"An appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile thinking he will eat him last."
_ ~ Winston S. Churchill
The suggestion by Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, NDP MP Peggy Nash and Bloc Québecois MP Maria Moureni that Hezbollah be removed from Canada's list of banned terror organizations in order to advance the cause of Mid-East peace is as vile an obscenity as I have heard mouthed from elected officials in my thirty years of involvement in public affairs. It's hypocrisy of transparent electoral whoring shames me as a Canadian. It's cowardice of appeasement sickens me as a human being. It's rewarding of the bloodlust of Hezbollah offends every standard of civilized man.
These MPs claim that Hezbollah's de-listing would open the way to discussions with them of their "grievances" leading to its disarming and full evolution into a strictly political force. They arrived at this conclusion after a "fact-finding" trip to Lebanon sponsored by the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations. Naturally Israel was not included in these MP's "fact-finding". Well here's a memo for them. For the sake of Canada's soul and spirit, so recently restored in pride and purpose by a bold new Prime Minister, it is to be hoped they "get it".
Hezbollah's only grievance, as set out in section 7 of its Charter is that Israel exists. Its purpose is to "wipe Israel off the map." It considers it a "foreign entity" on what it views as an "Islamic Waqf" or protectorate. It seeks to kill Jews for the sole reason that they are Jews. It is a proxy army for Iran; funded by Iran; trained and supplied by Iran and Syria and commanded, in many of its units, by Iranians. Iran's Ahmadinjed has made clear his intentions not only to eliminate Israel and all Jews, but to impose Islamic hegemony on the west. On what point would these MPs wish to begin to negotiate?
Taking them off the terrorist list would be a signal that Canada succumbs to, and rewards, terror. That Canada is a weak sister not to be counted on. And that if the Islamic Fascist alliance that Hezbollah is a part of blows off enough limbs and severs enough heads the west will succumb and surrender. I'm sure these MPs are sorry they missed the pro-Hezbollah demonstration in London on Saturday that featured prominent signs calling for a support of the restoration of the "Caliphate".
It is sadly coincidental that these "public servants" mouthed their obscenities only weeks away from Sept.29th. That is the date, sixty-eight years ago, that Britain's Chamberlain, France's Daladier, Germany's Hitler and Italy's Mussolini signed the infamous Munich Agreement that dismembered the Czech Republic and sacrificed it on the altar of Nazi barbarism. As Churchill said then of Chamberlain, "He wanted neither war nor Hitler. He got both."
As today, the period leading up to Munich also saw excuse after excuse proffered up for the "root causes" of fascist "disaffection". Instead of recognizing and confronting Hitler's tyrannical ambitions, western leaders betrayed their own peoples by mouthing Hitler's platitudes that Germany only wanted a little "Lebensraum" - living space for a growing population. Even after the Anshcluss on Austria, Chamberlain and Daladier rationalized it as the coming together of the same German-speaking people and not any of their business.
But their symphony of fey and feckless inaction came to a crescendo in that sad September of 1938. The Czech Republic, first under President Masaryk and then under President Benes, was arguably the most liberally humanist government on the continent of Europe. After Munich, which ceded the Czech Sudetenland to Germany, the Nazis were still not satisfied. Germany started a monstrous propaganda campaign of disinformation attempting to paint Czech President Benes as a provocateur and threat to the German people. One million troops were added to the Nazi war machine aimed specifically at the Czechs. The Soviet Union offered to help the Czechs and send an army against the Nazis. But they needed the permission of the Poles to cross Polish territory. The Poles refused.
While Britain and France, in attempting to appease Hitler, kept pressuring Benes to accept any and all German terms, the Poles had their own agenda. While Germany got the Sudetenland, Poland demanded the Czech territory of Teschen which had a sizeable Polish population. Several months after Munich the Czechs were pressured to cede Teschen to the Poles. Polish Marshal Ridz Smigly had denied the Soviet Union's request to help the Czechs and send an army against Hitler ostensibly because he was afraid of Soviet troops even crossing Polish territory. The real reason was Polish territorial ambitions against the Czech Republic.
At that time the Soviet Army would have been a match against the Nazis. Hitler could have been stopped. But because of British and French fears and Polish greed nothing happened. Within sixteen months Poland had neither Teschen nor its own sovereignty after the Nazi blitzkrieg in September of 1939. The Soviet Union, seeing the west's weakness, signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that divided Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union and the latter did not enter the war for another two years.
By the summer of 1940 all of Western Europe was in Hitler's grasp. The west's earnestness for negotiations was seen for what it was. Weakness. And Hitler took full advantage. The west's insistence on minimizing each aggression of the Nazi beasts and characterizing them as isolated incidents divorced from any broader threat was the single over-riding factor that permitted Hitler to re-arm Germany, pursue his territorial and genocidal ambitions, and plunge the world into an abyss from which 60 million souls would not arise.
Maria Moureni had the temerity to call Prime Minister Harper's pro-Israel position "Canada's Shame". What spineless audacity. The truth of the matter is that Wrzesnewskyj, Nash and Moureni have brought ignominy and infamy on this country by being the first western elected officials to call for the appeasement of Hezbollah. They have committed treason to the legacy of the tens of thousands of Canadian men and women who have died for the survival and the success of liberty and who now lay buried row on row beneath fields where poppies grow.
This gang of three would do well to remember Churchill's admonition that "An appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile hoping he will eat him last."
Beryl Wajsman, Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal