America – Never An Empire. By Conrad Black.

America – never an empire. By Conrad Black. National Post, August 2, 2013.

Black:

It is generally recognized that the United States is steadily withdrawing from several areas of the world where it has had a large military presence for many years, especially the Middle East, Western Europe, and parts of the Far East.

 

It is, in fact, engaged in a broad strategic retreat. But this must not be misconstrued as the collapse or permanent decline of that country. It remains an extremely rich nation, with the most productive workforce in the history of the world, and a relatively motivated and overwhelmingly patriotic population. The great majority of Americans are proud of their country and are capable of fighting and sacrificing for it in a plausible cause. Courage is valued and revered; and the performance of the United States armed forces in recent wars has been exemplary.

 

The United States has never been an aggressive power. Only when the Germans insanely attacked American commercial shipping on the high seas did the United States enter World War I, just as Russia was defeated and left the war. The Americans provided the final margin of victory for the beleaguered French, British and Italians (who took 4-million war dead and nearly 7-million wounded between them). The Americans then turned their back on Wilsonian internationalism and their president’s League of Nations, and emerged from isolation only once Franklin D. Roosevelt, who spoke German and French and knew Europe well, and whose family’s fortune was earned in the Far East, concluded that the United States alone could keep the British Commonwealth in the war, ensure Stalin did not make a separate peace with Hitler (as he attempted to do with the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939), and prevent Japan from overrunning the entire Western Pacific and Far East.

 

As America led the Allies to victory, Roosevelt developed atomic weapons and founded the United Nations to convince his countrymen that the world was a safer place than they had formerly thought — and to have an international cover for the exercise of America’s dominant post-war influence in the world, as Britain and its Dominions, and the Latin American countries, could all be reasonably assumed to vote with the United States in a permanent American-led majority.

 

Soon after Roosevelt died, it became clear that Stalin was promoting world-wide communist subversion, was striving for atomic weapons and nuclear parity with the United States, and was violating all his commitments to Churchill and Roosevelt to withdraw from Eastern Europe within Soviet borders. Nine consecutive American presidents, starting with Truman, imposed a containment policy on the Soviet Union, until, without a shot being exchanged between the competing alliances, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed, and international communism imploded noisily into Marx’s proverbial dust-bin of history.

 

In the 22 years since the Cold War ended, there has not been a serious external threat to the United States. And so it is not entirely surprising that that country gradually has receded back toward its former, Americo-centric (and not very globally preoccupied) self. The outrages of terrorists provoked the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the terrorists did not threaten the existence of America, as Soviet missiles and the alliance between German Nazis and Japanese imperialists did.

 

The United States successfully deterred any national aggression against it after Pearl Harbor by maintaining a mighty defense establishment, projected latterly by a force of approximately a dozen gigantic aircraft carriers and a large number of accompanying vessels and pre-positioned forces and supplies in strategic areas. All of this still exists. But Americans are taking less and less interest in the upheavals of other countries, or the sundry minor aggressions between them. Even foreign terrorism is receding as an issue for Americans: Almost everyone who was even remotely connected to the atrocities of the 9/11 attacks has been hunted down and killed with commendable thoroughness and efficiency.

 

The Cold War-era claim of the left, that Americans were malign imperialists, was always rubbish. Americans never cared a jot for overseas expansion. The United States could have taken over every square inch of the Americas if they had wished, and all they did was seize a chunk of Mexico that that country could not settle and didn’t really occupy (Texas, Arizona, California, etc.) — and that was 150 years ago. It would have been better for everyone, especially the Cubans, if they had hung on to Cuba when they evicted the Spanish from the island in 1898.

 

George W. Bush had the idea that if he could spread democracy a little farther, it would end terrorism because democracies don’t make war or commit terrorist acts. But though the premise (which was hardly “imperialist,” whatever anti-war protestors claimed) was correct, turning Afghanistan and Iraq into democracies was not so simple, given that they had no history of freedom, nor any institutional structures on which to base such an effort.

 

Apart from hammering America’s declared enemies, the Iraqi and Afghan Wars haven’t accomplished much and have not justified their cost. This fact has emphasized and accelerated the retirement of the American people from their country’s former active participation in the affairs of every region in the world.

 

The real threat to the United States is an internal one: the disintegration of their society. One hundred million Americans have inadequate health care for citizens of a rich country, public education is not competitive with the systems of at least 20 other countries, the constitutional system is in permanent gridlock and has not dealt effectively with any major national public policy priority since the Republican leaders in Congress jammed through welfare reform 15 years ago, and only Reagan’s tax reforms in the 30 years prior to that. The criminal justice system is just a conveyer belt to the bloated and corrupt prison system for anyone targeted by omnipotent prosecutors. And the national debt, which was 10-trillion dollars in 2009, is 17-trillion dollars today.

 

Richard Nixon famously said that “North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” They are doing it, and America must come home and change course.

 

***

 

Note: Thanks to readers who have pointed out that the bust of Sir Winston Churchill was not sent back from the White House to Great Britain, but has instead been moved from the Oval Office to the residential quarters. That does not alter the point I was making in this column last week, but I apologize for my error.

The Epic Arab Trek Between God and Gun. By Rami G. Khouri.

