TEL AVIV // Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of Israel's armed forces, warned this week that the country will maintain its naval siege on the Gaza Strip to prevent it from turning into an 'Iranian port'.
On the face of it, Mr Ashkenazi was alluding to Israel's fear that Iran will try to ship Hamas, the Islamic group that rules Gaza, rockets and other armaments should the maritime blockade be lifted. But Mr Ashkenazi, like many other Israeli political and military leaders, was probably also aiming his words at the Israeli public and its deep-seated fear of Iran as a way of drawing popular domestic support for Israel's restrictions on the impoverished Palestinian enclave.
Indeed, Mr Ashkenazi is just the latest top Israeli official to fan more fears of Tehran throughout a society already saturated in so-called Iranophobia. Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's prime minister, has been one of the most vocal Israeli leaders to warn that Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions pose an existential threat for Israel, often comparing present-day Iran to Nazi Germany. In 2006, three years before the head of the right-wing Likud party gained the premiership for the second time, Mr Netanyahu told Jewish American leaders: "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany". He added that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, "is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state".
Such statements, along with repeated predictions by Mr Ahmadinejad of the Jewish state's demise, have proven effective on the Israeli public's opinion of Iran. A poll taken by Tel Aviv University in June 2009 showed that four out of five Israeli Jews believed that Iran will attain a nuclear bomb, while more than a quarter of Israeli Jews would consider emigrating if Iran achieves nuclear capabilities. Such results have probably also been influenced by the mainstream Hebrew-language media, which has mostly toed the government's line on Iran.
But analysts say such fears are greatly exaggerated. David Menashri, the director of the Centre for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, said: "The year is not 1938 and Iran is not Germany. Israelis are giving Iran too much credit. Iranian policy since the first day of the Islamic revolution has been pragmatic if not moderate. They would not be willing to suffer the consequences of using nuclear weapons."
Nevertheless, analysts say Israeli leaders have used Iran as a fear-spreading tool to win popular support for actions that have been widely condemned abroad. For example, following last month's deadly Israeli commando raid of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Israel claimed that it wanted to prevent a corridor of arms smuggling from Iran to Hamas. The country also partly justified its devastating three-week onslaught in Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 by saying that it was fighting against Iran's growing influence on the Hamas-ruled territory.
Haggai Ram, an Iran specialist at Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel, said: "Placing Gaza under a dark and ominous Iranian shadow allows Israel to commit the atrocities that it has committed in Gaza." Analysts also say that the current right-wing government has been especially outspoken about Iran being the main threat to Israel's existence because it wants to divert attention away from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, for which it may be pressured to make politically-damaging concessions. Furthermore, Mr Ram says that Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, is also worried about losing that monopoly, which has "allowed Israel to act like the neighbourhood bully." But Iran also uses Israel as a strategy to shift its public's attention away from internal problems as well as become more prominent in the Muslim world, according to analysts. Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of political science, said: "It's a diversion strategy used by both sides. Ahmadinejad is doing the same thing as Netanyahu."
And apparently, so are Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the western-backed Palestinian Authority, which holds sway in the West Bank, has blamed the in-fighting between his secular Fatah group and the Islamist Hamas on Iran, which backs Hamas and - as he claims - opposes Palestinian unity. Mr Abbas told an Egyptian television station last month: "We are like a plane that has been hijacked by Iran."
For Israel, the seemingly-obsessive warnings about Iran and the constant indications that it may launch an attack against its arch-enemy's nuclear facilities may eventually prove harmful. Mr Menashri from Tel Aviv University warned: "We are positioning ourselves as the target and the potential solution, and both of them are not good for Israel."
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