Rowhani’s comment about Israel being a ‘sore’ (whether or not he added that it should be removed) expresses a popular meme in the Muslim world. The idea is expressed explicitly in the Hamas covenant, and it often appears in PLO media. Palestinian Journalist Khalid Amayreh published an article in 2010 on an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood website in which he called Jews “an abomination, a cancer upon the world.†Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday called Israel a “cancerous gland” which must be “excised,” echoing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Other Iranian officials also use this language on a regular basis.
The idea persists, despite the fact that — by any objective standard — the behavior of Israel is anything but expansionist and invasive. Although Israel ‘grew’ at the expense of the Arab nations in 1967, it has eagerly abandoned most of the territory conquered in the name of ‘peace’, even when that goal proved illusory. It would probably have given it all up if the Arabs had been more focused on strategic advantage than honor and vengeance.
Since 1948, the Arabs (and from 1979, the Iranian regime) have persisted in trying to ‘cure’ the Jewish ‘cancer’, sometimes by war, sometimes by diplomacy and often by both at once. The Arabs seem to have learned by successive humiliations (which only deepen their hatred) that direct means will not be successful. Now they have adopted a multi-pronged strategy of military pressure combined with delegitimization to reduce Western support for Israel, along with diplomatic offensives at the UN and with the US to obtain a solid territorial base. Once this is achieved, they expect to finish the job in another regional war.
The Arabs in particular have never been terribly original. First they borrowed the anti-Jewish ideology of the Nazis, exemplified by Palestinian Arab leader al-Husseini’s relationship with Hitler and the Nazi scientists and war criminals who found sanctuary in Egypt, Iraq and Syria after the war.
The rest of the world was understandably repelled by Nazi ideology, but in the late 1960’s Yasser Arafat was instructed by the KGB to present his gang as a movement of national liberation for a distinct ‘Palestinian people’, and Zionism as a form of imperialism. The international Left followed the KGB’s lead, and this marked the beginning of the Left’s fanatic anti-Zionism.
In 2001, a new element was added with the development of the Durban Strategy by anti-Israel NGOs. Gerald Steinberg explained it thus in 2005:
The Durban conference crystallized the strategy of delegitimizing Israel as “an apartheid regime” through international isolation based on the South African model. This plan is driven by UN-based groups as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which exploit the funds, slogans and rhetoric of the human rights movement.
On this basis a series of political battles have been fought in the UN and in the media. These include the myth of the Jenin “massacre,” the separation barrier, the academic boycott, and, currently, the church-based anti-Israel divestment campaign.
Each of these fronts reflected the Durban strategy of labeling Israel as the new South Africa.
Since then the campaign has expanded greatly, despite the complete absence of parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa.
It’s important to understand — and the cancer imagery makes this clear — that despite the various guises that the Arab-Muslim-Palestinian cause affects, there is one basic element that underlies it: an extreme hatred of the Jewish people and the desire for another genocide against it.
In this they will be unlikely to succeed — unless Israel first tears itself apart by internal conflict.
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I was very disappointed in this article. The idea that Israel was, at any time, eager to give back the land that had been reclaimed in 1967, especially Jerusalem, is offensive in the extreme. I know that I am not the only Israeli, or Jew in the diaspora for that matter, who was both outraged and heartsick each and every time that Israel gave away pieces of herself in the pursuit of an unattainable peace. Israel has tried for decades to make deals with a nonexistent “peace partner” and, before any more of Israel’s land, as well as her integrity, is lost, Israelis must return to the devoted Zionism and strength of the pioneers who, with their sweat and blood, built our country. That way our people will be strong enough to overcome any further attempts to destroy the world’s only Jewish State.
Dafna:
I’m not sure what you were disappointed about. I certainly didn’t favor giving up any of the territory gained in 1967, not the Sinai, nor Gaza nor anything else. But facts are facts, this is what Israel did, and I am certain that — as I said — it would have given up more if the Arabs had played it a little smarter.
Maybe by now enough people have learned that it doesn’t pay to be conciliatory in the Middle East.