Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism. By Josef Joffe.

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism. By Josef Joffe. Pew Research, May 5, 2006.

The Axis of Envy. By Josef Joffe. Foreign Policy, No. 132 (September/October 2002).

A World Without Israel. By Josef Joffe. Foreign Policy, No. 146 (January/February 2005).

Debating a World Without Israel. Roundtable. Foreign Policy, No. 147 (March/April 2005).

European Anti-Americanism (and Anti-Semitism): Ever Present Though Always Denied. By Andrei Markovits. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, August 2005.

Academics Against Israel and the Jews. Edited by Manfred Gerstenfeld. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2007. Also here.

The Anti-American Century? By Ivan Krastev. Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 2004).

The Myth of Israel as a Colonialist Entity: An Instrument of Political Warfare to Delegitimize the Jewish State. By Dore Gold. Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 23, No. 3/4 (Fall 2011).

Among the Bourgeoisophobes. By David Brooks.

Among the Bourgeoisophobes. By David Brooks. The Weekly Standard, April 15, 2002.

Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel.

Hollow Men. By Lee Smith. Tablet, July 14, 2010.

Why Israel’s enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals.

The Counterrevolution in Military Affairs. By Ralph Peters. The Weekly Standard, February 6, 2006.

Faith Versus Tradition in Islam. By Mustafa Akyol.

Faith versus tradition in Islam. By Mustafa Akyol. Video. TED, March 2011. YouTube. YouTube.

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. Introduction chapter. By Mustafa Akyol. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.

The White Path: Mustafa Akyol’s website.

Mustafa Akyol. Google Videos.




Akyol (TED Transcript):

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to go to Saudi Arabia. And the first thing I wanted to do as a Muslim was go to Mecca and visit the Kaaba, the holiest shrine of Islam. And I did that; I put on my ritualistic dress; I went to the holy mosque; I did my prayers; I observed all the rituals. And meanwhile, besides all the spirituality, there was one mundane detail in the Kaaba that was pretty interesting for me. There was no separation of sexes. In other words, men and women were worshiping all together. They were together while doing the tawaf, the circular walk around the Kaaba. They were together while praying.

 

And if you wonder why this is interesting at all, you have to see the rest of Saudi Arabia because it's a country which is strictly divided between the sexes. In other words, as men, you are not simply supposed to be in the same physical space with women. And I noticed this in a very funny way. I left the Kaaba to eat something in downtown Mecca. I headed to the nearest Burger King restaurant. And I went there – I noticed that there was a male section, which was carefully separated from the female section. And I had to pay, order and eat at the male section. “It’s funny,” I said to myself, “You can mingle with the opposite sex at the holy Kaaba, but not at the Burger King.”

 

Quite ironic. Ironic, and it’s also, I think, quite telling. Because the Kaaba and the rituals around it are relics from the earliest phase of Islam, that of prophet Muhammad. And if there was a big emphasis at the time to separate men from women, the rituals around the Kaaba could have been designed accordingly. But apparently that was not an issue at the time. So the rituals came that way. This is also, I think, confirmed by the fact that the seclusion of women in creating a divided society is something that you also do not find in the Koran, the very core of Islam – the divine core of Islam that all Muslims, and equally myself, believe. And I think it’s not an accident that you don't find this idea in the very origin of Islam. Because many scholars who study the history of Islamic thought – Muslim scholars or Westerners – think that actually the practice of dividing men and women physically came as a later development in Islam, as Muslims adopted some preexisting cultures and traditions of the Middle East. Seclusion of women was actually a Byzantine and Persian practice, and Muslims adopted that and made that a part of their religion.

 

And actually this is just one example of a much larger phenomenon. What we call today Islamic Law, and especially Islamic culture – and there are many Islamic cultures actually; the one in Saudi Arabia is much different from where I come from in Istanbul or Turkey. But still, if you’re going to speak about a Muslim culture, this has a core, the divine message, which began the religion, but then many traditions, perceptions, many practices were added on top of it. And these were traditions of the Middle East – medieval traditions.

 

And there are two important messages, or two lessons, to take from that reality. First of all, Muslims – pious, conservative, believing Muslims who want to be loyal to their religion – should not cling onto everything in their culture, thinking that that's divinely mandated. Maybe some things are bad traditions and they need to be changed. On the other hand, the Westerners who look at Islamic culture and see some troubling aspects should not readily conclude that this is what Islam ordains. Maybe it’s a Middle Eastern culture that became confused with Islam.

 

There is a practice called female circumcision. It’s something terrible, horrible. It is basically an operation to deprive women of sexual pleasure. And Westerners, Europeans or Americans, who didn’t know about this before faced this practice within some of the Muslim communities who migrated from North Africa. And they’ve thought, “Oh, what a horrible religion that is which ordains something like that.’ But actually when you look at female circumcision, you see that it has nothing to do with Islam, it’s just a North African practice, which predates Islam. It was there for thousands of years. And quite tellingly, some Muslims do practice that. The Muslims in North Africa, not in other places. But also the non-Muslim communities of North Africa – the Animists, even some Christians and even a Jewish tribe in North Africa is known to practice female circumcision. So what might look like a problem within Islamic faith might turn out to be a tradition that Muslims have subscribed to.

 

The same thing can be said for honor killings, which is a recurrent theme in the Western media – and which is, of course, a horrible tradition. And we see truly in some Muslim communities that tradition. But in the non-Muslim communities of the Middle East, such as some Christian communities, Eastern communities, you see the same practice. We had a tragic case of an honor killing within Turkey’s Armenian community just a few months ago.

 

Now these are things about general culture, but I’m also very much interested in political culture and whether liberty and democracy is appreciated, or whether there’s an authoritarian political culture in which the state is supposed to impose things on the citizens. And it is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so-called “Islamic regimes” such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan – they are pretty authoritarian. No doubt about that.

 

For example, in Saudi Arabia there is a phenomenon called the religious police. And the religious police imposes the supposed Islamic way of life on every citizen, by force – like women are forced to cover their heads – wear the hijab, the Islamic head cover. Now that is pretty authoritarian, and that’s something I’m very much critical of. But when I realized that the non-Muslim, or the non-Islamic-minded actors in the same geography, sometimes behaved similarly, I realized that the problem maybe lies in the political culture of the whole region, not just Islam. Let me give you an example: in Turkey where I come from, which is a very hyper-secular republic, until very recently we used to have what I call secularism police, which would guard the universities against veiled students. In other words, they would force students to uncover their heads, and I think forcing people to uncover their head is as tyrannical as forcing them to cover it. It should be the citizen’s decision.

 

But when I saw that, I said, “Maybe the problem is just an authoritarian culture in the region, and some Muslims have been influenced by that. But the secular-minded people can be influenced by that. Maybe it’s a problem of the political culture, and we have to think about how to change that political culture.” Now these are some of the questions I had in mind a few years ago when I sat down to write a book. I said, “Well I will make a research about how Islam actually came to be what it is today, and what roads were taken and what roads could have been taken.” The name of the book is Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. And as the subtitle suggests, I looked at Islamic tradition and the history of Islamic thought from the perspective of individual liberty, and I tried to find what are the strengths with regard to individual liberty.

 

And there are strengths in Islamic tradition. Islam actually, as a monotheistic religion, which defined man as a responsible agent by itself, created the idea of the individual in the Middle East and saved it from the communitarianism, the collectivism of the tribe. You can derive many ideas from that. But besides that, I also saw problems within Islamic tradition. But one thing was curious: most of those problems turn out to be problems that emerged later, not from the very divine core of Islam, the Koran, but from, again, traditions and mentalities, or the interpretations of the Koran that Muslims made in the Middle Ages. The Koran, for example, doesn’t condone stoning. There is no punishment on apostasy. There is no punishment on personal things like drinking. These things which make Islamic Law, the troubling aspects of Islamic Law, were later developed into later interpretations of Islam. Which means that Muslims can, today, look at those things and say, “Well, the core of our religion is here to stay with us. It's our faith, and we will be loyal to it. But we can change how it was interpreted, because it was interpreted according to the time and milieu in the Middle Ages. Now we are living in a different world with different values and different political systems.” That interpretation is quite possible and feasible.

 

Now if I were the only person thinking that way, we would be in trouble. But that’s not the case at all. Actually, from the 19th century on, there’s a whole revisionist, reformist – whatever you call it – tradition, a trend in Islamic thinking. And these were intellectuals or statesmen of the 19th century, and later, 20th century, which looked at Europe basically and saw that Europe has many things to admire, like science and technology. But not just that; also democracy, parliament, the idea of representation, the idea of equal citizenship. These Muslim thinkers and intellectuals and statesmen of the 19th century looked at Europe, saw these things. They said, “Why don’t we have these things?” And they looked back at Islamic tradition, they saw that there are problematic aspects, but they're not the core of the religion, so maybe they can be re-understood, and the Koran can be reread in the modern world.

 

That trend is generally called Islamic modernism, and it was advanced by intellectuals and statesmen, not just as an intellectual idea though, but also as a political program. And that’s why actually in the 19th century the Ottoman Empire, which then covered the whole Middle East, made very important reforms – reforms like giving Christians and Jews an equal citizenship status, accepting a constitution, accepting a representative parliament, advancing the idea of freedom of religion. And that’s why the Ottoman Empire in its last decades turned into a proto-democracy, a constitutional monarchy, and freedom was a very important political value at the time.

