Throughout history there have been countless moments which are held up as lessons form which we should learn. For example, Munich 1938 is often used as an example, though the lesson to be learned is often subject to intense disagreement. Some say that it is a lesson about appeasing tyrants, others that it is a lesson about trying to negotiate with aggressors, and still others argue that it was sui generis, and no lesson can be learned.

However, I would argue that there is a lesson, and one thing is immensely clear, that Bill Clinton, the liberal governments of Israel, and Americans who write of a "cycle of violence" all did not learn that lesson.

Now, let me begin by making sure we are all starting on the same page. It is my contention that Israel is not evil, and that the Palestinian assaults on Israel are. I know that puts me in opposition to about half of the US, brainwashed as they are by the media and the talking points of both the left and the so-called "paleo-conservatives". So let me explain very briefly. (For those who want a bit more explanation, you can read my essay "Moral Equivalence", which goes into this in greater detail.)

To keep it simple, some Jews lived in Israel since before Roman times. Despite the general expulsion of Jews, some managed to remain in parts of Judea from classical times to the present. Most others, however, are more recent settlers. They started when the Ottoman Empire, a Moslem empire hardly friendly to Jews, held the land. To dot his, they had to buy land and build it up, which they did. When the British received the land through peace treaty, they did not favor Jews, but did allow, for a time, Jewish settlers to continue buying land. No land was ever "stolen".

When the British created independent states, they DID create a Palestinian* homeland, it was made up of four fifths of the land and called "Jordan", it still exists today as a Palestinian kingdom. The remaining fifth was split fifty-fifty between Jews and Palestinians. However, thanks to virulent anti-semitism and Arab nationalism, the Arab League promised to destroy Israel when it was founded in 1948.  So many Palestinians fled Israel, hoping to regain even more when the Jews were destroyed and they could return. Sine Israel won, they were left without a home. On the other hand, Palestinians who stayed were full citizens of Israel, and their descendants live there today, including the members of a Palestinian political party in the Knesset.

Israel was attacked several more times, winning each war, often conquering land from the aggressors. When Jordan and Egypt annexed lands after attacking Israel in 1948, no one said anything about it, however, when Israel reconquered these lands, they were called "occupied territories" and much was made of Israel's "imperialism". However, Israel, in order to ensure peace, actually returned much fo the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty. The remaining lands, which were, with the exception of the Golan Heights, part of the historical borders of Israel in 1948, were incorporated into Israel.

That is the history, shorn of the usual anti-Israel spin. Without tales of expelled people, dispossessed Palestinians, and so on. And from it I cannot see how Israel is painted over and over as a villain. The only people they kicked out of their nation were those who had hoped for her destruction and collaborated with enemies. That hardly seems a sinister act, and is something done regularly by nations at war. The only reason it has become an issue in the middle east is that the surrounding nations, while paying lip service to "solidarity", refuse to settle those displaced persons in their own nations, preferring to leave them as a political tool which they can use against Israel. And somehow the unwillingness of other Arab nations to accept these refugees is blamed on Israel.

However, if after reading all that, you still think Israel is a sinister nation, which is wholly at fault and is to be blamed for simply existing, then I suppose you can stop reading, as the rest of this essay will make no sense to you. If you think of Israel as the cause of all trouble in the middle east today,t hen I am not going to change your mind. For anyone else, let us move on and look at  how Israel failed to learn the lessons of Munich.

Let us look at the state of affairs in the early 1990's in the middle east. Israel, by and large, was at peace. There was continuing low level violence, and Israel was still not recognized by most Islamic nations, buy things were more settled than they had been in a long time. Peace with Egypt existed since the Camp David Accords. De facto peace had been established with Jordan since Jordan had been soured on the PLO by PLO plans to kill King Hussein. The PLO had been evicted from Lebanon and was in hiding and largely impotent. Hezbollah had been too caught up in the Lebanese civil war to do much more than intermittently shell northern Israel. And Syria, though still hostile, had been deprived of Soviet support and knew they lacked the resources to fight Israel on their own.

