So the positions so far are that Iran is genuinely upset with Israel’s percieved mistreatment of the Palestinians (or other offenses against Islam - Jews at the Dome, the West in the ME etc) or that Iran is cynically positioning itself within the Arab political world. Any thoughts about if there is any role for the Iranian power elite using Israel instead for domestic consumption - to keep its own citizenry focused on an outside threat (especially now that Iraq is neuralized by the US and reduced to just the same US threat that has always been)? An Orwellian Goldstein, so to speak.
I do not know enough about the domestic situation within Iran to have an informed opinion about this but would be curious as to what those who do think about it (cough, Tamelane, cough).
In general, it is true that oppressive regiemes require an outside threat and will create one if it does not exist.
We’ve truly stepped into the Looking Glass with this logic. Palestinians attack Israelis with suicide bombers, so the Israelis take out the safe houses wherein the terrorists (and they are the terrorists since they target civilians and not military personnel), and thus suicide bombing is acceptable and the defensive act of the Israelis are acts of “terrorism outside of normal boundaries of behavior,” but the suicide bombing is not.
That’s not what I was saying; I was trying to make a point that if you start justifying one violation of the Geneva Conventions because you believe war shouldn’t have rules, than it becomes hypocritical to point the finger at certain other violations.
Incidentally, we’re not talking about taking out “safe houses” as in bases here, but just regular old houses, the places where the perpetrator or alleged perp live, usually with an extended, multi-generational family.
I’d also point out that obviously Palestinians, although not accorded citizenship in Israel, are held in Israeli jails in many cases, which again would seem to make my drug user analogy apt.
[ol]
[li]They’re fundamentalist Muslims and hate Israel because they occupy Jerusalem, a Muslim holy city[/li][li]They hate Israel because Israel is occupying land that used to be owned by their Palestinian “brothers” [/li][li]They hate Israel to get more credibility from the Arab world[/li][/ol]
Anything I missed?
Before I posted this I did a Google search to see if there’d been any war or anything between them; something I’d previously been unaware of, and found nothing.