 

Similarly, in the Arab world, there was what the great Arab historian Albert Hourani defines as the Liberal Age. He has a book, “Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age,” and the Liberal Age, he defines as 19th century and early 20th century. Quite notably, this was the dominant trend in the early 20th century among Islamic thinkers and statesmen and theologians. But there is a very curious pattern in the rest of the 20th century, because we see a sharp decline in this Islamic modernist line. And in place of that, what happens is that Islamism grows as an ideology which is authoritarian, which is quite strident, which is quite anti-Western, and which wants to shape society based on a utopian vision.

 

So Islamism is the problematic idea that really created a lot of problems in the 20th century Islamic world. And even the very extreme forms of Islamism led to terrorism in the name of Islam – which is actually a practice that I think is against Islam, but some, obviously, extremists did not think that way. But there is a curious question: If Islamic modernism was so popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, why did Islamism become so popular in the rest of the 20th century? And this is a question, I think, which needs to be discussed carefully. And in my book, I went into that question as well. And actually you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that. You just look at the political history of the 20th century, and you see things have changed a lot. The context has changed.

 

In the 19th century, when Muslims were looking at Europe as an example, they were independent; they were more self-confident. In the early 20th century, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the whole Middle East was colonized. And when you have colonization what do you have? You have anti-colonization. So Europe is not just an example now to emulate; it’s an enemy to fight and to resist. So there’s a very sharp decline in liberal ideas in the Muslim world, and what you see is more of a defensive, rigid, reactionary strain, which led to Arab socialism, Arab nationalism and ultimately to the Islamist ideology. And when the colonial period ended, what you had in place of that was, generally, secular dictators, which say they’re a country, but did not bring democracy to the country, and established their own dictatorship. And I think the West, at least some powers in the West, particularly the United States, made the mistake of supporting those secular dictators, thinking that they were more helpful for their interests. But the fact that those dictators suppressed democracy in their country and suppressed Islamic groups in their country actually made the Islamists much more strident.

 

So in the 20th century, you had this vicious cycle in the Arab world where you have a dictatorship suppressing its own people including the Islamic-pious, and they’re reacting in reactionary ways. There was one country, though, which was able to escape or stay away from that vicious cycle. And that’s the country where I come from; that’s Turkey. Turkey has never been colonized, so it remained as an independent nation after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. That’s one thing to remember. They did not share the same anti-colonial hype that you can find in some other countries in the region. Secondly, and most importantly, Turkey became a democracy earlier than any of the countries we are talking about. In 1950, Turkey had the first free and fair elections, which ended the more autocratic secular regime, which was the beginning of Turkey. And the pious Muslims in Turkey saw that they can change the political system by voting. And they realize that democracy is something that is compatible with Islam, compatible with their values, and they’ve been supportive of democracy. That’s an experience that not every other Muslim nation in the Middle East had until very recently.

 

Secondly, in the past two decades, thanks to globalization, thanks to the market economy, thanks to the rise of a middle-class, we in Turkey see what I define as a rebirth of Islamic modernism. Now there’s the more urban middle-class pious Muslims who, again, look at their tradition and see that there are some problems in the tradition, and they understand that they need to be changed and questioned and reformed. And they look at Europe, and they see an example, again, to follow. They see an example, at least, to take some inspiration from. That’s why the E.U. process, Turkey’s effort to join the E.U., has been supported inside Turkey by the Islamic-pious, while some secular nations were against that. Well that process has been a little bit blurred by the fact that not all Europeans are that welcoming – but that’s another discussion. But the pro-E.U. sentiment in Turkey in the past decade has become almost an Islamic cause and supported by the Islamic liberals and the secular liberals as well, of course.

 

And thanks to that, Turkey has been able to reasonably create a success story in which Islam and the most pious understandings of Islam have become part of the democratic game, and even contributes to the democratic and economic advance of the country. And this has been an inspiring example right now for some of the Islamic movements or some of the countries in the Arab world.

 

You must have all seen the Arab Spring, which began in Tunis and in Egypt. And Arab masses just revolted against their dictators. They were asking for democracy; they were asking for freedom. And they did not turn out to be the Islamist boogyman that the dictators were always using to justify their regime. They said that “we want freedom; we want democracy. We are Muslim believers, but we want to be living as free people in free societies.” Of course, this is a long road. Democracy is not an overnight achievement; it’s a process. But this is a promising era in the Muslim world.

