The Middle East, like the top of Mount Everest, continually finds itself engulfed by a sea of clouds. These are the clouds of lies that Europe and the United States opt to cover up in order not to see a panorama bogged down by violence, and anti-Christian and anti-Jewish hatred. Only the blistering heat of an exceptional truth can make them vanish. This is what has happened over the past few days.
Two incidents this week have triggered this sudden light—and now force the West to run out and buy sunglasses: First, the revelations by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following the wonderful Mossad-smuggling of a trove of documents out of Iran; and second, the anti-Semitic, ignorant and anti-historical statements of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.
So now, the whole world is forced to recognize the truth: Iran lied, despite insisting repeatedly that it wasn’t pursuing a nuclear bomb. Iran’s secret files meticulously describe every phase of its nuclear program and its plants. And moreover, they reveal that Iran continued to hide its decision to acquire a nuclear bomb (half a ton of documents!) even after signing the 2015 nuclear deal with the P5+1, which includes five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia, plus Germany.
The well-mannered Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, along with the “reformist” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, smiled nonstop at former U.S. President Barack Obama and Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, while they hid everything during negotiations leading up to the nuclear deal. Iran’s purpose was and is the pursuit of nuclear weapons—a goal of a state that inherently seeks to export the Islamic Revolution to assert its hegemony not only in the Middle East, but also throughout the world. The international community didn’t want to address the evident lies, while Netanyahu went on repeating it in every circumstance without fear.
Similarly, the world has refused to see the “moderate” Abbas for who is really is. To know, one could have simply read what he said and did throughout his career; only now are they realizing that he’s a classic anti-Semite who not only considers the Jews as the scum of the human race, but also accuses them of having brought the Shoah upon themselves with their hateful “social behavior.” However, his tirade didn’t stop there. He went on to reiterate what he already said in January and in other occasions: that the Jews have nothing to do with Israel; they were part of a European imperialist and colonialist project, even accusing the “Zionists” of having cooperated with Hitler.
Actually, we have written a thousand times about Abbas’s anti-Semitism and his hatred for the Jewish people, which are directly related to his delegitimization of Israel. All of this was already present in the negationist thesis he wrote back in Moscow as a student in 1982, as well as in his speeches and writings thereafter.
As for Iran, its culture will perpetuate any lie in order to bring about the victory of Islam on the West and on the Sunni Islam. The signs have always been, quite frankly, very clear. Even a blind man would have seen them. Not the self-decepting Western elite, which can so willfully imagine the good and peaceful nature of a cruel and dangerous (for our own children!) enemy.
Now, there are those who are saying that it was already well-known that the ayatollahs were lying—that what Israel has shown in black and white isn’t important because we still don’t know whether or not Iran is still in violation of the nuclear deal. Not true: There is one important thing that everyone now knows for sure, and it’s that Iran lies—and lied—all the time. There are consequences, too. Even Europe is starting to ask for real changes to the nuclear agreement, while U.S. President Donald Trump assesses whether or not to back out of it.
Another truth, even more annoying than the latter, has been revealed by the Mossad’s prestigious operation, as with Abbas’s delirious rant: The West’s predisposition to the Chamberlain syndrome, in which an elite without of a sense of reality is willing to reach any agreement, and in the process, discredit itself. Only Israel was able to read reality correctly and try, subsequently, not to jeopardize its national security. Now the United States is realizing this, and it’s actually really something new and positive for the world.
This elite doesn’t abandon the international stage: Zarif, while speaking in English on YouTube, said that if America leaves the nuclear deal, then Iran will likely do so as well. It has also threatened to “vigorously” resume its nuclear program. As for Abbas, whose expressions of hatred and anti-Semitism are well-known and frequent, we wait, hate-filled as he is, to be taken out of the game when he speaks of “peace.”
Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein was a member of the Italian Parliament (2008-13), where she served as vice president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Chamber of Deputies, served in the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, and established and chaired the Committee for the Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism. A founding member of the international Friends of Israel Initiative, she has written 13 books, including “Israel Is Us” (2009). Currently, she is a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Translation by Amy Rosenthal.