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Posted on 10/17/2001 9:21:55 AM PDT by Starmaker

Others of you who came of age in the 50s and 60s may remember the debate about the German people´s responsibility for the Nazi death camps. That the power-mad, fanatical Nazis were capable of such horror was a given. But what about the majority of German people who were not Nazis, or even Nazi sympathizers: How could they have stood by and let six million people be killed? How did they simply look the other way as their neighbors were being murdered? How did an entire nation acquiesce to the horror that was Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Treblinka?

Volumes have been written about the complicity in the Holocaust of those who are called (to distinguish them from the Nazis) ‘the good Germans.´ The more honest of these books acknowledge the general population´s awareness that ‘something´ was going on, but beyond that, there is little agreement on an explanation. One argument posits that all Germans were tacitly in agreement with the implementation of ‘a final solution´…another says that they were simply scared…another that they were too caught up in just surviving to notice what was happening to the Jews…some claim they suffered something akin to the Stockholm syndrome, being essentially victims themselves of the fear and power of the Nazis… The truth, no doubt, is an unknowable mix of those and other factors.

Whatever that truth, the stigma of the Holocaust has clung to the entire German people for over fifty years now. Though rarely brought up the past few decades, the unspoken—and un-answered—questions remain. Americans, especially, have long exhibited a smug moral superiority that assumes ‘that couldn´t have happened here.´ Even when incidents like the reported massacre at a Korean bridge and Vietnam´s My Lai are noted, they´re simply dismissed as aberrations, exceptions that prove the rule of American immunity to barbarism and atrocity. It´s chilling to realize that it was this same sense of moral superiority that enabled the Nazis to justify their final solution to the ‘Jewish problem.´

It will also be used, I´m afraid, to rationalize the coming American abandonment of the state of Israel.

Today, in one of those historical re-runs that never seem to be recognized until after the fact, the United States is facing a situation similar to that faced by the German people prior to WWII: once again the Jews are in trouble, with powerful forces eager to eliminate them. Various Arab states and their surrogate terrorist groups are committed to ejecting the Jewish state of Israel from the Middle East; the terrorists—and some of the states—even openly vow to destroy them. And Israel´s only friend on earth is the United States.

So here it is, our chance to actually demonstrate our moral superiority. And the choices couldn´t be clearer: do we stand by Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, defying the oil-rich Arabs and their terrorist cronies? Or do we appease the Arabs, leaving Israel at the (non-existent) mercy of Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the rest of the murderous Arab Nazis?

So far, it doesn´t look good. President Bush and the Secretary of Appeasement Colin Powell began chattering last week that a Palestinian state has always been their vision for ‘peace in the Middle East,´ providing the Palestinians acknowledge Israel´s right to exist. But that´s the rub, right there, though just like the Clinton administration, no one will face the truth—the Arabs and the Palestinians do not accept that Israel has a right to exist! They have repeatedly said so, although the scandalous American media has refused to report to Americans that this is what the Arabs and Palestinians say to each other after the smiley-faced Arafat leaves the peace table microphones and cameras.

But our government´s hypocrisy and duplicity are old news. What bothers me most, if the polls can be believed, is the attitude of average Americans. Recently, a poll reported that only 58% of Americans rejected the idea that Israel was the cause of terrorists targeting the U.S. That means that nearly half of our nation thinks our support of Israel is the cause for the World Trade Center and Pentagon deaths. That any American could believe such rubbish is an indication of how successful the leftist media has been in relaying the PR spin from the Marxist PLO and the other Arabs. How big a step is it from believing Israel is a major problem for us to the conclusion that we should cut all ties with them? Especially if the oil flow tightens up, further damaging the economy?

Those who whine about our foreign policy being supportive of Israeli ‘terrorism´ are especially repugnant in their mindless parroting of the media´s leftist claptrap. They also argue against U.S. military response to the terrorist attacks, intoning that ‘violence begets violence.´ But if Israel did not defend herself, what do these handwringers think would happen? Do they suppose the PLO would get bored and stop murdering Israelis? And why is it that the anti-violence crowd never comments on the Palestinian-instigated violence that is always the source of the confrontations in Israel?

Last year, Ehud Barak offered Arafat everything he has been demanding for years…and the response has been a year of suicide attacks and terrorism against Israel. Does that sound like the Palestinians have peace on their mind? Whatever the right and wrong of the 1948 establishment of Israel, one thing is abundantly clear—the Arabs and Palestinians can not un-do history, any more than Native Americans can drive out descendants of the early European settlers from the U.S. But that is exactly the Arab/Palestinian unholy alliance, to abolish the state of Israel altogether.

Even so-called ‘moderate´ Saudi Arabia declares that Israel is a terrorist state, and asks the U.S. to re-visit our policy towards this issue—like any ‘request´ from them, it carries a not-so-subtle threat about future oil production. But the other Arab states are even more vocal, and violent, in their condemnation of Israel. Yet it is these Arab states that Powell is courting for our anti-terrorist coalition—despite the fact that Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are famous for harboring and supporting terrorists!

The American people are slouching toward an acceptance of a political ‘solution´ to the ‘problem´ of the Jews in the Middle East, even though the real problem is the determination of the Arabs and Palestinians to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth. Politically and practically, the United States is all that stands between Israel and that destruction. While I would have expected such from Clinton or Gore, the signs are that the Bush administration, despite the rhetoric, is open to further nudging by the Arabs, their oil, and their promise of joining the vaunted coalition.

How did the German people ignore what was happening to the Jews in the 30s and 40s? In exactly the same way the American people are ignoring what is happening to the Jews in Israel today. By pretending that the Arabs don´t really intend the evil they consistently proclaim; by excusing Palestinian violence while condemning Israeli self-defense; and by choosing to appease those who provide us oil, we cooperate in a planned genocide. Oh, we´ll rationalize that our abandonment of Israel is justified, that ‘they brought it on themselves, etc. After all, to our increasingly secular nation, the shared heritage of the U.S. with the chosen people of our G-d is increasingly meaningless.

Last week, Chuck Baldwin´s article suggested that a primary reason the U.S. has been blessed is so we could provide protection for Israel until G-d Himself intervenes again in history. If that is true—and I believe that it is—then what do you think lies ahead for the U.S. if we desert Israel?

Our dilemma is not new, of course. Cain, the first man born, responded to G-d´s query of Abel´s whereabouts with the insolent, ‘Am I my brother´s keeper?´ It is, I think, especially significant that he who first sought to hide his murderous and deceitful acts behind that question already had blood on his hands. Just as Vietnam peace protestors encouraged North Vietnam, those who today question our support of Israel encourage PLO terrorists, and thus have the blood of innocent Israelis on their hands. If they get their way, they´d have the blood of seven million Israelis on their hands, but for one thing—the G-d America no longer follows will not let Israel be destroyed…even if the U.S. would.

If we do, in fact, abandon Israel, the German people will finally be off the hook, freed from their infamy. But unlike the Germans under Hitler, we have a say in our government, thus our wrong will be the greater. We won´t be able to claim that we were ‘the good Americans,´ for we will all be culpable, and deserving of the stigma of inhumanity, cowardice and betrayal. Like Judas, we will weep bitter tears.

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