A Lesson Ignored
The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the US officially into WW11. In the surprise attack, Japan sunk several ships, destroyed hundreds of planes and ended thousands of lives. President Franklin Roosevelt called the attack “a day which will live in infamy”, and the American people were shocked and angered.
After President Roosevelt died on April 12th, 1945, it became Harry Truman’s job to decide how to end the war. The thought of invading Japan gave Truman and his advisors pause. The war had shown that the Japanese were fighting for the Emperor who convinced them that it was better to die than surrender. The cost of invasion, they knew would be high.
After a successful test of an atomic bomb, Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese government, warning of “prompt and utter destruction”. Eleven days later, on August 6, 1945, having received no reply, an American bomber called the Enola Gay left Tinian Island en route toward Japan. In the belly of the bomber was “Little Boy”, an atomic bomb.
On August 6th and 9th, 1945, the US detonated 2 atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The consequence was the death of between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians.
On September 2, the Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending the war.
Today, the immediate danger we face due to the surrender in the hostage deal is the establishment of a so-called “Palestinian” state. Apparently, it does not concern the recently established US administration.
President Trump hopes to redraw the map of the Middle East, granting a state to the Kurds in Syria and the “Palestinians”. America has never understood the Middle East. How many officials have studied “The Legend of Islamic anti-Semitism” and/or “The Closed Circle”?
What is occurring now resembles much of what occurred during the Gilad Shalit episode. Canada Free Press published Daniel Greenfield’s “Gilad Shalit –Human Weakness in the Face of Terrorism” on October 6, 2009. A few extracts from the subject paper follow:
“The goal of terrorism is terror, to intimidate your enemies through monstrous and inhuman acts. By contrast Muslim terrorists sneer at the human weaknesses of their enemies. Islamists are taught and trained to only have one love and one passion, Islam. They can indulge their appetites in every way, so long as in exchange they are willing to kill and die in the name of jihad.”
If we are willing to do everything possible to get our hostages released, then hostage taking will dramatically increase. The Jihad zeroes in on human weakness. The more human weakness we show, the worse we shall bleed.
The Jihad against Israel has not resulted in military victories, only in victories of terror. Hamas is a crossbreed of the worst strains of Jihadism. It is all too aware of the political weaknesses of democracy, of Netanyahu’s need to shore up his position with something tangible.
Appeasement may seem like a politically convenient shortcut, but its full price weighs heavy with time. By negotiating with Hamas, Israel has legitimized the idea of negotiating with it as if it were a legitimate entity, not a ruthless and amoral ideology that lives only to conquer.
Any compromise with terrorism is surrender to it, and a way of enabling its final goals.
Gatestone Institute published Professor Alan Dershowitz’s, “It wasn’t a Deal it was a crime” on January 20, 2025. He says, “The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a ‘deal’. It was extortion—the kidnapping was a crime and the extortionate demand was an additional crime.
Both the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the Democrat Party urged people to listen to the messages of these protestors. They would never say
It about demonstrators who favored lynching blacks or raping women. But Hamas does lynch Jews and rape Jewish women. There is no moral difference.”
During 1995, Farrar Straus Giroux published, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extraordinary 152 page “Fighting Terrorism, addressing how democracies can defeat domestic and international terrorists.”
Chapter VII is titled, “What is to be done”. On page 144, we read, “Do not release jailed terrorists. Among the most important policies which must be adopted in the face of terrorism is the refusal to release convicted terrorists from prisons.
This is a mistake that Israel, once the leader in anti-terror techniques, has made over and over again. Release of convicted terrorists before they have served their full sentences seems like an easy and tempting way of defusing blackmail situations in which innocent people may lose their lives. But its utility is momentary at best.”
A sampling of terrorism:
[a] Alisa Flatow’s tragic experienced was a consequence of a suicide bomber driving a van loaded with explosives into a public bus neat the settlement of Kfar Darom. The blast peeled away the side of the bus and 7 Israeli soldiers were killed. Alisa, in truly bad shape was taken to Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva where she was admitted for serious brain surgery, but did not survive. Her father who had flown from the US was present on that day April 10, 1995.
[b] A roadside bomb exploded in the morning of November22, 2000 alongside a bus carrying children from Kfar Daron to school in Gush Katif. Among those seriously injured were 3 children of the Cohen family; 12 year old Orit, whose right foot was amputated, her 7 year old brother Yisrael whose right leg was amputated below the knee and her 8 year old sister Tehila who lost both legs despite doctors efforts to save them. They were visited by President Moshe Katsav.
[c] Malki Chana Roth was a victim of a suicide bombing on August 9, 2001 while inside the crowded Sbarro pizza restaurant. AhlamTamimi [born 1980] is a Jordanian national known for assisting in the event, which caused 145 casualties, including 16 fatalities, half of the children. She was age 20 at that time and still in university.
[d] Nava Applebaum and her father, Dr. Applebaum, murdered on September 9, 2003 by a suicide bomber while dining at Café Hillel, Jerusalem. She was due to be married during the evening before her planed wedding.
Given all this history, and President Truman’s resolve, there is only one solution—Bomb Iran!!