No, the Iran Nuclear Deal is Not the Start of 'Peace in Our Time'

...At least Chamberlain did not wax on about “the builders of stability” overcoming “the destroyers of hope.” At least he did not compliment himself for insisting that Hitler adhere to the best in himself. At least he did not assert that such insistence would “shape a safer and a more humane world.” And he had the good grace to admit that his extemporaneous remark about “peace for our time” resulted from a long day and cheering crowds.

Rick Richman..
Commentary Magazine..
03 September '15..

In his speech yesterday on the Iran deal, Secretary of State Kerry mentioned “Israel” or “Israeli” 26 times – protesting a bit too much about his concern for the ally put at existential risk by the Obama administration’s cascade of concessions. Even eerier was the similarity of Kerry’s words to those of Neville Chamberlain in the British parliamentary debate on the Munich agreement in 1938. Here is Kerry’s assertion about Israel, together with his concluding words:

The people of Israel will be safer with this deal, and the same is true for the people throughout the region. … [H]istory may judge [the Iran agreement] a turning point, a moment when the builders of stability seized the initiative from the destroyers of hope, and when we were able to show, as have generations before us, that when we demand the best from ourselves and insist that others adhere to a similar high standard – when we do that, we have immense power to shape a safer and a more humane world. That’s what this is about and that’s what I hope we will do in the days ahead.

In the debate on the Munich agreement, Chamberlain’s claims were actually more modest than Kerry’s. He acknowledged the criticism he had received for saying that the agreement signaled “peace for our time,” and he said he hoped Members of Parliament would not “read into words used in a moment of some emotion, after a long and exhausting day, after I had driven through miles of excited, enthusiastic, cheering people – I hope they will not read into those words more than they were intended to convey.” He said he knew “weakness in armed strength means weakness in diplomacy” and he had a program to accelerate Britain’s re-armament. Then he described the effect of the agreement on Czechoslovakia and his hopes for the future:

It is my hope and my belief, that under the new system of guarantees, the new Czechoslovakia will find a greater security than she has ever enjoyed in the past…. Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. … The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous [obstacle]. Now that we have got past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.

Chamberlain's Legacy versus Obama's (and Europe's)

...It is difficult to think that President Obama — or leaders in Europe — actually want their names to go down in history as those who legitimized a rogue entity such as "Palestine," or enabled Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But just as Neville Chamberlain is looked on as the biggest laughing-stock in history for promising "peace" with Hitler, so can Obama's legacy be that of an even bigger fool. Chamberlain, after all, did not have a Chamberlain to warn him.

Guy Millière..
Gatestone Istitute..
23 November '14..

On October 30, when the Swedish government recognized "the State of Palestine," Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said she thought that the decision "shows the way" to other European governments.

It seems she is right. Even earlier, on September 30, French President François Hollande declared that "France will soon recognize a Palestinian state." French Socialist representatives are presently working on a text along those lines. And on October 13, the British Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the official recognition of "Palestine", even if the vote was non-binding.

But non-binding votes can easily lead to binding decisions.

Sure enough, true to Wallstrom's prediction, on November 18, the Spanish parliament did the same thing — on the same day as a murderous terrorist attack on Israeli civilians praying at a synagogue in Jerusalem.

Wallstrom had added that the recognition of the "State of Palestine" by the Swedish government would help to facilitate renewed negotiations and strengthen the positions of the "moderates."

In reality, however, all recent diplomatic statements of Mahmoud Abbas[1] and other "Palestinian" leaders show a willingness to reach a formal recognition of "Palestine" but without the negotiations to which they had agreed under international law in Oslo II, and without any peace agreement.

It is precisely this recognition, in violation of international law, that Sweden gives the Palestinian Authority [PA], and that other European governments would give it if they follow Sweden.

Meanwhile, the most recent statements of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other "Palestinian" leaders about the use of violence show no trace of "moderation."

