In response to the prior post regarding the incipient new “peace process,” Biff notes Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Jeff Emanuel reports a reoccurrence of the phenomenon in a meeting a group of bloggers (including Scott Johnson and Jim Hoft) had in Israel a couple weeks ago:
When meeting with her in Jerusalem, I asked [Olmert’s] spokesperson, Miri Eisen, what her response would be to those who say that unilaterally making concessions is a well-known sign of weakness to Israel’s opponents, and, like in Lebanon and Gaza, would serve only to embolden the fighters to strike harder.
Her response? “We know that it is not weak, because we know that there is strength in being able to make concessions even when it has not worked before.”
Eisen’s and Einstein’s counter-principles recall the observation of Avi Dicter, who served as director of the Israeli Security Agency “Shin Bet” from 2000-2005, quoted in a Jerusalem Post editorial two months before the 2005 disengagement:
While some argue that Israel could be helping by removing more checkpoints and releasing more prisoners, what Dichter says of such "experiments" is sobering: "It’s impossible to jump from the Shalom Tower without a parachute every time and say: ‘Wow, we crashed.‘"
The physics of the peace process.