Any Solution to Syria? By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, February 9, 2013.
Friedman:
NEW
DELHI
SHOULD
the U.S. intervene to stop the bloodshed in Syria? I find myself torn between
four different perspectives — from New Delhi, Baghdad, Tel Aviv and the U.N.
Last
week, I met with a group of Indian strategists here at the Institute for
Defense Studies and Analyses to talk about how America should withdraw from
Afghanistan and navigate the interests of India, Pakistan and Iran. At one
point, I tossed out an idea to which one of the Indian analysts responded: That
was tried before — “in the 11th century.” It didn’t work out well. That’s why I
like coming to Delhi to talk about the region. Indian officials tend to think
in centuries, not months, and they look at the map of the Middle East without
any of the British-drawn colonial borders. Instead, they only see old
civilizations (Persia, Turkey, Egypt), old faiths (Shiites, Sunnis and Hindus),
and old peoples (Pashtuns, Tajiks, Jews and Arabs) — all interacting within
long-set patterns of behavior.
“If
you want to understand this region, just take out a map from the Ganges to the
Nile and remove the British lines,” remarked M. J. Akbar, the veteran Indian
Muslim journalist and author. It takes you back to the true undercurrents of
history that have long ruled the Middle East “and to interests defined by
people and tribes and not just governments.”
When
you look at the region this way, what do you see? First, you see that there is
no way the U.S. can keep Afghanistan stable after we draw down — without
working with Iran. Because of the age-old ties between Iranian Shiites and the
Shiite Persian-speaking Afghans of Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city,
Iran always was and always will be a player in Afghan politics. Shiite Iran has
never liked the Sunni Taliban. “Iran is the natural counter to Sunni
extremism,” said Akbar. It’s in Iran’s interest to “diminish the Taliban.”
That’s why America and Iran were tacit allies in unseating the Taliban, and they
will be tacit allies in preventing the reseating of the Taliban.
So
from India, the struggle in Syria looks like just another chapter in the
long-running Sunni-Shiite civil war. Syria is a proxy war between Sunni-led
Saudi Arabia and Qatar — two monarchies funding the Syrian “democrats,” who are
largely Syrian Sunnis — and Shiite Iran and the Shiite-Alawite Syrian regime.
It’s a war that never ends; it can only be suppressed.
Which
is why in Israel some Israeli generals are starting to realize that if Syria is
a fight to the death it could pose as great a strategic threat to Israel as
Iran’s nuclear program. If Syria disintegrates into another Afghanistan — on
Israel’s border — it would be an untamed land, with jihadists, chemical weapons
and surface-to-air missiles all freely floating about.
Can
that collapse be avoided? From Washington, some hoped that by quickly toppling
the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, the West and the Sunnis could “flip”
Syria from the Iranian-Soviet orbit to the Sunni-Saudi-American orbit. I’m
dubious. I doubt that Syria can be flipped in one piece; it will break apart in
the air into Sunni and Alawite regions. And, if we did manage to flip Syria,
Iran would try to “flip” predominantly Shiite Iraq and Bahrain into its camp.
Some
Arab diplomats at the U.N. argue, though, that there is a middle way, but it
would require the U.S. to lead: First, mobilize the Security Council to pass a
resolution calling for the creation of a transitional government in Syria with
“full powers” and with equal representation of Alawites and Sunni rebels. If
the Russians could be persuaded to back such a resolution (not easy), it could
break the stalemate inside Syria, because many regime loyalists would see the
writing on the wall and abandon Assad. The stick would be to tell the Russians
that if they don’t back such a resolution, the U.S. would start sending weapons
to the secular/moderate rebels.
Can
there really be such a policy between George W. Bush’s “all-in” approach to
transforming Iraq and Barack Obama’s
“you-touch-it-you-own-it-so-don’t-even-touch-it” approach to Syria? One should
study Iraq. The lesson of Iraq is that deep historical currents were at play
there — Sunnis versus Shiites and Kurds versus Arabs. The December 2010 Iraqi
elections demonstrated, though, that multisectarian parties and democratic rule
were possible in Iraq — and actually the first choice of most Iraqis. But America
would have had to keep some troops there for another decade to see that shift
from sectarianism to multisectarianism become even remotely self-sustaining.
Syria is Iraq’s twin. The only way you’ll get a multisectarian transition there
is with a U.N. resolution backed by Russia and backed by a well-armed referee
on the ground to cajole, hammer and induce the parties to live together.
It’s
the Middle East, Jake.
If
you will the ends, you’d better will the means. You can’t change the politics
“unless you say you’ll stay for a hundred years,” insists Akbar. But no one
wants to play empire anymore. In which case, he argues, it’s always best not to
stay long in any of these countries — five months, not five years. Five years,
says Akbar, is just long enough for people to hate you, but not fear or respect
you, let alone change their long-held ways.
Friday, February 15, 2013
India vs. China vs. Egypt. By Thomas L. Friedman.
India vs. China vs. Egypt. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, February 5, 2013.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Rise of the New Global Plutocratic Elite and the Crisis of the Middle Class.
The Rise of the New Global Elite. By Chrystia Freeland. The Atlantic, January/February 2011. Also find it here and here.
How the iPod Explains Globalization. By Chrystia Freeland. New York Times, June 30, 2011. Also find it here.
Modern capitalism isn’t working for the middle class. By Chrystia Freeland. Reuters, September 20, 2011.
Wall Street protesters challenge Reagan Revolution. By Chrystia Freeland. Reuters, October 14, 2011.
Some See Two New Gilded Ages, Raising Global Tensions. By Chrystia Freeland. New York Times, January 22, 2012.
Putting the magnifying glass on the one percent. By Chrystia Freeland. Reuters, February 8, 2013.
The Plutocracy Will Go to Extremes to Keep the 1% in Control. By Bill Moyers, Chrystia Freeland, and Matt Taibbi. Video and Transcript. AlterNet, October 19, 2012. Also at BillMoyers.com.
Plutocracy Rising October 19, 2012 Full Show from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
Can the Middle Class Be Saved? By Don Peck. The Atlantic, September 2011. Also find it here and here.
Why Elites Fail. By Christopher Hayes. The Nation, June 6, 2012.
In the Inequality Debate, Both Sides Are Wrong. By Brink Lindsey. Forbes, August 13, 2012.
Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter — and More Unequal. By Brink Lindsey. Video. Cato Institute, February 18, 2013. YouTube.
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. By Joseph E. Stiglitz. Vanity Fair, May 2011.
The 1 Percent’s Problem. By Joseph E. Stiglitz. Vanity Fair, May 31, 2012.
Q&A: Joseph Stiglitz on the Fallacy That the Top 1 Percent Drives Innovation, and Why the Reagan Administration Was America’s Inequality Turning Point. By Cullen Murphy. Vanity Fair, June 5, 2012.
Left Out. By Francis Fukuyama. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
The Future of History: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class? By Francis Fukuyama. Foreign Affairs, January/February 2012.
The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline. By George Packer. Foreign Affairs, November/December 2011.
Is Meritocracy A Sham? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 1, 2012.
American Dreams, American Resentments. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Let Us Now Praise Private Equity. By Reihan Salam. National Review, February 6, 2012. Also find it here.
Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances. By Ajay Kapur, Niall MacLeod, and Narendra Singh. Citigroup Global Markets, October 16, 2005.
Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer. By Ajay Kapur, Niall MacLeod, and Narendra Singh. Citigroup Global Markets, March 5, 2006.
The Plutonomy Symposium: Rising Tides Lifting Yachts. By Ajay Kapur, Niall MacLeod, Tobias M. Levkovich, et al. Citigroup Global Markets, September 29, 2006.
The Citigroup Plutonomy Memos: Two bombshell documents that Citigroup’s lawyers try to suppress, describing in detail the rule of the first 1%. Political Gates, December 10, 2011.
Citigroup’s plutonomy memos. By Cathy O’Neil. mathbabe, August 30, 2012.
Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain. By Maarten Goos and Alan Manning. The Review of Economics and Statistics, February 2007.
Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America. By Frank Levy and Peter Temin. MIT Working Paper, June 27, 2007.
Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation Network? The Case of Apple’s iPod. By Greg Linden, Jason Dedrick, and Kenneth L. Kraemer. Communications of the ACM, March 2009.
Innovation and Job Creation in a Global Economy: The Case of Apple’s iPod. By Greg Linden, Jason Dedrick, and Kenneth L. Kraemer. Journal of International Commerce and Economics, May 2011.
Bankers’ Pay and Extreme Wage Inequality in the UK. By Brian Bell and John Van Reenen. Centre for Economic Performance, April 2010.
The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market. By David Autor. Center for American Progress, April 30, 2010. Also find it here.
As Middle Class Shrinks, P&G Aims High and Low. By Ellen Byron. Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2011.
The firece urgency of fixing economic inequality. By Lawrence Summers. Reuters, November 21, 2012.
Terms of Contention: Plutocracy and Democracy. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
The Inequality That Matters. By Tyler Cowen. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Hedging Risk. By Sebastian Mallaby and Matthew Klein. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Courting Plutocracy. By Ruth Wedgwood. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Democracy and Oligarchy. By Jeffrey A. Winters. The American Interest, November/December 2011.
The Foreign Policy of Plutocracies. By James Kurth. The American Interest, November/December 2011.
How the iPod Explains Globalization. By Chrystia Freeland. New York Times, June 30, 2011. Also find it here.
Modern capitalism isn’t working for the middle class. By Chrystia Freeland. Reuters, September 20, 2011.
Wall Street protesters challenge Reagan Revolution. By Chrystia Freeland. Reuters, October 14, 2011.
Some See Two New Gilded Ages, Raising Global Tensions. By Chrystia Freeland. New York Times, January 22, 2012.
Putting the magnifying glass on the one percent. By Chrystia Freeland. Reuters, February 8, 2013.
The Plutocracy Will Go to Extremes to Keep the 1% in Control. By Bill Moyers, Chrystia Freeland, and Matt Taibbi. Video and Transcript. AlterNet, October 19, 2012. Also at BillMoyers.com.
Plutocracy Rising October 19, 2012 Full Show from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
Can the Middle Class Be Saved? By Don Peck. The Atlantic, September 2011. Also find it here and here.
Why Elites Fail. By Christopher Hayes. The Nation, June 6, 2012.
In the Inequality Debate, Both Sides Are Wrong. By Brink Lindsey. Forbes, August 13, 2012.
Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter — and More Unequal. By Brink Lindsey. Video. Cato Institute, February 18, 2013. YouTube.
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. By Joseph E. Stiglitz. Vanity Fair, May 2011.
The 1 Percent’s Problem. By Joseph E. Stiglitz. Vanity Fair, May 31, 2012.
Q&A: Joseph Stiglitz on the Fallacy That the Top 1 Percent Drives Innovation, and Why the Reagan Administration Was America’s Inequality Turning Point. By Cullen Murphy. Vanity Fair, June 5, 2012.
Left Out. By Francis Fukuyama. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
The Future of History: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class? By Francis Fukuyama. Foreign Affairs, January/February 2012.
The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline. By George Packer. Foreign Affairs, November/December 2011.
Is Meritocracy A Sham? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 1, 2012.
American Dreams, American Resentments. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Let Us Now Praise Private Equity. By Reihan Salam. National Review, February 6, 2012. Also find it here.
Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances. By Ajay Kapur, Niall MacLeod, and Narendra Singh. Citigroup Global Markets, October 16, 2005.
Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer. By Ajay Kapur, Niall MacLeod, and Narendra Singh. Citigroup Global Markets, March 5, 2006.
The Plutonomy Symposium: Rising Tides Lifting Yachts. By Ajay Kapur, Niall MacLeod, Tobias M. Levkovich, et al. Citigroup Global Markets, September 29, 2006.
The Citigroup Plutonomy Memos: Two bombshell documents that Citigroup’s lawyers try to suppress, describing in detail the rule of the first 1%. Political Gates, December 10, 2011.
Citigroup’s plutonomy memos. By Cathy O’Neil. mathbabe, August 30, 2012.
Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain. By Maarten Goos and Alan Manning. The Review of Economics and Statistics, February 2007.
Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America. By Frank Levy and Peter Temin. MIT Working Paper, June 27, 2007.
Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation Network? The Case of Apple’s iPod. By Greg Linden, Jason Dedrick, and Kenneth L. Kraemer. Communications of the ACM, March 2009.
Innovation and Job Creation in a Global Economy: The Case of Apple’s iPod. By Greg Linden, Jason Dedrick, and Kenneth L. Kraemer. Journal of International Commerce and Economics, May 2011.
Bankers’ Pay and Extreme Wage Inequality in the UK. By Brian Bell and John Van Reenen. Centre for Economic Performance, April 2010.
The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market. By David Autor. Center for American Progress, April 30, 2010. Also find it here.
As Middle Class Shrinks, P&G Aims High and Low. By Ellen Byron. Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2011.
The firece urgency of fixing economic inequality. By Lawrence Summers. Reuters, November 21, 2012.
Terms of Contention: Plutocracy and Democracy. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
The Inequality That Matters. By Tyler Cowen. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Hedging Risk. By Sebastian Mallaby and Matthew Klein. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Courting Plutocracy. By Ruth Wedgwood. The American Interest, January/February 2011.
Democracy and Oligarchy. By Jeffrey A. Winters. The American Interest, November/December 2011.
The Foreign Policy of Plutocracies. By James Kurth. The American Interest, November/December 2011.
The World Is No Longer America’s Problem. By Aaron David Miller.
The Avoider. By Aaron David Miller. Foreign Policy, February 13, 2013.
Barack Obama’s State of the Union address makes one thing clear: The world is no longer America’s problem.
Barack Obama’s State of the Union address makes one thing clear: The world is no longer America’s problem.
The Decline of America. By Victor Davis Hanson.
The Decline of America. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, February 14, 2013.
How the 1980s Explains Vladimir Putin. By Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy.
How the 1980s Explains Vladimir Putin. By Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy. The Atlantic, February 14, 2013.
Egypt Drowns Hamas. By Walter Russell Mead.
Egypt Drowns Hamas. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 14, 2013.
Egyptian Muslim Preacher Amr Khaled: Within 20 Years Muslims Will Become the Majority in Europe.
Egyptian Muslim Preacher Amr Khaled: Within 20 Years Muslims Will Become the Majority in Europe. Video. MEMRI TV Clip No. 1821, May 10, 2008. Also at YouTube. Transcript here.
More on Egypt and Morsi here.
More on Egypt and Morsi here.
Egyptian Cleric Sa’d Arafat: Islam Permits Wife Beating Only When She Refuses to Have Sex with Her Husband.
Egyptian Cleric Sa’d Arafat: Islam Permits Wife Beating Only When She Refuses to Have Sex with Her Husband. Video. MEMRI TV Clip No. 2600, February 4, 2010. Also at YouTube here and here. Transcript here.
Egyptian Cleric Abu Islam: Christian Women Who Go to Tahrir Square to Get Raped Are Not Taboo. MEMRI TV Clip No. 3741, February 7, 2013. Also at YouTube. Transcript here.
Psychotherapist Dr. Radhwa Farghali:Women in Arab Society Are Treated as Minors. Video. MEMRI TV Clip No. 2612, August 5, 2010. Also at YouTube. Transcript here.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Egyptian Cleric Abu Islam: Christian Women Who Go to Tahrir Square to Get Raped Are Not Taboo. MEMRI TV Clip No. 3741, February 7, 2013. Also at YouTube. Transcript here.
Psychotherapist Dr. Radhwa Farghali:Women in Arab Society Are Treated as Minors. Video. MEMRI TV Clip No. 2612, August 5, 2010. Also at YouTube. Transcript here.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Egyptian President Morsi Joins Preacher in Prayer for Dispersal of the Jews.
Egyptian President Morsi Joins Preacher in Prayer for Dispersal of the Jews. Video. MEMRI TV Clip No. 3614, October 19, 2012. Also at YouTube.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
America Hates Crony Capitalism. By Joshua M. Brown.
Dear Jamie Dimon. By Joshua M. Brown. The Reformed Broker, December 20, 2011.
Brown:
Dear Jamie Dimon,
I hope this note finds you well.
