308 · Yehudit Ronen
Waving the Banner of Hatred toward the Jewish State:
Motivations and Gains
Once in power, Qadhafi missed no opportunity to express his virulent
hatred toward and unequivocal negation of the right of the “Zionist en-
tity” to exist. Accordingly, Qadhafi and his state-controlled media never
employed the term “the state of Israel,” using instead pejorative termi-
nology such as the “Zionist enemy” or the “so-called state of Israel,” as
well as other denunciations aimed at delegitimizing Israel.
This attitude of utter rejection reflected the rising nationalist and Pan-
Arab sentiment of the young Libyan army officer, who had experienced
the humiliation caused by the painful defeat of the Arab Muslim world
and Nasser by Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Distressing as well
was the disregard of this war by the pro-Western king Idris al-Sanusi,
who had ruled Libya since its independence in 1951. The king’s position,
which Qadhafi perceived as degrading and treacherous, reinforced his
motivation to seize power and fight alongside “our Arab Muslim broth-
ers” with the aim of eliminating the “Jewish state” and thus restoring
Arab nationalist pride. The Egyptian model of the 23 July 1952 military
coup, which overthrew King Faruq and installed instead the “Free Of-
ficers Revolution” under Nasser’s leadership, clearly served as a model
for Qadhafi’s own successful military coup and the establishment of his
“revolutionary” regime.
Concurrently, the searing blow of 1967 fed Qadhafi’s enmity toward
the “imperialist” West, particularly the United States, which he believed
was responsible for Israel’s military victory and for other evils afflict-
ing the Arab Muslim world. Since that watershed, Qadhafi increasingly
referred to the “two arms of evil”—the Jews and the Americans—who
shared, according to his perception, the aim of crushing the Arab Muslim
world. Appellations such as “the Zionist-American tyranny in the Mid-
dle East” and “the two-headed devil” became common in his relentlessly
hostile rhetoric, as well as in the terminology of other anti-Israel leading
figures in the Arab Muslim world.^3
Qadhafi’s anti-Israel and anti-Jewish venom flowed not only from his
nationalist, ideological, and cultural convictions but also from essential
political considerations pertinent to the very survival of his regime. Posi-
tioning the destruction of the “Zionist entity” at the center of his agenda
was vital in crystallizing its identity, in galvanizing popular support, and