The U.S. generally makes allowance for verbal excesses from foreign governments, but if expressions of hatred and incitement to violence are actually harbingers of behavior, destruction and murderousness cannot be far behind.

At the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations [sic], Turkey’s Prime Minister equated Zionism with crimes against humanity. The American response was swift; speaking for himself and the administration, Kerry called the remark “objectionable.” But after expressing dismay, he called for nicer play.

“That said,” he commented, “Turkey and Israel are both vital allies. We want to see them work together to go beyond rhetoric and take concrete steps to change their relationship.” A State Department official concurred, saying the comment was “particularly offensive” and “complicates our ability to do all the things we want to do together.”

But what if Ergodan doesn’t want what the U.S. wants him to want — that is to say, he doesn’t want a changed relationship with Israel? What if harsh rhetoric and open political and financial support for Hamas — a U.S. designated terrorist organization — are part of Turkey’s regional Sunni Islamic ambition, which does not include Israel? What if Turkey’s prior cooperation was a phase to allow it to acquire political and military benefits?

In a similar vein, a few weeks ago, a North Korean diplomat told the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, “As the saying goes, a new-born puppy knows no fear of a tiger. South Korea’s erratic behavior would only herald its final destruction.” He added, “If the U.S. takes a hostile approach toward North Korea to the last, rendering the situation complicated, [we] will be left with no option but to take the second and third stronger steps in succession.” A North Korean general warned of the “miserable destruction” of the United States.

The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament called the comments “profoundly disturbing,” and the Spanish ambassador said he was “stupefied.” Why?

Beginning with President Carter, American administrations have treated North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear capability as defensive: designed to keep South Korea and the U.S. from overthrowing the cultish regime of the North. The U.S. tells itself that since it harbors no plans for any such invasion, it can reassure North Korea on that point and thus lessen its determination to have nuclear capability – hence the U.S. offers food, fuel and a light water reactor, thinking those “gifts” will reassure North Korea of America’s benign intentions.

But what if North Korea is not defensive, but rather Kim Jong Un, like his predecessors, believes that the unification of the peninsula should happen under governance of the North? How then should we understand the diplomat and the general? And how should we understand North Korea’s latest nuclear test?

The British ambassador said of the North Korean diplomat’s remarks, “It cannot be allowed that we have expressions which refer to the possible destruction of U.N. member states.” That is, of course, patently untrue. The U.N. tolerates and sometimes applauds Iranian representatives who have called not for the “possible” destruction of a U.N. member state, Israel, but for its outright annihilation.

“The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumor,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. “The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land… In the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists… Cancer must be eliminated from a body (the region).” For Qods Day last year Ahmadinejad told the Iranians, “Any freedom lover and justice seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the path for the establishment of justice and freedom in the world.”

The P5+1, the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany who are negotiating with Iran, still seem to presume that Iran is pursuing nuclear capability for some reason other than to use it, and that it can, therefore, be dissuaded from developing it. But what if “annihilation of the Zionist regime” really is topmost in the minds of the Mullahs? What if they believe Israel has to disappear and they can make it happen? What will happen, then, when they get nuclear weapons, if they still really believe that?

Vice President Joe Biden recently spoke at two of the largest retirement villages in South Florida, Boca Raton’s Century Village and Tamarac’s Kings Point. Biden, of course, was representing Barack Obama’s bid for reelection in the forthcoming presidential election.

The visit came a day after Benjamin Netanyahu’s poignant speech at the United Nations. Netanyahu spoke of the dire threat posed by Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Netanyahu was dismayed by what he considers America’s tepid response to Iran.

The residents of these huge complexes are senior citizens and are predominantly Jewish Democrats. Most were alive during the time of the Holocaust. Some are survivors. Some are the children of survivors.

All are aware that the world misjudged what seemed to be a ranting madman. Adolph Hitler clearly stated what he had planned. He wrote it in his book, Mein Kampf. All are aware of another ranting madman. Iran’s Ahmadinejad has clearly stated that he wants to “wipe Israel off the map.” One would think that the target audience of Bidens’s talk would be hyper-vigilant to the implications. Apparently, though, they had other things on their minds.

The relationship between this American president and the prime minister of Israel has not been a good one. Although Obama has been to many Arab countries since his election four years ago, he has not visited Israel. Last year, Obama suggested that Israel withdraw to the 1967 lines. Just weeks ago he refused Netanyahu’s request for a meeting. Obama had problems with scheduling. He had fund raising events to attend and had promised to make an appearance on “The View.”

