Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photo: Wiki Commons.

As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I have heard references to the term “Never Again” for as many years as I can remember – and today in the Middle East with a madman building a nuclear bomb, one wonders whether “Never Again” is just a slogan or a mantra that the world will act upon. One wonders if “Never Again” means that the world will take decisive action alongside Israel or “Never Again” means that the Jewish state alone will protect Jewish lives and interests.

There’s little question that while the Iran issue is heating up, the American administration has acted with caution towards Iran. There has been three years of “engagement” with Iran and diplomatic outreach, nevertheless it is starting to become quite clear that a confrontation is in the making. I hope America and the world will stand with Israel, but if not, thankfully there is today a Jewish state. Adding to the tension on this issue we heard Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s vice prime minister voice his disappointment with President Obama’s approach on Iran. Ya’alon said “there is hesitation for fear of oil prices rising this year, out of election-year considerations.”

We saw this week, like a scene from a thriller movie, the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist by a hitman on a motorcycle.  Following the assassination, the media and PR spin began. The Obama administration condemned the attack in Tehran which killed the nuclear scientist: “We condemn any assassination or attack on an innocent person, and we express our sympathies to the family,” said Victoria Nuland of the US State Department.

One wonders if someone who is building a nuclear bomb to harm western cvilization and kill people is in fact innocent?  It begs the questions, what does “Never Again” mean, if not acting to stop those who seek to kill? Owning 5WPR, I am well versed on the importance of media pressure upon government positions. Reading an op-ed in ABC Australia it’s clear that many will start asking questions and naturally some will condemn Israel.  Others will condemn the very nature of the attack itself:

“In the end, it comes down to a simple question: do we endorse car bombings, or not? Do we believe any of the rhetoric that’s been mouthed for the last decade (“all terrorist acts are criminal and must be universally condemned,” etc)? If so, why won’t we speak out? Again, this is textbook stuff. Osama bin Laden could not have composed a more classical apologia for terror. For if, then, the physicists of Iran are individually responsible for the policies of their regime, one presumes the scientists of the US might be held to account for the high-tech weapons used by America in Iraq. What Ariel Dorfman says about torture rings just as true about terrorism: every regime that uses it, does so in “the name of salvation, some superior goal, some promise of paradise”, but the invocation of good intentions doesn’t change the moral calculus involved.”

He who opposes evil must stand by Israel and thankfully, as one Iranian official told Reuters, there is a “sense of spreading paranoia” among scientists well aware that three others have died under similar circumstances in the past two years.  “Never Again” from a military standpoint means just as Israel’s military chief of staff told a parliamentary committee this week “Iran should expect more “unnatural” events in 2012.”

The Obama administration wrongly condemned someone who killed an engineer helping to build a weapon designed to kill people, and he should act different following similar acts in the future. With a Secretary of State who compared gender discrimination against female Israeli soldiers to be the same as the situation facing women in Iran, it may be too much to ask.

Those of us who believe in “Never Again” have the moral responsibility to stand up and say that Iran must be stopped before they have a chance to destroy the Jewish state and inflict grave harm on the West.

Ronn Torossian is the CEO of 5WPR, a Top 25 PR Agency and author of best-selling PR book “For Immediate Release: Shape Minds, Build Brands, and Deliver Results with Game-Changing Public Relations,” available for purchase here.