The Latest Repetition of History?

Once again, philosopher George Santayana is in the spotlight with his best-known aphorism, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” This time it involves a NewsFeed Web page on the Al Jazeera Web site involving the United Nations. The headline says it all: “US bars Palestinian president from attending UNGA [United Nations General Assembly] for second year.”

The history I have in mind involves the ongoing question of legitimacy. In the last centuries, countries like Germany tried to deny the legitimacy of its Jewish population. It would not be an understatement to say that the consequences were ghastly, but ultimately they led to the creation of Israel as a sovereign state. The resulting governance gave Jews a “voice,” which had been denied in many regions in Europe.

Many who benefitted from that preference had not been born in the territory that is now Israel. They were more likely to come from Europe than from other countries, such as the United States. For my part, I left the United States to teach in Israel after I achieved my doctoral degree. Since my thesis advisor had not prepared me for what I would do after receiving that degree, teaching at the Technion in Haifa was the only job I managed to get! So it would be fair to say that Israel played a significant role in launching my professional career.

That said, the best thing to result from that career was that it prepared me for returning to the United States to teach Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania! This allowed me to use my summer break to do something that I could not have done when I was living in Israel. I arranged a vacation for visiting Egypt and Jordan, after which, I prepared for an overland move to Jerusalem. This endowed me with a much broader view of the history and governance in that region, a view in which Palestinian Arabs had as much right to participate in governance as the Jewish population did.

The plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty with the text of Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, “The New Colossus” (from the Wikimedia Commons Web page, photograph provided by the National Park Service, public domain)

As many might guess, this was an idealistic perspective, which has yet to come to terms with reality. The latest attack on that idealism showed up on that Al Jazeera Web page cited in the opening paragraph. Apparently,  seeing to “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” only seems to apply to “masses” from some regions in the world but not others!