I am writing to profess my utter disbelief at how little you seem to understand the current mood of the nation. In a story at Bloomberg today, you and a handful of fellow banker and billionaire “job creators” were quoted as believing that the horrific sentiment directed toward you from virtually all corners of America had something to do with how much money you had. I’d like to take a moment to disabuse you of this foolishness.
America is different than almost every other place on earth in that its citizenry reveres the wealthy and we are raised to believe that we can all one day join the ranks of the rich. The lack of a caste system or visible rungs of society’s ladder is what separates our empire from so many fallen empires throughout history. In a nation bereft of royalty by virtue of its republican birth, the American people have done what any other resourceful people would do – we’ve created our own royalty and our royalty is the 1%. Not only do we not “hate the rich” as you and other embubbled plutocrats have postulated, in point of fact, we love them. We worship our rich to the point of obsession. The highest-rated television shows uniformly feature the unimaginably fabulous families of celebrities not to mention the housewives (real or otherwise) of the rich. We don’t care what color they are or what religion they practice or where in the country they live or what channel their show is on – if they’re rich, we are watching.
When Derek Jeter was toyed with by the New York Yankees when it came time for him to renew his next hundred million dollar contract, the people empathized with Derek Jeter. Sure, this disagreement essentially took place between one of the wealthiest organizations in the country and one of the wealthiest private citizens – but we rooted for Jeter to get his money. Nobody begrudged him a penny of it or wanted a piece of it or decried the fact that he was luckier than the rest of us. In the American psyche, Jeter was one of the good guys who was deservedly successful. He was one of us and an example of hard work paying off.
Likewise, when Steve Jobs died, he did so with more money than you or any of your “job alliance” buddies – ten times more than most of you, in fact. And upon his death the entire nation went into mourning. We set up makeshift shrines to his brilliance in front of Apple stores from coast to coast. His biography flew off the shelves and people bought Apple products and stock shares in his honor and in his memory. Does that strike you as the action of a populace that hates success?
No, Jamie, it is not that Americans hate successful people or the wealthy. In fact, it is just the opposite. We love the success stories in our midst and it is a distinctly American trait to believe that we can all follow in the footsteps of the elite, even though so few of us ever actually do.
So, no, we don’t hate the rich. What we hate are the predators.
What we hate are the people who we view as having found their success as a consequence of the damage their activities have done to our country. What we hate are those who take and give nothing back in the form of innovation, convenience, entertainment or scientific progress. We hate those who’ve exploited political relationships and stupidity to rake in even more of the nation’s wealth while simultaneously driving the potential for success further away from the grasp of everyone else.
Here in New York, we hated watching real estate and financial services elitists drive up the prices of everything from affordable apartments to martinis in midtown with the reckless speculation that would eventually lead to mass layoffs, rampant joblessness and the wreckage of so many retirement dreams. No one ever asked the rest of us if we minded, it just happened. I’m sure people across the country can tell similar stories.
So please, do us all a favor and come to the realization that the loathing you feel from your fellow Americans has nothing to do with your “success” or your “wealth” and it has everything to do with the fact that your wealth and success have come at a cost to the rest of us. No one wants your money or opportunities, what they want is the same chance that their parents had to attain these things for themselves. You are viewed, and rightfully so, as part of the machine that has removed this chance for many – and that is what they hate.
America hates unjustified privilege, it hates an unfair playing field and crony capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy, it hates privatized gains and socialized losses, it hates rule changes that benefit the few at the expense of the many and it hates people who have been bailed out and don’t display even the slightest bit of remorse or humbleness in the presence of so much suffering in the aftermath.
Nobody hates your right to make money, Jamie. They hate how you and certain others have made it.
Don’t be confused on this score for a moment longer.
Brown:
Dear Jamie Dimon,
I hope this note finds you well.
I am writing to profess my utter disbelief at how little you seem to understand the current mood of the nation. In a story at Bloomberg today, you and a handful of fellow banker and billionaire “job creators” were quoted as believing that the horrific sentiment directed toward you from virtually all corners of America had something to do with how much money you had. I’d like to take a moment to disabuse you of this foolishness.
America is different than almost every other place on earth in that its citizenry reveres the wealthy and we are raised to believe that we can all one day join the ranks of the rich. The lack of a caste system or visible rungs of society’s ladder is what separates our empire from so many fallen empires throughout history. In a nation bereft of royalty by virtue of its republican birth, the American people have done what any other resourceful people would do – we’ve created our own royalty and our royalty is the 1%. Not only do we not “hate the rich” as you and other embubbled plutocrats have postulated, in point of fact, we love them. We worship our rich to the point of obsession. The highest-rated television shows uniformly feature the unimaginably fabulous families of celebrities not to mention the housewives (real or otherwise) of the rich. We don’t care what color they are or what religion they practice or where in the country they live or what channel their show is on – if they’re rich, we are watching.
When Derek Jeter was toyed with by the New York Yankees when it came time for him to renew his next hundred million dollar contract, the people empathized with Derek Jeter. Sure, this disagreement essentially took place between one of the wealthiest organizations in the country and one of the wealthiest private citizens – but we rooted for Jeter to get his money. Nobody begrudged him a penny of it or wanted a piece of it or decried the fact that he was luckier than the rest of us. In the American psyche, Jeter was one of the good guys who was deservedly successful. He was one of us and an example of hard work paying off.
Likewise, when Steve Jobs died, he did so with more money than you or any of your “job alliance” buddies – ten times more than most of you, in fact. And upon his death the entire nation went into mourning. We set up makeshift shrines to his brilliance in front of Apple stores from coast to coast. His biography flew off the shelves and people bought Apple products and stock shares in his honor and in his memory. Does that strike you as the action of a populace that hates success?
No, Jamie, it is not that Americans hate successful people or the wealthy. In fact, it is just the opposite. We love the success stories in our midst and it is a distinctly American trait to believe that we can all follow in the footsteps of the elite, even though so few of us ever actually do.
So, no, we don’t hate the rich. What we hate are the predators.
What we hate are the people who we view as having found their success as a consequence of the damage their activities have done to our country. What we hate are those who take and give nothing back in the form of innovation, convenience, entertainment or scientific progress. We hate those who’ve exploited political relationships and stupidity to rake in even more of the nation’s wealth while simultaneously driving the potential for success further away from the grasp of everyone else.
Here in New York, we hated watching real estate and financial services elitists drive up the prices of everything from affordable apartments to martinis in midtown with the reckless speculation that would eventually lead to mass layoffs, rampant joblessness and the wreckage of so many retirement dreams. No one ever asked the rest of us if we minded, it just happened. I’m sure people across the country can tell similar stories.
So please, do us all a favor and come to the realization that the loathing you feel from your fellow Americans has nothing to do with your “success” or your “wealth” and it has everything to do with the fact that your wealth and success have come at a cost to the rest of us. No one wants your money or opportunities, what they want is the same chance that their parents had to attain these things for themselves. You are viewed, and rightfully so, as part of the machine that has removed this chance for many – and that is what they hate.
America hates unjustified privilege, it hates an unfair playing field and crony capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy, it hates privatized gains and socialized losses, it hates rule changes that benefit the few at the expense of the many and it hates people who have been bailed out and don’t display even the slightest bit of remorse or humbleness in the presence of so much suffering in the aftermath.
Nobody hates your right to make money, Jamie. They hate how you and certain others have made it.
Don’t be confused on this score for a moment longer.
Toward a New American Policy in the Middle East. By Daniel C. Kurtzer.
Toward a New American Policy. By Daniel C. Kurtzer. The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, February 10, 2013.
Kurtzer:
The United States has invested heavily in Middle East peacemaking for decades. While the strategic goal has been to achieve a peace settlement, the United States has tended to focus on the essentially tactical objective of bringing about face-to-face negotiations between the parties. With some exceptions—for example, the Clinton Parameters in 2000 and the George W. Bush letter to Ariel Sharon in 2004—administrations have eschewed articulating positions on the substantive outcome the United States seeks. Because of the serious problems confronting the region and the peace process today, it is time for the United States to adopt a new policy, a new strategy, and new tactics.
Why Tilt at Middle East Windmills?
