IN THE NEW NUCLEAR AGE

The Iranian’s president’s latest outburst against Israel repeated all his usual genocide threats and Holocaust denial, with an innovative addition of denying the Bible: There were never Jews in the Land of Israel. Furthermore, he threatened Europe to stop its support for Israel.

Shimon Peres rightly called him “the new Hitler.” The Iranian president is not a clown. He heads a regional power with long-range missiles, which stands to manufacture nuclear weapons within a few years. Despite this, there is one clear advantage to Ahmadinejad’s statements: He did not make any mention of the occupied territories, the rights of the Palestinians and two states for two peoples. In doing so, he is dispersing the media- ideological fog regarding the main factor preventing an arrangement in the Middle East: The refusal to accept the existence of any Jewish state in the Middle East…

What is new is that today, the campaign against Israel is headed by a non-Arab country with strength and talent that is unwilling for any compromise with the “Zionist entity.” Unlike Hitler, who hid the “Reich’s secret” about the liquidation of the Jews and tried to disguise it, the leader of Iran declares this [aspiration] openly and proudly. One might expect that neo-Nazi declarations of this type would meet with a global boycott, but this has not happened. The Iranian president was given a very warm welcome at the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement-non-aligned with whom?-that was recently held in Havana, he spoke at the UN General Assembly and was even invited to the respected club of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. There a debate was indeed conducted with him on various issues, but no one stood up and condemned him with words worthy of note on the matter of “wiping Israel off the map.” It is with great justification that Shimon Peres denounced this odd reception with sharp words.

But why should we complain about others? Only recently, about 30 lecturers and professors from Tel Aviv University signed an incredible petition. According to this petition, Iran is not to blame for anything. It is not the one that launched the propaganda campaign. It is not the reckless party. The United States and Israel are to blame. They are the reckless ones, who are endangering poor Iran.

In Ahmadinejad’s meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations, chairman Peter G. Peterson denounced the Iranian president for his Holocaust denial. The UN secretary general, in his visit to Tehran, also did not hesitate to reprimand his hosts for this denial. But the 30 professors from Tel Aviv did not see fit to include in their letter of defense for Iran even a single word of disapproval for its president’s Holocaust denial, and this is considered the “radical Left” in the Israeli madhouse!

The threat from Iran troubles the entire world, but Israel is the first victim of the nuclear danger. It is hard to believe that there is anything that will prevent the Iranian power from arming itself with nuclear weapons, while its extensions threaten us from the north and the south. Worse: It can be expected that the Arab Middle East will also equip itself with nuclear weapons, and we can also not ignore the possibility that Pakistan’s nuclear “Muslim bomb” will fall into the hands of new rulers, who will identify with al-Qaida.

All this faces Israel and the Western world with a new nuclear era. This era is worse than the Cold War era. The Soviet Union was a cruel empire, but its leaders were rational and calculated people who were influenced by the balance of terror, and prevented a global disaster. In the new era, the bombs are under the control of madmen, who sanctify the idea of suicide and death. The president of Iran also believes that Israel’s destruction will herald a new Muslim age and redeem the world.

What should be done? Only a defense pact with the US-inside or outside NATO-can deter the lunatics. Israel, for its part, must conduct a denunciation campaign against the person who is threatening it with genocide: To initiate his prosecution in The Hague, as Liav Orgad proposed in Ma’ariv; to recruit Jewish organizations for protest vigils and demonstrations against Iranian embassies in the West; to demand a condemnation by the Security Council after each additional threat; and mainly, to develop an anti-ballistic missile system with the aid of the United States-such a system is expensive but possible-along with preparation for passive defense, which mainly consists of building shelters capable of withstanding a nuclear bombing.

This ran in Maariv on October 27th, 2006