The epic Arab trek between God and gun. By Rami G. Khouri. The Daily Star (Lebanon), August 3, 2013.

Khouri:

Hold on to your seats, for the four most powerful and influential Arab countries – Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – are all experiencing significant, sometimes violent, internal changes that touch on the most basic elements of identity, power and national authority. What happens in those countries in the years ahead will shape the Middle East for generations perhaps, creating new patterns of stable statehood on the way. Saudi Arabia is not experiencing the upheavals of Iraq, Syria and Egypt, but its new internal dynamics portend historic changes underway in that country and throughout the Gulf – because some citizens no longer accept blindly to follow the rules of the foundational tenets of Saudi-Wahhabi doctrine.

 

The worsening carnage in Syria, the sharp increase in bombings and ethnic cleansing in Iraq in the past few months, and the confrontation between the armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are stark reminders of where the modern Arab world stands today on its road to modern statehood. Syria, Iraq and Egypt embody the leading political challenges the Arab world faces: how to shape a stable and equitable pluralistic society; how to achieve an acceptable balance of authority among military and civilian forces; and how to assert religious values in daily and public life without falling into the trap of theocratic autocracy or artificially imposed secularism from above.

 

That these three historical Arab powerhouses all are experiencing deep conflict or uncertainty is the inevitable consequence of our recent history since the 1950s. We are today dealing with the national wreckages, social carcasses and political diseases of several generations of security-based state-building that provided a thin veneer of stability, but never buttressed this with the durable substance of genuine citizen-anchored nationhood.

 

The surge in killings in Iraq – over 1,000 people died in July – is most troubling for revealing the combination of weak state security capabilities in the face of resurgent attacks by groups that largely kill their victims on the basis of their sectarian identity. The inability of the Iraqi state to protect its prisons or defend its own citizens is bizarrely juxtaposed against the determination of much of the Iraqi state’s and society’s determination to send troops and support the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. This completes a linkage between Iranian, Iraqi, pro-Assad Syrian, Hezbollah and Hamas-Islamic Jihad parties that have been working together for some years to maintain their collective regional interests.

 

The battle in Egypt brings into the open an important fault line that has been lying beneath the region for the past century: This is simply about whether individuals and society are shaped by the divine promise of religious values, or by the post-1770s temporal handiwork of civic-political-national institutions that have been hijacked by security agencies in the modern Arab world.

 

God or the gun, in fact, is really only basic choice that Arab citizens have faced in recent generations, and it is both unfair and unworkable. The big tragedy is that faced with opportunities that they have had to date in the Middle East and South Asia, religious and military leaders have proven to be fully and embarrassingly incompetent at promoting productive, just and stable societies.

 

Egypt now reveals the determination of tens of millions of typical Arab citizens seeking that elusive middle ground between gun and God, which is simply pluralistic citizenship and accountable governance under the rule of law. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt offer different examples of the hard, slow quest for this goal. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states offer another example, which defines citizenship primarily as consumerism, with unaccountable governments spending hundreds of billions of dollars to provide their nationals with every possible material need.

 

Yet more and more Gulf states’ nationals also seek that elusive middle ground between living in a perpetual shopping mall and having no right to vote or express a political-social opinion on how the state spends its money at home or abroad. Hundreds of Gulf citizens are being jailed or indicted in court for actions such as expressing an opinion on Twitter or Facebook. The sharpest recent example was last week’s decision by a Saudi court to sentence Raif Badawi to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for creating a website where Saudis could share their views on the role of religion and other such issues.

 

In their own ways, some Saudi and other Gulf citizens have embarked on that epic journey from a traditional, patriarchal, collective society defined mainly by faith and family, to one in which individual citizens have many more rights and options in living out their lives.

Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hasan “Left Free” to Kill. By Jon Swaine.

Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan “left free” to kill. By Jon Swaine. The Telegraph, August 4, 2013.

America’s Misguided Wilsonianism. By Josh Kiernan.

The “war on terrorism” and the Cold War. By Josh Kiernan. Jerusalem Post, August 3, 2013.

Kiernan:

Perhaps the lesson from the Cold War is that building democracies requires patience, moral compromises and, at times, putting national interests above lofty Wilsonian ideals.

 

There are parallels between the current “war on terrorism” and the Cold War. By learning from the West’s experiences during the Cold War, we can apply the lessons to the current conflict, particularly in the context of the Arab Spring.

 

During the Cold War, the US faced the dilemma of supporting anti-communist dictators and undermining democratic values on the basis that the alternative, supporting local populist movements, would result in the emergence of Soviet-sponsored communist regimes that themselves would repress any democratic movements.

 

In the end the US “won” the Cold War and in places like Latin America democracy ultimately emerged triumphant, although the US paid a moral price for its often ambiguous and sometimes hypocritical policy. One might thus conclude that US policy during the Cold War in supporting anticommunist regimes was a necessary evil.

 

In the war on Islamic extremism, the US faces a similar dilemma. Should it support democratic movements seeking to overthrow secular autocratic or dictatorial regimes when there is a significant risk that assisting in the overthrow of such regimes will simply give way to the emergence of hard-line anti-democratic Islamic regimes? The US is often blamed for creating the conditions that give rise to Islamic extremism through its support of dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, its support for Israel and its perceived failure to promote democratic values. However, the sources of Islamic extremism are far more complex and actually have less to do with US policy and more to do with local and regional factors. And there is no doubt that Islamic extremism is the greatest threat facing the West since the Cold War.