Then came the Gulf War, and Israel once again became a target for hostile action. Iraq, in an effort to drum up support in the Arab world aftr its nakedly opportunistic invasion of Kuwait, began to support terrorism within Israel and to launch missile attacks. It was a brief revival fo the old hostilities against Israel, but it managed to remind America of the Arab world's continuing dislike for the state.

Next came President Clinton, a man looking for a legacy. He had rather grandiose plans to reform US health care as well (which would turn out almost as successful as Oslo), but, hoping to make a mark in foreign affairs as well, he decided to bring peace tot he middle east. Perhaps it was because it was a problem seen as intractable ( much like the Northern Ireland situation he later claimed to resolve as well), or maybe it was because he recalled how much praise Carter got for Camp David (though I don't believe he deserves it). It doesn't matter exactly why Clinton thought to involve himself in a situation which was already in the process of winding down. What matter sis that he did involve himself. And by involving himself, he created many of the problems he had pretended to solve.

You see, to negotiate, you need two parties, and, at the time, there really was no leadership of the anti-Israel movement. The PLO having collapsed after their eviction from Lebanon, and with Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hammas, and others largely inactive during the period, there simply was no one who could be seen as the leader of the Palestinians. But since Clinton was determined to hold negotiations, he needed someone, even just a figurehead. And so, taking a very American perspective, he picked the most familiar face, and contacted Yasr Arafat. But, though familiar, Arafat was largely impotent, so not only did Clinton need to bring Arafat out of exile in Tunisia, he had to revive the PLO as well. And thus, Clinton managed to revive a terrorist group which had been almost destroyed.

Worse still, Israel went along. They didn't have to. The PLO was inert, a non-issue. Had they simply refused to meet with Arafat, there would have been no consequence. But Israel, either because they hoped to settle the Palestinian question once and for all, or just because they trusted the US a little too much, agreed to revive the almost dead terrorist faction, and not only that, to give them control over large parts of Israel.

And that is where the lesson of Munich should have been learned. You see when one side gives up territory, and all the other side gives is a promise not to do any more harm, there really is nothing to prevent the second party form later renewing hostilities to gain more land.  Hitler did it when he had gained the Sudetenland, and the Palestinian Authority did it after Oslo. 

The reason is obvious. First, when a nation is willing to surrender territory to secure a promise of peace, they have admitted that violence works. Second, when they make such an agreement, there is simply no surety guaranteeing performance on the part of the other party. So, having basically admitted one self a coward and given away land without any way to enforce the agreement, why would anyone expect the other side to abide by the agreement? And even if they did, what is to prevent a third party from attacking in hopes of getting concessions similar to the ones granted in the agreement?

And that does seem to be the lesson Israel is finally learning. After the PA finally gave up on endless provocation seeking ever more concessions, Israel saw power wrested away by the more radical Hammas, which brought about even more attacks. And, despite going to the extreme of fully abandoning Gaza to the PA, Israel still has no peace. In fact, Israel is still being blamed for responding to provocation by terrorists, and proper responses by Israel are criticized as part of the "cycle of violence".

Thankfully, it appears Israel has at last come to recognize this and is trying to resolve the terrorist question not at the negotiating table, but in the streets where they almost resolved the PLO question in the 1980's.

My only fear is that a president Obama, with his endless faith in the power of negotiations, will try to burnish his foreign relations credentials by repeating the error of Clinton and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, guaranteeing another decade or two of terrorism in Israel.

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* I do not actually believe in a race called "Palestinian". Until they needed an identity for anti-Israel propaganda purposes, they were called "Arabs" and were simply seen as residing in Palestine. However, as much of the world thinks they are some separate race, I will bow to their delusions for now. It makes no difference to my argument, I simply wanted to point out this error, as I did in my earlier post.