Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin
Rabbi Yitschak RudominCourtesy
Images and sounds of mass protests in the West supporting Hamas terrorism and opposing Israel's right to self-defence against its sworn enemies may be something new to people uneducated and unfamiliar with the modern history of the Western World that has been afflicted by the need to appease and support countries and groups that are enemies of the West.
"The West" or the "Western World" generally refers to the United States, the countries of Western Europe such as the United Kingdom and France and those countries that either support them or are their strongest allies. In particular, over the past two hundred years the United States, the United Kingdom (Great Britain) and France have shared and valued common ideals of democracy and freedom as encapsulated by the famous motto of the 1789 French Revolution of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
In modern times Fascism, in particular Nazism, previously primarily based in Germany, Communism, previously primarily based in the former Soviet Union (Russia), and radical Islamic Fundamentalism, now mostly prominently active in parts of the Middle East by means of Arab terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and by Iran's government. These are as vociferously anti-Semitic as the Nazis were during the times of the Holocaust
How the West blundered before the World War II with Appeasement and Isolationism
During the times of the rise of Fascism, especially of Nazism and of Communism, the West revealed weakness and ambivalence towards opposing ideologies, political systems, groups and countries that were Fascists or Communists. While Fascism and Communism were taking root in countries like Germany and Italy that fell to Fascists, and in Russia and China that fell to the Communists, all during the twentieth century, the leadership of the West could not rally and was initially defeated in any efforts that were made to counter and oppose Fascism, Nazism and Communism.
There were many in the West who during the time Fascism, Nazism and Communism were rising, gaining strength and taking hold in other countries, who not only supported it but wanted to drag down their own countries to serve the same radical ideologies that had infested Germany, Italy, Russia and China.
Before World War II broke out in 1939, Great Britain was afflicted by the politics and emotions of Appeasement. From the time Hitler and the Nazis took over Germany in 1933 every British government refused to take Hitler at his word when he said that he was set on making Germany the dominant world power and would crush all his enemies, especially the Jews.

"Appeasement, in an international context, is a diplomatic negotiation policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald (in office 1929–1935), Stanley Baldwin (in office 1935–1937) and (most notably) Neville Chamberlain (in office 1937–1940) towards Nazi Germany (from 1933) and Fascist Italy (from 1922) between 1935 and 1939. Under British pressure, appeasement of Nazism and Fascism also played a role in French foreign policy of the period but was always much less popular there than in the United Kingdom....Appeasement was strongly supported by the British upper class, including royalty, big business, the House of Lords, and media such as the BBC and The Times." (Wikipedia)

It was a massive mental block, blindness, delusion and madness that inserted itself into the minds of Britain's leaders and its elites, blinding them to the dangers of making peace with and accommodating the Devil himself who was bound to attack the very ones trying to appease him. The same thing was going on in the United States where the political forces of Appeasement and Isolationism were led by the notorious Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK):

"Kennedy rejected the belief of Winston Churchill that any compromise with Nazi Germany was impossible. Instead, he supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Throughout 1938, while the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany intensified, Kennedy attempted to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler. Shortly before the Nazi bombing of British cities began in September 1940, Kennedy once again sought a personal meeting with Hitler without the approval of the U. S. Department of State, in order to 'bring about a better understanding between the United States and Germany'." (Wikipedia)

It was only when Nazi Germany attacked Poland in 1939 that Britain and France finally realized that they had been led astray by HItler's trickery and their own blindness. They were like the proverbial ostrich that rather than stand and fight its obvious enemies instead sticks its head into the sand hoping that all will turn out for the best. Shockingly and dangerously, even though Britain and France finally declared war on Germany after it invaded Poland in September of 1939, America stuck to the ostrich "strategy" until December of 1941 when Japan attacked it and Hitler joined in by declaring war on America. America finally responded in kind by declaring war on Nazi Germany.

The politics and public opinion that supported Appeasement and Isolationism in America, Britain and France went down the tubes as Germany, Italy and Japan showed their true dark and sinister colors and threw off all pretense, revealing their true murderous and genocidal viciousness hell bent on world domination.

How the West lost to Communism in China and Vietnam during the Cold War

After World War II there was a standoff between the West and the Communist countries that was known as the Cold War but it was anything but "cold"! In the Far East, the Communists of Russia were able to ensure that the Communists of China would win and take control by 1949. The Communists then set out to conquer more neighboring lands in the Far East and set off the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 managing to take control of North Korea that has remained as one of the last Stalinist states. The Communists then set out to conquer Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by defeating first the French and then forcing the United States to withdraw from Vietnam as Communist North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam.

The West represented by France was defeated by the Communists in 1954. That resulted in the division of Vietnam into Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam supported by the United States. The Communists were determined to wage war on South Vietnam and conquer it. That resulted in the outbreak of the Vietnam War with America fighting the Communists and North Vietnam from 1955 to 1973:

"The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975...While the war was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, the north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies, making the war a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union...The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries officially becoming communist states by 1976." (Wikipedia)

How could it be that a nuclear-armed super-power like the United States that had won both world wars and held off the Communists in Korea could lose to the Communists in Vietnam and Indo-China? One of the biggest factors was the anti-war movement in the United States that rose to a frenzy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Millions of demonstrators and especially college age students marched all over America denouncing the American government and calling for America to withdraw from fighting. The media, academia, liberals and even some conservatives fell back into the old Isolationism mould saying that America had no business meddling in the affairs of countries far from its borders.

