I spent a few years of my early childhood in Africa, and one
of the things I learned from the indigenous people I mingled with is that there
exist several kinds of colonial powers. Being young at the time, I did not
catch everything that was said to me; and by the time I grew up, I had
forgotten most of it. As to the little that was retained in my memory, it boils
down to this: The French will educate you and treat you like an adult,
sometimes roughly. The English will keep you uneducated, pretend to pamper you,
and plot against you behind your back.
These ancient thoughts were squeezed out of my memory as I
read the article that was written by the British historian Andrew Roberts. It
came under the title: “The Case for Pre-Emptive War, From Goliath to the
Dardanelles” and the subtitle: “Some lessons for Israel as it contemplates an
attack on Iran's nuclear program.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal
on May 1, 2013.
Already skeptical of the motive of non-Jews when they advise
Israel to attack someone, more skepticism was added to my mind the more that I
read of this Englishman's article. In fact, not only did I remember some of
what I heard as a child; I also remembered a mini-debate that was sparked some
three decades ago here in North America about the possible reasons why the
African nations seemed to trust the French more than the Brits even though the
latter are more accommodating toward the Continent in such places as the United
Nations. It is as if the British representative was seen not as a human being
but a snake that is forever plotting to bring colonialism back to Africa.
And so, the set of imperatives with which the author
presents Israel's compulsion to adopt an aggressive posture in the Middle East,
and the certainty he exhibits at the start of the article to the effect that
everything will work out just fine when Israel will have attacked a neighbor
(this time the distant neighbor of Iran) indicated to me that I should read the
article not for the historical information it may contain but for the
motivation of an English snake out to give someone the kiss of death.
Just look what comes in the first paragraph of the article.
Rewritten in a condensed form, this is how it reads: “When – and it is a
question of when not if – Israel is forced to bomb Iran, it will face
denunciations from the press, the Left, the UN, the Arab states and some
legislators in America and Europe. Critics will harp on about the law and claim
that no right exists for pre-emptive military action. So it would be wise to
mug up on history to refute this claim.” And this was the point at which I
guessed that the Israelis themselves will laugh off the article and discard it
in the trash can.
Indeed, what Andrew Roberts does after that first paragraph
– and he does it for the rest of the article – is compile a set of historical
examples which he presents in such a way as to argue that every time someone
attacked a neighbor about to arm himself with a superior weapon, the attacker
crushed the neighbor, won the fight and lived to attack again. It is obvious
that in presenting his case in this manner, the author had a specific audience
in mind: the people of Israel and their leaders. Will they buy this view of
history?
Well, it has been the policy of Israel for a number of
decades to openly advertise that it has now or will soon have weapons superior
to those of its neighbors. It has also been the argument inside Israel and
among the Jewish communities abroad that the neighbors were the ones to attack
Israel first; something they did each and every time that they had the
opportunity. And it has always been the view in Israel and elsewhere that the
Jewish state counterattacked and won the war each and every time even when it
began from an inferior position.
Never mind whether any of this is true or not; it is what
most people believe in Israel and in the Jewish communities abroad. And these
people are not going to discard this set of beliefs to replace it with the set
that the English snake is presenting to them. They will give him a quick kiss
off, and they will send him back to the pit from which he came.