Speaking at a recent event honoring the late Shimon Peres, the Israeli prime minister declared that “the weak crumble, are slaughtered, and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive.” These comments quickly met with scorn, derision, and even outrage on social media—some of which came from respected journalists, professors, and retired statesmen. Seth Frantzman notes that the events of the past 100 years strongly support Netanyahu’s claim:
For all of those who are outraged about the prime minister’s statement, I have a question. Where were they in August 2014 when Islamic State (IS) launched its attack on the weak, peaceful, defenseless, and vulnerable Yazidis in northern Iraq? When IS overran their villages and separated men and women, and then systematically machine-gunned the men into mass graves as the Einsatzgruppen did in 1941, where were they? . . .
[The Yazidis] are the weak. Who helped them? Well, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) helped them in 2014. Who was it that formed a human wall against IS in 2014 at the gates of Erbil and Baghdad? It was Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite militias aided by U.S. air power. . . .
So let’s read again what Netanyahu said. “The weak crumble, are slaughtered, and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.” People [have commented] that this [sentiment] reminds them of fascism and Hitler. But let me tell you a story about the people who stopped Hitler. Was it the weak? Did protesters in New York stop Hitler? Whose troops liberated Auschwitz? The Soviet Red Army. It was the strong who stopped Hitler. It was [military might paired with] the strength of conviction of such leaders as Winston Churchill.
If you care about the weak, you need to be strong to defend them. A bully isn’t defeated by virtue signaling. A bully is defeated by someone who is willing to stand up and be strong.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Netanyahu-is-tragically-right-the-world-fails-to-protect-the-weak-566344