Wiping oppression off the map

TEHRAN, Nov. 4 (MNA) -- President Ahmadinejad’s comment about ‘wiping Israel off the map’ has sparked hysterical international furor. This statement requires contextualization, however, not in the sense that it is a reference to the words of the late Imam Khomeini or a slogan of the 1979 revolution. Instead, it needs to be couched in the broad spectrum of Iran’s foreign policy.

Over the past decades, the Palestinian nation has been systematically marginalized, or, one could say, methodically ‘wiped off’ of the Israeli map. What we have witnessed in Israel has been a perpetual Palestinian holocaust, characterized by uninhibited human rights violations, stringent curfews, invasive checkpoints, the proliferation of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory, and the further partitioning of Palestinian land with separation walls. According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, since September 2000, Israeli security forces have been responsible for the deaths of 3,670 people in the Palestinian territories. This unfortunate state of affairs is tantamount to the monstrous depredations perpetrated by Hitler’s regime.

The most blatant violation of the Palestinian birthright is, of course, the confiscation of Palestinian land. Israel has relentlessly seized Palestinian land during times of war and has continued to do so at times of ‘peace’. Israel presently rules Palestinian land illegally -- according to Resolution 242, passed by the United Nations Security Council on November 26, 1967, during wartime a country cannot claim the territory of another; they must return any captured land after the war. This stipulation apparently has no bearing on the Palestinian case.

It is true that the Palestinians have not necessarily been annihilated, but they have been ostracized to the point where their future is rapidly descending into obscurity. A linchpin of Iran’s foreign policy, guided by the spirit of the 1979 revolution, is to liberate victims of tyranny and oppression. Ahmadinejad’s comment was made figuratively, but it was taken literally the world over. But the substance of his statement is crystal clear:

Iran will not turn a blind eye to Palestinian extinction. Not only because Iran supports the family of Islam, but because it vehemently rejects the infringement of human rights. It is, thus, incumbent upon Iran to support this falling nation and to unshackle it from the hands of any aggressor -- dare I say, along the same lines as the Anglo-American ‘liberation’ of Iraq and of Afghanistan?

MS/HG

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MNA

News ID 13655