Israel and Ahmedinejad
Abdul Wahab Badrakhan Al-Hayat - 12/12/05//
In the context of the European condemnation directed to the statements of the Iranian President about Israel, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Jack Straw, said that the words of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad "have no place in a civilized political debate". Undoubtedly, Ahmedinejad's statement that Israel is like a "cancer", after he called for wiping it off from the map, in addition to his proposal to transfer it to Germany or Austria, provokes the American-European West, which spent the last five decades covering up for Israel's crimes and offering all support to illegal and inhumane violations used to implant Israel in the middle of the Arab region. After the Arabs stopped fighting it and even stopped condemning its existence, the Iranians extract slogans, considered outdated and obsolete, to remind the West and Israel that the historical facts are not what they portray and work hard to establish.
The problem between Iran and the West was not Israel but has become Israel in the past few years after the United States gave Israel the "right" of extending its security sphere to Iran and beyond. Consequently, Tel Aviv started acting as if it were the one concerned, first and foremost, with the Iranian nuclear armament. It also wanted to control the Iranian military capabilities as it imposed the limits on the collective Arab capabilities. As long as Tehran is launching a hot battle to acquire its nuclear right, it did not find anything to prevent it from using Israel as a tool in the battle, especially that the latter is currently focusing its diplomacy on provocations against Iran. Perhaps what encouraged this stance is that the United States is confounded in Iraq and has come to acknowledge the Iranian influence in the country. It even went to the extend of publicly declaring that the American ambassador in Baghdad is assigned to communicate with Iran. If that was not in the American interest, Washington would not have requested this communication regardless of what it might accomplish.
It is clear that Ahmedinejad is deliberately demeaning Israel, assuming that the Western countries might finally understand that they have to deal with Iran in a different mentality, whether concerning its location, role or nuclear program. If the Iranian President favors this way of addressing Westerners, then Hans Blix, the former head of the United Nations inspectors for WMD in Iraq has expressed this position using clearer terms when he said that the European Union could offer additional suggestions to Iran in order to get guarantees that it wont use it's atomic energy for military purposes. Blix indicated that there is a big discrepancy between what was offered to North Korea and what is being offered to Iran, which means, according to him, that we are not at the end of the negotiation sessions.
There is another reason that explains the organized attacks that Ahmedinejad is launching against Israel, since the latter is extending its fingers to Iraq and is trying to set a foot in some of Iraqi regions, with the knowledge of the Americans and the Europeans. In this way the features of an Iranian-Israeli direct struggle are being drawn, where Tehran will not accept to have any concessions imposed on it.
On the other hand, if we take Ahmedinejad's statements at face value, he must also be addressing the Arab public opinion, which has suffered and is suffering from the symptoms of the "cancer". This more relevant since Israel has expressed and is expressing clearly and with absolute US support that it is not seeking to become a normal state in the region and it does not want to enter in its synthesis. Furthermore, Israel asserts that it is not concerned with a "peace partnership" but with a hegemonic status.
Concerning the political "civilized" debate, according to Jack Straw's definition, the Arabs have tried it in 2002 when they adopted a peace initiative in the Beirut Summit and it is well-known how Israel reacted: by re-occupying the Palestinian territories and committing more massacres. Straw or the US President or any Western leader did not point out that Israel's behavior was not civilized at all and none of them said whether the racist fence is uncivilized and worthy of condemnation, or whether it should be dealt with under the seventh article of the UN charter. Even worse, Israel was rewarded with recognition, especially in a speech voiced by the UN Secretary General who said that the justification for Israel's existence is the Nazi Holocaust… Ahmedinejad's statements might deserve Western condemnation, but it is difficult for the Arabs to endorse this condemnation even if they did not line up in support of the Iranian President.
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