This essay argues for the development of a new, comprehensive American policy and a sustained strategy for advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It advocates for American creativity, flexibility, and initiative in crafting the tactics required to engage the parties and help them approach the required mutual concessions. This argument does not rest on either the inevitability or even the likelihood of early success, nor on the readiness of the parties to overcome legitimate concerns and powerful internal opposition to confront the tough decisions required to make peace. Indeed, there are strong reasons to avoid working on the peace process at all.
However, doing nothing or continuing down the same path that the United States has traveled before—simply trying to get to negotiations—not only will not succeed, it will deepen the challenges the United States faces in the Middle East and it will exacerbate the very conflict that the United States has tried to resolve over many decades. There are hard realities in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that some try to ignore or argue away. It is time to confront those realities and develop a reasonable but also bold policy and diplomatic strategy worthy of American values and interests. Developing a sound policy, a sophisticated strategy, and appropriate tactics to advance the peace process is not tilting at windmills. It is doing what the United States has shown itself capable of doing in the past to advance prospects for peace.
The idea of a two-state solution—the cornerstone of American policy in the region—is now on life support, and its chances of surviving cannot improve without active diplomacy. Not only are governments losing interest, but more importantly, public opinion is losing confidence that such an outcome is achievable. The issues in the peace process are complex, and American policy needs to address this complexity, whether or not there is a promise of immediate success.
Current upheavals in the region argue for investing in Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. Hunkering down or managing the status quo is not a policy when it assures the United States less leverage and less support for our policies elsewhere in the region. With growing skepticism about and opposition to American policy in the Middle East, a serious effort to advance peace can have a transformative effect on our standing and credibility.
There is no magic formula for success, whether it involves intense American diplomacy or conflict management. Periods of engagement have often ended in frustration, violence, and war. Trying to manage the conflict—for example, by focusing solely on improving the situation on the ground—is not only a recipe for inaction; it is actually far more dangerous than it appears.
Status quos are not static. They either improve or they worsen. The status quo in the West Bank appears to be improving, evidenced by economic activity in Palestinian cities, the relative absence of terrorism, and several important signs of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, for example, in security and in economic affairs. This is, however, a misleading picture. Israeli settlement activity has accelerated in recent years, and the Israeli government’s active support and funding of settlement infrastructure have skyrocketed. As more settlers move into the occupied territories, the area of the prospective Palestinian state is shrinking, becoming less contiguous and less viable. To believe that Palestinians will accept a state limited to their main population centers—so-called Areas A and B in the West Bank—is delusionary. Calm on the surface masks growing frustration and anger below. Any spark can ignite a conflagration that will consume the status quo.
More fundamentally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drains energy from the parties and from the United States to deal with more pressing issues in the region, in particular, Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yitzhak Rabin recognized this in 1992, when he reportedly told then-President George H. W. Bush that Israel required comprehensive peace with all its neighbors in order to free its energies to prepare for the emerging threat from Iran, which Rabin assessed would be evident within ten years. In 2002, Saudi King Abdullah and other Arab leaders also recognized this reality when they adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, a cosmic change in the position of Arabs toward Israel and the conflict. Arabs no longer insisted on dealing with the “problem” of 1948, that is, the very existence of the State of Israel, but rather promised Israel peace, security, and recognition if the 1967 occupation of Arab territories and the persistence of the Palestinian issue could be resolved. Iran was as much on the minds of Abdullah and other Arab leaders in 2002 as it was on Rabin’s in 1992.
So, while some argue that it is a waste of time for the United States to invest in the peace process, the opposite is really true. Such an investment will pay dividends if it moves the conflict toward resolution and allows the region to act in concert to deny Iran its power ambitions. Doing nothing, or doing too little, is a prescription for trouble.
Kurtzer:
The United States has invested heavily in Middle East peacemaking for decades. While the strategic goal has been to achieve a peace settlement, the United States has tended to focus on the essentially tactical objective of bringing about face-to-face negotiations between the parties. With some exceptions—for example, the Clinton Parameters in 2000 and the George W. Bush letter to Ariel Sharon in 2004—administrations have eschewed articulating positions on the substantive outcome the United States seeks. Because of the serious problems confronting the region and the peace process today, it is time for the United States to adopt a new policy, a new strategy, and new tactics.
Why Tilt at Middle East Windmills?
This essay argues for the development of a new, comprehensive American policy and a sustained strategy for advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It advocates for American creativity, flexibility, and initiative in crafting the tactics required to engage the parties and help them approach the required mutual concessions. This argument does not rest on either the inevitability or even the likelihood of early success, nor on the readiness of the parties to overcome legitimate concerns and powerful internal opposition to confront the tough decisions required to make peace. Indeed, there are strong reasons to avoid working on the peace process at all.
However, doing nothing or continuing down the same path that the United States has traveled before—simply trying to get to negotiations—not only will not succeed, it will deepen the challenges the United States faces in the Middle East and it will exacerbate the very conflict that the United States has tried to resolve over many decades. There are hard realities in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that some try to ignore or argue away. It is time to confront those realities and develop a reasonable but also bold policy and diplomatic strategy worthy of American values and interests. Developing a sound policy, a sophisticated strategy, and appropriate tactics to advance the peace process is not tilting at windmills. It is doing what the United States has shown itself capable of doing in the past to advance prospects for peace.
The idea of a two-state solution—the cornerstone of American policy in the region—is now on life support, and its chances of surviving cannot improve without active diplomacy. Not only are governments losing interest, but more importantly, public opinion is losing confidence that such an outcome is achievable. The issues in the peace process are complex, and American policy needs to address this complexity, whether or not there is a promise of immediate success.
Current upheavals in the region argue for investing in Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. Hunkering down or managing the status quo is not a policy when it assures the United States less leverage and less support for our policies elsewhere in the region. With growing skepticism about and opposition to American policy in the Middle East, a serious effort to advance peace can have a transformative effect on our standing and credibility.
There is no magic formula for success, whether it involves intense American diplomacy or conflict management. Periods of engagement have often ended in frustration, violence, and war. Trying to manage the conflict—for example, by focusing solely on improving the situation on the ground—is not only a recipe for inaction; it is actually far more dangerous than it appears.
Status quos are not static. They either improve or they worsen. The status quo in the West Bank appears to be improving, evidenced by economic activity in Palestinian cities, the relative absence of terrorism, and several important signs of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, for example, in security and in economic affairs. This is, however, a misleading picture. Israeli settlement activity has accelerated in recent years, and the Israeli government’s active support and funding of settlement infrastructure have skyrocketed. As more settlers move into the occupied territories, the area of the prospective Palestinian state is shrinking, becoming less contiguous and less viable. To believe that Palestinians will accept a state limited to their main population centers—so-called Areas A and B in the West Bank—is delusionary. Calm on the surface masks growing frustration and anger below. Any spark can ignite a conflagration that will consume the status quo.
More fundamentally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drains energy from the parties and from the United States to deal with more pressing issues in the region, in particular, Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yitzhak Rabin recognized this in 1992, when he reportedly told then-President George H. W. Bush that Israel required comprehensive peace with all its neighbors in order to free its energies to prepare for the emerging threat from Iran, which Rabin assessed would be evident within ten years. In 2002, Saudi King Abdullah and other Arab leaders also recognized this reality when they adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, a cosmic change in the position of Arabs toward Israel and the conflict. Arabs no longer insisted on dealing with the “problem” of 1948, that is, the very existence of the State of Israel, but rather promised Israel peace, security, and recognition if the 1967 occupation of Arab territories and the persistence of the Palestinian issue could be resolved. Iran was as much on the minds of Abdullah and other Arab leaders in 2002 as it was on Rabin’s in 1992.
So, while some argue that it is a waste of time for the United States to invest in the peace process, the opposite is really true. Such an investment will pay dividends if it moves the conflict toward resolution and allows the region to act in concert to deny Iran its power ambitions. Doing nothing, or doing too little, is a prescription for trouble.
Do Palestinians Deserve a State? By Dan Calic.
Do Palestinians Deserve a State? By Dan Calic. Ynet News, February 13, 2013.
Anybody Listening? Netanyahu’s Not the Obstacle to Two-State Solution. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 12, 2013.
