There’s an insight into Secretary of State Kerry’s view of Israel in the New Republic’s reprise of the collapse of the Obama administration’s attempt last year to broker a peace with the Palestinian Arabs. It came when the secretary suddenly started lecturing Prime Minister Netanyahu about Indochina. “When I fought in Vietnam, I used to look at the faces of the local population and the looks they gave us,” Mr. Kerry said. “I’ll never forget it. It gave me clarity that we saw the situation in completely different ways.”

“This isn’t Vietnam!” Mr. Netanyahu shouted, according to the account in the New Republic. “No one understands Israel but Israel.”

“No one is saying it’s Vietnam,” Mr. Kerry is reported to have retorted.

Well, almost no one. These columns, for one, have long argued that there are certain similarities between Vietnam and Israel. This goes all the way back to our first visit to Israel, in 1967, when we discovered that our hosts were hawks in America’s struggle against the communists in Vietnam. Those were the days when President Lyndon Johnson was warning that if we didn’t stop the communists in Vietnam they’d eventually be coming across the Rio Grande. “If you quit in Indochina,” one of our Israeli friends added, “they’re going to come for us next.”

It’s been a long time since that conversation, but we have often thought of it. We thought of it when American Marines were in Lebanon and our Arab enemies were threatening to turn Damascus into the “Hanoi of the Middle East.” Also during the years when there was emerging in a peace movement that seemed all too often to share the objectives of our enemies. It reminds us of the Vietnam era peace movement that, though it included millions of patriotic Americans, was prepared to accept consequences of retreat indistinguishable from the goals of the communists.

President George W. Bush understood this down to the ground, a fact he made clear in 2007 in his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “There are many differences between the wars we fought in the Far East and the war on terror we’re fighting today,” he said. “But one important similarity is at their core they’re ideological struggles. The militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam were driven by a merciless vision for the proper ordering of humanity. They killed Americans because we stood in the way of their attempt to force their ideology on others.”

“Today,” he continued, “the names and places have changed, but the fundamental character of the struggle has not changed. Like our enemies in the past, the terrorists who wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places seek to spread a political vision of their own — a harsh plan for life that crushes freedom, tolerance, and dissent. Like our enemies in the past, they kill Americans because we stand in their way of imposing this ideology across a vital region of the world. This enemy is dangerous; this enemy is determined; and this enemy will be defeated.”

It was defeated, too, at least on President Bush’s watch. Just as the communists were defeated in Vietnam while we kept our expedition in the field. It was the peace negotiations that set the stage for defeat. There were those who fell away from the fight, including a young Navy officer, John Kerry, who met with the enemy, argued the enemy’s talking points, testified against our own GIs before the United States Senate, and worked to achieve the peace accords that were being violated by the communists even as Congress voted to cut off military support for our one-time ally.

There are those who liken the quest for a peace agreement in the Middle East to Munich. We don’t gainsay it, particularly the talks now underway with Iran. The similarity to Vietnam looks even clearer to us. We’d like to think that Mr. Netanyahu has it in mind even while he protests “This isn’t Vietnam.” The one fundamental difference is that, while Vietnam may have been an ideological struggle, the element of anti-Semitism was not at the fore as it is in the Middle East. It is the declared ambition of Israel’s enemies to kill every Jew, in and out of the Middle East, a fact that, all other things aside, explains the unique evil of the foe we face.