One might think the Jews in Biden’s audience would have been focused on Iran’s threat to Israel, and the lack of respect shown by Obama to Netanyahu, and used the opportunity of this visit to express their concern. Unfortunately, this did not prove to be true.

It seems the Jewish voters had other matters on their minds that outweighed the survival of the Jewish state. The Jews in Century Village and Kings Point were, for the most part, focused on Medicare and their assumption that their best bet for benefits lay in the hands of the Democratic Party. A resident was quoted in the Miami Herald as saying what many were thinking: “I’m not voting over Israel. I’m voting over Medicare.”

An American Jewish Committee poll shows 79 percent of Jewish voters in Florida to be disturbed by the events in Iran. Still, 69 percent of Jewish voters, according to the poll, were sticking with Obama and the Democrats.

The Torah teaches, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” The Jewish voters in Florida need to remember the corollary to this teaching – “If I am only for myself, what am I?” Altruistic motives aside, all Jews suffer when Jew hatred is allowed to fester unchecked.

The Jewish world just celebrated the High Holiday season, a time of collective introspection, celebration and identification. Hopefully, Jews will finally use these lessons to unite with the understanding that indeed “All Israel is responsible for one another.”

Many conservative pundits write and lecture on the threat of radical Islam. Almost none, however, possess political power. Geert Wilders is an exception. Head of the Netherlands’ third largest political party – the Party for Freedom – Wilders is on a mission to halt Islam’s advance in the West.

In May, Wilders published his first book, Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Regnery Publishing). In it, Wilders, as is his wont, ventures beyond the bounds of political correctness. For instance, unlike many other prominent politicians – including those on the Right – Wilders refuses to call Islam a “religion of peace.” In the book, he unabashedly writes:

• “Islam is the problem – and we should not be afraid to say so.”

• “[T]here are many moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam.”

• “Islam…is a totalitarian system aiming for political domination of the world.”

• “[O]ur civilized Western culture is far superior to the barbaric culture of Islam.”

In short, Wilders is a breath of fresh air in a world that has gone mad in its attempts to reassure itself that 99.9 percent of Muslims are peace-loving citizens. As Wilders documents in the book, many Muslim immigrants yearn to impose Islamic culture and law on the West, yet the political class says virtually nothing. Those who do speak up are immediately tagged xenophobes and bigots.

As Mark Stein – possibly the greatest English satirist alive today – writes in his foreword to Wilders’ book: “[A]t election time in Europe, the average voter has a choice between a left-of-center party and an ever so mildly right-of-left-of-center party, and whichever he votes for, they’re generally in complete agreement on everything from mass immigration to unsustainable welfare programs to climate change. And they’re ruthless about delegitimizing anyone who wants a broader debate.”

Marked for Death is not a literary masterpiece. The writing is engaging enough, but thematically, the book seems a bit disjointed at times with Wilders liable to jump from Mohammed’s military conquests in the 7th century to the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical in 2004 to pedophilia in Islamic culture (it is apparently “widely condoned”).

Nonetheless, the book is important for three reasons. First, it contains a chock full of interesting information. Among many other items, Wilders writes about Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha (he was in his 50s, she was six); the Koran’s numerous anti-Semitic and violent verses; and Islam’s disturbing history of slavery (which amazingly continues to the present day).

Second, Wilders is great at finding little-known damning quotes about Islam. For example, Aldous Huxley wrote in 1925 (a tad too pessimistically), “In fifty years’ time, it seems to me, Europe can’t fail to be wiped out by these [Muslim] monsters.” A century earlier, John Quincy Adams predicted that the conflict between Christianity and Islam cannot “cease but by the extinction of that imposture [Islam], which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man.”

Most importantly, though, the book is valuable because Wilders wrote it, and Wilders deserves every bit of support he can get. Thanks to his outspokenness against Islam, Wilders regularly receives death threats and was forced to flee his home in 2004. Today, he lives in a bullet-proof safe house under 24/7 armed guard. As Wilders writes, “I have not walked the streets on my own in more than seven years.” Perhaps that’s just as well since Muslim immigrants have overrun Wilders’ old neighborhood, Kanaleneiland, transforming it into a crime zone.

Wilders, however, is not backing down. In 2008, he produced “Fitna,” a 17-minute documentary on violence and the Koran, which generated enormous controversy. And in 2010, his Party for Freedom, which he founded four years earlier, won 16 percent of the vote, becoming the Netherland’s third largest party. Due to his influence, the government agreed to decrease immigration from Muslim countries (Wilders wants it abolished completely); increase pressure on immigrants to assimilate into Dutch culture; and reject elements of multi-culturalism, which Wilders blames for creating the Netherlands’s Muslim problem in the first place.

