The Magic of Mahmoud
Like a diminutive political time bomb, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stalked the halls of the United Nations in September. He took his vitriol to the podium of the General Assembly to announce that the United States was behind the September 11, 2001, attacks, Israel has no right to exist, and “All values, even the freedom of expression in Europe and the United States, are being sacrificed at the altar of Zionism.”
Predictably, the U.S. delegation and 27 European Union delegates walked out. The bad news was that 164 other delegations stayed and gave the megalomaniac a polite round of applause.
Interestingly, this odious pretender to unassailable power seems, to some, to have an aura of rock-star magic about him, the type of magic Webster’s describes as “an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source.” And the conclusion is foregone as to the source, which is driving the man to create nuclear power capable of wiping Israel and its 6 million Jewish citizens off the face of the earth with one giant mushroom cloud.
Evidence of his perverted influence is the number of collaborators willing to join both him and Iran’s mullahs in the diabolical quest to spread a blanket of radical Islamic hegemony over the Middle East.
In mid-October Ahmadinejad spoke to thousands of enraptured Lebanese in the Hezbollah-controlled town of Bint Jbeil two miles from Israel’s northern border. “Resistance is the key,” he declared, “to the Lebanese nation and all nations in the region. The people of Lebanon, of all religions and all walks of life, have found the secret to victory.”
And with these words there was neither thought of a negotiated settlement nor the fantasy of two states living side by side in peace. Which, by the way, some Western leaders have convinced themselves can be achieved by bringing Hezbollah terrorists into the negotiating process.
Here is Ahmadinejad’s take on the purpose of the resistance being forged with Lebanon, Hamas, Syria, and others: “The Zionists will not last long. Bring defeat to the Zionists.” He said “Palestine” should be “forcefully freed” and the Zionists sent back “to where they came from.”
Incredibly, he blamed the Jewish people for the current economic crisis and air pollution and claimed they are “depriving” other nations of and “monopolizing” nuclear technology.
Feigning a desire for ecumenical harmony, Ahmadinejad counseled, “All divine religions guide mankind to prosperity and invite human societies to monotheism, justice and friendship.” All religions, that is, with the obvious exceptions of Christianity and Judaism.
For Israel and its Jewish citizenry, the huge stockpile of rockets in the Hezbollah enclaves of South Lebanon represents anything but an ecumenical-harmony hug. As for the United States and its vast majority of professing Christians, the message will be delivered by nuclear-tipped, intercontinental ballistic missiles when they become available.
And about his talk of sending Jews back to where they came from—an attitude finding much currency in Palestinian and Arab circles today—the man’s grasp of history fails the test. The homeland of world Jewry is not Germany. Nor is it Poland, Europe, North America, or more rational Arab states. The Jewish people in the State of Israel are at home. To them—biblically, legally, and historically—belongs the very soil Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to vaporize.
And while he can stand safely near the border of the Promised Land and thumb his nose at its rightful owners, it would be well to remember that, millennia before Islam was around to place a footprint in the sands of the Arabian desert, Jewish people were at home in Eretz Yisrael. And they will be there when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn’t even a memory.
