Posted by
The Proud Liberal on Monday, October 29, 2007 1:26:05 PM
Now that Israel is an established country I'm not in favor of eradicating the country and see if blown to smithereens. But listening to Dennis Miller today I was reminded that conservatives distort their viewpoints by their choice of where they start their history.
There was a fellow named Jabotinski in Israel, I think in the 1930s, author of The Iron Wall. The Jews who were emigrating to Israel from Europe were avidly learning to speak Hebrew. Jabotinski admonished them, howerver. He said that learning Hebrew is well and good, but even better they should learn how to shoot a rifle. He declared that the Jews were engaged in a colonialist endeavor in trying to take the land away from the Arabs who lived there. He declared that there were two peoples fighting over one land and the Jews would have to take it by force.
That's all history, of course. The author Robert Kaplan's books recount many instances of one culture invading another, so it's not like Israel is unique in history. But, it also demonstrates that it's important where you start looking at history to support your rationalizations for current policies.