For the second time this year, as they dodged another barrage of almost 200 Iranian ballistic missiles, Israelis were reminded of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s ruthless vow, frequently repeated, to “uproot” and “eliminate” the Jewish nation, which he called “a tumorous cancer.” No doubt many Israelis, running for shelter, angrily thought of the incessant demands by Western leaders that Israel try yet another round of diplomatic talks with the terrorists that have been ravaging the Jewish nation for over seven decades:: demands from the leaders of France and Germany and the US, from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken—who were deeply involved themselves in the Russia-Ukraine war and yet had adamantly refused the Russian president’s offer of a ceasefire there. Usually, Iran’s Khamenei would order his proxy armies in Gaza and Lebanon to bombard Israeli citizens while pretending to the world that Iran had nothing to do with it. But after Hamas launched its barbarous attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had his own understanding of who should be uprooted and eliminated. Despite frenzied objections by the same people who insisted on a ceasefire, Netanyahu ordered the IDF to wage unrelenting war against Hamas murderers, which might take a year or longer, and then prepare to bring the same kind of justice to Hezbollah, particularly its Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, a protégé and friend of Ali Khamenei. When the IDF went on the attack against Hamas, Hezbollah tried to split Israeli forces by attacking northern Israel with rockets--and even a planned invasion. Netanyahu kept Hezbollah at bay until most of Hamas’s underground infrastructure and its fighters were destroyed. Then he had a unique surprise for Nasrallah and his gunmen. To avoid Israel listening in on their phone conversations, Nasrallah ordered his company commanders to carry pagers and use walkie-talkies. Unwittingly, he purchased booby-trapped equipment from an Israeli shell company. On September 17, 2024, while in the pockets or backpacks or hands of their owners, the pagers exploded, evidently having received a radio code. Thousands were maimed and some killed. The next day the walkie-talkies exploded and maimed many more. Israeli planes then destroyed hundreds of rocket launchers and picked off one Hezbollah leader after another until finally, on September 27, its bombs dug deep into the earth to reach Nasrallah and put an end to the most wanted terrorist in the world. Even part of the ceasefire crowd had to reluctantly approve the assassination of Nasrallah. The US and a number of other countries had designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Notably, the European Union had applied that label only to the group’s military wing, as if there were a moral separation of some sort between a leader and the killers he pays. Though Hezbollah is Iran’s army in Lebanon and will be armed with nuclear weapons from Iran, Joe Biden has publicly declared the US will not help Israel destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities. He and Antony Blinken still cannot relinquish their well-rehearsed mantra that “Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism, but it must be through diplomacy, to have a ceasefire and reach an agreement.” They ignore the stated intentions by Hezbollah and Hamas, even written in the Hamas Charter—the same intentions expressed by Supreme Leader Khamenei: to “uproot” and “eliminate” the Jewish nation. And they ignore the truth that men like Ali Khamenei show the futility of diplomacy when it comes to psychopaths whose ideologies would undo centuries of civilization. For decades, Benjamin Netanyahu exercised a diplomacy so remarkable it allowed Israel to grow and thrive in the face of a hostile world, most exemplified by the pernicious and antisemitic United Nations. But Netanyahu has always known nothing would change Khamenei’s plans. Now the foremost diplomat of Israel has strapped on his pistol and donned the cap of commander in chief. Fortunately for his besieged nation, devising military operations and ordering soldiers into battle is a perfect fit for their prime minister, a former heroic commando in one of Israel’s elite special forces. Once Israel has defeated Iran’s terrorist proxies, the Iranian Supreme Leader must fight his own battles against an Israeli prime minister who was in the Israeli Defense Forces by his eighteenth birthday, fought in numerous battles against Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Yasser Arafat’s terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization--and is more than ready to add the ever-belligerent Iran to that list. Israel has a good chance to once again emerge victorious against all the odds. In any case, history will heavily condemn the leaders of the Free World for choosing to be spectators as this small nation fights alone for its very existence. These short-sighted and timid leaders have made themselves the new Neville Chamberlains and will be in the same historical category as the Munich debacle of 1938 when Czechoslovakia was abandoned to another madman for whom diplomacy was utterly futile. Robert Scott Kellner, a navy veteran, is a retired English professor who taught at the University of Massachusetts and Texas A & M University. He is the grandson of the [non-Jewish] German justice inspector and diarist Friedrich Kellner and is the editor and translator of My Opposition: The Diary of Friedrich Kellner--A German against the Third Reich, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom.
