The philosopher George Santayana famously said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The saying has been misquoted in many ways. I remember it as “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” However we put it, the sentiment that Santayana expressed is an important one, and it is one that a professionally trained historian such as myself should understand and value. There is indeed truth in it. Perhaps the best example of the truth in it is this common slogan of the Jewish people since the end of World War II: Nie wieder! Never again! We must not forget the Holocaust because if we forget it we just might repeat it. We must remember the depths to which humans have sunk throughout history if we hope to avoid sinking to those depths again. History teaches us the depravity of which otherwise civilized humans are capable, and that is an important lesson. Fair enough. There is truth in Santayana’s famous aphorism. Yet I have become convinced that there is also great danger in it, and I have become convinced that the opposite of this saying also contains truth and is just as important. As we affirm that those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it we must also keep in mind that in many instances those who will not forget history are equally doomed to repeat it.
We just saw a powerful example of the need to forget history in the news stories of the past couple of days. The Serbian authorities finally got around to arresting Ratko Mladic, the butcher of Srebrenica. The news media consistently refer to Mladic as the world’s most wanted war criminal. In 1995 he ordered and oversaw the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. The circumstances of that atrocity are a chronicle of treachery, deceit, and brutality, but the important thing about the massacre for my purposes here is the justification Mladic gave for the massacre. Mladic calls the Bosnian Muslims “Turks.” They of course are not Turks, but Mladic transferred all of Serbia’s historical hatred of the Turks onto them nonetheless. He stated at the time that the murder of those 8,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys was an act of revenge of a massacre of Serbs carried out by some Turks in 1804! That atrocity was part of the Serbian revolution against Turkish rule. It occurred 191 years before the massacre at Srebrenica. The Serbs, many of them at least, have nonetheless never gotten over it. They would not forget history, so they repeated history, killing 8,000 innocent people who, obviously, had nothing to do with 1804 killing of Serbs. They weren’t even of the same nation. But even if they were, what kind of sense does that make? To those of us who are not Serbs, none at all.
Another example of the truth that those who won’t forget the past are doomed to repeat it is found on a much larger scale among the Arabs. Holding tenaciously to ancient hurts and slights seems to be a central characteristic of Arabic culture. This is not to bash Arab culture. Over the course of history the Arabs have given the world some of its greatest art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and science. In our day, despite the poverty and oppressive governments from which most Arab people suffer, the Arabs have produced world class diplomats, authors, scientists, and others of great accomplishments in many fields of human endeavor. Yet holding onto ancient wrongs is widely recognized as a prominent aspect of Arab culture.
We see this aspect of Arab culture in the way Arab people react to any western mention of the Crusades. The Crusades were wars of aggression conducted by the kings and princes of western Europe against the Muslim rulers of what these western Christians called “the Holy Land.” They were conducted in the name of religion, of Christianity, despite the fact that Jesus Christ taught and lived nonviolence and would never had sanctioned the Crusades that were fought in his name. The Crusades are a sorry chapter in the history of Christianity and of Christian-Muslim relations. They are something of which Christians may not be proud and of which they should repent. The historical fact is, however, that the Crusades ended more than 700 years ago, yet they are still an extremely sore point with many Arab people. We see how touchy the subject of the Crusades is in the Arab world in the reaction to the use of the word by former US President George W. Bush. In the days after the terrorist attack on the US on September 11, 2001, Bush referred repeatedly to a “crusade” against the terrorists. Reaction in the Arab world and by those in the West who understand the sensitivity of that word in the Arab world was swift and highly critical. Numerous different voices told Bush not to use that word, not that he heard those voices or understood what their objection was. The Crusades are ancient history to Americans and western Europeans, but, so I understand, they are as yesterday to many Arabs. Because people dwell on them, continually rehearse the insult that they were to Arab and Muslim people, and will neither forgive nor forget the hurt, the anger and the resentment toward the West that the Crusades engendered lives on. They color people’s reactions to statements made, and more importantly actions taken, by the western powers in the region. Arab hypersensitivity to those ancient battles and American ignorance of how the Crusades play in the Arab world create unnecessary tensions and make healing the rift between the West and the Arabs more difficult if not impossible.
Then there are the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel has been an established fact of life in the Middle East for over sixty years. It is true that a great many Palestinians were displaced from their homes and forced into exile in other Arab lands. That that was an injustice from the Arab point of view, indeed also from a western point of view, is clear. That there were reasons for it that outweighed the injustice involved was also clear, at least to the western powers that created and supported the Israeli state. My point here is not to take sides. I point out only that Israel has been a reality for what, by western standards, is a long time. Yet if to the Arabs the Crusades happened yesterday, Israel was established five minutes ago. For us the establishment of Israel is history, a fait accompli, something that must be accepted and that cannot be changed. The Palestinians, however, will not forget the history that is the establishment of Israel and the way their world was before Israel was founded. So some of them refuse to recognize Israel, and all of the Palestinian leadership insists that the descendants of those Palestinians who were displaced be allowed to return to their families’ former homes in what is now Israel. Few of the original displaced Palestinians are still alive. The people the Palestinians want to resettle in Israel are their descendants, but to people who will not forget history that is a distinction without a difference. That is one central dynamic, although not the only one, that makes a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict difficult if not impossible.
There are many, many other examples. The Turks and the Greeks can’t get along because they won’t forget the history of the empire that was once Greece and the empire that was once Turkey. The Serbs, many of them, hate not only the Bosnian Muslims but the Croats as well, and the Croats return the sentiment with glee, all over ancient struggles and hurts. The Ukrainians, many of them, hate the Russians because of Russia’s historical disrespect of Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian language. The Koreans, many of them, still hate the Japanese because of the atrocities the Japanese committed during World War II. Many Americans still hate the Japanese because of Pearl Harbor. And so on, and so on.
It is of course imperative that we learn from the past. Santayana was right about that. But it is also true that the past becomes an obstacle to peace when people use it to keep old grievances alive and as an excuse not to come to terms with contemporary reality. Sometimes for the sake of peace and progress in human relations we have to acknowledge what happened in the past, then forget it. Let it go, then move on. When we don’t the result is Srebrenica. When we don’t the result is September 11. When we don’t the result is Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel and Israeli shells and rockets in Gaza. Yes, in some ways those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it. Yet it is an equally important truth that those who cannot forget history are equally doomed to repeat it.
No comments:
Post a Comment