Israel in the Crosshairs

By Alan Caruba

“Israel's security cabinet convened Wednesday, April 2, to examine the homeland's preparedness for war. It decided to redistribute the bio/chemical warfare masks a few months after they were called in. DEBKAfile's military sources disclose intelligence data indicating the possibility that Syria may transfer to Hezbollah chemical or biological warheads known to have been developed for its war arsenal.”

When you have spent every day of your sixty years of sovereignty having to deal with either full-scale wars against your existence, persistent terrorist attacks on your citizens, or the constant rain of rockets and mortars from Gaza, preparing for war becomes second nature.

Hezbollah and Hamas are Iran’s proxy militias, created, funded, and equipped by a nation led by ayatollahs that daily chant “Death to America! Death to Israel!” Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, hasn’t even smooth-talked its plans to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.”

A cursory perusal of Israel’s leading newspapers and Internet news sites does not reveal that it is about to move to a full war-footing, but that might just be part of the effort to deceive the militias poised in Lebanon and Gaza, as well as the military forces being massed in Syria. The Syrians are still smarting from a recent Israeli attack on structures said to contain possible nuclear or other WMDs.

If I was to guess when an attack would come, I would put a red circle around April 20 because that is the first day of Passover. The contempt and hatred felt for Israel’s Jews promoted the now famous and failed attack on Yom Kippur in 1973. It reflects the widely held hatred by many Middle Eastern Muslims for all “Crusaders (Christians) and Zionists.”

Israel is on the front line, an affront to the Islamic hubris that lays claim to Jerusalem, a city holy to Christians and Jews. A city built by Jews as the capital of Israel more than 2,000 years before Islam existed. Christians sought to reclaim it from Muslims during the Crusades.

The Zionist movement, begun in 1897, was a response to widespread anti-Semitism in Europe and Russia. It encouraged Jews to return to their ancient holy land, the area that became a British protectorate under the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles. Following WWII, the original settlers were waiting for the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.

Then as now, the Arab response was war. An attack on Israel is a declaration of war on the West. If the West does not rally to the defense of Israel it will signal the jihadists that we are ripe for conquest.

Anti-Semitism is rampant throughout Great Britain these days despite the terrorist attacks it suffered. The BBC is supine in its surrender to Islam. In Europe, the responses to Muslim protests have ranged from timid to moments of moral outrage. America’s focus is the occupation of Iraq and the backwater conflict in Afghanistan.

The Islamic Revolution’s threat is growing. Israel cannot ignore it. The United States for whom 9/11 is a receding memory does so at the peril of its existence. Half-hearted or measured military responses have not worked.

The Koran is a battle plan.