Ahmadinejad analyzed

Editorial

Because Iran has no more serious social or economic problems facing it, last week Tehran hosted a conference titled A World Without Zionism. It was at this conference, as most people now know, that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared that Israel should be wiped off the map.

Though the words are chilling and horrible, they are hardly front-page news. In fact, this apocalyptic approach to regional affairs probably represents, in gradations only of degree, the majority popular and diplomatic approach of most of the Arab and Muslim world.

After 57 years, only two of Israel's neighbors even recognize the presence of the Jewish state, and then it is what might be termed a cold peace. The rest of the countries in the region behave as though Israel has already been wiped off the map. The educational, political, diplomatic and cultural traditions across the Arab and much of the Islamic world operate on assumptions that vary from benign denial to aggressive rejection. Young people in the Arab world are raised on a steady diet of propaganda, ranging from textbooks that make no mention of a Jewish state in the region to the institutionalized child abuse of racist inculcation and paramilitary terrorist training of teenagers and children.

For 57 years, each of Israel's neighbors has been involved to varying degrees in promoting the ultimate objective of ending the Jewish presence in the Middle East. Whether through successive military attacks, the funding, training and equipping of the world's foremost terrorist infrastructure or spearheading the global pogrom that is the anti-Israel movement, Israel's neighbors have always subscribed to a variation on Ahmadinejad's recent comments.

Israelis and Jews who live elsewhere have been trying for decades to convince the world that it should take seriously the existential threats to Israel's security, to little avail. The world community, for the most part, has clung steadfastly to the rote insistence that Israel has nothing to fear if it concedes unequivocally to every demand posed by the terrorists.

What is notable about Ahmadinejad's call for Israel's destruction is not that he said it. The destruction of Israel is an explicit objective of many states in the region and much of the Arab "street." This is not news. That Ahmadinejad's words received the global reaction that they did is the notable thing.

In this, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that, finally, when the murderous objective of Islamist extremists is stated in the bluntest terms possible, as it was by Ahmadinejad last week, the world does stand up and take notice.

The bad news is that the comments merited front-page news at all. The coverage Ahmadinejad's comments received is evidence that the world has been blind to the rejectionist approach facing Israel for the entire duration of its history.

What happens next will be illustrative. If, by expressing this genocidal hatred, Ahmadinejad forces Arab and other world leaders to state on the record their position on Israel's existence, it will have been a constructive development.

But, in the end, the greatest threat facing Israel may not be the explicit genocidal intent of extremists like Ahmadinejad. The most frightening thing from a Jewish perspective is the six-decade-long refusal of people of goodwill worldwide to recognize and stand up to the genocidal threats that Israel faces.

Now that Ahmadinejad has put this on the front page, will people of goodwill acknowledge Israel's precarious presence and condemn those – who are far more numerous than just Ahmadinejad – who would see the Jews of the Middle East driven into the sea? Or will the world dismiss his comments as the hysteria of a madman and return to a happy ignorance that assumes Israel's presence in the Middle East will be assured if only Israel concedes to whatever demands the Palestinians and their allies set out?

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