In his recent interview of Hillary Clinton, Jeffrey Goldberg asked the secretary of state “how do you contain [Iran], box them in, move them toward actual reform, encourage the people to rise up as they did in 2009?” Clinton responded as follows:

CLINTON: Well, I mean, I regret deeply the way that the regime in Iran is treating their own people, the level of hypocrisy that they have demonstrated in responding to the uprisings across the region.

QUESTION: I think in Farsi it’s called “chutzpah.”

CLINTON: Yes, I think that’s right. And they have demonstrated quite a talent for totalitarianism, and they have—

QUESTION: Nicely put. I like it.

CLINTON: And they have imposed a relentless mind control regime that has—

QUESTION: Apparatus—

CLINTON: —apparatus, mechanism that has begun to go even into what is in their textbooks, what you can learn, what you can talk about.

Perhaps we can extend this insight into another area.

When you are dealing with a society that has demonstrated quite a talent for anti-Semitism, extending even into what is in their textbooks, continually dedicating public squares to mass murderers of Jews, omitting Israel from their maps, denying the historical connection of Jews to the Land (even to the Western Wall), seeking not a second state but a “return” to the first one, with an annual “holiday” to mobilize the public for its destruction, it may be (not for the first time, and not only in one area) a teachable moment.