On October 28,
2005 the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council passed a unanimous
resolution condemning the remarks about Israel made by MahmoudAhmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of
Iran. The UN press statement said: “The members of the Security Council support
the Secretary-General’s statement of 27 October noting that, under the United
Nations Charter, all Members have undertaken to refrain from the threat or use
of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any
State.” The resolution refers to the October 26 statement, made by the President
of Iran to a conference titled “World without Zionism”, that Israel should
be “wiped off the map”.
Modern Communism is opposed to the
remarks by Iran’s
president and is also opposed to the UN Security Council resolution. Ahmadinejad’s remarks concerning Israel
are an attempt to appeal to the most backward and reactionary elements in Iran, while reducing the political problem of
the Israel-Palestine conflict to a matter of simply “wiping Israel off the
map”. It is no secret that the Islamic Republic of Iran is opposed to Zionism
and supports the struggle of the Palestinian people for their rights. At the 60th
Session of the UN General Assembly, President Ahmadinejad
stated: “In Palestine,
a durable peace will be possible through justice, an end to discrimination and
occupation of Palestinian lands, the return of all Palestinian refugees, and
the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state with Al-Qods
al-Sharif as its capital.” One may argue in favour
of a “one-state” solution in Palestine,
or a “two-state” solution, but that is not the issue. Zionism is an ideology
that combines racism with colonialism and expansionism; it was put into
practice by the racist claim that Palestine
was a land without a people.
The Zionists
expelled the Palestinians from their homes. This injustice must be reversed. However,
it is not the Jewish people that should be “wiped out”, nor the buildings and
the houses and the schools that the settlers have built.It is the institutional framework that is
represented by the Israeli state founded on Zionism that needs to be abolished.
The issue is not the name of the “state” or the name of the country. The issue
is to reverse the injustice in what was called Palestine
and is now called Israel,
the West Bank and Gaza,
an issue which Ahmadinejad simply ignores in favour of whipping up hysteria. What is certain is that as
long as Israel continues along the path of Zionism, and as long as Israel and
other regimes in the Middle East continue to serve as proxies for the interests
of the big powers in that region, all of the peoples in the Middle East,
including the Palestinian and Israeli people, will go from crisis to crisis,
and from war to war.
The Islamic
Republic of Iran has never committed aggression against any other country. Yet,
the United States
and Britain,
as well as Israel,
are building a case to justify a military attack against Iran, either
with or without the approval of the UN Security Council. The U.S. and Britain are
proceeding against Iran
in the same manner that they did against Iraq. After the last American election,
U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney openly threatened to attack Iran. Since the
International Atomic Energy Agency passed its resolution against Iran on September 24, 2005,
alleging non-compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States
and Britain
have been trying to get support to refer Iran to the Security Council over
its nuclear activities. In a television interview last week, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair warned that Iran
will face “a much more difficult life” if it does not co-operate with the U.S. and the European Union (EU), and as far as
military action against Iran
is concerned, he said: “You don’t ever take any option off the table.” This was
before President MahmoudAhmadinejad
made his remarks. In view of this situation, the other members of the UN
Security Council, if they were determined to censure the remarks of Iran’s
president, could have insisted that the resolution include a disclaimer that it
in no way constitutes a moral or legal ground for military action against Iran.
The UN Security
Council is very selective in responding to the threat and the use of force
against its members. The Security Council has ignored countless aggressions and
threats against member states because one or another of the five permanent
members threatened to use its veto. Only
when the United States, Britain, France,
Russia and China come to
some prior arrangement does the UN Security Council act on these issues.
However, no action is ever taken against the interests of the imperialist
powers or their allies, no matter what the crimes. This double-standard in the
Security Council puts into question the motives behind this particular
resolution.