Saturday, October 26, 2024
From Ian:
Douglas Murray: The profundity of evil
Douglas Murray: The profundity of evil
Before I conclude, I should like to point to one other aspect of the damage that Arendt has wrought. And to underscore it, I should like to return once again to the work of Bettina Stangneth.Col Kemp: Netanyahu needs an American president who will let him finish the job against Iran
One of the things Stangneth’s work gives the reader is the opportunity to understand one particular aspect of what Eichmann wrote in the 1950s. It is one that deserves far wider attention. In Die anderen sprachen, jetzt will ich sprechen! Eichmann turns his attention to the recent Suez Crisis. (How extraordinary it is to think of Eichmann commenting on the Suez Crisis!) Here is one passage from that work:
And while we are considering all this—we, who are still searching for clarity on whether (and if yes, how far) we assisted in what were in fact damnable events during the war—current events knock us down and take our breath away. For Israeli bayonets are now overrunning the Egyptian people, who have been startled from their peaceful sleep. Israeli tanks and armored cars are tearing through Sinai, firing and burning, and Israeli air squadrons are bombing peaceful Egyptian villages and towns. For the second time since 1945, they are invading. . . . Who are the aggressors here? Who are the war criminals? The victims are Egyptians, Arabs, Mohammedans. Amon and Allah, I fear that, following what was exercised on the Germans in 1945, Your Egyptian people will have to do penance, to all the people of Israel, to the main aggressor and perpetrator against humanity in the Middle East, to those responsible for the murdered Muslims, as I said, Your Egyptian people will have to do penance for having the temerity to want to live on their ancestral soil. . . . We all know the reasons why, beginning in the Middle Ages and from then on in an unbroken sequence, a lasting discord arose between the Jews and their host nation, Germany.
There then follows an extraordinary and important passage. For Eichmann goes on to say—only a few years before being taken to face trial in Jerusalem, mind you—that if he himself were ever found guilty of any crime, it would only be “for political reasons.” He even tries to argue that a guilty verdict against him would be “an impossibility in international law,” though he admits that in any case he could never obtain justice “in the so-called Western culture.” The reason for this is obvious enough: in the Christian Bible, “to which a large part of Western thought clings, it is expressly established that everything sacred came from the Jews.” Western culture has, for Eichmann, been irrevocably Judaized. And so Eichmann looks to a different group, to the “large circle of friends, many millions of people” to whom his manuscript is aimed. This is part of what he writes:
But you, you 360 million Mohammedans, to whom I have had a strong inner connection since the days of my association with your Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, you, who have a greater truth in the surahs of your Koran, I call upon you to pass judgment on me. You children of Allah have known the Jews longer and better than the West has. Your noble Muftis and scholars of law may sit in judgment upon me and, at least in a symbolic way, give me your verdict.
Eichmann in exile was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an enormous admirer of Israel’s neighbors—something that, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned out to run in the family. After Eichmann’s abduction, his relatives apparently became concerned about his second son. According to a police report, “As Horst was easily excitable the Eichmann family was afraid that when he heard about his father’s fate, he might volunteer to fight for the Arab countries in campaigns against Israel.” As Stangneth notes, “Eichmann had obviously told his children where his new troops were to be found.”
And as Stangneth concludes,
Eichmann refused to do penance and longed for applause. But first and foremost, of course, he hoped his “Arab friends” would continue his battle against the Jews who were always the “principal war criminals” and “principal aggressors.” He hadn’t managed to complete his task of “total annihilation,” but the Muslims could still complete it for him.
How strange it is that as we try—and largely fail—to recognize and stand up to the enemies of civilization in our time, one of the people who seems to have stripped us of our ability to do so should have been a German Jewish philosopher, who sat for a few days in a room with evil in its most concentrated form and decided to define it by everything it was not.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, knows only too well that a decisive strike is required. But his military actions have to be calibrated according to what will be tolerated in Washington. Fighting a war on seven battle fronts, plus a hugely important eighth front — political warfare fought in the UN, international courts, and capitals around the world — Israel is heavily dependent on continued US support.Israel strikes inside Iran
To say the least, that is already patchy. Yes, the White House directly assisted Israel’s defences against Iranian missile attacks and has recently deployed THAAD air defence systems and the troops to man them. But when it comes to offensive operations, vital to defence, it has been positively obstructive, including withholding essential munitions supply.
