Richard Cohen and George Will are not stupid men. Yet, because they seemed to have missed something obvious, they have found their way to some fairly foolish conclusions.
In the Washington Post today, Cohen starts with a faulty premise and then goes down hill from there. The opening paragraph of Hunker Down With History is a triumph of Arab propaganda:
The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.
Judith Weiss, even late at night and in a state of understandable high dudgeon, does an excellent job of debunking Cohen's nonsense in Holocaust revisionism at the WaPo. She not so gently points out that Jews were resident in the area well before any Arabs or "Palestinians" discovered how important Palestine was to them:
To assert that "a nation of European Jews" was created in "an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians)" is to turn history on its head. In fact, the first area of Muslim control outside Arabia was created in what had been the Jewish homeland, renamed "Palestine" by the Romans. Then Islam went on to conquer North Africa, half of Europe, Byzantium, and points East.
Dennis Prager fortuitously does the useful service of summarizing the issues in ways that Cohen and Will should be able to follow, in The Middle East conflict is hard to solve but easy to explain:
The Arab and other Muslim enemies of Israel (for the easily confused, this does not mean every Arab or every Muslim) want Israel destroyed. That is why there is a Middle East conflict. Everything else is commentary.
Beyond Cohen's historical illiteracy, he makes an even larger error, an error that George Will shares, which brings their arguments into severe disrepair.
Cohen concludes that Israel's best option, rather than an invasion of Southern Lebanon, would be to "hunker down":
Another gifted British historian, Tony Judt, wraps up his recent book "Postwar" with an epilogue on how the sine qua non of the modern civilized state is recognition of the Holocaust. Much of the Islamic world, notably Iran under its Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stands outside that circle, refusing to make even a little space for the Jews of Europe and, later, those from the Islamic world. They see Israel not as a mistake but as a crime. Until they change their view, the longest war of the 20th century will persist deep into the 21st. It is best for Israel to hunker down.
[Please check with Judith again to see the wisdom that Tony Judt offers for resolving the longstanding crisis of the Middle East.]
In DELUSIONS OF PROGRESS, Will wrote a column critical of the Neocons who counseled invading Iraq and some of whom now suggest attacking Iran as the source of the current troubles in the Middle East; he suggests something similar to "hunkering down" with Iran, "containment":
Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate, in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Assad's regime does not fall after The Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?
As for the "healthy" repercussions that The Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy, but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises - all of them unpleasant - that Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement" that The Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet another nation - the bombing of Syria?
Neoconservatives have much to learn, even from Buddy Bell, manager of the Kansas City Royals. After his team lost its 10th consecutive game in April, Bell said, "I never say it can't get worse." In their next game, the Royals extended their losing streak to 11 and in May lost 13 in a row.
First of all, "containment" is exactly what both Israel, (viz Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria), and the United States, (viz Iran) have been doing. Our use of the UN to induce Iran to give up its Nuclear ambitions is nothing less than containment. Despite their repeated rhetorical attacks on the existence of Israel, their stated willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons, and their ongoing support of terror attacks on Israel, if they show they are willing to verifiably give up their Nuclear enrichment programs, we would be happy to co-exist with them, even going so far as to offer all sorts of inducements to do so. In the same way, the Israelis have vacated "occupied" territory in order to remove any excuses the Palestinians have for refusing to accept even the most grudging co-existence.
Thus far, Iran and their clients have shown no inclination to accept co-existence, which is a sine qua non of containment. That leaves Cohen's choice of "hunkering down". He goes so far as to suggest the Israelis should tolerate some level of terror, since they should be used to it by now.
Here is the problem: Hunkering down means that you give your enemy the first punch. When your enemy can kill you with one hit, and a nuclear bomb going off in Tel Aviv would be the end of Israel, taking such a risk would be the height of irresponsibility. (The fact that it would signal the end of Iran as well is little comfort, especially when the Iranians are led by people who believe this would be a worthwhile exchange.)
I might add to George Will that Buddy Bell's comment is apt but t doesn't support your suggestions. Certainly, things can always get worse, but if you don't take the field at all you are guaranteed to lose.
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