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Heaven On Earth
Category Archives: Global Jihad
On Moderation and Cognitive Warfare: More from Stuart Green
Chapter 8 from Stuart Green’s thesis. Previous postings available here.
He prefaces it with the following remarks:
Richard, this is chapter eight. I hope it’s not too long, but I sense there are some conceptual problems with it that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’d love to get feedback from your readers and pick their brains. Also, some of your readers were asking about the difference between cognitive warfare and, say political warfare as waged by the Soviets and Chinese. As I continue to read more about political warfare, I do see a great deal of overlap. There are still differences, however. My theory is quite broad, perhaps too broad, as it stretches down to the basic building blocks of the idea, up through culture, ideology, and the pointy parts of PSYOP. I also need to note the importance of psychology itself.
CHAPTER 8
THE MODERATE MEME OFFENSIVE, COGNITIVE PARALYSIS, AND DHIMMITUDE
The last chapter focused a great deal on deception in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but with particular emphasis on its operational applications. Delving a little more into deception, the first half of this chapter moves away from the blunt operational manifestations and toward some of the slight-of-hand, soft rhetoric used by related jihadist groups in other parts of the West, namely the U.S. and Europe. It seeks to demonstrate that jihadists have successfully targeted American and European politicians, academics, and journalists with deceptively moderate memes designed to infiltrate and disarm the Western discourse. They have managed to hide agendas that are not only pernicious to Israel, but to secular Western society as a whole. The second half of this chapter addresses the Western intelligentsia’s reaction to evidence of the uncomfortable truth: cognitive dissonance and paralysis. In the end, it argues that the failure to confront these realities as they become progressively clearer constitutes a form of modern dhimmitude. That is, the failure to confront violence, violent rhetoric, and violent ideology represents unwitting submission to an Arab-Muslim agenda.
USE OF MODERATE MEMES
In times of particularly intense conflict the accepted discourses have naturally shifted toward the extreme. During the World Wars entire enemy populations became associated with rapacious destruction and evil, as were “the Hun” during WWI and the Japanese during WWII for Americans. In the current context, however, only the Arab-Muslim society maintains that it is now (and always has been) at war with Western society. Western society, for its part, continues to think of war in confined, sporadic terms—certainly, war is not perceived as a millennial imperative. Today the accepted Western discourse, with some exceptions, does not allow for the suggestion that it is in a civilizational war—such talk is generally denounced as racist or Islamophobic. Thenceforth, “extreme” rhetoric is permitted within the mainstream, Arab-Muslim discourse, while the Western discourse remains relatively unradicalized.
Professor Anna Geifman of Boston University observes the frequent appearance of a particular question after terrorist attacks: “What did we do to make them hate us?”[1] The emergence of this question demonstrates not only that the Western discourse remains comparatively unmoved by even the violent manifestation of the war—there is little “mobilization” in the Western discourse when compared to WWI, WWII, or the current Arab-Muslim discourse—but also that it is decidedly vulnerable to hostile ideologists and their “moderate” supporters who indulge in answering the question.
Few ask the more relevant question Landes suggests, which holds particular value for our own cognitive warriors: “What are they telling themselves that makes them hate us?” The accepted pattern is to point out a variety of Western policies as the genesis of Arab-Muslim anger and conflict. This kind of thinking—not completely without value—stems from guilt-culture and maintains that we can find out “why they hate us” by opening a “dialogue,” and possibly even improve relations by admitting culpability. For this to be theoretically possible, the Western elite must find a moderate Arab-Muslim cadre to sit across the table, and because universalist memeplexes insist that there is such a cadre, cognitive warriors happily provide them.
Stephen Coughlin suggests that the moderates of respective societies interact with each other to feed temperate, sometimes “soft,” impressions of the other culture back into their own society’s discourse (see chapter 2). There are also influential individuals and groups wholly aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas who use taqiyya to make themselves appear moderate by Western standards, that is, they pass themselves off as the best chance for “mutual understanding” and inter-societal progress. By appropriately aligning their memes for infiltration and infection, these groups and individuals soften Western policy-makers, academics, and journalists, most of whom are neither familiar with taqiyya nor the depth and extremity of the opposing ideology. These deceptively moderate elements are on the front lines of the cognitive war and arguably present the most dangerous, most capable threat to the West.
The Campus
Schleifer demonstrates that their activities represent one of the more “mastered” elements of cognitive warfare. During the first intifada, Palestinian leaders broke down their PSYOP target audiences into several subcategories. Western democratic audiences, for instance, were divided between Arab-American/Europeans, opinion makers, Muslim groups, Jewish liberals, and the general public.[2] Walid Shoebat’s anecdote above gives some clue as to the extent of Fatah’s message tailoring in the U.S., but Schleifer notes that Palestinians also study in Israeli universities. “One notable example is Ibrahim Karaeen, a leading Fatah member who in 1978 opened the Palestinian Press Service in East Jerusalem,” to translate publications and give foreign correspondents a new, Palestinian perspective. [3]
Steven Emerson highlights some of the activities of the more infamous jihadists in the U.S., including Sami al Arian, a University of South Florida professor with strong ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and who has been taped shouting “death to Israel” in Arabic. Arian established two organizations dedicated “exclusively for educational and academic research and analysis, and promotion of international peace and understanding,” which could easily have attracted the interest of unsuspecting students and academics.[4]
There is a multitude of organizations on Western campuses dedicated to boycotting Israeli products and Israeli academics. Their prevalence and several recent events have demonstrated the extent to which the Palestinian narrative has penetrated some campuses.[5] Palestinian “trade unionists,” representing a wide variety of professional, often leftist, associations in the territories, agitate internationally for Palestinian causes (they may do so on behalf of the PA, although this requires additional investigation), most commonly calling for intellectual and commercial boycotts of Israel on humanitarian civil rights grounds.
Recently, they received a significant moral boost when at least two British unions—the British University and College Union (UCU), claiming to speak for 120,000 British educators, and “UNISON,” a union claiming to represent 1.3 million public sector workers—passed similar resolutions calling for anti-Israel intellectual and military boycotts. They pledged support for the Palestinian “people’s right to self-determination and to establish a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with its capital in Jerusalem.”[6] Unions and activists such as these do not generally intend to support the violent activities of Palestinian ideologists, but from the ideologist’s perspective, that type of support is a tertiary concern. By way of international pressure, cognitive warriors seek only to trigger Israel’s self-imposed military restraint, which subsequently allows jihadists more freedom for their own military operations.
Lest the substantive connection between militants and apparently moderate organs like the trade unions mentioned above be doubted, it is important to remember the previous sections of this thesis which established the level of militant control over the Palestinian discourse. Even for genuinely independent groups with specialized causes, only memes that are in line with or beneficial to “radical” ideology may be permitted. Moreover, many jihadist groups have used deception to establish new groups that appear independent and moderate, but remain connected to and work for the benefit of their parent organization.
The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood?
