(Times-UK) Amir Taheri - Over the past three years, Iran's Khomeinist regime has portrayed Israel as a waning power, a small and vulnerable enclave that, having lost the support of its powerful protector, the U.S., is facing the might of a resurgent Muslim world under Tehran's leadership. This message is pumped out through Iranian satellite television stations, and in scores of magazines and books that are freely distributed throughout the Muslim world. Muslim opinion-formers are regularly invited to Iran for seminars on the pan-Islamic campaign to accelerate "the inevitable end of Israel," a phrase repeatedly used by Iran's official media. To underline this new image of Israel, the Tehran propaganda machine has replaced footage of poor Palestinians crushed by "Zionists" with that of the growing arsenal of rockets that Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza have built up for what President Ahmadinejad calls "the final assault on the Zionist state." The Jew, previously depicted as aggressive and domineering, is presented as cowardly.
2010-06-10 08:43:48Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive