“Another Generation of the Unteachable”

By Paul Eidelberg (written in 2006)

When George Orwell coined the spine-chilling line, “A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses,” he was referring primarily to England’s intelligentsia – the deaf, blind, mutes who were incapable of recognizing the enormity of evil that had come to power in Hitler’s Germany.

Orwell saw that moral relativism had stupefied the mentality of university professors, novelists, and of course journalists. This stupefaction, he saw, had influenced the foreign policy of Britain’s political elites vis-à-vis Nazi Germany. Instead of preventing German rearmament and thereby precluding the ascendancy of evil’s in that country, Britain’s ruling elites obscured the danger and pursued the policy of appeasement which led to World War II.

The mentality of that unteachable generation has more or less shaped Israel’s political and military echelons. Consider two former and most influential Hebrew University professors, Shlomo Avineri and Yehoshafat Harkabi. In the mid-1970s, Avineri was Director General of the Prime Minister’s office, and Harkabi was Israel’s Chief of Military Intelligence. Both advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state, which they thought would dissolve the Israel-Arab conflict. This is not ancient history.

Throughout the 1980s, and culminating in the September 1993 Oslo Agreement, many politicians and pundits thought that by recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization – a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s annihilation – and by allowing its chairman, Yasser Arafat, to preside over a Palestinian state, the PLO would undergo a profound metamorphosis. Moderation would replace terrorism.

The terror war Arafat launched in September 2000, a war that has thus far resulted in the murder of more than 1,600 Jews, has not taught the blind, deaf, mutes of Israel about the implacable evil that animates Israel’s enemies.

Indeed, a Palestinian state remains on the agenda of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who, on June 14, 2009, endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state apropos of the “two state solution.” It was as if Bibi did not know that PLO chief Yasser Arafat and his minions had educated three generations of Arab children to emulate suicide bombers. It was as if he had succumbed to the mentality of Leftists who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil about the Palestinians, hence, that he had learned nothing from the fact that the Palestinian street supports the slaughter of Jewish women and children by means of homicide bombers. It was as if he had succumbed to the leftist fantasy that Hamas represents the down-trodden and “innocent” Palestinians.

This calls to mind the fatuous remark of Israel’s elder statesman, Shimon Peres, who said “we can learn nothing from history.” Peres actually believed Israel can do business with Hamas, as if it were not the embodiment of evil. This denial of evil syndrome is well-established in American higher education and is manifested and the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C.

It took 9/11 to awaken President George W. Bush to the existence of an “Axis of Evil.” That was enough for him to order the military forces of the U.S. to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. Israel has suffered the equivalent of a dozen 9/11s under the premiership of Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, yet neither warrior ordered the elimination of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Let’s get real. The only rational response to decades of Arab terrorism against the Jews is a national strategy whose goal is the elimination of the PA and its terrorist network in the so-called West Bank. However, such a strategy logically requires the incorporation of Judea and Samaria into the State of Israel. This could be facilitated by the passage of a Land Act to settle 200,000 Jews now threatened in Europe, which has been inundated by Muslim migrants from North Africa and the Middle East.

The settlement of these endangered Jews in Judea and Samaria will induce Arabs to move from this ancient Jewish land to Muslim countries, which can be facilitated by financial incentives. Unfortunately, Israel’s ruling elites are not equal to this strategy. It seems that many Jews are victims of another generation of the unteachable. ?