When I was a boy newspapers and comics often featured a popular memory game, “Spot the Difference.” You can usually find one in the children’s pages of The Jewish Press. Two nearly identical pictures of some scene or other sit side by side and you have to identify what is missing in one that’s present in the other.
I was thinking about this the other day as I sat having an eye examination. The doctor wanted to test my peripheral vision, He had me look at a picture of some mountain scene through a machine (one eye at a time of course). A red light flashed for a millisecond somewhere in the picture and I had to press a button when it did. As soon as I pressed my button a new landscape appeared and I had to spot the dot all over again.
The reason I’m telling you all of this is that both stories rather perfectly illustrate the problem I am having writing my current column. The picture of the Jewish people’s situation from a month ago is completely different from the one today and like that eye machine, the picture keeps changing with disorienting speed.
That means of course that anything I write about this morning is likely to be out of date by tomorrow or even later this afternoon!
I think therefore I’d better stay with the past, both ancient and near and avoid the fast-changing present altogether.
Let’s start with the ancient past. King Solomon, whom we Jews insist was a very wise fellow, once observed, “Ein Kol Chodosh Tachas HaShemesh”… There is nothing completely new anyway.
Winston Churchill, who possessed a brilliant mind and an acerbic tongue once quipped about his immediate predecessor, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, “One day an empty black taxi pulled up outside the House of Commons… and out stepped Neville Chamberlain.”
He was making the point that the taxi was empty because it contained Chamberlain who was a man of no substance who amounted to nothing.
He had a point. This was after all, the person who flew to Munich to meet with Hitler in 1938. There he agreed that Germany should be given the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in exchange for Germany making ‘no further territorial claims.’ He returned to England on September 30 waving a piece of paper signed by himself and Hitler. Chamberlain read it out to a crowd of admirers.
It contained a solemn pledge from Hitler to pursue ‘peaceful’ means. He then declared, “I have returned from Germany with peace for our time!”
Less than a year later, on September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and World War Two began.
It isn’t the benefit of hindsight that make Chamberlain’s claims so risible. Plenty of his contemporaries saw exactly how ridiculous their Prime Minister’s confidence was and how catastrophic his appeasement of Germany had been. An empty black taxi indeed.
At the time of writing this piece, history has been repeating itself. A long line of empty black taxis have pulled up and out have stepped America and the West’s leaders, Joe Biden, the UK’s David Cameron, the EU’s President Ursula von der Leyen and many more. The new message written on the piece of paper they grasp in their hands says, “Take the Win… Don’t hit back at Iran.”
The same treatment of appeasement and cowardice that so delighted and emboldened Hitler in the 1930s has emboldened Iran for decades (and Russia and China too). It is still being prescribed by “Dr. Biden” and his team now. Israel is being told to keep swallowing more of the same medicine. They are assured that it will do them the world of good and what’s more, keep the doctor and his team in business and in their jobs.
Jews inside the state of Israel or outside it, who have even the faintest familiarity with our history are perfectly aware that this “therapy” will in fact kill them. It did precisely that in 1939 after all.
So as the future is unknown and the picture of what it may look like changes every day let’s recall some of the words of a Prime Minister who was anything but a Chamberlain to remind us of some unchanging Jewish historical facts, Menachem Begin.
In 1981 during a meeting with young American activists from the UJA he was asked, “Would you share with us what you think is the relevant message of the Holocaust for the people here, who are the coming leaders of the American Jewish community?”
Here is an extract of some of his reply,
“If an enemy of our people says he seeks to destroy us, believe him. Don’t doubt him for a moment. Don’t make light of it. Do all in your power to deny him the means of carrying out his satanic intent.
When a Jew anywhere in the world is threatened or under attack, do all in your power to come to his aid. Never pause to wonder what the world will think or say. The world will never pity slaughtered Jews.
A Jew must learn to defend himself. He must forever be prepared for whenever threat looms.
Stand united in the face of the enemy.”
The world’s empty men are trying to persuade Israel and Jews everywhere not to believe the threats of Iran. They want those in the Diaspora to discourage or disown our brothers and sisters in Israel. They insist that Israel must not defend itself. They and their agents try to sow disunity through demonstrations in Tel Aviv and beyond.
Yet even as the pictures and events of our time change at bewildering speed, we must recall that, as Shlomo HaMelech said, there’s nothing truly completely new.
I think, looking at our situation now, he would urge us to avoid empty black taxis. He might also quote Moshe Rabbeinu facing an Egyptian army, “Al Tirau... Don’t be afraid, stand firm and you’ll see how Hashem will save you.”
