Some of our European friends, who are usually reluctant to defend themselves and always eager to blame Israel first when fighting breaks out, nevertheless are beginning to understand how absurd their analysis looks when closely scrutinized. The Germans, irony of ironies, are trying to find ways to help Israel, as difficult as this may be.
When his countrymen were giddy with the success of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Harvard-educated naval strategist who had organized the stunning operation, is said to have remarked that all Japan had accomplished was to awaken "a sleeping giant, and to fill him with a terrible resolve." Whether Yamamoto actually said it or not, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah would hardly characterize Israel that way (the Israeli Defense Force never sleeps), but he, like Yamamoto after Pearl Harbor, concedes that a brutal provocation can be answered by a terrible resolve.
The West should be busy taking into account the ferocity of the Islamist provocation, and what it means for the civilized world. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, put things into the correct perspective for us when he vowed last year to "wipe Israel off the map." This goal, he said, must be accomplished amid a "historical war that has been going on for hundreds of years." The conflict is not limited to Israel, but is "the front line between the Islamic world and the world of arrogance." The aim of Ahmadinejad and his fellow Islamists is not merely the seizure of the entire Middle East, but Islamic domination of the entire world.
Matthias Kuntzel, a German political scientist who studies the Nazi roots of Arab anti-Semitism, nurtured during World War II, observes that "the men and women of the Israeli military are currently fighting on the front lines against this apocalyptic program." He asks simply: "Should we not at least consider offering our solidarity?" It's a question the rest of us have to answer, whether we like it or not.