 

The problem the US faces in supporting democratic movements in the Arab world is similar to that faced during the Cold War since such support carries with it a high degree of risk that it will ultimately backfire. As has occurred in Egypt and elsewhere, democratic movements have been hijacked by Islamist forces who ultimately use the tools of democracy to destroy it.

 

Islamists do not believe in democracy. To them, democracy is an anti-Islamic Western creation that undermines their ultimate goal of creating an Islamic Caliphate guided by Sharia law. Sharia is their model constitution. When the Islamists come to power they gradually restrict civil liberties, demonize and persecute religious minorities and eventually do away with Western-style concepts of democracy.

 

This is what was happening in Morsi’s Egypt, this is the same struggle that is taking place in countries like Libya and Tunisia. We have even seen how Islamist tendencies are starting to erode Turkey’s democratic values.

 

Far worse consequences are likely to unfold in Syria if the Assad regime falls. This despite the fact that this regime is dictatorship at its worst, its forces responsible for unspeakable atrocities and its allies Hezbollah and Iran, like itself, sworn enemies of the US and its allies Israel, Saudi Arabia and others. Even in Israel they speak of the “devil you know” and many policy makers would prefer to see Assad stay in power considering the likely alternative of a failed state increasingly taken over by al-Qaida-affiliated forces with no red lines, no limits.

 

Radical Sunni Islam is an extreme machine of murder and violence. It preaches piety but engages in barbaric acts of violence, murder, rape and ethnic cleansing, openly promotes genocide and proudly displays its handiwork on YouTube; to it, these are badges of honor.

 

If these groups obtain nuclear or chemical weapons, they will have little to no hesitation in using them. As non-state actors, the “MAD” paradigm, Mutually Assured Destruction, does not apply. If the Assad regime falls, the al-Qaida affiliated groups will likely get their hands on some of Assad’s massive arsenal of chemical weapons unless the US and/or its allies undertake a complicated military operation requiring boots on the ground, since an air attack would create an unacceptably high risk of dispersal.

 

So, in determining whether to undermine autocratic or dictatorial regimes with the idealistic goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East, the US needs to ask the difficult question: are Middle Eastern societies really ready for democracy? At the end of the day, one has to make a judgment call as to the likelihood of democracy emerging in a given country before rushing to support the overthrow of the likes of Mubarak, Gaddafi and Assad.

 

While this requires a country-by-country analysis, there does appear to be a significant risk that in many of these countries, an idealistic policy of undermining the “old” regimes in an effort to promote democracy will backfire and the US will inadvertently end up facilitating the emergence of much more hostile Islamist theocratic and antidemocratic regimes. Perhaps the lesson from the Cold War is that building democracies requires patience, moral compromises and, at times, putting national interests above lofty Wilsonian ideals.

Return of the Jesus Wars. By Ross Douthat.

Return of the Jesus Wars. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, August 3, 2013.

Aslan’s Jesus Is a Failed Muhammad. By Stephen Prothero. Washington Post, August 2, 2013.

Son of Man: Review of Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. By Scott Korb. Los Angeles Review of Books, July 26, 2013.

Reza Aslan Misrepresents His Scholarly Credentials on Fox News. By Matthew J. Franck. NJBR, July 29, 2013.

Kerry “Using Europeans to Blackmail Israel.” By Aaron Klein.

Kerry “Using Europeans to Blackmail Israel.” Threat targets Jews in Jerusalem, biblical territories. By Aaron Klein. Klein Online, August 2, 2013.

No Woman Born. By C. L. Moore.

No Woman Born. By C. L. Moore. The Best of C. L. Moore. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975. Also here. Summary and discussion at jennre, April 30, 2012.

Feminism, Technology, and Art in C. L .Moore’s “No Woman Born.” By Thomas L. Wymer. Extrapolation, Vol. 47 No. 1 (Spring 2006). Also here.

“Neither Norman nor Human”: The Cyborg in C. L. Moore’s “No Woman Born.” By Susan Smith. Femspec, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2010).

The Fate of the Sons of Usnach. By Lady Augusta Gregory. Cuchulain of Muirthemne. London: John Murray, 1911. Also here.

Four Poems: Deirdre. By James Stephens. Irish Review, Vol. 4, No. 38 (April 1914). 

Deirdre. By James Stephens. London: Macmillan and Co., 1923. 

The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu. Early Irish Myths and Sagas. Translated by Jeffrey Gantz. New York: Penguin Books, 1981.

An Anti-Obama Belly Dance Video by Egyptian Singer Sama ElMasry.

This Is The Most Entertaining Anti-American Video From Egypt You’ll Ever Watch. BuzzFeed, August 3, 2013. YouTube.

At Last: An Anti-American Arab Rant That Republicans Will Love. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, August 3, 2013.

Whoa! . . . Wildly Popular Anti-Obama Belly Dance Video Takes Egypt By Storm. By Jim Hoft. The Gateway Pundit, August 4, 2013.