The Muslim American Society (MAS) is one such example. Formed in 1993, its “leadership was instructed to deny their affiliation with the [Muslim] Brotherhood, their strategy was to operate under a different name but promote the same ideological goals: the reformation of society through the spread of Islam, with the ultimate goal of establishing Islamic rule in America.”[7] Like several other organizations claiming to serve as conduits for dialogue with American Muslims, the MAS was in fact established by the global Muslim Brotherhood movement, which, according to an internal memorandum made public at the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas, wages
a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”[8]
Perhaps the best known Brotherhood scion and arguably the most influential American Muslim organization is the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Established in 1994, this organization descended from yet another influential offshoot, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). According to another internal memorandum, the IAP “absorbed most of the [Muslim Brotherhood’s] Palestinian energy at the leadership and grassroots levels in addition to some of the brothers from other countries,” and it developed the Palestine Committee and Hamas, often described as a sister organization by the IAP’s leaders.[9]
Scruton stumbles through explaining how the West should deal with Islam’s challenge.
A number of commenters have discussed Roger Scruton’s essay in Azure, “Islam and the West: Lines of Demarcation.” Some find it excellent even while others find the conclusion on “forgiveness” confusing if not troubling. I read it with increasing dismay and the results are the fisking below. It’s, alas, a good example of how (even mild) Christian supersessionism, makes it so hard for even sophisticated and (appropriately) politically incorrect thinkers to grapple with what confronts us from Islam.
Azure Winter 5769 / 2009, no. 35
Islam and the West: Lines of Demarcation
By Roger ScrutonWhat it is about our civilization that causes such resentment, and why we must defend it.
The West today is involved in a protracted and violent struggle with the forces of radical Islam. This conflict is intensely difficult, both because of our enemy’s dedication to his cause, and also, perhaps most of all, because of the enormous cultural shift that has occurred in Europe and America since the end of the Vietnam War. Put simply, the citizens of Western states have lost their appetite for foreign wars; they have lost the hope of scoring any but temporary victories; and they have lost confidence in their way of life. Indeed, they are no longer sure what that way of life requires of them.
That’s an interesting formula, since it is quasi-religious, in the sense that religion does answer the question “what life requires” of the adherent. Having translated religious morality into a secular idiom (e.g., Kant), having dismissed religions as so much hocus-pocus, modern secular people who care about morality don’t know what to do but push the “most moral” elements to the extreme. As a result we get a “progressive left” that is at once scornful of religion (especially of the “white” variety, Judaism and Christianity) even as it pushes a “turn the other cheek, love your enemies as yourself” morality in international relations. “Wildly inappropriate” comes to mind.
Of course, the kind of wisdom expressed in a biblical text like, “nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his dispute,” could not penetrate the mentality that, for example, supports the “poor Palestinians” no matter how badly they behave. Religiously deracinated “ethics” can be as dangerous a phenomenon as religious zealotry. (Or is that moral equivalence?)
At the same time, they have been confronted with a new opponent, one who believes that the Western way of life is profoundly flawed, and perhaps even an offense against God. In a “fit of absence of mind,” Western societies have allowed this opponent to gather in their midst; sometimes, as in France, Britain, and the Netherlands, in ghettos which bear only tenuous and largely antagonistic relations to the surrounding political order.
I like the expression “fit of absence of mind,” because it was a fit, a blood-libel induced fit that led “progressives” to adopt Jihadi hatreds, and walk out on anyone who dared to criticize Muslims (a fortiori Palestinians) because that made their third-world colleagues in the fight for justice and truth “uncomfortable.”
And in both America and Europe there has been a growing desire for appeasement: a habit of public contrition; an acceptance, though with heavy heart, of the censorious edicts of the mullahs; and a further escalation in the official repudiation of our cultural and religious inheritance. Twenty years ago, it would have been inconceivable that the archbishop of Canterbury would give a public lecture advocating the incorporation of Islamic religious law (shari’ah) into the English legal system. Today, however, many people consider this to be an arguable point, and perhaps the next step on the way to peaceful compromise.
It’s even worse. Twenty — even ten — years ago, it would have been inconceivable… now he says it’s inevitable.
The Durban Front Crumbles: Italy Pulls Out
Some good news from the Durban front. And there may be more to follow.
Update on Italy from Fiamma Nirenstein, who, as a member of Parliament, played a role.
Update from France: French PM [at the annual meeting of the CRIF]: France would not hesitate to withdraw from Geneva meet if Israel stigmatized
Italy pulls out of UN racism conference
By AP AND TOVAH LAZAROFF
Jerusalem Post
Mar 5, 2009 18:43 | Updated Mar 5, 2009 22:32Italy has pulled out of a UN conference on racism seen by many Western governments as being hijacked by Muslim attempts to attack Israel and shield Islam from criticism.
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Thursday that Italy had withdrawn its delegation from the negotiations ahead of the so-called Durban II conference due to “aggressive and anti-Semitic statements” in the draft of the event’s final document.
Frattini made the comments in Brussels, where he attended a NATO meeting. Ministry Spokesman Maurizio Massari said Rome would not participate in the conference unless the document is changed.
A similar condition has been impose by the United States, while Israel and Canada have already announced a boycott.
Frattini also said that he planned to cancel his controversial upcoming visit to Iran, a move which had created tension between Israel and Italy.
He told Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the decision during a meeting between the two in Brussels.
Italy is the first EU country to officially withdraw from the conference, though other nations have threatened not to attend.
Islamic countries, still angry over cartoons and films attacking Muslims, have been campaigning for wording that would equate criticism of a religious faith with a violation of human rights.
The informal negotiations have proven difficult, with many issues that marked the first UN conference on racism in 2001 re-emerging – such as criticism of Israel.
The April 20-25 meeting in Geneva is designed to review progress in fighting racism since the previous summit in South Africa. That meeting was marred by attacks on Israel and anti-Israel demonstrations at a parallel conference of non-governmental organizations.
The US and Israel walked out midway through the conference over a draft resolution that singled Israel out for criticism and likened Zionism to racism.
Last week, the Obama administration said the United States will stay away from this year’s meeting unless its final document is changed to drop all references to Israel and the defamation of religion.
European nations have expressed hope the summit can go ahead with a final text that is acceptable to all sides.
But they, too, have red lines they say cannot be crossed.
Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said in December that his country would walk out unless anti-Israel statements were scrapped. French diplomat Daniel Vosgien said then that his country opposed the idea of banning criticism of religion.
The Revealing Confusions of Imran Ahmed’s Comments and Responses
One of my commenters recently wrote me off-line to warn me about trolls, identifying Imran Ahmed as a possibility. I’m not sure, personally. He strikes me as a fairly honest person, in the sense that he tells you just what he’s thinking (however muddled), and as such, worth responding to seriously. The test of his real honesty, will be in how he responds to our challenges. So far, he hasn’t done too well. Below, I analyze his comments, the responses he’s given to other commenters at the site, pose him questions (in bold).
Please, Imran, feel free to answer any or all of my questions.