The administration has also been unduly restrained in providing diplomatic cover for its ally’s necessary and legitimate military actions, not least by failing to respond aggressively to the obscene accusations of genocide in the International Court of Justice and the disgraceful demand by the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
It is only too clear that the decisions made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris since this war began has been directed by their overriding desire for appeasing two fronts. Domestically, they have calculated that the strong and growing anti-Zionist influence amongst the Democratic electorate can just about tolerate supporting Israel’s defence but won’t stretch to overt backing of offensive actions. It will always tempered by “Israel has a right to defend itself, but…”
Internationally, the administration’s Middle East policy is dominated by dangerous empowerment of Iran, including desperation to restore Barack Obama’s fundamentally flawed nuclear deal and fuelling its regional aggression by releasing billions of dollars of frozen assets. Both of these considerations account for the White House falling over itself to deny any involvement in this morning’s Israeli strikes.
That means Netanyahu has little choice other than to bide his time until after the presidential elections before he can deliver the necessary decisive blow against Iran. Despite the IDF’s remarkable success so far against Hamas and Hezbollah, the “ring of fire” of terrorist proxies intended to suffocate the Jewish state can only be extinguished by a bullet in the head of the brain that controls and funds the whole pernicious strategy. But Israel is acting not just in defence of itself, but of the entire region and the world.
The Islamic Republic’s watchwords are not only “death to Israel” but also “death to America”. Its intention is to subjugate the Sunni world. Even if the current administration in Washington does not take that seriously, the Arab countries certainly do. That is why most of them, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are fully behind Israel in its efforts to eliminate the threat.
Thanks to Biden’s pusillanimity and misjudgement over the last four years, Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power. That must be prevented at all costs. Israel awaits a president who will have the courage to join, or at least back, the military action necessary to do so. The IDF has announced that its current strikes have been completed, but we should expect a much stronger resumption in the coming months.
Israeli Air Force fighter jets conducted precision strikes on military targets in Iran overnight Friday, nearly one month after Tehran launched a massive ballistic-missile attack on the Jewish state.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, dozens of aircraft, including refuelers and spy planes, conducted “waves” of attacks over the course of a few hours across several regions of Iran, located some 1,600 kilometers from Israel. The targets included missile and drone manufacturing facilities and launch sites, as well as air-defense batteries.
The state-run SANA news outlet reported simultaneous Israeli strikes against military targets across central and southern Syria, amid Tehran’s decades-long effort to entrench itself in that country.
The IDF named the operation “Days of Repentance.”
“I can now confirm that we have concluded the Israeli response to Iran’s attacks against Israel. We conducted targeted and precise strikes on military targets in Iran—thwarting immediate threats to the State of Israel,” said IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
“The Israel Defense Forces has fulfilled its mission. If the regime in Iran were to make the mistake of beginning a new round of escalation, we will be obligated to respond. Our message is clear: All those who threaten the State of Israel and seek to drag the region into wider escalation will pay a heavy price,” Hagari continued.
“We demonstrated today that we have both the capability and the resolve to act decisively, and we are prepared—on offense and defense—to defend the State of Israel and the people of Israel,” he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the overnight attack from the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he was later joined by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Mossad head David Barnea and Israel Security Agency leader Ronen Bar.
“The regime in Iran and its regional proxies have been relentlessly attacking Israel since [Hamas’s] Oct. 7th [massacre of 1,200 people]—on seven fronts—including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” the IDF said. “Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and duty to respond.”
The military was conducting an ongoing situation assessment, and there were no immediate changes to Home Front Command directives for civilians.
