Posted on 08/07/2002 7:56:33 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
The Old Testament tells us in the Book of Esther 3:13, written about 2600 years ago,
"Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews – young and old, women and little children – on a single day…"
From that time to the 20th century, from time to time others attempted to get rid of the Jews, often driving them from supposedly civilized countries.
Then in 1924 an unemployed vagrant named Adolf Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf that the first obstacle facing the creation of a New National Socialist State was "above all elimination of the existing Jewish one." That would require not only the elimination of the current "Jewish" State but elimination of all the Jews in that State.
Thirteen years later, in 1937, according to William Shirer´s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich that unemployed vagrant had supporters in Austria "financed and egged on by Berlin" conducting a "campaign of terror. Bombings took place nearly every day in some part of the country, and in the mountain provinces massive and often violent Nazi demonstrations weakened the government´s position." Political assassinations were rampant.
By 1941, Hitler had taken over most of Europe and by 1945 had killed approximately six million Jews and caused the death of over 30 million people as a belated effort to stop him resulted in World War II.
Those of us who lived through those years said, "Never again! Next time, instead of trying to negotiate with a madman like Hitler, we will stop him! We should have stopped him when he invaded Austria, or Poland, or Czechoslovakia!"
Yet, it appears to me that we are seeing today a reenactment of the 1930s. The forgotten terrorism of the 1930s is very similar to what we are watching happen in Israel and on September 11 and elsewhere. In the 1930s Western nations, including the United States, tried very hard to look the other way and pretend that Hitler was not really going to do what he SAID he would do. The British Government under Neville Chamberlain and even the British Times readily accepted Hitler´s proposals as "sincere" and "well-considered."
In 1938 Hitler seized Austria "without firing a shot and without interference from Great Britain, France and Russia, whose military forces could have overwhelmed him." Chamberlain explained to the British House of Commons "The hard fact is that nothing could have arrested what actually has happened in Austria unless this country and other countries had been prepared to use force."
Most of those who lived through the deception and rampant terrorism leading up to World War II are either dead, or have forgotten or are silenced. And, today, the very thought of stopping a mad man like Saddam Hussein with force is being labeled "a violation of the U.N. Charter."
Yet, the preamble of Hamas´ Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, written in 1988, like Mein Kampf, plainly outlines a planned genocide. It states:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."Article seven reads:"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' "
Recent killings in Israel clearly show Hamas is trying to implement that "Covenant." Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian authority are supporting Hamas. Thousands of Palestinians gathered in the streets in Gaza to cheer the killing of five American students and others at Hebrew University. Yet, our modern day Neville Chamberlains urge us to ignore reality.
For example, last week Ramsey Clark, President Lyndon Johnson´s U.S. Attorney General, sent all members of the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly and Senator Biden, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations a letter urging them to "Act to prevent an attack by the United States against Iraq." Clark´s letter goes on to criticize America for being the "greatest purveyor of violence on the face of the earth" and for having "bombed defenseless Iraq mercilessly for forty-two days in 1991."
Did Bush-41 attack a "defenseless" Iraq? I don´t think so. I had a son who was dodging Iraqi Scud missiles in the Saudi Desert and fighting tank battles in Kuwait with the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991. The Iraqis were as well-armed as Adolf Hitler´s army was.
The last president we had with World War II experience was George H. W. Bush, who drew a line in the sand at Kuwait and said, "NO!" to Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein has used chemical weapons against his own people. He certainly would have no qualms about using them against the hated Jews, or the Americans. In fact, my son´s Marine Battalion captured the area Saddam had used for storing chemical weapons he intended to use against the quickly advancing American troops.
George Bush-41 made the right decision to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. He was not able do finish Hussein off because the coalition, which included several Muslim states, opposed toppling an Arab government.
We would do well to remember an old adage: "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."
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