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Irwin E. Blank

It Is Time

“Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran. Israel will always defend itself.”-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, July 14th, 2015.

The above quote is probably prophetic and I do not use that term lightly, nor do I believe that anyone other than Israel will need to take the necessary steps to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilites and, unfortunately, to pay the price.

But that has always been the Jewish condition. The world ignored the rampant and devastating rise of Nazism in Germany. Even with the primitive, compared to today, media tools available, the speeches, the torchlight parades, the films of goose stepping storm troopers and the anti-Semitic rantings of Hitler, Goebbels, Streicher and the rest of that barbaric gang of criminals, were not closed off, but readily discernible on radios, read in newspapers and seen in every movie theatre with a projector showing newsreels.

Foreign ambassadors and military attaches from all over the world witnessed the flyover of Luftwaffe aircraft and the christening of warships.  Even though these very acts were forbidden by the Versailles Treaty, the “great powers” kept silent. No one can doubt that there were not espionage agents from many nations sending coded messages back to their respective governments.

But, of course, it was the incredulous feigned ignorance and apathy to the destruction of the Jewish community of Europe that was relegated to mere hysterical blustering. Even the  GermanJews themselves, for the greater part of the 1930s, thought that the Nazis were an aberration. But no one can say that they didn’t see the swastikas put on store windows, the uniformed thugs of Brown Shirts, carrying their sandwich signs ” Don’t buy from Jews.” on April 1, 1933 when the first Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses and individuals was demonstrated throughout the country. Certainly, the “Kristallnacht,” “Night of Broken Glass” in November, 1938, which made headlines all over the world, could be ignored. But their implications were and that is the same danger we face today. The danger of woeful ignorance and intended blindness.

The possible ramifications of the “deal” struck with the mad mullahs of Iran by the so-called “Great Powers,” reeks with the same malodorous effluvium that filled the air in Munich, 1938, when the self same great powers, surrendered Czechoslovakia to the Nazi claws. Again, a world leader, the prime minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, waved high a piece of paper with the bloody scrawl of Hitler emblazoned at its bottom, promising peace in our time. I’m waiting for the Secretary of State of the United States to return on his crutches to his master’s doorstep, waving the agreement in which he, and his fellow cowards, enshrined their names in infamy.

Israel, the nation most threatened by this calumny, was not even a party to these negotiations-just as the Czechs were forced to remain silent as their patrimony was carved up like a turkey. Czechoslovakia which had a modern, well equipped military, wasn’t even given the dignity and opportunity to defend itself.

After the fall of Czechoslovakia, the world witnessed the value of the signatures of the great powers drowned in rivers of blood. The Jews suffered most of all.  During the Second World War and the Holocaust, the Jewish people weren’t decimated, they were tertiated-losing one third of the total Jewish population of the world at that time. Now, in Israel, where almost the same fraction of world Jewry resides, is there no one to point out the obvious?

Yes, I am certain that Israel alone doesn’t view this horrific surrender to the forces of evil and malevolent prejudice and bigotry alone. I am certain that other nations concerned with the growing power of Farsi fascism have not remained silent. There is little doubt in my mind, and remember that I am no intelligence agent nor military professional, but I am certain that Israeli, Saudi and perhaps representatives of some of the Gulf states have met in various places under the cover of an extensive cloak of secrecy.

However, it is Israel’s elimination that is trumpeted by the howling mobs in the streets of Teheran. It is Israel that the Iranian “Fuhrer” has deemed a “cancerous tumor.” Other might feel threatened through blackmail and economic measures that will hurt, but Israel alone faces destruction.

This is how it has always been. We are a people that dwells alone. We are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When the world was headed to an apocalypse in the 1930s, it was the Jew upon whom the first blows were struck. It was the Jew whose existence was daily challenged and it was the Jew whose liquidation took preference even over the progress of the war-even while German forces went begging for transport, trains were sent to Auschwitz and other death camps over the needs of troops in the field.

The similarity to the tragic consequences of Munich, 1938 and Vienna, 2015, are undeniable to anyone with a knowledge of history and a scintilla of common sense. But there is one significant difference. The Jewish people are no longer without the means to defend themselves. The right that we were denied as a people in Exile, is ours today as a nation reborn in its ancient homeland.

We are not without the means capable to protect ourselves and defend our sovereignty.  However, if our leadership chooses to take the path of pre-emptive resistance, we will bear the cost. With the billions of dollars soon to flow into the coffers of the Persian pirates, they will supply our enemies with huge quantities of deadly armaments. A strike at Iran would undoubtedly bring massive retaliation upon our cities and towns from both the north and the southeast.  Unless warnings are delivered backed by the certainty of an inevitable overwhelming strike at Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, the war will be brutal-but the price of “peace” will bring new Hiroshimas and Nagasakis over Tel Aviv and Haifa.

I am not a Cassandra, nor am I the ostrich with its head in the ground presenting a tantalizing target. I am an Israeli Jew and I say that it is time for us to remember who we are, what we are and why we are here.

It is time to remember how the world abandoned us in our darkest hours and recall how it left a helpless people to its fate.

It is time to remember how the survivors among our people were shunned, blockaded and imprisoned on an island called Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea by one of the same great powers that truncated Czechoslovakia.

It is time to remember how the United States of America, in the 1930s and 1940s, with a population less than half of what it has today, said it had no room for Jews fleeing Europe.

It is time to remember how the great powers denied Israel, for many years, the means to defend itself with the same modern weaponry that they were shipping to our adversaries.

It is time to remember how, on the eve of the Six Day War, how France, one of the signatories to the Iranian fiasco, a nation that was our main arms supplier, told us “ne tirez la premiere balle,”-“don’t fire the first shot,” after the Gulf of Eilat was already closed to us. And when we triumphed, the French abandoned us and refused to sell us as much as a single cartridge.

It is time to remember how our great “ally” the United States of America, said on that same eve that it “is neutral in thought word and deed.”

It is time to remember that the great powers of Europe denied flying rights for arms shipments over their territories when Israel was fighting for its life during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. Yes, the USA sent aid, not to grant us victory, but, as the American Sec’y of State said, the Court Jew, Henry Kissinger, ” let Israel bleed a little.”

It is time to remember that while missiles were falling on our cities in the north and south that the great powers ignored our plight and only became vocal to condemn us for protecting our children in their classrooms from the molten shards of hot steel of Kassam missiles and mortar shells.

But, all this aside, we can never relinquish our right to do what must be done to ensure our survival, come what may. It appears that we have been thrown to the wolves once again. These howls used to be bellowed in guttural German now they are shrieked in Arabic and Farsi.

It is time to remember how far we, as a people, have come despite the world wanting us dead for over 20 centuries. The next 20 centuries depends on what we do in this century at this time. Now.

Our leadership can bewail the travesty of this foul deal, it can attempt to use what few friends it has to make this reprehensible and dangerous arrangement be defeated in the halls of international legislatures. But history makes that strategy untenable and time consuming and there is little time left. Appealing to the so-called “conscience of mankind” is as empty paean.

How an answer to the Iranian threat is to be accomplished is beyond this poor writer’s ken. I do not presume to possess all the necessary data nor am I privy to state secrets.But I don’t need to be either. All I need is confidence in my leadership to do what must be done as they have oft stated. “Israel will take whatever means necessary to defend itself.” Let’s hope so…..no, let’s pray so.

 

 

About the Author
Irwin was born in New York City and is now retired. He lives in Maaleh Adumim since making aliyah 7 years ago.
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