Following this Allies demand against a barbaric enemy in WWII, should Israel not insist on the same against the spiritual heir of the Nazis?
By Lennie Lurie
On the 14th of January 1943, almost two and a half years after the outbreak of World War II, an important meeting took place in Casablanca, Morocco. The two Allied leaders, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, participated while the Soviet Premier, Joseph Stalin, was unable to attend as the Red Army was engaged in a major offensive against the German Army at that time.
Absolute Victory. US President Franklin Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill in Casablanca in 1943 issued the public Casablanca Declaration of "unconditional surrender" that came to represent the unified voice of implacable Allied will to fight the Axis powers until their ultimate defeat. (Photo: National Archives)
This Conference took place in November 1942, just two months after the Allied forces had landed in French North Africa. For 10 days, Roosevelt and Churchill focused on their strategy against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
They decided to concentrate their efforts in the Mediterranean by launching an invasion of Sicily, to be followed by the Italian mainland. The plan being to draw German forces away from the Eastern Front and to increase supplies to the Soviet Union, whilst strengthening their bombing campaigns of Germany. At the same time, to also begin concentrating forces in England for an eventual landing in France.
On the final day of the Conference, Roosevelt announced that he and Churchill had decided that postwar peace required a policy of unconditional surrender which would not entail the destruction of civilian populations but rather "the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people."
No More War. In February 4-11, 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet at Yalta to finalize their strategy for the remainder of the war and forge a post-war settlement insisting on "unconditional surrender" and the "denazification" and "demilitarization" of Germany.
Roosevelt was determined to avoid a repeat of what took place after World War I when large segments of German society supported the Nazi party's assertions that their country had been "stabbed in the back" by liberals, pacifists, socialists, communists and Jews.
Approaching the end of World War II, on the 4th of February, 1945, the three Allied leaders, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, met in Yalta, Crimea, to discuss and determine the final stages of the war and the postwar world. It became known as the Yalta Conference and its key points included:
- Unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany
- Germany would undergo demilitarization and denazification
- The prosecution of war crimes.
On the 8th May 1945, the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces was signed by General Alfred Jodl and Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel. Walter Bedell Smith signed on behalf of the Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, General Ivan Susloparov on behalf of the Soviet High Command and Major-General Francois Sevez as the official French witness.
Nurturing Tomorrow's Killers. Hopefully, in a post Israel-Hamas war, young Palestinian children will not be indoctrinated and forced to attend Hamas military training camps (seen here) to emerge as future killers as what happened on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli Government, in its present war against the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, has formulated four objectives of its justifiable military campaign which coincide very closely with the Allied declarations in demanding unconditional surrender from Germany in World War II:
- A resounding war victory resulting in the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the immediate return of all the captured hostages.
- The elimination, capture and trial of all Hamas leaders responsible for the Hamas attack on 7th October, 2023, which involved the unprovoked rocket firing into Israeli civilian communities, the cold-blooded murder of over 1,200 innocent men, women and children, both Israeli and foreign nationals plus the kidnapping of over 240 civilians and soldiers into Gaza.
- The complete demilitarization of Gaza and eradication of any Gaza military potential threatening the security of Israel.
- The de-Hamasification of the Gazan population and eradication of any political policies relating to the destruction of Israel.
Nobody can criticize or condemn Israel for pursuing and implementing these goals upon the defeat of Hamas which follows the exact path taken by the victorious Allied forces after Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender.
About the writer:
A B.Sc. graduate in Economics and Geology from the University of Cape Town (UCT), Lennie may be the only volunteer from abroad who was granted permission to leave his group on kibbutz during the 1967 Six Day War to rejoin his paratroop brigade that he had served with years before following his matriculation in Cape Town. In Israel, Lennie has worked as an Export Manager for some of the country's major food manufacturers and chemical companies as well as an independent consultant in Export Marketing guiding many small Israeli businesses to sell their products and services in the world-wide market. As a result of a work accident in 1995, Lennie made a career change and became an independent English teacher working mainly with hi-tech companies and associated with universities and colleges in the north of Israel.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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