The ongoing Obama-Netanyahu feud: genuine outrage or cynical strategy?

posted on: Mar 25, 2015

Recently we learned about the unfortunate Chen Hongzhi, a 25 year old Taiwanese who has “the memory of a fish,” as the headlines noted. Hongzhi suffers from an acute amnesia that enables him to retain memories for only 5-10 minutes. He maintains a daily diary in order to keep track of the course of his life, which is what differentiates him from the way Israel handles its relationship with the United States: we don’t even keep a diary.

The problem is not with our long term memory, which is superb: we remember what the biblical Amalek did to us as if they were here just a minute ago, we lambast Haman the Wicked in Congress as if he was a jihadist not far away and we relive Munich, 1938 anew every day, like Bill Murray in the immortal Groundhog Day. And our amnesia is acutely selective as well: every harm or insult directed at us is retained for generations but our affronts to others are erased on the spot.

Source: www.haaretz.com