Anti-Americanism/Obama Ridicule on the Rise in Egypt (Video). By Lori Lowenthal Marcus. The Jewish Press, August 4, 2013.

Her hips don’t lie: Egyptian belly dancer protests President Obama in music video. By Leslie Larson. New York Daily News, August 5, 2013.

Egyptian Belly Dancer Sama El Masry’s Salacious Video Mocking Muslim Brotherhood Goes Viral. By Mahmood Salem. TechPresident, November 19, 2012.

Sama Al Masry on Facebook.

Sama ElMasry: Obama, Your Mother, Your Father. Video. mmado mado, July 30, 2013. YouTube.




Sama ElMasry: Act Thuggish. Video skewering the Muslim Brotherhood. Dahlia Wahba, November 14, 2012. YouTube. Also here, here.




Sama ElMasry: Danse pour Morsi en nikab. Video. sindiSS3, June 18, 2013. YouTube.

Ramallah vs. the “Peace Process.” By Khaled Abu Toameh.

Ramallah vs. the “Peace Process.” By Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute, August 1, 2013.

Abu Toameh:

If Mahmoud Abbas does not have the power or courage to allow an Israel-based clothing shop to open branch near his residence in Ramallah, how will he ever be able to make peace with Israel?

 

This is the question some Palestinian businessmen have been asking during the past few days in light of an organized campaign to prevent the Fox clothing chain from opening a store in the city.

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s strenuous efforts to resume peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority led two Israeli Arab businessmen to take the initiative and open the first Fox store in the West Bank.

 

After investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovations and the training of employees, the two businessmen soon found themselves at the center of a protest organized by “Anti-normalization” activists and journalists.

 

Facing daily threats, the two entrepreneurs decided to call off the project, which would have provided jobs to nearly 150 Palestinians.

 

Although the Palestinian Authority gave permission to the two businessmen to open the Ramallah Fox branch, it was yet unable to do anything to protect them against the threats, including calls for fire-bombing the store.

 

The opening of a clothing store in Ramallah may be a minor issue, especially compared with the major and explosive issues facing Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

 

But this incident, in which a clothing shop is forced – under threats – to withdraw plans to open branch in a Palestinian city, is an indication of what awaits Abbas if and when he dares to reach any agreement with Israel.

 

The same “anti-normalization” movement that Abbas supports will be the first to turn against him if he strikes a deal with Israel.

 

Although Fox clothes are immensely popular among young Palestinian men and women, the fashion retailer did not have a branch in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

 

While many Palestinian merchants have been quietly selling Fox clothes in several Palestinian cities, they are particularly afraid of the strong “anti-normalization” movement that prohibits any form of contact with Israelis.

 

Ironically, this movement is fully supported by the same Palestinian Authority and Fatah leaders whose leaders do not hesitate to conduct public meetings with Israelis, in addition to security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank.

 

Just this week, senior Fatah officials were invited to the Knesset for talks with Israeli colleagues about peace and coexistence; and earlier, Fatah leaders in Ramallah hosted scores of Israeli politicians, including members of the Likud and Shas parties, to an event organized by the joint Israeli-Palestinian Geneva Initiative group.

 

The campaign against the opening of a Fox store in Ramallah also coincided with the launching of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington.

 

While Palestinian activists were busy threatening the owners of the clothing store, their representatives, Saeb Erekat and Mohamed Shtayyeh, were sitting with Israeli minister Tzipi Livni in Washington and talking about ways of achieving peace and coexistence between the two sides.

 

What Kerry and the U.S. Administration need to understand is that Abbas has failed to prepare his people for the possibility of peace with Israel. Abbas may be conducting peace talks with Israel, but at the same time he is also backing campaigns that promote boycotts and hatred of Israel. It is important to talk peace. But it is even more important to educate people about peace – something that neither Yasser Arafat nor his successor Abbas has done for the past two decades.

Does John Kerry’s Peace Process Have a Chance? By Aaron David Miller.

Does John Kerry’s peace process have a chance? By Aaron David Miller. Politico, August 1, 2013.

Israeli-Palestinian talks won’t fix the Middle East’s problems. By Ian Bremmer. Reuters, July 31, 2013.

Mideast peace deal seems far off. By Dan Perry. AP, July 29, 2013.

Israel, Palestinians deeply divided despite renewed peace talks. By Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Ali Sawafta. Reuters, July 31, 2013.


Miller:

In the history of the world, nobody ever washed a rental car.

 

As the champagne corks pop at Foggy Bottom celebrating Secretary of State John Kerry’s hard-earned success in launching Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, he’d be well advised to keep this piece of homespun philosophy in mind.

 

People really care only about what they own. And right now, Kerry has more ownership of this effort than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, or U.S. President Barack Obama, for that matter.

 

It is an inconvenient truth. But having started this process, the United States will be on the hook for trying to finish it. If it’s not prepared for that, the negotiations will fail. And the idea of a two-state solution will remain just that: an idea.

 

To reach this point, Kerry has combined his own relentless and willfulness (six trips to the region in four months) with something else: Neither Abbas nor Netanyahu wants to say no to America’s top diplomat and take the blame for the collapse of the process. James Baker, one of Kerry’s most successful predecessors, used this tactic effectively – threatening to leave a proverbial dead cat on Israel’s and the Arabs’ doorstep if they refused to attend the Madrid peace conference in 1991. Kerry’s effort is also aided by the fact that both Abbas and Netanyahu worry that without a process of some kind, events on the ground could easily deteriorate.

