A sure path to destruction

Five little girls giggle and scream with delight as they chase each other round the playground, their pigtails flying as they run. The girls' parents come from the Philippines, Thailand and Sudan but they sing, shout and chat together in Hebrew. Like her friends, bright-eyed, eight-year-old Noah Mae was born in Israel. This is her home, she says. She proudly shows me her schoolbook, where she got top marks for her Hebrew writing and spelling. Her parents might come from the Philippines but she feels truly Israeli. Hebrew is the language she dreams in, she tells me. But Israel's government now wants Noah Mae to leave. Here it's illegal for migrant workers to have children."

This is how BBC correspondent Katya Adler starts her report published a couple of weeks ago on Israel's plan to deport immigrant children. The report continues by stating that Israel planned to deport over 1,000 children like Noah at the end of the school year. Adler adds that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's explanation for the policy is that it will preserve Israel's Jewish character.

Adler then explains that Israel had to increase the number of foreign workers allowed into the country in order to fill the gap left by Palestinian workers, who found it almost impossible to get work permits after the Second intifada. She contrasts the Netanyahu government's increased insistence on expelling foreign workers and their children from Israel with the government's support for organisations that encourage Jews to immigrate to the country.

Although Israel claims that this situation has nothing to do with racism, it becomes hard to accept this argument when one takes into consideration that the country's policy is that anyone with a Jewish grandparent can get Israeli citizenship.

On the same day that the BBC published this report, the media also circulated stories about the Iranian government's ban on airlines flying through Iranian airspace if they do not use the word ‘Persian' when describing the Arabian Gulf. Minister of Roads and Transport Hamed Bahbahani announced that "airlines from states south of the Persian [Arabian] Gulf have been warned of the importance of using the term ‘Persian Gulf' on their in-flight screens." If they do not, "they will be banned from flying in Iranian airspace for one month after the first offence, and if the incident is repeated their permits for flying in this airspace will be revoked."

It's well known that in Iran there is an uproar every time the word "Arabian" is used to describe a mere body of water between itself and the Arab states — lands that are all God's lands at the end of the day.

Why is Israel afraid of the few hundred children of the legal immigrants it brought into the country to do the jobs Israelis themselves won't do?

And why does Iran fear for its existence and future because the word ‘Arabian' is used by Arabs as a description of a gulf bordered by Iran and five Arab countries?

It's clear that both cases involve a notion of racial purity that does not at all match the slogans that the leaders of these countries pronounce. What's more problematic, it's clear that the citizens of these two countries are very supportive of their leaders' views on these issues.

Day and night, Israel waves its banners of democracy, human rights and protection of oppressed peoples, and claims that it has learned a ‘lesson' from its history.

Iran does the same with the banners of Islamic brotherhood and Islamic unity, and claims to be pursuing these goals based on its religious creed.

However, the actions of these two countries do nothing but show blatant hypocrisy in the face of the banners they wave.

Some in Israel and Iran might think that this flexing of muscles is proof of their power. But according to social laws, it is in fact a sign of weakness. It's a sign of a fear that grips many nations and cultures, and causes those nations and cultures to commit acts that they later regret.

Perhaps we can see this in Israel's predicament in Dubai, where it sent more than 26 assassins to go after one Palestinian man and the whole issue became the source of international outrage.

It's imperative that Israelis and Iranians become aware of the actions of leaders who do not seem to know how to learn from history. If the citizens of these countries do not do so, their leaders can lead them to destruction by arrogantly forgetting that ‘might is right' does not trump the ‘might of right', which has long triumphed in human history.

Wael Merza is a freelance journalist and media analyst. He works from Dubai and the US.