The only thing missing from the Stephen Breen cartoon (Herald, Feb. 9) was that the Israeli pilot should have been wearing a yarmulka and had a beaked nose. That would have made the image and the implication even more precise.

In Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler said what he would do to Europe’s Jewish population. And he did it. Six million people – a million more than the entire population of Colorado – were murdered while the world largely stood by, either unaware, unconcerned or impotent to help.

During prayers in Tehran on Feb. 10, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated Iran’s threat to wipe Israel – “a cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut” – off the map, and averred that Iran will aid any nation or state that attacks Israel. The Associated Press has acknowledged that Iran supports Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ attacks on Israel. The gravity of the supreme leader’s remarks is underlined by Iran’s inexorable progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them. They will be aimed at Israel, western Europe, or the United States itself. Even the brain dead Thomas Friedman doesn’t maintain that Iran is enriching uranium for electricity, to believe that a government that sent 100,000 of its own children to death clearing minefields, that counts 15 percent of its population as “volunteer martyrs,” or that chants “Death to America” at sessions of parliament won’t use nuclear weapons is beyond delusional. Israel’s population of 7 million live in a nation the size of New Jersey. They cannot take a 10 percent chance of 100 percent annihilation.

If, as it is alluded to in the despicable Herald cartoon, Israel is forced to take military action against Iran, it won’t be because it wants to inflict hardship upon Americans at the pump. It will be because Israel knows that world powers are again willing to watch the murder of millions of Jews, and that it, alone, is responsible for its citizens’ lives.

Michael Lubin

Durango