Abbas's advisor and Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einen recently said, "Blessed be your quality weapons, the wheels of your cars, your axes and kitchen knives… [because they are being used] according to Allah's will. We are the soldiers of Allah."

Another Fatah official, Muhammad al-Biqa'i, announced on official PA TV on November 7, that, "Jerusalem needs blood in order to purify itself of Jews."

There are countless more such examples.

The Palestinian leadership is encouraged to continue, when they see that they can publicly praise murderers as heroes and nevertheless be described as "moderates."

Revisiting Neville Chamberlain's Peace in our Time

So often cited but rarely reviewed. Any similarities you may notice are not coincidental but are because you may have learned something from past history

Speech given in Defense of the Munich Agreement, 1938 Neville Chamberlain
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/workbook/ralprs36.htm

The Prime Minister:

Before I come to describe the Agreement which was signed at Munich in the small hours of Friday morning last, I would like to remind the House of two things which I think it very essential not to forget when those terms are being considered. The first is this: We did not go there to decide whether the predominantly German areas in the Sudetenland should be passed over to the German Reich. That had been decided already. Czechoslovakia had accepted the Anglo-French proposals. What we had to consider was the method, the conditions and the time of the transfer of the territory. The second point to remember is that time was one of the essential factors. All the elements were present on the spot for the outbreak of a conflict which might have precipitated the catastrophe. We had populations inflamed to a high degree; we had extremists on both sides ready to work up and provoke incidents; we had considerable quantities of arms which were by no means confined to regularly organised forces. Therefore, it was essential that we should quickly reach a conclusion, so that this painful and difficult operation of transfer might be carried out at the earliest possible moment and concluded as soon as was consistent, with orderly procedure, in order that we might avoid the possibility of something that might have rendered all our attempts at peaceful solution useless. . . .

. . . To those who dislike an ultimatum, but who were anxious for a reasonable and orderly procedure, every one of [the] modifications [of the Godesberg Memorandum by the Munich Agreement] is a step in the right direction. It is no longer an ultimatum, but is a method which is carried out largely under the supervision of an international body.

Before giving a verdict upon this arrangement, we should do well to avoid describing it as a personal or a national triumph for anyone. The real triumph is that it has shown that representatives of four great Powers can find it possible to agree on a way of carrying out a difficult and delicate operation by discussion instead of by force of arms, and thereby they have averted a catastrophe which would have ended civilisation as we have known it. The relief that our escape from this great peril of war has, I think, everywhere been mingled in this country with a profound feeling of sympathy.

[Hon. Members: Shame.] I have nothing to be ashamed of. Let those who have, hang their heads. We must feel profound sympathy for a small and gallant nation in the hour of their national grief and loss. Mr. Bellenger: It is an insult to say it.

(+Video) Remember when appeasement made the world less safe?

...The British appeasement policy may have been popular in Britain and France, countries whose populations were not eager to go to war, but the end result was war in increasingly unfavorable circumstances and with greater casualties.

Michael Curtis..
American Thinker..
03 October '13..

The democratic countries of the world today may be heading towards a possible recurrence of a policy of appeasement, concessions made to an enemy or potential enemy in order to avoid a conflict or a resort to hostilities. The image of the supine pessimistic British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain needs to be remembered. It was he who submitted to and acquiesced in a policy that turned out to be disastrous, bringing war not peace.

The historic date was September 29, 1938 in Munich when Chamberlain accepted Adolf Hitler's demand that Nazi Germany would occupy the Sudetenland, part of the independent state of Czechoslovakia. The insatiable Hitler followed this in March 1939 by taking over all of the country, which then ceased to exist. The British appeasement policy may have been popular in Britain and France, countries whose populations were not eager to go to war, but the end result was war in increasingly unfavorable circumstances and with greater casualties. Appeasement had made the world less safe.

