One of the earliest facts of life we all learn is that old axiom…"Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile."

Cynicism sets in with experience. Only a healthy dose of Christian forgiveness can prevent us from developing a totally warped and hardened worldview.

Still, the Lord told His followers to be harmless as doves but wise as serpents. And we know it’s human nature to take all that’s offered and fight for more.

That’s what makes it so hard to discern between compromise and appeasement. Time and time again, history has shown us examples of individuals who were willing to "go along to get along"…only to discover they eventually had to defend themselves and their people from a position of weakness.

Let’s consider the examples from the past 100 years. England’s master of appeasement, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed he had achieved "peace in our time" after giving Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland to Adolph Hitler. In no time at all, German panzers were rolling across the flat Polish landscape and Stuka bombers had breached the Maginot line.

Then came Yalta. Churchill and Roosevelt met with Joseph Stalin and agreed to slice up Europe like a Christmas turkey. The two weak westerners virtually gave away the store to the cagey Russian and a generation of oppressed East Europeans from Latvia to Yugoslavia spent 40 years in isolation and slavery.

Now, the scene shifts to the Middle East. Enter Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The darling of the Labor Party who wanted peace at virtually any price, even if it meant giving away half of his nation’s "eternal" capital, Jerusalem. Barak bowed to international and domestic pressure telling Yassir Arafat, in effect, "You want the Temple Mount, you got it. You want more than 90 percent of the West Bank, you got it."

But it wasn’t enough for the wily Arafat. He had spent seven years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, consolidating his power, creating a demi-state with its own police, armed by the Israelis. He moved into areas ceded by the Jews under terms of the agreement but refused to honor even the most basic terms demanded of the Palestinians, striking from the Palestinian Charter a clause demanding the eradication of Israel. Then, Arafat, seized upon the first choice chance to renew the Intifada. He set loose imprisoned Muslim terrorist bombers and gave his goon squads carte blanche to blow up buses, shoot innocent Jewish civilians and hurl rocks at Western Wall worshippers.

Then Arafat had the "chutzpah" to point the finger at Israel when it attempted to restore order, admittedly with a large and tragic loss of human life.

History is well on its way to repeating itself, again. The localized battle between two sparring cousins may soon become a regional holocaust. And the tragic part is that some of mankind’s most famous scholars, the Jewish people, have not been able to internalize the lessons of the past 100 years to avoid what may now be the next, inevitable outcome.

Perhaps the true lesson here for all of us is…"You can’t talk peace with someone when they have a knife at your throat."

Without the changed hearts and minds that only Jesus can create, there will be no relief for anyone in the Middle East.

But how can there be peace without the "Prince of Peace?"

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