Netanyahu compares Iranian nuclear program to Holocaust
Tony Blinken wasn't the only one interviewed by Candy Crowley on Sunday. So was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyhu. Here's what Netanyahu had to say about Iran.
Let's go to the videotape.
At a Holcaust Memorial Day Ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Sunday evening, Netanyahu made pointed comparisons between Iran's nuclear program and the Holocaust.
"We need to identify existential threats on time, and to act against
them on time," he said. "I ask, why in the years preceding the Holocaust
did the vast majority of the world's leaders, and the vast majority of
the leaders of our people, not see the threats before hand."
In
retrospect, Netanyahu said, all the signs were apparent: the arming of
the Nazi regime from year to year, the anti-Semitic propaganda that got
worse month by month, and the attacks on the Jews.
Netanyahu said that a few world leaders, like
Winston Churchill, saw the nature of the threat Nazism posed, and a few
Jewish leaders – Like Ze'ev Jabotinsky – warned against the oncoming
destruction.
Then, in what seemed like a direct response to
critics who accuse him of exaggerating the Iranian threat, Netanyahu
said those who warned about the Nazis were roundly criticized, and
dismissed them and their warnings as "prophets of doom" and
"warmongers."
"I ask how it could be that so many did not
understand the reality?" he asked. "The bitter tragic truth is that it
is not as if they did not see, they did not want to see. And the reason
they chose not to see the truth is because they did not want to deal
with the ramifications of that truth."
In an effort to avoid a
repeat of the horrors of World War I, the west's leaders wanted to avoid
a confrontation at any price. "And by doing so they prepared the ground
for the worst war in the history of humanity."
When he talks about Iran, Netanyahu is spot-on. Unfortunately, too many treat him like Chicken Little.
From the Facebook page of Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon. Here's the caption (translated from Hebrew):
In a normal country, when a bus is blown up on Sunday and a police officer is stabbed on Monday, one does not free terrorists as a 'gesture' the following week.
Indeed. But Zionists dreams of being 'like all the other nations' aside, we are not a normal country. And that's unfortunate.
I woke up this morning with the outline of a keyboard on my forehead :-)
In an earlier post, I reported that Iran is shipping weapons to Hezbullah (Lebanon - in response to the person who asked in the comments) via Iraq, in order to avoid the alleged Israeli air strikes that have plagued those shipments in Syria.
The use of Iraq as a transit point is just one symptom of a wider and deeply troubling phenomenon: Iran has stepped into the vacuum created when President Obama ordered US troops to flee Iraq, and Iran now controls Iraq. Here's another example: A September kidnapping and execution of seven MEK (Iranian opposition - banned by the Ayatollahs) members from Iraq is now being blamed on Iran.
The
Sept. 1 attack on a base called Camp Ashraf killed at least 50 members of
the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, or MEK, which had disarmed at the request of the U.S.
military after the American invasion of Iraq and received explicit promises of protection
from senior commanders. Instead, gory videos released by the group showed that
many of its members had been shot with their hands tied behind their backs or
in one of the camp's makeshift hospitals. MEK leaders, backed by an array of
U.S. lawmakers, said Iraqi security forces carried out the attack.
Baghdad
has long denied the charge, and U.S. officials have now concluded that a small
number of Iranian paramilitaries from its feared Islamic Revolution Guards
Corps helped plan and direct the assault on the camp. Three officials, speaking
to Foreign Policy for the first time,
said gunmen from two of Tehran's Iraqi-based proxies, Kitab Hezbollah and Asaib
Ahl al-Haq, then carried out the actual attack. The Iranian involvement in the
Ashraf massacre hasn't been reported before.
"Iraqi
soldiers didn't get in the way of what was happening at Ashraf, but they didn't
do the shooting," a U.S. official briefed on the intelligence community's assessment
of the attack said in an interview. The official spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss classified information.
U.S. officials say that Iran's role in the attack didn't end with the killings
of the MEK members at Ashraf. Instead, officials believe that Iranian commandos
and fighters from the country's Iraqi proxies also abducted seven MEK members
and smuggled them back to Iran. The missing MEK supporters haven't been seen or
heard from since the attack.
Direct
Iranian involvement in the Ashraf assault is one of the clearest signs yet of
Tehran's growing power within Iraq, a dynamic of deep concern to American
policymakers. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite government has long
maintained close ties with top Iranian leaders, and U.S. officials believe that
Tehran prodded Maliki to refuse to sign a bilateral security pact in the fall
of 2010 that would have kept some U.S. troops in the country. Perhaps under
Iran's influence, Maliki has alienated Iraq's sizable Sunni and Kurdish
minorities by centralizing power in Baghdad and refusing to share power or
fairly divvy up the country's oil revenues.
The
timing of the attack also raises questions about whether Iran's security
services are as committed to finding a rapprochement with Washington as its
civilian government appears to be. The assault took place in September, several
months after negotiators from the two governments had begun
secret nuclear talks in Oman that ultimately led to last month's landmark
nuclear pact between the Obama administration and the government of Iranian
President Hasan Rouhani. The deadly attack on a U.S.-allied group inside Iraq
suggests that at least some elements within Tehran are willing to take steps
that risk upsetting that fragile equilibrium.
But the MEK is insistent that Iraqi troops also had a part in the attack.
MEK
leaders in
Washington strongly disagree with the U.S. conclusions about the Ashraf
attack.
They point out that the facility is guarded by fences, checkpoints and
more
than 1,200 Iraqi troops, making it extremely difficult for gunmen to
reach the
camp without, at a minimum, the active cooperation of Iraqi forces. They
also
note that survivors said the masked gunmen spoke Arabic and argue that
the
group's own operatives within Iran would know if the seven missing
members had
been brought into the country. They believe that Tehran ordered the
attack, but
say that it was carried out by Iraqi soldiers loyal to Maliki.
It was inevitable that once US troops withdrew from Iraq, someone else would step into the vacuum. The hasty manner in which the troops were withdrawn made sure it was the bad guys - and not the good guys - who would step into the vacuum. Maliki is rolling with the punches and facing the reality that he has been left totally exposed. He isn't strong enough to fight Iran by himself.
Iraq is a case where President Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and he did so without paying a personal price. Thank you to the mainstream media for not pointing out the truth.
Sarah Honig gives some historical context for President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry's mendacious treatment of Israel.
*Even the definitive end of “the Czechoslovakian problem,” didn’t end
Hitler’s provocations – as the appeasers had trusted it would. Hitler
robbed Europeans of “a nice quiet sleep” with yet new demands. These
involved the Free City of Danzig, a semi-autonomous entity created in
1920 as part of the Treaty of Versailles and placed under League of
Nations protection.
Hot on the heels of the Munich Conference, Hitler began agitating for
Danzig’s incorporation into the Third Reich. In April 1939 Poland
warned that it would defy any German incursion. That presumably would
subsequently oblige Warsaw’s allies to come to its aid.
And to forestall this, Déat wrote his commentary with the stirring
headline that tauntingly asked Frenchmen whether they should really want
to put their lives on the line for Danzig. Not only did Déat think that
they shouldn’t, but he further portrayed the Poles as intransigent
firebrands, whose irresponsible politicking was the source of all their
tribulations. They bring calamity on themselves by opposing Germany’s
territorial demands, he asserted.
This should sound ominously familiar to us Israelis all these decades
after Déat’s powerful pro-appeasement piece. We have been told that we
would bring calamity on ourselves if we continue to oppose Ramallah’s
territorial demands. This reprimand was delivered by none other than
America’s top diplomat – precisely when he and his boss also bent over
backwards to appease the tyrants from Tehran.
Anyone who gets in the way of appeasers is sure to be castigated by
them. In his address to the British people on September 27, 1938, a
couple of fateful days before the signing of the Munich Agreement,
Chamberlain made it seem that Czechoslovakia is the troublemaker, that
it harasses Europe’s fellow-democracies with impertinent expectations:
“We cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole
British Empire in war simply on her [Czechoslovakia’s] account. If we
have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.”
And after putting Czechoslovakia in its place, as a diminutive
no-account bother, Chamberlain proceeded to defend his duplicity as
morality incarnate: “Since I first went to Berchtesgaden, more than
20,000 letters and telegrams have come to No.10, Downing Street. Of
course, I have been able to look at a tiny fraction of them, but I have
seen enough to know that the people who wrote did not feel that they had
such a cause for which to fight, if they were asked to go to war in
order that the Sudeten Germans might not join the Reich.”
This is exactly what Déat did to the Poles six month later – depict
their ostensible obstructionism and obduracy as the only obstacles to
world peace. This is what Kerry does to us Israelis when he warns that
if the so-called peace talks fail, it will be our fault and we will reap
the whirlwind. We will only have ourselves to blame for the misfortunes
we bring on ourselves.
Who said the words below and what was (s)he talking about?
I will begin by saying what
everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be
stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.
...
It is the most grievous consequence of
what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years
- five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for
the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat ...
five years of neglect of our defences....
Our loyal, brave people...should know the
truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and
deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a
defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us
along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone
in our history ... and that the terrible words have for the time being
been pronounced against the Western democracies:
"Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."
And do not suppose that this is the end.
This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip,
the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year
by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour,
we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.
Here's a picture of the man who said it:
The date was October 5, 1938. Winston Churchill was talking about Neville Chamberlain's Munich agreement. But the same words could have applied to Hussein Obama's Iran deal. Scary, isn't it?
You can find the full text of Winston Churchill's speech in the House of Commons after Chamberlain's return from Munich here (Hat Tip: William Kristol).
Okay, I probably ran this last year, but since I'm taking Mrs. Carl out for her birthday this morning, and JPost put it up again, I thought I would run it again.
Here's the Tel Aviv adeloyada (until he didn't know) parade from 1932-34, featuring then-Mayor Meir Dizengoff.
Let's go to the videotape.
Looking forward to next year, when I can listen to the music....
Shortly after 9/11, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon managed to infuriate US President George W. Bush (who would take a little longer to emerge from his father's shell and become pro-Israel for a while) with a speech that compared Israel to 1938 Czechoslovakia.
"The enlightened democracies of Europe decided then to sacrifice Czechoslovakia in favor of a convenient temporary solution" to the demands of Germany's Adolf Hitler, Sharon said. "We will be unable to accept that. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism."
"Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense," Sharon said.
Bush, as noted, was not pleased.
"The prime minister's comments are unacceptable," [then White House spokesman Ari] Fleischer said. "Israel has no stronger friend and ally in the world than the United States. President Bush is an especially close friend of Israel."
He added: "The United States has been working for months to press the parties to end the violence and return to a political dialogue. The United States will continue to press both Israel and the Palestinians to move forward."
Earlier [that] week, an unidentified administration official leaked to the news media that Bush's security team was working on a plan for a Palestinian state and that it would keep pushing its own proposals.
In the meantime, under prodding by [then-] Secretary of State Colin Powell, Israel and the Palestinian Authority resumed security talks without waiting for a period free of terrorist attacks, as demanded by Sharon.
Fleischer responded, "The United States is not doing anything to try to appease the Arabs at Israel's expense."
The Bush administration has tried to get Arab countries to support its counterterrorism campaign against the al-Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan.
If this all sounds familiar, it should. But there are other parallels between Israel and Czechoslovakia, aside from the World's desire to sacrifice a small, vibrant democracy in order to maintain 'World Peace.' One important parallel is between Czechoslovakia's Sudentenland and Israel's Samarian mountains. Another is the parallel between the IDF and Czechoslovakia's army. Giulio Meotti explains.
On September 29, 1938, the Czechoslovak state was truncated and deprived of defensible borders by the “Munich agreement.” Six months later, abandoned by its allies England and France, and bullied by Adolf Hitler, Czechoslovakia lay down and died. Like Israel today, the Czechs were accused of “intransigence” and of being “disturbers of the peace.” They were so disheartened that in the end they chose not to fight, but to surrender. “Peace” meant capitulation.
Czechoslovakia’s situation in 1938 is in fact similar to Israel’s in 2012. Like Israel’s IDF, the Czechs had one of the strongest armies in Europe. Like Israel, Czechoslovakia was a very young and vibrant state. Like Israel, Czechoslovakia was the only liberal democracy in Eastern Europe. And like the Obama administration’s pressing Israel to give up its settlements to the Arabs, the Nazis demanded the annexation of the Sudeten Land, settled by three million Germans. And the Sudeten mountains, like Israel’s “occupied territories,” were the only position from which the Bohemian plain, and the capital Prague, was defensible.
Like Hitler’s demand of “land for peace,” in the name of “peace” Obama is pressing Israel to give up Judea and Samaria, the final line of defense before the Coastal Plain against a hostile Iranian proxy state seated high on the hills only 12 miles from Tel Aviv and just three miles from Israel’s only international airport. That’s why Israel’s legendary diplomat Abba Eban called the borders established following the 1967 Six-Day War “Auschwitz borders.” And does anyone remember how Lord Trenchard got up in the British parliament after Munich and declared that the Czechs didn’t need the Sudeten territories for security? “The best security border,” Trenchard said, “is peace.” Sound familiar?
The 'Palestinian' representative to the United States, Maen Areikat, has an op-ed in the Washington Post. It starts with the lie that the 'Palestinians' lived in Israel under occupation before the Cananites(!) and it goes downhill from there.
We lived under the rule of a plethora of empires: the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans and, finally, the British. This has made our region rich in history, culture and heritage. Indeed, if our olive trees could speak — some are centuries old — they would have a lot to say.
This makes us very proud and appreciative of our special place in this world. That is why we are so attached to our land and to our identity. I can’t think of a place that is quite like it. Yes, it is tumultuous, incomprehensible and, at times, very dangerous, but for us it is home. Centuries of rule by an eclectic assortment have taught us that empires come and go but legacies and values remain. We proudly carry those values today. Family is sacred, education is indispensable, and religious tolerance is innate. The fact that we outlived these empires is a testament to our resilience and strength.
Notice how he doesn't count Jordan as an occupying power (which they clearly were under international law), and therefore he speaks of their 'religious tolerance' without mentioning the facts that every Jewish synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Jordanians,that the gravestones of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives were used as latrines and paving for a hotel by the Jordanians, and that Jews were denied access to our Holy sites during the 19 years that the Jordanians controlled the Old City of Jerusalem. Some 'religious tolerance.' And that's without even considering the steep decline in the Christian population in Judea and Samaria since the 'Palestinian Authority' came to power there in 1994.
Before World War II, Palestinians and Jews living in Palestine enjoyed times of great harmony. My grandfather shared a bakery shop with a Jewish partner, Aaron, in Jerusalem’s Bak’a Tahta neighborhood. My mother told me stories of the period of peace and tranquillity they enjoyed with Jews during this time. That period ended in 1948, however, and a conflict began. The result was our subjugation to the rule of others and more than half of our people being dispossessed. It was a traumatic experience. It triggered our characteristic defense mechanism, which has stood the test of time — stout perseverance and a faith in the manifest destiny of those who uphold their values in the face of oppression.
Great harmony. Especially during the Hebron massacre in 1929, the riots in Jerusalem in 1936-39, the war on the Jews that five Arab countries declared as soon as the nascent Jewish state was born. The conflict didn't begin in 1948 and it didn't just begin by itself.
I won't bother with the rest of his drivel. Shame on the Washington Post for allowing an opinion writer to reinvent facts.
Sunday marked the 73rd anniversary of the massacre of 19 Jews by Arab terrorists in Tiberias. Yes, 73 years. Before there was any 'occupation' and before there was a Jewish state. But missing from many of the martyrs' lists and the Israeli public consciousness is the massacre of 19 Jews of Tiberias on October 2, 1938, in the height of the "Arab Revolt in Palestine." An organized force of Arab militiamen attacked the neighborhood from several directions.
Why is the account missing? Perhaps because of the absolute failure of British authorities and Orde Wingate's (Jewish) Special Night Squads to protect the Tiberias community. The Mandate was aflame, but virtually no one was guarding the 6,000 Jews of Tiberias. Just three weeks later, an Arab assassin gunned down the Jewish mayor of Tiberias, Zaki Alchadeff, in broad day light.
A lengthy annual report of the British Mandate, 1938, included these three sentences:
"On October 2nd there occurred a general raid on the Jewish quarter of Tiberias. It was systematically organized and savagely executed. Of the 19 Jews killed, including women and children, all save four were stabbed to death."
7 wounded, 4 of them severely – concern of more losses.
Official announcement: Last night at around 9 a large armed gang entered Tiberias. After cutting all phone links, they came in two platoons. One came from the direction of Saffed, through the Kiryat Shmuel quarter, and the second, from the south, through Achva neighborhood. After five minutes a whistle sound was heard from the hills around the city and shootings begun. The shots were aimed mainly at the district offices, the police station, and the residence of the British policemen. At the same time fires broke at the district offices, at the synagogue, and six houses in Achva neighborhood. The police came immediately and 25 minutes later came reinforcement of the Transjordan Frontier Force. They were shot severely near a barricade that was placed on the road near Tiberias spa. From 9 to 11 in the evening the shots continued in the city. The police and the Frontier Force repel the gang out of Tiberias at 11 in the evening.
A curfew was emplaced and the situation is now under control.
The six houses that were stricken, mostly by the bomb, are those of Ben Arye Mizrachi and Katin. In the house of Ben Arye, Yehoshua Ben Arye and his wife Shoshana were stabbed and burned to death, and his son Arye. The year and a half old child Tzadock was shot. Rebecca Leymar, age 10, Haya Leymar age 12, and Ezra Leymar age 8 which were also at the home of Ben Arye at the time of the attack were stabbed and burned. At the home of Mizrachi the killed were Rachel Mizrachi, Ezra age 12, Miryam age 5, Jocheved age 3, Shmuel age 1 and Heftziba age 2, at the house of Katin he and his sister were stabbed and burned but his wife was saved.
