Israel Matzav

Many Iraqis don't think like their 'speaker'

Last night, I noted with some disgust, the comments of the Iraqi parliament speaker that "Jews" were financing violence in Iraq. Reader Gideon pointed me to this post at well-known Iraqi blog Iraq the Model to show me that not all Iraqis think like their 'speaker.'

Omar, who owns the blog, culled reactions to the Gilad Shalit kidnapping from an Arabic language forum on the BBC website. Omar says,

"About three dozens of comments were made by Iraqis both inside Iraq and in exile and all these comments were supportive of Israel or at least against Hamas as far as the topic is concerned except for only three comments; that's a 10:1 ratio while as you probably have guesses, the opposite ratio is true about the comments by the rest of Arabs....

"What was written in that thread stands as one example of the change in the Iraqi way of thinking since the day we got rid of the dictator and shows that logic and facts are gaining more ground at the expense of emotions and conspiracy theories....

"But what really makes me feel optimistic about this new Iraqi way of thinking is that it shows how Iraqis are beginning to distinguish between terrorism and rightful acts of resistance not only in Iraq but also on a global level and are showing decreasing tolerance for extremism and this in my opinion is what builds peace in the region or any given region of this world."

For the record, none of the "non-Iraqi" reactions noted by Omar come from Lebanon.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:00 AM