(A small reminder of the cost seems in order. The approximated death-toll of WW2 is placed at 60,000,000 to 85,000,000, 3.17 to 4.00% of the world population of 1939. Wikipedia  Yosef)

wolfmanwill Uploaded on Nov 15, 2010

Post-revisionist writers have suggested that a justification for Chamberlain's capitulation towards the Nazis between 1937 and 1939 was that he, a sincere if misguided individual, had no alternative. Today, a similar argument for non-action is being made regarding the attitude of Western countries, including the United States, towards the menace of Iran. It takes the form not so much of lack of alternative, but on the need for extended negotiations with a regime unwilling to fulfill its international obligations. The international community as a whole is refusing to acknowledge and meet the threat of a radical Islamic state, Iran.

Since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, the Iranian leaders have made no secret of their attitude to the State of Israel. Before then, relations, during the Pahlavi dynasty between Israel and Iran had been cordial, even close at times. Iran had been the second Muslim country, after Turkey, to recognize Israel as a sovereign state, and had supplied Israel with oil and entered into a number of joint projects. For its part, Israel viewed Iran as a friendly Muslim non-Arab power.

When Ayatollah Khomeini took power in February 1979 he cut off all official relations with Israel which he called an enemy of Islam and a little Satan, a friend of the Great Satan, the United States. The present supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has restated this opinion with even stronger language. He sees Israel as a cancerous tumor in the heart of the Islamic world. He believes that the "fake Zionist regime will disappear from the landscape of geography."

The Washington Post is unable to discover Hezbollah terrorists

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
07 February '13..

Hezbollah is a terrorist group with a global reach. Except for al-Qaeda, it has murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Bulgaria, after a lengthy and exhaustive investigation, found ample evidence to conclude that Hezbollah was behind the killing of five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver in the seaside resort of Burgas last year.

Both the United States and Israel have designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. However, the 27-member European Union, true to Neville Chamberlain's legacy, has declined to do so, citing Hezbollah's political and social activities in Lebanon. By taking a soft approach, European leaders probably hoped that Hezbollah would perform its bloody deeds elsewhere. But any such expectation now has been shattered by the terrorist killings in Bulgaria, a bona fide EU member.

And while both Washington and Jerusalem immediately urged the EU to follow their example and finally use the "T" word for Hezbollah, all indications point to continued appeasement by European leaders.

In writing about this development, the Washington Post showed that both in how it describes Hezbollah and in what it fails to report, its style book tracks the weak-kneed European model. ("U.S. steps up pressure on Europe about Hezbollah" by Anne Gearan, Feb. 6, page A10). Gearan's lead paragraph immediately makes clear that, while the U.S. and Israel may label Hezbollah a terrorist outfit, the Washington Post will not follow suit.

The Munich Three Find Their Target: Israel

Kenneth Levin
frontpagemag.com
27 April '11

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/27/the-munich-three-find-their-target-israel/

In 1938, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany met in Munich to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was not invited. The three conferees agreed to strip the targeted nation of the Sudetenland, whose population consisted largely of ethnic Germans, and transfer that territory to German control. This deprived the victim state not simply of land but of those areas – mountainous, fortifiable - necessary for Czechoslovakia to be able to defend itself.

See also: Speech given in Defense of the Munich Agreement, 1938 Neville Chamberlain

Today, the same three nations are doing the same vis-a-vis Israel. They are discarding UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed unanimously in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and since then the cornerstone for all Middle East negotiations. They are ignoring the language of the resolution and the explicit declarations of its authors that Israel should not be forced to return to the pre-1967 armistice lines; that those lines left defense of the country too precarious and should be replaced by “secure and recognized boundaries” to be negotiated by Israel and its neighbors.

Lord Caradon, Britain’s ambassador to the UN at the time and the person who introduced Resolution 242 in the Security Council, told a Lebanese newspaper in 1974: “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places where the soldiers of each side happened to be on the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them, and I think we were right not to…”

Arthur Goldberg, the American UN ambassador, made much the same point, stating that the reference to “secure and recognized boundaries” intentionally pointed to the parties negotiating new lines entailing a less than complete Israeli withdrawal and that “Israel’s prior frontiers had proved notably insecure.” Lyndon Johnson, then President, declared Israel’s retreat to its former lines would be “not a prescription for peace but for renewed hostilities.” He advocated new “recognized boundaries” that would provide “security against terror, destruction, and war.”

