Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, during a regional conference on security in Iraq, called for the “elimination of the Zionist government.”
“There is a great desire for the disappearance of the Zionist government and its replacement by a Palestinian government in all areas of Palestine. The main problem in the Muslim world is the existence of a Zionist government and, thus, the whole Muslim world must act to eliminate the problem,” he said. (AFP)
If you’re planning on waiting for world condemnation, don’t.
Oh, yes, across the Arab Muslim word–corrupt and brutal governments, ignorance, economies that except for natural resources contribute less to world trade than does Finland, oppression of women and minority groups…and the greatest problem is Israel.
This has the virtue of being starkly revealing of how the Arab regimes have cynically used the Palestinians to deflect attention from their offenses and viciousness.
If Israel disappeared tomorrow, precisely what would change in the Arab Middle East?
A jerusalem couple whose dsughter was a victim of terrorists have been writing a new blog which I really feel needs to get seen by as many people as possible. The name of it is “This Ongoing War” and they deal with the same issue as you in a new posting tonight. I’m copying the whole text here. I hope this doesn’t contravene your posting policies.
8-Jul-06: Creating a Balance of Fear
Nearly 600 missiles have been fired into Israel since the handing over of control of the Jewish communities of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority last summer. Damage, destruction, constant fear, injuries and deaths have all followed. This is not what the government of Israel assured its citizens a year ago.
The disparate views that Israelis, as compared with Palestinian Arabs, have of the removal of the Israeli towns and the way the Arabs immediately converted those suburbs and farms and greenhouses into launch pads for deadly missiles are strikingly irreconcilable to anyone who ponders on the subject as we do.
The New York Times today introduces an intriguing theory: the Arabs are doing it because they believe in a creating a balance of fear. Hard to comprehend? Here’s a sample:
The Times article includes this brief quote from an Israeli source that really says it all:
Read the rest of it here. (Registration required.)
Sometimes, you get the feeling that the insanity of the Palestinian Arab leadership – its self-destructiveness, its vanity, its grotesque mockery of what leadership responsibility really means – all comes down to a case of history’s most acute and long-lasting chip on the shoulder. Fifty-eight years after the infant State of Israel embarked on one of the greatest rehabilitation projects of all time, most of our Arab neighbours are still too busy nursing hurt feelings to even start thinking about building hospitals, orchestras, decent housing or a future for their children.
Lest we be accused of gross generalization, let’s make clear that we’re not including Arafat’s widow Suha (pictured weeping at the funeral of the husband she had physically avoided for 3 years while ensconced in her $11,000 per day hotel suite in Paris), or any other members (Nabil Shaath is a fine example) of the Arafat kleptocracy in this. For decades, they have managed to look out for their own interests with enormous distinction. You might even say they made out like thieves.
When a person suffers “huge pain” like the parliamentarian quoted in the Times says he has, it’s a tragedy – for us and for his children, if not for him – he can’t see how much of that pain is self-inflicted.
UPDATE: One lone voice from the Arab world seems to share that viewpoint. An op-ed piece published today in Al-Watan, a Kuwaiti non-government daily paper, points out that Hamas bears the real responsibility for Israel’s current incursion into the Gaza Strip. Fuad al-Hashem says Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israel after Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza, making Israel’s decision to shell Gaza ‘natural’. Al Hashem calls on leaders in the Hamas movement to concern itself with rebuilding Gaza (a strikingly novel position to take) and address the real issues for the Palestinian people. “Then the ‘Summer Rain’ will stop falling,” he writes.
If the Arabs stopped trying to destroy Israel and kill the Jews they would have nothing to fear from Israel.
As Mark Steyn has pointed out it isn’t just the Palis against big, bad Israel. It’s the Arab (and now Muslim) world against Israel, 1.2 billion people against five million Jews. They had a massive superiority of planes, tanks, guns, and men, and the Israelis cleaned their clocks, repeadtedly.
The fundamental reasons for continued Muslim hostility to Israel are simply outraged vanity and offended amour-propre. How dare a bunch of despised dhimmis aspire to govern themselves, to live unthreatened by pogroms if an imam got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Then, when the Master Rulers (Allah said they should rule) came to kill them, the Jews not only fought back but, adding injury to insult, won. Some people just don’t know their place.
It’s long past time for these spoiled Arab/Iranian children to grow up and stop throwing deadly tantrums.