In the 1930s, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain took one look at the Nazis and decided it was best to just give Hitler what he wanted, lest he draw the ire of his fighting forces. “Appeasement,” to Chamberlain, was apparently preferable to standing up against Hitler’s evil aspirations. We know what the consequences of such a policy were as the free government of Britain stood by and watched as anti-Semitic barbarians marched across borders and expanded its vile empire. Now, less than 100 years later, not much has changed in the heartless and warped-minded bodies of those who hate freedom, religion — especially Judaism — liberalism, and progress. But has the free world learned the morbid lesson of Chamberlain’s folly? We’re finding out now, in real-time, as the world watches President Biden and his administration deal with Iran-backed terrorists seeking to accomplish what Hitler didn't.
First, Hitler rolled through the Rhineland, then Austria and the Sudetenland — all with the assent of Chamberlain via the Munich Agreement. One of the lone voices calling out the “unmitigated disaster” that was Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was an on-the-outs chap named Winston Churchill.
Chamberlain believed that appeasing Hitler would prevent another global war — and he was entirely wrong. Within a few months of signing the Munich Agreement, Hitler tore it up and expanded his occupation to all of Czechoslovakia before invading Poland in September 1939. The war was on and Chamberlain’s strategy was rendered a devastating mistake as the Nazis engaged in the systematic murder of six million Jews and five million Soviet POWs, people with disabilities, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and other humans deemed incompatible with Hitler’s abominable vision for the future.
Today, Hitler’s body is rotting and Germany is a liberalized ally of the free world. But that doesn’t mean the evil aims of the Nazis have decomposed.
As the world watched in horror, Hamas terrorists backed by the Iranian regime invaded Israel on October 7. Their goal: to butcher innocent Jews. Horrifically, the Hamas barbarians killed the most Jews in any single day since Hitler’s Holocaust. Beyond the anti-Semitic foundation of both Iranian proxies and the Nazis, the ties between Hitler’s evil and today’s Arab anti-Semitism are deeper and go back to the days of the Holocaust.
Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority which governs the West Bank, studied in the Soviet Union and authored his doctoral dissertation on “The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945.” His position, as Clifford May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies summarizes, was that “Zionists” assisted with “the annihilation of the Jewish population in European countries occupied by Nazi Germany to implement the Zionist ideal of mass colonization of Palestine and create a Jewish state on its territory.”
Abbas has also cast doubt on the reality of the horrors carried out against Jews by the Nazis, and said that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust might have been “even less than a million” but was exaggerated so that “Zionists” could have “greater gains” when the time came to “distribute the spoils.”
Abbas’ writings on the Holocaust align with the Soviet Party line which seeks to paint Israel as “irreparable and irredeemable.”
What’s more, during World War II, the Nazis broadcast specifically different anti-Semitic propaganda into Arab countries, seeking to stir up more hatred against the Jews, with significant effects.
Today, the evil regime in Tehran has largely taken up Hitler’s quest to exterminate Jews and other “defect” people around the world. They fund, arm, and support terror operations targeting Jews in Israel and around the world. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are just a few of the groups they back, as the world’s leading sponsor of terror.
And what has the United States’ response to Iran’s tentacles of terror in the Middle East and around the world? In recent history — except for the four years of Trump’s presidency — it’s been appeasement.
Starting with the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that saw pallets of cash delivered to Iran on a proverbial silver platter, Iran has been emboldened by — rather than engendered to — the United States. Tehran’s nuclear ambitions have not waned, and the Iranian nuclear program moved from single-digit enrichment to around 60 percent under the JCPOA.
The Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy, conversely, forced Iran to tighten its belt. That meant fewer funds for its terrorist proxies surrounding Israel and around the world — so much so that Hezbollah’s fighters in Lebanon were essentially hat-in-hand looking for spare change from other Arab countries — and less investment in its nuclear program. When Trump ordered the strike that blew Qasem Soleimani into bits as he traveled through Baghdad, the power of an anti-appeasement strategy became clear.
But then Joe Biden was elected and his administration began seeking a return to the JCPOA that had previously appeased and pleased Iran’s bloodthirsty regime. Those attempts were unsuccessful, but the end of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign and Biden’s replacement with flimsy “memorandums of understanding” (MOUs) had only seen Iran ramp up its nuclear ambitions. Subsequent “deals” between the Biden administration and Tehran saw Iran's access to $6 billion restored — supposedly only for humanitarian uses, but that’s a mountain of fungible cash — as well as other shows of deference from the Biden government.
In the wake of Biden’s policies toward Iran, its terrorist proxy Hamas launched the worst terror attack on Israel ever and slaughtered more than 1,300 Israelis. Since the bloody launch of another war from the Gaza Strip, Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists began launching attacks from Lebanon. In just the last week, American troops in the Middle East have been attacked at least 14 times by terrorist groups, many with backing from Iran or using Iranian-made weapons. Additional attacks launched toward Israel by Iran-armed Houthi rebels from Yemen have been intercepted by U.S. forces in the region.
It’s almost as though seeking to appease Iran — by giving it access to funds, lifting sanctions, allowing other prohibitions on its activities to expire, and allowing Tehran greater access to the world economy — is doing the same thing to its evil aims, just as Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler saw the Nazis grow in their ability to execute the Holocaust.
So, what will Joe Biden do now as murderous terrorists look to lay siege to Israel and seek to end its existence while slaughtering its citizens? Will he continue down his Chamberlain-esque “minimalist” policy that has only appeased Iran? Or will he heed the warnings of history and support Israel in its righteous campaign to eliminate Hamas, beat back Hezbollah, root out Iran-backed terror groups in the West Bank, and potentially neuter Iran’s aspirations with a strike at the head of the “octopus” whose tentacles again wage war against Israel?
With Democrat displays of blatant anti-Semitism escalating around the United States — Hamas flags flying in American cities and higher education pervaded with calls for “glory” to be heaped upon the barbarians who raped women until their pelvises broke, beheaded children, and burned families alive in their homes — it’s clear now, as it was among British citizens in the 1930s, that there are plenty of people who believe stopping Iran and its tentacles is not the right course of action.
But what horrors may await if Tehran and its terrorist proxies are not stopped and prevented from continuing to propagate their evil? It wasn't Britain that was immediately invaded by the Nazis. But Chamberlain's appeasement allowed Hitler to bring death to its doorstep and brought about the eventual horrors of World War II. History has shown us what can happen when evil is appeased, and we must heed its warnings.
