Senior Israeli military and intelligence officials have with a high degree of certainty linked Iran’s senior leadership with direct involvement over the past fifteen years in Qods Force operations against Israel. The Qods Force carries out these types of military operations across the Middle East, to export the revolution and establishing an “Iranian Shiite crescent” through which Iran could assert regional hegemony.
Anti-Semitism’s core theme is that Jews embody absolute evil. The three main permutations of the core theme are religious anti-Semitism—one might call it more precisely anti-Judaism, ethnic (racist) anti-Semitism, and anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism. The anti-Semitic character of anti-Israelism can be proved through the analysis of cartoons, opinion survey findings, statistical analysis, and semantics. During the summer 2006 war in Lebanon, further proof emerged that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel
Europe and Appeasement
Hurra, wir kapitulieren: Von der Lust am Einknicken (Hurray, We’re Capitulating: On the Desire for Appeasement), by Henryk M. Broder, Wjs Verlag, 2006, 197 pp. [German]
Reviewed by Simon Erlanger
The Power of Words
Nations United: How the United Nations Is Undermining Israel and the West, by Alex Grobman, Balfour Books, 2006, 192 pp.
Reviewed by Sarah Schmidt
The genocidal attacks on Israel and the distortion of Holocaust history should be seen as part of Ahmadinejad’s overall political agenda concerning the West and Israel. They derive from his apocalyptic Islamic ideology. Iranian Holocaust manipulation is therefore likely to continue as long as he is in power.
Iran is more determined than ever to achieve regional hegemony in the Middle East and is fueling regional instability across the entire area. The primary threat to the Sunni Arab states now clearly comes from Iran. There is no short-term diplomatic option for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The stabilization of the Middle East requires the neutralization of any of the components of the current radical Islamic wave. Israel has a continuing need for defensible borders.
Listen carefully to Ahmadinejad. He is not insane. He embodies very accurately the nature of the Iranian regime and he is gaining popularity among Muslims. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, sitting in Damascus where he is supported by Iran and Syria, controls the military wing of Hamas and is more powerful than PA Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh. Mashaal is responsible for the money, for the policy of terror, and he holds many cards relating to Israel’s abducted soldier in Gaza.
Israel should not try to second-guess U.S. decisions about putting American soldiers in harm’s way. However, the specific strategy that the Baker-Hamilton report proposes for facilitating an American pullback in Iraq – the use of an international support group including Iran and Syria – poses serious problems that affect vital Israeli interests.
Many Norwegian journalists and leaders espouse the traditional mainstream European anti-Jewish attitudes. Norwegian anti-Semitism does not come from the grassroots but from the leadership – politicians, organization leaders, church leaders, and senior journalists. It does not come from Muslims but from the European-Christian society.
A nuclear Iran is even more of a threat than North Korea. In East Asia, North Korea lacks allies and can be contained by an alliance of surrounding states. However, in the Middle East, Iran’s close links to Syria and its support for Hizballah make containment more difficult. In addition, in contrast to North Korea, Iran has large oil revenues to finance a major weapons program.
The European Union has for many years announced its ambition to be a global political actor – to act as a counterweight to the United States on the world scene. The summer war in Lebanon could have been a major opportunity for the EU to show that it could move rapidly to stop a conflict in its tracks by offering a solution in which it would make a major contribution.
Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Germany
Antisemitische Verschwörungstheorien nach dem 11. September (Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories after September 11) by Tobias Jaecker, LIT, 2005, 208 pp. [in German]
Reviewed by Manfred Gerstenfeld
On 26 October 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, made a genocidal call for the elimination of Israel at the “World without Zionism” conference in Teheran. Other speakers were terrorist leaders Hassan Nasrallah of Hizballah and Khaled Mash’al of Hamas.
Austria doesn’t play a leading role in the European Union nor, as far as I’m concerned, should it. The country’s overall attitude can be characterized as ‘going with the mainstream and not being conspicuous.’ Before the enlargement of the EU in 2004, Austria was one of its smaller countries. Now it is usually considered a medium-sized one.
Now is the time to avert bloodshed: Ahmadinejad’s incitement deserves an indictment.