Imran’s comments came in response to a piece I posted with Nidra Poller’s analysis of the dynamics of Eurabia.
Comment by Imran Ahmed — February 27, 2009
HA HA HA. That’s all I can say about a bunch of scared fools who cant remember history well enough to realize their own religious acts from the past. The only difference was that at that time there were no CNN, Blogs, Internet, Media etc.
Last time I check:
1. Jews didnt like Jesus Christ that well – if you know what I mean.. So did Christians banned Jew’s book?2. During all Crusades – more Jews were killed by Christens then ever… what happened to that party?
Here’s a passage from wikipedia: “For the first decade, the Crusaders pursued a policy of terror against Muslims and Jews that included mass executions, the throwing of severed heads over besieged cities walls, exhibition and mutilation of naked cadavers, and even cannibalism…”
3. Hitler was also from a religion.. so why didn’t you Jews classify entire Christianity as an AIDS virus?
Similarly, there are millions of other questions..
People, the answers to all these questions is simple: there was no media, no internet at that time… otherwise the crime, the terror, the hostility, the horror committed at that time against Muslims, Jews or Christians are even sometimes impossible to imagine. Not even the writers of Friday the 13th could imagine that torture.
So, lets face it.. its been always a triple threat match between Jews, Christians and Muslims… However none of our religious books actually (and I mean ACTUALLY) signals hate or torture.
I’m not fully sure of what the point is here. On the one hand, there’s a point I agree with: without the eye of the camera, terrible things happened; on the other hand, since Muslims were among the most vicious — and continue to be… what are you saying?
The only problem was and still is, that if one guy wakes up one day to say – “This Religion is Crap – they are taking over, they are this, they are that…. bla bla bla..”, He only is trying to light-up a a fuel tank..
Presuming here that the “guy” who wakes up one day is the non-Muslim and the “crappy religion” that wants to take over bla bla bla is Islam, then the non-Muslim (i.e., infidel) is trying to light up a fuel tank, namely religious war? or Islam? This, of course, leaves the issue of whether Islam is, indeed “taking over.”
If you Christians and Jews think that Islam is taking over Europe.. I’ve got two questions:
1) Was Europe born with your religion? or did you took over it before we did?
Isn’t that jumping the gun? You haven’t taken over yet. But let’s say you meant, “before we set out to take it over.” In which case there are two answers:
a) Europe has, over the last two millennia, been the subject of constant invasions, some of them successful — Celts, Roman, Germans — some less successful — Huns, Saracens (Muslims), Magyars (Hungarians), Northmen (Scandinavians), and Turks (Muslims again). So, yes, in the “longue durée” it’s conquer or be conquered. But that just leaves us at, Muslims are trying to conquer and Europe wants to/should defend itself (if it can).
b) Europe was not Europe until the last millennium. (Some say that Charlemagne was Pater Europae, but that paternity was really post-mortem. From the eleventh century onwards, the “Europeans” made Europe what it is today — the richest and most powerful civilization the world has seen. So again, surely Imran, you don’t mind if they defend themselves from attack, right?
2) If you are so civilized and “Better than us” – then try to stop it like as if you are indeed “Better than us”. I mean preach your religion, show dignity of your beliefs, show ppl that yours better. it would only be a fair competition. What? are you scared of some competition from as you calls it “just another religion”? the all mighty Chris-Jews combination is scared now… hahaha.. you’ve got to be kitting me.
Redefining a Vampire: Europundit’s spoof on the death of Sheikh Yassin
On the 22 of March 2004, the Israelis assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a targeted killing. The Israelis struck at this man because he was the spiritual advocate of the vicious Hamas strategy of suicide terror, which had attempted to turn all of Israel into a hell of fear and grief. The strike killed its target, two of his body guards and nine bystanders, including two of Yassin’s sons. The world was swept with an outpouring of outrage at the Israelis, and sympathy for the “poor, blind, parapalegic, spiritual figurehead” of Hamas. Indeed — mind you, this is 2004! — some worried that the assassination might harm the peace process.
The obituaries for this man were cloying at best, idiotic at worst. And they were everywhere. Except, of course, Nelson Ascher whose stealth obituary I reproduce below:
A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
Indignation took hold of the whole world as soon as news transpired of the cold-blooded murder of Transylvania’s spiritual leader, Count Dracula. The militant and founder of the local anti-imperialist movement was a victim of what both human right organizations and specialists in International Law called an “extra-judicial execution”. The UK government took responsibility for the action, justifying it as a legitimate reprisal against an open enemy in a context of war. Diplomatic sources, on the condition of anonymity, disclosed that the aristocrat has been killed by members of the SAS under the command of the notorious Dr. Abraham Van Helsing.
The count, better known among his many friends as Vlad Tepes (Vlad, the Impaler) founded and has been leading for over 500 years the MLT (Movement for the Liberation of Transylvania). Though nobody disputed his popularity in the region, a popularity made obvious by the thousands of protesters who took immediately to the streets of Timisoara, Oradea, Cluj-Napoca and Tirgu Mures, his enemies insisted that he was nothing but a “vampire”, something his followers deny, claiming that “one man’s vampire is another man’s freedom fighter”.
The spiritual leader of the Transylvanians was finally found out by his killers yesterday in the crypt of his castle in Bran, 20 miles from Brasov, in the Central Carpathians. His spokesperson, Mr. Renfield, told our reporters that, cowardly caught during his morning nap while he was resting in his coffin, the defenseless old man had no chance to react against the high-tech wooden stakes with which the Americans supply abundantly the British army. He also assured us that “there are no vampires: they’re but an excuse to deprive us criminally of our lands and to justify this illegal occupation”.
The Uses of Antisemitism: More from Neslon Ascher (Europundit)
THE USES OF ANTI-SEMITISM
We all have spent too much time talking about the widespread anti-semitism in the Muslim world and discovering, to our surprise, that many in the West actually share this feeling, while many more couldn’t really care less. This is a mistaken approach.
Instead of trying to understand “why they hate us” and why they (and many others) hate the Jews (something I hope we’ll still be discussing for several generations), what we have to understand right now is: what is anti-semitism good for? What are the uses of anti-Semitism?
Whether those who manipulate anti-Semitism are themselves anti-Semites (or anti-Zionists or whatever), whether they personally share the hatred, all that is irrelevant right now. The historical roots of the hatred, its psychology and so on are not questions we have time to analyse, dissect, discuss endlessly nowadays. (And we’re still debating the Holocaust, how and why it happened etc., 61 years after the end of WW2, without having reached anything resembling consensual answers.)
We are spending precious time getting surprised or scared, wondering about the hatred itself, its depth and extension. That’s important, but not what’s most important or urgent. What we need to understand is that this hatred is being once again used cynically to obtain certain results.
Besides being anti-semitic themselves, the Nazis used anti-Semitism skilfully to subvert other countries and societies. Though Nazism was (among other things) a form of German expansionism, wherever there were anti-Semites the Germans would also find collaborators. Anti-semitism was used by the Germans to undermine from the inside countries, societies and armies that could or would stand up to them.
