There is a paradox to the Italian Jewish experience in the 2000s. Jews are more integrated than ever since 1945, and Israel has been relegitimized in important quarters after being in practice delegitimized by the Communists, Socialists, and those media close to the Christian Democrats in the late 1970s and 1980s, reaching the lowest point in the second half of 1982. Yet, because of various factors including the web as well as unwillingness to take things in stride any longer, the organized and
Iran has been seeking to establish that it is the hegemonial power in the Middle East. Its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an interview to the Iranian daily Ressalat on July 7, 1991, and asked a rhetorical question: “Do we look to preserve the integrity of our land, or to we look to its expansion?”
Last month’s talks in Turkey offered Iran an opportunity to show how the center of power has shifted from Western dominance to Islamic hegemony under Tehran’s leadership. Iran’s behavior once again demonstrated the limits of dialogue and engagement with the regime. In their current scope, international economic sanctions may damage the Iranian economy and impede the nuclear program’s pace, but they do not suffice to restrain the Iranian leadership from attaining a nuclear bomb.
Iran no longer hesitates to state publicly that its forward defense line now passes through “Lebanon and Palestine.” In practice, the Lebanese-Israeli border is in fact Israel’s border with Iran. Hizbullah is nourished by the growing strength and power of Iran and draws upon its successes. Both parties recognize that the fall of one also signifies the demise of the other.
Shiite Iran is appealing to the Arab Sunni street by trying to co-opt the agenda of the Sunni masses – the existence of Israel and the sanctity of Jerusalem – neither of which are traditional Shiite issues. In doing so, Iran seeks to undermine the existing Arab Sunni regimes by going over the heads of their leaders. That is why almost all of the regimes in the region hate the Iranian regime more than they hate Israel.
The Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is justified. The issue of the Jewish homeland is derived from the 29 November 1947 UN resolution which decided on the establishment of a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian homeland.
The West’s Iranian Policy: What Exactly Went Wrong?
The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West, by Dore Gold, Regnery, 2009, 256 pp.
Reviewed by Matthias Küntzel
Anti-Semitism reemerged in Hungary after the transition to democracy in 1989. There is, however, a notable difference between its earlier manifestations in the 1990s and recent developments. Traditional anti-Semitism has resurfaced and received an institutional framework, while verbal and physical aggression against Jews and Roma has intensified.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon constitutes an additional stage in the process of the Lebanese state’s collapse. From now on, Hizbullah supporters will find it difficult to argue that theirs is a national Lebanese party operating in the Lebanese reality on behalf of Lebanese objectives.
This analysis identifies patterns exhibited by the Iranian government and the Iranian
people since ancient times. Most importantly,
The Arab Gulf states are feeling compelled to adopt an appeasement policy toward Tehran while with increasing dread they helplessly follow the nuclear crisis, epitomized by Iranian determination and aggression in the face of American weakness.
The singling out of Zionism as a supposed form of racism was a device invented by the Soviet Union to justify its refusal to condemn anti-Semitism during the negotiation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the mid-1960s.
Numbering just under eighteen thousand, Jews constitute a tiny fragment of Switzerland’s population of 7.7 million. Nevertheless, Swiss public discourse is preoccupied with things Jewish. This goes back at least as far as the first centralized Swiss state. The Helvetic Republic, founded in 1798, fell apart largely over the issue of Jewish emancipation. This issue remained at the very center of the Swiss political discourse up to 1868 when, under U.S. and French pressure, Switzerland granted equ
At the beginning of 2008, a debate erupted in the Swedish media after members of the Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet) had, among other things, accused the left-wing journal Mana of anti-Semitism. Mana’s reaction was a categorical denial of all allegations, while suggesting it was the victim of a politically motivated witch-hunt. Although a survey of the journal shows that the accusations were justified, Mana’s claims that the criticism was policy-driven appealed to many of its defenders, and
On First Looking into Wistrich’s A Lethal Obsession
A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, by Robert S. Wistrich, Random House, 2010, 1,184 pp.
Reviewed by Winston Pickett
