Always the Aggressor
Usually I don’t read political blogs. But I came across this post in Henri Begius’ blog (which is a very good blog), mainly because it got aggregated by Planet PHP for some reason. That led me to read this post in roozbeh’s blog - which was very interesting.
What I found interesting is that roozbeh, an Iranian open-source developer working on the FriBidi project (along with Arabs and Israelis AFAIK) does not seem to understand the Israeli mindset, and is worried from an Israeli attack on Iran as a retaliation on the results of the war in Lebanon the past summer. I didn’t find any way to leave a comment in roozbeh’s blog - so I will leave my comments here in hope to start up a real discussion.
Now I don’t know allot about Iran - but this is what I do know about Israeli - Iranian relations:
- Israel and Iran never had any territorial disputes
- Israel and Iran never engaged in direct combat with each other - unless you count Iranian backed organizations attacking Israeli and Jewish targets around the world
- Israel never declared a state of war on Iran - in contrast to the legal state of war Israel had with some of the countries in the region since 1948 (IIRC, those are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and maybe some others - after Egypt and Jordan are no longer at war with Israel)
- Up until the revolution of 1979, Israel and Iran had very good relations, being in a small minority of non-Arab countries in the middle east. These relations included economical and military cooperation. I know this because my grandparents worked for several years in Teheran, and my father spent most of his grade school years there, together with a large Israeli community
- Ever since the Islamic revolution, and most notably, ever since president Ahmadinajad was (democratically) elected to lead Iran, allot of verbal hostility seems to be coming from that direction, both against Israel and against Jews (yes, I consider Holocaust Denial as verbal hostility against Jews and even worse)
Considering these facts, I don’t see any reason for Israel to attack Iran. I never heard any Israeli leader, let alone any mainstream Israeli press members or public speakers calling for the annihilation of Iran or the Persian people.
Obviously, I am not to say what’s going on in the minds of Iranian leadership, nor I am an expert in the politics and society of Iran - But in my opinion, you (educated and politically aware Iranians) should ask yourself whether this “Israel will attack you” and “Hence Israel must die” rhetorics we get from your leadership so very often is not just a method of controlling the masses - as in “as long as they hate and fear Israel, they will not hate us and overthrow us”. If you didn’t read Orwell’s 1984 - you should. It’s a smart book and a good read.
Of course - this is a call to an open discussion. I would be happy to engage in direct conversation about this.