 

These factors proved sufficient to get them back to negotiations, but more will be required to keep them there, let alone to reach an accord. Right now, neither has enough incentives, disincentives, and an urgent desire or need to move forward boldly. The gaps on both process and substance are wide, and the mistrust deep. Abbas wants a comprehensive effort to resolve all the core issues; Netanyahu knows his politics and ideology can’t handle one and would prefer to go slow. If you took Kerry out of the picture, there would not even be talks about talks.

 

In fact, the process Kerry has launched is backwards. Unlike the Egyptian-Israel breakthrough that led to Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem or the Israeli-Palestinian one in Oslo, some tough decisions were made by the parties themselves long before the United States got involved. Unfortunately, right now, the U.S. owns this one more than the parties do. And there’s a good chance, given the gaps and mistrust on each side, that owning it themselves will be much tougher than anyone imagined. It would be nice to assume that once involved in talks, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will just sit down, work out the details themselves, and take the necessary steps on the ground that will create a better environment at the table. And bucked up by all kinds of bells and whistles – prisoner releases and economic aid for the Palestinians and security assistance and Arab state recognition for Israel – they’ll somehow find one another and come to own the negotiating process.

 

But who are we kidding? This is the Arab-Israeli conflict. What can go wrong will go wrong. And because there’s still very little traction right now in the talks, the U.S. will need to be all over them like a cheap suit. This is not an ideal situation. It would have been better had real urgency brought Mahmoud Abbas and Bibi Netanyahu together rather than John Kerry.

 

That doesn’t mean Kerry is doomed to fail. But if he is to succeed, not only will the two sides have to own up, Kerry too will need to readjust his thinking and consider a more active strategy.

 

Laying out parameters: Right now, as far as we know, there are no agreed terms of reference governing the talks. If these negotiations were happening a decade ago, you might not need any, particularly if the process focused on interim issues. But this is a major-league peace process, dedicated to the end game. Without some kind of parameters to guide the talks — say, June 1967 borders with mutually agreed swaps or an agreement that Jerusalem will be the capital of two states — the negotiations will wander and likely break down.

 

U.S. bridging proposals: These, too, will be necessary. The two sides may well succeed in narrowing the gaps. But more than likely they will be unable to close them. It will take U.S. ideas and bridging proposals to move matters along. And these U.S. ideas must take into account the needs and requirements of both sides. The last time we tried this, at Camp David in July 2000, American proposals were much more to Israel’s liking.

 

The president’s role: Then there’s Barack Obama, a risk-averse president whose priority isn’t the Middle East but the American middle class. If a deal is to be done, it will have to entail a major role for Obama and a tough struggle with Abbas, but particularly with Netanyahu over issues such as borders and the final status of Jerusalem, where the American position is much closer to the Palestinians than to the Israelis. (On security and refugees, the Americans are closer to Israel). Will the president want to undermine his carefully calculated “reset” with Israel earlier this year for a risky bet on Middle East peace? Legacy pulls hard. But legacy cuts both ways: You can be the hero and the goat, too.

 

Is some kind of Israeli-Palestinian agreement possible? Perhaps. But it will take the kind of leadership, courage, and commitment that we haven’t seen from any member of the Big Three – yet.

The Outrage Gap. By Gil Troy.

Netanyahu on “Final Resolution”: Not “A Single Arab on Our Lands.” By Gil Troy. The Daily Beast, July 30, 2013.

Troy:

Of course, Benjamin Netanyahu did not say that—or any such thing. Netanyahu, as the leader of the Jabotinskyite Likud movement understands that Israel must remain a Jewish and democratic state that respects all its citizens, including Arabs, many of whom serve honorably in the courts, the Knesset, and elsewhere. But imagine the outrage if Netanyahu had said such a thing—we have seen how when third-string Knesset backbenchers make even less offensive remarks it generates New York Times headlines and much Jewish handwringing about supposed Israeli “racism,” when, of course, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a national one not a racial one at all.

 

By contrast, when Mahmoud Abbas, briefing “mostly Egyptian journalists,” according to the report reprinted in the Jerusalem Post, imagined an Israeli-free (but let's face it, basically Jew-free) Palestinian state, few mainstream media outlets decided this was news. This Outrage Gap, this magical ray that renders Palestinian bigotry and hate-mongering invisible, has perverted the so-called “peace process” for decades, and has already caused imbalance in this latest round of negotiations—which, despite my frustrations and fears, I desperately hope will succeed.

 

To be fair, this is Abbas’s full sentence: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli—civilian or soldier—on our lands.” This is, of course, one of the fundamental assumptions guiding peace talks for decades, that the Jews will leave what the Palestinians have convinced the world is their territory exclusively, while Arabs will stay in Israel. That assumption follows the guidelines of the original British Mandate after World War I, which created a Jew-free Transjordan, east of the Jordan River, and envisioned carving out some territory west of the Jordan for a Jewish state.

