The Root of the Israeli-Iranian Conflict
(and Beyond)
C. Gourgey, Ph.D.
One of my earliest, and particularly searing memories after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 was of a woman in New York City, clad in abaya and hijab, tearing down posters of Jewish children captured by Hamas. What did these children do to her? I wondered. And yet her face was contorted in hate. To me she was making a statement: I as a Muslim support what Hamas did on October 7.
And now Israel and Iran are at war. How could it have gotten this bad?
This war has a context. It is not just starting now. Iran initiated this war and has been waging war against Israel for decades, through rocket attacks and incursions by its proxies Hamas in the south, Hezbollah in the north, and the Houthis in Yemen. These proxies have been described as arms of an octopus, with Iran the head. Iran has long declared its intention to destroy Israel. In 2015 Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted that by the year 2040 the State of Israel will no longer exist. There is actually a "doomsday clock" on display in Teheran counting down the moments until Israel’s destruction. And Iran has been getting steadily closer to carrying out its threat. It was inevitable that we would reach this pivotal moment.
And note an unsurprising anomaly of this war: While Israel focuses on Iran’s military installations, Iran throws ballistic missiles at civilian population centers. Iran’s hatred of Israel and Jews is visceral. Where does a hatred like this come from, with the power to disrupt the peace of the entire world?
Some say it’s because of the Israeli “occupation.” But there is one word you are not hearing very much during the current conflict: “Palestinians.” Iran is not fighting for the Palestinians. Iran does not simply want Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, nor does it want a two-state solution. Even if Israel completely withdrew to the pre-1967 border it would make no difference. Iran is fighting to destroy Israel, because it considers Israel’s very existence illegitimate.
In the wars between Israel and the Muslim states, the Palestinians were never the real issue. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank, whatever one may think of them, did not cause this conflict. Intense animosity toward Israel existed long before a single settlement was built. From the day Israel was born, various entities in the Muslim world never ceased their efforts to destroy it. Jews and Palestinian Arabs both inhabited the land and both deserved their own self-determined space within it. The Jews accepted, but the Palestinians repeatedly rejected any notion of sharing the territory.
And not just the Palestinians. The entire Muslim world considered any sovereign Jewish presence within its midst anathema. The West Bank settlements were the result of an attempted war of annihilation engineered by Muslim states. This anti-Israel hatred led to the occupation and settements in the West Bank, and not the other way around. So however one wishes to debate the wisdom of those settlements, we can dispense once and for all with the notion that they are the cause of this conflict.
But, it is often said, didn’t Muslims and Jews get along during the Convivencia, the so-called “Golden Age” in medieval Spain? It is true that Muslims didn’t burn Jews at the stake, as Christians did, and many bring this up as evidence of Muslim magnanimity, even though as a standard of comparison it is absurd. Nevertheless, the idyllic picture often portrayed of Muslim-Jewish coexistence is a myth. Muslims were happy (sometimes, not all the time) with Jews as long as the latter knew their place as dhimmi, subservient, second-class citizens. That was always how things were supposed to be. Having incorporated the Jewish story into their holy scriptures, Muslims and not Jews now fancied themselves the ones chosen by God, with a destiny to rule. Jews ruling themselves anywhere in that region was a reversal of the natural order. It could not be tolerated. Jews once again had to become dhimmi or leave, either willingly or by force.
I tried very hard to build bridges with Muslims. I formed friendships with Muslims. I learned about their religion, wanting to understand what it meant to them. I read the entire Qur’an with commentary, and could appreciate the spirituality within it if it is interpreted in a certain way. I attended Muslim prayer services. I engaged in Scriptural Reasoning groups, in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews learned about each other’s sacred scriptures. I even wrote study texts for those groups incorporating selections from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur’an. I became a defender of Islam, and advocated to advance what I believed a more tolerant form of Islam not sufficiently recognized or respected. I engaged in arguments with my more critical Jewish and Christian friends who could see nothing good in Islam. And I thought I was making progress.
Then October 7 happened.
The Jewish people had not experienced similar atrocities perpetrated against them since the Nazis. It was so horrifying and beyond any limit of human decency that I was certain Muslims would come out to protest the horrendous cruelty perpetrated in the name of their religion.
And come out they did, in huge numbers all over the Muslim world. Against Israel, and in support of Hamas and what Hamas did to the Jews on that day.
And so it was also in this country. Massive demonstrations all over the country, centered on our college campuses, promoting the Palestinian cause, condemning Israel, calling for Israel’s destruction, and extolling Hamas.
And my Muslim friends? They defended the rights of Palestinians to “resist,” with violence if necessary. They wanted Jews to support the rights of these demonstrators to say whatever they wanted, no matter how hateful. They wanted Jews to protest the suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that openly supported the atrocities of October 7. As for the Scriptural Reasoning group I was in at the time, the Jews wanted to continue but the Muslims stopped speaking to us and the group dissolved.