Anybody Listening? Netanyahu’s Not the Obstacle to Two-State Solution. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 12, 2013.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Historian David McCullough on Work and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Historian David McCullough on Work and the Pursuit of Happiness. By Joseph Sunde. Acton Institute, February 11, 2013.
Life’s Work: David McCullough. Interview by Scott Berinato. Harvard Business Review, January/February 2013.
Life’s Work: David McCullough. Interview by Scott Berinato. Harvard Business Review, January/February 2013.
Muslim Brotherhood: Blaming “el Yahud.” By Zvi Mazel.
Blaming “el Yahud.” By Zvi Mazel. Jerusalem Post, February 7, 2013.
With the Muslim Brotherhood in power, anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Mazel:
Suddenly the world is discovering that the leaders of Egypt are not afraid to voice their hatred for the Jews and the Jewish state openly.
America is asking for clarifications regarding a blatantly anti-Semitic outburst from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Essam Erian, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has called on former Egyptian Jews living in Israel to come back to make room for returning Palestinians after the demise of the Jewish state, which he believes will happen within 10 years.
Erian thus puts into words the deep-seated anti-Semitism of the movement he represents: There cannot be a Jewish state, and Jews cannot aspire to be more than second-class citizens in Muslim countries, dhimmis subject to Shari’a (Islamic) law and living under the protection of Islam only as long as they accept their inferior status. In the past, they and other non- Muslim residents had to pay a special poll tax, the jizya; there are now calls in Egypt to revive that tax, which was abolished in the late 19th century by a much-weakened Ottoman empire.
Historically, Muslim hatred toward the Jews is rooted in the latter’s refusal to accept Islam and its preeminence over all other religions, as expressed in the shahada, the credo of the faithful: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”; Muhammad is the last of the prophets and ushers in an era in which Islam will rule the world through peaceful means – or through war.
Islam claims for its own both the Old and New testaments, and Muhammad was incensed that the Jews, who had introduced monotheism to the world, did not recognize him and accept his teachings. One can find in the Koran far more attacks against Jews than against Christians, who did not acknowledge Islam either. There are numerous verses vilifying the Jews, calling for their abasement and humiliation and, for instance, branding them as sons of pigs and apes, having to bear the wrath of Allah and being doomed to hell on Judgment Day unless they accept the true faith.
The Muslim Brotherhood gave a new slant to the age-old hatred. Hassan Banna, who founded the movement in 1928, transformed what was a “passive” phenomenon into a virulent doctrine, part of both his vision to restore the caliphate and his fight against the British occupation and Western influence on his country.
The hand of the Jews was seen everywhere; they were allegedly attacking Islam and targeting the whole world.
Adopting the message and model of Christian anti-Semitism, the Brothers initiated a program of incitement against Jews living in Egypt and fomented pogroms against the old Jewish quarter of Cairo. In the 1930s and ’40s, Banna developed his theories in countless writings, declaring the Jews the agents of change and Westernization, and responsible for the decline of the West as well as of Islam.
There is an inherent contradiction there, since the Brotherhood is fighting the West and its democratic values, which are alien to Islam. However, Banna corresponded with Hitler; there were contacts between the Brotherhood and the Nazis, and the Brothers published a translation of Mein Kampf under the title My Jihad. Caricatures from Der Stürmer and Nazi texts were translated and printed in their publications.
The Brothers found willing allies in the strong German community living in Cairo in the ’30s, which included a number of Nazi agents.
Those agents also helped the new pro-Nazi party, Misr Elfatat (Young Egypt), established at that time to destabilize the regime and fight the Jews.
With the onset of World War II, Banna offered his services to Hitler while asking him to help Egypt in its fight against the British and the Jews. The clandestine terror organization he set up passed along information on the movements of British forces. A young officer by the name of Anwar Sadat was a member of the organization. King Farouk’s secret services ultimately found and killed Banna in 1949.
THE MAN who set down the religious basis for the fight against the Jews and developed its propaganda themes was Sayyid Qutb, often called the father of the Brotherhood ideology and grandfather of present-day jihadi extremists. Former president Gamal Abdul Nasser had him sentenced to death by hanging, and Qutb was executed in 1966.
In his best-known work, Milestones, he wrote that Jews were working to erase “all limitations imposed by faith and religion so that Jews may penetrate the body politics of the whole world and may be free to perpetuate their evil designs. At the top of the list of those activities is usury, the aim of which is that all the wealth of mankind end up in the hands of Jewish financial institutions.”
He also wrote an essay called “Our Battle against the Jews,” in which he states, “The Jews have confronted Islam with enmity from the moment the Islamic state was established in Medina . . . the Muslim community continues to suffer the same Jewish machinations and double-dealing which discomfited the early Muslims . . . This is a war which has not been extinguished . . . for close on 14 centuries its blaze has raged in all the corners of the earth and continues to this moment.”
He added that “the Jews have installed . . . a massive army of agents in the form of professors, philosophers, doctors, researchers... some even from the ranks of the Muslim religious authorities . . . intending to break the creed of the Muslims by weakening the Shari’a in many ways... with this and that they fulfill the ancient rule of the Jews.”
And there is a reference to the well known historical fake, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society. Principal among them are Marx, Freud, Durkheim and the Jew Jean-Paul Sartre.”
One could go on and on. Qutb even wrote that Allah had sent Hitler to punish the Jews.
IT WOULD be impossible to enumerate the countless books, essays, pamphlets and fatwas that the Muslim Brothers have published against the Jews – and are still publishing.
Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf Kardawi, who lives in Qatar, is the Brotherhood’s main theologian. He attacks the Jews relentlessly; in an Al Jazeera interview on January 28, 2009, he declared, “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. . . . The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. . . . Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”
Interestingly the Koran acknowledges the claim of the Jews to the Holy Land. However, Caliph Omar Khattab, who conquered the Holy Land, subsequently decreed that any land conquered by Islam would henceforth be forever part of the Islamic caliphate. Therefore, the rebirth of Israel was considered unacceptable to Arabs and Muslims – all the more because they were used to seeing Jews as a subservient minority and could not adjust to the new reality in which the Jews were “tearing away” a territory deep inside Muslim lands.
The fact that the small Jewish state defeated the armies of five Arab states during the 1948 War of Independence was seen as an added insult, and anchored hatred of the Jews in Arab and Islamic culture.
In Egypt and in the Arab world as a whole, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are generally seen as one and the same. And since the Jews were cursed by the Prophet, all their deeds are evil, and the creation of the State of Israel is worse. Egyptian media – the written press, television and radio – use “the Zionist enemy” and “the Zionist entity” interchangeably with “Jews” and “Israel.”
When former president Hosni Mubarak took office, Egyptian anti-Semitism included all the above-mentioned elements. The new president did not try to curb this phenomenon, and incitement went on in the media and in the mosques, though they were under state control.
For instance, it was forbidden at the time to criticize the president or the army, or to mention the existing discrimination against the Coptic Christian minority, but one could attack the Jews at will.
Thus there was a daily outpouring of hate against the Jews and against Israel; it was an unwritten rule that no item presenting Israel and/or the Jews in a favorable light could be aired. Whether it was planned at state level or not, this policy was intended to demonize the Jews and Israel and to bring about the delegitimization of the Jewish state and prevent normalization between the two countries.
News was deliberately distorted. Following the 2001 terror attack at the popular Dolphinarium nightclub in Tel Aviv, headlines in the state-owned Al Gomhuria daily screamed, “Pieces of Israeli flesh were thrown in the air as a result of the heroic operation.”
Then, too, state news agencies used various terms to avoid calling Israel by its name: “the occupation,” “the Zionist entity” or “the Zionist enemy.” Israeli cities were called “settlements” wherever they were; reports would describe “a fedayeen operation in the Haifa settlement,” blunting the effect of a terror attack on a peaceful city in the heart of Israel.
Israelis are usually called “el Yahud,” the Jews. Whenever Israel replied to an accusation or tried to set the record straight, the Egyptian media used the word “alleges” to illustrate their rejection.
Editorials in the Egyptian media routinely accuse Jews of all crimes under the sun, including treacherous actions such as “infiltrating into Africa to incite Africans against Egypt.” A recurrent theme is making the Jews responsible for the ongoing struggle between Egypt and upper Nile countries regarding the distribution of the river’s waters.
Some editorials explain that the very existence of Israel is illegal and that the country should be eliminated.
Holocaust denial is the norm, though it takes different forms:
• Regarding the event itself, deniers say that it never happened; that there was something, but on a far smaller scale, and the Jews are deliberately inflating numbers; that Jews are exploiting the event. They ask why Arabs should have to pay for something that involved Europe and the Jews. In any case, they say, Jews are worse than Nazis.
• Caricatures show Palestinian women and small children confronted by soldiers with machine guns and steel helmets marked with the swastika to show how cruel they are. Other caricatures, similar to those of Der Stürmer, depict religious Jews with oversized noses killing Palestinian children.
• There are books, films and television series based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, showing the Jews as monsters, and on the books of European Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy and David Irving.
In addition, Koran verses and Hadith are used to demonstrate the wickedness of the Jews and the way they attacked Muhammad and Islam, as well as the dire fate awaiting them on Judgment Day.
ONE CANNOT minimize the impact of these concerted measures on the Egyptian public, which is deprived of objective information and led to accept a distorted picture.
Repeated protests from the Israeli government have met with the bland reply that the media in Egypt are free. Here are three outstanding examples:
• When Pope John Paul II visited Egypt in February 2000, a scathing February 26 editorial in the state-owned daily the Egyptian Gazette accused the church of having yielded to Israeli blackmail and American intervention in issuing the Vatican II document “acquitting the Jews from the charge of killing Jesus.”
• In 2009, a self-proclaimed historian, Dr. Abdel Wahab Messiri, published his Encyclopedia of the Jews, Judaism and Zionism – eight volumes totaling 3,000 pages. In a television interview, he explained that he had undertaken this work to demonstrate that there was no such thing as a Jewish people. He received an award from Mubarak for his efforts.
• When Shimon Peres visited Egypt in April 2001, a photomontage in the Nasserist weekly Al Arabi showed him wearing a Gestapo uniform.
Unfortunately the fall of Mubarak did not usher in a new era. Protesters brandished pictures of the president with a Star of David to show that he was a puppet of the Jews. American journalist Laura Logan was assaulted in Tahrir Square by a mob yelling, “Jew! Jew!” Focus on Israel and the Jews grew as the Muslim Brothers emerged as the leaders of the revolution, yet the West, blinded by what it saw as a spring of hope and democracy, was reluctant to mention the fact. In January 2012, the Brothers made an all-out – and successful – effort to block the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Abu Hatzera, a Jewish holy man buried in a small village not far from Alexandria – a pilgrimage that attracts Jews from all over the world.
Gamal Hashmet, a newly elected parliament member from the Brotherhood’s not-so-aptly named Freedom and Justice Party, proclaimed that for the Israelis to come would be “suicidal,” adding that “the Abu Hatzera problem is that of a people who rejects normalization [with Israel] and the presence of any Zionist on Egyptian soil. . . . No one can force the inhabitants of Damanhour to accept normalization.”
The Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces ordered all Egyptian representations not to issue visas for the pilgrimage.
Now that the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, is in power, Islamic anti-Semitism, which is at the core of the group’s doctrine, has become part of the regime’s ideology. Though there is a measure of continuity in anti-Semitism from Mubarak to Morsi, the impact is now far greater.
Clerics, feeling that they have the support of the government and can look forward to the elimination of the Jewish state in the near future as a step toward the establishment of a renewed caliphate, rant against the Jews on a daily basis from their pulpits in mosques or in the media. Since he became president, Morsi has been careful not to voice openly his hatred for the Jews and for Israel, and when confronted on some of his more extreme outbursts – such as those quoted in The New York Times this past January 14 (see below) – he declares blandly that they were “taken out of context.”
But the Brothers had no such qualms. Already during the campaign for the parliamentary elections, they had organized a mass rally “to fight the Judaization of Jerusalem” at Al-Azhar University.
On November 25, 2011, 5,000 protesters heard Sheikh Azhar, who does not belong to the Brotherhood, warn that Al-Aksa Mosque was under attack by the Jews. “We shall not let them Judaize Al Quds,” he declared, adding that the Jews had attempted at the dawn of Islam to embroil the followers of Muhammad in civil war, and “today they are trying to prevent the union of all Muslims.”
Speakers for the Brotherhood called for a jihad to free Palestine and quoted a famous hadith: “The day will come when we shall kill all the Jews, and even the trees and the stones will cry out, ‘There is a Jew hiding behind us, come and kill him!’” This event will be remembered as one of the strongest recent demonstrations of hatred by the Muslim Brothers.
For all his caginess, Morsi himself swore, during the campaign, to deliver Jerusalem and listened with apparent complacency to the violent diatribes of local clerics.
The aforementioned New York Times article quoted him as saying Muslims needed to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for Jews and Zionists.”
The Times added that in a television interview months later, the same leader had described Zionists as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”
After Morsi’s election, there was a sharp increase in attacks against the Jews in the Egyptian media from intellectuals, journalists and clerics. The most extreme can be found on the site of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
MEANWHILE, THE Brotherhood is openly pursuing its religious aims while allegedly leaving Morsi to lead the country “pragmatically.” However, all the members of the ruling Freedom and Justice Party are senior members of the movement. Last October, movement leader Mohamed Badie, who holds the title of “supreme guide,” renewed the tradition of Koran and Shari’a teachings that Banna had initiated and that had stopped with his death.
In one of his first lessons, he called on all Muslims to conquer Jerusalem by jihad, since according to him, it was not possible to do so through negotiations or the UN. He added that it was the duty of every Muslim to do so.
Badie alleged that “the Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places, including their own.” In June of the same year, he stated that “Allah had warned us about the treachery of the Jews and their dangerous role in fomenting wars. The war in Sudan and the partition of the country is their work, as is the fight between Ramallah and Gaza.”
Hatred toward the Jews sometimes takes the strangest forms. Thus on November 5, Freedom and Justice, the party’s official newspaper, quoted a learned sheikh as saying, “If Islam had been fated to disappear from the world, then it would have disappeared the day rose the star of the accursed Jew [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk . . . who committed the greatest crime against the Caliphate.... But it did not happen, because the Caliphate still burned bright in the heart of the Muslims.”
During the mass protests in Tahrir Square during the IDF’s Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip, Brotherhood fighters were chanting, “Give us guns, give us guns and send us to Gaza.”
Jews were also a recurrent theme during the campaign of the referendum on the constitution. The preacher of one of the largest suburbs of Cairo called on the faithful to go and vote, since the Jews were trying to destroy Egypt by paying huge sums of money to Egyptians so they would vote against the constitution.
Last year, the Egyptian pavilion at the Frankfurt book fair, the largest in the world of publishing, displayed a number of anti-Semitic books with lurid covers announcing their content. The Simon Wiesenthal Center protested, but to no avail.
ANOTHER EXPRESSION of the boundless hatred of Israel and the Jews in present-day Egypt was evident in an episode that took place last August. Well-known actor Iman Kandil was invited to a television studio for what he had been told was an interview with a German television show. There, the pretty Egyptian interviewer told him it was in fact for Israeli television. It was a joke, of course, but Kandil did not wait for an explanation and reacted violently, pushing her against the wall and hitting her while cursing until the penny dropped. He did not really apologize, and explained that it was her fault.
The same thing happened with an actress, who also started shouting that Allah cursed worms and moths as he cursed the Jews.
Anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture, among both devout and secular people.
Unfortunately, as Islam is on the rise both in Arab countries and in the West, no change for the better can be expected – unless the West sits up and takes notice at long last, and decides to do something about it.
With the Muslim Brotherhood in power, anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Mazel:
Suddenly the world is discovering that the leaders of Egypt are not afraid to voice their hatred for the Jews and the Jewish state openly.
America is asking for clarifications regarding a blatantly anti-Semitic outburst from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Essam Erian, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has called on former Egyptian Jews living in Israel to come back to make room for returning Palestinians after the demise of the Jewish state, which he believes will happen within 10 years.
