When it comes to the events of the last two decades in Israel, I think that history will record with surprise that the people who had the most reasons to remember the lessons of the Second World War so readily forgot them. Time and time again, Israel appeased its enemies and bowed before international pressure. “Never again,” the world said – but the world (the whole world, including Israel) forgot that those words meant more than staging solemn memorials and giving Oscars to Schindler’s List.

What should we have learned from the Second World War?

We should have learned that madmen will often state their goals openly and that, when their insanity is coupled with national power, it can be deadly for a nation.

We should have learned that when people say they want to kill you, you ought to take them at their world and react appropriately.

We should have learned that negotiations are impossible with an enemy whose final goal is fixed. To them – to those who seek and refuse to abandon a final goal – all deals are merely tactical manoeuvres. No deal they sign and no promise they make can be trusted.

But Israel forgot.

Time and time again, the Israelis spoke bold words, and then withdrew under pressure. They gave the Sinai back to the Egyptians. They went to Camp David and – in a move which may yet prove fatal to the Israeli nation – conceded to the idea of a Palestinian state. The pulled out of Southern Lebanon. They left the Gaza Strip. They are in the processing of abandoning great swaths of the West Bank. It is not in mirth, but in horror that I note that the Israelis are rapidly running out of places to abandon – save Israel itself.

The Moslem world wishes to see Israel destroyed. This wish is nearly universal. Most of you out there who have dealt civilly with individual Moslems will doubtlessly observed the common phenomenon wherein a Moslem’s outward veneer of civilization dissolves the moment the subject of the Jews comes up. They hate them. They wish to destroy them. Their own holy book commands this. They will not be persuaded. They will not be dissuaded. It is the primary obsession of what is laughably known as their “civilization.”

No number of concessions will make Israel’s enemies love it. Indeed, every compromise that Israel has made has been taken by its opponents as a sign of weakness – a shrewd and fair judgement given that every decision to withdraw has been exactly that. However you want to spin it, Israel has withdrawn time and time again under fire because they were too weak to withstand the pressure. Not militarily too weak, you must understand – but politically and morally too weak.

Time and time again, the Israelis have paid the Danegeld. But they are not rid of the Dane.

Ultimately, it is a matter of them or them. Either the Israelis win or the Palestinians win. It’s a matter of us or them. Either our civilization wins or our enemies win. There is no gray area or middle ground. This is a fight to the end, whether some wish to recognize it or not.

If the Jew and the Moslem cannot live together – and all signs are that they cannot – then they must live apart. This is the recognized truth behind the attempt by Israel to unilaterally establish its own borders. But that attempt fails to recognize that good fences cease to make good neighbours once rockets enter the equation. It is not enough for the Israeli and the “Palestinian” to live separately. They must live apart as well.

The physical relocation of certain populations has been a long-standing feature of human history. As recently as the aftermath of the Second World War, massive population transfers have occurred (in that case, mostly of ethnic Germans). Over the last six decades, hundreds of thousands of Jews have been driven from their homes in Moslem lands.

It’s long past time that we recognize that the transfer (or, screw the euphemisms – the forced relocation) of the “Palestinian” Arabs is the only long-term solution which offers the Israeli state a reasonable chance of survival. The most plausible alternative is a long war of demographic and political attrition which ends in the destruction of Israel as we know it.

The scenario is easy enough to envision. The Moslems will never be satisfied – they will always have more demands. And the Israelis are more and more like other people in the West – desperate for peace above all else. Bit by bit, the Arabs will chip away at Israel. There will be no more mass migrations to the Jewish state. By the middle of the century, the Jews in Israel will be vastly outnumbered by the quick-breeding Moslems. In the best-case scenario, Israel will simply fade away bit by bit and year by year.

Of course, the worst-case scenario under present conditions is much, much worse.

Israel will survive only through dramatic action. It will survive only by changing the fundamental rules of the game. So long as Israel agrees to play by this rigged set of rules, its destruction is made virtually inevitable. To accede to the idea of the Palestinians as a “wronged” people and to negotiate with them in any way, shape, or form is to invite Israel’s destruction. To allow them their own state is insane. Such a state will –as has already been proven – inevitably become a terrorist haven.

Wars – particularly wars as deeply rooted in faith and history as this one – are never ended by negotiation. Any deal, any peace accord, is simply a tactical pause for one or both sides. It will not be over – truly over – until one side is so thoroughly defeated that any and all resistance becomes absolutely hopeless.

The greatest problem for the West – in Israel as in Iraq and elsewhere – is our collective loss of the nerve to do the kind of things which have to be done to win wars. Our ancestors understood that victory is never achieved by restraint. A true and decisive victory can only be secured through the complete and utter annihilation of the enemy – however long and difficult such an outcome may be to achieve it must always be the final goal.
Rome’s final victory over Carthage should stand as an example of how a war ought to end. The Romans – having faced destruction at the hands of the Carthaginians and knowing that they would revive unless an end was put to them – not only destroyed the city, but salted the Earth, killed the adult men, and enslaved the rest of the population.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting that the Israelis should do everything that the Romans did. After all – they might want to live on the land the Palestinians now hold and slavery is a great moral wrong. But the spirit of the Romans ought to be embraced.

In World War Two, we bombed and destroyed German and Japanese cities without a second thought. We did it because we knew that our lives and, in many cases, the existence of our nations was at stake. The same is true here. As goes Israel, so goes the West. Israel is the Canary in the Coal Mine. If the Israelis are defeated and destroyed because of their own weakness, so too will the civilization of Europe fall before a resurgent Islam.