Ahmadinejad Hits Below the Belt

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The Iranian president’s recent statements about relocating the Zionist Jews to Europe bring the question of Israel back to the very first square it began from — the square of rejecting Israel and refusing to accept its existence in Palestine at all. After all these efforts and wars that the West and Israel have expended in order to tame the Arabs and Muslims and drive them toward accepting Israel, normalizing relations with it, and defending its security, the president of a major Islamic state emerges to dismiss all these Western accomplishments and say that the question still lies in whether to accept Israel at all, not in how we might accept it. The problem is not the West Bank and Gaza, and it is not how to draft a peace agreement, but the very roots of the issue, which lie in a Western-backed invasion that led to the seizure of sacred Islamic land.

The Westerners pursue Iran’s nuclear program relentlessly, yet do not breathe a single word about Israel’s production of nuclear bombs; indeed, some of them, such as the United States, find sufficient justification for Israel to produce nuclear weapons. The threat against Iran keeps escalating, and the brandishing of sanctions continues without pause. As for Israel, it never stops threatening to strike Iran’s nuclear reactors by one means or another, and considers Iran’s nuclear development a threat to itself. It is as though the Iranian president is answering threat with reminder. He did not threaten, and he did not warn; he did not tell us he wants to destroy Israel, or that he will attack tomorrow, but he reminded the world that Israel stands on land whose people were expelled, that it is a usurping entity; and if there is anyone who so adores it, such as Germany, then let it provide the space at its own expense.

The West flew into a rage over these statements, just as it did on 26 October 2005, when the Iranian president called for wiping Israel from existence. The people of the West, in Britain, France, Russia, and Poland, hated the Jews and brutalized them across the centuries, killing them, torturing them, hunting them down, and exporting them to Palestine. So has that hatred lingered, or has it developed, over time, into a love of the Jews? If the hatred has lingered — and my sense is that it has — then the Europeans certainly do not want the Jews brought back to Europe; and if a love for Israel has developed in them instead, then they cannot bear to see it threatened either way.

…-the refugee’s return to his home and his property? For Israel’s sake, the Europeans insist on the displacement of the Palestinians, and insist on pursuing them wherever they may be found. Whoever accepts the expulsion of a people from their homeland for the sake of others cannot expect any moral theory or humanitarian statement of his to be taken seriously. The Europeans and the Americans are drowning in the blood of Palestinians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Jordanians, Egyptians, Libyans, Iranians, Afghans, and Syrians, and they hold no right to hand out certificates of morality.

The Arab media did not hesitate to support the Western position from behind a half-open door. They focused on the idea that the Iranian president lacks experience, does not think before making statements, and often departs from the requirements of diplomatic professionalism and political maneuvering. They say he still carries the mindset of the student he once was as a young man at the outset of the Iranian revolution’s victory. In doing so, they try to avoid taking a clear position of their own, as though wanting to tell the president that he is “rowing while the crowd looks on” — that is, that he is wasting his effort on injury time, and that the era of questioning Israel’s right to exist has long passed. The media conveniently forget that it was the rulers, the great intellectuals, and the masters of the diplomatic arts who sold Palestine; the student, the peasant, and the worker never allowed themselves to extend a hand to Israel in a handshake. Disgrace comes to us from those of “elevated standing,” while goodness remains in the simple folk, and the nation will never triumph except through them. In Palestine, it is the men of the Authority, and many intellectuals, academics, and financiers, who negotiate, coordinate on security matters with Israel, and normalize relations with it, while the peasant still throws himself beneath the wheels of the Israeli bulldozer in defense of the land, and the student still straps explosives to his own body in vengeance for the blood of Palestinian martyrs. It is these simple people, who understand nothing of the language of diplomacy or the comfort of hotels, who keep the Palestinian cause alive. And I do not believe those velvet-tongued sophistries have ever served, or will ever serve, the Palestinian cause. This does not mean we should go back to an age of mere clamor, only that we must not lose our causes under the weight of a “civilized approach” to solving problems.

What is so disgraceful about the Iranian president’s call to set aside a piece of land for the Jews in Europe? The Europeans adore the Israeli Jews, and it would be better to reunite loved ones; as for us, we hate them, and it would be better to keep them far away from us, so that the wars do not continue. The matter requires no genius in political analysis, nor in understanding the harmony of hearts; it is simply part of the ordinary business of daily life that individuals and communities encounter all the time. Those who love each other come together, and those who hate each other part ways. Europe pays a heavy price for the wars that break out in the region, and it goes to the trouble of traveling every time it wants to hand out gifts. And it remains important that the lover honor his beloved with what belongs to him, not with what belongs to others.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “نجاد يضرب تحت الحزام” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.