Subsequent American presidents have reiterated Israel’s right to defensible borders.

The dangers for Israel of a return to the pre-1967 cease-fire lines are evident from even minimal consideration of the region’s topography. Such a withdrawal would not only reduce the nation to a width of nine miles at its center but would entail Israel’s handing over to people who continue to call for her ultimate dissolution control of hill country entirely dominating the coastal plane that is home to some 70% of Israel’s population.

It would also give potential hostile forces beyond the Jordan River untrammeled access to those heights.

This was what the drafters of Security Council Resolution 242 sought to preclude. And this is what the Munich Three now choose to ignore by calling upon the Quartet or the UN to abandon the emphasis on negotiations between the parties and to present a plan of its own based on Israeli retreat to the pre-1967 lines.

In the wake of the 1938 Munich agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared, of course, that the parties had achieved “peace in our time.” But Britain and France also offered solemn promises that, should Germany unexpectedly violate the agreement and move against what remained of Czechoslovakia, they would come to the rump nation’s defense.

Less than six months after Munich, Hitler conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France did nothing.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Dershowitz Throws Down the Gauntlet to Obama

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
23 March '10

Let’s give credit where it’s due. In the past, I’ve written about Alan Dershowitz’s defense of the Obama administration as well as about his recent attack on J Street.

Despite Dershowitz’s outstanding pro-Israel record, I’ve taken him to task for his loyalty to Obama and refusal to call the president out for his decision to downgrade the alliance with Israel. But it looks as if the Harvard Law professor is finally starting to lose patience with the man whose candidacy for the presidency he supported so enthusiastically. In today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Dershowitz stops short of condemning the administration, but he delivered as stark a challenge to the president as one could imagine regarding Iran.

Pulling no punches, Dershowitz instructs Obama that no one remembers that Neville Chamberlain was a successful reformer who not only helped restore Great Britain’s financial stability during the Depression but also passed landmark legislation on unemployment and retirement benefits. Instead, all history remembers is Chamberlain’s “failure to confront Hitler.” It is, he writes pointedly, “Chamberlain’s enduring legacy.” And if Obama does not act to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, anything he achieves on health care or the economy will count for nothing when compared to the impact of a failure on Iran.

“History will not treat kindly any leader who allows so much power to be accumulated by the world’s first suicide nation,” Dershowitz writes. Like Chamberlain with Hitler, “Mr. Obama will come to symbolize the failure of the West if Iran acquires nuclear weapons on his watch.”

(Read full post)
.

Quote of the Day

Michael J. Totten
MichaelTotten.com
16 January '10

Appeasement is much harder to accomplish than it seems. It is not just a matter of saying to the stronger side, There you go, have what you want, it’s all yours, just sign on the dotted line. The appeaser much accomplish two crucial tasks.

First, the appeaser must, to the greatest extent possible, disguise the fact that he is appeasing. He must portray himself as a peacemaker, as a man who has prevented or ended a war on decent terms. That is why, for example, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, returning from Munich after handing a chunk of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, said in an address from Downing Street on the evening of September 30, 1938, that he had achieved “peace with honor,” and that, as a thankful result, everyone should “go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” He had not appeased; he had kept the peace. Now go to sleep, go to sleep…

Second, the appeaser much persuade the victim to cooperate. Chamberlain was fortunate in this case, because Edvard Benes, the president of Czechoslovakia, had no visible alternative to surrendering the Sudetenland; his small country could not resist a German blitzkrieg, especially if Britain was on Germany’s side. As a result, Chamberlain was able to present the carve-up of Czechoslovakia as a sort of diplomatic euthanasia that the victim agreed to. He was lucky. If the victim resists, the appeaser is in a bind, because euthanasia turns into murder, and, instead of being a benevolent guide, soothing the victim as it is put to sleep, the appeaser must hold down the screaming victim as the terminal injection is administered. It is a very nasty business.

From Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass.
.

Beyond Appeasement: The Concession Man

Herbert I. London
President, Hudson Institute
16 November 09

When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1936 he noted that based on his stance of appeasement with Hitler “peace was at hand.” Alas, Chamberlain was duped and, as might have been expected, history has not treated him kindly. But, however false the concessions made by Hitler, Chamberlain believed he had obtained a concession: Restraint on Nazi imperial ambitions.

In 2009 America’s own Chamberlain, President Obama, has adopted a stance beyond appeasement; he engages in preemptive conciliation without any expectation of a quid pro quo. President Obama does not wait to be double-crossed; he is concession man who gives before he is asked and remarkably puts American interests at risk in order to enhance his international standing.

Without securing any benefit from the withdrawal of missile sites and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama blithely gave up what had been negotiated and settled with our allies. This move was heralded by the Russians, as might be expected. But Russian leaders immediately noted that they will not use this gesture to put pressure on Iran’s ambition to obtain nuclear weapons. After all, a Russian spokesman noted, “Why should we make a concession when you’ve decided to correct a mistake?”

On September 23, President Obama addressed the United Nations, and in the midst of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, he embraced the Palestinian position for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, a divided Jerusalem, a cessation of new settlements in the West Bank and a “contiguous” Palestinian state. This was said without the slightest concession from the Palestinian side. There wasn’t any demand that the state of Israel must be recognized. There was not the slightest recognition of defensible borders. There was not a hint that Palestinian violence would be arrested. And most significantly, there did not seem to be the slightest recognition of geographic realities: A contiguous Palestinian state of Gaza and the West Bank means Israel would have to be divided in half.
(Continue article)
.

Another Tack: If Ahmadinejad had attended Harvard

Sarah Honig

JPost

01 October 09

To avoid being mistaken for a white sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets." - Barack Obama, Dreams of My Father

You can hardly blame Obama. Most folks are prisoners of their upbringing. They cannot escape the mind-set that took shape in their youth. Breaking through the bounds of early instruction/indoctrination requires a plucky character. Even then, intellectual integrity doesn't always overcome the expediency of exploiting superficial truisms and old associations for ulterior motives and political ends.

It's hard to judge precisely into which subcategory Obama fits. Does he simply lack the knack to unfetter himself from what was inculcated into him, or does he by now merely use platitudes and affiliations to further personal vested interests?

But whether it's conformity or cynicism (or a convenient combination of both), the bottom line is that Obama seems to expect all global arena players to abide by Harvard conventions - to broad-mindedly tolerate adversarial viewpoints, to submit a priori that no cause is unavoidably more just than any other, and to effectively prefer ostensible Third-World underdogs with a peeve.

My country, Obama was taught at Harvard, isn't necessarily more right, democracy isn't necessarily democratic or superior, and belligerents can be soothed with sufficient sympathy, flattery and concessions. Obama's tour de force at Cairo University epitomized the ethos of post-hippie-era Harvard.

EVERY BIT as crucially formative was the enlightenment gained by Neville Chamberlain's foreign secretary, Lord Halifax (Edward Frederick Lindley Wood), at aristocratic Christ Church, Oxford. Halifax would go on to become one of the prime architects of appeasement. After hobnobbing with Hitler, Goering and Goebbels in 1937, Halifax noted in his diary that "although there was much in the Nazi system that profoundly offended British opinion, I was not blind to what he [Hitler] had done for Germany, and to the achievement from his point of view of keeping communism out of his country." Hitler's feat involved banning the Communist Party and banishing its leaders and accused members to concentration camps.

