October 27, 2005

Suicide Bomber Knits Hadera and Tehran Together

Hadera, Israel, and Tehran, Iran are hundreds of miles away, but one blast from a suicide bomber knit them together on Wednesday. A member of Islamic Jihad on his deadly mission killed five Israelis and wounded dozens. Few of them knew when they went to the market or lined up for a falafel death was standing with them. When you ask Israeli officials about the bombing, they say you can follow the trail from the falafel stand in Hadera, wind your way through the terror cells of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, hop through the electronic communications from Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus, and ultimately end up in the inner sanctums of the Iranian government in Tehran. There you will find the kind of rhetoric that blasted the air waves on Wednesday with vitriol seldom heard from a national leader.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, promised Israel would be destroyed by a new wave of Palestinian attacks. He said, “There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (of Israel) from the Islamic world.” During his speech, given at a conference called “The World without Zionism”, he went on to repeat the statements of Ayatollah Khomeini about Israel, “As the Iman said, 'Israel must be wiped off the map.'”

He went onto demonize any Muslim nation that would dare recognize Israel: “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world." Ahmadinejad also said Israel’s recent pullout from Gaza was a “trick” only to persuade Islamic nations to recognize Israel.

Dangerous words, but made more so since Iran has the money, technology, will ,and savvy to train and dispatch men like 20-year-old Hassan Abu Zeid who blew himself and five others into eternity Wednesday afternoon. And the threat to Israel becomes existential when you consider Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons and the delivery systems to send those nukes hundreds if not thousands of miles, certainly within range of Israel. But the threat extends beyond Israel to U.S. troops in Iraq and even to Europe. Imagine what an Islamic nuclear umbrella would do the Middle East.

According to Mark Regev, spokesman of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the one thankful aspect of Ahmadinejad’s comments is that they have provoked a growing sense among many nations that Iran’s policies pose a threat not just to Israel, but to entire international community. What that community will do about the increasing Iranian nuclear threat is one of the major questions confronting the world today. It might greatly affect life around the world or at a falafel stand in Hadera.

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