REVENGE IS SWEET?

There was a rather interesting story in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ today about how President Ahmadinejad of Iran may have been the target of an ‘X-Ray Plot’ while on a trip to a UN sponsored global food summit in Rome earlier this year.

Apparently the x-ray security devices were being remotely controlled so that they were able to deliver higher doses of x-rays than normal to the point that they could do permanent damage to a person.

The whole thing sounds a little fanciful until one realises that this method of permanently injuring or even causing the death of somebody had been suggested before. It sounds even less fanciful when one learns that this method of permanently injuring a person was first thought up by the Nazis when the SS thought it may be an efficient way of sterilising the European Jewish population without any pain being administered. The plan in theory was simple: As the German occupiers moved in to a country they would simply order all Jews to report to an office to register. As a victim was being interviewed by a clerk a dose of radiation would be delivered to the genitals from an x-ray machine hidden behind the counter. The victims wouldn’t even know they had been zapped until they wondered why they were no longer able to procreate. The main problem with the plan was that people react in different ways to various doses of radiation. What might be just right for one person might be far too much for another.(1) The game would soon be up for the Nazis.

Sixty-five years later, however, and with the technological bugs ironed out of the idea… Well, who would do a thing like that to Ahmadinejad?


ENDNOTE

(1) Tiefenbacher, “Letter to Viktor Brack Concerning the X-Ray Sterilization Experiments”, 12 May 1941, Harvard Law School. HLS Item no. 115.