Erian thus puts into words the deep-seated anti-Semitism of the movement he represents: There cannot be a Jewish state, and Jews cannot aspire to be more than second-class citizens in Muslim countries, dhimmis subject to Shari’a (Islamic) law and living under the protection of Islam only as long as they accept their inferior status. In the past, they and other non- Muslim residents had to pay a special poll tax, the jizya; there are now calls in Egypt to revive that tax, which was abolished in the late 19th century by a much-weakened Ottoman empire.
Historically, Muslim hatred toward the Jews is rooted in the latter’s refusal to accept Islam and its preeminence over all other religions, as expressed in the shahada, the credo of the faithful: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”; Muhammad is the last of the prophets and ushers in an era in which Islam will rule the world through peaceful means – or through war.
Islam claims for its own both the Old and New testaments, and Muhammad was incensed that the Jews, who had introduced monotheism to the world, did not recognize him and accept his teachings. One can find in the Koran far more attacks against Jews than against Christians, who did not acknowledge Islam either. There are numerous verses vilifying the Jews, calling for their abasement and humiliation and, for instance, branding them as sons of pigs and apes, having to bear the wrath of Allah and being doomed to hell on Judgment Day unless they accept the true faith.
The Muslim Brotherhood gave a new slant to the age-old hatred. Hassan Banna, who founded the movement in 1928, transformed what was a “passive” phenomenon into a virulent doctrine, part of both his vision to restore the caliphate and his fight against the British occupation and Western influence on his country.
The hand of the Jews was seen everywhere; they were allegedly attacking Islam and targeting the whole world.
Adopting the message and model of Christian anti-Semitism, the Brothers initiated a program of incitement against Jews living in Egypt and fomented pogroms against the old Jewish quarter of Cairo. In the 1930s and ’40s, Banna developed his theories in countless writings, declaring the Jews the agents of change and Westernization, and responsible for the decline of the West as well as of Islam.
There is an inherent contradiction there, since the Brotherhood is fighting the West and its democratic values, which are alien to Islam. However, Banna corresponded with Hitler; there were contacts between the Brotherhood and the Nazis, and the Brothers published a translation of Mein Kampf under the title My Jihad. Caricatures from Der Stürmer and Nazi texts were translated and printed in their publications.
The Brothers found willing allies in the strong German community living in Cairo in the ’30s, which included a number of Nazi agents.
Those agents also helped the new pro-Nazi party, Misr Elfatat (Young Egypt), established at that time to destabilize the regime and fight the Jews.
With the onset of World War II, Banna offered his services to Hitler while asking him to help Egypt in its fight against the British and the Jews. The clandestine terror organization he set up passed along information on the movements of British forces. A young officer by the name of Anwar Sadat was a member of the organization. King Farouk’s secret services ultimately found and killed Banna in 1949.
THE MAN who set down the religious basis for the fight against the Jews and developed its propaganda themes was Sayyid Qutb, often called the father of the Brotherhood ideology and grandfather of present-day jihadi extremists. Former president Gamal Abdul Nasser had him sentenced to death by hanging, and Qutb was executed in 1966.
In his best-known work, Milestones, he wrote that Jews were working to erase “all limitations imposed by faith and religion so that Jews may penetrate the body politics of the whole world and may be free to perpetuate their evil designs. At the top of the list of those activities is usury, the aim of which is that all the wealth of mankind end up in the hands of Jewish financial institutions.”
He also wrote an essay called “Our Battle against the Jews,” in which he states, “The Jews have confronted Islam with enmity from the moment the Islamic state was established in Medina . . . the Muslim community continues to suffer the same Jewish machinations and double-dealing which discomfited the early Muslims . . . This is a war which has not been extinguished . . . for close on 14 centuries its blaze has raged in all the corners of the earth and continues to this moment.”
He added that “the Jews have installed . . . a massive army of agents in the form of professors, philosophers, doctors, researchers... some even from the ranks of the Muslim religious authorities . . . intending to break the creed of the Muslims by weakening the Shari’a in many ways... with this and that they fulfill the ancient rule of the Jews.”
And there is a reference to the well known historical fake, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society. Principal among them are Marx, Freud, Durkheim and the Jew Jean-Paul Sartre.”
One could go on and on. Qutb even wrote that Allah had sent Hitler to punish the Jews.
IT WOULD be impossible to enumerate the countless books, essays, pamphlets and fatwas that the Muslim Brothers have published against the Jews – and are still publishing.
Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf Kardawi, who lives in Qatar, is the Brotherhood’s main theologian. He attacks the Jews relentlessly; in an Al Jazeera interview on January 28, 2009, he declared, “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. . . . The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. . . . Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”
Interestingly the Koran acknowledges the claim of the Jews to the Holy Land. However, Caliph Omar Khattab, who conquered the Holy Land, subsequently decreed that any land conquered by Islam would henceforth be forever part of the Islamic caliphate. Therefore, the rebirth of Israel was considered unacceptable to Arabs and Muslims – all the more because they were used to seeing Jews as a subservient minority and could not adjust to the new reality in which the Jews were “tearing away” a territory deep inside Muslim lands.
The fact that the small Jewish state defeated the armies of five Arab states during the 1948 War of Independence was seen as an added insult, and anchored hatred of the Jews in Arab and Islamic culture.
In Egypt and in the Arab world as a whole, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are generally seen as one and the same. And since the Jews were cursed by the Prophet, all their deeds are evil, and the creation of the State of Israel is worse. Egyptian media – the written press, television and radio – use “the Zionist enemy” and “the Zionist entity” interchangeably with “Jews” and “Israel.”
When former president Hosni Mubarak took office, Egyptian anti-Semitism included all the above-mentioned elements. The new president did not try to curb this phenomenon, and incitement went on in the media and in the mosques, though they were under state control.
For instance, it was forbidden at the time to criticize the president or the army, or to mention the existing discrimination against the Coptic Christian minority, but one could attack the Jews at will.
Thus there was a daily outpouring of hate against the Jews and against Israel; it was an unwritten rule that no item presenting Israel and/or the Jews in a favorable light could be aired. Whether it was planned at state level or not, this policy was intended to demonize the Jews and Israel and to bring about the delegitimization of the Jewish state and prevent normalization between the two countries.
News was deliberately distorted. Following the 2001 terror attack at the popular Dolphinarium nightclub in Tel Aviv, headlines in the state-owned Al Gomhuria daily screamed, “Pieces of Israeli flesh were thrown in the air as a result of the heroic operation.”
Then, too, state news agencies used various terms to avoid calling Israel by its name: “the occupation,” “the Zionist entity” or “the Zionist enemy.” Israeli cities were called “settlements” wherever they were; reports would describe “a fedayeen operation in the Haifa settlement,” blunting the effect of a terror attack on a peaceful city in the heart of Israel.
Israelis are usually called “el Yahud,” the Jews. Whenever Israel replied to an accusation or tried to set the record straight, the Egyptian media used the word “alleges” to illustrate their rejection.
Editorials in the Egyptian media routinely accuse Jews of all crimes under the sun, including treacherous actions such as “infiltrating into Africa to incite Africans against Egypt.” A recurrent theme is making the Jews responsible for the ongoing struggle between Egypt and upper Nile countries regarding the distribution of the river’s waters.
Some editorials explain that the very existence of Israel is illegal and that the country should be eliminated.
Holocaust denial is the norm, though it takes different forms:
• Regarding the event itself, deniers say that it never happened; that there was something, but on a far smaller scale, and the Jews are deliberately inflating numbers; that Jews are exploiting the event. They ask why Arabs should have to pay for something that involved Europe and the Jews. In any case, they say, Jews are worse than Nazis.
• Caricatures show Palestinian women and small children confronted by soldiers with machine guns and steel helmets marked with the swastika to show how cruel they are. Other caricatures, similar to those of Der Stürmer, depict religious Jews with oversized noses killing Palestinian children.
• There are books, films and television series based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, showing the Jews as monsters, and on the books of European Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy and David Irving.
In addition, Koran verses and Hadith are used to demonstrate the wickedness of the Jews and the way they attacked Muhammad and Islam, as well as the dire fate awaiting them on Judgment Day.