 

Let me be clear. My vision of Israel’s future includes all of Israel’s current citizens and their future descendants, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. Moreover, I understand that a future Palestinian state will require displacing more Israelis from some territory, as was done with Yamit after the Egyptian Peace Treaty and was done in Gaza—and we forget—part of the West Bank, with the Disengagement. I also believe that the most viable arrangement with the Palestinians will respect current demographic realities as much as possible, trying to draw viable boundaries that minimize the amount of inconvenience to people living on both sides of the Green Line—that improvised boundary from 1949.

 

But the free pass given Abbas on these remarks, like the free pass given to his odious dissertation trying to Nazify Zionism and minimize the Holocaust, tells a deeper, darker tale. There are vast armies of Palestinian enablers in the West who exaggerate every Israeli imperfection and soft-pedal serious Palestinian evils. This asymmetry results in always blaming Israel—even when the Palestinians turn from negotiating back to terror in 2000—and always putting the onus on Israel to make the first move—as evidenced by Israel’s major concession this week in freeing murderers with blood on their hands. This outrage gap holds democratic Israel, with all its imperfections, to an impossibly high standard, while rarely holding Palestinians up to even the most minimum standards when it comes to judging their undemocratic procedures, their appalling human rights record, their hostile attitudes toward gays, women, Jews, or any non-Palestinian, non-males.

 

Clearly, this imbalance hurts Israel, undermining Israel’s standing, alienating bystanders, putting extra-pressure on Israel even from natural allies in the United States and Europe. But this imbalance hurts Palestinians too, in at least two central ways.

First, I think reflects what I call liberal condescension. I hold Palestinian politics and society up to high standards out of respect; giving Palestinians a free pass, be it when they terrorize or demonize, shows contempt for them, assuming that somehow they cannot live up to basic standards of decency.

 

Second, all this enabling feeds Palestinian extremism and Israeli extremism as well. Indulging Palestinian bigotry, oppression, fanaticism, and violence helps make the Middle East more incendiary, undermines Israeli moderates, and fuels the fanatics.

 

Just as many critics of Israel insist they are true friends trying to save Israel’s soul, true friends of the Palestinians in the West would start by publicizing Abbas’s remarks—and then repudiating them as contrary to the kind of country he should be trying to build and the kind of tone he should be trying to set in negotiations.

A Cultural Redesign of the Peace Process. By Richard Landes.

Redesigning the Peace Process. By Richard Landes. Tablet, September 25, 2012. Also at The Augean Stables.

Romney Is Right on Culture and the Wealth of Nations. By Richard Landes. Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2012.


Landes (Peace Process):

Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, there hasn’t been a moment when the punditocracy hasn’t insisted that Israel needs to make a deal with the Palestinians—and soon. Otherwise, they claim, Israeli democracy, saddled with millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control without citizenship, will have to choose between the twin catastrophes of democratic suicide and apartheid. And since the solution that everyone knows is the eventual one–land for peace–is so clear, let’s just get on with it.

 

It hasn’t panned out. We’re now approaching two decades of failure of the two-state solution. Every strategy for pulling it off—Oslo, Taba, Geneva, Road Map, Dayton, Obama/Clinton—has, despite sometimes enormous efforts, failed or died stillborn. And yet, with each failure, a new round of hope emerges, with commentators and politicians arguing that this time, if we just tinker with some of the details, we’ll get peace right. (Or, as an increasing number have now come to believe, it’s time we abandon the two-state solution entirely.)

The predominant explanation for this impasse in the West has focused on Israel’s role: settlements that provoke, checkpoints that humiliate, blockades that strangle, and walls that imprison. Palestinian “no’s” typically get a pass: Of course Arafat said “no” at Camp David; he only got Bantustans while Israelis kept building illegal settlements. Suicide bombers are excused as registering a legitimate protest at being denied the right to be a free people in their own land. In Condoleezza Rice’s words: “[The Palestinians] are perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace . . . the great majority of people, they just want a better life.” The corollary to such thinking, of course, holds that if only the Israelis didn’t constantly keep the Palestinians down the world would be a better place. So, the sooner we end the occupation, the better, even if it means urging the United States to pressure Israel into the necessary concessions. It’s for Israel’s own good.

 

This line of thinking is driven entirely by politics. Oslo thinkers from Bill Clinton to Thomas Friedman believe that what was needed was a political settlement and the rest would take care of itself. In 2007, Rice reflected this outlook in a statement of faith that projected a peculiarly modern outlook: “I just don’t believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that’s what people are going to do.”

 

Overestimating the power of politics and dramatically underestimating the importance of culture has actually hindered the possibility for a political solution. For Jews, especially progressive Jews, the early second decade of the 21st century poses a particularly interesting and painful meditation just in time for Yom Kippur: In our quest for “fairness,” for splitting the blame evenly, for misidentifying problems as political and therefore easily solvable—so easily solvable they could be dispatched with a simple email, as one exasperated BBC anchor put it recently—are we actually working against both parties in the conflict?

 

I believe the answer is yes. And those who wish to pursue a peaceful resolution need to take a hard look at the cultural difference between Israelis and Arabs—and craft policy that confronts it.

