As a rabbi, Zionist educator, and former political commentator and analyst, I bring a unique perspective to events. I try to combine a Torah-centric focus with the ability to contextualize current issues within a historical backdrop. I frequently utilize Jewish philosophical values to understand contemporary issues. Recent events have transpired that cannot be fully understood without looking at their philosophical and historical contexts.
Unfortunately, many recent events have been attributed simply to antisemitism. While antisemitism plays a role, it isn’t the only, or even the major factor that has led to these events.
A few weeks ago, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter accident. Born in 1960, Raisi played a vital part in fundamentalist Iran. He played a role in the 1988 Iran Death Commission, which executed Iranian citizens accused of crimes against the regime. His brutal nature on the commission earned him the moniker “The Butcher of Tehran.” He was accused by the United Nations and other international bodies of crimes against humanity.
After losing the Iranian presidential election in 2017, Raisi won in 2021’s rigged election. Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, viewed Raisi’s brutality as a perfect qualification to lead Iran as its eighth president.
Under his presidency, Iran refused to rework a nuclear deal, increased uranium enrichment, and supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Iran has increased its support of terrorism and has continued to supply Hezbollah with the missiles it has fired almost daily at Israel since October 7.
Raisi wasn’t a mere cog in the evil Iranian machine, he was one of its leaders. The world is a much safer place without him, and his helicopter crash should be viewed as a fortunate event for world peace.
The evil that he was responsible for makes the UN’s moment of silence held in his memory difficult to fathom. The UN was established to advance peace and justice in the world. Raisi and Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, not only stood against peace and justice, but they also actively worked against it.
How could the UN even consider holding a moment of silence for a person who worked to contravene the peaceful work of the United Nations on a daily basis?
The United Nations and its promotion of peace
THE UN isn’t known for keeping to its mission of promoting peace. It has become a cesspool of corruption and justification for the evil of the world. In contrast, the United States has stood for life and liberty. It has long been considered the moral exemplar of the world. It was America that stood against the world’s worst evils: Germany’s Nazis, Russia’s Communism, and South Africa’s apartheid.
The United States disgraced itself when its State Department issued a statement of condolence to the Iranian terrorist government over the death of Ebrahim Raisi – the man who murdered thousands of Iranians and stood for everything America was established to repudiate. How could President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and the rest of America’s foreign policy establishment think a condolence letter wouldn’t contradict America’s brand and message of life and liberty it spreads to the world?
Prosecutor Karim Khan made the following application for warrants against Palestinian leaders at the International Criminal Court (ICC), “On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Yahya Sinwar (head of the Islamic Resistance Movement – “Hamas” – in the Gaza Strip), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, more commonly known as DEIF (commander-in-chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail Haniyeh (head of Hamas’s political bureau) bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel…
“On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the minister of defense of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine.”
OUTGOING LABOR party chair – and Netanyahu opponent – Merav Michaeli objected to the warrants, saying, “Khan’s decision to seek arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is one that the State of Israel will not and cannot accept. It is simply a scandal to put the Israeli leadership in the same category as a vile, cruel terrorist organization. This is something we cannot accept under any circumstances.”
Khan defended himself explaining, “I am not saying that Israel, with its democracy and its Supreme Court, is akin to Hamas, of course not. I couldn’t be clearer; Israel has every right to protect its population and to get the hostages back. But nobody has a license to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. The means define us.”
Irrespective of whether the Iranian people were genuinely mourning the death of their president, and the UN and US were merely recognizing the Iranian people’s sadness; and whether or not Khan’s request for arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas leaders equated them, these acts demonstrate a disgraceful level of moral turpitude.
The problem behind the UN’s moment of silence, the US’s letter of condolences for the loss of president Raisi, and the ICC’s request for arrest warrants, isn’t one of antisemitism – although it’s undeniable that many who were saddened by Raisi’s death are antisemites. The bigger problem is the moral relativism that dominates the world today.
AT NO other time in history would a mass murderer on the scale of Raisi have escaped the world’s condemnation. At no other time would his death not be met with a global sigh of relief and maybe even celebration. At no other time would a nation legitimately defending itself from murder, rape, and kidnapping – and protecting its people and its enemy’s people at the level that Israel does – be characterized as conducting genocide and violating international war crimes. In a moral world, the rapists and murders are eliminated, and the victims find justice.
The world needs to return to moral clarity. It is unacceptable to allow relativism to dominate discourse and foreign policy. Nations that claim to stand for values must stand against tyrants like Raisi.
Instead of memorializing him, the United States and the United Nations should have wiped his name from global memory.
The writer is a Zionist educator at institutions around the world and recently published the book, Zionism Today.