Cooking A Self-Hating Turkey

A really weird story coming out of the UK Telegraph today, they are claiming that Iranian President (and part-time Holocaust denier) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in fact born Jewish.

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him.

"Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.

"By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."

Which means this is either one of the most Epic Fails in history, or the CIA finally figured out how to pull a regime change without actually hacing to bomb anybody. As Larisa Alexandrovna puts it:

I give Ahmadinejad 24 hours before Iranian clerics demand his ousting.

And here is something else to consider. If Ahmadinejad's mother was also a Jew, then the conversion to Islam is irrelevant in the eyes of Jewish orthodoxy. He is still a Jew - albeit - a Jew practicing another religion. And if you want to have a very good laugh at how ironic this can get then consider too that if his mother was in fact Jewish, then as a Jew he has automatic Israeli citizenship.

A self hating Jew, how lovely for Ahmadinejad. I wonder if his family lost anyone in the Holocaust, the horrific crime he claims never happened?

This is one of those interesting times the Chinese proverb keesp telling us about living in.