Dan,
You draw the parallel between Lebanon & pre-Israel Haganah. This seems, at best, weird. Lebanon is a fragment of Ottoman Syria cut off by some European mapmaker, an impossibility struggling towards national identity. What Lebanon has to deal with is drastically different than what Haganah had to deal with.
Furthermore...
"but the hoped-for sympathy for terrorism would be confined to those who remember the 1948 war, and among those, a small number who were pretty much villified by their opposite numbers in Haganah/Palmakh."
This, I don't believe. Anybody in a significant position who doesn't remember it has got to be wilfully forgetting it. And remembering it is not the same thing has having been oneself a terrorist, villified or not. It's just remembering.
Anyway, the quotation you cleverly twist is, of course, the relevant one: those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. But this raises the really big question: how does one profitably remember history? How do you remember things in a way that makes a difference in what you do? This, perhaps, is one basis for the definition of "wisdom." There seems to be a dearth of wisdom, a plethora of self-justifications, in political discourse, generally, nowadays. A lack of stature. Everybody seems zeroed in on their little interests, with no sense of context. All it takes is one person in a position of authority to rise above that level & speak "wisdom", & anything can happen. But let's not hold our breaths.
|