A Mass Murderer With “An Easy Smile”

Dear Editor:

Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the leader of the most notorious terrorist regime on earth, had “an easy smile” and was “fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels,” the Washington Post wrote in its obituary of him yesterday.

Khameini rose to power under the guidance of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Islamist revolution in Iran. But, the Post emphasized, Khameini “cut a more avuncular figure in public than his perpetually scowling but much more revered mentor.”

“Avuncular” is an odd word to describe someone who recently ordered the mass murder of thousands of unarmed demonstrators (tens of thousands, according to many reports) and has sponsored terrorist attacks around the world that have claimed the lives of countless Americans, Israelis, and others.

Technically, “avuncular” means something related to an uncle. But every dictionary defines it in a strongly positive sense. The Cambridge Dictionary, for example: “Friendly, kind, or helpful, like the expected behavior of an uncle.”

The New York Times’s obituary also called Khameini “avuncular” (adding “magnanimous” for good measure). Strange that two major newspapers would independently choose the same uncommon word.

Both newspapers have a history of describing terrorist leaders in positive terms. In 2019, the Washington Post’s obituary for ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called him as an “austere religious scholar.”

A New York Times profile of the late Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah, in 2025, described his “charm” and “charisma” and characterized him as a “religious leader.”

This is nothing new for the New York Times.

In July 1933, Adolf Hitler granted the Times his first interview with a foreign journalist since becoming chancellor of Germany six months earlier.

In those months, the Nazis had expelled Jews from most professions, burned down the parliament, outlawed opposition parties, and carried out sporadic violence against Jews and political dissidents. In an effort to improve his image abroad, Hitler turned to the Times. It worked like a charm.

“Hitler Seeks Jobs for All Germans,” was the headline of the article. Interviewer Anne O’Hare McCormick gave the Nazi leader paragraph after paragraph to explain that his policies were necessary to deal with Germany’s unemployment, improve its roads, and promote national unity.

Here’s how McCormick described Hitler’s appearance: “He is a rather shy and simple man, younger than one expects, more robust, taller…”

And his eyes! McCormick wrote: “His eyes are almost the color of the blue larkspur in a vase behind him, curiously childlike and candid…His voice is as quiet as his black tie and his double-breasted black suit…Herr Hitler has the sensitive hand of the artist.”

The Times interviewer eventually got around to asking him, “How about the Jews?” She then gave Hitler all the space he needed for his lies, with no rebuttal or even questioning:

“It is true we have made discriminatory laws, but they are directed not so much against the Jews as for the German people, to give equal economic opportunity to the majority…You say the Jews suffer, but so do millions of others…Our fight is not primarily against the Jews as such but against the Communists and all elements that demoralize and destroy us…”

McCormick’s final question: “What character in history do you admire most, Caesar, Napoleon, or Frederick the Great?”

Sincerely
Prof. Rafael Medoff

Radical Islam’s War Against the World

Dear Editor:

Immediately after the Oct. 7, 2024 attack on Israel, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres accused Israel of bearing responsibility. “It did not happen in a vacuum,” he said.

He was right. It did not happen in a vacuum, but like Canada, the UK, France and Australia, he is totally ignorant of the history of the region and is spouting Jew-hatred.

Radical Islam has been waging a 100-year war against the world, but we have not acknowledged it.

For 400 years, the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey aligned with Germany in World War One. When it lost the war, it lost its empire.

Southern Syria was divided into Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. Its borders were drawn at San Remo in 1920 by the victors of the war. They implemented mandates to handle the remnants of the empire, until these states could be self-sufficient. Palestine was the reconstituted Jewish homeland. Almost immediately, Britain cut off 78% and gave it to the Saudi Hashemites.

In 1922, the League of Nations unanimously set the San Remo accords into law.

In Egypt, 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement, sworn to spread the Caliphate across the world. Today, Qatar is the epicenter of Islamic expansion. The Oct.7 attack could not have been carried out without Iran and Qatar’s financing, equipping and planning.

The leader of the Palestinian mandate’s Arabs was Haj Amin al-Husseini. He instigated pogroms against Mideast Jews from 1920 to 1942, formed the Bosnian Muslim Waffen-SS troops in WWII and intervened to send 4,000 Hungarian children to the gas chambers. He was captured by the French, who let him escape.

In 1945, the United Nations was founded. Article 80 of its charter states what was promised the Jews cannot be altered. This solidified Israel’s borders as including Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

In 1947, the Arabs rejected a UN suggestion that the mandate be partitioned again between Jews and Arabs, and launched the Nakba to ‘drive the Jews into the sea.’

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union saw Israel as an American outpost and set out to undermine both nations through terrorism and disinformation. They formed the PLO in 1964, collecting fighters from throughout MENA and calling them ‘Palestinians’. No Arab had been called a Palestinian till then.

In 1995, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, allowing Yasser Arafat and 100,000 followers to enter Israel. Arafat had made it clear the accords were like Mohammed’s pact with the Quraysh Jews, when the Prophet went back on his agreement, beheading the men and enslaving the women.

Nobody took Arafat seriously then and we still minimize radical Islam’s devious intentions.

No-one can expect America and Israel to accept a ceasefire that keeps radical Islam in power. The Ayatollahs’ war against the west ends when Iran and its flunkies surrender.

Sincerely
Len Bennett, author of ‘Unfinished Work’
Deerfield Beach, FL