The Campus Conservative

Last Wednesday, Iran’s new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told thousands of students at an event called “A World Without Zionism” that Israel “must be wiped off the map.” As usual, leaders of Western countries made a big show of condemning Ahmadinejad’s remarks while continuing to support a Middle East peace process that condones Palestinian terrorism and makes unfair demands on Israel.

The United States, Canada and countries across Europe quickly responded to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments, denouncing his anti-Semitic words and stressing the danger that would be posed if his country possessed nuclear weapons.

As we go to press, I have not yet heard reports of Sen. John Kerry admiringly calling Mr. Ahmadinejad a “statesman” or of Sen. Hillary Clinton kissing Ahmadinejad’s wife. (I’m referring to how Kerry described former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and to how, when she was First Lady, Clinton, kissed Suha Arafat after she accused Israel of poisoning Palestinians.) When even the Democrats don’t have any sympathy for Ahmadinejad, we know we’re dealing with a bad guy.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee reported that a resolution was proposed on Friday in the U.S. House of Representatives that would censure the Iranian president’s comments and reaffirm the U.S.-Israeli alliance and “the commitment of the United States to defend the right of Israel to exist as a free and democratic state.”

I’ve been waiting to hear Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas or other Arab leaders condemn Ahmadinejad for his remarks, but I’m not holding my breath. If Abbas was at all interested in the peace process that has the ultimate goal of two democratic states, one Israeli and one Palestinian, coexisting side-by-side in peace, he might have said something about how calls for Israel’s destruction are, at the very least, not constructive toward that goal. And if Muslim religious leaders who support the peace process and condemn hatred really exist, why aren’t they speaking up?

While we’re on the subject of maps and wiping countries off them, let’s revisit a different map – the roadmap to peace. The saddest thing about Ahmadinejad’s remarks is that they present nothing new. Neither Abbas nor any other Arab leaders have ever really supported the two-state solution provided for by the roadmap to peace. They all want a one-state solution – one Palestinian state occupying the entire land of Israel.

What’s worse is that most of their people support these views. Most Palestinians are not interested in the peace process. They do not want to compromise with Israel; they want to destroy her.

People who think that Ahmadinejad’s radical remarks represent the views of only a small portion of his constituents and that most Arabs don’t want to end Israel’s existence are deluding themselves. On Friday, over 1 million Iranians gathered in Tehran and other cities to support their president and his call for wiping Israel off the map, chanting “Death to Israel, death to America,” the Associated Press reported.

Going back to maps, take a look at the map of “Liberated Palestine” on the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s official emblem, worn daily by Yassir Arafat on his uniform. It’s a map of the entire state of Israel. Then look at the map of “Liberated Palestine” on page 64 of the Palestinian Authority’s official fifth-grade school textbook. It’s the same map. Palestinian leaders want to take over the entire state of Israel. They don’t support a two-state solution; there’s no Israel on either of those maps.

The idea that the average Palestinian does not support terrorism against Israel is also a myth. A public opinion poll released by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center in May of this year found that 53.5 percent of Palestinians support the continuation of the intifada and that 49.7 percent support suicide bombings. Half the population sees the murder of innocent Israeli men, women and children as being justified simply because they’re Jews.

President Bush is an advocate of a two-state solution at the end of the roadmap to peace. This is hypocrisy at its worst. If Islamic fundamentalists began committing suicide attacks in the United States, murdering American children on their way to school, teens in clubs, families in restaurants and senior citizens on the bus, I think our nation’s anger against our attackers would make our anger against the Sept. 11 hijackers seem like nothing.

The United States doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. No one, no less our president, would dare to suggest that the United States give up a significant portion of our land to the terrorists so that they could live next to us peacefully. While I acknowledge that this analogy is not perfect, at this point in time, it is still equally ridiculous to suggest that a two-state solution is the answer to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

While world leaders pat themselves on the back for taking a stand against Ahmadinejad’s comments from the safety of their capitols, more civilians are dying in suicide bombings in Israel because these same leaders support policies that make it extremely difficult for Israelis to fight terrorism.

Israelis have always been willing to make sacrifices for peace; Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent unilateral withdrawal from Gaza is only one example. Palestinians leaders, however, have never been willing to compromise and haven’t been able to stop their people from committing acts of terrorism. Yet the United States and many other countries continue to criticize Israel for some of the things it does to prevent terrorism, an example being the Israeli security fence, and to pressure Israel to give up more and more land without any credible guarantee of peace in return.

If the United States really wants to keep Israel from being wiped off the map, we need to abandon the disastrous roadmap to peace and come up with a realistic plan to work with Israel to fight the radical ideology that advocates terrorism and hatred against both Israelis and Americans.