Talks Will Go Nowhere. By Benny Morris. The Daily Beast, April 10, 2012.
Morris:
Western
observers have suggested that this prospective exchange is equivalent to a
diplomatic cul-de-sac, and have long pointed to Israeli recalcitrance over the
settlements as the chief obstacle to progress toward peace. Recent Israeli
government announcements of moves to beef up settlements on Jerusalem’s
peripheries—most notably in Har Homa, a new neighborhood just east of the
Jerusalem-Bethlehem road—have done nothing to help Israel’s image abroad.
And
without doubt, the whole settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria—the
Biblical term Israel uses to define the West Bank—has posed an obstacle to
peace, intensifying Israeli acquisitive drives and expansionist ambitions as
well as underlining Palestinian fears—or certainties—that Israel has no real
intention of ever relinquishing the territories.
But in
deep and broad historical terms, all of this is a giant red herring. The
Palestinian political elite—both of the secular Fatah persuasion, which
controls the PA, and Hamas, the Islamist party that has ruled the Gaza Strip
since 2007 (and won the Palestinian general elections in 2006)—has no intention
of ever accepting Israel’s legitimacy or a two-state settlement based on the
partition of Palestine into two states, one for the Palestinian Arabs and one
for the Jewish people.
Hamas
has always been clear about this; its 1988 charter states simply that, through
jihad, it will uproot Zionism and that no Arab leader has the right to concede
even one inch of Palestine’s sacred land to the Jews.
Fatah
has played a more cagey game, but its historical record is no less clear to
those willing to look at the facts. The successive leaders of the Palestinian
Arab national movement have consistently rejected a two-state solution. Haj
Amin al-Husseini, its first leader, did so twice, in 1937 (when he rejected the
Peel Commission partition proposals) and in 1947-1948 (when he rejected the UN
General Assembly partition plan, Resolution 181). His successor, Yasser Arafat who founded the
Fatah in the late 1950s and led it—and the PA—until his death in 2004,
similarly decisively rejected the idea twice (while occasionally making vague
positive noises to appease Washington and Western Europe): In 1978, when he
turned down the Sadat-Begin Camp David Agreement that provided for the
establishment of a Palestinian “Autonomy”—which would have devolved into
statehood—in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; and in 2000, when he rejected the
two-state proposals that ultimately offered the Palestinians 95% of the West
Bank, 100% of the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem (Ehud Barak’s peace offer in
July 2000 and the Clinton “Parameters” of December 2000, which the Barak
government, albeit grudgingly, endorsed).
Neither
in 1978 nor in 2000 did Abbas publicly dissent from Arafat’s rejectionist
position—and, in 2008, after a protracted negotiation with then Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert, Abbas himself in effect said “no” to Olmert’s peace plan,
which had somewhat upgraded (from the Palestinian perspective) the Clinton
“Parameters.” (Actually he never uttered a full-throated “no”—he simply refused
to respond to the plan, despite American and Israeli prodding, and a few months
later Olmert was out of office, replaced by Netanyahu and his right-wing
coalition, and the plan was off the table).
To this
one needs to add that Abbas has repeatedly, publicly, over the past decade
rejected the Clinton formula of “two states for two peoples”—while endorsing
what he calls a “two-state solution”—and has inflexibly affirmed the “right” of
the Palestinian refugees to return to pre-1967 Israel proper. As there are in
the world some 5-6 million Palestinian “refugees” (meaning those still left of
the original 1948 refugees and their children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren) and as Israel has about 1.5 million Arab citizens and less
than 6 million Jewish citizens, a mass refugee return would create an Arab
majority in Israel and nullify the state’s Jewish character.
This
would seem to indicate that Abbas’s hoped-for “two-state solution” means one
state for the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, and another state
for the Palestinians (with a Jewish minority) where pre-1967 Israel used to be.
This doesn’t really give the Jews very much, when it comes to their
two-thousand year quest for a resumption of political sovereignty.
And
this is the real, protracted, historical deal-breaker which will stymie the
prospective “peace” meetings. Settlements can be finessed and uprooted (as
Israel’s uprooting of all the Gaza Strip settlements in 2005 demonstrated). But
uprooting deep, basic Palestinian rejectionism is a far more difficult task.
Of Herrings and Elephants: Benny Morris and “Palestinian Rejectionism.” By Daniel Levy. The Daily Beast, April 16, 2012.
A Response to Daniel Levy. By Benny Morris. The Daily Beast, April 17, 2012.
A Second Response to Benny Morris. By Daniel Levy. The Daily Beast, April 24, 2012.
Israel Under Siege. By Benny Morris. The Daily Beast, July 31, 2012.
Palestinians Dupe West. By Benny Morris. The National Interest, April 25, 2011.
Ilan Pappe: The Liar as Hero. By Benny Morris. The New Republic, March 17, 2011. From the April 7, 2011 issue. Also here.
Bleak House: The Grim Prospects for a Palestinian State. By Benny Morris. Tablet, December 2, 2010.
Morris:
Which
brings us to the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiating impasse. I am not
talking about the tactical problem posed by continued or discontinued Israeli
construction in West Bank settlements, which will probably be resolved, after
some bumps and hesitations. I am speaking of a basic, strategic impasse which,
unfortunately, is far more cogent and telling than the ongoing “negotiations,”
which are unlikely to lead to a peace treaty or even a “framework” agreement
for a future peace accord. This unlikelihood stems from a set of obstacles that
I see as insurmountable, given current political-ideological mindsets.
The
first, the one that American and European officials never express and—if
impolitely mentioned in their presence—turn away from in distaste, is that
Palestinian political elites, of both the so-called “secular” and Islamist
varieties, are dead set against partitioning the Land of Israel/Palestine with
the Jews. They regard all of Palestine as their patrimony and believe that it
will eventually be theirs. History, because of demography and the steady
empowerment of the Arab and Islamic worlds and the West’s growing alienation
from Israel, and because of Allah’s wishes, is, they believe, on their side.
They do not want a permanent two-state solution, with a Palestinian Arab state
co-existing alongside a (larger) Jewish state; they will not compromise on this
core belief and do not believe, on moral or practical grounds, that they
should.
This
basic Palestinian rejectionism, amounting to a Weltanschauung, is routinely ignored or denied by most Western
commentators and officials. To grant it means to admit that the Israeli-Arab
conflict has no resolution apart from the complete victory of one side or the
other (with the corollary of expulsion, or annihilation, by one side of the
other)—which leaves leaders like President Barack Obama with nowhere realistic
to go with regard to the conflict. Philosophically, acceptance of the rock-like
unpliability of this reality is extremely problematic, given the ongoing
military and philosophical clash between the West and various forces in the
Islamic world. Perhaps the fight between America and its allies and its enemies
in the Middle East and South Asia and North Africa and the banlieues of Western
Europe will go on and on, until one side is vanquished?