The Nazis managed to convince millions and millions of Frenchmen and Poles, Belgians, Norwegians etc. and, yes, Brits and Americans that, since they were fighting a common enemy (the Jews), they weren’t really the mortal enemies of France, Poland, Belgium, Norway, England and the US. Untold millions were eager to believe that Germany wasn’t really threatening them and their countries, that the Germans didn’t really want to conquer, exploit and kill them. Why? Because they either thought that they could make common cause with the Nazis against the Jews, or remained indifferent, neutral and defenceless. Since, when not actively loathing or persecuting them, they were indifferent to the fate of the Jews, they also believed it was none of their problem. Many of them even turned against those in their own countries who wanted to fight the Nazis and blamed them for putting everyone else in danger just to “protect the Jews”.
In short: if the Jews were used in the beginning as scapegoats, their main use throughout the war was as a tool to “divide and conquer”. Thanks to their sincere or opportunistic ant-semitism, the Germans were able to paralyse important forces in the countries and societies they wanted to defeat and submit.
PC, Prohibited Analysis, and the “Arab Mind”: More from Green’s thesis
In the version I’m revising for publication, this section is now called “Discouraged Analysis.” This section is taken from a chapter called “Flawed Assumptions and a Poor Understanding of the Threat”, which opens by explaining that the National Security Strategy (2006) is based on some PC, but probably incorrect notions about Islam. Hence the below…
PROHIBITED ANALYSIS
The national security strategists do not make their assumptions in a vacuum. They do so in the context of an intellectual environment that pre-ordains some conclusions and discourages others. In essence, there are accepted judgments Westerners may levy with or without support, and there are judgments deemed unacceptable despite support. It is the unintended byproduct of a benevolent, intellectual environment designed to correct a human history filled with uninformed, unjustified, and unfortunate bigotry. However, rather than removing moral judgments from intellectual pursuits altogether — and this would be a prudent philosophy for achieving objectivity — Western intelligentsia, including mainstream media and academia, allows penetrating, sometimes derisive critiques of its own culture while disallowing it of other cultures.
Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind has to be the most enduring example of a solid, if imperfect, work routinely rejected by modern scholars as “emblematic of a bygone era,” Orientalist á la Edward Said’s definition, racist, “lurid,” and, like Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, too general to be accurate or of any use. Critics deride neo-conservatives in the current administration for reading it; some of the more polemic critics claim it “…provided the intellectual backdrop for the torture and sexual abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib.”[1]
Rejecting Patai’s work as a disfavored “type of thinking,” one anthropologist ironically dismisses it as “culture talk,” while another claims “[Patai] can no longer be taken seriously.” In true, universalist form, critic Emram Qureshi suggests, “Rather than plumbing some mythical ‘Arab mind,’ we should affirm the shared humanity that transcends our differences and binds us all together.” Lee Smith, whom National Public Radio interviewed without contest, eloquently demonstrates the accepted discourse on Patai:
The very title of The Arab Mind suggests that it’s possible, and desirable, to reduce a set of cultural ideas and circumstances to a single concept. Patai’s term is more than the vulgar shorthand of mass politics (e.g., “the black community”). It belongs to an old tradition that classified races according to their ostensibly characteristic traits, a field pioneered by 19th-century European writers and shared by, among others, T.E. Lawrence. “They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellects lay fallow in incurious resignation.”[2]
Racism-driven inquiry certainly did leave an indelible mark on “the academic mind.” The rejection of obviously flawed and bigoted analysis from the 19th century, however, has produced its own problems. Analysts are now required to assume the universality of human character and prohibited from inquiries like Patai’s, lest they be lumped in with the likes of 19th century bigots.
The problem, of course, is that there are differences between cultures and religions that affect behavior and judgments—this cannot be gainsaid. Moreover, it deprives such terms as “Arab” and “Western” of any utility by picking them apart with incessant particularization. It could be inappropriate to use the term American, for instance, because there are fifty diverse states, hundreds of counties in some of them, thousands of towns and cities, as well as a wealth of cultures and subcultures — in the United States alone. Because it would be difficult to find many U.S. citizens who conform to every character trait considered quintessentially American, the term American can have no use, so the argument goes.
Israel’s “Three Choices”: A tentative response to “israeli”
In a previous post on Bob Simon’s 60-minutes piece, I got a long comment from someone with the tag “israeli”, in which he made the basic argument that Simon did about needing to act now in order to avoid either self-destruction as a Jewish democracy or apartheid.
My answer to him turned out to be much longer than I had planned, and fairly dense in both style and content… lot’s of contorted short-hands and long explanatory phrases in mid-sentence. But I do think it gets at some of my broader thoughts on some key issues concerning the problem of “solving” the conflict. So I’m putting it up as an independent post, and starting a new line of comments.
If anyone wants to offer some edits of my text so it’s not so convoluted, I’d be very grateful. If anyone has links to suggest, also welcome.
I am very late to this, so i am not sure RL will even see my comment but here it goes anyway…
RL, the points you bring up are valid, but there is one or two things you are not taking into consideration… I worked in the policy world for a while, on military matters… The main thing I learned was that critiques are no good if you cannot offer a better solution.
i understand, and have been told that many times. i think, however, that in the current situation, demanding solutions is a luxury we can’t afford. first we have to think seriously and realistically about the situation before we can come up with solutions.
indeed, it’s precisely this demand for solutions that contributed so much to getting into our current predicament. rushing to solutions that policy-makers hoped would work (positive-sum, marshall-plan, land-for-peace type solutions), we systematically ignored all evidence that they wouldn’t work, then didn’t work, indeed even ignoring that they’ve blown up in our face — in this conflict, right now, concession produces violence.
so we won’t find real solutions if we don’t do more reality testing (ie shed our liberal cognitive egocentrism, pay real attention to what’s going on on the other side, and learn to identify and isolate demopaths).
what solutions will emerge for clearly seeing and acknowledging the realities (which in good post-modern style, i will grant you are mutliple and variegated), will only emerge over time. if you won’t move off your current paradigm till you have a solution in sight for this problem, you will go nowhere.
In Israel today the situation is as follows: If there is no peace deal between Israel and the palestinians, the settlements will gradualy expand to the point that a two state solution will become impossible.
i don’t know why you say that. i really doubt any serious settlements are going up in the middle of clearly palestinian areas. most activity (as far as i know — and i’ll accept correction/rectification on this — are areas that a reasonable palestinian negotiating team will agree belongs under israeli sovereignty (e.g., maale adumim, gush etzion).
in any case, this is not what i would call an axiom, so much as it is an acceptance of the current palestinian negotiating stance as immutable — ie the settlements are the reason why there’s not been a 2-state solution yet (eg why Oslo failed), and they all have to go. so if the settlements grow, it’s all over. i don’t accept any of these positions or suppositions as either “fact” or justified.
