(Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all religious on you, or at least not more than I normally do.)

No one really quite knows who Gog is, or Gomer and Togarmah, but EVERYONE knows who Persia is.

So, anyway, there’s this prophet in the bible that predicts that an army that includes Persia will come down and attack Israel, and I’ve always had a problem with working that one out geopolitically. How in the world would Persia (Iran) EVER be able to be a part of such an attack? If Iran went around Iraq and attacked Israel, Saddam Hussein would take the opportunity to destroy Iran while Iran was occupied with trying to destroy Israel.

Then, right before our very eyes, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fell apart. It will be a decade before Iraq will have the military capacity to worry Iran, if she should decide to attack Israel.

But, I still could not understand why Iran would WANT to attack Israel. True, since the fall of the Shah, Iran has always been a trouble-maker in the Middle East, but invade Israel?

It just didn’t make sense.

That is, until a few months ago when I discovered this Shiite prophecy that requires that Israel be destroyed before the Mahdi (Islamic Messiah) will return.

Um, THAT is a powerful incentive for religious nuts to go to war.

So, I finally started to see the how and the why. Now, I just lack the ‘when’.

Except, I started to see the ‘when’ on Saturday morning, when I turned on my computer and saw the number one story on the Jerusalem Post web site:

Iran to provide Syria with $1b for new weapons

Here is a country that is suffering from terrible economic mismanagement. The people don’t have enough fuel. They don’t have enough jobs. Their economy is shrinking. They are spending vast amounts of money on a nuclear weapons project.

And, they are throwing a BILLION dollars at the Syrians?

Whoa.

Or maybe, that word should have been ‘woe’. 

Let’s call him Bill. It’s a nice name, and he’s a nice guy.

He says something interesting. He says that the nicest prisons in Iraq are the ones run by the US military. And, as an MPI, he never needed to resort to harsh methods to obtain information.

Never.

Granted, Bill is a nice guy, and it’s hard to imagine him resorting to ‘water boarding’, and other forms of physical intimidation. But, you never know what a person is capable of until he’s being shot at, and until he sees his buddies being killed. It can change you.

Anyway, Bill.

He says that when he’s interrogating a detainee, all that he needs to do is tell them that he is transferring them to an Iraqi prison, if the inmate doesn’t cooperate. He gets immediate cooperation. Immediate. They stumble over themselves to cooperate.

The Iraqi prisons (run by Iraqis) are THAT bad. They, by themselves, are a form of torture.

Even Sadaam Hussein, one of the most evil of men, thanked his American guards for their treatment of him. It was instructive to see how the Iraqi guards treated him, when he was handed over for execution. 

The other point that Bill makes is about a US military pulled out. He says that when the prisons are handed over, there will be a massacre. Whoever they hand the prison over to will murder all the inmates that do not follow their brand of Islam. The Sunnis will massacre the Shiites, the Shiites will massacre the Sunnis, and everyone will massacre the Christians.

Actually, I don’t really think that there are many Christians in these prisons, but if there are any… they won’t survive the handover.

But, let’s not talk just about the prisons. When the US military pulls out – and it will – there will be a blood bath. There will be an orgy of killing, and no one will be spared. The Shiites will massacre the Sunnis. The Sunnis will commit genocide against the Shiites, and everyone will kill the Christians.

The result will be a failed state in the land of Iraq, and Iran will move in and take over. If the US pulls out of Iraq in the way that the Democrats in Congress want them to, they will be handing the Middle East over to the Iranians.

If you think the world is a difficult place now, just wait until Iran takes over.

You’ll wonder if it isn’t the beginning of the Apocalypse.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about Iran and the Mahdi. It strikes me that the Iranian government is REALLY religious.

I know. I just heard that ‘no duh!’

I don’t mean that it’s a new discovery. It’s not. What I mean is that the quality of that religiousness is amazing. It’s the incredible zeal that permeates the whole government.

It’s one thing for the president of Iran to be nuts about Islam. But, it’s quite another thing for the whole government to be nuts about Islam. THAT is what I mean.

The problem is that, when I say this, I know that you are going to have difficulty understanding what I mean. When I say religious zeal, you immediately think of some nut-case type standing on a corner and calling for us all to get saved.

It’s the going to church (or synagogue) in your best clothes kind of ‘really religious’ that you immediately think of.

The problem is that this ISN’T that kind of religious zeal. This kind of zeal, to put it in American terms, says that we will all go to Hell if we don’t invade Mexico and obliterate Guatemala with nuclear weapons – to make Messiah come.

No, I can see that you still don’t get it.

Think about walking into your local license branch to renew your driver’s license and know that everyone in that office is hired because they believe stuff like that. Think about zeal that is as pervasive as THAT.

Now, I think that you are beginning to understand.

Now, put it down. I can’t type this thing one handed.

The ones that I can’t stand are the sanctimonious journalists who know NOTHING about Israel and yet seem to think that they can shake their finger and tell us how bad we are.

However, living in Israel has helped me understand something very important. Without a strong, critical media, we cannot remain free. Unfortunately, that means having to put up with the ‘holier-than-thou’ journalists who relish the opportunity to defame Israel.

So, even though we might want a certain journalist to succumb to a bad case of halitosis, we need them all.

Let me connect this thought to yesterday’s article.

Both Russia and Iran are murdering journalists. Not because they have bad breath. Not because they are criminals. Not because they suffer from a deficit in morality. No, they are murdering journalists because they are afraid of what might happen when the average Russian or Iranian finds out what they are doing. 

What is the Russian government afraid of? Well, they ARE afraid of general unrest. And, in fact, EVERY government is afraid of unrest. But, in Russia, they’re also afraid of losing their comfortable positions – as well as their opportunity to keep their hands in the cookie jar. You can sum up the biggest reason why Russia kills journalists with just one word: corruption.

Whither the Iranians? Are they, like the Russians, killing journalists because of corruption?

No.

One of the benefits of Islamist regimes is their willingness to stamp out corruption and establish law and order. So no, Iran isn’t killing journalists because they are corrupt. But, they ARE killing journalists to stay in power.

Why?

Because they have a holy purpose. Because everything that they do is infused with holy purpose. Because they are willing to die, and more importantly are willing for YOU to die for their holy purpose.

It’s even worse when they believe that YOU stand between them and their holy purpose.

What is the single most important holy purpose to the Iranian government?

To bring in the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah. And the Mahdi isn’t going to come until YOU are out of the way. 

I get annoyed. About Little things.

Well, not EVERY Little thing, but a lot of Little things – like, for instance, the proper pronunciation of words.

I was driving home today after dropping my aunt off at the airport and was listening to my second favorite radio station, when the announcer said the word calzone. However, instead of saying it right, he said it like this: cal-zohn.

Look, calzone is Italian, which means that you ALWAYS pronounce the last vowel. ALWAYS. When you say calzone, say it like this:

cal-ZO-neh

Of course, to really get it right you hafta lift your head a bit on the ‘ZO’ and wave your hand. You know how it’s done. 

That got me thinking about MY neck of the woods. Humus, that quintessentially Middle Eastern chick pea paste, is NOT ‘Huh Muss’. It’s Choo-moos (with the CH like Bach). Israel is NOT ‘Is-real’ (which it isn’t). It’s actually ‘Yis-ra-el’. And, it’s NOT Saudi Arabia. It’s just Saudi, and pronounced ‘Sah-oo-dee’.

You can always tell when someone’s been to Saudi.

Oh, and one more thing – and I wonder if this is why Iranians hate Americans so much. You don’t say Shiite like this: Shee-ayt. It’s really pronounced like this:

Shee-eet

Now, go send a bunch of 18-to-20-something young men and women to Iraq and ask them to tell the difference between Soo-ni and Shee-eet. Draw your own conclusions about how much fun they are going to have with that.

Just don’t step in any.