Western Failure to Read the Writing on the Wall

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

In 539 BCE, Babylonian King Belshazzar ignored the writing on the wall – as interpreted by the Prophet Daniel – and was, therefore, annihilated by the Persians (Book of Daniel, Chapter 5).

In 2015, Western civilizations must read the writing on the wall, desist from ambiguity, denial and political correctness and embrace clarity, realism and political incorrectness, in order to survive and overcome the clear and present lethal threat of Islamic takeover, which gathers momentum via demographic, political and terroristic means.

While medical ambiguity, and the failure to diagnose lethal disease, cause personal misfortune, policy-making ambiguity and denial could trigger national and international calamities.

History proves that Western ambiguity and the refusal to identify enemies – due to ignorance, gullibility, oversimplification, appeasement, delusion and wishful thinking - have taken root, yielding major strategic setbacks and painful economic and human loss.  When it comes to reading the writing on the wall, Western eyesight has been far from 20:20, dominated by modern day Belshazzars, ignoring modern day Prophet Daniels.

For example, during the 1930s, the writing was on the wall in glaring letters: Germany abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, which called for German disarmament, reparations and territorial concessions; German military spending skyrocketed, military conscription was reintroduced and the Rhineland was remilitarized; Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and annexed Austria.  Still, on September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, declaring "Peace for our time.” He refused to recognize Hitler's strategic, global, supremacist goal, assuming that Hitler's appetite could be satisfied with a tactical, limited gain in Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, thus signing a "peace accord” which triggered the "war of all wars.”

Hitler's master plan was highlighted in 1925-26 by the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which is currently a best seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

During 1977-79, President Carter did not read the writing on the wall, supporting Ayatollah Khomeini's battle against the Shah of Iran, who was in fact the US Policeman of the Persian Gulf.  Overwhelmed by denial and wishful-thinking, and heavily influenced by the US foreign policy establishment, Carter ignored the litany of sermons delivered by Khomeini, which exposed the Iranian cleric as an enemy of Western civilization and civil liberties. He despised the US and aligned himself with the enemies of the US, while protected by a Palestinian-PLO praetorian guard. Thus, the US betrayal of the Shah eliminated a most effective and loyal strategic partner of the US, gave rise to the most lethal, conventional and non-conventional threat to vital US interests in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and beyond and generated a robust tailwind to Islamic terrorism.  

In 1990, on the eve of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the US stated that an Iraq-Kuwait military clash would be an intra-Arab, rather than a US, concern.  The Bush/Baker Administration assumed that "the enemy of my enemy (Iran) is my friend (Iraq),” supplying Saddam with dual-use sensitive systems, providing him with $5bn loan guarantees and concluding a US-Iraq intelligence sharing agreement. The 1990 policy of denial triggered a conventional conflict, a $1.25 trillion cost to the US taxpayer, 4,500 US military fatalities, a surge of anti-US Islamic terrorism and a dramatic destabilization of the Persian Gulf.
Since the conclusion of the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic non-compliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli retreats with intensified terror.

In 2011, Western democracies denied the eruption of an Arab Tsunami, welcoming the violence on the Arab Street as an Arab Spring, transitioning the Arabs toward democracy. The Obama Administration embraced the Muslim Brotherhood (while turning a cold shoulder toward General Al-Sisi), refusing to recognize its well-documented intra-Arab terrorism, the offshoot of its motto: "Allah is our objective; the Qur'an is the Constitution; the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

The 2015 failure to carefully read the Iranian writing on the wall could produce a nuclear conflict at a mega-trillion dollar cost to the US taxpayer, an unprecedented level of fatalities, a tidal wave of Islamic terrorism throughout the globe, including in the USA, decimation of the pro-US Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf and Jordan, an unprecedented disruption of the supply of Persian Gulf oil, further radicalization of the anti-US regime in Venezuela with ripple effects in Latin America, including Mexico, and additional tectonic eruptions of insanity throughout the globe.

At stake is not only freedom of expression and the safety of European Jewry, but the survival of Western democracies.

Solidarity demonstrations and eloquent speeches will not spare Western democracies the wrath of Islamic terrorism and domination, unless accompanied by clarity, realism and the willingness to take military, legislative and political action in order to thwart the writing on the walls of the mosques: submission of humanity to the Prophet Muhammad; submission of the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish Kuffar ("infidel”) to Muslims and to Sharia' laws; Jihad - holy war on behalf of Islam - is the duty of Muslims; Waqf – Muslim land – is ordained by Allah; Dar al Salaam (the residence of the believers) must take over Dar al Harb (the residence of the Kuffar); and Islam-sanctioned Taqiyyah (dissimulation, deception and concealment of inconvenient data) aimed at shielding Islam and "believers” from "disbelievers.”