 

***

 

Any approach that pays heed to cultural issues yields a very different view as to why the conflict persists. The zero-sum logic of Arab attitudes toward Israel does not represent merely the choices made by politicians, but Islamic religiosity and deep-seated cultural mores. From the Arab perspective, the very existence of Israel represents a stain on Arab honor and a blasphemy to Islam’s dominion in Dar al Islam. Some, like the Palestinian Authority, may have made a tactical shift in which they will, despite the shame of it, talk with Israelis and even make public agreements. But they have treated such engagement as a Trojan horse, a feint to position for further war. Within this cultural context, the peace process has actually served as a war process.

 

Well-meaning Oslo proponents, afraid that criticism of, and demands on, the Palestinians would delay the peace process, denounced anyone who made these kinds of observations as enemies of peace. So, when Arafat said “no” at Camp David in the summer of 2000, and a wave of suicide bombers came pouring out of the belly of the horse, these same Oslo supporters, including many an alter-Juif, rather than admitting they had called it wrong, preferred to blame Israel.

 

But bitterest of ironies, in so doing, they fed the very culture they denied. Palestinian hatred has festered under the guidance of Oslo-empowered elites, unopposed by the very actors one would expect to have the courage to call out such vitriol: journalists, human-rights organizations, and progressives. Instead, these groups have gone out of their way not to inform their readers of this culture of hate.

 

By constantly reinforcing a Palestinian sense of grievance against Israel, activists like the late Rachel Corrie, journalists like BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and CNN’s Ben Wedeman, and Israel-obsessed organizations like Human Rights Watch have unwittingly contributed to the very war that rages. And as a result of this consensus, Israel appears to most in the West as a terrible oppressor when the sad but redeeming truth is that the Israelis are the best enemies one could hope for, and they face the worst.

 

Nothing illustrates the cultural gap between Israel and Palestine better—and offers a more immediate and constructive way out—than the problem of Palestinian refugees. They are the symbol of Arab political priorities. When faced with the catastrophic humiliation of 1948, when the combined Arab nations, fully confident of a glorious victory, failed to destroy the upstart Jewish nation in the heart of the Muslim world, the Arab leadership unanimously chose to herd Arab refugees into prison camps so that they could serve as a symbol of Israeli crimes and a breeding ground or the counter-attack.

 

For over 60 years, Arab leaders have blocked any efforts to remove these people from these wretched camps because to do so would be a tacit acceptance of Israel’s permanence and would acknowledge the humiliating defeat. (By contrast, Israel rapidly moved the even larger number of Jews chased from the Arab world in 1948 out of their refugee camps.) The Arabs thus went from a zero-sum loss (the establishment of Israel) to a negative-sum solution: sacrifice your own people on the altar of your lost honor. No negotiations, no recognition, no peace.

 

Not only do Palestinian negotiators insist on the return of 5 million refugees to Israel (it was one of two key  deal-breakers at Camp David), but the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon recently explained that Palestinian refugees not residing in the future Palestine would not be citizens in that state. In other words, Palestinian refugees still captive in camps in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan only have a right to citizenship in Israel.

 

So, here’s my proposal to those who somehow feel we must revive the peace process now, before it’s too late. Call for the Palestinians to show their good intentions, not toward the Israelis, but toward their own people. Get those “refugees” out of the prison camps into which they have been so shamefully consigned for most of a century.

 

Begin at home, with the over 100,000 refugees in Territory A, under complete PA control. Bring in Habitat for Humanity and Jimmy Carter to help them build decent, affordable, new homes. Let us all participate in turning the powers of Palestinian ingenuity away from manufacturing hatred, fomenting violence, and building villas for the rich and powerful, while the refugees live in squalor as a showcase of Israeli cruelty, and start to do good for a people victimized by their own leadership.

 

To take this position, so aligned with progressive values, however, we would have to confront two obstacles. First, overcoming our immense reluctance to criticize and make demands on the Palestinians. That would also mean we’d also have to renounce the impulse to attack as racists or Islamophobes those making the demands. We also have to consider, especially true for journalists in the field, the possibility that we’re intimidated, afraid to criticize people with so prickly a collective ego. Second, it would mean overcoming the widespread hunger for stories of “Jews behaving badly.” After all, if it weren’t for the appetite for moral Schadenfreude, the whole idea of pinning the miserable fate of the Palestinian refugees on Israel rather than on their Arab jailors would never have taken hold in the first place.

 

***

 

Such introspection and self-criticism can be a little like chewing glass, but I can think of no more important communal task this Yom Kippur.

 

How often have I gone overboard, how often have I accepted a lethal narrative in order to save face with my friends who expect me to rise above being an “Israel-firster”? How often have I admitted to crimes on behalf of my people without checking to see if they were accurate? How often have I failed to speak out against the depravity of the Palestinian leadership, out of fear of being called an Islamophobe? In the answers to those questions lies the path to a real peace in this troubled, blessed land.

 

Do we outsiders who say we want peace want it badly enough to confront our own comfort zones? Let’s hope. Those Palestinians and Israelis who are ready to live in a win-win world depend on it.

How Sweet, Smart Kids Under Occupation Come To Worship Militants. By Haroon Shah.

How Sweet, Smart Kids Under Occupation Come To Worship Militants. By Haroon Shah. Tablet, July 30, 2013.

