Order Robert Spencer’s new book, Holy Hell: Islam’s Abuse of Women and the Infidels Who Enable It: HERE.
The Ayatollah Khamenei is dead now, and he died before he was able to realize the central goal of his long tenure as the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran: destroying the Jewish state.
From the moment that he became supreme leader in 1989, Khamenei repeatedly reiterated the necessity of utterly destroying Israel. On December 4, 1990, he said, “Regarding the Palestine issue, the problem is taking back Palestine, which means disappearance of Israel.” He made it clear that this didn’t just mean the Israeli land commonly termed “the occupied territories,” but the entire state of Israel: “There is no difference between occupied territories before and after [the Arab-Israeli war of] 1967. Every inch of Palestinian land is an inch of Palestinians’ home. Any entity ruling Palestine is illegitimate unless it is Islamic and by Palestinians. Our position is what our late Imam [Khomeini] said, ‘Israel must disappear.’”
Khamenei contradicted Mahmoud Abbas and others, however, in saying that Jews could still live in Palestine, though, if they accepted Islamic rule, which for them would mean second-class status as dhimmis, the “protected people” of the Islamic state: “The Jews of Palestine can live there, if they accept the Islamic government there. We are not against Jews. The issue is the illegal ownership of Muslims’ homes. Muslim leaders, if they were not influenced by the world powers, could solve this important problem, but unfortunately have not been able to.”
Again on August 19, 1991, Khamenei emphasized that Israel must be destroyed: “Solving the Palestinian problem entails destroying and eliminating the illegitimate government there, so that the true owners [of the land] can form a new government; Muslims, Christians, and Jews can live side by side…. Our view regarding the Palestine issue is clear. We believe the solution is destroying the Israeli regime. Forty years has passed [since establishment of the state of Israel], and if another forty years passes, Israel must disappear, and will.”
One of the supreme leader’s favorite terms for Israel was “cancerous tumor.” In March 1994, Khamenei complained that “the United States and others support this cancerous tumor in the heart of Islamic nations.” Four months later, he again referred to Israel as “this cancerous tumor” and said that it had a “a terrorist government.” In June 2013, he ascribed the phrase to the Ayatollah Khomeini: “our magnanimous Imam is the person who never changed his mind about the Zionist regime; that ‘the Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor that must be removed’ are the Imam’s words.”
On January 15, 2001, Khamenei declared that destroying Israel was nothing less than the “mission” of the Islamic Republic of Iran: “It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region.” On April 22 of the same year, he called for Muslim nations to support the jihad against Israel, predicting “that if even a portion of the Islamic world’s resources is devoted to this path, we will witness the decay and eventual disappearance of the Zionist regime.”
Muslim nations, Khamenei explained, should be willing to use their resources for Israel’s destruction because the Jewish state was created, in Khamenei’s view, in order to undermine them: on January 31, 2002, Khamenei complained that the U.S. and its allies established “the cancerous Zionist tumor” in order “to use it against Islamic nations.”
In August 2012, Khamenei reiterated that Israel would soon vanish: “the fake Zionist (regime) will disappear from the landscape of geography. The light of hope will shine on the Palestinian issue, and this Islamic land will certainly be returned to the Palestinian nation.” In 2014, he returned to the same theme: “This barbaric, wolflike and infanticidal regime of Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated.” He added an offer of support to all of Israel’s enemies: “From now on we will also support any nation, any group that confronts the Zionist regime, we will help them, and we are not shy about doing so. Israel will go, it must not survive, and it will not.”
Now Khamenei is dead, and Israel is still on the map. Sometimes, even in this blind and tormented world, there is justice.
