Arutz Shameonya and the Israeli government

In the wake of the Aftonbladet scandalette, in which a journalist could be found guilty of nothing more than journalistic laziness but prompting the Israeli government nonetheless to call on the Swedish government to condemn Aftonbladet's piece, a new and far more pernicious case of blatant lying has very recently come from the Zionist side.

On 01/09 Arutz Sheva published a piece with the juicy title Ahmadinejad's Imam: Islam Allows Raping, Torturing Prisoners, which got picked up very quickly by large numbers of Ziobloggers and assorted Iran-baiters. At the core of the article sits the following damning piece of text:

"Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?" was [one] question posed to the Islamic cleric.

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed."

This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: "Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?"

Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape."

A related issue, in the eyes of the questioners, was the rape of virgin female prisoners. In this instance, Mesbah-Yazdi went beyond the permissibility issue and described the Allah-sanctioned rewards accorded the rapist-in-the-name-of-Islam:

"If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala."

One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: "What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?"

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women - ed.] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi'a Muslim."

Scour the Arutz article for references to any credible source or a link to an authorative web page and you'll notice there isn't anything like that at all: nada, zilch, nothing.

To me, the whole thing sounded way too fantastical to be anything near true. Take for instance the sentence:

Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape."

It sounds like pastiche. And far too sexually explicit to come from the lips of an arch-conservative Ayatollah or Imam.

It turns out that that's exactly what it is: satire - black comedy, if you prefer.

As this web page amply proves. The satirical text, now pulled because too many mistook it for a real report, is a spoof piece published first in the 'Fun/Entertainment' section of the Farsi-based Balatarin site.

Arutz found it and printed it uncritically and self-servingly as "News". Countless Ziobloggers salivated at this piece of gefundenes fressen and followed suit. One of them, 'Elder of Ziyon', has been notified of this sorry state of affairs but refuses to retract, or even blurb his piece. 'Elder of Ziyon' (what's in a name? A Hasbara mouthpiece blog named after an well-known and widely circulated anti-Semitic conspiracy myth peddles... a satirical anti-Iranian hoax. It's enough to give you a pointy head) defends his piece in the comment section as follows:

And I made it very clear where it came from (Iranian dissidents), and that the sources were certainly biased.

But combined with what is known about the cleric, the fact of the rapes in Iranian prisons and the pseudo-sharia justification for raping virgin death-row inmates (which all had multiple sources,) it seemed worthwhile to post.

But not worthwhile enough to retract now you've been caught with your pants down?

Update: 'Elder of Ziyon' has now effectively retracted the piece. Thanks!

Now lets' go back a bit to Aftonbladet's peccadillo of reprinting hearsay (and clearly stating it was nothing more than hearsay) and their journalistic missed opportunity of not following up with some investigative journalism. This was met with some seriously heavy breathing by Ziobloggers hissing about 'blood libel' and venting no shortage of anti-Swedish feelings, as well as an astonishing Israeli government reaction (in the guise of Herr Lieberman, if I recall well), demanding their Swedish counterpart condemn the utterances of a member of its free press corps.

Considering that Aftonbladet and Arutz Sheva are of similar size but that the latter's sins far outweigh the former's, we should be comfortable in the knowledge that the Israeli government will now slam Arutz Sheva for serious slander and libel and perhaps even offer an note of apology to the Iranian government. No?

H/T The Hasbara Buster