the threat from Iran is real

Clerics watch as a nuclear-capable Shahab-3 missile, with a range of 1,200 miles, soars into the Iranian sky in military exercises near Qom

Here’s what Bibi has to say:

Netanyahu, leader of the opposition in Israel’s Knesset, said he had been trying for a decade to warn world leaders that Iran represents the greatest threat not just to Israel but also to Europe and America, “but nobody seems to care very strongly.”

Hitler started a war and then tried to develop an atomic bomb, Netanyahu noted, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is building nuclear weapons first and then will start a war, he said.

Unlike 1938 and its aftermath, however, the Jewish people will not be the sacrificial lamb this time, Netanyahu declared.

Netanyahu made this speech in Los Angeles, so he’s not just campaigning (though it could be argued that his entire life is one big campaign). I am not a Netanyahu fan, but I appreciate this particular effort. You can watch it here.

He is not alone in his fears. Ron Rosenbaum, whose book I’ve mentioned before, has been talking about the possibility of a “second Holocaust” for years:

Back in 2002 I initiated a major controversy among Jewish writers by daring to mention the possibility of a “second Holocaust”—-the destruction of the State of Israel, most likely through a nuclear exchange. I quoted Iranian mullah Hashemi Rasfanjani declaring that Iran would not be particularly upset to lose 10 or 15 million people in a nuclear exchange with Israel if it resulted in the extermiation of 5 million Jews there and left a billion or more Muslims alive. Bascially he was saying that there was no deterrence. Many didn’t want to face this, think the unthinkable and whined that one shouldn’t say such things aloud, one shouldn’t think so pessimistically, foolishly boasting of the Israeli nuclear deterrent Rasfanjani’s stance made irrelevant. (You can read about this controversy in the anthology of essays on anti-semitism I edited, Those Who Forget the Past).

Alas a Second Holocaust is now virtually Iranian state policy (although their leader denies the first one).

“Something has changed,” Rosenbaum wrote in his introduction, quoting Paul Berman. And: “Don’t look away,” quoting Samuel G. Freedman.

Yes. Let’s don’t look away.