A man called Yechezkel Katz, age 42, was killed when the synagogue was torched. During the shooting two Jewish policemen were killed, Israel Foxman and Tzvi Chezkilevitz, also was killed Jacob Gross. Hannah Leymar age 37 was severally injured, and Rahamim Ha’Levi age 26 was lightly injured. Hannah Sabach was lightly injured by a fall. The total number of Jews killed and wounded, according to the available information, is 19 killed and three wounded.
It’s possible that more losses will be found under the ruins. The losses among the gang during the shooting in Tiberias are unknown for the moment, bandits were killed when Jewish policemen who went to help the city from Mitzpeh met and entered into battle with a gang of armed men on the main road near Tiberias. In the battle four English rifles were caught, a German rifle, a hunting rifle and an amount of bullets. The police had no losses.
Mourning throughout the land From 2 – 4 a cessation of work and closing of shops had been declared throughout the land to the time of the funerals of the saints of Tiberias.
Ron Radosh reviews a lengthy piece in the Tablet by Benny Morris. It's definitely worth it to read the whole thing, but among other things, he comes up with this.
Benny Morris understands that for the Arab mentality, little has changed since 1948 and the creation of the Jewish State. The first reason no peace is possible, he writes, “the one that American and European officials never express and — if impolitely mentioned in their presence — turn away from in distaste, is that Palestinian political elites, of both the so-called ’secular’ and Islamist varieties, are dead set against partitioning the Land of Israel/Palestine with the Jews.” Morris continues:
“They regard all of Palestine as their patrimony and believe that it will eventually be theirs. History, because of demography and the steady empowerment of the Arab and Islamic worlds and the West’s growing alienation from Israel, and because of Allah’s wishes, is, they believe, on their side. They do not want a permanent two-state solution, with a Palestinian Arab state co-existing alongside a (larger) Jewish state; they will not compromise on this core belief and do not believe, on moral or practical grounds, that they should.”
The truth, Morris believes, cannot be mentioned by our statesman, because if the Palestinian and Arab position is accurately stated, it means that “the Israeli-Arab conflict has no resolution apart from the complete victory of one side or the other (with the corollary of expulsion, or annihilation, by one side of the other) — which leaves leaders like President Barack Obama with nowhere realistic to go with regard to the conflict. Philosophically, acceptance of the rock-like unpliability of this reality is extremely problematic, given the ongoing military and philosophical clash between the West and various forces in the Islamic world.”
Instead of facing this truth and trying to decide what is to be done, our leaders continue on with the farce of always trying to resurrect a peace process that always fails, and will continue to do so in the future. Speaking as a historian, Morris argues the similarities with the era before World War II — the age of “appeasement” — are too striking to ignore. He writes:
“In this connection, our age, it may turn out, resembles the classic age of appeasement, the 1930s, when the Western democracies (and the Soviet Union) were ranged against, but preferred not to confront, Nazi Germany and its allies, Fascist Italy, and expansionist Japan. During that decade, Hitler’s inexorable martial, racist, and uncompromising mindset was misread by Western leaders, officials, and intellectuals — and for much the same reasons. Living in unideological societies, they could not fathom the minds and politics of their ideologically driven antagonists. The leaders and intellectuals of the Western democracies, educated and suffused with liberal and relativist values, by and large were unable to comprehend the essential ‘otherness’ of Hitler and ended up fighting him, to the finish, after negotiation and compromise had proved useless.”
History, he clearly fears, might just this time actually repeat itself. Certainly, the comparisons are too striking to be ignored, a point that Pastor Hagee also pointed out in his speech. At this moment, Hamas is pledged to obliterate Israel as its very raison d’etre, and while Fatah claims to be willing to accept a two-state solution, it insists upon the acceptance of what they call “the right to return,” without any exception. For Abbas and his comrades, this is non-negotiable. A few years ago, the group of journalists I traveled to Israel with met with Saeb Erekat, the top Palestinian negotiator. He argued that everyone knows a two-state solution could be accepted overnight. But, he added, they will never — and he emphasized this — accept less than the state of Israel agreeing to the right of return of the Arab refugees who fled at the time of the 1948 war between Israel and the invading armies of six Arab nations.
Like I said, read the whole thing. It's not just on the Iranian front that the Obama administration is trying to return us to 1930's-style appeasement.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
