Israel Will Never Hunker Down, Mr. Cohen

If you want to puke, read the opinion Hunker Down With History, by Richard Cohen, Washington Post, Tuesday, July 18, 2006; Page A19.

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself...

Another gifted British historian, Tony Judt, wraps up his recent book "Postwar" with an epilogue on how the sine qua non of the modern civilized state is recognition of the Holocaust. Much of the Islamic world, notably Iran under its Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stands outside that circle, refusing to make even a little space for the Jews of Europe and, later, those from the Islamic world. They see Israel not as a mistake but as a crime. Until they change their view, the longest war of the 20th century will persist deep into the 21st. It is best for Israel to hunker down.

Finished puking? Ok, let's see what the word "hunker" means. Michael Quinion tells us:

Nobody seems to know exactly what its origin is, though it has been suggested it’s linked to the Old Norse huka, to squat; that would make it a close cousin of old Dutch huiken and modern German hocken, meaning to squat or crouch, which makes sense. That’s certainly what’s meant by the word in American English, in phrases like hunker down or on your hunkers.

The Oxford English Dictionary has a fine description of how to hunker: “squat, with the haunches, knees, and ankles acutely bent, so as to bring the hams near the heels, and throw the whole weight upon the fore part of the feet”. The advantage of this position is that you’re not only crouched close to the ground, so presenting a small target for whatever the universe chooses to throw at you, but you’re also ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Hunker down has also taken on the sense of to hide, hide out, or take shelter, whatever position you choose to do it in. This was a south-western US dialect form that was popularised by President Johnson in the mid 1960s. Despite its Scots ancestry, hunker is rare in standard British English.

To me it seems you "hunker" when there is a powerful force hurled against you and when you are not capable of withstanding the onslaught in an upright position.

Well Mr. Cohen, Israel does not need to "hunker". Israel can stand up tall and proud. And Israel does not need to take shelter. Israel can go ahead and take the initiative.

I am quite sure that there is no idiom in Hebrew equivalent to "hunker down". This is not part of the language of the modern Zionist.

We are proud. We stand tall. We take action against our enemies.

The mistake in history will be made by anyone who thinks that Israel will ever "hunker down."

And while I'm on the subject Mr. Cohen, you are wrong about the infamous Harvard-published-essay by Walt and Mearsheimer. You say:

No, It's Not Anti-Semitic: On April 5, for instance, The Post ran an op-ed, 'Yes, It's Anti-Semitic,' by Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a respected defense intellectual. Cohen does not much like a paper on the Israel lobby that was written by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University. He found it anti-Semitic. I did not.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, Yes it is! I'm not 'hunkering down' on this issue.