One need not agree with all of Wilders’ ideas. For example, some may reject his call to ban new mosques in the United States and Europe. Others may question the wisdom of banning the Koran in the Netherlands (Wilders argues that the Koran is no less dangerous than Hitler’s Mein Kampf which the Netherlands bans). Indeed, some of Wilders’ ideas landed him in court in 2009 for “incitement to hatred and discrimination” – a trial that Wilders says was a “farce” and “an anti-democratic exercise to suppress my freedom.” (He was acquitted in 2011.)

Hitler is considered a heinous historical by most of humanity, but in the last few years India has been witness to the advent in his popularity.

Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi, an Assistant Professor at the Department of History & Civilization in Gautam Buddha University in India, is a scholar of the history of the Jewish communities in India. Last month he concluded a lecture tour to Israel, during which he gave a lecture titled “The Rise of Hitler’s Popularity in India” at Tel Aviv University. He notes that “India is the only country in the world where Jews have lived with their non-Jewish neighbours in complete harmony for more than two millennia. Jews are India’s smallest religious minority and Muslims its biggest, and the two have produced beautiful examples of amity, unlike anywhere else in the world.”

Hiltler has rapidly gained popularity in India in recent years. This phenomenon is a paradox because of the absence of Anti-Semitism in India. Yet, though the country has never known anti-Semitism, sales of Hiltler’s Mein Kampf have risen over 15% in the last decade. The name “Aryan” is becoming a popular first name in India, and “Hitler” is the name of the protagonist in many a Bollywood production.

Dr. Aafreedi offered a few explanations. Unlike the modern-day neo-Nazis who idealize Hitler for his racism and persecution of the Jews, Indians who respect Hitler do so out of misinformation. He believes that this rise in Hitler’s popularity is not a result of anti-Semitism: “It can be ascribed to the absence of Jewish Studies in India, where Islamic Studies are available at almost all major Indian universities. The level of ignorance among Indians about Jews is hysterical and the state has been unwilling to introduce Jewish Studies in India, whereas in the neighboring country China, Jewish Studies are available at ten of its universities.” He explains that Indians are largely ignorant of the Holocaust, and such individuals “tend to see it as a justified collateral damage for the greater good of Germany, influenced as they are by the way Hitler is often projected as a hero by the Hindu right wing,”

He observes that “Most of the Indians do not even know about the Jews, let alone the Holocaust. Among the section of the Indian population that is aware of the Holocaust, there are many who have fallen into the trap of the Holocaust deniers and have started either doubting it as a whole or just its scale.” As part of this misinformation, many Indians believe that the Axis powers of World War II were partially responsible for India’s independence from the British in 1947. It is believed that Hitler’s battle with the Allies forced Britain to focus their resources in Europe. Britain was unable to control a territory as large as India, leaving room for an Indian independence movement. Subhas Chandra Rose, a key figure of the Indian independence movement, collaborated with Axis powers to raise an army to fight the British.

Another reason is the younger generation’s great desire for strong leadership. Dr. Aafreedi thinks they do not have good examples.

Dr. Aafreedi believes that the key to combating this situation is the dissemination of facts. “I promote Jewish Studies in India, the study of Jewish history, culture and religion. It is just not possible to understand the two most widely practiced religions, Christianity and Islam, without a study of Judaism, oldest of the three Semitic monotheistic religions. It is important for any nation to appreciate and recognize the contributions made to it by its religious minorities. If this does not happen, the society becomes intolerant towards minorities, which has grave consequences not just for the minorities but also for the majority community. In India, Jews happen to be the smallest religious minority and the Muslims, the biggest. As a result of their small numbers, most of the Indians know them only through secondary sources, which are mostly unreliable, and not as a result of any direct contact with them. Ignorance gives birth to stereotypes and misconceptions, and hatred thrives on falsehood. Hence, it becomes very important to promote Jewish Studies in India. If this is not done, we would neglect one-sixth of mankind.”

Hitler’s Mein Kampf is available in almost all Indian languages, but the only book on the Holocaust in India’s national language, Hindi, is an FAQ about the Holocaust published by Yad Vashem. Dr. Aafreedi has worked and continues to work in spreading accurate information about Judaism and the Holocaust in India. He has organized cross-cultural and international student dialogues at the University of Lucknow. There he also invited Jewish authors and filmmakers to speak about their works and brought a number of Muslim intellectuals to speak out against anti-Semitism. “I believe that if awareness is created through the spread of information,” he says, “it can help in eliminating many misconceptions that people have.”

