‘God Help Your Souls’

The frantic pursuit by the Biden administration of articles of appeasement with Iran reminds us of a spat that erupted in 2001 between the new prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, and the new president of America, George W. Bush. The issue was Mr. Bush’s pursuit of a deal with the Palestinian Arabs. Sharon refused to back down, though he had irked Mr. Bush by suggesting that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in 1938.Sharon was referring to the central feature of Munich. It was a deal that had been struck among four nations — Britain, France, Italy, and Germany — in respect of what to do about a fifth, Czechoslovakia. Yet the fifth was not a party to the talks. “If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world,” the Czech envoy, Jan Masaryk, said, “I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls.”This is the central flaw of the Iran appeasement. It is being pursued by six nations — the P5+1 comprising the five members of the United Nations Security Council plus, weirdly, Germany — about the fate of a seventh nation, Israel. Yet Israel, like Czechoslovakia of yore, is not a party to the talks, and, indeed, objects to them vociferously. Israel has been making that known, forthrightly, since the quest for a pact was begun.“Don’t repeat the terrible mistake of 1938 when the enlightened democracies of Europe decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a temporary solution,” was how Sharon put it in 2001. “Do not try to placate the Arabs at our expense … Israel will not be Czechoslovakia.” President Bush brusquely chastised Sharon in public, but in his later memoir described him as “a leader who understood what it meant to fight terror.”Today, our Benny Avni reports, “Washington is abuzz with talk about a pending return to the Iran nuclear deal,” with President Biden’s White House eager for a “public relations boost before the midterm election.” While Mr. Biden’s camarilla boasts of concessions from Tehran, Iran contends it’s the Americans who are bending. “There are technical details to be worked out, but very few,” a Congressional source mumbles. The Israeli premier, Yair Lapid, thus finds himself in the role of Masaryk. Today, Mr. Avni reports, he disparaged the terms contrived with the ayatollahs as a “bad” deal that “cannot be accepted as it is written right now.” The Israeli defense minister, Benny Gantz, is heading to Washington for meetings at the Pentagon. The mood in the region, Mr. Avni reports, points to “gearing up for military confrontation.”Israel’s instinct in making its own arrangements for self-defense echoes the heroic Czechs, who, under the leadership in 1938 of Edvard Beneš, stood ready then to defend their nation against Nazi encroachment. It was the conflict-averse Neville Chamberlain, who, desperate for “peace in our time,” dismissed the dispute as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing” and betrayed the Czechs. It certainly cannot be said of Mr. Lapid that he is unfamiliar with the lessons of Munich. He is doing his best to hold firm. “Israel is not against any agreement,” he said today. “We are against this agreement, because it is a bad one.” He noted its terms would enrich Iran — and not with humanitarian projects. “This is $100 billion a year that will be used to undermine stability in the Middle East and spread terror around the globe.”Mr. Lapid emphasized that the Biden deal “does not obligate Israel.” As Mr. Avni explains, “Jerusalem isn’t a party to the deal,” and Israeli officials have long made clear that such a deal with Iran “would,” Mr. Avni writes, “not derail their plans to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state by any means necessary, including sabotage, assassinations, cyber attacks, and possibly even air attacks against nuclear and missile installations.”Ariel Sharon, the Guardian noted in 2001 amid the dispute with Mr. Bush, “signaled his contempt” for the American “strategy of mending fences with the Arab world” by launching “a pre-dawn assault” featuring “Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers, helicopters, paratroopers, and ground forces” against a city yielded to the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank. It’s hard not to imagine the Israelis weighing that option on a more distant theater.

‘God Help Your Souls’

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