Iran Vs. Israel



These days, due to 60th celebration of establishment of the state of Israel, I had the opportunity to watch a documentary about the birth of Israel which made me curious to read more about Arab-Israel conflict and talk about it with a few people. I strongly recommend watching this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEFPxRDhT_U

Despite the fact that during my childhood when growing up in Iran, we were taught to use slogans at school about Israel and USA, I never understood why we are reciting these slogans in elementary school. When studying history, I understood why USA and Britain are being belittled in Iran.

However, although we collected food and necessities for Palestinian children when we were in elementary school and every year one lesson in literature course was about a letter from a Palestinian kid, I truly didn't understand why apart from the fact that we are doing a humanitarian deed for those kids, would Iran be interested in helping Palestinians? Schools and media were successful in making us dislike what Israel was doing to Palestinians. But we were never taught what is our role in this dilemma? We were taught that Israelis forcefully took over Palestinians lands. Later on I learned that some of those lands were actually bought by Israelis. Still I couldn't connect to the idea of why Iran is helping Palestine?

The quest to answer this question as well as finding the root cause of Iran's president's strong despise of Israel made me question why Iran is sending money to Hezbollah and not using that money for Iranian people? People who the majority of them are living in difficulty trying to make ends meet. Why help Palestinians and not the people of your own country? Why is some other country's concern more important that Iran's own concerns? At the same time, Palestinians are Arabs, why aren't any of the Arabic countries help their fellow brothers?

Watching the movie about Birth of Israel, was an eye opener, I learned a bit more about the history of Arab-Israel conflict. Not surprisingly, one of the root causes of this mess is Britain! Why am I not surprised? But that is beside the point, still doesn't make sense why is Iran helping oppositions like Hezbollah fighting against Israel?

As I was discussing enthusiastically what I learned about this conflict to a few people, a wiseman told me that his hypothesis is that the core of this conflict is economics! Aha! This can make sense a bit.
Israel with the help of USA, has become a super power by itself in many aspects, such as military and health. With their growing population they can dominate middle east market for their goods and services.
Iran's growing population along with rich natural resources wants a share of middle east market and by destabilizing Israel by this conflict, it delays Israel's success.

If this hypothesis is correct, I am ashamed to say that I was fooled to think that we were acting as humanitarian in the region.