The time is now long overdue to recognize that Adolf Hitler’s contribution to political wisdom — the Big Lie – has reappeared in the Palestinian narrative of the state of Israel as an “apartheid state.” “[T]he broad masses of a nation,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “will more readily fall victim to the big lie than to the small lie.” The constant repetition of the Big Lie, he explained, made it acceptable, especially when it could be manipulated to appear to have a certain credibility. The world is all too familiar with the success of Hitler’s Big Lie narrative that the Jews were internationally powerful, responsible for World War I – and, in his view – for most of the problems of the world. This new Big Lie about Israel being an “apartheid state” that has been trumpeted by the Palestinian narrative of Middle Eastern history and politics has, in recent years, been accepted not only been accepted by “the broad masses,” but also by more educated and supposedly politically sophisticated individuals in the media, the churches, and academia.

The official definition of the crime of “apartheid” was first formulated in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on November 30, 1973. The definition was “inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group…over another racial group…and systematically oppressing them.” A later version of the definition was included in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, of July 17, 1998 which came into force in July 2002. The definition became inhumane acts concerning an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious grounds “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

The change in legal terminology is important for political reasons. Israelis and Palestinians can be considered as “identifiable groups” and therefore the provisions of international law in the 1973 Convention and the 1998 Statute can be applied to them, thus opening the opportunity for a legal charge of the crime of apartheid against Israel.

Yet this legal issue has little to do with the real life political attempt to bring the charge against Israel. That action began in the 1970s when the Soviet Union, for its own political purposes, organized a coalition with Arab states and other willing countries in what was then considered the group of “non-aligned” countries of the world. The greatest success of the coalition was to obtain an overwhelming majority, 72-35-32, for the infamous UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 of November 10, 1975 which defined Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination, and years later repealed only after great efforts by American diplomats, including, finally, the future US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

Similar declarations followed. The most forthright was the Declaration of the first Durban conference (The UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance) in September 2001 that “We declare Israel as a racist, Apartheid state in which Israel’s brand of Apartheid as a crime against humanity has been characterized by separation and segregation, dispassion, restricted land access, denationalization, ‘bantustanization’ and inhumane acts.” Since then an “Israel Apartheid Week” has become an annual event on many college campuses in the United States and elsewhere.

The declaration of Durban 1, which reads as an indictment, was certainly applicable to the old, unlamented South Africa where blacks were indeed segregated in many ways by legal and other restrictions, and were treated as inferior human beings; but it has no application to the state and society of Israel. Within the state of Israel, Israeli Arabs, 20% of the population, have: equal political and social rights as Jews; full citizenship members of the Israeli Parliament – called the Knesset; a seat on the Supreme Court; diplomatic representation at the most senior levels; a free press in Arabic, which is – along with Hebrew – an official language; the capacity to move freely; equal opportunity to enter universities, to be employed, and to enter freely into marital relations with fellow Arabs or with Jews. If Jews and Arabs do live in different areas of the country it is not through a state-imposed segregation, enforced by legal means, but by choice. There are no segregated roads, as there are in Saudi Arabia, and there are no segregated schools, housing, drinking fountains, buses or any officially imposed limits whatsoever. Discrimination does not exist on the basis of race, religion, or sex; and all groups have legal protection of the law. Unlike Muslim countries, Israel has no state religion, but rather contains some 15 recognized religions. Israel, unlike the old South Africa, is a multiracial society.

Jewish reaction was mixed to the election of the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande as the president of France while Jewish leaders in Greece expressed concern and disappointment after the fascist Golden Dawn party was poised to enter the Greek parliament for the first time.

The European Jewish Congress congratulated Hollande, who was elected Sunday over Nicolas Sarkozy with 51.7 percent of the vote to 48.3 percent for the incumbent.

“Our recent meeting with Mr. Hollande was very constructive and touched on many areas of concern to the Jewish community,” EJC President Moshe Kantor said in a statement.

“I believe we have a sympathetic ear in the new French leadership and we look forward to continuing this relationship with the new president.”

Richard Prasquier, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewry, told reporters Monday in New York that he was concerned that Hollande’s election would lead to a rise in the anti-Israel left.

“We know that some of the parties who are supposed to be partners of the coalition in favor of Francois Hollande are not friends of Israel. The part they will play we will see,” he said.

