History repeats itself because we don’t learn from it. The continued and horrifying attacks on Gaza are testimony to this. Our textbooks tell us that in ancient times, the powerful invaded and pillaged the weak. It’s the same story in modern times: a single bomb effects far-reaching devastation.

What’s worse is that we’re supposed to be better informed today. There’s communication and knowledge. There’s travel and mingling. There’s sharing of food and fortunes. Yet, the hatred seems to be getting more entrenched, more unreasonable, more evil.

The cover story in the latest Frontline quotes an Israeli member of parliament Ayelet Shaked as saying: “The entire Palestinian people is the enemy. In wars, the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and infrastructure.”

She puts even Hitler to shame. Especially as she herself is descended from a line of people among the most persecuted. In all likelihood, her parents or grandparents were victims or survivors of the Holocaust.

After the second world war, we thought, okay, we’ve seen it all, there will be no more incarceration of innocents in concentration camps. Then came the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda… the persecution of Sikhs in 1984 and Muslims in 2002 showed up India too. According to some studies, it appears that at any point in time, there are 50 active conflicts happening across the globe.

So, for every Herod and Caligula, there’s an Idi Amin and a Slobodan Milosevic, for every Caligula and Attila the Hun, there’s Augusto Pinochet and Yoweri Museveni. The practice of random cruelty continues — and not just by dictators — simply because we can.

They say education is a tool for improvement and empowerment. Yes, our weapons systems have improved, we combine sophisticated bully tactics with crude ones, we grow more powerfully inured to cruelty. Not only do we remain indifferent to injustice, we carry on with our lives with a staggering sense of normalcy. Clearly, we have learned nothing, and we do the same thing, over and over and over again.

Senior Assistant Editor

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