The difference between those who do not learn from history
and those who do, is that the first believe history will repeat itself in the
exact same manner as before, whereas the second know that it will not.
The result is that the first will stand like the generals
who fight the last war only to be surprised by what happens at every turn. In
contrast, the second prepare themselves for the surprise they know will come
but whose nature they cannot yet fathom. For this reason, they hunker down and
play it by ear till they fully understand the enemy they are facing before
taking the countermeasures that will defeat him.
And so, you see William Kristol make the mistake that Jewish
historians have been making over and over. It is that he cites a number of
historical events, spins them the way that suits his taste, and draws parallels
between what he just described and what he says is the contemporary situation …
itself a distorted view of reality. He does that – and then some – in an
article he wrote under the title: “Does Israel Stand Alone?” It was published
in the online edition of the Weekly Standard on August 14, 2015.
Up until 1967 when Israel
launched a surprise blitzkrieg on the Sinai and won a major battle, the Jewish
cry had been that Israel
was the little thing that the Arab juggernaut wanted to crush. For six years
after that, and while the War of Attrition was ongoing, the Jewish roar was to
the effect that the Jews are invincible; and there was nothing that Egypt could
do to kick Israel out of the Sinai. But when this happened in 1973, the Jewish
historians got hit with a round of schizophrenia. They cried 'little Israel ' at one
side of the mouth and roared 'Jews are invincible' at the other side of the
mouth – both at the same time.
And so, they modified their view of history to make the
parallels that Kristol is now making in his latest article: Israel is both
vulnerable and invincible at the same time. Furthermore, the situation he is
litigating being centered around the view that Israel may or may not be
standing alone, he is advancing the ambiguous notion that Israel is doing both:
Israel is standing alone, he says, because the whole world at the UN is
standing apart from it. But Israel
does not stand alone because America
stands with it. Well, never mind the population of America ,
the Congress is … and that's big enough to be called all of America –
indeed, to be called the whole world. Try to figure that out on your own; I'm
not going there.
But is there at least a faint resemblance between what
happened in Europe in the early to the mid-part of the twentieth century and
what is happening now in the Middle East ? In
fact, there is some resemblance, but only in the sense that what happened in
Europe has had its ramifications in the Middle East ,
and history has not ended.
To understand that part, we must recall what psychologists
say about kids who are raped, and grow up to become rapists themselves. Well,
that's what happened to the Jews. They got raped in Europe
under the Nazis, and several more times before that wherever they settled in
that Continent. And so they went to Palestine
and repeated that sordid history on the people of Palestine . Of course, what the Jews did was
not an exact replica of what happened in Europe ,
but they adopted the same spirit and the same disregard for the rights of
others.
Thus, if there is a “little Czechoslovakia ”
that is never invited to discuss its own destiny; it is Palestine
and not Israel .
And if Czechoslovakia of the past “suffered from the fecklessness of the
Western democracies” it is Palestine of the present that is suffering from the
fecklessness of the Western democracies … all the more so because Yitzhak
Shamir went to America and cried out: “Zey know nossing about za damacracy of
za Vest.”
Also, it was the same Congress that's now being called upon
to stand with Israel that
stood against the people of Palestine
having the right to take their case to an international tribunal where the
grievances of its people may be looked into and adjudicated. That's the
congress of America ;
the very place where they pretend is run by the rule of law.