Halifax signaled Hitler that German designs on Austria, chunks of Czechoslovakia and Poland weren't altogether illegitimate in British eyes, so long as German territorial expansion was "peaceful." And Halifax, of course, proclaimed unwavering faith in Hitler's professions of peace. Old attitudes die hard. Once reputations are staked on policies, no matter how misconstrued, it's not easy to acknowledge error.

Only after the Axis bully began misbehaving with particular impudence following 1938's Munich pact did Halifax finally figure out that this wasn't quite cricket. But to his credit Halifax did agonize, even if belatedly, and he did draw some extremely cogent conclusions. "I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage," he mused, "if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford."
(Continue)
.

Neville Chamberlain Was A Far-Sighted Hero Compared To This

Melanie Phillips

The Spectator

15 September 09

Barry Rubin says this is the big one and I agree. Obama’s decision to accept Iran’s, er, offer of talks is a mistake of simply staggering proportions. It was inevitable – and yet even so it is hard to believe that an American President can be quite this reckless.

As we all know, Obama offered Iran a hand of friendship in the hope that this would finally encourage the regime to open up its clenched fist. Months passed; Obama’s hand remained open, the Iranian fist remained clenched and Iran made good use of the precious gift of time Obama had given it to advance its nuclear programme to the point where it is now variously estimated as soon able /already able to manufacture a nuclear weapon.

As time and credibility drained away, the Obama administration announced that if Iran hadn’t moved by late September, the US would finally get tough, which meant some kind of souped-up sanctions regime. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what would happen next. Having contemptuously disdained the idea of talking to the US, a few days ago Iran suddenly said it would indeed talk to the Great Satan – but not about its nuclear programme, only about ending nuclear proliferation (guess which country it has in mind for a cosy chat with Obama?) and getting rid of great power vetoes at the UN.

In other words, it has graciously consented to talk about terms for the surrender of the west. In doing so, it would park the sanctions threat indefinitely and tie the US up in further knots for months, thus ensuring the tranquil completion of its nuclear programme, and make the US look so weak and pathetic that Neville Chamberlain would retrospectively appear heroic and far-sighted by comparison, thus hugely endangering not just America but the world. In the circumstances, only an imbecile, brainwashed ideologue or lunatic would agree to pick up Iran’s gauntlet of contempt.

Obama has agreed.

‘There's language in the letter that simply says the government of Iran is willing to enter into dialogue,’ State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. ‘We are going to test that proposition, okay? And if Iran is willing to enter into serious negotiations, then they will find a willing participant in the United States and the other [partner] countries. If Iran dissembles in the future, as it has in the past, then we will draw conclusions from that.’

The US will ‘draw conclusions’, eh! Doubtless when Iran tests its nuclear weapon the US will ‘draw conclusions’ from that as well; and when the balance of regional and world power finally tips irrevocably towards Iranian hegemony and the nuclear blackmail of America and the world, not to mention the nuking of Tel Aviv, the US will ‘draw conclusions’ from that too. But it will never act. Instead the US, having dug itself into the ground up to its neck so that it can be stoned, is going to enter into ‘serious negotiations’.

What about?

Rubin observes:

At first, the leaks were that both the United States and the Europeans rejected the letter. Yet within two days this was all reversed and they accepted it. Why would such a thing happen? Unless they received some secret Iranian assurances—which is possible—it means that the State Department mid-level officials scoffed at the letter but as it went up the chain of command, to Obama itself, he chose to accept it. There’s no doubt that this decision was made at the very top and there are also indications that wiser heads who understand the situation better were against it.

For those waiting for the Administration to make some dreadful mistake, they now apparently have their case. One close Washington observer of Iran policy stated in bewilderment, ‘This makes no sense.’ But it can be made sense of in several ways. One is that the Administration leadership has no idea of what it’s dealing with. Another is that it has fallen prey to wishful thinking. Both are true but the real answer might also involve something else: a government desperately seeking to avoid even a lower-level confrontation and passionately desiring to do nothing about the most dangerous issue it and the world faces.