ONE CANNOT minimize the impact of these concerted measures on the Egyptian public, which is deprived of objective information and led to accept a distorted picture.
Repeated protests from the Israeli government have met with the bland reply that the media in Egypt are free. Here are three outstanding examples:
• When Pope John Paul II visited Egypt in February 2000, a scathing February 26 editorial in the state-owned daily the Egyptian Gazette accused the church of having yielded to Israeli blackmail and American intervention in issuing the Vatican II document “acquitting the Jews from the charge of killing Jesus.”
• In 2009, a self-proclaimed historian, Dr. Abdel Wahab Messiri, published his Encyclopedia of the Jews, Judaism and Zionism – eight volumes totaling 3,000 pages. In a television interview, he explained that he had undertaken this work to demonstrate that there was no such thing as a Jewish people. He received an award from Mubarak for his efforts.
• When Shimon Peres visited Egypt in April 2001, a photomontage in the Nasserist weekly Al Arabi showed him wearing a Gestapo uniform.
Unfortunately the fall of Mubarak did not usher in a new era. Protesters brandished pictures of the president with a Star of David to show that he was a puppet of the Jews. American journalist Laura Logan was assaulted in Tahrir Square by a mob yelling, “Jew! Jew!” Focus on Israel and the Jews grew as the Muslim Brothers emerged as the leaders of the revolution, yet the West, blinded by what it saw as a spring of hope and democracy, was reluctant to mention the fact. In January 2012, the Brothers made an all-out – and successful – effort to block the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Abu Hatzera, a Jewish holy man buried in a small village not far from Alexandria – a pilgrimage that attracts Jews from all over the world.
Gamal Hashmet, a newly elected parliament member from the Brotherhood’s not-so-aptly named Freedom and Justice Party, proclaimed that for the Israelis to come would be “suicidal,” adding that “the Abu Hatzera problem is that of a people who rejects normalization [with Israel] and the presence of any Zionist on Egyptian soil. . . . No one can force the inhabitants of Damanhour to accept normalization.”
The Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces ordered all Egyptian representations not to issue visas for the pilgrimage.
Now that the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, is in power, Islamic anti-Semitism, which is at the core of the group’s doctrine, has become part of the regime’s ideology. Though there is a measure of continuity in anti-Semitism from Mubarak to Morsi, the impact is now far greater.
Clerics, feeling that they have the support of the government and can look forward to the elimination of the Jewish state in the near future as a step toward the establishment of a renewed caliphate, rant against the Jews on a daily basis from their pulpits in mosques or in the media. Since he became president, Morsi has been careful not to voice openly his hatred for the Jews and for Israel, and when confronted on some of his more extreme outbursts – such as those quoted in The New York Times this past January 14 (see below) – he declares blandly that they were “taken out of context.”
But the Brothers had no such qualms. Already during the campaign for the parliamentary elections, they had organized a mass rally “to fight the Judaization of Jerusalem” at Al-Azhar University.
On November 25, 2011, 5,000 protesters heard Sheikh Azhar, who does not belong to the Brotherhood, warn that Al-Aksa Mosque was under attack by the Jews. “We shall not let them Judaize Al Quds,” he declared, adding that the Jews had attempted at the dawn of Islam to embroil the followers of Muhammad in civil war, and “today they are trying to prevent the union of all Muslims.”
Speakers for the Brotherhood called for a jihad to free Palestine and quoted a famous hadith: “The day will come when we shall kill all the Jews, and even the trees and the stones will cry out, ‘There is a Jew hiding behind us, come and kill him!’” This event will be remembered as one of the strongest recent demonstrations of hatred by the Muslim Brothers.
For all his caginess, Morsi himself swore, during the campaign, to deliver Jerusalem and listened with apparent complacency to the violent diatribes of local clerics.
The aforementioned New York Times article quoted him as saying Muslims needed to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for Jews and Zionists.”
The Times added that in a television interview months later, the same leader had described Zionists as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”
After Morsi’s election, there was a sharp increase in attacks against the Jews in the Egyptian media from intellectuals, journalists and clerics. The most extreme can be found on the site of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
MEANWHILE, THE Brotherhood is openly pursuing its religious aims while allegedly leaving Morsi to lead the country “pragmatically.” However, all the members of the ruling Freedom and Justice Party are senior members of the movement. Last October, movement leader Mohamed Badie, who holds the title of “supreme guide,” renewed the tradition of Koran and Shari’a teachings that Banna had initiated and that had stopped with his death.
In one of his first lessons, he called on all Muslims to conquer Jerusalem by jihad, since according to him, it was not possible to do so through negotiations or the UN. He added that it was the duty of every Muslim to do so.
Badie alleged that “the Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places, including their own.” In June of the same year, he stated that “Allah had warned us about the treachery of the Jews and their dangerous role in fomenting wars. The war in Sudan and the partition of the country is their work, as is the fight between Ramallah and Gaza.”
Hatred toward the Jews sometimes takes the strangest forms. Thus on November 5, Freedom and Justice, the party’s official newspaper, quoted a learned sheikh as saying, “If Islam had been fated to disappear from the world, then it would have disappeared the day rose the star of the accursed Jew [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk . . . who committed the greatest crime against the Caliphate.... But it did not happen, because the Caliphate still burned bright in the heart of the Muslims.”
During the mass protests in Tahrir Square during the IDF’s Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip, Brotherhood fighters were chanting, “Give us guns, give us guns and send us to Gaza.”
Jews were also a recurrent theme during the campaign of the referendum on the constitution. The preacher of one of the largest suburbs of Cairo called on the faithful to go and vote, since the Jews were trying to destroy Egypt by paying huge sums of money to Egyptians so they would vote against the constitution.
Last year, the Egyptian pavilion at the Frankfurt book fair, the largest in the world of publishing, displayed a number of anti-Semitic books with lurid covers announcing their content. The Simon Wiesenthal Center protested, but to no avail.
ANOTHER EXPRESSION of the boundless hatred of Israel and the Jews in present-day Egypt was evident in an episode that took place last August. Well-known actor Iman Kandil was invited to a television studio for what he had been told was an interview with a German television show. There, the pretty Egyptian interviewer told him it was in fact for Israeli television. It was a joke, of course, but Kandil did not wait for an explanation and reacted violently, pushing her against the wall and hitting her while cursing until the penny dropped. He did not really apologize, and explained that it was her fault.
The same thing happened with an actress, who also started shouting that Allah cursed worms and moths as he cursed the Jews.
Anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture, among both devout and secular people.
Unfortunately, as Islam is on the rise both in Arab countries and in the West, no change for the better can be expected – unless the West sits up and takes notice at long last, and decides to do something about it.
Will the al-Qaeda Affiliates Ousting Assad Turn to Israel Next? By Mitch Ginsburg.
Will the al-Qaeda affiliates ousting Assad turn to Israel next? By Mitch Ginsburg. The Times of Israel, February 10, 2013.
Jihadi warriors are fueling the violent rebellion in Syria. Some fear their successes are reviving wider regional ambitions.
Syria crisis: al-Qaida fighters revealing their true colours, rebels say. By Martin Chulov. The Guardian, January 17, 2013.
A schism is developing in northern Syria between jihadists and Free Syrian Army units, which threatens to pitch both groups against each other and open a new phase in the Syrian civil war.
Syria: how jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is taking over Syria’s revolution. By Ruth Sherlock. The Telegraph, February 8, 2013.
Aleppo has been plunged into despair. Riven with war, life in Syria’s most populous city has become a dog-eat-dog existence: a battle for survival in a place where the strong devour the weak.
Jihadi warriors are fueling the violent rebellion in Syria. Some fear their successes are reviving wider regional ambitions.
Syria crisis: al-Qaida fighters revealing their true colours, rebels say. By Martin Chulov. The Guardian, January 17, 2013.
A schism is developing in northern Syria between jihadists and Free Syrian Army units, which threatens to pitch both groups against each other and open a new phase in the Syrian civil war.
Syria: how jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is taking over Syria’s revolution. By Ruth Sherlock. The Telegraph, February 8, 2013.
Aleppo has been plunged into despair. Riven with war, life in Syria’s most populous city has become a dog-eat-dog existence: a battle for survival in a place where the strong devour the weak.
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