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Are Israelis Paranoid? Yes ... and They Have Every Reason to Be When It Comes to Iran

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) Frida Ghitis - In recent days I have heard people wondering if Israelis aren't making too much of the Iranian threat. But there is no arguing the question of whether Israelis are paranoid: You bet they are. And with good reason. Let's set aside the lessons of history, which are multiple, tragic and eerily repetitive. Let's focus instead on the present. On Feb. 3, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the country's most powerful man and its spiritual leader, told the faithful in his Friday sermon that Israel is "a cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut." Iran, he said, would help anyone who wants to help carry this out. Khamanei admitted that Iran has already participated in recent wars. "We have intervened," he revealed, in the wars between Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2009. During those wars, thousands of rockets were launched against Israeli civilians, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and more than a million to live in shelters. So the prospect of rockets falling on Israelis requires no imagination. Journalists have photographed military parades displaying long-range missiles, capable of reaching Israel and Europe, draped with banners reading "Israel must be uprooted and erased from history." And to those saying Iran makes "rational" decisions, let's remember their rationality includes the belief that dying can be glorious.
2012-03-09 00:00:00
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