At that point the palestinians will demand citizenship and Israel will have the choice of apatheid or a democracy that is dominated by the soon to be arab majority.
your very language suggests the degree to which your thinking has been taken over by others. by any sane rules of the democratic game, the “palestinians” have no right to demand citizenship and the israelis are under no moral obligation to grant either to them.
over the last 60 years, the palestinian leadership has pursued policies, both internal and external, that are so profoundly anti-democratic that the current palestinian population, especially the generation raised by the post-Oslo leadership (Fatah and Hamas), are radically incapable of sustaining a democracy among themselves much less participating in one created and maintained with great energy and immense risk, by the israelis.
the only reasoning that this kind of idiotic thinking — that the israelis must grant citizenship to the palestinians if they don’t “give them” their own state — is so fashionable is the result of a combination of incredibly superficial political thinking (along the lines of “hamas was elected, so it must be a democracy/israel, if it wants to be a democracy, can’t insist on being a jewish state”) and really nasty anti-zionism (make them swallow the indigestible palestinians either as citizens or as sovereign neighbors and watch them die a long and painful death).
(i know some of my commentators here will point out that i’ve just “combined” two expressions of the same thing — nasty anti-zionism. and i must confess that the superficiality of most political science right now is so breath-taking that it demands explanation, and that anti-zionism and its siamese twin anti-semitism are major candidates. but i’d like to at least allow the possibility that not every intelligent idiot is a scoundrel. there are genuine dupes of demopaths who, if they realized their folly and confronted the dangers, would change their mind.) Time to swallow the red pill.
Taqiyya: A brief analysis by Stuart Green
In the comment thread of another post, a former student of mine who has completed a thesis for the National Defense Intelligence College. For an abstract and table of contents, see here. Below, a discussion of a critical issue in the world of intelligence in both senses of the word, the Muslim principle of Taqiyya.
TAQIYYA
Do Arab Muslims lie on the same order of magnitude and for the same purposes? Are they prohibited by tradition from lying in all the same circumstances as Westerners? Although there is overlap in the two cultures’ approaches to lying, there is also great divergence. During brief service in Iraq in 2004, for instance, I noticed most of the translators working for a particular unit were not Muslim, as one would expect, but Assyrian Christian—an Iraqi minority whose dwindling percentage is in the single digits. When the author asked why this was so, a unit interrogator explained that, based on experience, they had determined the Christian translators were more reliable and less prone to deceit.[1] Why did the Muslim translators lie? Moreover, why did they lie to protect individuals associated a regime despised as much locally as internationally?
In this case, as in many others, the answers at least partially rest in the religious duties of all Muslims. According to the faith, it is anathema for Muslims to be ruled by or even allied with non-Muslims. Koran 3:28 clearly states, “The believers should not make disbelievers their allies rather than other believers….”[2] As discussed in a previous section, it is doctrinally vital to protect a fellow Muslim before aiding non-believers, no matter how hateful the Muslim’s character or reputation. Although it may seem counter-productive to the Western mind, it has also been traditionally accepted that Muslim tyranny is better than anarchy or disorder. Thus, in the Iraqi context as in many others, the honorable end of community defense legitimizes and necessitates deceiving non-Muslim employers.
The practice is effectively codified in the Shiite doctrine of taqiyya, or dissimulation. Most Islamic doctrine that allows for dissimulation finds its roots in Koran 16:106, “Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief, except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in Faith… theirs will be a dreadful chastisement.”[3] The Shiites developed this historically defensive (though that aspect clearly varies) practice over the course of many persecuted generations, and their Sunni brethren often deride them for it. The Sunni, however, are by no means purists when it comes to truth-telling. One classical Sunni jurist stated, “If anyone is compelled and professes unbelief with his tongue while his heart contradicts him, in order to escape his enemies, no blame falls on him….”[4] In at least the Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence, it is considered prudent to lie for an honorable objective when telling the truth would be detrimental to the cause.
… Scholars say that there is no harm in giving a misleading impression if required by an interest countenanced by Sacred Law that is more important than not misleading the person being addressed, or if there is a pressing need which could not otherwise be fulfilled except through lying.[5]
According to the same school, one is not encouraged, but required to lie if the honorable objective cannot be achieved by telling the truth. Honorable objectives can include smoothing over relations with one’s wife, settling disagreements, or most honorably, defending Muslims against unjust (infidel) authorities. Interestingly, one may also lie if the particular sin, such as fornication or drinking, affects only the individual and is known only to him and Allah.
…if a ruler asks one about a wicked act one has committed that is solely between oneself and Allah Most High ([if] it does not concern the rights of another), in which case one is entitled to disclaim it, such as by saying, ‘I did not commit fornication,’ or ‘I did not drink.’[6]
There is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of anecdotal evidence demonstrating the prevalence of Muslim lying, particularly in the midst of war, some of which will be explored in chapter seven. The analytical quandary, of course, is that one can easily say the same about Western lying. Those feeling uncomfortable with a comparison between the two cultures will again assert that, “we do it too,” and again, this is at least partially true. Sissela Bok explores the Western aspects of the practice in great depth. She recounts the absolute philosophical positions of Immanuel Kant and St. Augustine, both of whom believed all lies are abhorrent but differed in their practical approaches, and she contrasts them with the ethics of Machiavelli and Nietzsche, where “violence and deceit are portrayed with bravado and exultation.”[7] She notes a well-known Catholic textbook that advises doctors to deceive seriously ill patients, and she describes numerous other pragmatic examples paralleling the Islamic positions outlined above. Even Martin Luther rhetorically asked,
What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church[…] a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.[8]
I believe there is a difference in the volume of lies between the two cultures, but it is impossible to systematically exhaust the supply of anecdotes on either side. Additionally, any quantitative studies of deception—if there are indeed any—run the risk of being corrupted by the very phenomenon they seek to explore.
An honest intellectual must therefore consider two qualitative points. Is there a difference in societal approval for the lies? Is there a difference in the philosophical or religious sanction for the lies? Societal derision for Yasser Arafat’s frequent and profound lies about peace with Israel was virtually non-existent in the Muslim world, while a U.S. president was impeached for lying about a personal affair (examples of Arafat’s tactics in the context of cognitive warfare will be given in the following chapters). In contrast, even Bok noted in an updated preface to her book, that a raging debate about the ethics of lying and dishonesty had erupted in the U.S. during the 1980s.
I can no longer subscribe, therefore, to the claim I made in the Introduction, that [the issue of lying has] received extraordinarily little contemporary analysis. Questions of truthfulness and deception are now taken up in classrooms as in the media and in scholarly literature. Codes of ethics, such as the 1980 “Principles of Medical Ethics” of the American Medical Association, have incorporated clauses stressing honesty.[9]
British Politeness trumps sanity… one more step on the path to Dhimmitude
Neo-Con Latina has a post: “Queen of England: “Long Live the Iranian Revolution” which cites the Queen of England’s warm greetings to the Iranian regime in honor of the 30th anniversary of the regime which, among other things, shattered English sovereignty by putting out a fatwa on an English writer — Salman Rushdie. (H/T: oao)
Queen Elizabeth’s message to the Iranian people (09/02/2009)
It gives me great pleasure to send the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran my warmest greetings on the celebration of your National Day, together with my best wishes for good fortune and happiness in the coming year.