More than 92 percent of French nationals who voted in Sunday’s election at the French Embassy in Tel Aviv cast their ballot for Sarkozy, the center-left candidate, according to reports.

Israeli President Shimon Peres congratulated Hollande on his victory.

“On behalf of the Israeli nation, it is a pleasure for me to send my sincere congratulations on your election to the post of President of France. I am confident that under your leadership, the French people will look to the future with hope, security and a spirit of unity.”

Hollande became the first Socialist president of France in nearly two decades. Sarkozy, of the Union for a Popular Movement party, was considered the favored choice among French Jews.

Sarkozy, the ninth European leader to be ousted since the start of the continent’s debt crisis, conceded shortly after the polls closed, wishing his successor luck in handling difficult times in France and in Europe.

“Francois Hollande is the president of the republic; he must be respected,” Sarkozy said in a concession speech shortly after the polls closed.

Meanwhile, in Greece, Golden Dawn received nearly 7 percent of the vote as Greeks punished the mainstream parties they blame for the country’s financial crisis and accepting harsh European austerity measures.

“It is very disappointing that in a country like Greece, where so many were killed fighting the Germans, that a neo-Nazi party is now in parliament,” David Saltiel, president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, told JTA.

It was a major victory for Golden Dawn, whose flag closely resembles the Nazi swastika. In the 2009 elections, the party garnered just 0.29 percent of the vote. In Greece, a party needs more than 3 percent of the vote to make it into parliament.

According to the final results published Monday evening, Golden Dawn had 6.97 percent, which would give the party 21 seats in the 300-member parliament.

But with no party getting more than 20 percent, there are fears that the major parties will be unable to cobble together a coalition. The biggest party, the conservative New Democracy (18.85 percent), had three days to form a government. The runner-up Coalition of the Radical Left (16.78 percent) would get the next chance. If both fail, fresh elections will be called.

Saltiel said Golden Dawn entering the parliament was of “very great concern because they are extreme right,” but he expressed his hope that the party may now moderate its positions.

“We are looking at how the situation will be in parliament and what their positions will be,” he said.

Speaking to a news conference on Sunday, Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos warned Greece’s enemies inside and outside the country that they should be “very afraid.”

“We are coming,” said Michaloliakos, one of the party’s only nationally known leaders. He came to prominence when he won a seat on the Athens City Council in 2010 and celebrated by giving the Nazi salute at the first City Hall meeting.

The party had campaigned on an anti-austerity, anti-immigrant platform, preying on the fears of ordinary Greeks who have seen their neighborhoods overrun by the nearly 1 million immigrants who have flooded the country from Asia and Africa hoping to use it as a gateway to the European Union.

During the elections, young party supporters with shaved heads and wearing black shirts with the Golden Dawn symbol set up vigilante groups to protect Greeks from immigrants. They have been blamed for several attacks on foreigners; the party denies the charges.

The party’s election platform included plans to landmine Greece’s borders, immediately arrest and expel illegal immigrants, and set up special labor camps for legal immigrants who commit crimes.

Its manifesto does not specifically mention the country’s small Jewish community, saying only that the party would tolerate religious freedom “except in cases that affect national interest and undermine Hellenism.”

This year, Holocaust Remembrance Day is the anniversary of two starkly contrasting events of April 19, 1943 – the first day of the gallant but doomed Warsaw Ghetto uprising and of the ignominious Anglo-American Bermuda Conference on the Refugee Problem, which State Department diplomats organized to deflect pressure to rescue Jews from the Nazi death machine.

Most of the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto perished but the American diplomats went on to comfortable, if not highly successful, careers – and to largely avoid the wrath of historical judgment.

One might ask, given all of the articles and books written about the American response to the Holocaust, hasn’t the diplomats’ role been thoroughly examined? Remarkably, the answer is no, not because their conduct has been ignored but rather because it has been submerged in the American collective guilt approach that underpins many historical assessments.

Consider the State Department’s treatment in arguably the most influential book on the subject of the past twenty-five years, The Abandonment of the Jews, by David Wyman, an exhaustive scholarly study of the American response. The 29-page summation chapter titled “Responsibility” (“America’s response to the Holocaust was the result of action and inaction on the part of many people”) devotes less than a page to the State Department, while three full pages are spent on the wartime rivalries of American Jewish groups. The book also contends that “direct proof of anti-Semitism in the department is limited” and that “plain bureaucratic inefficiency” was one explanation for the State Department’s behavior.

