For those schooled in the Punic Wars and Cato The Elder, you will know what my title means. For others not so enlightened, I will elaborate.
During the Punic Wars, Cato The Elder, the Roman statesman, coined the phrase "Carthago delenda est!" It meant in Latin "Carthage must be destroyed!" It is, to my knowledge, the first time that the maxim in politics "If you say something long enough and loud enough people will believe it is true," was put to useful effect. Cato got his wish. Carthage was razed to the ground, its citizens sold into slavery and its soil plowed and sodden with salt to make it dead land. Tacitus likely said it best when he said "They created a desert and called it peace."
So why have I altered Cato's quote by replacing Carthage with Israel? Because since the 1930's the continental Europeans and then the militant Islamists have developed the same obsession with the destruction of Israel that Cato infected the Roman Republic with many thousands of years ago. The plot has not changed, simply the characters. Adolf Hitler took his place as Cato The Elder, declaring that the nation of Judaism (not the state of Israel because it did not yet exist) was the cause of all Germany's woes and absolutely had to be destroyed. Germany and its occupied European collaborators then systematically set about destroying the Jews the way that Rome pursued Carthage: to any limits, any barbarity and as efficiently as possible. Because there was a third power involved in WWII that was not present in the Punic Wars, the Anglo-Americans, the Nazis and their allies were dispatched before they finished the extermination of the Jews. However, that is not where the story ends, there is a bridge to today.
That bridge is the unquenchable thirst for the last drop of Jewish blood that escaped through Otto Skorzeny's ODESSA network to infect the Muslim world with their rallying cry: "Judaea delenda est!" (Source: The Beast Reawakens by Martin Lee) It was Skorzeny in his postwar existence from friendly Spain (under the dictator Franco) that greased the wheels of arms deals for Egypt under Gamel Abdel Nasser as well as sending hardcore Nazis that escaped the Nuremburg trials to the Egyptians to train their military with the specific aim of eliminating the recently established state of Israel. It was with Skorzeny and other Nazis' help that Nasser prepared for what he thought would be the end of the Jewish position in the Levant: the 1967 War. When the result was not what anyone but Israel wanted, the position that Israel must cease to exist was transferred to the Palestinian population by the Nazis with the help of their Arab allies. It is fortunate for them that their desire was passed on because the more dangerous, industrialized powers against Israel, Egypt and Jordan, signed peace accords with Israel. That is where we cross the bridge to the modern day war in Gaza.
Even two generations hence from the Nazis' attempt to implement the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question" (a question which I say, tongue in cheek, was 'When and how do they all die exactly?'), Israel is fighting a different enemy with the same aims. The Nazis are relics of history, but Hamas is here and they have the exact same demand: the Jews cannot exist in their neck of the woods in any reality. The Hamas constitution says so. Yet when Israel moves to counteract this clear threat, it is called the bully. A legitimately elected government has declared a constant state of war on Israel from the Gaza Strip and when Israel retaliates, Israel is castigated by the world community because Hamas has disproportionate weapons with which to efficiently dispatch the IDF. This obsession has evolved into a death cult after it evolved with Islam in Gaza to the point that Hamas fighters willingly use women and children for shields and sometimes those women consent. It is a very dangerous combination, the idea that "Judaea delenda est" equals paradise.
Perhaps Americans understand the Israeli position best because of our culture. We have a saying for a fight like this: "You just brought a knife to a gunfight." It is the intent that matters and if Israel did not have the gun, Hamas would slit their throat. Who in a rational frame of mind would blame Israel for using its gun to dispatch the knife fighter with all due speed?
