Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

252 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:249
KILLING OFF THE JEWS!—A GOAL THAT BRINGS GREATNESS!
There is a further deadly consideration. For many in this world, a
highly desired objective is getting rid of the Jews. It is for them a profound
inspiration, “A life’s work”—even deserving dying for it. Is it possible that
the joy of ridding the world of the hateful Jewish state of Israel is “worth”
the obliteration of Teheran and perhaps more of Iran?
Another possible target of special choice is the accursed United States
of America and its world empire. Is it worth dying to kill off America?
In Iran’s case, there are several justifying theological concepts for taking
this road:
1. The people are on a mission for Iran’s greatness.
2. The people are on a mission to bring on the Messiah.
3. The people who give their lives for the cause are privileged and
eternally honored “martyrs” (shahids).
4. If the enemy people who are destroyed are the Jews, this is God’s/
Muhammed’s will and a magnificent fulfillment of a centuries-old
quest, and even a fulfillment of a somewhat universal hope (witness
worldwide antisemitism).
5. If the Americans are to be the victims, they are the ultimate oppressor
of the Muslim world (a kind of Muslim version of an “anti-
Christ”—one, moreover, in full cahoots with the accursed Jews).
DETERRENCE FOR A RATIONAL IRAN (BUT NOT FOR A
NUCLEAR IRRATIONAL IRAN)
One defense analyst for Haaretz, Reuven Pedatzur, a political scientist
trained at Tel Aviv University who is director of the Galilee Center for
Strategy and National Security in Israel, raises the specific question of
whether the Iranians are rational. Pedatzur correctly sketches the alternatives.
If Iran is expected to react as a rational state, deterrence strategies can
work to stop it from using nuclear weapons and could even justify living
with a nuclear Iran. On the other hand, if Iran is not expected to be a
rational state, “there would apparently be no choice but to try to destroy
Iran’s nuclear program.”
Pedatzur continues, still correctly, that Israel’s policymakers face a
“complicated dilemma.” Will Iran prove to be amenable to deterrents, as the
Soviet Russia proved to be in the Cold War? Or, he asks, “Are Ayatollah
Khomeini’s successors willing to commit suicide and bring doom to the
Iranian people solely to kill a few hundred thousand inhabitants of the
detested Zionist entity?”