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Yair Lapid
Photo: Yoni Hamenachem

Good we didn’t bomb Iran

Israeli strike on Iran two months ago would have averted current uprising

It will take weeks, maybe months, before we know where Iran is heading. Revolutions, by their very nature, do not break out – they evolve. The real processes do not occur in front of the cameras, but rather, behind the black hijab. Perhaps this is why the commentators, just like authorities, are always surprised when the point of no return arrives.

 

The American Revolution started as a minor protest at the Boston port over tea taxes; the famous storming of the Bastille, which became the symbol of the French Revolution, only secured the release of seven prisoners – four conmen, two madmen, and one sexual offender; three long years passed from the day Gorbachev took the stage during the 27th Soviet Party Congress and declared the “Glasnost,” to the day when the masses stormed the Berlin Wall and brought it down with hammers.

 

Events in Iran are fascinating because they tell us something about the human spirit and the fact that we were born to freedom; however, a long time will pass before we know how it all ends.

 

Meanwhile, the protestors are redrafting, in Persian, the timeless lines appearing in the US Declaration of Independence: “experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”

 

One-time opportunity

The collapse of the Ayatollah regime is, of course, everything Israel could ever hope for. We are not only talking about the nuclear issue, but also about much more immediate gains: Hizbullah will dry up, Hamas will lose its main source of strength, and Syria’s backdoor will slam shut.

 

However, everything happening at Tehran’s Azadi Square – the amazing coming together of young people, Internet culture, social ferment, and woman power – would not have happened had we listened to the regular bunch of hysterical screamers around here and attempted to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites.

 

What would have happened then? Exactly what happens around here during times of war: The Iranian public would have rallied around the leadership, a wave of patriotic fury would have swept through the whole of Iran, and Ahmadinejad would not have needed to resort to any fraud in order to defeat the reformists.

 

And so, using our very own fighter jets, we would have lost this one-time opportunity to see genuine domestic change in the Islamic empire of evil. The most absurd thing is that we wouldn’t even have known that we missed this opportunity.

 

This is the lesson; the question is whether there is anyone around here who would learn it. After all, our screamers always speak on behalf of history, but are never willing to learn anything from their own history.

 


פרסום ראשון: 06.27.09, 14:41
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