by Benjamin Kerstein
SS officer Reinhard Heydrich’s car after a 1942 assassination attempt in Prague. Heydrich later died of his injuries. Photo: German Federal Archives via Wikicommons.
A veteran Israeli analyst described over the weekend the execution of Iranian Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani as being second only to the assassination of Holocaust architect Reinhard Heydrich.
Interviewed on Israel’s Channel 12, Ehud Yaari said, “I’m going to surprise you.” Soleimani’s execution, he stated, “is the most important assassination from the Jewish point of view since the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Final Solution, in Prague in 1942.”
“This man was the brains and the engine of the Iranian machine that is trying to wrap the Middle East in the arms of an octopus,” Yaari said. “He was the head of the octopus in this regard.”
“He is the man that conceived the idea of how to slowly tie the noose around Israel’s neck,” he added. “So I say — second only to Heydrich.”
Soleimani directed Iran’s foreign terrorist activities, including against Israel. He was killed in a US drone strike on Baghdad airport late Thursday night.
As a high-ranking officer in the SS, Heydrich was, in the opinion of many, the primary architect of the Holocaust, and headed the Wannsee Conference that approved plans for the genocide of the Jews. He was fatally wounded in an attack by Czech partisans in Prague on May 27, 1942.
Heydrich was also one of the organizers of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938.
View the complete Channel 12 interview below:
For Hebrew speakers, a succinct and cogent explanation from @EhudYaariJLM of the importance of killing Soleimani | pic.twitter.com/oH4NobGWnH
— Mike (@Doranimated) January 4, 2020