Zionism's promise

From The Jerusalem Post, 29/01/2010, by CAROLINE GLICK:

..."Never again!”

So declared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he spoke at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Wednesday, the 65th anniversary of its liberation.

Netanyahu used his speech at the notorious death camp to nudge what he referred to as “the enlightened nations of the world” to recognize that “murderous evil” has to be stopped as early as possible to prevent it from achieving its aims. Unfortunately, the events of the past week show clearly that evil is on the march, and “the enlightened nations of the world” are on a coffee break from enlightenment.

As Netanyahu addressed the world from the site of the most prolific genocide factory in human history, at the place where over a million Jews were gassed, starved, beaten, raped, frozen, shot and hanged and then burned in ovens, Iran’s leaders were declaring loudly that they intend to finish what the Nazis started. They will destroy the Jewish people.

Iran’s dictator supremo Ali Khamenei used a photo-op with Mauritania’s President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz – who cut his own country’s diplomatic ties with Israel last January – to renew his pledge to commit yet another Holocaust. As he put it, “Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime... When the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue.”

And as he spoke ...Germany’s Der Speigel reported that evidence gleaned from document intercepts and from the testimony of two senior Iranian defectors who were involved in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Iran’s nuclear program is not a peaceful one. The Iranians are designing and building nuclear warheads for their Shihab-3 ballistic missiles. According to a summary of the findings now circulating through the halls of power, Teheran will have the wherewithal to build nuclear warheads by 2012.

So the Der Spiegel report showed that Iran is developing the capacity to carry out a second Holocaust in under a hundred years. And yet, in the face of their sure knowledge that evil is on the march, as they did 70 years ago, the “enlightened nations” of Europe are siding with evil against its would-be victims.

On a popular level, as Sunday’s release of the Jewish Agency’s annual report on global anti-Semitism documented, there were more anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in 2009 than there had been in any single year since the Holocaust. The report stated that the attacks were carried out by Jew-haters on both the Left and the Right.

....Since the Holocaust, old-style right-wing anti-Semites in Europe have had a hard time getting political traction for their desire to see Jews suffer. But by conflating Jews with Israel, their colleagues on the Left have made sticking it to the Jews, our state and our supporters the easiest way to score political points. So it was that in her first speech as the EU’s new foreign policy chief, Britain’s Catherine Ashton went out of her way to condemn Israel for building in Jerusalem, closing its border with Hamas-controlled Gaza and defending itself from Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria.

....Against the backdrop of the persistence of right-wing Jew hatred, and the politically ascendant Red-Green alliance of anti-Semites, it makes sense that Europe will not raise a finger to prevent another Holocaust.

And so, not surprisingly, in the wake of the Der Spiegel report, the EU’s foreign ministers got together and decided not to support any new sanctions against Iran – unless they are passed by the UN Security Council. Since Europe’s foreign ministers all know full well the Security Council will not pass sanctions against Iran because China has announced that it will veto any sanctions against Iran, this week the EU’s foreign ministers got together and essentially said they’re okay with another Holocaust.

With Europe out, and with “enlightened” Asian, African and South American countries never really in the game, the only “enlightened” country that might be expected to stop murderous evil before it can carry out its aims is the United States. But unfortunately, like the Europeans, the Americans don’t feel like being responsible. President Barack Obama, his administration and many of his fellow Democrats would rather take on Israel.

This week 54 Democratic members of Congress wrote Obama a letter asking him to apply pressure on Israel to remove its restrictions on the import of goods – including dual use goods like construction materials – to Hamas-controlled Gaza. Never mind that under US law it is legally problematic to provide any aid, (including the $300 million Obama has pledged) to Gaza in light of the fact that it is controlled by a terrorist organization....

...This week [Obama’s Middle East envoy George] Mitchell asked Israel to stop all of its counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria, and allow Palestinian forces to operate not only in the Palestinian areas, but in predominantly Israeli areas as well. Specifically, Mitchell asked Israel to allow Palestinian forces to deploy in what the arguably defunct Oslo agreements refer to as Area C, where the Palestinian Authority has no security authority whatsoever.

When it comes to Iran ... in his State of the Union address on Wednesday, Obama himself made clear that the US will do nothing to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As far as Obama is concerned, the nuclear arsenal in most urgent need of evisceration is the US’s nuclear arsenal.

ALL OF this just goes to show that at the end of the day, now when the chips are down, there is only one “enlightened” nation in the world that may actually do something to prevent the advance of murderous evil. And Israel unfortunately is of two minds on the issue.

On the one hand, we have Netanyahu, who is clearly focused on preventing another Holocaust of Jewry. But on the other hand, we have Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who on Tuesday claimed that the absence of peace with the Palestinians – not Iran – is the greatest threat that Israel faces today. As he put it, “The lack of defined boundaries within Israel, and not an Iranian bomb, is the greatest threat to our future.”

Barak’s outrageous pronouncement is a succinct encapsulation of the great aspiration of the Israeli Left. If he could only be right, then Israel would be able to singlehandedly solve all the problems of the region and be immediately adored by the likes of the EU and the Obama administration just by making itself smaller.

So with the scourge of moral and strategic blindness rampant not only in Europe and America, but within his own government, Netanyahu rapidly approaches his moment of truth ...he will have to decide whether Iran will become a nuclear power, or whether Israel, standing alone, will prevent it from becoming a nuclear power.

Was his declaration of “Never Again,” ...a solemn vow that Zionism’s promise will be kept?