Ed Vitagliano

AFA Journal news editor

December 2012 – In modern times the nation of Israel has never existed far from conflict. Since being founded as a nation in 1948, Israel has survived a handful of wars and uprisings as well as numerous terrorist attacks.

Those may pale in comparison to what the nation faces in the months to come, however. Looming ahead is the most deadly menace Israel has ever faced: a virulently anti-Israeli regime in Iran that is also on the verge of becoming a nuclear-armed one.

The hatred for Israel on the part of Iranian leaders runs deep. In 2005, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad infamously said Israel “must be wiped off the map.”

This past February, the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, called the nation of Israel a “cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut,” promising that the nation of Iran “will endorse and … help” any nation that fights against Israel.

And in May, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi of Iran, chief of staff of the armed forces, promised that Iran will remain motivated by this desire – “the full annihilation of Israel.”

With Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon imminent, of course, that goal suddenly becomes achievable. Even though military experts believe that Israel has a sizeable nuclear arsenal of its own, some Iranian leaders are willing to trade nuclear blows with their enemy, since Israel as a state occupies such a small parcel of real estate – often characterized as being no bigger than New Jersey.

In 2001, Akbar Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran, argued that if an Islamic nation every developed a nuclear weapon, it should be used against Israel. “[T]he use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything,” he said. “However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”middle east map

Why this malicious hatred of Israel? The explanation is fairly simple. Islamic doctrine teaches that once a land has become a part of dar al-Islam – the “house of Islam” – it may never leave.

In the seventh century, Muslim forces took the land of the Jews by war; they lost it to Christian armies during the Crusades; then re-conquered it in the twelfth century.

Western powers didn’t control the Holy Land again for another eight centuries. And following the horrors of the Holocaust during World War II, the Jews were granted their ancestral land once more and the nation of Israel was established by the United Nations.

This became a scandal to Muslims. How could they allow the existence of Israel as a sovereign, non-Islamic state on land once a part of dar al-Islam?

This scandal of Israel’s existence explains – in part, at least – why many Muslims also hate the nations of the West. Those nations are responsible for the creation of the Jewish state.

Ahmadinejad has referred to Israelis as “the usurper Zionists” who “have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners.”

He said he looks forward to the day when “there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists” in the land that he claims belongs to Palestinian Muslims.

Israel is certainly taking such statements to heart, but what about the West?

A Wall Street Journal editorial in September warned: “The tragic lesson of history is that sometimes barbarians mean what they say. Sometimes regimes do want to eliminate entire nations or races, and they will do so if they have the means and opportunity and face a timorous or disbelieving world.”  

What can you do?
1) Pray for the protection of Israel and the conversion of the Jews to Christianity.
2) Contact your representative and senators in Washington and ask them to back policies that support Israel.