Townhall cover for the article by Larry Kelley

Original Article in Townhall Magazine (pdf)

In the spring of 1945, when a liberated survivor of a World War II Nazi death camp was asked what he had learned from his ordeal, he replied, “When someone says he wants to kill you, believe him.” During the holocaust, in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the “tragedy of powerlessness,” millions of European Jews walked, obedient and docile, all the way into the gas chambers. This fact painfully permeates the modern Israeli psyche to the extent that it gives rise to a kind of national mantra—never again. Today, it is incomprehensible for those outside Israel to understand how Israelis must be feeling, knowing that there is a new Nazi-like state poised to attempt Israeli annihilation.

APPEASEMENT AND THE FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS

In 346 B.C., prior to the conquest of the Greek mainland by the armies of Macedon, Greek ambassadors agreed to a treaty called the Peace of Philocrates. After years of negotiations, the terms of the treaty allowed Macedon to absorb still more land—two very small city-states, Phocis and Alos. It proscribed that the Greeks stand by while their fellow Greeks of two small states were absorbed in the fashion of the ancient world, where many members of the leadership were executed and many of the women and children sold into slavery. Gone were the final two buffer states standing between central Greece and the invading armies from the north. With these two remaining obstacles out of the way, Macedon could prepare for the all-out invasion. More »