Negotiating with evil - The Jewish Standard

Winston Churchill must be spinning in his grave.

It was the great statesman who stood up against Britain’s then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, warning his country that no manner of negotiation was going to stop evil from marching forward.

Look it up on the Internet. Find the film of Chamberlain’s famous “peace for our time” speech.

Look up the time when Chamberlain told the British people, “My good friends, for the second time in our history a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor.”

Less than a year later, Germany made Poland the first stop on its blitzkrieg tour.

It is difficult to not have Churchill’s warnings in your head when you listen to Secretary of State John Kerry and even President Obama talk about the recent negotiation with Iran.

This is the same rogue nation that funds Hezbollah, props up Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, and has the blood of many Israelis and Americans on its hands.

It almost seemed as if Kerry so badly wanted to come out with something he could show for his own credibility and that of his boss, that he felt it was okay to diss Israel and even Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a great deal to say about this.

“It’s not made the world a safer place,” he said. “Like the agreement with North Korea in 2005, this agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place.”

Why do I hear Chamberlain’s voice when I listen to Kerry?

And why do I hear Churchill when I listen to BiBi?

As David Horovitz of the Times of Israel wrote, this agreement “scandalously failed to require Iran to admit to those two decades-plus of lying and deception.”

Instead, Horovitz continued, the United States simply hopes that over the next six months Iran will admit what it’s been developing.

“Unfortunately, disastrously, that’s just not going to happen,” Horovitz concluded.

But as is being reported around the world, Israel worries that during this next six months Iran could pull back from this deal, and then, using the next generation centrifuges it possesses, produce military grade uranium very quickly.

“They agreed to freeze their program, but they can continue to enrich,” said Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.

The president? He said he understands why Israel has “good reason to be skeptical.”

Are you kidding me?

No one wants war. Perhaps these talks are a start. But I do believe in learning from history.

The public posturing makes it seem as if Israel was never consulted or included in the negotiation.

But I guess the final warning that is pulsing in my head like a bad headache comes from the Torah in Deuteronomy 25:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.”

I’m having trouble forgetting what the last Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said: “Remove Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations.”

Iran is only one leader removed from Ahmadinejad. So I don’t think in six months there’s going to be such promise in Iran.

Chamberlain wanted us to believe in Hitler’s promise. A short time later, the evil he negotiated with was out to destroy his nation.