These highly educated, patrician diplomats, in fact, rank among the worst villains in American history. They were part of a now all-but-vanished American aristocracy that existed outside the experience or even awareness of most of their fellow Americans.

Sheltered in a hermetically sealed aristocratic archipelago, many went from elite northeast boarding schools to Ivy League educations to diplomatic postings. Imbued with an intoxicating sense of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism, anti-Semitic (sometimes virulently), and mindlessly conformist (at the Groton School, many of whose graduates went to the State Department, nonconformists were waterboarded by fellow students with the approval of the headmaster), they had a heartless indifference to the sufferings of human beings from different ancestries, religions, or economic classes.

In 1940, the head of the Division of European Affairs was Jay Pierrepont Moffat. As a young diplomat in Warsaw shortly after the end of World War I, Moffat had watched desperate refugees flee oncoming Soviet armies: “they sounded like so many cackling geese and generally behaved in a manner that made us pray like the pharisee, ‘Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men.’ ”

His successor, Ray Atherton, arranged for an anti-Semitic French Nazi collaborationist to become a governor-general in liberated North Africa (where he continued to oppress Jews).

Loy Henderson, who worked in the State Department on East European issues in the 1940s, blamed “international Jewry” for support of the Soviet Union and, after a visit to New York City, commented of the inhabitants jostling him in the street that “They seemed to have little in common with me.”

William Phillips, an undersecretary of state, in the 1930s described Atlantic City as “infested with Jews.”

William Bullitt, an ambassador to the Soviet Union during FDR’s first term, called an official in the Soviet Foreign Ministry a “wretched little kike.”

Breckinridge Long, a wartime assistant secretary of state, regarded Mein Kampf as “eloquent in opposition to Jewry and Jews as exponents of Communism and chaos.”

They were lethally efficient bureaucratic operators. In 1942, when the first cable reports of Nazi Germany’s genocidal scheme reached the State Department from its legation in Switzerland – “in Fuhrer’s headquarters plan under consideration all Jews at one blow exterminated” – the Division of European Affairs suppressed the information (even from American Jews). Then, in early 1943, when informed by the legation that 6,000 Jews were being killed each day at a single location in Poland, the division’s head, Ray Atherton, and three colleagues instructed the legation “in the future we suggest that you do not accept reports submitted to you” from the legation’s Jewish sources about the exterminations.

Several months later, the division blocked a proposal, endorsed by FDR, to rescue 70,000 Romanian Jews on the ground that these Jews were “enemy aliens” since Romania was a German ally, and that, even if the rescue succeeded, there were no “other areas” to put the Jews.

Finally, at the Bermuda Conference, a “facade for inaction,” as a British delegate admitted years later, Breckenridge Long forbade any proposals that would solely benefit Jews and blocked any meaningful rescue initiatives.

Christian lawyers in the Treasury Department discovered the State Department’s cover-up and battled to save the Romanian rescue plan. Outraged, they considered the diplomats an underground “movement to let the Jews be killed,” “vicious men,” “accomplices of Hitler,” and “war criminals in every sense of the term.” Few historians have rendered such a judgment.

Several weeks ago an 18-foot chunk from the wing of a cargo plane broke off and fell out of the clear blue sky. The plane had been flying overhead en route to the nearby Miami International Airport. The debris crashed in a mall parking lot. Miraculously, there were no casualties.

There was no way to anticipate the perilous ride of the plane that flew over Miami. There are, however, many times that danger could be averted if only individuals would only open their eyes and choose to see.

The Jews of Europe originally minimized the menace of Adolf Hitler, yemach shemo. Many thought that he was just another bigmouth Jew hater. Who could take the ranting of this little mustachioed housepainter seriously?

Many in the worldwide community view Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as more bluster than serious threat. His outrageous tirades are seen as hackneyed outbursts. How could a guy in such funky little jackets be seen as a real threat?

Adolf Hitler was forthright in his plans to annihilate the Jews. He wrote about it in his book, Mein Kampf. For the most part, European Jewry thought Hitler was just another case of a blowhard anti-Semite.

Ahmadinejad is up front in his plans to wipe Israel off the face of the map. He has declared his scheme openly.

Six million Jews died before the world woke up. The Nazi threat was real. It was vocal, and yet, sadly, very few saw it coming.

The Iranian threat is genuine, and yet, when and if a major incident happens, it will be as if the action came out of the clear blue sky. Perhaps it is time that the worldwide Jewish community believes the words of its enemies and takes their threats seriously.