Why Iran's Holocaust Denial Matters (more than you think)

     A couple of weeks ago was International Holocaust Remeberance Day, a day that was chosen because it is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (interestingly, Israel commemorates the Holocaust on a different day, related to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). To mark the event many international leaders gave speeches and held ceremonies. President Obama, for example gave a very moving speech at the Israeli Embassy. But in Iran (at least among the leadership), it was used as another opportunity to deny that the Holocaust happened (as you can see here and here). While denying the slaughter of millions of people is heinous, Iran's underlying motivation is even more important.
     In order to understand the Iranian view we first have to briefly try and understand Iranian history. Iran, called Persia for most of its history, has a long and glorious past. 2500 years ago they had the largest empire in the world. It was a bastion of tolerance (including toward the Jews) and civilization. And this wasn't an anomaly. Throughout history Persia has frequently been a major power. And, as with many of their Arab neighbors, this impressive history makes their current second-class status hard to stomach. In particular, much of the middle east has a great deal of trouble with the fact that the Jewish people--the world's punching bag for 2,000 years--have established a (mostly) successful, modern state, while they have completely failed to do so. And just as many Germans refused to accept their defeat in World War I (and gave rise to the Stab-in-the-back myth), many Iranians refuse to accept the facts and believe there must be some other force at work.
     So here's the story the Iranians tell (or at least the story their leadership officially endorses). One way or another the Jewish people convinced the west that the Holocaust happened. As a result, the Europeans and Americans felt really bad, came to the Middle East and stole land to give to the Jewish people. And, due to guilt over the (non-existent) Holocaust the UN voted to create a Jewish state. So the Iranians are saying 1) Israel exists because of the Holocaust and 2) this Holocaust didn't really happen. When they deny the Holocaust, what the Iranian leadership is really saying is that the raison d'etre for Israel's existence is a fabrication. While this is deeply offensive, the bigger problem is that this reasoning seems like it could be used to justify an existential attack on Israel. Why would it be a problem to erase a country that never should have existed in the first place?
     I feel a little bit silly pointing out the fallacies in Holocaust-deniers logic, so I'll keep it short. First of all, the Holocaust happened. Duh. (As my dad likes to say, "otherwise, where did all those European Jews go?") But even if you believe that it didn't, and you believe there are no historical Jewish ties to the land, there's clear evidence of modern Jewish settlement in the land of Israel dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century, long before the Holocaust. And, secondly, there's clear archaeological and textual evidence of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel as early as 1000 BCE, and if you want to be unreasonably conservative, no scholar in the world would question that there have been Jews living here since at least Roman times. There's also solid evidence of Jews visting and/or moving to Israel throughout the last 2000 years (like the Spanish poet Yehuda HaLevy in the twelfth century for example). So both claims that Holocaust deniers make are patently false; but that doesn't make their logic--and the story it tells--any less scary. 

What the Heck is Going on up North?