What’s up with these Royals? We all know that Prince Charles may have already converted to Islam. I wonder how many other Royals are practicing Muslims?
Of course, the pro-fascist stance of the British Royal Family is nothing new. During WWII, King Edward VIII met with Hitler and did the full Nazi salute. Here is a picture of this disgraceful meeting:
And even the regular politicians in England are now giving me the heebie-jeebies. For example, I still don’t know what to make of the Koran-reading, Mohamed-loving Tony Blair. And the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is openly anti-Semitic and enthusiastically pro-Hamas. Is it any wonder that England just banned Geert Wilders from entering the country because he dared to criticize Islam?
There’s a reason they call it “Londonistan.”
I’m sure the good Queen is trying to be helpful, and thereby embodies the very insanity of Western misplaced good intentions. This will, like the picture above, go down in history as one more step on the path to British suicide.
Pallywood, Al Durah, and Icon of Hatred up in Spanish
Jimenez Lopez of Libertad Digital TV has put up a Spanish dubbed version of the , three shorts that make up According to Palestinian Sources…“ — Pallywood, Al Durah: the Birth of an Icon, and Icon of Hatred — at Youtube, along with his own introduction and commentary.
Indeed, if I might humbly suggest, particularly after the debacle of media coverage in Operation Cast Lead, they should be required viewing for any journalist claiming to want to do professional work in covering the Arab-Israeli conflict.
And in Hungarian.
Breath of the Beast explores the deep links between Jihadis and Leftists
Yaakov ben Moshe at Breath of the Beast has a long and profound meditation on what binds Leftists and Jihadis despite their obvious differences (secular, egalitarian, feminist vs. religious patriarchal dominion) and their superficial links (anti-Zionism, anti-Americanism). In the process he plumbs some of the depths of honor-shame culture as it appears in some of the less expected realms.
The Biggest Honor Killing of All
For the past week I have been spinning my wheels on a broader version of the question I posed in my post “Can Public Broadcasting Really be This Contemptible?” The real question, and I am not to first one to have posed it, is “Why do so many otherwise intelligent people ignore and deny the obvious savagery and danger of the Islamist Jihad?” What do the intellectual elite and the chattering classes actually have in common with Hamas, al Qaeda, the Taliban and The Saudis that allows them to accept and even applaud the bloody, violent, misogynist fascist behavior and writings while they revile our elected leaders and condemn our democratic government and its allies as oppressors.
I have written a number of speculations on that question in the past and I was resolved not to just go over old ground but to add something substantial if I could. In firing off that snap reply, I opened the new door I had been looking for.
It is fascinating that, at first glance, the Arab Muslims and The Left appear to have even more reasons to fear and distrust each other as they do points of conflict with Israel, western civilization, capitalism, the military and the business community. After all, the Muslim treatment of women, children and gays and their absolute antagonism (surpassing even their hatred of Jews) for atheists, pagans and agnostics would seem to be deal-killers for any leftist and the anarchic bent of the left is completely at odds with the desire of the Islamists to institute authoritarian Sharia law and a World-wide Caliphate.
But these are only problems of doctrine, theory and logic. If the bond between these two camps seems to make no sense, it is because political doctrine, logic and fact have almost nothing to with it. Caliphate Islam and Communism/Socialism/Progressivism are, after all, both utopian fascist movements. I have quoted Louis Menand in two other posts, writing that in a fascist movement…, “…official ideology can be, and usually is, absurd on its face, and known to be absurd by the leaders who preach it.” Given that absurdity, the actual details of ideology are much less important than the strength of the movement to dictate complete allegiance, the rejection and liquidation of counter-fascists and the conquest of any other nation – especially those that might be more successful or more democratic. Clearly, the left and the Islamists do not see each other as threats- at least not nearly on the same level as the threat they see in Israel, The U.S. and Western Civilization.
They are, of course, correct. One of the few things that can draw together common cause between fascist groups with entirely opposed “official ideologies” is the overwhelming shame of knowing that your movement’s goals and tenets are mistaken, embarrassingly counter-productive and contrary to human nature- and that there is a thriving example of the alternative right next door.
Read the whole post, and leave comments both there and here.
Did Daniel Pearl die in vain? On the shape of the first decade of the third millennium
Daniel Pearl’s father, Judea, reflects on the world seven years after his son’s death. Not a pretty picture. In so doing he raises some critical issues about the vulnerability/stupidity of the Western world when faced with the remorseless hatreds that (among many other deeds) killed his son with such deliberate brutality. My comments attempt to bring out some of the issues he merely raises in order to stay within his word-limit for an op-ed.
OPINIONFEBRUARY 3, 2009
Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil
When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?By JUDEA PEARL
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today’s world emerged after his tragedy?
The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.
Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters.
I’ve found references to the trial, but not to the cheers of jihadi supporters. Anyone have a link?
Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of “the resistance.” Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.
No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny’s murder would be a turning point in the history of man’s inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.
Although Pearl does not go into it, his son’s murder was the first “beheading video” to get put up on the internet. That grotesque snuff film has spawned a whole industry, and the posted films get millions of downloads in days. One of the less salubrious impacts of the new communications technology of cyberspace.
The larger issue, however, concerns the trends at work in 2002. Pearl may not have begun to catch on seriously until after the death of his son. Indeed he may have shared his son’s optimistic (if “realistic”) world view — that we can work out, talk out, negotiate out of any conlfict.
But for those of us who understood why the Oslo Process had blown up in our faces, who understood the Jihadi vision that lay behind the Intifada, who understood how massive an intellectual and moral failure had occurred, starting in late 2000, when, inspired by the wrenching image of poor little Muhammad al Durah, the European “street” and the activist “Left” turned against Israel and embraced the “Palestinian” cause, for those of us who had been watching in dismay at the spread of a new wave of anti-Semitism thinly disguised as delirious anti-Zionism spread unopposed by the liberal and progressive authorities… for us, Daniel’s death was just one more roadsign on the path to the present.
Honor-Killings and Suicide Bombers: The Pathologies of Honor-Shame Cultures
We just did a series of readings in my honor-shame class on gender and especially the issue of honor-killings. Although the feminist article we read tried to argue that honor-killings were on a continuum of violence against women that characterize all cultures, I argued that honor-killings, where it is legitimate to shed the blood of women in your own home for the sake of family honor, constituted a separate phenomenon, one sustained by a peculiar and deeply insecure masculine culture.