In this
connection, our age, it may turn out, resembles the classic age of appeasement,
the 1930s, when the Western democracies (and the Soviet Union) were ranged
against, but preferred not to confront, Nazi Germany and its allies, Fascist
Italy, and expansionist Japan. During that decade, Hitler’s inexorable martial,
racist, and uncompromising mindset was misread by Western leaders, officials,
and intellectuals—and for much the same reasons. Living in unideological
societies, they could not fathom the minds and politics of their ideologically
driven antagonists. The leaders and intellectuals of the Western democracies,
educated and suffused with liberal and relativist values, by and large were
unable to comprehend the essential “otherness” of Hitler and ended up fighting
him, to the finish, after negotiation and compromise had proved useless.
***
Another
problem for Westerners is that the Palestinians, by design or no, speak to them
in several voices. Hamas, which may represent the majority of the Palestinian
people and certainly has the unflinching support of some 40 percent of them,
speaks clearly. It openly repudiates a two-state solution. Hamas leaders, to
bamboozle naïve (or wicked) Westerners like Henry Siegman, occasionally express
a tactical readiness for a long-term truce under terms that they know are
unacceptable to any Jewish Israelis (complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967
borders and acceptance of the refugees’ “Right of Return”), but their strategic
message is clear, echoing the Roman statesman Cato the Elder: “Israel must be
destroyed.”
The
secular Palestinian leadership looks to a similar historical denouement but is
more flexible on the tactics and pacing. They express a readiness for a
two-state solution but envision such an outcome as intermediate and temporary.
They speak of two states, a Palestinian Arab West Bank-Gaza-East Jerusalem state
and another state whose population is Jewish and Arab and which they believe
will eventually become majority-Arab within a generation or two through Arab
procreation (Palestinian Arab birth-rates are roughly twice those of Israeli
Jews) and the “return” of Palestinians with refugee status. This is why Fatah’s
leaders, led by Palestine National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, flatly
reject the Clintonian formula of “two states for two peoples” and refuse to
recognize the “other” state, Israel, as a “Jewish state.” They hope that this
“other” state will also, in time, be “Arabized,” thus setting the stage for the
eventual merger of the two temporary states into one Palestinian Arab-majority
state between the River and the Sea.
Review Article: Benny Morris, Islamophobia, and the Case for the One-State Solution. By Oren Ben-Dor. Holy Land Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (November 2010).
One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict. By Benny Morris. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
Review of Benny Morris, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict. By Peter Gubser. Middle East Policy, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 2009). Also here.
The Zero-Sum Question. By Elliot Jager. Commentary, July 1, 2009. Review of One State, Two States. By Benny Morris. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
Review of Benny Morris, One State, Two States. By Ami Isseroff. MidEastWeb.
Christopher Hitchens has no love for Muslims unless they’re Palestinian. By Benny Morris. Haaretz, September 29, 2010.
Benny Morris on a “secular, democratic Palestine.” Elder of Ziyon, May 13, 2009. Also here, here, and The Augean Stables. [Excerpted from One State, Two States, pp 167-171.]
Morris:
The
Palestinian national movement started life with a vision and goal of a
Palestinian Muslim Arab-majority state in all of Palestine — a one-state
“solution” — and continues to espouse and aim to establish such a state down to
the present day. Moreover, and as a corollary, al-Husseini, the Palestinian
national leader during the 1930s and 1940s; the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), which led the national movement from the 1960s to Yasser
Arafat’s death in November, 2004; and Hamas today — all sought and seek to
vastly reduce the number of Jewish inhabitants in the country, in other words,
to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Al-Husseini and the PLO explicitly declared
the aim of limiting Palestinian citizenship to those Jews who had lived in
Palestine permanently before 1917 (or, in another version, to limit it to those
50,000-odd Jews and their descendants). This goal was spelled out clearly in
the Palestinian National Charter and in other documents. Hamas has been
publicly more reserved on this issue, but its intentions are clear.
The
Palestinian vision was never — as described by various Palestinian spokesmen in
the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to Western journalists — of a “secular, democratic
Palestine” (though it certainly sounded more palatable than, say, the
“destruction of Israel,” which was the goal it was meant to paper over or
camouflage). Indeed, “a secular democratic Palestine” had never been the goal of
Fatah or the so-called moderate groups that dominated the PLO between the 1960s
and the 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power.
Middle
East historian Rashid Khalidi has written that “in 1969 [the PLO] amended [its
previous goal and henceforward advocated] the establishment of a secular
democratic state in Palestine for Muslims, Christians and Jews, replacing
Israel.” And Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah has written, in his
recent book, One Country: “The PLO did ultimately adopt [in the late 1960s or
1970s] the goal of a secular, democratic state in all Palestine as its official
stance.”
This is
hogwash. The Palestine National Council (PNC) never amended the Palestine
National Charter to the effect that the goal of the PLO was “a secular
democratic state in Palestine.” The words and notion never figured in the
charter or in any PNC or PLO Central Committee or Fatah Executive Committee
resolutions, at any time. It is a spin invented for gullible Westerners and was
never part of Palestinian mainstream ideology. The Palestinian leadership has
never, at any time, endorsed a “secular, democratic Palestine.”
The PNC
did amend the charter, in 1968 (not 1969). But the thrust of the emendation was
to limit non-Arab citizenship in a future Arab-liberated Palestine to “Jews who
had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion”
— that is, 1917.
True,
the amended charter also guaranteed, in the future State of Palestine, “freedom
of worship and of visit” to holy sites to all, “without discrimination of race,
colour, language or religion.” And, no doubt, this was music to liberal Western
ears. But it had no connection to the reality or history of contemporary Muslim
Arab societies. What Muslim Arab society in the modern age has treated
Christians, Jews, pagans, Buddhists and Hindus with tolerance and as equals?
Why should anyone believe that Palestinian Muslim Arabs would behave any
differently?
Western
liberals like, or pretend, to view Palestinian Arabs, indeed all Arabs, as
Scandinavians, and refuse to recognize that peoples, for good historical,
cultural and social reasons, are different and behave differently in similar or
identical sets of circumstances.
So
where did the slogan of “a secular, democratic Palestine” originate? That goal
was first explicitly proposed in 1969 by the small Marxist splinter group the
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). According to Khalidi, “It
was [then] discreetly but effectively backed by the leaders of the mainstream,
dominant Fatah movement . . . The democratic secular state model eventually became
the official position of the PLO.” As I have said, this is pure invention. The
PNC, PLO and Fatah turned down the DFLP proposal, and it was never adopted or
enunciated by any important Palestinian leader or body – though the Western
media during the 1970s were forever attributing it to the Palestinians. As a
result, however, the myth has taken hold that this was the PLO’s official goal
through the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
And
today, again, and for the same reasons – the phrase retains its good, multicultural,
liberal ring – “a secular, democratic Palestine” is bandied about by
Palestinian one-state supporters. And a few one-statists, indeed, may sincerely
believe in and desire such a denouement. But given the realities of Palestinian
politics and behaviour, the phrase objectively serves merely as camouflage for
the goal of a Muslim Arab-dominated polity to replace Israel. And, as in the
past, the goal of “a secular democratic Palestine” is not the platform or
policy of any major Palestinian political institution or party.
