OLMERT'S ANSWER TO IRAN
NEW YORK POST
Editorial
December 13, 2006
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under fire in Israel for all but acknowledging one of the world's worst-kept secrets: Israel has a nuclear arsenal.
Whether it was a true slip of the tongue, or more deliberate, isn't clear.
Olmert's statement came in an interview with German TV, as he was rejecting comparisons between Israel and Iran, which is actively seeking nuclear weapons.
"We have never threatened any nation with annihilation," he said. "Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"
If Olmert was purposely sending a message to Tehran, it's certainly understandable. As he noted, Israel faces a threat from Iran not just to its security but to its existence.
It's a danger Israel must take seriously, given the refusal of the United Nations to come to grips with the growing Iranian nuclear threat.
The draft resolution on the topic now before the Security Council has been stripped of any threat of sanctions. And unilateral U.S. military action to thwart Iran has all but been taken off the table.
The nature of Iran's provocations took an ugly new turn this week with Tehran's "academic conference" aimed at disproving the indisputable fact that 6 million Jews were killed in the Nazi genocide.
As Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, explained: "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt."
Thankfully, the gathering has drawn international condemnation (though not, significantly, from Arab governments or Muslim leaders). But it is a predictable follow-up to longstanding efforts by Palestinian leaders to deny the Jewish people's biblical and historic connection with the land of Israel.
In other words, the Muslim world's problem with Israel has nothing to do with permanent borders or occupied land or refugees or water rights. It is about the continued refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East, by suggesting that Israel was established for no other reason than to make Arabs pay for European sins against Jews - which, in this telling, never occurred anyway.
Defenders of Iran's nuclear ambitions point out that Tehran is surrounded by nuclear powers: Pakistan, Russia, Israel. True enough - but none of those nations has threatened Iran with extermination, as it now threatens Israel.
The mullahs must remember that Israelis - having faced one attempt barely a half-century ago to annihilate their people - will never let themselves be wiped off the map.
That, more than anything else, is the most important point that Ehud Olmert was making.
Whether he meant to or not is immaterial.
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