Ahmadinejad's Holocaust

Iran's President Wants Israel Destroyed

The same day Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared at a conference in Tehran titled "The World Without Zionism" that Israel should be destroyed (and also that "accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible"), an Islamic jihad suicide attacker murdered at least five people in the Israeli city of Hadera.

No doubt Ahmadinejad had this kind of thing in mind when he stated, "There is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will wipe off this stigma [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world." If he condemns attacks against civilian non-combatants, he has kept it to himself.

Imagine if President Bush had announced that he intended to wipe Iraq off the map: The domestic and international outcry that would follow would effectively end his presidency. But in the context of Israel, the world has always had a higher tolerance for such talk.

The Hamas charter states that its goal is to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine," and quotes Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." Hamas attacked Israel with 113 suicide bombers from 1993 to 2005 in pursuit of this end. Yet some Western analysts have actually advocated Hamas' inclusion in the political process in the Palestinian Authority, as long as the group renounces violence. Is the obliteration of Israel more acceptable if it takes place without violence?

Ahmadinejad also made it clear that, like Hamas, he did not view the Palestinian conflict as one of nationalism, but of religion: "Anybody who recognizes Israel," he warned, "will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, any [Islamic leader] who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world."

Many officials and observers in the West will be puzzled by his view that recognition of Israel would amount to defeat for Islam. Even though Ahmadinejad has begun recently to refer to the jihadists' goal of establishing a unified caliphate under Sharia law, the totalitarian, supremacist, expansionist jihad ideology that Ahmadinejad and his ilk espouse has still received scant attention given its increasingly central role in so many world conflicts.

Ahmadinejad, Hamas and innumerable others believe that any land-not only Israel, but Spain also-that has once belonged to the House of Islam belongs to it forever. Non-Muslims may live in such lands, but only as dhimmis, protected people, subject to various forms of legal discrimination and harassment. They have no right to govern such lands. This is why Ahmadinejad views Israel as a "stigma," and will, like Hamas, accept nothing short of its total destruction.

But this time the reaction has been different. Ahmadinejad may have inadvertently initiated a shift in the prevailing winds. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, among many others, was dismayed: "There has been a long time in which I have been answering questions on Iran with everyone saying to me: 'Tell us you are not going to do anything about Iran.' If they carry on like this, the question people are going to be asking us is: 'When are you going to do something about this?' You imagine a state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has issued a call of his own: expel Iran from the UN. If Ahmadinejad and his gang are to see that the anger of the civilized world against his criminal regime is genuine, world leaders should heed Sharon's recommendation-and also work quickly to defuse Iran's nuclear program. Otherwise, Iran's thug in chief will almost certainly use those weapons to make sure that there is indeed a "world without Zionism."

Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), published by Regnery, a HUMAN EVENTS sister company, and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter).

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Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Nov 7, 2005
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