Unfair to Chamberlain
The Jerusalem Post
November 9, 2000
ANOTHER TACK by Sarah Honig
After the Axis gang began misbehaving with increasing impudence in the late Thirties, Britain's Lord Halifax finally started realizing that this wasn't quite cricket.
Until then, Neville Chamberlain's foreign minister and one of the leading advocates of appeasing the Nazis stolidly kept professing unwavering faith in Hitler's promises of peace. Old attitudes die hard. Once reputations are staked on policies, no matter how misconstrued, it's not easy to admit error.
But Halifax agonized and drew 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."
Indubitably. Our little bit of the world would have likewise been so much easier to manage had Arafat enrolled at Beit Berl. Not that the comparison is fully valid. Arafat is only a poor Arab wanna-be Hitler, though his heart may be in the same place as the Fuehrer's, and though, like Hitler, he's aided and abetted by the decency of the democracy which deals with him so civilly.
Neither are comparisons between Chamberlain and Ehud Barak fair (not to Chamberlain). The British prime minister never surrendered a single inch of Britain -- nor even a forgotten corner of its then vast empire. Chamberlain sold out someone's else's country. Our prime minister compromises the narrow waistline of his own vulnerable state.
Big difference, regardless of the fact that both autocratic, intolerant and haughty premiers -- ours now and Britain's then -- practiced appeasement and that in both cases their conceptions collapsed calamitously. In the aftermath, though let down by their respective peace partners, both prime ministers conducted themselves with admirable aplomb in face of conflagrations they failed to foresee.
For the first eight months of World War II, Chamberlain continued to lead Britain. He conducted the war reluctantly, as one who wished it would go away. His passivity and incompetence aroused unprecedented public outrage.
In our neighborhood's mini-conflict, Ehud Barak too conducts things reluctantly, as one who wishes the troubles would just go away. He is passive and incompetent. But here public outrage is deemed unpatriotic. Proposing no-confidence during a national emergency is akin to treason. Here the opposition is expected to unite behind the leader (his abilities and record notwithstanding) and prolong his term of office (disastrous though it may be) on his terms (including ongoing appeasement).
Barak hasn't ceased making conciliatory overtures toward Arafat. His goal isn't victory but returning to the process which bred the national emergency in the first place. Here the prime minister's failure doesn't mandate changing course but pigheaded adherence to the same dead-end track. His critics are invariably asked: "what's the alternative?" His boosters, recovering from their initial shock, invariably contend that appeasement wasn't wrong, but that there just wasn't enough of it.
This precisely is what we now hear from the Four Mothers, who helped precipitate the unilateral fiasco that was the flight from Lebanon. Not only haven't they gone into hiding, but one of the ringleaders, Zehava Antebi recently got lots of ITV airtime to argue that Palestinian violence is "unavoidable so long as occupation continues. We need negotiations, not power, or we'll have to wage a war against the whole world." Unrepentant, she vowed to do for Judea and Samaria precisely what she accomplished in Lebanon.
At the rally marking the fifth anniversary of Rabin's assassination, Shimon Peres declared that Oslo isn't dead, that there are no regrets and that efforts to attain Oslo's goals will proceed unrelentingly.
The event was nothing like American memorials for JFK. Its organizers annually orchestrate a cross between pagan idolatry and Communist personality cults, accompanied by an undisguised political agenda in which half the nation is blamed for the crime and its views are delegitimized.
This year the expectation was that a distinction will now be drawn between sorrow about the slaying and support for Rabin's political positions, especially considering that Oslo was just revealed as colossal a chimera as Chamberlain's "peace for our time."
But Oslo's tarnished legacy didn't have much sobering effect. Schools, surrealistically divorced from reality, were still decked with the doves of peace, pupils attended memorial pageants and recited paeons of praise to pretend harmony, nonexistent coexistence and policies kids can't begin to evaluate. Parents were still forced to pay for these extravaganzas and a teacher, Yisrael Shiran, who dared voice dissent was barred from the school system.
Nothing was to mar the elaborate production. Everything was meticulously organized in advance. Bumper stickers for the occasion arrived with the morning papers. Billboards and radio commercials bombarded us with solemn exhortations to "gather at Rabin Square. This year it's more important than ever to continue in his path," regardless, apparently, of where it led us.
Much money and effort were invested to forestall the sort of massive change of heart which occurred in wartime Britain, where even Lord Halifax eventually repudiated his previous policy, advocating instead a vigorous pursuit of war. It's improbable we'll hear Shlomo Ben-Ami do the same. We better not hold our breath for Yossi Beilin's mea culpa.
Least of all should we expect Peres to return his Nobel Peace Prize. After all, he has vowed to redouble his efforts to vindicate his policy of appeasement. Already Barak dispatched him to implore Arafat to hold his fire. There's no way Chamberlain would have obsequiously sent Halifax to Hitler after the outbreak of war to plead for a cessation of hostilities.
This is yet another reason why the comparison to Barak is unfair to Chamberlain. There are more. An uncontrite Barak, for instance, will resort to any ploy to stay in power - be it national unity or a flimsy Shas safety net to protect him from no-confidence motions. Barak must enlist any allies because he doesn't have a parliamentary majority.
Chamberlain had a large one.
Indeed on May 9, 1940, Chamberlain survived a no-confidence motion (which was submitted despite the state of emergency). Nevertheless, because his majority had been reduced, he felt honor-bound to resign and recommend that Winston Churchill succeed him. But Barak is no honorable British gentleman.
