Iran FM calls on Muslims to 'erase' Israel
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called on the world's Muslims on Sunday to work to "erase" Israel, in the latest verbal attack by Tehran against the Jewish state.
"As the Imam Khomeini said, if each Muslim throws a bucket of water on Israel, Israel will be erased," Mottaki told a conference in Tehran, recalling a saying by Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Mottaki added: "More than ever, the Zionist regime is disintegrating from within. Today, the Islamic resistance in this region has shattered the regime's legend of invincibility."
Israeli strategy often shaped by Islamic rules
Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 29, 2008 letter to the editor
The May 18 Opinion page offered a typical muddy barrage of mail on the
Middle East situation ("Don't forget the other side of celebration"
and "Five myths on what it really means to be 'pro-Israel'"). I have a
few salient observations to make.
As to 1948, when Palestinian Jews responded to the U.N. Partition Plan
by declaring an independent Israel and suffering immediate attack by
five Arab states, the revisionist Israeli historian Benny Morris
recently has changed his mind regarding Arab complicity in the refugee
problem. Some of the 600,000 refugees were created by forced
evacuation, others by fear of rape -- but mostly by their own Arab
leaders exhorting them to get out of the way so they could finish off
the Jews. After the war, 850,000 Jewish refugees were expelled from
Middle East lands they had lived in for many centuries -- their
property stolen. Congress is entertaining a resolution that the
"refugee problem" no longer can be discussed without reference to
these Jewish refugess.
Israel continually has sued for peace and been as consistently
rebuffed. Why? Because Islam is religiously forbidden to tolerate a
dhimmi (Jewish or Christian) regime in areas once held by Islam. The
Lebanese Civil War essentially was an attempt of Muslims to overpower
Christians.
In a guest column some time ago, I noted that within a couple of
decades, the Christian population of Nazareth and Bethlehem had gone
from the 80 percent prevailing for almost 2,000 years to 20 percent,
because of Palestinian Authority ethnic cleansing .
The intent of most Arabs against Israel remains not just destruction
but genocidal extermination. That renders Europe's call for
"proportionate" response to Arab provocations null and void. Genocide
is infinite. Israel therefore has no "proportionate" restraint short
of infinity. And jihad only has been stopped historically by an
insuperable force in which Muslims see the will of God.
Draw your own conclusions as to what Israel's strategy should be in
the face of, say, daily murderous attacks with Qassam rockets from
Gaza. To win an Islamic jihad, one must play by Islamic rules -- alas,
for us as well.
Charles E. Vernoff, Mount Vernon
