Yesterday, a cold feeling ran down my spine as I read that for the first time a president of the United States demanded publicly that Israel accept its borders of 1967 as a starting point for peace negotiations with the Palestinians. The president of the USA has adopted the Palestinians’ opening demand.

In September 1938, Adolf Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia turn over its Sudetenland border areas to Germany as the price of peace. This was the area where the Czechs had the bulk of their defenses against Germany.

England, France and Czechoslovakia were bound together by treaties of mutual protection. At the request of Neville Chamberlain of the UK, he and  Edouard Daladier of France met with Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich and signed an agreement that gave Hitler what he demanded.

Czechoslovakia was not invited. It was told to accept or fight, but there would be no friends to help. Chamberlain went home to Britain and announced that he brought “Peace in our time.”   He was wrong. On March 15, 1939, Germany annexed the part of Czechoslovakia that was left.

Prime Minister Chamberlain and Prime Minister Daladier were both good men, as politicians go. They wanted peace so they could go home and win their next election. They betrayed their promises to the Czechs; sold them out for Hitler’s promise of peace. They went home to an approving public and a well-earned damnation in hell.

President Obama is a good man, as politicians go. Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu has told him that an Israeli retreat to the borders of 1967 would strip Israel of its best defenses.

Netanyahu should learn the lesson of Munich. Never trust the promises of a politician who wants to win his next election. Obama comes up for election next year.

Jim Stevens

Davis

Comments

comments