By Iqbal Jassat
As is the case in Israel’s horrendous holocaust in Gaza, where the Zionist regime led by an indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has desperately attempted to influence public opinion to support the genocide, so too is he at wits end to garner global support for his unjustified war on Iran.
That he is perplexed and deeply anxious about how the world has reacted to his aggressive unprovoked military action in Iran, is evident in his sharp rebuke of critics who dared to question his justification for attacking Iran.
The line he uses is all too familiar and reflective of his deep-seated hatred of Islam and Muslims, especially and particularly those who refuse to bow to Zionism.
Indeed, Netanyahu’s bloody history is steeped in vile Islamophobia. As a delusional self-declared “authority” on the extremely provocative term “Islamic Terrorism”, he has authored a few books on the same contentious theme.
For instance during the mid-1980s, his book “Terrorism: How the West Can Win”, despite its sloppy propaganda disguised as “research”, Netanyahu used his poison pen to attack Islam and Muslims in the most undignified racist terms. His objective was to propagate the idea “that terrorism and violence is congenital to Islam and Muslims”, as one reviewer wrote.
Just over a decade ago, we are reminded by the United Nations that from the podium of the General Assembly, Netanyahu “warned the world of the grave threat he said it faced from militant Islam’s desire to dominate the planet, be they Sunni extremists or Iran…”.
VOA reports at the time spelled out that Netanyahu tied the “Jewish state’s fight against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip to the larger global fight against Islamic State militants”.
His Islamophobic rhetoric was matched by an equally virulent Iranophobia, a position he has held over the decades until now.
In his later book “Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists” published in 2001, Netanyahu once again resorted to highly provocative anti-Muslim rhetoric while battling to counter a public profile of himself as the high-priest of Zionist terrorism.
In it he blamed “Islamic militants” as the architects of “international terrorism” and that they draw “inspiration and directives” from Iran. His outrageous claims are presented as “facts”, whereas the truth is that none of his allegations have been proven, as is the case today with the war launched on Iran on the back of manufactured lies.
As head of an illegitimate settler-colonial apartheid regime, Netanyahu had the audacity to to dub the United Nations Human Rights Council as a “terrorist rights council”, in his attempt to defend the atrocities in Gaza as a “moral imperative”.
Paul Racco, writing in Mondoweiss captured Israel’s tactic brilliantly as a “… mutual relationship between Zionism and its crutch: Islamophobia”.
In other words if Netanyahu is to be believed, his settler colony and Western allies share liberal, rational and philanthropic values not the medievalism of Islam and Iran.
It is thus encouraging to note that unlike the shrills of support for Netanyahu’s killing spree by local Zionist organisations, the South African government has expressed strong views against Israel’s attack on Iran.
Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola did not mince his words when he said that the attack on Iran raised serious concerns about international law, including principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the protection of civilians enshrined in the UN Charter and international humanitarian law.
These concerns go to the heart of the debate over Iran’s sovereign rights to pursue nuclear energy as a signatory of the NPT which Israel is not despite possessing untold number of atomic bombs.
The implication for nuclear safety and security arising from Israel’s attacks on facilities known and verified as peaceful by the IAEA, lie in Netanyahu’s lap.
Lamola’s warning that IAEA resolutions against armed attacks on peaceful nuclear installations as violations of the UN Charter and international law – which Israel has defied – is a timely reminder.
Apart from Netanyahu’s manufactured lies and prejudice against Iran and Islam, the Zionist apartheid regime has yet again failed the test of Article 51 of the UN Charter which requires clear evidence of an imminent armed attack.
Iqbal Jassat
Executive Member
Media Review Network
Johannesburg
South Africa