Ahmadinejad
Photo: AP
Hitler and Chamberlain
I believe Ahmadinejad
Jews should apply retrospective Hitler lessons to Iran’s current leader
When a small man casts a long shadow darkness is near.
“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor…Go home and get a nice quiet sleep,” said British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 30, 1938, as he was standing at the entrance to London’s 10 Downing Street upon returning from his meeting with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
Six months later, Hitler conquered the Sudetenland, and a year later Nazi forces invaded Poland and the cursed war broke out in Europe.
As was the case then, now too the Jewish people and enlightened nations are facing a dictator, this time an Iranian one, who keeps on declaring that the people of Israel have no right to exist. Or simply put, he says that the entity known as the State of Israel has to be eliminated, along with its Jewish citizens of course.
When Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears on television we chuckle and tend to see him as a fool and short-lived standup comedian. We tend not to believe him and are certain that someone in the Western world will put him in his place; we think that maybe he too will realize that his words are empty of substance.
Yet this is what our fathers believed when Hitler repeatedly declared that the Jews should be exterminated. Hitler, just like Iran’s Ahmadinejad when he speaks of the State of Israel, presented a clear position whereby those born Jewish have no place on earth.
In retrospect, we can present today the lessons and conclusions we should have drawn back then, before the Munich Conference and before 1939. Had we had our own state back then, we would have expected its leaders to take the required decision and curb the process undertaken by Adolf Hitler. We would have expected the decision to thwart the threat.
The government of Israel took such decision, according to foreign reports, after it decided to prevent the killers of our 11 athletes in the Munich Olympics from undertaking another such massacre. By doing so, the State of Israel created the right kind of monument for our murdered athletes. The living monument of those who hurt us and are no longer alive is the most important testament to our continuing lives here rather than the embarrassing monument at the outskirts of Munich.
If we go on with this line of thought, then we should have seen a Jewish leader speaking out back then and demanding that Hitler’s life be terminated. And if there was no such leader, there should have been such Jew in Israel or elsewhere in the world who would do the right thing at the right time. Had Hitler’s life been terminated in 1939, there would be another six million Jewish living in the State of Israel today.
I believe Iran’s Ahmadinejad and think that he is serious in his intentions. When a small man casts a long shadow darkness is near.
Aviam Sela is a former senior Air Force officer. He was responsible for the planning the attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor and took part in the operation
