A Lesson of History

My wife, as many of you know, calls her writings "musings".

Well, my outlook is more between contemplations and assertions.

One of the favored responses I have come across in all these years (soon to be decades) to the change in approach and policy by Ariel Sharon by those I debate (and I have appeared in some strange and weird places with similar-fashioned people) is that finally he has seen the light. They add, too, that they knew this years ago.

In my opinion, almost every single perception of future reality made by those of the nationalist camp has come true. I recall justifying my move to Tehiya in 1978 by saying to someone that "katyushas will yet fall on Israel from Gaza". The position of the nationalist camp is not easy to defend because it is predicated on (take your choice): pessimism, charges of racism or paternalism, despondency, fatalism, et al. This is not because the character of our ideology or positions but due to the nature of our enemy.

I started this after reading a book review of a volume on the Hollywood Ten.
Those were the writers, actors and others in the film industry that were outed
by McCarthy in the early 1950s. The new book, "Red Star of Hollywood", by
Ronald and Allis Radosh, deals with one specific issue that I think has relevance
to our situation here and the problem I noted above.

For at least 6 years, between 1933-1939, a major attraction of the Left and especially the Communist Party, was its firm and unyielding anti-Nazism. This lured all the best of America's liberals and the Jews, the latter a powerful demographic element of Hollywood as well as Manhattan's West Side theater district.

Well, late in August 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a volte face only comparable to, yes, you guessed, Ariel Sharon championing a Palestinian state, disengagement and a few other unniceties (I think I just made up a word there).

The Radoshs point out that the day before the signing, rumors were rife and CP leader
Herbert Biberman, Stalinist screenwriter and director, publicly denounced the rumors
as hideous fascist slanders. The Soviet Union would never cooperate with Hitlerite
Germany. A few days after the official pact signing, he became head of the Hollywood
Peace Forum as if nothing had happened.

Our leftists here in Israel, whether in academia, the juridical system, the state prosecution, the media and our cultural elite, are slap-happy silly over Sharon's twist-about. And his son's loyal minions in the Likud party together with the fawning, timorous, obsequious politicians that lend him support in the Knesset and cabinet see wisdom and logic were there is none.

The fact that Sharon has adopted the approach to the Jewish/Zionist/Israel -
Muslim/Palestinian/Arab conflict that has been promoted by the Left since Matzpen
and Leibowitz in 1967, not to get too historic and recall The Five, Brit Shalom and
the Ihud, has no relevance to truth, cogency of thought and morality. In fact, just two years later, all thoses commies themselves found out their terrible mistake.

We, in Israel, have twice been through major "mistakes" like this. The proposed
autonomy plan wnet down the drain, despite the intentions of its initiators and the
Oslo accords literally blew up in our faces.

But, unperturbed, and despite all the warnings, and despite Justice Edmund Levy's
valiant attempts, we are going to go through this all over again.