Munich = Road Map, a PS

Munich = Road Map, a PS

Here are a few of many more salient details that highlight the geopolitical repeat of the phased destruction of Czechoslovakia by British diplomacy and German aggression to the betrayal and phased destruction of Israel by Anglo-American and EU/UN diplomacy and Arab aggression since the second intifada (1987) led to Madrid I and Oslo.

The Arabs west of the Jordan River, both Israeli Arabs and those in the Autonomous areas have many more political and economic privileges and benefits than those in any other state. From medical care to virtually free electricity and water, to uncensored media that spew Nazi-style Jew hatred, their liberties reaches license. Similarly, "the minorities of Czechoslovakia were the best-treated minorities in Europe [in the 1930s] and their agitations were noticeable precisely because they were living in a democratic liberal state that gave them the freedom to agitate."

The resemblance to the violent even murderous agitation and the attentive media that follow and sometimes stage or prompt it in Israel is clear.

Beginning in 1935, second President Czech President Eduard Benes made numerous conciliatory offers toward self-rule for the Sudeten Germans. They were offered proportional representation throughout the Republic but they declined it. One thinks of the gift of total autonomy within Area "A" with which the Arabs refuse to be satisfied though Jordan and Egypt gave them no autonomy and little if any services.

In 1937, Czech Prime Minister Hodza offered to transfer all German administrators serving in the Czech government to the Sudeten area so that they could be entirely self-ruled. But "none of these suggestions was acceptable to Konrad Henlein [head of the Sudeten German Party] for the simple reason that he wanted no concessions within Czechoslovakia" -- his real desire was to destroy the Czechoslovak state. Here is a precise description of the position and rejectionist behavior of all the Arab states to an Israeli state, no matter how small since 1937, right down to the PLO, Fatah and Hamas today. They don't want concessions; their real desire is to destroy the Jewish state as they often state while western diplomats minimize and back page the ugly and lethal fact.

But concessions continue to be offered, then and now, under pressure of the great power "friend" of the beleaguered nation in question. Months before Hitler demanded self-rule for the Germans in the Sudetenland, Neville Chamberlain, Lords Halifax and Lothian among others were privately discussing, inadvertently "leaking" and eventually publicly stating that the Czechs should cede the entire mountainous region outright. This demand for conciliation actually was a blatant and vicious recipe for dismemberment and ruin because the nation's system of fortifications ran through the mountain region. The Sudeten Mountains then, the mountains of Judea and Samaria today: a historian asks: how could Czechoslovakia have its peace or even its existence guaranteed by France after surrendering its key defensive positions when according to the British it could not be guaranteed by France, Russia, and England with these defenses intact?

How will the United States, even with the best will in the world be able to guarantee and maintain the existence of Israel minus Judea and Samaria when it claims that peace will never come so long as Israel retains its heartland and mountain barrier and maintains full autonomy for its own armed forces?

One last parallel to emphasize: just as the Czech armed forces quantity were on par with those of Germany in fall 1938 and the quality of their forces far superior, so is the quality of Israel's armed forces today still far superior to those of its neighbors. But without its mountain barrier, Jewish settlements, and with EU, UN and NATO troops in Judea, Samaria and Gaza these advantages will be gravely compromised. More security measures will follow, everywhere...

History does repeat itself; but with awareness the game need not again be played out till checkmate, global catastrophe and holocaust.

Eugene Narrett

Quotations are from Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope (NY 1966), 625-7; 628-34 for details of the comparative military strength and additional British diplomatic pressures.