I felt like I had been tricked.
I could no longer deny the evidence of my senses. I could no longer avoid seeing the obvious: While clearly not all Muslims are antisemites, and many are not, yet antisemitism is epidemic in the Muslim world and that cannot be denied. I’ve experienced it first-hand, and have also seen it play out on the world stage. What Israel’s most virulent enemies have in common is not ethnicity. The Iranians are not Arabs like the Palestinians. Nor are the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, or Afghans, yet their countries are steeped in antisemitism. What all these groups have in common is one thing: Islam.
Islamic antisemitism is indeed a thing. If classical Islamic sources are to be believed, its roots go all the way back to the time of Muhammad. Animosity between Muhammad and the Jews of his time, set in motion by the Jewish refusal to consider him one of their prophets (this is documented in Islamic sources), reached the point of Muhammad himself committing mass murder on a tribe of Jews. Even today, anti-Israel demonstrators chant slogans recalling Muhammad’s battles with the Jews. It is they, not Jews, who invoke their religious history as a rationale for hate.
From the very beginning, the most salient root of the Middle Eastern (no longer simply “Israeli-Palestinian”) conflict has been Islamic antisemitism. It is behind the Palestinians’ repeated refusal of peaceful coexistence, as well as the (so far) unsuccessful efforts of other elements within the Muslim world to eliminate Israel, to “throw the Jews into the sea,” to “wipe Israel off the map.” These efforts began long before any Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. But, unfortunately, the Muslim world by and large considers Israel itself to be “Palestinian territory.”
The antisemitism fueling this conflict is unmistakable. Arabic copies of Mein Kampf have been found among the belongings of Hamas fighters, who brag of killing “Jews,” not just Israelis. Khamenei has denied the Holocaust, calling it a “myth,” and Iran even sponsored an international conference dedicated to Holocaust denial – all while trying to perpetrate a new Holocaust, first through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, then by a series of direct missile attacks against Israeli cities. Iranian textbooks have been found to contain anti-Jewish material, some even instructing students to chant “Death to Israel.” Much, much more can be said.
The fact remains that Iran and those who share its ideology consider Israel’s elimination a religious imperative. Their faith demands it. That is why they will not stop until Israel’s end is achieved, and why Israel felt it had no choice but to act now.
As already mentioned, the roots of Islamic antisemitism run deep. Those who want more details can consult my study The Roots of Islamic Antisemitism, available on Judeochristianity.org. The distinction many make between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is completely disingenuous. Anti-Zionism is not about Israeli policies; it is about Israel’s existence. Anti-Zionism is the ultimate practical application of antisemitism.
Islam has a Jewish problem. Anti-Jewish rhetoric is embedded in its history and in its scriptures, even the Qur’an. Islam can possibly be reformed, but this problem must be recognized. And only Muslims, not outsiders, can do it. Yet on the global scale, so far we have only seen mass demonstrations in support of the antisemitism Islam carries within it.
It must always be remembered that people are individuals, and must be judged as such. Not all Muslims are antisemites. A good heart can always overcome a bad ideology, but it takes effort. During the Second World War Albanian Muslims played a heroic role in sheltering Jews from Hitler. Nevertheless, this does not negate broad historic trends that affect us to this day. While we must always be fair in our dealings with others, ideological systems including religion can and must be subject to criticism. Without such criticism religious reform is impossible. The same goes for evangelical Christianity, another form of religion whose effects have been very damaging. No one has an exclusive corner on religious bigotry.
The foregoing is not intended to discourage but to provide a pathway for hope. There can be hope, if people on all sides are willing to face this problem, look at themselves, and question themselves. But what will it take? Up until the Holocaust, Christianity was almost monolithically antisemitic. Parts of it still are. But the Holocaust, largely supported by Christian Europe, shook the Christian conscience leading to much self-questioning, making rapprochement between Christians and Jews possible. Will it take another Holocaust to do the same for Islam?
The religious dimension of the Middle Eastern conflict is not easy to face, but the conflict cannot be understood without acknowledging its religious influences. The peace of the entire world is at stake. One may criticize this Israeli policy or that Israeli policy, and that is fair game. But none of that will count if the religion-based existential hatred of Israel and Jews within the Muslim world is not addressed. That hatred does not care what the policies of the Israeli government happen to be. It wants Israel gone under any circumstances, even if a bloodbath is necessary to achieve it. But the Jewish people already suffered one Holocaust and will not submit quietly to another. This does not bode well for the world.
There is no influence on human behavior more intense than the religious impulse. It must be watched and checked, before it unleashes forces that cannot be contained and we have reached the point where there is no turning back. History should already have taught us this. And history will have no hesitation teaching it to us again.