The other dubious claim the article made was the notion that honor-killings have “nothing to do with Islam,” that although almost all the current examples of honor-killings we have comes from Muslim countries, they warn:
-
Although these reports are written with sensitivity toward religious differences, they nevertheless leave the impression that there may be something wrong with Islam or its practice. Especially in the televised reports, a sobering discussion about honor killings is frequently juxtaposed over a silhouette of a mosque or a soundtrack of a Moslem call for prayer. The outcome of these visual and auditory cues is to inseparably tie the crime with the already negatively stereotyped Moslem world. In fact, honor killings predate Islam and are not consistent with the Qur’an…
Of course, the sociological meaning of culture subsumes all forms of belief systems, but any connection between Islam and this heinous crime is by no means clear or direct. International coverage of honor killings that overemphasizes the role of religion fails to look at the more prevalent patriarchal legitimization behind violence against women.
The striking correlation between honor-killings and Muslim communities the world over (ethnicity plays a lessor role) sharpens still further when we factor in the legitimate causes for an honor-killing. Almost every culture that approves/demands the killing of a daughter/sister for sexual misbehavior would agree that if the girl becomes a public prostitute, she deserves to die.
But what if she did not have sex? What if she were still a virgin?
Or what if she was raped? Shouldn’t it be the rapist who gets killed?
What if she dresses immodestly (and how immodestly)?
What if she went to a movie with girlfriends?
The more unforgiving the attitude, the more trivial the trigger to violence… the more likely we are talking about a Muslim community. There are lots of reasons for this, many of which I don’t know about, some of which relate to a broader anti-modernism. But one, I think, that deserves attention, is the psychological issue of the insecurity of the males. The more insecure, the more “humiliated” in the world of alpha male precedence (i.e., where real “honor” gets accumulated), the more likely males are to obsess over someone else’s loss of honor, and victimize their own women, rather than fight other men.
(In some places, the practice is to kill the girl on suspicion, get the medical report on her virginity, and only go after the guy, if she’s not a virgin.)
What has recently surfaced in Iraq, however, suggests that even if we grant the above-stated reservations (which I would not, nor do I think would any serious sociologist unimpaired by political correctness), Islamic Jihad has no hesitation about exploiting the most craven aspects of the culture of honor-killing to achieve its goals. (H/T Solomonia)
February 5, 2009
Al-Qaeda damaged by arrest of ‘rape and suicide bomb’ woman
(Qassim Abdul-Zahra/AP)
Samira Ahmed Jassim is suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers
Deborah Haynes in Baghdad
The arrest of a woman suspected of grooming rape victims to become female suicide bombers in Iraq has dealt a blow to the network of extremists that orchestrates such attacks, a senior Iraqi official said yesterday.
Samira Ahmed Jassim, 51, is accused of recruiting more than 80 women to become human bombs, including 28 who actually carried out attacks.
She has apparently confessed to helping to organise the rape of young Iraqi women.
She would then play on the shame associated with victims of rape in Iraqi society to convince the women to become suicide bombers as their only means of escape.
Blair vs. Hamas: The Moebius Strip of Cognitive Egocentrism Personified
An Iranian press agency reports on Hamas leader Khaled Mashal’s visit to Iran and his remarks about Tony Blair’s remarks about the conditions of Hamas’ participation in discussions aimed at resolving the conflict. Both the remarks, and the article, represent lucid insights into the deep disconnect between the religious and political culture that produces an organization like Hamas, and that that produces a politician/diplomat like Blair. The Moebius strip of cognitive egocentrism at work. Again, like the exchanges between Obama and Ahmadinejad, we have two different notions of honor at play.
Hamas: Blair’s remarks mirror of stupidity
Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:15:52 GMTHamas has dismissed a condition set by Mideast Quartet Envoy Tony Blair that the movement must recognize Israel before starting talks.
Mushir al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s parliamentary bloc, said Saturday that raising this “suggestion” testifies that Blair is not familiar with the situation in the Middle East.
He termed Blair’s suggestion as “utterly foolish and useless.”
Both the tone and the content suggest contempt, in particular for how clueless Blair is. He just doesn’t get it: Hamas has no intention of changing its tune on Israel, and believes that the vast majority of the Muslim world (minus some cowardly politicians) is behind it.
Note that they make no effort to “respect” Blair’s feelings. On the contrary, dissing him, public scorn, is part of their act. No reciprocity here.
Note that the article begins with the insult before even revealing the remarks to which it is a reaction.
In an interview with The Times published Saturday, Blair said Hamas must be involved in the Middle East peace process; however, the movement have to recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce ‘violence’.
Although by Western standards this is basic stuff, simple groundrules for reaching a positive-sum solution, by Jihadi standards, this is a joke. From their point of view, he is an idiot, not only because he’s made a demand they will not meet, but because unless he’s got a way to marginalize Hamas, that’s a losing opening gambit, in which case he’s an idiot and a fool. (Let’s hope he’s got some other moves in response to this clearly predictable reaction to his opening condition.)
Obama’s Al Arabiya Interview: Honor-Shame Dynamics and VDH’s Analysis
I’m teaching my favorite course this semester on “Honor-Shame Cultures, Middle Ages, Middle East.” In a discussion, we touched on President Obama’s interview on Al Arabiya and his offering an open hand to soften the clenched fist of the Muslim world, including an offer to meet with Ahmadinejad without conditions. When I asked them what they thought the response might be, the closest I got to an accurate estimation was, “they ignored it.”
I pointed out that, as we had been learning about cultures given to blood revenge, people have long memories, and that they keep score. In that sense, since 1979 — i.e., when Khoumeini took over — Iranians had humiliated the Americans and the West repeatedly, from the seizure of the American Embassy, to kicking the US out of Lebanon via their proxies, Hezbullah, to intimidating the Western intelligentsia with the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, to messing with the US in Iraq, again via proxies. So Iran, having been offered the hand of friendship was less likely to view this offer as a sign of magnanimity and courage and a new opening for a peaceful diplomacy, than as a sign of weakness and cowardice.
And within moments, Ahmadinejad responded precisely as a player in the honor-shame game could be expected to respond, not with magnanimity but with the aggresion one can expect from someone who smells blood: to Obama’s offer to meet without conditions — a position that many warned was an ill-advised concession — Ahmadinejad responded with a host of conditions, from further grovelling (Iran has their own list of grievances against the US), to major on-the-ground unilateral concessions.
And still more predictably, dedicated America haters chimed in — Hugo Chavez blamed Obama for not showing sufficient respect; while our own media discussed his “cool” or “ambiguous” response.
Below, Victor Davis Hanson’s analysis with comments from the honor-shame perspective.
January 27th, 2009 8:40 pm
Dancing Among Landmines—The Obama Al-Arabiya Interview.President Barack Obama is being praised for choosing an Arabic TV network for his first formal television interview on the Dubai-based, Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel. I think we can all appreciate the thinking behind such bold outreach, given that the media at home has chortled to the world that our new guy’s unusual background, in sort
A classic PCP move based on principles of integrity: be self-critical, and generous in judging the other side. They in turn, out of gratitutde for how you’ve shown them respect, will reciprocate. The Israeli progressives tried this on a massive scale during the Oslo process, including rewriting/revisioning Zionist history in the form of an apology to the Palestinians for all the damage Israelis had caused their neighbors.
Now this kind of historiography is a form of “therapeutic” history — “if I apologize, then the other side can accept my acknowledgment of the suffering I’ve caused them, and we can both move on. But therapy is a most dangerous platform on which to build a serious history, not only because it subordinates facts to a rhetorical stance, but because if you misjudge your audience(s), it can misfire. Indeed, not only has post-Zionism (predictably) provoked more hatred — “we told you so, we always knew you were to blame! — among Palestinians and other anti-Zionists, but it has seriously, dangerously, undermined Israeli self-confidence.
Obama, in a minor way, is trying the same maneuver. Let’s hope he’s got a fast learning curve. In any case, both history, and the study of honor-shame cultures suggests that this maneuver will backfire.
Pierre Rehov takes the Mickey out of Hamas
I met Pierre Rehov while working on the al Durah affair, and used some of his footage in my Pallywood movie. His documentaries are superb, and given the locations he works out, they took a great deal of courage to shoot. He now has a short piece of black humor on Youtube which I recommend.
The Palestinians’ Worst Enemy: The Poisoned Gift of European Anti-Semitism
I had a conversation with a remarkable Palestinian advocate of human rights several years ago when I tried to show him the material I had on Pallywood. As we discussed the problem, and his helplessness to even address it, it became clear to me that the single most insidious enemy of the Palestinians is the European loathing of an independent Jewish nation. What seemed to Palestinians like a gift — Europeans’ hostility to Israel — has ended up strengthening the worst aspects of Palestinian culture, its irredentism, its preference for suffering Palestinians, its thirst for hatred.
And this is nowhere more evident than when Palestinians try and go sober, try and kick their addiction to hatred, try to turn from gnawing on old wounds to growing new life. Then they run into their most fearful demon, the sympathetic hater in the West: the old fashioned European anti-semite at last released from his post-Holocaust prison of politically incorrect, the radical, the revolutionary, the morally superior/envious progressive, both Christian and post-Christian, even Jewish. For these people, like those Arab leaders who have treated them so abominably for so long, the moral and symbolic value of the Palestinians lies in their suffering, not in their recovery. The forces that have driven on the astounding, unprecedented, otherwise inexplicable 60-year refugee status for Arabs who fled Israel in 1948, will not be cheated of their most precious possession: a people victim of the Jews. Indeed, I would argue, the media footprint of Jewish misdeeds — true and invented — are the very image of this corrosive need.
For those progressives with enough remaining integrity to look at the current madness over Israel and wonder what’s wrong, I invite them to the following meditation. The behavior of Hamas described below in Belmont Club’s discussion, the deeds of that very same Hamas whose flags German’s successfully petitioned their courts for permission to wave at their anti-war demonstrations, is the karmic product of sixty years of proxy hatreds, now reaching new temperatures. Under a terrifying assault by neighbors driven mad by their own leaders’ mad policies, the Gazans find themselves literally crucified by a reign of terror.
January 21st, 2009 3:31 am
The Grand InquisitorsUp to a hundred Palestinians in Gaza who have defied house arrest orders have been tortured in children’s hospitals and schools converted into interrogation centers. People have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken. The campaign has been described as a “new massacre”. One victim had his eyes put out. No one was safe from the torturers, not even those attending funerals. When is will the UN act to put a stop to this horror? Won’t President Obama intervene to stop these barbaric acts? Aren’t international human rights monitors going to put a stop to this? When will War Crimes charges be preferred against the perpetrators?
Never.
Why? Because Hamas is in charge of the torture and their victims are simply Fatah members. If it were Israel who had done these things, well then … But since it’s Hamas, the same Hamas for whom thousands have been marching in ’solidarity’, it’s a non-story. The Jersualem Post cites reports from Fatah members describing the events.
Of course, that’s Khaled abu Toameh, who, without going to Gaza, tells us more than all the brave Ben Wedemans in their flak jackets or Taghreed el-Khodarys, with their anti-Israel talking points. And yet, many journalists dismiss Toameh because he works for the Jerusalem Post. “He’s not fully reliable, you know,” they say “with a sad wink and a nudge.”
The argument is not without its ironies. After all, imagine an Israeli reporter, reporting dirt on Israel to the readers of Al Jazeera. One can hardly imagine our MSM journalists dismissing his or her information. Come to think of it… that’s more or less the function of Gideon Levy and Amira Hass in the internet, English Ha-Aretz. When’s the last time a journalist airily dismissed their testimony?
Clear-Thinking from the Left: What Else Explains this Uproar but…?
Although the Guardian is one of the more obnoxious papers when it comes to Israel, it occasionally posts something thoughtful. Of course, just look at the more than thousand comments, and it’s clear that the Guardian’s readers are against her piece 9 to 1 (and I assume the many deleted comments are also against her).
Standing against a tide of hatred
It is not Israel’s action, but the vitriolic reaction to it that has been disproportionate. There’s only one explanation: antisemitismComments (1131)
Elizabeth Wurtzel
guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 January 2009 10.00 GMTIs it good for the Jews?
If you were so inclined, you could ask that question about the Madoff mess, the Gaza offensive, the latest screed from Alan Dershowitz – or about a new recipe for angel-food cake. Which is to say, if you are looking for antisemitism, you can find it anywhere, even in a dessert cookbook. But if even paranoids have enemies, I think it’s fair to say that these are tough times for Jews.
While I would prefer to equate the fate of the Palestinians with that of Israel – meaning, I’d like to believe we’re all on the same side – I think that might be a difficult political fiction to maintain at the moment. And while I’d like to artificially separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism, like most American Jews, I’m not willing to make that false distinction: when there is more than one Jewish state, the world’s hatred of Israel might become no different from its exasperation with any other country, but since Israel is the only homeland, and really it is nothing more than six million Jews living together in an area the size of New Jersey, I can’t pretend that the problem with Israel is that it’s a poorly located country that happens to be at odds with its neighbours and only coincidentally happens to be Jewish. The trouble with Israel is the trouble with Jews.
This situation makes me profoundly uncomfortable. As the kind of left-leaning liberal who tends to agree with the positions taken by The Nation in most instances, I hate having to differ so completely on the Israel issue with many I otherwise would align with. As it is my good fortune to be American, I live in the only country that as a matter of policy is pro-Israel regardless of party allegiance; Democrats and Republicans equally unite behind the blue-and-white. But to communicate with anyone I think of as rightminded (and left-leaning) in any other part of the world is to experience the purest antisemitism since the Nazi era. In fact, in Europe right now, it is de rigueur to liken the current regime in Israel with the Nazi party, and to view the experience of the Palestinians as a form of ethnic cleansing. Hamas and Hezbollah are thought by the French and British to be social welfare organisations, and Israel is viewed as a terrorist state. Here, we honor the linguistic discoveries of Noam Chomsky and otherwise experience him as a quaintly brilliant crank, but in the bookstores in London there are entire sections devoted to his political thought – and he is read as if the distinctions between Leninist and Trotskyite philosophy had genuine consequence in today’s world.