Communism, meaning primarily the USSR and China, won a great victory when its power forced America to withdraw from the Vietnam War and Communist forces helped North Vietnam defeat and over-run South Vietnam. Basically America shot itself in its own foot and suffered a self-inflicted wound by submitting to the power of the Communists and refusing to use its maximum military power, including both the threat and use of nuclear force to gain a clear-cut victory over Communism the way it had helped defeat Nazi Germany and bombed Japan with atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The West ignores the dangers of Radical Islam

The Arabs, Iranians and Muslims were influenced by both Nazism and Communism and became radicalized especially after the Second World War and following the rise of what they deem as their arch-enemy Western-aligned Israe. The United States has been slow to realize that Islamic radicalism is the West's sworn enemy. The Arabs and Muslims have not been satisfied in fighting only Israel, but have turned their attention to fighting the West. On the one hand millions of Muslims have moved to and now live in Western countries and they are determined to live their lives as strict Muslims setting up Mosques and Islamic-run schools and fighting to impose Sharia law. On the other hand radical Muslims have attacked Western countries and Westerners both in the West and internationally.

One of the biggest blunders made by any American president was when Jimmy Carter supported the expulsion of the pro-Western Shah of Iran and allowed the radical Islamic Ayatollah Khomeini to take power in Iran during the Iranian Revolution in 1979. No sooner had the radical Islamic regime taken hold of power in Iran when they ransacked and held captive the United States embassy in what was known as the Iran Hostage Crisis, a horrific portent of nightmares to come at the hands of radical Islam:

"The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic standoff between Iran and the United States. Fifty-three American diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students...who supported the Iranian Revolution...took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took them as hostages. The hostages were held for 444 days, from November 4, 1979 to their release on January 20, 1981. The crisis is considered a pivotal episode in the history of Iran–United States relations." (Wikipedia)

Things have gone from bad to worse to horrible since then as Iran's radical Islamic regime has aggressively supported terrorism throughout the Middle East, especially anything to do with Israel. Hence Iran's aggressive military, strategic and tactical support for the anti-Israel Axis of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and radical Islamic governments and militias in Iraq and Syria.

True to its pattern of always choosing the wrong side in the build-up to any major global conflagration, the United States has followed a pattern of appeasement of Iran's radical Islamic regime, particularly under the Obama and Biden administrations. They have consistently taken a soft line towards Iran and have refused to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The radical Iranian Islamic regime is sworn to Israel's destruction and if it were to obtain nuclear weapons, there can be no doubt that they would use that against both Israel that it calls the "Little Satan" and eventually against the United States that it calls the "Big Satan"!

The United States fought against the radical Arab regimes of Saddam Hussein of Iraq and executed him in 2006 and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya who was executed in 2011 and removed them from power, showing that America was capable of doing the right thing by facing up to the dangers of maniacal and radical Arab dictators hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and the West.
Both Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya had attempted to start the process of becoming nuclear powers but were foiled when Israel bombed and destroyed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Under intense Western pressure, in 2003 Gadaffi agreed to eliminate Libya's weapons of mass destruction program including its nuclear weapons program.

Radical Islamic Arabs reared their ugly heads and showed their true colors when the radical Arab Islamic Al Qaeda terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC on September 11, 2001:

"In 1996, bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, issued his first fatwā, which declared war against the United States and demanded the expulsion of all American soldiers from the Arabian Peninsula. In a second 1998 fatwā, bin Laden outlined his objections to American foreign policy with respect to the State of Israel, as well as the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. Bin Laden maintained that Muslims are obliged to attack American targets until the aggressive policies of the U.S. against Muslims were reversed." (Wikipedia)
By 2023 the Shiite Islamic radicals in Iran had fully joined forces with the Muslim Brotherhood Sunni Hamas Islamic terrorists in directly attacking Israel, gruesomely exhibited by the October 7, 2023 massacre and by Iran openly firing hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel on April 13, 2024. The response of the West has been ambivalent at best and treacherous at worst. The Biden administration, true to form, follows in the appeasement footsteps of the Carter and Obama administrations by refusing to take forceful action against the radical Iranian regime for its attacks against Israel in particular and the West at large. The Houthi Iranian proxies attack Western shipping in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden with no attempt to stop them.
The ultra liberal revolutionary anti-Western radical organizers on campuses have joined hands with the radical Islamic and Arab students and agitators on American and Western university campuses marching and demanding a variety of anti-Israel measures. They are using the pretext of the war that Hamas started against Israel and Israel's military counter-response as an excuse to riot and shut down university campuses.
As someone once said, "been there, done that", as students protesting and rioting in anti-war demonstrations have happened before in the West but they ultimately only benefited the enemies of the West.
When Isolationists and Appeasers lobbied to keep America and Britain from fighting the Nazis and decisively removing the Fascist ideological cancer afflicting humanity, they undermined themselves and only delayed the day of reckoning when Nazi Germany would bite the hand that tried to feed it.
When students in Western countries rioted and demonstrated against the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 1970s, they undermined the national interests and values of the Western countries that gave them the freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate. The Vietnam War demonstrations were abetting the dictatorial and totalitarian Communist regimes of the USSR, Red China and North Vietnam.
Now the same thing happens, but this time it is not in support of the Nazis who were crushed or Communists of the USSR, China and Vietnam who have by now succumbed to Western influence and have taken on Capitalism as their own. Now students wave Palestinian flags in support of radical Islamic Arabs and Iranians who stand for the total destruction of not just Israel but of the the entire West. The radicals cheering Hamas on campuses are showing by what they chant and curse that they support another Holocaust against the Jews of Israel. With the help of God, the Jews will live and thrive in their own homeland in the Land of Israel.
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College–Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988–1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994–1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995–2015. He is also a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York.
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