The Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 were only the first step in an Iranian-backed assault on the West and its democratic principles, says Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a journalist, commentator and expert on the Middle East.
Speaking to NTD’s Lee Hall for the “British Thought Leaders” programme, Ms. Perez-Shakdam said Iran had exerted a “tremendous influence” on Hamas and had stirred up its belligerence towards Israel.
She said, “Israel has warned for decades and decades that ever since Hamas came to existence, the Islamic Republic of Iran has done everything it could to not only fund the efforts of Hamas, but also train them, aid them and furnish them with weapons.”
Ms. Perez-Shakdam said: “Hamas terrorists came out in a press release in a video saying that they were extremely grateful to the Islamic Republic of Iran for making this terrible attack against Israel possible. So that tells you the level of not just a friendship, but the ideological control that Iran holds on Hamas.”
Beware of the ‘Axis of Resistance’
“This axis of resistance that they talk about in Tehran has been put into action and has been activated. And Israel may be in the line of fire today. But make no mistake, the West is under attack,” said Ms. Perez-Shakdam.She described the attacks on Israel as, “the canary in the mine” and said it was a warning to the West and to moderate Arab governments in the Middle East not to be complacent or to under-estimate the threat posed by Iran and its acolytes.
Ms. Perez-Shakdam went further and claimed pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London and elsewhere were stirring up anti-Semitic sentiments which had lain dormant since the 1930s.
She said: “It’s a bad dream that has echoes of the 1930s and the Islamic Republic of Iran did this, absolutely did this, and the question that we need to ask ourselves today is that what happened in Israel on Oct. 7 could be replicated here in the West.”
“We invite people to not be too hasty in condemning and accusing Israel, of not being fair, or not conducting its military strike with enough accuracy. Because it could be us tomorrow. And I don’t know what our response would be or should be,” added Ms. Perez-Shakdam.
Ms. Perez-Shakdam spent several years working in Iran while keeping her Jewish origins secret, and she said: “I think that they saw me as someone that could be turned and be used as a mouthpiece. Essentially, they quite desperate for voices in the West, to echo some of the things that they said and make them palatable to a western audience.”
“I played into it, I realised that I had an opportunity that because they came to me, they will never suspect. And I guess they didn’t do their due diligence properly. They didn’t know I was Jewish. And so I was let in,” she said.
She met the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei and she got an insight into his mindset and his world view.
Ayatollah Khamenei is ‘Extremely Dangerous’
“The problem that we have today in the West, is that we believe that those are the rantings of a lunatic. He’s not a lunatic. I mean, yes, he is, but he’s a lunatic who can implement his ideology. And that makes him extremely dangerous. So when you say things like Death to America, and to Israel, he does mean it,” she added.She said Khamenei talked at length about, “certain prediction that resides within Islamic texts in terms of the end of the world” and it included a “great war” which would take place and how Syria would play an important part in the apocalypse.
Ms. Perez-Shakdam said Khamenei strongly believed Israel would need to be annihilated, “and that in order to do so he was willing to commit acts of genocide even against his own people.”
She said: “As far as I’m concerned in modern history it is the first time that we have an individual who is advocating not only a world war, but annihilation of entire communities, not just the Jewish community or even the state of Israel, but the West in general, and everything that we stand for, in terms of democratic value, human rights, and I would say that the sanctity of life more profoundly.”
Ms. Perez-Shakdam said: “I believe that what we see today in Israel, and unfortunately, in Gaza is a result of these policies, this desire to lay waste entire communities and in order to do so commit acts of genocide.”