We will draw our own conclusion: it was always going to be like this.

.

No Peace In Our Time

American Spectator

July 09

The following interview with Prof. Robert J. Aumann, a game theorist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the winner of 2005 Nobel Prize for Economics, is excerpted from the Israeli weekly, Sha'ar La'Mathil (6/23/09). The interviewer was Dania Amihai-Mikhlin. Translated from the Hebrew by Joseph Shattan.

In your opinion, what must Israel do to finally bring peace to our part of the world?

In the past, we've made mistakes that can't be quickly undone. When you break a tool, it's often impossible to fix it, so I don't anticipate that peace will come to our part of the world in our time. I hope peace will come in our grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's time, but it won't come in our time, because we've made too many mistakes. The biggest mistake was the expulsion from Gush Katif. [ Gush Katif was a bloc of 17 Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip. In 2005, its 8,000 residents were forcibly evicted by the Israeli government, and their homes demolished, as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza.] This was an irrevocable mistake. We won't ever return to Gush Katif.

What we did there was send a message to the other side -- namely, the more they pressure us, the more they'll succeed. This was what we taught them, and since it's difficult to teach the opposite lesson -- and we obviously don't intend to clear out of Israel -- the problem is bound to continue for many years. It's not a pleasant thing to say, but there you are. What we need to do, from now on, is send the opposite message over the next thirty years. Maybe they'll learn from that.

Do you mean that we should be more consistent in carrying out our decisions?

Our flexibility, our various concessions and gestures achieve precisely the opposite of what they're intended to achieve, and this is so obvious and simple that everyone knows it. Throughout history, peace was never achieved -- neither from a scientific-theoretical perspective, nor from a common sense perspective -- through concessions and demonstrations of flexibility -- never. In conflict situations, it has first of all been necessary to demonstrate resolve, and only afterwards to sit down at the negotiating table -- but not in the wake of concessions. These only invite more pressure and more explosions and more Kassam and Grad missiles. They invite these things because the adversary realizes that he's succeeding.

If you're succeeding in whatever business you undertake, it's obvious that you'll step up your efforts. If you're succeeding by blowing yourself up, you'll continue to blow yourself up. That is to say: the young people who blow up themselves and us aren't crazy; they're idealists. They're people who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for something they believe in. I don't share their beliefs, but they do believe, and there's a certain insight from game theory here, that in order to play a game effectively you need to understand what the other side is doing. If you're playing chess, and the other side makes a move that you don't understand, if you say: "I don't get it, it's all nonsense, I'm going to continue my attack" -- you'll lose. First of all, you need to ask yourself why he made his move and after you've understood, you need to adjust your behavior accordingly.

And it's not just in chess, it's in everything. If you think that the other side is irrational, blowing themselves up for no good reason, so let's ignore their behavior and keep making concessions for the sake of peace -- you won't achieve your goal. Because all those tales about 70 virgins and such-like -- they're nonsense. The young people who are prepared to lay down their lives to advance what they regard as an exalted goal are idealists -- let's understand that. What we did with the expulsion from Gush Katif -- we said to them, "Bravo! You've succeeded." So if they were successful, they'll continue doing more of the same.

What are the greatest threats facing us today?

We are. We're threatening ourselves, and that's the greatest threat; we, and our insane race after peace, that's what brings war. When Chamberlain returned to Great Britain from Munich in 1938, he said, "I have brought peace in our time." Back then, too, everyone was racing madly after peace, and Chamberlain brought war.

Then what really will bring peace?

What will bring peace is our readiness for war. The Romans already knew this: If you want peace, prepare for war, not just materially, but also psychologically. You should be psychologically prepared for war, and not go around all the time yelling, "When will peace finally come?" The other side wants war? Fine, bring it on! Only then will peace come, only when the other side is convinced that we mean it. We're not doing anything to convince them. On the contrary, we're doing precisely the opposite, which is why we are the greatest threat to ourselves.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.