     For those of you who haven't heard several members of the Iranian military and the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah were killed in an airstrike in the Syrian Golan Heights recently. While Israel never officially acknowledges or denies military actions like this, it seems likely that we were the ones who struck. Before I address my central question--why would Israel do something like this--I'll give a bit of background.
     Prior to December of 2010 the world was full of Arab dictators ruling their docile populations. In some cases the various dictators were able to maintain there power by using massive oil revenues to essentially bribe their populations. (Another way to think about it: Governments have traditionally given the people more rights because they need the people's money; some Arab oil states don't need their people's money and therefore don't give them many rights). In other cases these dictators simply used violence to cow their states' population into submission. Often they used a combination of the two. When a man in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest the Tunisian dictator he set off a wave of protests, rallies and, eventually, revolutions, that has come to be called the Arab Spring.
     The problem with talking to Americans (like me) about revolutions is that when we hear the word "revolution" we think of the American Revolution, a period of violence that lasted much less than a decade and led directly to the creation of a stable, representative government that ensures the rights of minorities. Since the American Revolution there have been only a couple of outbreaks of violence in the US, and an almost continuous rule of law. This is extraordinarily unusual. The vast majority of rebellions lead to protracted periods of violence and chaos. Even rebellions that start with noble goals attract the sort of people who are drawn to violence and end up failing to create a stable, law-abiding state. This has been the case with the Arab Spring. While there have been some small successes in creating new, representative states, a much larger percentage of the Arab world has failed to do this and remains in upheaval, most violently in Syria.
     Syria has been ruled for the last 15 years by a dictator named Bashar el-Assad, who inherited the position from his father. He is a member of the Alawite religious community, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, ruling over a predominantly Sunni population (the two major groups in Islam are Sunni and Shia). In 2011, as part of the Arab Spring, there were protests against his government. The government cracked down violently, which helped turn the protests into a revolt. For a while it seemed like Assad was going to be defeated, but now it seems likely that he will remain in power, at least in part of the country. This shift is due to in no small part to the help of his two Shi'ite allies: Iran and Hezbollah.
     From 1982 to 2000 Israel occupied a strip of land in southern Lebanon (it's waaaay more complicated than that). Hezbollah arose as an organization whose goal was to force Israel out of Lebanon, which made them very popular both in Lebanon and in the Arab world as a whole. After Israel pulled out Hezbollah (and other, smaller groups) continued to attack Israel, sparking the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Since then it has been very quiet between Israel and Hezbollah. As Assad began to seem like he was losing control Hezbollah, together with Iran, began to send troops and material to his aid (which also has dampened Hezbollah's popularity). Currently, Syria and much of Iraq are a checkerboard of various armies and militias, some of the largest of which are the Assad government (together with his Shiite allies Hezbollah and Iran), the original rebels (who are mostly secular), ISIS (Sunni extremists who aim to re-establish a Caliphate) and the al-Nusra front (a group associated with al-Qaeda, who are Sunni extremists that broke ties with ISIS primarily because ISIS was too violent toward Muslim civilians).
     As you can imagine Israel has been keeping a close eye on this huge balagan (chaos, big mess). On the one hand, any time the Arabs (this is not a 100% accurate term to use, especially when talking about Iran, whose population is Persian, but I'm doing it for convenience) are killing each other, it means they have less drive and resources to try and kill us (I feel bad thinking like that, but it doesn't make it less true). On the other hand, if one of the organizations emerges from this violence in a position of strength it could be trouble for us. Or, equally worrying, if one side feels like it is losing it could well try to start violence with us simply to "reshuffle the deck". It is under these circumstances that Israel has launched several airstrikes in the last year or so.
     Up until now, as far as I can tell, it seems like Israeli strikes have been aimed at certain types of weapons that were being transferred to Hezbollah. It is critically important to us that Hezbollah (or other anti-Israel terrorist groups) not receive the most advanced weaponry, with which Iran (sometimes with help from other international actors such as Russia) is eager to provide them. In order to prevent this we have launched a number of airstrikes in Syria over the last several months. Last week we seemingly upped the ante by targeting a convoy that (apparently) held six members of Hezbollah and six members of the Iranian military, including important members of each.
     It's unclear why Israel did this. One possibility is that Iran was helping Hezbollah set up rocket launching stations in the Syrian Golan Heights in order to open another front with Israel in any future conflict. Another possibility is that they were involved in training special units for attacks into Israel. It's also possible we were simply trying to demonstrate the Hezbollah and/or Iranian forces in the Golan is a red line for us. There are also suggestions that perhaps we didn't have full intelligence and didn't know the Iranians were there (though I, as someone who generally believes in the efficacy of Israeli intelligence, find that harder to believe) As an Israeli, and someone who may well be involved in any future conflict, I certainly hope there was an important reason for the strikes, because there will definitely be some sort of retaliation.
     Iran and Hezbollah have acknowledged that members of their organization/state were killed in the Golan, have blamed Israel, and have promised retaliation. This threat, particularly from Iran, is scary. Iran is a country with about 80 million people (Israel has around eight) with oil and gas revenues in the hundreds of billions and a pretty clearly declared dislike for the Jewish state. So why did we do something that might piss them off? Assuming Israeli intelligence agencies are competent, which I do, there's basically two options. Either the threat was severe and/or imminent enough that we felt like we had to act, even with the likelihood of an Iranian/Hezbollah response, or we're assuming they're busy enough in the Syrian Civil War that they won't be able/willing to launch a meaningful retaliation against us, fearful that it'll drag them into a larger conflict with us and divert their resources. Either way, it's a gamble. Let's hope that it's one that turns out to be correct.

Update: in recent days there have been several rockets launched from Syria into Israel, causing no injuries or casualties. Israel responded with artillery fire.

Update 2: There was an attack against Israeli soldiers along the Lebanese border in which two soldiers were killed and several more injured. It seems like this was an attempt to kidnap soldiers.