RABBI WEIN ON FAILURES

History has recorded for us great powers, ideas, faiths and societies that though apparently successful for periods of time, even long centuries, have turned eventually into monumental failures. The twentieth century was witness to the immense failure of fascism and of communism as examples of promised social panaceas that eventually collapsed due to false ideals and dogmatic ineptitude. Even when failures are evident for all to see, the true believers never give up in their support of false gods. It is one of the perverse traits of human nature, never to admit error no matter how evident and apparent it may be. Here in Israel this is exemplified by the obvious and complete failure of the Oslo peace process, which over the past twenty years has brought only grief and death to all parties concerned. Yet, its adherents continue to defend and attempt to prolong it as though it really would be able to achieve peace and solve the difficult situation that Israel has always found itself enmeshed in. It is difficult to admit failure and our president is not likely to return his Nobel Prize and say that he was wrong – in many cases dead wrong. But failures eventually exact their toll and history does not allow them to be ignored forever. Just look at the economic problems that plague Europe directly and the world generally because of the incipient built-in disarray of the Euro zone currency arrangement. Cyprus and Greece are able to bring down France and even Germany. But no one is admitting failure as of yet.