In the heart of Kashmir, where happiness was a warm AK-47, the weapon was my voice, and my dream.

Britain Is Now a Socialist Utopia. By Toby Young.

Britain is now a socialist utopia. By Toby Young. The Spectator, August 3, 2013.

SWAT for Settlers. By Debra Kamin.

SWAT for Settlers. By Debra Kamin. Foreign Policy, July 31, 2013.

Meet the Brooklyn-born weapons instructor who’s training West Bank Jews to pack heat and use it.

Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness. By Emily Esfahani Smith.

Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness. Emily Esfahani Smith. The Atlantic, August 1, 2013.

A functional genomic perspective on human well-being. By Barbara L. Frederickson et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, published online, July 29, 2013.

Michelle Malkin: Al Sharpton Is a “Shakedown Artist” Who “Has Blood on His Hands.”

Michelle Malkin: Al Sharpton Is a “Shakedown Artist” Who “Has Blood on His Hands.” Video. Real Clear Politics, August 1, 2013. YouTube.

SEAN HANNITY: Do you think Al Sharpton has ever created a job with all this activism? Has he prevented a life from being taken with all this activism? Has he united anybody, has he solved any problems among any groups that you know of, Michelle?

 

MICHELLE MALKIN: Al Sharpton has blood on his hands. He’s ruined lives, he’s been one of the worst purveyors of racial divisiveness and hate in my lifetime. And it’s – how can you expect an ounce of honor from a man who doesn’t have it? Certainly he’s not going to go out of his way to try to defend yours or be a standup guy. I love you like a brother, Sean. And I was very dismayed when you made that decision, and I know you made it out of good faith, to attend the National Action Network, and this guy is a shakedown artist who hates cops, who hates whites, who hates Jews, who has stoked his rent-a-mob to murder Yankel Rosenbaum, to destroy the life of Steven Pagonis when he lied about Tawana Brawley, and who has done nothing but foment the very kind of anger that he is now accusing you, a once “friend” of, and I think the lesson here is something that I have tried tirelessly to remind all conservatives. If you get in the snake pit, you will be bit. Conservatives have been far too nice to these people in a good faith effort to try and have honest race relations. You can’t with somebody who is a demagogue. And who is evil.

 

HANNITY: Maybe you’re right. Maybe I made a mistake. I gotta tell you. In, especially the first debate – we aired it here on Fox. I confronted him with all his comments about, for a Jewish man to pin his yarmulke on backwards and the white interloper comment that he made at Freddie’s at 125th street, that resulted in deaths. I’m gonna say to him, if this is a battle he wants to fight every day, I’m going to remind everybody, not of one isolated incident, but of a history of vitriol out of his mouth.

 

***

 

HANNITY: If it wasn’t so sad and incendiary, it would almost be like a Saturday Night Live skit, its so over-the-top.

 

MALKIN: It’s chilling, is what it is. Because in an era where we’re supposed to take Martin Luther King Jr.’s words to heart, judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, all this man has done is enrich himself by fomenting more racial division. And it should be known that in addition to that long string in history, of racial hate and demagoguery, that the National Action network itself is nothing more than a shake-down vehicle to buy legitimacy. And you have the fact that everyone from President George W Bush to Newt Gingrich to Al Gore. Every Democratic presidential candidate in the 2008 election and preceding it has kissed the ring of this race charlatan. And now he has reinvented himself, he thinks he can lose weight, put pancake makeup on, and all of a sudden he’s respectable. You do that Sean, and remind people every day of where that man came from. Warn people not to make the mistake of being an enabler of Al Sharpton, but be a disabler of his demagoguery.

Sam Houston: American Hero. By Jeffrey Stuart Kerr.

Sam Houston: American Hero. By Jeffrey Stuart Kerr. The Huffington Post, August 1, 2013.

The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston. By Marquis James. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1929.

Sam Houston and Secession. By Edward R. Maher, Jr. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 4 (April 1952).

Sam Houston and Eliza Allen: The Marriage and the Mystery. By Elizabeth Crook. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 94, No. 1 (July 1990).

Republicans and the Rich. By Ross Douthat.

Republicans and the Rich. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, July 23, 2013.

Libertarian populism is viable and necessary. By Timothy P. Carney. Washington Examiner, July 22, 2013.

Why Republicans Miss the Realists. By Ross Douthat.

Why Republicans Miss the Realists. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, July 31, 2013.

White House Losing Its Grip on the Middle East? By Walter Russell Mead.

White House Losing Its Grip on the Middle East? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, August 2, 2013.

The Death of Populism. By Victor Davis Hanson.

The Death of Populism. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, August 1, 2013.

Plenty of pleaders for rich and poor, but no politician speaks for the common man.

I and My Brother Against My Cousin. By Stanley Kurtz.

I and My Brother Against My Cousin. By Stanley Kurtz. The Weekly Standard, April 14, 2008.

Is Islam the key to understanding the Middle East? Tribalism offers a more profound—if neglected—insight into the region.

The Neocon Revival. By David Brooks.

The Neocon Revival. By David Brooks. New York Times, August 1, 2013.

The Neoconservative Persuasion. By Irving Kristol. The Weekly Standard, August 25, 2003.