“Know your real enemy.”

That was the message Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei recently delivered to the rulers of the Muslim world, particularly the Gulf states. He urged them to unite against Israel and the United States, blaming Muslim division for much of the region’s misfortune and asking whether the Palestinians would have been left “so helpless” had Muslims stood together.

It is a familiar refrain from Tehran: Israel is the enemy. America is the enemy. Unite against them and the problems of the Muslim world can be overcome.

But history poses an uncomfortable question:

If Israel and America are the “real enemy,” who was responsible for the millions of Muslims who died in wars in which Israel played no part?

Former Israeli Ambassador Yoram Ettinger recently offered a provocative answer.

In his August 13 essay, Does US Policy Account for the Intra-Muslim Carnage? Ettinger assembled a remarkable catalogue of conflicts that receives far too little attention when the Middle East is discussed. His research and historical framework provided the starting point for this response.

Ettinger calculates that since Israel’s establishment in 1948, approximately 11........

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