Haveil Havalim, the Carnival of the Jews, is up at Abba Gav. I love the sound of Abba Gav. Say it out loud. Go ahead. It’s fun. You know you want to.

The Carnival of the Cats is up, too, over at Watermark.

Yes, my two favorite things in the whole world: Jews and cats. Oh, wait. Two of my three favorite things. Add fried potatoes to the mix. And chocolate. Ooh, and Gilmore Girls. I think we’re up to five favorite things. Did I say sex? Sex goes on that list, too.

Yes, I’m rather tired tonight. I’d better stop now.

The Iranians are blaming — who else? — the Jews (and Americans) for the Danish cartoons. Funny, I didn’t know Denmark was the fifty-first state.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran’s hard-line president on Saturday accused the United States and Europe of being “hostages of Zionism” and said they should pay a heavy price for the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have triggered worldwide protests.

Denmark - where the drawings were first published four months ago - warned Danes to leave Indonesia, saying they faced a “significant and imminent danger” from an extremist group and announced it had withdrawn embassy staff from Jakarta, Iran and Syria.

In a sign that the AP editors read my blog, they’re finally adding some context to Gorilla Boy’s anti-Semitic remarks.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is at odds with much of the international community over Iran’s disputed nuclear program, launched an anti-Israeli campaign last fall when he said the Holocaust was a “myth” and that Israeli should be “wiped off the map.”

In a speech marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution Saturday, Ahmadinejad linked his public rage with Israel and the cartoons satirizing Islam’s most revered figure.

“Now in the West insulting the prophet is allowed, but questioning the Holocaust is considered a crime,” he said. “We ask, why do you insult the prophet? The response is that it is a matter of freedom, while in fact they (who insult the founder of Islam) are hostages of the Zionists. And the people of the U.S. and Europe should pay a heavy price for becoming hostages to Zionists.”

Look at that! One little sentence, and it makes all the difference in the world to the context of the article. Congratulations, AP, apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Oh, but then there’s this. Just in case you were living under a rock, the AP had to make absolutely sure that you got why the cartoon riots are occurring:

The drawings - including one that depicts the prophet with a turban shaped like a bomb with a burning fuse - were first published in September and recently reprinted in other European publications that said it was an issue of freedom of speech.

Islam widely holds that representations of the prophet are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.

Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim country, has seized on the caricatures as a means of rallying its people behind a government that is increasingly under fire from the West over its nuclear program.

Shiite Muslims do not ban representations of the prophet and some in Iran’s provincial towns and villages even carry drawings said to be of Muhammad. But Tehran said the newspaper caricatures were insulting to all Muslims.

Two things: The old boilerplate simply read “Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.” The AP has changed its boilerplate for this story, even though in the next breath they show the Iranians to be the hypocrites that they are.

Let me interpret for you what Ahmadinejad was really saying:

“With my left hand, I will condemn the Danish cartoons, while with my right, I will continue my march towards nuclear weapons for the Mullahcracy.”

By the way, take a quick look at my previous post, and tell me if you can tell the difference between Iranian “moderates” and “hard-liners.”

I can’t.

Raise hands, anyone who thinks he truly means this:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - The Islamic world is fed up with violence and extremism in the name of religion and is ready for an era of progressive, democratic Muslim governments, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Friday.

Khatami said current conflicts between the West and Islam have created a situation that “can only see ever-escalating violence, whether in the form of war and occupation and repression, or in the form of terror and destruction.”

“After about two centuries of dispute between tradition and modernity in the world of Islam (there is) a high level of mental preparation for the acceptance of a major transformation in the mind and lives of Muslims,” Khatami said in a speech at an international conference on Islam and the West.

If this is true, I’d like to see Khatami recant his insistence that he never shook hands with Moshe Katsav, the president of Israel he sat next to at Pope John Paul II’s funeral.

And there are also these veiled threats and lies:

Khatami also cautioned that imposing sanctions on his country because of its nuclear program would also hit the West hard by pushing oil prices higher.

“The first effect on sanctions against Iran is that this high price will go even higher … and the impact on the industrialized world will be very serious. I hope all sides of the issue will act prudently,” he said.

[...] Khatami said “Iran neither has nuclear weapons nor is developing weapons. Thus the pressure on Iran to relinquish its nuclear technology is unfair and unjust.”

He noted that a number of countries in Middle East and Asia have nuclear weapons.

“Israel has at least 200 nuclear war heads. It would have been very good if the international community especially Europe and the IAEA focused on creating a nuclear free region in the Middle East instead of focusing on their efforts on Iran.”

And I’m thinking that he’s not about to reverse his lies about Katsav. Nope. When in doubt, blame the Jews.

I wonder if he also is on the “wipe Israel off the map” bandwagon. I’m thinking yes. If you have any doubts, go read this transcript from a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour.

Obviously, Washington is the U.S. capital where policy decision on U.S. national interests must be made. However, the impression of the people of the Middle East and Muslims in general is that certain foreign policy decisions of the U.S. are in fact made in Tel Aviv and not in Washington. And I regret to say that the improper American policy of unbridled support for the aggressions of a racist terrorist regime does not serve U.S. interests, nor does it even serve that of the Jewish people. Zionists constitute a small portion of the Jewish people and have openly declared and proven in practice that they are expansionist.

Don’t ignore the date of this interview at the top of the page.

It’s from 1998.

An Iranian “moderate”?

Not so much.