Indeed,
the idea of a “secular democratic Palestine” is as much a nonstarter today as
it was three decades ago. It is a nonstarter primarily because the Palestinian
Arabs, like the world’s other Muslim Arab communities, are deeply religious and
have no respect for democratic values and no tradition of democratic
governance.
And
matters have only gotten worse since the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. For anyone who
has missed the significance of Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006 and the
violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, a mere glance at the West Bank and
Gaza today (and, indeed, at Israel’s Arab minority villages and towns) reveals
a landscape dominated by rapidly multiplying mosque minarets, the air filled
with the calls to prayer of the muezzins and alleyways filled with hijab-ed
women. Only fools and children were persuaded in 2006-07 that Hamas beat Fatah
merely because they had an uncorrupt image or dispensed aid to the poor. The
main reasons for the Hamas victory were religious and political: the growing
religiosity of the Palestinian masses and their “recognition” that Hamas
embodies the “truth” and, with Allah’s help, will lead them to final victory
over the infidels, much as Hamas achieved, through armed struggle, the
withdrawal of the infidels from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
And Now For Some Facts. By Benny Morris. The New Republic, May 8, 2006. Also here. Review of Mearsheimer and Walt.
Morris:
From
Mearsheimer and Walt, you would never suspect that the creation of the
Palestinian refugee problem in 1948 occurred against the backdrop, and as the
result, of a war—a war that for the Jews was a matter of survival, and which
those same Palestinians and their Arab brothers had launched. To omit this
historical background is bad history—and stark dishonesty. It is quite true,
and quite understandable, that the Israeli government during the war decided to
bar a return of the refugees to their homes—to bar the return of those who,
before becoming refugees, had attempted to destroy the Jewish state and whose
continued loyalty to the Jewish state, if they were readmitted, would have been
more than questionable. There was nothing “innocent,” as Mearsheimer and Walt
put it, about the Palestinians and their behavior before their
eviction-evacuation in 1947-1948 (as there was nothing innocent about Haj Amin
al Husseini’s work for the Nazis in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, broadcasting
anti-Allied propaganda and recruiting Muslim troops for the Wehrmacht). And
what befell the Palestinians was not “a moral crime,” whatever that might mean;
it was something the Palestinians brought down upon themselves, with their own
decisions and actions, their own historical agency. But they like to deny their
historical agency, and many “sympathetic” outsiders like to abet them in this
illusion, which is significantly responsible for their continued statelessness.
A new exodus for the Middle East? By Benny Morris. The Guardian, October 2, 2002.
No chance for peace in Israel. By Benny Morris. The Guardian, February 20, 2002.
Survival of the Fittest. Interview with Benny Morris by Ari Shavit. Haaretz, January 9, 2004. Also here, here, here. Part 1 here, here. Part 2 here, here. Part 1 at Haaretz. Part 2 at Haaretz.
Benny Morris: Moral Bankruptcy of a Zionist Historian. By Richard Silverstein. Tikkun Olam, February 25, 2004.
Diagnosing Benny Morris: The mind of a European settler. By Gabriel Ash. The Electronic Intifada, January 27, 2004.
Moral decay and Benny Morris. By Ali Abunimah. The Electronic Intifada, January 24, 2004.
Benny Morris’s Shocking Interview. By Baruch Kimmerling. History News Network, January 26, 2004. Also at The Electronic Intifada.
Relative Humanity: The Fundamental Obstacle to a One-State Solution in Historic Palestine. By Omar Barghouti. The Electronic Intifada, January 6, 2004. Part 1. Part 2.
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. By Benny Morris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Also here.
Eyeless in Zion: When Palestine First Exploded. By Anita Shapira. The New
Republic, December 11, 2000. Review of Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete.
The Past Is Not a Foreign Country: The Failure of Israel’s “New Historians” to Explain War and Peace. By Anita
Shapira. The New Republic, November
29, 1999.
The New Historiography: Israel Confronts Its Past. By Benny Morris. Tikkun,
November/December 1988.
The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948. By Benny Morris. Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (January 1986).
Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and Ramle in 1948. By Benny Morris. The Middle East Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter 1986).
Myths and Historiography of the 1948 Palestine War Revisited: The Case of Lydda. By Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela. The Middle East Journal, Vol. 59 No. 4 (Autumn 2005).
Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. By Benny Morris. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. Part 1. Part 2. Also here.
1948 as Jihad. By Benny Morris. NJBR, July 14, 2013. With related articles.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
The Arab World Needs Its Own Nelson Mandela – and Its Own FW de Klerk.
The Arab world needs its own Nelson Mandela – and its own FW de Klerk. By Richard Spencer. The Telegraph, December 10, 2013.
U.S. Plan for Israel’s Safety. By Ron Ben-Yishai.
U.S. plan for Israel’s safety. By Ron Ben-Yishai. Ynet News, December 5, 2013.
Imbalance in Israel. By Richard Cohen.
Imbalance in Israel. By Richard Cohen. Real Clear Politics, December 10, 2013. Also at the Washington Post.
Cohen:
In “My Promised Land,” Ari Shavit’s anguished book about Israel, there is plenty about the mistreatment of Palestinians — today, yesterday and always. Some of it is just plain sickening, reminiscent of the ethnic cleansing attempted in the Balkans. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, a passage pierces the gloom like the sun breaking through the fog. Shavit is walking in the Galillee with Palestinian-Israeli attorney Mohammed Dahla when the lawyer’s phone rings. The family of an accused terrorist is asking Dahla to represent him. From a hilltop, the lawyer calls the Jerusalem police to find his client and declare his interest in the case. Then he and Shavit resume their walk. Justice was served.
Does the alacrity, the efficiency, the very
existence of the Israeli justice system outweigh or negate the occupation of
the West Bank? No. Does it matter that in the nearby Arab states, justice is
the word for the outcome the government wants? No. Does any of that compensate
for what the Palestinians have suffered? No. The answer is always no.
But the
immense virtue of Shavit’s book is its insistent use of the concept of “and.”
It is not so much said as implied, and it is actually the theme of the book.
Much of Israel’s history is about parallelism. Things happen and at the same
time other things happen. Palestinians are oppressed and they are given legal
representation. Israel conquers the Gaza Strip and then withdraws. The blogger’s
handy word “but” is of no use here. Nothing balances. Everything exists at the
same time.
