Below is an article taken from the Arkansas State University newspaper, the Herald which covered a recent Christians United for Israel On Campus event:

Last Thursday, I attended a meeting of a recently formed campus chapter of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), a group of individuals from across the U.S. who have pledged to do their best to make politicians in Washington stand behind Israel, one of our greatest allies.

The evening was an eye-opener, in many respects.

The guest speaker was retired Colonel John Somerville, a 30-year Marine veteran who made over 60 trips to the Middle East during his career.

He made a very strong case for the need to support Israel.

Somerville spoke at length about the threats to Israel, using historic precedent and current events to validate his claims.

One of the most striking pieces of evidence was the fact that Iran was not called Iran until the year 1935. This was the period of time when Adolf Hitler was making his meteoric rise to power in Germany, as well as laying his plans of Aryan supremacy and Jewish extermination.

The real surprise lay in the name “Iran,” which means “land of the Aryans.”

Understanding this history is important for those watching the news recently, for it is becoming clear that Iran seeks uranium enrichment.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has also made incendiary vows to exterminate the Israelis.

These aspects of Iran bear a frightening resemblance to the saber-rattling and inflammatory rhetoric coming out of Germany during the 1930s.

So, with all this historical precedent seemingly being repeated, one would think that our leaders in Washington, who are supposed to be some of the smartest men and women in America, would be trying to stop this, right? Wrong.

President Obama has refused to state in any conclusive manner how he is going to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and obliterating Israel, even though he has said he will not allow Iran to go nuclear.

The strongest statement against Iran came from Obama’s defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who said, “I think they need to know that — that if they take that step — that they’re going to get stopped.”

It took two years for anyone in the Obama administration to say anything that decisive about the Iranian nuclear threat.

So what can we as college students do about major world events like this if our leaders can’t even seem to handle it?

Should we even worry at all, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about already?

The answer to this question is yes; we absolutely need to be concerned about it.

College is only temporary. Eventually we will be living in the “outside” world, and we need to do our part to influence it for the better.

While individually, we may be hardly noticeable, banding together into organizations like CUFI will make us much more noticeable.

This will send a message to our leaders to stand with our allies, which will in turn tell Iran (and other enemies) to avoid making serious threats.

George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

It is time to look back at WWII and recall the lessons of that war, or we may soon find ourselves in another deadly conflict with a far more merciless enemy.

Kazyak is a freshman music major of Manila.

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