The Qassam rockets fired into Israel are surely a war crime, a crime against innocent civilians by Hamas, but they pose less of a threat than the common flu. More people die every month in Israel from the common flu than have ever been killed by Qassam rockets flying into the country.

I would like to point out a few sharply-contrasted comparisons between Qassam Rockets and the flu:

1) Proliferation of the flu virus is casual, and unintentional by those who carry it.

2) Naturally-occurring Influenza was not created by one man to weaponize it against a neighbor he hates.

3) It is sad enough that Influenza and other communicable illnesses and disease can cause a greater mortality rate than these Qassam Rockets.

But it becomes a horrific nightmare to imagine the outcome if one could indeed weaponize and focus a concerted bio-warfare attack against a purported enemy to cause mass-mortality. This is actually a viable discussion in certain places right now.

4) Given this, it should be noted with gratitude that minimal property damage and physical harm/mortality has come from Qassam Rocket attacks.

however, it would be a far different playing field if these tiny rockets could be accurately guided in order to have a high incidence of collateral damage and casualties.

Recent events show us a demonstration of Iran’s intention of extending rocket technology and payload delivery in order to reach Israel, which I can safely conclude is an Iranian objective in the regional struggle for domination, semetic genocide, etc.

With clandestine efforts by North Korea, and such politically-embarrassing gaffes as catching a German ship transporting weapons and ammunition destined for Iran, it is apparent to me that the needed technology will eventually reach Iran at some point. It will be just a matter of time, and better concealment by her clandestine allies.

In either case, the perspective of taking neither Influenza or Qassam Rockets seriously is perilous to those who would suffer harm or mortality as result. In both cases, preventative and defensive measures work best.

Israeli’s IDF is focused on this exact point, lest a surge in lives lost or damage to property skyrocket.

Yes, my pun was fully intended…

Nothing will. We live in an age when people believe what they wish to believe. Neither history nor facts nor deductive reasoning that proceeds from facts move them.

Hamerow gives full credit to the supreme efforts made by the allies in the war to defeat Hitlerism – once the allies belatedly recognized that their appeasement and isolationism would not avert the danger of further territorial aggression.

In the final analysis, there were three reasons why the west only watched the Holocaust.

First, the legacy of the isolationism that tainted all Western political parties in the inter-war period. This left the West with a residual sense that what Hitler did to his own people was his own business.

Second, a near-universal toxic mixture of anti-Semitism and fear of anti-Semitism. This was the context for any discussion of doing more to help the Jews of Europe. Anti-Semites before the war treated Hitler’s racist policies as an internal matter. Once the war started, any discussion of explicitly helping the Jews was treated as a distraction from the supreme effort to win the war. And the staunchest anti-fascist [political leaders worried that any effort at aiding Jews would stir up anti-Semitic feelings ion the citizenry – the feelings that Hitler and Goebbels constantly tried to fuel – that the war was for the benefit of the Jews. A macabre balance was maintained between hatred of Jews and fear of anti-Semites as the gas chambers did their work.

And third, a failure of the imagination necessary to appreciate the depth of Hitler’s evil and the seriousness of his commitment to the “final solution”. Western leaders restrained themselves from even talking openly about the death camps. They worried that many citizens would regard such talk as ridiculous exaggerations akin to WWI baby-killing atrocity tales from the “Rape of Belgium”, and thereby discredit themselves as preposterous propagandists. In fact, many western political leaders harbored their own doubts about whether the death camp reports were not in part lobbying pressure tactics directed at increasing Jewish immigration. Western foreign-policy “realists” certainly felt that Hitler’s Jew-hatred could not be stronger than his will to win the war; as a political leader, surely he would put national survival over Jewish extinction. Few could believe that, by the time Hitler could be stopped, the Jews of Europe might be a cause irretrievably lost.

Hamerow attributes the largest role to anti-Semitism and the reciprocal fear of anti-Semitism. But the interaction of all three factors enabled the ultimate sad outcome, an outcome so dismal that even now we refuse to acknowledge it: the near-total success of Hitler’s plan to rid Europe of Jews. The Germans murdered two-thirds of the Jews within their reach, and the majority of the rest left Europe as soon as possible. Most of those who fled came to the US and Israel.

Which brings us to the present day.

Again, we see a nation seeking to control its region and dominate its neighbors. We see this nation in the hands of militant fanatical ideologues and apocalyptic tyrants. We hear in their own words their hatred of the Jews and their commitment to destroy them.

And now we see them devoting all themselves to a level of nuclear armament that will put their neighbors under their control, and put extinction of the hated Jews within easy military reach.

And again, the factors which enabled Hitler’s Germany are at work to enable Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

The counsels of isolationism tell us to stay out of the fight, to maintain even-handed detachment, to avoid antagonizing enemies or reassuring allies. Indeed, we seek to have neither enemies to oppose nor friends to support.

And anti-Semitism stalks the world more fiercely and openly even than in the 1930’s. Islamism has revived The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the resentment of the Jews as all-powerful world puppet-masters. Once again, Jews are cautioned not to wear openly Jewish clothing or hats on the streets of cosmopolitan, urbane, post-modern, multicultural Europe, for fear of mob attack. Meanwhile, Democratic elder statesman advise Israel, “for its own good”, to avoid antagonizing the world with its bad behavior, or risk a rise of…anti-Semitism!…in Gaza and the West Bank!

And, above all, we have the pernicious influence of foreign-policy realists who reassure us that Iran couldn’t possibly mean what it says about eradicating Israel. That’s just rhetoric, big talk. They must know that they couldn’t possibly use nuclear weapons even if they get them. After all, they wouldn’t want to risk the casualties from an Israeli or UIS second-strike. They’re not crazy, after all!

The ultimate failure of imagination, as we saw on 9/11, is to refuse to believe people when they say they want to murder us.

Will we, once again, sit and watch? Despite the present excitement about “talks”, it appears that the world is dithering while Iran arms itself with first-strike weapons of annihilation.

They “speculate” based upon the ‘quantifiable (logical) variables’ ignoring ‘confounding (illogical) variables’ therefore they lay claim without certainty because the quantity of ‘logic’ the dependent variable, is not a constant & is precarious at best. It’s dangerously irresponsible to make assertions & draw ‘any reliable’ statistical conclusions when factors in your scale are flawed.

-you say this at a time when there is a war, via Iranian funding, training, and supplying of armies in Lebanon and Palestine, when Iranian terrorist agents in the US, or France, or UK, might, at a moment of heated passions, do something. And you have perfect faith all this can never balloon into anything more. The bottom line is that Israel does not know exactly when Iran will have a bomb – and it really only needs one or two – capable of destroying Israel. Who knows when they will fear enough, or when Obama, humiliated enough by his international bumblings, will do something in a cloud of emotional calculations. So what if Ahmadinejad is not a law unto himself; do you really think the Mullahs aren’t also obsessed with antisemitism and apocalyptic dreams of a returning Mahdi? How anyone can look at this and be sure no war can break out is to have a kind of faith guarantee that I think can only emerge from a need to come to terms, somehow, anyhow, with a real existential crisis, the uncertainty of which is too much to bear.

What exactly is your definition of a ‘legitimate threat’?

How can one ‘measure legitimacy’ on a sliding scale?

Legitimacy is a factor of perception with infinite variables.

“In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action – what is often called ruthless – what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.”

You have no parameters to measure legitimacy against, therefore you have no right to judge.