Take
the ethnic cleansing of Lydda during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
“Lydda is our black box,” Shavit writes. “In it lies the dark secret of
Zionism. The truth is that Zionism could not bear Lydda.”
And yet
the truth is also that the emerging state needed to control the Jerusalem-Tel
Aviv road. A civil war was underway, and victory required atrocity. Some 50,000
to 70,000 Palestinians were evicted from the area. The innocent were murdered.
Terrible things happened. Shavit provides first-person accounts, but Israeli
historians, particularly Benny Morris in his book “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War,” have not ignored the ethnic cleansing that produced
what the Arabs call “the Nakba,” the catastrophe. Israel is more than an open
society. It is an open wound.
Israel
today is 20 percent Arab. This is because the country was not ethnically
cleansed. Israel did not follow what in 1945 through 1948 was standard behavior
— the population transfers approved by the victors of World War II. Europe was
ethnically reorganized — no Germans in Poland; no Germans in Czechoslovakia,
either. And, lest we forget, the British approved the plan to swap Muslims and
Hindus in the creation of Pakistan. All over the world, millions died — at
least 500,000 ethnic Germans alone.
Shavit
is an Israeli aristocrat, if such a thing exists. He is fourth-generation
Israeli, a columnist for the robustly left-of-center newspaper Haaretz, and so
he knows many of the people who run the country. Unfortunately, it is precisely
people like him who could be affected by various academic organizations that
want to boycott Israel. One of them, the National Council of the American Studies Association, just passed such a resolution, but from the evidence it could
sorely benefit from listening to Israeli academics. The Americans know so much,
yet understand so little.
A
virtue of Shavit’s virtuous book is that it exhumes the dream of Zionism — and
also its success. This was a movement that saved countless lives, that was
fueled by the ovens of Auschwitz, that became imbued with the appealing
dreaminess of socialism and whose leaders often espoused tolerance and respect
for the Palestinians. (“I am certain that the world will judge the Jewish state
by what it will do with the Arabs,” Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann,
wrote before taking office.) These Zionists never lost sight of the right
thing. Sometimes, though, they just couldn’t do it.
Shavit
has nothing in common with the religiously zealous West Bank settlers. He wants
them all — religious, nationalist, secular, whatever — gone. This is what I
want, too. But when Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip, it got a daily barrage
of rockets by way of thanks. What if the West Bank becomes, like Gaza, a Hamas
state?
In
Israel, nothing is easy, which is why the subtitle of Shavit’s book is “The
Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.” One does not balance the other — and both are true.
Cohen:
In “My Promised Land,” Ari Shavit’s anguished book about Israel, there is plenty about the mistreatment of Palestinians — today, yesterday and always. Some of it is just plain sickening, reminiscent of the ethnic cleansing attempted in the Balkans. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, a passage pierces the gloom like the sun breaking through the fog. Shavit is walking in the Galillee with Palestinian-Israeli attorney Mohammed Dahla when the lawyer’s phone rings. The family of an accused terrorist is asking Dahla to represent him. From a hilltop, the lawyer calls the Jerusalem police to find his client and declare his interest in the case. Then he and Shavit resume their walk. Justice was served.
Egypt’s Trouble with Women. By Alaa al Aswany.
Egypt’s Trouble with Women. By Alaa al Aswany. New York Times, December 8, 2013. Translated from the Arabic by Russell Harris.
Aswany:
CAIRO — In December 1933, an air race from Cairo to Alexandria was held. The first plane to cross the finish line was piloted by a 26-year-old woman named Lotfia El Nadi, Egypt’s first female aviator.
To have
a flying career was not easy for Lotfia. Her father had rejected the idea, but
she did not despair. She persuaded the director of the Institute of Aviation to
let her work, free of charge, as his secretary — in exchange for flying
lessons. As she later explained, “I learned to fly because I love to be free.”
Lotfia
became a hero and a national treasure in the eyes of Egyptians. Women saw her
as an inspiration in their struggle for equal rights, and many young women
followed her example by applying for flying lessons. Egyptian women made
advances in equality throughout the period of the monarchy, which ended in
1953. After the republic of Egypt was established, under Gamal Abdel Nasser,
women continued to advance, achieving positions in universities, Parliament and
the senior judiciary.
The
historical advancement of Egyptian women contrasts sharply with the results of
a new Thomson Reuters Foundation survey that found Egypt ranked overall worst
among 22 Arab countries for discrimination in law, sexual harassment and the
paucity of female political representation. Why do Lotfia’s granddaughters
suffer from problems today that she managed to overcome 80 years ago?
After
the 1973 war in the Middle East, the price of oil shot up. This gave Gulf
states unprecedented power, while the economic shock forced millions of
Egyptians to emigrate to work there. Many of these Egyptians came home having
absorbed radical Wahhabi values.
Egypt’s
tradition of moderate Islam recognized women’s rights and encouraged women to
study and work. By contrast, for Wahhabis, a woman’s job is to please her
husband and provide offspring. Wahhabi preachers promote female genital
mutilation, to control women’s sexuality. A woman must cover her body completely
and may not study, work or travel. She cannot even leave the house without her
husband’s permission.
Wahhabism
has influenced all Islamic societies and movements, including Al Qaeda and the
Muslim Brotherhood. As it spread in Egypt, more women started to wear the
hijab, or head scarf. But this did not create a virtuous society; it led to the
reverse.
Until
the end of the 1970s, many Egyptian women still went without head scarves,
wearing modern Western-style dress, yet incidents of sexual harassment were
rare. Now, with the spread of the hijab, harassment has taken on epidemic
proportions. A 2008 study from the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights revealed
that 83 percent of women interviewed had been subjected to sexual harassment at
least once, and that 50 percent experienced it on a daily basis.
Why is
it that men did not harass Egyptian women when they wore short skirts but that
sexual harassment has increased against women in head scarves? When
ultraconservative doctrine dehumanizes women, reducing them to objects, it
legitimizes acts of sexual aggression against them.
The
Mubarak regime had various differences with the followers of political Islam,
but the two camps converged in their contempt toward women. In spite of some
formal reforms instigated by Suzanne Mubarak, who wanted to appear as an
enlightened first lady, the Mubarak era witnessed a deterioration in women’s
rights.
Even
so, it was not until 2005 that sexual harassment became an organized form of
retribution against Egyptian women who took part in anti-Mubarak
demonstrations. The security apparatus paid thugs, known as “beltagiya,” to
gang up on a woman attending a demonstration, tear off her clothes and molest
her. This sexualized form of punishment continued through the period of the
military regime and into the Brotherhood’s rule.
On Dec.
17, 2011, during a demonstration against the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces near Tahrir Square in Cairo, soldiers pulled a female protester’s
clothes off and dragged her along the ground, stomping on her with their boots.
A video of the attack went viral, eliciting the sympathy of millions.
Solidarity committees were formed, and the victim of the attack became an icon
for Egyptian women. But the Islamists, at that time allied with the council,
mocked the victim, blaming her for not staying in the home — as was seemly for
a respectable woman.
During
the revolution, millions of Egyptian women went out and bravely faced snipers’
bullets, but those who gained power played down their bravery and attempted to
sideline them. After the 2012 election that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to
power, there were only 10 female members of Parliament out of a total of 508.
President Mohamed Morsi’s later attempt to rewrite the Egyptian Constitution would
also have removed the only female judge on the Supreme Constitutional Court.
In
short, the Islamists strove to eradicate the gains Egyptian women had made.
They tried to overturn the law punishing doctors who carried out female genital
mutilation, and refused to consider the marriage of minors as a form of human
trafficking by claiming that Islam permitted a girl as young as 10 years old to
be married.
Women’s
rights are a bellwether of the current conflict in Egypt. The revolutionaries
are fighting for equality, whereas the reactionary forces of both the
Brotherhood and the Mubarak regime are trying to strip women of their political
and social rights and make them subject to men’s authority.
The
conflict will eventually be resolved in favor of women because the revolution
represents a future that no one can prevent. In 2002, Lotfia El Nadi died at
age 95. Shortly before her death, she said: “I don’t recognize Egypt as it is
now, but the Egypt I knew will return. I am certain of that.”
Aswany:
CAIRO — In December 1933, an air race from Cairo to Alexandria was held. The first plane to cross the finish line was piloted by a 26-year-old woman named Lotfia El Nadi, Egypt’s first female aviator.
Obama Takes a Selfie at Mandela Memorial. By Peter Grier.
 |
|
President
Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron pose for a picture with
Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt next to First Lady Michelle
Obama during the memorial service of South African former president Nelson
Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on December 10, 2013. (Photo:
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images.) |
Obama takes selfie at Mandela memorial. Inappropriate? By Peter Grier. The Christian Science Monitor, December 10, 2013.
President Obama poses for a funeral selfie and gets chummy with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt but Michelle does not look impressed. By Leslie Larson. New York Daily News, December 10, 2013.
President Obama snaps a selfie at Mandela’s memorial service. By Caitlin Dewey. Washington Post, December 10, 2013. Also here.
Obama Takes Selfie with World Leaders at Mandela Memorial, and Michelle Is Having None of It. By Paige Lavender. The Huffington Post, December 10, 2013.
The media’s Michelle Obama problem: What a selfie says about our biases. By Roxane Gay. Salon, December 10, 2013.
Gay:
The overanalysis of the first lady’s expression speaks volumes about America’s expectations of black women. . . .
Michelle Obama was not unhappy during Nelson Mandela “selfie,” photographer insists. By Natasha Clark. The Telegraph, December 11, 2013.
Mandela funeral selfie adds to image problem for Denmark’s prime minister. By Andrew Anthony. The Guardian, December 14, 2013.
The Great Mandela Selfie. Cartoon by Chip Bok. Bokbluster, December 13, 2013. Also at Real Clear Politics.
Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt of Denmark: Bilateral Meeting with President Obama (2012). Video. The Film Archive, May 20, 2012. YouTube.
Raúl Castro Honors Mandela, But Ignores His Message. By Alex Massie.
Raúl Castro Honors Mandela, But Ignores His Message. By Alex Massie. The Daily Beast, December 10, 2013.
“The last great liberator”: Why Mandela made and stayed friends with dictators. By Max Fisher. Washington Post, December 10, 2013. Also here.
“The last great liberator”: Why Mandela made and stayed friends with dictators. By Max Fisher. Washington Post, December 10, 2013. Also here.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Andrew Jackson Lives! America’s Foreign-Policy Populism. By Robert Golan-Vilella.
Andrew Jackson Lives! America’s Foreign-Policy Populism. By Robert Golan-Vilella. The National Interest, December 5, 2013.
Golan-Vilella:
In his well-known book Special Providence, Walter Russell Mead laid out a typology that divided American foreign-policy thinking into four broad schools: the big-government, pro-business Hamiltonians; the Wilsonians, determined to spread U.S. values around the world; the Jeffersonians, concerned primarily with preserving America’s identity at home; and a group that he dubbed the Jacksonians. While the first three are readily identifiable—and well represented within the Washington elite (especially the the first two)—the Jacksonian school is at once the most difficult to describe and the most interesting. Mead calls it a “large populist school” that “believes that the most important goal of the U.S. government in foreign and domestic policy should be the physical security and the economic well-being of the American people.” Its adherents believe that America should not seek out foreign wars. But should it become involved in them, then “there is no substitute for victory,” in the words of Douglas MacArthur.
Jacksonian opinion is instinctively protectionist, seeking trade privileges for American goods abroad and hoping to withhold those privileges from foreign exports. . . . They see the preservation of American jobs, even at the cost of some unspecified degree of “economic efficiency,” as the natural and obvious task of the federal government’s trade policy.
Likewise,
Mead says that Jacksonians “are also skeptical, on both cultural and economic
grounds, of the benefits of immigration,” seeing it as “endangering the
cohesion of the folk community and introducing new, low-wage competition for
jobs.”
Your Cell Phone Might Be Making You More Anxious. By Alexandra Sifferlin.
Do You Use Your Cell Phone a Lot? It Might Be Making You More Anxious. By Alexandra Sifferlin. Time, December 6, 2013.
The relationship between cell phone use, academic performance, anxiety, and Satisfaction with Life in college students. By Andrew Lepp, Jacob E. Barkley, Aryn C. Karpinski. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 31 (February 2014).
The relationship between cell phone use, academic performance, anxiety, and Satisfaction with Life in college students. By Andrew Lepp, Jacob E. Barkley, Aryn C. Karpinski. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 31 (February 2014).
Liberals Want to Stop Men From Checking Out Women. By Patrick Howley.
Liberals want to stop men from checking out women. By Patrick Howley. The Daily Caller, December 8, 2013.
Howley:
In the progressive future, men will not be able to look at women’s bodies because that is a terrible thing to do — and science says so.
“Although objectification theory suggests that women frequently experience the objectifying gaze with many adverse consequences, there is scant research examining the nature and causes of the objectifying gaze for perceivers. The main purpose of this work was to examine the objectifying gaze toward women via eye tracking technology,” according to the abstract of “My Eyes Are Up Here: The Nature of the Objectifying Gaze Toward Women” by Sarah J. Gervais, Arianne M. Holland, and Michael D. Dodd.
Libs Want Men to Stop Looking at Women. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, December 9, 2013.
My Eyes Are Up Here: The Nature of the Objectifying Gaze Toward Women. By Sarah J. Gervais, Arianne M. Holland, and Michael D. Dodd. Sex Roles, Vol. 69, No. 11/12 (December 2013).
Abstract:
Although objectification theory suggests that women frequently experience the objectifying gaze with many adverse consequences, there is scant research examining the nature and causes of the objectifying gaze for perceivers. The main purpose of this work was to examine the objectifying gaze toward women via eye tracking technology. A secondary purpose was to examine the impact of body shape on this objectifying gaze. To elicit the gaze, we asked participants (29 women, 36 men from a large Midwestern University in the U.S.), to focus on the appearance (vs. personality) of women and presented women with body shapes that fit cultural ideals of feminine attractiveness to varying degrees, including high ideal (i.e., hourglass-shaped women with large breasts and small waist-to-hip ratios), average ideal (with average breasts and average waist-to-hip ratios), and low ideal (i.e., with small breasts and large waist-to-hip ratios). Consistent with our main hypothesis, we found that participants focused on women’s chests and waists more and faces less when they were appearance-focused (vs. personality-focused). Moreover, we found that this effect was particularly pronounced for women with high (vs. average and low) ideal body shapes in line with hypotheses. Finally, compared to female participants, male participants showed an increased tendency to initially exhibit the objectifying gaze and they regarded women with high (vs. average and low) ideal body shapes more positively, regardless of whether they were appearance-focused or personality-focused. Implications for objectification and person perception theories are discussed.
The Pope’s Self-Defeating Anti-Capitalist Rant. By Shikha Dalmia.
The Pope’s Self-Defeating Anti-Capitalist Rant. By Shikha Dalmia. Reason, December 3, 2013.
What the Pope Gets Wrong About Capitalism. By David Harsanyi. Reason, December 6, 2013.
The Pope Should Know Capitalism Fights Poverty. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, December 9, 2013.
Papal Bull: Why Pope Francis Should Be Grateful For Capitalism. By Louis Woodhill. Forbes, December 4, 2013.
The Heretical Pope Francis vs. Rush Limbaugh. By Christian Caryl. Foreign Policy, December 7, 2013. Also here.
The Pope and the Right. By Ross Douthat, New York Times, November 30, 2013.
Pope Francis and the argument for compassionate capitalism. By Michael Gerson. Real Clear Politics, December 10, 2013. Also at the Washington Post.
Pope Francis “Evangelii Gaudium” Calls for Renewal of Roman Catholic Church, Attacks “Idolatry of Money.” By Naomi O’Leary. Reuters. The Huffington Post, November 26, 2013. Also here.
Evangelii Gaudium. By Pope Francis. Vatican.va, November 2013. PDF. No to an Economy of Exclusion (Paragraphs 52-60.)
What the Pope Gets Wrong About Capitalism. By David Harsanyi. Reason, December 6, 2013.
The Pope Should Know Capitalism Fights Poverty. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, December 9, 2013.
Papal Bull: Why Pope Francis Should Be Grateful For Capitalism. By Louis Woodhill. Forbes, December 4, 2013.
The Heretical Pope Francis vs. Rush Limbaugh. By Christian Caryl. Foreign Policy, December 7, 2013. Also here.
The Pope and the Right. By Ross Douthat, New York Times, November 30, 2013.
Pope Francis and the argument for compassionate capitalism. By Michael Gerson. Real Clear Politics, December 10, 2013. Also at the Washington Post.
Pope Francis “Evangelii Gaudium” Calls for Renewal of Roman Catholic Church, Attacks “Idolatry of Money.” By Naomi O’Leary. Reuters. The Huffington Post, November 26, 2013. Also here.
Evangelii Gaudium. By Pope Francis. Vatican.va, November 2013. PDF. No to an Economy of Exclusion (Paragraphs 52-60.)
In Defense of the Crass Consumerism of Walmart—and Everyone Else. By Liel Leibovitz.
In Defense of the Crass Consumerism of Walmart—and Everyone Else. By Liel Leibovitz. Tablet, December 6, 2013.
Enough already with blasting shopping as soulless: Jewish tradition is nothing if not a defense of commerce.
Enough already with blasting shopping as soulless: Jewish tradition is nothing if not a defense of commerce.
How Adam Lanza Wrecked Obama’s Second Term. By Alex Seitz-Wald.
How Adam Lanza Wrecked Obama’s Second Term. By Alex Seitz-Wald. National Journal, December 9, 2013.
U.S. Strategy in the Middle East (Unclassified). By Martin Kramer.
U.S. strategy in the Middle East (unclassified). By Martin Kramer. Sandbox, December 9, 2013.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Israel Poses a Serious Dilemma for Europe’s Jews. By Diana Pinto.
Israel poses a serious dilemma for Europe’s Jews. By Diana Pinto. Haaretz, February 14, 2013. Also here.
Obama in Israel’s New World. By Diana Pinto. Project Syndicate, March 14, 2013.
Towards an European Jewish Identity. By Diana Pinto. Golem.
Obama in Israel’s New World. By Diana Pinto. Project Syndicate, March 14, 2013.
Towards an European Jewish Identity. By Diana Pinto. Golem.
The Man Behind the Mandela Myth. By John Campbell.
Think Again: Nelson Mandela. By John Campbell. Foreign Policy, December 6, 2013. Also here.
The man behind the myth – and the tenuous future of South Africa.
The Character of Nelson Mandela. By Max Boot. Commentary, December 5, 2013.
Don’t Distort the Meaning of Mandela. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, December 5, 2013.
Nelson Mandela: A Jewish Perspective. By Michael Lerner. Tikkun, December 6, 2013.
The man behind the myth – and the tenuous future of South Africa.
The Character of Nelson Mandela. By Max Boot. Commentary, December 5, 2013.
Don’t Distort the Meaning of Mandela. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, December 5, 2013.
Nelson Mandela: A Jewish Perspective. By Michael Lerner. Tikkun, December 6, 2013.
Our Promised Land. By James Traub.
Our Promised Land. By James Traub. Foreign Policy, December 6, 2013. Also here.
Secretary of Nothing: John Kerry and the Myth of Foreign Policy. By Andrew Cockburn. Harper’s Magazine, December 2013.
Surprise – The Very Dark Side of U.S.History. By Robert Parry and Peter Dale Scott. AlterNet, October 8, 2010.
Traub:
How the beautiful, painful, and problematic birth of Israel mirrors modern America’s moral ambiguity.
What
would it mean for an American to apply this tragic understanding to his own
circumstances? In regard to the national founding, the analogy to Israel is
glaringly obvious. If the American pioneers had accepted that the indigenous
people they found on the continent were not simply features of the landscape
but people like themselves, and thus had agreed to occupy only those spaces not
already claimed by the Indians, then today’s America would be confined to a
narrow band along the Eastern seaboard. No Indian wars, no America. And yet,
like slavery, the wars and the forced resettlement constitute a terrible
reproach to the founders’ belief that America was a uniquely just and noble
experiment.
But
when I say that I am reading Shavit for moral guidance, I’m thinking of the
American present, not just the past. The tragic sense is largely alien to
Americans, and to American policymakers. Americans have an almost unique faith
in the malleability of the world, and of the intrinsic appeal of their own
principles (a faith which Shavit writes that Israel’s settlers shared until the
Palestinians first rose up against them in 1936). In Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger argued that all American presidents from
the time of Woodrow Wilson (possibly excepting his own pupil, Richard Nixon)
have been idealists, because the American people refuse to elect someone who
speaks the tragic language of 19th century European statecraft.
But
Shavit is not asserting, as classic realists do, that no one set of animating
principles is better than another, and thus one should be agnostic among them.
Nor is he simply warning, as realists do, that great projects inevitably
miscarry. Shavit argues that we must act, and do so in the name of a moral
vision; but that our action must be governed by a recognition of the harm we
cause to others, and perhaps also to ourselves. The bad outcome does not prove
bad motives, but neither do the good motives excuse the bad outcome.
Secretary of Nothing: John Kerry and the Myth of Foreign Policy. By Andrew Cockburn. Harper’s Magazine, December 2013.
Surprise – The Very Dark Side of U.S.History. By Robert Parry and Peter Dale Scott. AlterNet, October 8, 2010.
Traub:
How the beautiful, painful, and problematic birth of Israel mirrors modern America’s moral ambiguity.
I have
been reading My Promised Land, Ari
Shavit’s extraordinary account of the founding and growth of Israel. It is a
book one reads not simply for historical instruction but for moral guidance.
Shavit is an ardent Zionist who is nevertheless imbued with a sense of Israel’s
tragic condition. “Tragedy,” as Shavit uses it, does not refer to the suffering
of the Jewish people but rather to the suffering – the unavoidable suffering –
of the Palestinian people as a result of the Zionist project. In his narrative
of the brutal conquest of the Arab city of Lydda by Israeli forces in May 1948,
Shavit returns again and again to the idealistic, even utopian young men who
killed Arab civilians and forced the entire population into a death march in
the desert. Their anguish, shame, confusion is Shavit's own; and so is their
acknowledgment that it could not have been otherwise. Both conquest and
expulsion “were an inevitable phase of the Zionist revolution that laid the
foundation for the Zionist state.” No Lydda, no Israel.
There Is a Clash of Civilizations. By Alain Finkielkraut.
There Is a Clash of Civilizations. Interview with Alain Finkielkraut by Mathieu von Rohr and Romain Leick. Spiegel Online, December 6, 2013.
Finkielkraut:
Alain Finkielkraut is one of France's most controversial essayists. His new book, “L’Identité Malheureuse” (“The Unhappy Identity,” Éditions Stock ), has been the subject of heated debate. It comes at a time when France finds itself in the midst of an identity crisis. But rather than framing things from a social or political perspective, Finkielkraut explores what he sees as a hostile confrontation between indigenous French people and immigrants. He was interviewed in his Parisian apartment on the Left Bank.
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Finkielkraut, are you unhappy with today’s France?
Finkielkraut:
I am pained to see that the French mode of European civilization is threatened.
France is in the process of transforming into a post-national and multicultural
society. It seems to me that this enormous transformation does not bring
anything good.
SPIEGEL:
Why is that? Post-national and multicultural sounds rather promising.
Finkielkraut:
It is presented to us as the model for the future. But multiculturalism does
not mean that cultures blend. Mistrust prevails, communitarianism is rampant –
parallel societies are forming that continuously distance themselves from each
other.
SPIEGEL:
Aren’t you giving in here to the right-wingers’ fears of demise?
Finkielkraut:
The lower middle classes – the French that one no longer dares to call Français de souche (ethnic French) – are
already moving out of the Parisian suburbs and farther into the countryside.
They have experienced that in some neighborhoods they are the minority in their
own country. They are not afraid of the others, but rather of becoming the
others themselves.
SPIEGEL:
But France has always been a country of immigrants.
Finkielkraut:
We are constantly told that immigration is a constitutive element of the French
identity. But that’s not true. Labor migration began in the 19th century. It
was not until after the bloodletting of World War I that the borders were
largely opened.
SPIEGEL:
Immigration has had more of a formative influence on France than on Germany.
Finkielkraut:
Immigration used to go hand-in-hand with integration into French culture. That
was the rule of the game. Many of the new arrivals no longer want to play by
that rule. If the immigrants are in the majority in their neighborhoods, how
can we integrate them? There used to be mixed marriages, which is crucial to
miscegenation. But their numbers are declining. Many Muslims in Europe are
re-Islamizing themselves. A woman who wears the veil effectively announces that
a relationship with a non-Muslim is out of the question for her.
SPIEGEL:
Aren’t many immigrants excluded from mainstream society primarily for economic
reasons?
Finkielkraut:
The left wanted to resolve the problem of immigration as a social issue, and
proclaimed that the riots in the suburbs were a kind of class struggle. We were
told that these youths were protesting against unemployment, inequality and the
impossibility of social advancement. In reality we saw an eruption of hostility
toward French society. Social inequality does not explain the anti-Semitism,
nor the misogyny in the suburbs, nor the insult “filthy French.” The left does
not want to accept that there is a clash of civilizations.
SPIEGEL:
The anger of these young people is also stirred up by high unemployment. They
are turning their backs on society because they feel excluded.
Finkielkraut:
If unemployment is so high, then immigration has to be more effectively
controlled. Apparently there is not enough work for everyone. But just ask the
teachers in these troubled neighborhoods – they have major difficulties
teaching anything at all. Compared to the rappers and the dealers, the teachers
earn so ridiculously little that they are viewed with contempt. Why should the
students make an effort to follow in their footsteps? There are a large number
of young people who don’t want to learn anything about French culture. This
refusal makes it harder for them to find work.
SPIEGEL:
These neighborhoods that you speak of, have you even seen them firsthand?
Finkielkraut:
I watch the news; I read books and studies. I have never relied on my
intuition.
SPIEGEL:
In the US the coexistence of communities works better. The Americans don’t have
this European adherence to a national uniform culture.
Finkielkraut:
The US sees itself as a country of immigration, and what is impressive about
this truly multicultural society is the strength of its patriotism. This was
particularly evident after the attacks of September 11, 2001. In France,
however, the opposite could be seen after the attacks on French soldiers and
Jewish children in Toulouse and Montauban last year: Some schoolchildren saw
Mohamed Merah, the assailant, as a hero. Something like that would be
unthinkable in the US. American society is a homeland for everyone. I don't
think that many children of immigrants here see it that way.
SPIEGEL:
America makes it easy for new arrivals to feel like Americans. Does France
place the hurdles too high?
Finkielkraut:
France prohibits students from wearing headscarves at school. This is also for
the benefit of all Muslims who don’t want a religious cage for themselves, for
their daughters and wives. France is a civilization, and the question is what
it means to participate in it. Does this mean the natives have to make
themselves extremely small so the others can easily spread themselves out? Or
does it mean passing on the culture that one possesses?
SPIEGEL:
But this has worked for a long time. The Italians, Spaniards, Poles and
European Jews had no difficulties becoming French patriots. Why is this no
longer working?
Finkielkraut:
Why is there today such aggression toward the West in the Islamic world? Some
say that France was a colonial power, which is why those who were colonized
could not be happy. But why has Europe been subjected to this massive
immigration from former colonies over the past half a century? France still has
to pay for the sins of colonialism and settle its debt to those who vilify it
today.
SPIEGEL:
You yourself are the child of immigrants, the progeny of a persecuted family.
Does your personal will to integrate explain your radical commitment to the
values of the Republic?
Finkielkraut:
I defend these values because I probably owe more to my schooling than do the Français de souche, the hereditary
French. French traditions and history were not laid in my cradle. Anyone who
does not bring along this heritage can acquire it in l’école républicaine, the French school system. It has expanded my
horizons and allowed me to immerse myself in French civilization.
SPIEGEL:
And made you into its apologist?
Finkielkraut:
I can speak and write more openly than others precisely because I am not a
hereditary Frenchman. The natives easily allow themselves to be unnerved by the
prevailing discourse. I don't have such complexes.
SPIEGEL:
How do you define this French civilization that you speak of?
Finkielkraut:
I recently reread a book by the admirable Russian writer Isaac Babel. The story
takes place in Paris. The narrator is in a hotel and at night he hears the
lovemaking sounds of the couples next door. Babel writes: This has nothing to
do with what one hears in Russia – it’s much more fiery. Then his French friend
responds: We French created women, literature and cuisine. No one can take that
from us.
SPIEGEL:
Those are idealized clichés that nations create for themselves.
Finkielkraut:
But it is true, or at least it was in the past. France can’t allow itself to
bask in its own glory. But it has evidence of its civilization, just like
Germany – it has its sights, its squares, its cafés, its wealth of literature
and its artists. We can be proud of these ancestors, and we have to prove that
we are worthy of them. I regret that Germany – for reasons that are
understandable – has broken with this pride in its past. But I believe that
German politicians who speak of Leitkultur
– the guiding national culture – are right. The Leitkultur does not create an insurmountable barrier to newcomers.
Finkielkraut:
Alain Finkielkraut is one of France's most controversial essayists. His new book, “L’Identité Malheureuse” (“The Unhappy Identity,” Éditions Stock ), has been the subject of heated debate. It comes at a time when France finds itself in the midst of an identity crisis. But rather than framing things from a social or political perspective, Finkielkraut explores what he sees as a hostile confrontation between indigenous French people and immigrants. He was interviewed in his Parisian apartment on the Left Bank.
A Real Arab Spring. By Norman Lebrecht.
A Real Arab Spring. By Norman Lebrecht. Standpoint, December 2013.
Lebrecht:
Coming out of a movie last month in one of those edge-of-town malls that disfigure Israeli conurbations, I ran into a conga line of men, women and children shuffling their way into a McDonald’s. The men wore T-shirts and jeans, the women flowery headscarves and varied outfits. Several danced along in silly conical hats. It was someone's birthday, by the look of it.
It took
a second look to realise that the celebrants were a family of Israeli Arabs,
descendants of the stubborn minority — some 150,000 Christians and Muslims —
who refused to join the 750,000-strong Palestinian exodus in 1948. Today, by
census, there are 1.6 million Israeli Arabs, some 20 per cent of the population.
They enjoy full civic rights and a high level of prosperity. Beside the
refugees, their lifestyle appears lavish.
As I
drove through the Arab heartlands in Galilee, a hilly straggle of houses that I
remember being blacked out at night for want of connection to the national grid
has boomed into a noisy town with three-storey houses and an exclusive
dealership in a European make of car much favoured by ultra-orthodox Jews.
Bars
and restaurants on the Tel Aviv seafront are dotted with Arabs from Jaffa. On
Friday night, the common day of rest, there are as many Israeli Arabs strolling
along the promenade as there are Israeli Jews. When I remark on the phenomenon,
young Israelis shrug as if my observation is too obvious to be worth
mentioning. Integration has become a fact of life. Yet 25 years ago, Israeli
Arabs were inconspicuous in Jewish towns and 45 years ago, as far as my memory
extends, they were invisible.
In the
first two decades of the state of Israel, until the Six Day War, Arab citizens
were penned into pales of settlement, nervously watched by the security
services. In the next two decades, they formed a no-man's-land between the
Israeli state and the occupied Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
their resentful cousins. Torn between kinship and comfort, Israeli Arabs opted
on the whole to put head over heart.
Over
the past 25 years, normalisation has set in. Learning Hebrew at school as an
obligatory second language, Israeli Arabs have made careers in most parts of
the economy and in academic life. One of the most popular comedy series on
commercial Israeli television is entitled Arab
Labour. It makes merry with the tensions raised by a middle-class Arab family
who move into an urban Israeli apartment block. In the episodes I have seen,
Israeli Jews come off worst in the clash of cultures. One of the Arab actors,
Mira Awad, has represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest. What could be
more normal?
That is
not to pretend that all is rosy. Israeli Arabs are subject to stringent airport
and roadside security checks. Some complain of being treated as second-class
citizens. A Jaffa driver told me his town had become overpriced and young men
could not afford to buy a home. Economic progress and social participation,
however, are positive indicators of how the country and the region might
function if and when a peace agreement is reached. The Israeli Arabs serve, in
this respect, as role models for a postwar utopia.
They
also refute hostile clichés. The novelist Linda Grant drew attention in the Independent in March to a book by a
French academic, Diana Pinto, arguing that Israel is functionally
autistic-high-tech and tunnel-visioned, unable to see “the Other.” The vastly
increased visibility of Israeli Arabs gives the lie to that theory.
It also
confounds the perpetual accusation that Israel is somehow an “apartheid state.”
If Israel were indeed a society founded on racial supremacy and separation,
there would be no Arabs celebrating birthdays in shopping malls, no strollers
on the Tel Aviv prom, no automobile millionaires in Galilee and no property
boom in Jaffa. The apartheid libel, a propaganda ploy of the pro-Palestine
lobby and the anti-Zionist Left, denies the blatant reality that Israel is a
fast-evolving, multicultural society with more tolerance for minorities than
any of its neighbours (and most European states). The casual confidence of its
Arab citizens is testimony to a healthy society.
Lebrecht:
Coming out of a movie last month in one of those edge-of-town malls that disfigure Israeli conurbations, I ran into a conga line of men, women and children shuffling their way into a McDonald’s. The men wore T-shirts and jeans, the women flowery headscarves and varied outfits. Several danced along in silly conical hats. It was someone's birthday, by the look of it.
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