Charles Krauthammer, interview with Bill Kristol (13 March 2015)
“

[P]eople misunderstand Israel, and see it now in colonial, imperialist terms is because it’s a unique event in human history. The British colonization of North America, New Zealand, Australia, the Dutch in South Africa, they came to places that they had never been to. That’s colonialism. You put your people in there. You takeover. You marginalize the natives if you can. You may not succeed. In South Africa, that’s colonialism. So they see the Jews arriving in what’s called Palestine, and that’s the parallel, the only one they understand. They can’t put their heads around the fact that this is a people returning to their home. That they never gave up title to. They never gave up their longing for. It was repeated in their rituals three times a day, it wasn’t like once a year, let’s remember the homeland.

— Charles Krauthammer on Israel

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[P]eople misunderstand Israel, and see it now in colonial, imperialist terms is because it’s a unique event in human history. The British colonization of North America, New Zealand, Australia, the Dutch in South Africa, they came to places that they had never been to. That’s colonialism. You put your people in there. You takeover. You marginalize the natives if you can. You may not succeed. In South Africa, that’s colonialism. So they see the Jews arriving in what’s called Palestine, and that’s the parallel, the only one they understand. They can’t put their heads around the fact that this is a people returning to their home. That they never gave up title to. They never gave up their longing for. It was repeated in their rituals three times a day, it wasn’t like once a year, let’s remember the homeland." in the context of "Charles Krauthammer, interview with Bill Kristol (13 March 2015)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Israel" (Quotes, K) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Charles Krauthammer

About Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer (March 13, 1950 - June 21, 2018) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and political commentator. He wrote a weekly column syndicated to more than 400 newspapers worldwide, including The Washington Post. He was also a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, a panelist on Fox News's Special Report with Bret Baier, and a panelist on the PBS news program Inside Washington.