By: Robert D. Onley
On September 1st, 1939, exactly seventy years ago today, the world knew little of Hitler’s threats against the Jewish people, and less still of the evil that would result from his invasion of Poland to start the Second World War. Indeed Nazi Germany’s aggressive military posturing against Austria and Czechoslovakia in the late 1930’s effectively concealed Hitler’s dream of a “Judenrein” Europe and hid what would eventually become the most ruthless campaign of murder, genocide and violence seen in human history.
Truly it was not until at least 1945 – when the war ended – that the rest of the world understood and saw the absolute venom Hitler unleashed upon Jews in particular. While there were rumours, suspicions and even aerial photographs of the death camps that ended so many lives, it was not until these death camps were opened that the world’s leaders witnessed the sheer, unadulterated evil that humanity was capable of organizing in the modern age.
Today, numerous threats are facing the Jewish people and their homeland Israel – threats that bear undeniable resemblance to those that similarly preceded the Second World War. However unlike in 1939, today the malicious, delusional desires of Israel’s enemies are being publicly, blatantly and aggressively spread across the world, emanating specifically from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and enacted by its proxy armies Hamas and Hizbullah. Thus for those who intrinsically hate the Jewish people today, instead of having to hunt for Jews scattered across numerous nations throughout Europe as Hitler did, a large number of Jews can be found “conveniently” in one location – Israel.
This “convenience” means that once again, unlike in 1939, their latent and literal threats toward Israel are clearer, more definitive and disturbingly deliberate than ever could have been the case during the Third Reich. While Hitler’s “Final Solution” was ultimately kept secret until the 1942 Wannsee Conference, the leaders of Iran today share a public desire to see Israel “wiped off the map”, and have for several decades. The veracity of Iran’s threat to Israel is embodied by Iran’s repeated military parades of enormous Shahab-3 missiles draped with the words “DEATH TO ISRAEL” and “DEATH TO AMERICA.” These same missiles could quite literally be nuclear-tipped within the coming months.
As such, while U.S. President Obama and the EU actively pursue what are perceived to be “long overdue” negotiations with Iran this September, it is with an incredibly critical and cynical eye that Israel must view any supposed “progress” set to emerge from these talks. After years of blatant proof of Iran’s evil intentions, virulent threats toward Israel, and covert military nuclear development, Israel holds much legitimate pessimism for any “progress” the Iranians might package for the West inside further layers of deceit.
Imagine Adolf Hitler meeting with Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938 once again, but this time with the meeting hall decorated with enormous banners that read “DEATH TO THE JEWS” and “JUDENREIN EUROPE” - only to have Chamberlain emerge from his talks with Hitler to somehow announce “peace for our time” nonetheless. The lunacy of such an outcome – when the warning signs and banners were so visible before even entering negotiations – would have led many to question the wisdom of negotiating with Hitler in the first place.
With the unfair advantage of hindsight, we know today that Chamberlain was at the least a bit naive and that Hitler was a liar. However Chamberlain did not have enormous banners that plainly and grotesquely stated Hitler’s goals when he entered into negotiations. In contrast, Western leaders, diplomats and concerned Israeli defence planners have had a panoply warning signs about Iran’s true intentions - signs that should stand the hairs up on the necks of any official possessing serious visions of finding a compromise with Iran this month.
No, Ahmadinejad is not exactly Hitler and Iran today is certainly not the military machine that 1938 Nazi Germany was, if one directly compares the two. What is true of this comparison however - and inarguably so - is that the threats toward Israel that have already emerged from Iran are far more menacing than Hitler’s ever were, given Iran’s ongoing defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons technology and its already far-reaching missile capability.
It has been said that what Hitler took six years to accomplish against the Jews in World War Two, Ahmadinejad could make happen in less than six minutes with a single nuclear-tipped missile launched from Iran. Others, including this writer, have argued that a more accurate time-frame might be just six seconds, were Iran able to smuggle a nuclear weapon to Hamas in the Gaza Strip for use directly against Israel.
U.S. defence planners, intelligence officers and the State Department may shrug at the sight of “DEATH TO AMERICA” banners hung on Iranian Shahab-3 missiles as generic anti-American bluster, but their Israeli counterparts simply cannot do the same for Iran’s “DEATH TO ISRAEL” monikers - not when every single Israeli military facility is within striking distance of those same Iranian missiles. This is not to mention the entire physical landmass of Israel which remains subject to random rocket attacks from Iran’s Hamas and Hizbullah proxies.
As such Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric – be it from President Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khamenei, or various other crazed Iranian leaders – is not viewed by Israel the same way that the United States or the EU might more ‘idealistically’ interpret it. Neither still are Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated statements that the ‘end is coming for Israel’, evidenced by his “World Without Zionism” conference, his multiple Holocaust denials and his purported desire to “wipe Israel off the map”, as the former Ayatollah Khomeini stated.
To top-off the absolute legitimacy of Israel’s worst fears about Iran, Ahmadinejad’s fanatical ravings about the coming “Hidden 12th Imam” at the UN General Assembly in September 2007 provided stark proof that Iran’s leaders mean what they say, no matter how insane and provocative. Would any other national leader step on to the world stage to declare that the end of the world is coming, and that they expect it to happen “in the near future”?
Why then does President Obama entertain the prospect that Ahmadinejad might suddenly change his apocalyptic preparations for the supposed "return of the Hidden Imam"? Particularly after Iran’s election fiasco and its suppression of protests, any dreams of reining in the reckless Iranian Republic should have been dashed for good. Obama’s September 15th deadline for Iran to agree to negotiations could bear fruit for concerned Israelis hoping against hope, but Israel should not hold its breath.
Ultimately it is the ruthless lethality of a single nuclear weapon, and the potential for its random, indiscriminate use against Israel, which is precisely why Israel - and Israel alone - must be prepared to act defensively in eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat. For if the United States stalls, and Obama pleads for more time and patience on Iran, the nuclear timeline will pass and Israel will be left with no choice but to unilaterally stop Iran.
Not since 1939 has a threat to the Jewish people been so obvious, so particular and so lethal. In light of the Jewish people’s tragic past, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu recently stated that the lesson of the Holocaust is that evil must be “nipped in the bud”. But just as the world held out hope for peace after the Munich Agreement in 1938, so too it might this September after negotiations with Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot be assuaged by American and Iranian pleasantries. Seventy years after Hitler began his attempt to wipe them out, the Jewish people have the advantage of hindsight and the ghastly lessons of history to make the dreaded decision that will preserve Israel’s future today. This future is why Israel will fight, even if it means fighting alone.
Robert D. Onley
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