[Commentary] Ze'ev Maghen - The accession of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been accompanied by a sharp transformation in the Iranian attitude to, and depiction of, the State of Israel. This change includes a new conception of the Jewish polity as weak and unstable, an easy target for a united Muslim (or united Shiite) offensive. Chanting "Death to America! Death to Israel!" has been the way Iranians applaud for over a quarter-century. When the soccer team from Isfahan scores a goal against the soccer team from Shiraz, its fans cheer wildly: "Death to America! Death to Israel!" Like the daily "Two-Minutes Hate" in George Orwell's 1984, this venom-spewing is the mantra upon which an entire generation of Iranians has been raised. That Israel is the devil, the root of all evil, a criminal cancer that must be excised from the Muslim body politic - these propositions are not ephemeral feelings for most Iranian Muslims, but rather eternal truths. By casting an entire people as a parasitic infestation, by demonizing, delegitimizing, and dehumanizing them at home, in school, in the mosque, and in the media, the quarter-century-old routine of Israel-hatred, added to 1,400 years of traditional Islamic anti-Semitism, has prepared in the minds of Iranians and their neighboring coreligionists the moral ground for the eradication of the State of Israel. At least some elements within today's Iranian leadership are indeed interested in a rapprochement with the West and especially with America. But Tehran in no way intends to lessen its enmity toward Israel in exchange. To the contrary: the Islamic Republic is offering to diminish its enmity toward the West in exchange for the latter's abandonment of Israel. More and more Iranian Islamists today - together with their zealous coreligionists in other Muslim countries - believe that the erasure of the Jewish state from the map is a dream that can be realized in the here and now, whether in one fell swoop or through a relentless process of attrition and erosion. No agenda is being pushed more energetically by today's Islamists worldwide than that, for the sake of Muslim-Christian rapprochement, and on pain of terrible consequences otherwise, America and Europe agree to offer up the Western imperialist enclave or outpost known as Israel on the altar of "accommodation." The writer is senior lecturer in Islamic history and Persian language and chair of the department of Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
2009-02-06 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive