Interpreting Iranian Threats against Israel

by Joseph S. Spoerl (June 2018)

Cartoon from Summer 2016 Holocaust Cartoon Contest held in Iran:[1]

Special mention: Misha (Russia)

 

In 2006, a controversy erupted over a statement made in October 2005 by then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Had Ahmadinejad said that Israel should be “wiped off the map” or merely that “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”? The New York Times had initially reported the former,[2] but left-wing anti-Israeli commentators like Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and Jonathan Steele of the Guardian argued for the latter translation. Cole wrote, “I smell the whiff of [right-wing, anti-Iranian] war propaganda,” and Steele insisted that Ahmadinejad “was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future.”[3]

 

Cole and Steele may or may not have gotten the Persian right, but more importantly, they ignored the larger context of Ahmadinejad’s statement.

 

As for the Persian, the New York Times consulted respected translators, who informed them that “’wipe off’ or ‘wipe away’ is more accurate than ‘vanish’ because the Persian verb is active and transitive.”[4] On the other hand, in his biography of Ahmadinejad, the Iranian journalist Kasra Naji disagrees with the translators consulted by the Times and sides with Juan Cole regarding this one statement by Ahmadinejad.[5] However, unlike Cole and Steele, Naji has the honesty to cite examples of statements by Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders clearly calling for Israel to be erased, excised, or obliterated.[6]

 

As for the larger context, it includes the whole world view of the Iranian regime as well as its military posture.

 

A central component of the Iranian regime’s ideology is paranoid Jew-hatred that posits a global conspiracy of Jews allegedly aiming at the destruction of the Islamic faith. The Zionist movement and Israel are the leading edge of this supposed Jewish plot to destroy Islam and Muslims. This image of Jews as the enemies of Islam who must be subjugated and placed under strict Islamic control is rooted in the Koran, Islamic law, and the earliest extant biographies of Muhammad.[7]

 

Supplementing these Islamic sources, in the 20th century, Islamists like those who rule Iran have enthusiastically embraced a Western anti-Semitic work, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This work is a forgery produced by the Tsarist Russian secret police roughly around 1900 in which the Jews are portrayed as conspiring to take over the world and destroy all non-Jewish religions.[8] Iran expert Orly Rahimiyan writes: “The Islamic Revolution [of 1979] was accompanied by a continuous wave of Protocols editions, alongside other anti-Israel and anti-Jewish texts.”[9] The Iranian state promotes the Protocols as part of its official propaganda: “. . . since the revolution, they have been issued by government publishing houses such as that of the Revolutionary Guards, the department of Translation and Publication, the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization, and the Propaganda Department.”[10] Another Iran expert, Meir Litvak, writes: “. . . state-run Iranian television regularly broadcasts documentaries and drama shows based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Such programs claim that the State of Israel was founded on the basis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which exposed the Jewish plot to take over the world.”[11] Iranian Holocaust-denial stems from the same anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking: If the Holocaust is a myth, this can only mean that malevolent Jewish conspirators control media, academia, and political parties across the Western world.[12]

 

In his classic study of the Protocols, aptly entitled Warrant for Genocide, historian Norman Cohn summed up the significance of this toxic forgery as follows:

 

As I see it, the deadliest kind of antisemitism, the kind that results in massacre and attempted genocide, has little to do with real conflicts of interest between living people or even with racial prejudice as such. At its heart lies the belief that Jews—all Jews everywhere—form a conspiratorial body set on ruining and then dominating the rest of mankind.[13]

 

This is precisely the type of anti-Semitism that was a central aspect of Adolf Hitler’s world-view[14] and which has now become a central component of the ideology of the Iranian state.[15] Adolf Hitler’s words perfectly capture the thinking of the Iranian leadership from 1979 to the present: “I have read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—it simply appalled me. The stealthiness of the enemy, and his ubiquity! I saw at once that we must copy it—in our own way, of course . . . It is in truth the critical battle for the fate of the world.”[16] This way of thinking about the Jews is the real reason behind any sort of threat against Israel emanating from the Iranian regime.

 

Left-wing commentators like Juan Cole and Jonathan Steele have no excuse for ignorance here. Historians of anti-Semitism like Robert Wistrich have been pointing out the alarming parallels between Iranian and Nazi Jew-hatred for decades, with plenty of evidence available by 2006. For example, in his classic 1985 study Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy, Wistrich pointed out that the Iranian Embassy in London was publishing excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its English-language journal Imam in 1984. The preface to the series told readers, “All through history, Zionism has been the perpetual enemy to Islam.”[17] In his 1991 history of anti-Semitism, The Longest Hatred, Wistrich again pointed out the centrality of paranoid, conspiratorial Jew-hatred to the regime founded by Ayatollah Khomeini.[18] The German political scientist Matthias Küntzel reports that in 1996, the Iranian state disseminated a German-language pamphlet quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini describing Israel as a “festering sore and a cancerous tumour on the body of the Islamic countries,” “a man-eating giant and a pagan usurper,” a “monster aspiring to world domination,” a “germ of corruption in the heart of the Arab world,” and an “enemy of all mankind.”[19] Küntzel reports personally visiting the Iranian stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2005 and purchasing a complete English edition of the Protocols published by the Islamic Propagation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran; at the same stand, he purchased an English edition of Henry Ford’s The International Jew (a work based on the Protocols) published in 1997 by the Tehran-based Islamic Culture and Relations Organization.[20]

 

Against this background, attempts by Juan Cole and Jonathan Steele to put a benign interpretation on Ahmadinejad’s 2005 statement about Israel are clearly an obfuscation of the real import of the Iranian president’s words. Cole and Steele are not isolated or insignificant examples of such obfuscation. They represent a long and dishonorable tradition of Western leftists and academics willfully mischaracterizing the Iranian regime and Islamist movements generally. The American historian George L. Simpson has published an important recent article copiously documenting Western leftist and liberal delusions about Khomeini and his regime.[21] Political scientist Ofira Seliktar has documented decades of American policy and intelligence failures regarding Iran, noting that “[t]he failures are deeply rooted at every level. The paradigms that drive American foreign policy are generated by a scholarly community often highly politicized and out of touch with reality,”[22] a point that Martin Kramer had made more generally about academic Mideast Studies in the USA a decade earlier.[23] Neil J. Kressel, a professor of psychology at William Paterson University, has documented in great detail how the social sciences in the USA have almost completely ignored the widespread phenomenon of Islamic anti-Semitism, which explains why US policy makers and journalists are so ignorant on this important topic.[24] As historian Jeffrey Herf, a leading authority on Nazi Germany and a keen student of US Iran policy, has written, “The scholarship on the history of anti-Semitism hasn’t yet had a significant impact on the policy discussions in Washington about Iran.”[25]

 

Professor Juan Cole is a paradigmatic example of such politicized detachment from reality in the academic realm, as is The Guardian in the journalistic world. It is this same detachment from reality that leads leftists like Jeremy Corbyn and Judith Butler to describe Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” or “progressive” members of the “global left.”[26]

 

Moreover, since the 2006 controversy over the exact translation of Ahmadinejad’s Persian, the Iranian regime has helpfully provided us with a flood of new evidence regarding its real intentions vis-à-vis Israel. Much of this has come from the English-language news outlets of the Iranian regime itself (e.g. Fars News, IRNA, Press TV, Tasnim), sparing us the task of translating from Persian to English and thus risking misinterpretation of their true meaning. Consider a Fars News release in English dated April 21, 2018, quoting the Commander of Iran’s Army, Major General Abdolrahim Moussavi.[27] The article quotes General Moussavi as saying of Israel,

 

’. . . we shouldn’t allow one day to be added to the ominous and illegitimate life of this regime,’ General Moussavi said. He ensured annihilation of the Zionist regime in 25 years, but said this would not mean the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps] would sit and do nothing for 25 years. ‘The Army will move hand in hand with the IRGC so that the arrogant system will collapse and the Zionist regime will be annihilated,’ General Moussavi said.

 

Addressing the “Zionists,” the IRGC Lieutenant Commander Brigadier General Hossein Salami is quoted in the same article as saying,

 

’You have no way out to escape and you are living in dragon mouth [sic],’ General Salami said, addressing the Zionists . . . General Salami told the Zionists to be aware that in case of outbreak of any war ‘you can be assured that it will result in wiping you off [sic], the smallest target is your existence, there is no smaller target than that . . . ’. General Salami advised the Tel Aviv regime not to pin hope on the US, Britain, and France, and said, ‘You are gone when they arrive there like an ambulance sent to a dead man that can only take him to the graveyard; then, behave yourself and avoid doing dangerous calculations.[sic]’

 

Back in 2006, when discussing Ahmadinejad’s statement about making Israel disappear, Jonathan Steele insisted that Ahmadinejad was merely “making a vague wish for the future” and predicting the eventual collapse of the Zionist state of Israel, which would pave the way for “regime change.”[28] Steele wrote then that the Iranian president’s language “makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel.” And of course, many Western leftists also would love to see “regime change” in Israel, which is exactly what the BDS and one-state movements seek.[29] To these anti-Israeli leftists, Ahmadinejad’s position was not so unreasonable after all.

 

The above quotations from two of Iran’s top military commanders show how misguided this all is. The context makes it crystal clear that the prediction of Israel’s demise is also a threat, and a violent one at that. Read again this key statement: “He [the commander of the Iranian Army] ensured annihilation of the Zionist regime in 25 years, but said this would not mean the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps] would sit and do nothing for 25 years. ‘The Army will move hand in hand with the IRGC so that the arrogant system will collapse and the Zionist regime will be annihilated,’ General Moussavi said.” In other words, Iran is actively working to ensure that its “prediction” will come true. (We might also wish to interpret Ahmadinejad’s 2005 statement in the context of statements he made in 2010, when he denied that Israeli Jews are even human, asserting that they “only appear to be human,” and anyway, since they are atheists, they “are not entitled to man’s minimal rights.”[30] These chilling words would seem to portend something a bit rougher than mere “regime change.”)

 

In fact, Iranian threats to destroy Israel often take the form of predictions of Israel’s imminent demise. The context of these “predictions” is not only a conspiracy theory that sees Zionists and Jews as eternal enemies who aim to destroy Islam and even denies that they are human beings with rights. It is also an active Iranian military build-up in Lebanon and Syria that is aimed at Israel, including solid-fuel ballistic missiles with GPS precision targeting and half-ton conventional warheads that can now strike anywhere in Israel.[31] Uzi Rubin, the former head of Israel’s missile defense program and thus one of the world’s leading experts on Iran’s missile capability, describes Iran’s missile threat as “fast growing in quantity and quality.” Rubin notes: “A precision-guided missile that can hit and destroy aircraft shelters from 1,500 kilometers can also hit and destroy critical national infrastructure such as power stations and desalination plants. It can also hit and destroy nuclear power stations, causing Chernobyl scale disaster. This is an existential threat by any other name.”[32] As The New York Times has recently reported, “Iran can strike Israel directly through Hezbollah, which is believed to have more than 100,000 missiles and rockets, some capable of hitting major Israeli cities and sensitive infrastructure.”[33] Israel may have the best missile defense system in the world,[34] but even it can be overwhelmed by sheer volume. That appears to be the Iranian strategy. Even without nuclear weapons, the Iranian threat to Israel is an existential threat. Iran’s steadfast support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad makes the threat that much more serious.[35]

 

In the following Appendix, I catalogue a long list of Iranian threats to destroy Israel from a variety of sources, most of them made since the 2006 controversy over the translation of Ahmadinejad’s Persian. In some cases the threat is explicit in the title of the source; in other cases the reader must click on the link and examine the text to find the threat. For the reasons given above, I include predictions of Israel’s demise as threats. The overall pattern and the context described in this paper are more important than any single example, and it is precisely this pattern and context that anti-Israeli leftists like Juan Cole and Jonathan Steele consistently ignore, obscure, or deny.

 

I also include in the following Appendix threats against Israel by the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. The reason is that Hezbollah is a close ally of Iran and espouses the same ideology as the Iranian regime. Hezbollah has “assimilated the doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran totally and pledged allegiance to its leader, Ayatollah Khomeyni [or Khomeini], and his heir, ‘Ali Khamaneh’i [or Khamenei].”[36] For Hezbollah, “The struggle with Israel and the Jews is a total life-or-death war,” a modern continuation of the historical struggle between Judaism and Islam dating back to the founding of Islam.[37] According to Hezbollah leaders, “either we destroy Israel or Israel destroys us,”[38] “the Jews are the enemy of the entire human race,”[39] and “the struggle with the Jews is a struggle for Islamic survival.”[40] Like Iran (and Hamas[41]), Hezbollah uses the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its propaganda.[42] Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has repeatedly denied Israel’s right to exist, threatened to wipe Israel out, and stated in 2002 that “If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”[43] The foundational statement of the Hezbollah program proclaims that “our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements . . .”[44]

 

Hitler and the Nazis sincerely believed that World War II was a war of self-defense against a global Jewish conspiracy bent on extermination of the German people. Heinrich Himmler spoke for all the Nazis when he stated in October 1943, “We had a moral duty towards our people, the duty to exterminate this people [the Jews] which wanted to exterminate us.”[45] The Iranian regime sees the struggle against Israel in exactly the same light. Its founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, “was . . . convinced that the central political theme of contemporary life was an elaborate and highly complex conspiracy by the Jews—’who controlled everything’—to ‘emasculate Islam’ and dominate the world thanks to the natural wealth of the Muslim nations.”[46] Khomeini warned his followers that “the Jews . . . are opposed to the very foundations of Islam and wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world.”[47] Khomeini’s paranoid, Judaeophobic conspiracy thinking lives on in Iranian state propaganda that is strikingly reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, for it features the same stark dichotomy: “Either we destroy them, or they destroy us.”[48] Every single threat to Israel emanating from Iran and its allies must be interpreted in light of this fact.

 

Appendix: Iranian Threats to Destroy Israel

(in reverse chronological order)

 

“Army Commander: Zionist Regime Annihilated in 25 Years,” Fars News Association (Iran), April 21, 2018, accessed April 23, 2018, http://en.farsnews.com/print.aspx?nn=13970201000537

 

Karim Sadjadpour, “Iran’s Real Enemy in Syria,” The Atlantic, April 16, 2018, accessed April 17, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/iran-syria-israel/558080/

 

“Negotiating with Israel would be big mistake – Iran’s Supreme Leader,” Reuters, April 4, 2018, accessed April 5, 2018, https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-iran-israel-saudi-arab/negotiating-with-israel-would-be-big-mistake-irans-supreme-leader-idUKKCN1HB2NC

 

“Hizbullah Deputy Sec.-Gen. Sheikh Naim Qassem Receives a ‘Symbolic Gift from the Jewish People,’ Declares: We Will Be Victorious But Are In No Hurry,” Middle East Media Research Institute, March 13, 2018, Clip No. 6471, accessed March 14, 2018, https://www.memri.org/tv/hizbullah-deputy-leader-naim-qassem-receives-gift-from-jewish-people-we-will-be-victorious/transcript

 

“Iranian Official Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi: The West Is Trying to Prevent Iraq from Becoming the Leader of the Arab World; Liberation of Jerusalem Is Now the Most Important Thing,” Middle East Media Research Institute, March 2, 2018, Clip No. 6469, accessed March 14, 2018, https://www.memri.org/tv/iranian-official-azghadi-west-trying-to-prevent-iraq-from-leading-arab-world/transcript

 

“Iran to Hold International ‘Israel Hourglass’ Festival,” Iran Front Page, February 27, 2018, accessed February 28, 2018, http://ifpnews.com/exclusive/iran-hold-international-israel-hourglass-festival/

 

“IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani: The Blood of Imad Mughniyah Will Be Avenged by the Uprooting of the Child-Killing Zionist Regime,” Middle East Media Research Institute, February 15, 2018, Clip No. 6434, accessed Feb. 19, 2018, https://www.memri.org/tv/irgc-quds-force-commander-soleimani-blood-of-imad-mughniyah-avenged-by-uprooting-zionist-regime/transcript

 

“Zionist Regime of Israel not to survive: IRGC comdr,” Islamic Republic News Agency, February 15, 2018, accessed February 16, 2018, http://www.irna.ir/en/News/82833100

 

“Ebrahim Raisi, Associate and Designated Heir of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei, at Lebanon-Israel Border: ‘Soon We Will Witness the Liberation of Jerusalem,’” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 7313, February 2, 2018, accessed February 2, 2018, https://www.memri.org/reports/ebrahim-raisi-associate-and-designated-heir-iranian-supreme-leader-khamenei-lebanon-israel

 

“Iranian Leader Khamenei’s Representative in Iraq Mojtaba Hosseini: Israel, That ‘Cancerous Tumor,’ Will Be Extracted in a Few Years,” Middle East Media Research Institute, January 14, 2018, Clip No. 6398, accessed January 30, 2018, https://www.memri.org/tv/khamenei-representative-in-iraq-mojtaba-hossein-israel-cancerous-tumor-extracted-in-few-years/transcript

 

“Iranian MP Mojtaba Zolnour: Nothing Will Be Left of Israel following the First Wave of Hizbullah Missiles,” Middle East Media Research Institute, January 18, 2018, Clip No. 6383, https://www.memri.org/tv/iranian-mp-mojtaba-zolnour-with-first-wave-of-hizbullah-missile-launchers-nothing-will-be-left-of-israel/transcript

 

“Hizbullah Leader Nasrallah: I’m Not Worried about Iran Situation; I Discussed Support for Intifada with Fatah, Other Palestinian Factions; Large-Scale War Is Opportunity to Liberate Jerusalem – Help is Needed from Outside Palestine, Such As Demonstrations, Media, Policies; We Should All Benefit From Our Ties, Communities in ‘Outside World,’” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No 7265, January 4, 2018, accessed April 27, 2018, https://www.memri.org/reports/hizbullah-leader-nasrallah-im-not-worried-about-iran-situation-i-discussed-support-intifada

 

“IRGC General Kawthari: Israel Will Be Wiped Off Planet Earth in 25 Years or Less,” Middle East Media Research Institute, September 27, 2017, Clip No. 6256, accessed Nov. 8, 2017, https://www.memri.org/tv/irgc-general-kowsari-israel-wiped-off-planet-earth-less-than-25-years/transcript

 

“Ayatollah Khamenei: Muslims obliged to fight against Israel,” Press TV (Iran), June 26, 2017, accessed June 26, 2017, http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/06/26/526548/Iran-Leader-Israel

 

“Iranian Speakers at New Zealand Quds Day Event: The Holocaust Was Fake; Israel A ‘Cancerous Tumor’ to Be Annihilated within 25 Years,” Middle East Media Research Institute, June 23, 2017, Clip No. 6240, accessed Oct. 27, 2017, https://www.memri.org/tv/iranian-speakers-new-zealand-quds-day-holocaust-fake-israel-cancerous-tumor/transcript

 

“Destruction of Israel Muslim World’s Top Priority: Quds Day Statement,” Tasnim News (Iran), June 23, 2017, accessed June 26, 2017, https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2017/06/23/1444634/destruction-of-israel-muslim-world-s-top-priority-quds-day-statement

 

“Iran’s Khamenei: ‘There is no doubt’ we’ll witness Israel’s demise,” The Jerusalem Post, June 22, 2017, accessed June 26, 2017, http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-News/Irans-Khamenei-There-is-no-doubt-well-witness-Israels-demise-497623

 

Thomas Erdbrink, “At Tehran Gala, Cakes, Fruits, and Anti-Israeli Slogans,” The New York Times, February 22, 2017, accessed Feb. 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/world/middleeast/at-tehran-fete-cakes-fruit-and-anti-israeli-slogans.html?_r=0

 

“Khamenei in Speech At Iran’s Sixth International Conference In Support Of Palestinian Intifada: ‘We [Stand] With Every Group That Is Steadfast On This Path [Of Resistance]’; ‘Cancerous Tumor’ Must Be Cured In Several Phases,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 6795, February 21, 2017, accessed Feb. 21, 2017, https://www.memri.org/reports/khamenei-speech-irans-sixth-international-conference-support-palestinian-intifada-we-stand

 

“Iranian Official and Social Media Call for the Destruction of Israel after the JCPOA,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, February 16, 2017, accessed Feb. 16, 2017, http://social-media-news.com/link/1372090_iranian-official-and-social-media-call-for-the

 

“Khamenei Associate Mehdi Taeb: ‘The Jews…Are The Only Ones Who Need Weapons Of Mass destruction In Order To Rule The World – Because There Are 1.4 Billion Muslims And None Of Them Agree To Jewish Supremacy,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 6759, January 27, 2017, accessed January 27, 2017, https://www.memri.org/reports/khamenei-associate-mehdi-taeb-jews-are-only-ones-who-need-weapons-mass-destruction-order

 

“Leader: Israel Won’t Exist in 25 Years If Palestinian Resistance Continues,” Tasnim News (Iran), Dec. 14, 2016, accessed Dec. 15, 2016, https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2016/12/14/1268107/leader-israel-won-t-exist-in-25-years-if-palestinian-resistance-continues

 

“Iranian general: We formed Shiite army to fight in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen,” Al Arabiya English, 23 August 2016, accessed Aug. 29, 2016, http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/analysis/2016/08/23/Iranian-general-We-formed-Shiite-army-to-fight-in-Iraq-Syria-and-Yemen.html

 

“Senior Hizbullah Official Hashem Fafieddine: Israel Is Closer Than Ever to its Demise; We Are Capable of Entering the Galilee and Beyond,” Middle East Media Research Institute, August 8, 2016, Clip No. 5624, accessed August 17, 2016, http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/5624.htm.

 

“Antisemitism – a Rising Theme for Iran’s 2016 Qods Day,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 6519, July 11, 2016, accessed July 16, 2016, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print9317.htm

 

“Iran Launches Long-Range Missiles Emblazoned With Slogan: ‘Israel Should Be Wiped Off The Face of the Earth,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 6349, March 16, 2016, accessed March 16, 2016, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print9078.htm

 

Jane Onyanga-Omara, “Reports: Iran fires missiles marked with ‘Israel should be wiped off the Earth,’” USA Today, March 9, 2016, accessed March 10, 2016, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/03/09/reports-iran-fires-missiles-marked-israel-must-wiped-out/81517488/

 

“Hizbullah Deputy Secretary-General Na’im Qassem At Beirut Conference For Palestine: Our Goal Is To Eliminate Israel,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 6258, January 12, 2016, accessed January 12, 2016, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print8945.htm

 

Adam Kredo, “Iran on Israel: ‘We Are Going to Destroy Them,’” Washington Free Beacon, September 23, 2015, accessed Sept. 24, 2015, http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-on-israel-we-are-going-to-destroy-them/

 

“’Zionist Regime Will Cease to Exist in 25 Years,’ Khamenei Vows”, The Jerusalem Post, Sept. 9, 2015, accessed Sept. 9, 2015, http://www.jpost.com/landedpages/printarticle.aspx?id=415668

 

“Commander: Iran Continues Military Enhancement Until Collapse of Israel,” Fars News (Iran), Sept. 2, 2015, accessed Sept. 3, 2015, http://english.farsnews.com/print.aspx?nn=13940611000630

 

Toby Greene, “Iran’s Undimmed Passion for Annihilating Israel,” Huffington Post, Aug. 28, 2015, accessed Sept. 4, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-toby-greene/irans-undimmed-passion-fo_b_8052748.html

 

“Parliament Advisor: No Change in Iran’s Policy on Israel,” Fars News (Iran), Aug. 25, 2015, accessed Aug. 26, 2015, http://english.farsnews.com/print.aspx?nn=13940603001293

 

Steven Emerson, “Iranian Officials Ratchet Up Genocidal Anti-Israel Rhetoric After Nuclear Deal,” IPT News, Aug. 18, 2015, accessed Aug. 25, 2015, http://www.investigativeproject.org/4955/iranian-officials-ratchet-up-genocidal-anti

 

Michael Segall, “The Nuclear Deal: No Pause In Iran’s Vow to Destroy Israel,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Aug. 16, 2015, accessed Aug. 25, 2015, http://jcpa.org/article/nuclear-deal-irans-vow-destroy-israel/

 

“First Translation of Khamenei’s New Book on the Destruction of America, Israel,” IranTruth, August 5, 2015, accessed Sept. 28, 2016, http://irantruth.org/exclusive-first-translation-of-khameinis-new-book-on-the-destruction-of-america-israel/

 

Amir Taheri, “Iran publishes book on how to outwit US and destroy Israel,” New York Post, Aug. 1, 2015, accessed Sept. 28, 2016, http://nypost.com/2015/08/01/iran-publishes-book-on-how-to-outwit-us-and-destroy-israel/

 

Ehud Yaari, “How Iran Plans to Destroy Israel,” The American Interest 11, no. 1, (Aug. 1, 2015), accessed Aug. 25, 2015, http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/08/01/how-iran-plans-to-destroy-israel/

 

Amir Taheri, “The Ayatollah’s Plan for Israel and Palestine,” The Gatestone Institute, July 31, 2015, accessed Aug. 5, 2015, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6263/khamenei-israel-palestine

 

“’Pursuing Strategy of Destruction of Israel’ Islamic World’s Top Priority: IRGC,” Tasnim News (Iran), July 8, 2015, accessed July 9, 2015, http://www.tasnimnews.com/english/Home/Single/793950

 

“As Nuclear Talks Continue, Iran Issues Latest Threat to Destroy Israel,” IPT News, March 31, 2015, accessed April 1, 2015, http://www.investigativeproject.org/4809/as-nuclear-talks-continue-iran-issues-latest

 

“100 Clips on Iran – From the MEMRI TV Archives,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Announcements No. 369, March 20, 2015, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print8487.htm

 

Reza Khalili, “Iran General: Our Ultimate Goal is the Destruction of America and Israel,” The Daily Caller, January 5, 2015, accessed Sept. 15, 2017, http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/05/iran-general-our-ultimate-goal-is-the-destruction-of-america-and-israel/

 

“Iranian Regime Escalates Threats To Annihilate Israel,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 5906, December 17, 2014, accessed Dec. 17, 2014, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print8337.htm

 

“Kayhan Editor Denies Holocaust, Calls For Israel’s Annihilation,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 5837, September 9, 2014, accessed Sept. 9, 2014, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print8140.htm

 

“Hassan Nasrallah In Interview With ‘Al-Akhbar’: Israel An Illegitimate Entity, Must Be Eliminated,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 5825, August 24, 2014, accessed August 28, 2014, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print8125.htm

 

“IRGC Deputy Commander: We Will Hunt the Zionists Down from House to House,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Clip No. 4398, July 25, 2014, accessed Aug. 5, 2014,  http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/4398.htm

 

Y. Mansharof, E. Kharrazi, Y. Lahat, and A. Savyon, “Qods Day In Iran: Tehran Calls For Annihilation of Israel And For Arming the West Bank,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Inquiry and Analysis Series Report No. 1107, July 25, 2014, accessed Aug. 12, 2014, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print8090.htm

 

Ariel Ben Solomon, “Khamenei: ‘Israeli regime is doomed to failure, annihilation,’” The Jerusalem Post, November 20, 2013, accessed Nov. 21, 2013, http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Khamenei-Israeli-regime-is-doomed-to-failure-annihilation-332403

 

A. Savyon, Y. Mansharof, and E. Kharrazi, “Iranian Qods Day 2013: The Uprising In The Arab World Is Islamic, Aimed Against the U.S. And Israel; ‘Israel Cannot Last,’” Middle East Media Research Institute, Inquiry and Analysis Series Report No. 1006, August 7, 2013, accessed Aug. 8, 2013, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7335.htm

 

“Former Iranian Official: The Countdown to Attacking Israel Has Begun – ‘With Hopes Of Completely Eradicating [It] From the Planet,’” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 5226, March 8, 2013, accessed March 8, 2013, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print7062.htm

 

E. Zigron and A. Savyon, “The Image of the Jew In The Eyes of Iran’s Islamic Regime – Part I: Theological Roots,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Inquiry and Analysis Series Report No. 922, January 7, 2013, accessed January 28, 2013, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print6956.htm

 

“This Year’s Qods Day In Iran: Israel’s Elimination Is Imminent – And More Possible Than Ever Before,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 4893, August 17, 2012, accessed Aug. 18, 2012, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print6600.htm

 

Rick Gladstone, “Iran’s President Calls Israel ‘an Insult to Humankind,’” The New York Times, August 17, 2012, accessed August 20, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/world/middleeast/in-iran-ahmadinejad-calls-israel-insult-to-humankind.html

 

Clifford D. May, “Khamenei’s Sacred Word: Destroy Israel,” Moment Magazine, August 13, 2012, accessed Aug. 14, 2012, http://www.momentmag.com/khameneis-sacred-word-destroy-israel/

 

Michael Oren, “Time Is Short for Iranian Diplomacy,” The Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2012, accessed Aug. 7, 2012, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443687504577567051040668984

 

Reza Kahlili, “Ayatollah: Kill All Jews, Annihilate Israel,” WND, February 5, 2012, accessed February 6, 2012, http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/ayatollah-kill-all-jews-annihilate-israel/

 

“Antisemitic Statements, Publications by Iranian Regime,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 4445, January 25, 2012, accessed January 25, 2012,  http://www.memri.org/report/en/print6024.htm.

 

Joshua Teitelbaum and Michael Segall, The Iranian Leadership’s Continuing Declarations of Intent to Destroy Israel, 2009-2012 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2012), accessed Sept. 15, 2017, http://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IransIntent2012b.pdf

 

Joshua Teitelbaum, “Analysis: Iran’s talk of destroying Israel must not get lost in translation,” The Jerusalem Post, June 22, 2008, accessed April 25, 2018, https://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=105071

 

Patrick Devenny, “Hezbollah’s Strategic Threat to Israel,” Middle East Quarterly 13, no. 1 (Winter 2006): pp. 31-38, accessed Dec. 6, 2005, http://www.meforum.org/806/hezbollahs-strategic-threat-to-israel.

 

Ethan Bronner, “Just How Far Did They Go, Those Words Against Israel?”, The New York Times, June 11, 2006, accessed April 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11bronner.html

 

Nazila Fathi, “Iran’s New President Says Israel ‘Must Be Wiped Off the Map,’” The New York Times, October 27, 2005, accessed Sept. 15, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/world/middleeast/irans-new-president-says-israel-must-be-wiped-off-the-map.html?_r=0

 

“Former Iranian President Rafsanjani on Using a Nuclear Bomb Against Israel,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series No. 325, January 3, 2002, accessed May 18, 2005, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print582.htm.

 

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[1] “Tehran Presents the Winners of Iran’s 2016 Holocaust International Cartoon Contest,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 6454, June 1, 2016, accessed June 1, 2016, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/9227.htm.

[2] Nazila Fathi, “Iran’s New President Says Israel ‘Must Be Wiped Off the Map,’” The New York Times, October 27, 2005, accessed Sept. 15, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/world/middleeast/irans-new-president-says-israel-must-be-wiped-off-the-map.html?_r=0.

[3] Steele as cited in Ethan Bronner, “Just How Far Did they Go, Those Words Against Israel?”, The New York Times, June 11, 2006, accessed April 25, 2018,  https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11bronner.html. See also, Jonathan Steele, “Lost in translation,” The Guardian, June 14, 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155.

[4] Ethan Bronner, “Just How Far Did they Go, Those Words Against Israel?”, The New York Times, June 11, 2006, accessed April 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11bronner.html. 

[5] Kasra Naji, Ahmadinejad  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 139-140

[6] Naji, Ahmadinejad, pp. 141-149, 152-153.

[7] On Jews in the Islamic tradition, see Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 3-67, on Shiite Islam especially see pp. 33-34; Haggai Ben Shammai, “Jew-Hatred in the Islamic Tradition and the Koranic Exegesis,” in Shmuel Almog ed. Antisemitism Through the Ages (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), pp. 161-170; Jacob Lassner, Jews, Christians, and the Abode of Islam (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 161-169; S.D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of Their Social and Cultural Relations (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2005), pp. 62-88; E. Zigron and A. Savyon, “The Image of the Jew In The Eyes of Iran’s Islamic Regime – Part I: Theological Roots,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Inquiry and Analysis Series Report No. 922, January 7, 2013, accessed January 28, 2013, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print6956.htm

Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008); Joseph S. Spoerl, “Muhammad and the Jews according to Ibn Ishaq,” Levantine Review 2:1 (2013), pp. 84-103, https://www.academia.edu/12425107/_Muhammad_and_the_Jews_According_to_Ibn_Ishaq_The_Levantine_Review_Volume_2_No.1_2013_pp._84-103Sira of Ibn Ishaq,” The Levantine Review 4:1 (Spring 2015), pp. 43-66, file:///C:/Users/jspoerl/Downloads/8719-14673-1-PB.pdf.

[8] Sergyei A. Nilus, World Conquest through World Government: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Victor E. Marsden trans. (London: Britons Publishing Company, 1963). The Jews are portrayed here as seeking “the killing out of the goyim [i.e. non-Jews]” (p. 30, Protocol III) and as stating, “it will be undesirable for us that there should exist any other religion than ours…We must therefore sweep away all other forms of belief” (p. 67, Protocol XIV). On the historical origins of the Protocols, see Esther Webman ed., The Global Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old Myth (London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2011), pp. 1-43.

[9] Orly R. Rahimiyan, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Iranian political and cultural discourse,” in Esther Webman ed., The Global Impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2011), p. 200.

[10] Rahimiyan, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Iranian political and cultural discourse,” p. 204.

[11] Meir Livak, “Iranian Antisemitism: Continuity and Change,” in Charles Asher Small ed. Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity, Volume IV, Islamism and the Arab World (New York: Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, 2013), p. 62. On the role of the Protocols in Iranian state propaganda, see also Matthias Küntzel, “Tehran’s Efforts to Mobilize Antisemitism: The Global Impact,” in Alvin H. Rosenfeld ed., Deciphering the New Antisemitism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2015), pp. 508-532, available at the author’s website (last accessed May 7, 2018): file:///C:/Users/jspoerl/Downloads/Tehran’s%20Global%20Efforts%20to%20Mobilize%20Antisemitism%20.pdf, and Stephan Grigat, “Antisemitism of the Ayatollahs: Holocaust Denial and Hatred of Israel in Khamenei’s and Rouhani’s Iran,” Journal for the Study of Antisemitism 7:2 (2015), pp. 165-187, last accessed May 7, 2018, http://jsantisemitism.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Holocaust-denial-Ayatollahs-Iran.pdfhttp://www.memri.org/report/en/print7050.htm.

[12] On Iranian Holocaust denial, see Meir Litvak, “Iranian Antisemitism: Continuity and Change,” in Charles Asher Small ed. Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity, Volume IV, Islamism and the Arab World (New York: Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, 2013), p. 63-65; Stephan Grigat, “Antisemitism of the Ayatollahs: Holocaust Denial and Hatred of Israel in Khamenei’s and Rouhani’s Iran,” Journal for the Study of Antisemitism 7:2 (2015), pp. 165-187, last accessed May 7, 2018, http://jsantisemitism.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Holocaust-denial-Ayatollahs-Iran.pdfhttp://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/holy-hatreds-holocaust-denial-and-antisemitism-in-iran.

[13] Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York and Evanston: Harper Torchbooks/Harper and Row, 1969), p. 16.

[14] Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 169-215; Robert Wistrich, Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985); Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006); Wolfram Meyer zu Uptrup, “Why the Jews? The Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Nazi Ideology and Policy,” in Esther Webman ed., The Global Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old Myth (London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2011), pp. 69-88.

[15] For more details on Iranian Jew-hatred, see my article “Understanding Iran’s Quest for Nuclear Technology: The Importance of Ideology,” New English Review, January 2018, last accessed May 7, 2018, https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=189114&sec_id=189114.

[16] Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 182-183.

[17] Wistrich, Hitler’s Apocalypse, p. 180.

[18] Robert Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), pp. 218-221.

[19] Matthias Küntzel, “Tehran’s Efforts to Mobilize Antisemitism: The Global Impact,” p. 510.

[20] Matthias Küntzel, “Tehran’s Efforts to Mobilize Antisemitism: The Global Impact,” p. 511.

[21] George L. Simpson, “Seeking Gandhi, Finding Khomeini: How America failed to understand the nature of the religious opposition of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Iranian Revolution,” The Journal of the Middle East and Africa 8:3 (2017): pp. 233-255.

[22] Ofira Seliktar, Navigating Iran: From Carter to Obama (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 179.

[23] Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001). See, more recently, by the same author: The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East (New Brunswick, NJ and London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 2016).

[24] Neil J. Kressel, “The Sons of Pigs and Apes:” Muslim Antisemitism and the Conspiracy of Silence (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012); Neil J. Kressel and Samuel W. Kressel, “Trends in the Psychological Study of Contemporary Antisemitism: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Evidence,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 38:2 (2016): pp. 111-126, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2016.1164704From Antisemitism to Antizionism: The Past and Present of a Lethal Ideology (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017), pp. 29-68.

[25] Jeffrey Herf, “Obama Misses the Mark on Iranian Anti-Semitism,” The Times of Israel, June 2, 2015, accessed June 3, 2015, http://www.meforum.org/5283/antisemitism-iran.

[26] On Judith Butler, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amJNIcSNPco (at 6:00; accessed April 27, 2018); for Jeremy Corbyn, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGj1PheWiFQ (accessed April 27, 2018); see also Camila Bassi, “’The Anti-Imperialism of Fools’: A Cautionary Story on the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard of England’s Post-9/11 Anti-War Movement,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 9:2 (2010): pp.113-137, last accessed May 7, 2018, https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/863The War on Error, pp. 71-76 and 105-112.

[27] “Army Commander: Zionist regime Annihilated in 25 Years,” Fars News, April 21, 2018, accessed April 23, 2018, http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13970201000537.

[28] Jonathan Steele, “Lost in translation,” The Guardian, June 14, 2006, accessed April 25, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155.

[29] See Joseph S. Spoerl, “Whitewashing Palestine to Eliminate Israel: The Case of the One-State Advocates,” Jewish Political Studies Review 26:3-4 (Fall 2014), last accessed May 7, 2018, http://jcpa.org/article/whitewashing-palestine-eliminate-israel-case-one-state-advocates/.

[30] “Antisemitic Statements, Publications by Iranian Regime,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 4445, January 25, 2012, accessed January 25, 2012,  http://www.memri.org/report/en/print6024.htm.

[31] In a seminar that I attended at Tel Aviv University on June 2, 2010, Dr. Uzi Rubin told the audience that the missile threat from Iran and Hezbollah was already classified by Israel as a strategic threat, not a mere terrorist threat. He said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were all armed with (among other weapons) the Fateh 110 (or M500) short-range ballistic missile with a solid-fuel engine, a half-ton conventional warhead, precision GPS targeting technology, and a range that included virtually all of Israel. He estimated that each of these missiles cost Iran a mere $10,000 to build and that Iran could produce them “like sausages.” Iran’s missile technology, of course, has improved further since 2010, as has its control over Syria and the size of its arsenal in Lebanon. Already in 2010, Dr. Rubin said, Hezbollah’s missiles could “cripple power plants, airports, sea ports, population centers, military installations” (from my notes taken during the seminar).

[32] Uzi Rubin, “The Nuclear Agreement Boosts Iran’s Missile Threat,” Defense News, October 5, 2015, accessed October 7, 2015, https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2015/10/05/the-nuclear-agreement-boosts-irans-missile-threat/.

[33] Ben Hubbard, “As Deal Crumbles, Iran’s Foes Sense an Opportunity to Strike,” The New York Times, May 14, 2018, p. A9, accessed May 14, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-mideast-conflict.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.

[34] Ruth Eglash and William Booth, “Israel to launch one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, with U.S. help,” The Washington Post, March 3, 2016, accessed March 4, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-to-launch-one-of-the-most-advanced-missile-defense-systems-in-the-world-with-us-help/2016/03/03/6383cb88-dfd5-11e5-8c00-8aa03741dced_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7ab33ce74e94.

[35] “Sinwar: Iran is Hamas’ Largest Backer Financially, Militarily,” Asharq al-Awsat, August 29, 2017, accessed August 29, 2017, https://eng-archive.aawsat.com/theaawsat/world-news/sinwar-iran-hamas-largest-backer-financially-militarily. On the tight connection between Iran and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, see Jacob Lassner and S. Ilan Troen, Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), pp. 136-141. On Hezbollah, see below.

[36] Esther Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizbollah and Hamas (Tel Aviv: The Project for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Tel Aviv University, 1994), p. 6. The Hezbollah leadership has embraced the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei as its marja or their ultimate authority on Islamic law: Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 100. More recently, see Amir Toumaj, “Hezbollah chief’s censored speech reaffirms group as Tehran’s arm in Lebanon,” May 4, 2018, The Long War Journal, accessed May 4, 2018,  https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2018/05/hezbollah-chiefs-censored-speech-reaffirms-group-as-iran-proxy.php.

[37] Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizbollah and Hamas, pp. 7-8. (Page numbers refer to the print edition, but the work is available online at https://www.ict.org.il/Article/457/Anti-Semitic-Motifs-in-the-Ideology-of-Hizballah-and-Hamas?articleid=51#Publications&gsc.tab=0.)

[38] Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizbollah and Hamas, p. 7

[39] Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizbollah and Hamas, p. 10.

[40] Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizbollah and Hamas, p. 13.

[41] Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizbollah and Hamas, p. 20. See also the “Hamas Covenant,” Article 32, “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series No. 1092, February 14, 2006, accessed Feb. 14, 2006,  http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1609.htm.

[42] Esther Webman, “Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Zionism, and the Jews.” In Esther Webman ed., The Global Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old Myth (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 177. See also Thanassis Cambanis, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and their Endless War Against Israel (New York: Free Press, 2010), pp. 194-5.

[43] Anti-Defamation League, “Hezbollah,” February 6, 2013, http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/combating-hate/Hezbollah-backgrounder-2013-1-10-v1.pdf.

[44] “The Hezbollah Program: An Open Letter,” February 16, 1985, in Itamar Rabinovich and Yehuda Reinharz eds., Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present, second ed. (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008), p. 427.

[45] Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, p. 214.

[46] Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler, 1985), p. 159.

[47] Hamid Algar trans., Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (1941-1980) (N.P.: Mizan Press, 1981), p. 127; cf. pp. 27, 89, 109, 142, 175-6, 193, 197, 201, 210, 243, 276.

[48] For an especially vivid example of this, see: “Khamenei Associate Mehdi Taeb: ‘The Jews…Are The Only Ones Who Need Weapons Of Mass destruction In Order To Rule The World – Because There Are 1.4 Billion Muslims And None Of Them Agree To Jewish Supremacy,’” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 6759, January 27, 2017, accessed January 27, 2017, https://www.memri.org/reports/khamenei-associate-mehdi-taeb-jews-are-only-ones-who-need-weapons-mass-destruction-order.

 

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Joseph S. Spoerl is Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of Philosophy at Saint Anselm College. His research interests include Ethics, Business Ethics, Modern Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Formal Logic, and more, and teaches classes in those subjects.

More by Joseph S. Spoerl here.

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