THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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Learning the lessons of defeat

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BY IRVING GREENBERG
Special to The Jewish. News

New York — The Exodus
was not only a major
triumph for the Israelites; it
was a major defeat for
Egypt. The Red Sea crossing
one week later was an even
greater Israelite triumph,
and an even greater setback
for Egypt — its army was
totally smashed.
What should Pharaoh
have learned from the
Exodus?
. • The limits of power: he
was up against a situation
he could not control, and he
should have cut his losses.
• The danger of undere-
stimating the enemy:
Pharaoh assumed that the
Israelites were too ambiva-
lent and indecisive to assert
themselves and would
meekly return to the status
quo ante, i.e., slavery, if he
applied enough muscle.
• Not to go on with
business-as-usual: The age
of unilateral power was
over.
But Pharaoh failed to
draw the lessons of defeat.
His attempt to recapture
the Israelites at the Red Sea
turned the defeat incurred
in the Exodus into catas-
trophe for Egypt.
In politics and in life, con-
tinuous victories are rare.
The key to long-term suc-
cess is often the ability to
handle defeat — to learn
from it and bounce back.
In Jewish history, par-
ticularly in the past two
millenia, our enemies won
repeatedly. The secret of
Jewish survival has more
often been to learn and re-
coup from defeat rather
than from frequent vic-
tories.
Recent political develop-
ments in the United States
and Israel show again that
the test of political leader-
ship's mettle is the ability to
• draw conclusions from de-
feat. What made then fron-
trunner Walter Mondale so
vulnerable to Gary Hart's
upsurge was more than
media representations that
he was leading due to
"machine" politics; it was
Mondale's apparent failure
to learn the lessons of
Democratic defeat in 1980.
Indeed, polls showed that
Mondale would be even
more vulnerable running
against Ronald Reagan.
What made Mondale's sup-
port soft was the voter per-
ception that the message of
1980 had not been taken to
heart.
In 1980, the voters sig-
naled that checking infla-
tion and reactivating the
economy were urgent
priorities. They were will-
ing, to allow some cuts in
environmental protection

Irving Greenberg is president
of the National Jewish
Resource Center.

and other government regu-
lation and even add benefits
for business and the weal-
thy if that was the price of
getting the economy to be
productive again.
The voters also asked that
priority be given to check-
ing some of the abuses of
welfare and use of quotas
and expressed willingness
to permit cuts in humanita-
rian responsibilities if that
was the only way to get the
corrections in the economy.
Similarly, they asked for
some reassertion of patriot-
ism and traditional values
as contrasted with the em-
phasis on national failures,
injustice, and radical chal-
lenges to past norms of fam-
ily, faith and national op-
timism.
It can be argued that the
Reagan government went
too far in slashing taxes for
the wealthy and school

The key to victory
will not be some
simple solution,
but who is the
"best loser." -

point. But this argument
represents a failure to learn
from similar past experi-
ences; such factors will al-
ways operate in democ-
racies. The price of defeat is
over 500 Israeli soldiers
dead beyond the losses in-
curred in the original push
to widen the security zone
for northern Israel by 25_
kilometers.
Israel is militarily over-
extended; its economy badly
hurt; its citizens increas-
ingly disillusioned. The Is-
raeli public attitude toward
the invasion of Lebanon has
swung in the past year from
over 80 percent justifying it
to over 47 percent finding it
a failure. Financial pres-
sures and inflation are lead-
ing this hawkish govern-
ment to making cuts in
spending on the West Bank
settlements. Moderation
and a sense of the limits of
policy are growing.
When Cyrus Vance vis-
ited with Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir in Feb-
ruary, there was a report —
not denied — that Shamir
indicated willingness to dis-
cuss "everything" including
the settlements, with King
Hussein when the Jorda-
nians were ready to talk. All
this is a healthy reaction —
not because it signals a sim-
ple reversal of policy but be-
cause it shows that there is
some willingness to learn
the lessons of defeat.
Public opinion polls in Is-
rael show that the Labor
Alignment would win in a
race against the Likud as of
today — by a narrow mar-
gin with Shimon Peres as
leader, by much greater
margin with a new leader
such as Yitzhak Navon. The
loss of so many lives in a war
for a questionable purpose
would normally have de-
stroyed Likud's chances for
re-election if not for the
Labor Party's failure to
shake up leadership and
engage in a rethinking of its
policies.
The recent hounding of
Jacob Levinson by his polit-
ical enemies in-the Labor
Party, which led to his
tragic suicide, demon-
strates Labor's continuing
failure to learn. Levinson
was one of the most talented
and econically productive
leaders in Israel.
In both America and Is-
rael, one can predict that
the key to -victory in the
next political phase will not
be some simple solution lYut
who is the "best loser." This
is a time for sobriety, self-
criticism, flexibility, and
chastened leadership. The
American and the Israel
public will stand behind the
political figures who can
advocate policies in this
sgirit.

lunches for poor children.
But Mondale did not cam-
paign as one who had
learned the need for check-
ing past excesses. He came
across as someone repeating
the liberal positions and
promises of the 1970s with-
out having acquired the
wisdom of defeat.
Even his support by the
AFL-CIO, which was used
against him, could have
been a plus had he pre-
sented the unions as chas-
tened by the past inflation
and willing to work to cut
the high costs of union labor
which left American indus-
try so vulnerable to foreign
competition.
Once the people saw that
the primary lessons were
learned, they could have re- .
sponded to the need for
compassion, for greater
sharing of the tax burden.
Not receiving the signal
that the need for corrections
was noted, the voters
shifted toward the Reagan
alternative.
The situation Israel now
faces in Lebanon is that the
attempt to change the op-
tions for peace by the use of
Israeli force has failed — at
least at this time. A combi-
nation of Lebanese internal
divisions, the assassination
of Bashir Gemayel, and in-
consistent and excessively
naive U.S. policy toward
Syria has defeated the Sha-
ron policy.
Ariel Sharon and others
blame the media. and the
United States' intervention
and public opinion for stop- Copyright 1984, the National
ping Israel at the knockout Jewish Resource Center.

Friday, April 20, 1984

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