 

And I believe that the Islamic modernism which began in the 19th century, but which had a setback in the 20th century because of the political troubles of the Muslim world, is having a rebirth. And I think the getaway message from that would be that Islam, despite some of the skeptics in the West, has the potential in itself to create its own way to democracy, create its own way to liberalism, create its own way to freedom. They just should be allowed to work for that.

 

Thanks so much.


Mustafa Akyol on Islam without Extremes. Interviewed by Fareed Zakaria. GPS. CNN, December 15, 2013. Video at the Internet Archive. Akyol interview begins at clip 46:30.

Transcript:

ZAKARIA:  Modern Islamists full of contrasts, conflicts and contradictions. Some of the fateful seem stuck in the 15th century or even earlier while others are racing into the 21st. One of the sharpest takes on modern Islam that I’ve read in a long time is a new book by Turkey’s finest political analyst, Mustafa Akyol. It is called “Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty.” It’s a past GPS book of the week. Akyol joined me recently to discuss the futures of Islam.

 

Mustafa Akyol, pleasure to have you on.

 

MUSTAFA AKYOL, AUTHOR, “ISLAM WITHOUT EXTREMES”: It’s a pleasure to be on the show, Fareed, thank you.

 

ZAKARIA: Why do you think Islam has such a kind of brutal image? You know, even well-meaning people, even tolerant people basically believe that at the end of the day, there’s something in the religion that seems to breed fanaticism or intolerance or violence? And that if you look at, you know, an event around the world, a terrorist event, something like that, there is a tendency to assume that it must be those Muslims out there somewhere, Nigeria, Indonesia. Why do you think that is?

 

AKYOL: Well, that is because honestly, there are fanatic intolerant Muslims who, of, course have been making the news because they’re doing or saying horrible things, but my argument as a fellow Muslim is that, well, Christianity had such expressions in the past. There was a time Catholicism was not very liberal, the Middle Ages, the inquisition. But it has changed. But Islam can change as well.

 

ZAKARIA: Now, you grew up in Turkey, which is a secular country, you grew up as a believing Muslim, but liberal.  What was your experience of growing up with regard to this issue? Or did you watch extremism grow?

 

AKYOL: While I was growing up I saw signs of authoritarianism in the name of Islam, which disturbed me, but on the other hand I loved Islam as a faith. In my book, actually, I explain how I found the book in my grandfather’s library at the age of nine, which had beautiful quotes from the Koran, then a quote not from the Koran, but a medieval Islamic text, which said if your children do not start to pray at the age of ten, then beat them up. Well, at the age of nine, when I read that, I got a little worried. And I had a question in my mind. I said like, would it be a good thing if I prayed because I wanted to away the slap in my face? Would it be much better?

 

ZAKARIA: If the only reason you’re praying is to avoid getting . . .

 

AKYOL: Avoid. Yeah. And would it be much better if I prayed genuinely to worship God? And I think that’s the question that is very relevant for some Muslim societies today.

 

ZAKARIA: But you found that a lot of the things that youths, that people think of as part of Islam are actually not in the book.

 

AKYOL: Not in the Koran. I mean there’s no stoning in the Koran. The idea that you should execute someone for apostatizing from Islam doesn't exist in the Koran. The idea that women are not smart enough to advise men, that’s not in the Koran. A lot of troubling issues that we find in the Muslim world today are actually – do not come from the core of the religion, which is scripture. They come from historical interpretations, and they sometimes reflect just medieval, Middle Eastern culture rather than the religion itself, which makes it easier to make a case for reform of these.

 

ZAKARIA: If you look at the issue that most people think of as the central part of Islam, the women in black veils, head to toe, the line in the Koran as I understand it, simply says women should dress modestly, as should men.

 

AKYOL: Exactly.

 

ZAKARIA: From that has been interpreted . . .

 

AKYOL: Exactly. I mean when you look at the Koran, there is – yes, women should stress modestly and some medieval scholars describe this modesty in the tenth century that nothing should be visible other than their eyes. And when we freeze Islam in these medieval norms we are actually making – creating this big gap between the modern world and evolving modern world and some traditions. And I think that also harms Islam because it makes people to choose between their fate and a more open liberal attitude.

 

ZAKARIA: You noticed something very interesting when you went to Mecca, you know, where you did the hajj actually, what's called the Umrah, the offseason hajj.

 

AKYOL: Yeah.

 

ZAKARIA: And you noticed something about the difference between being in the heart of Mecca, following the rules that have been in place since the seventh century, and Saudi Arabia today.

 

AKYOL: Very interesting. Indeed, when I went to the Kaaba, I did my prayers and the rituals. What I noticed was that around the Kaaba, there is no segregation. Men and women are together. There is no physical barrier between a man and a woman in the very holy shrine of Islam.

 

ZAKARIA: And the Kaaba is the holiest shrine.

 

AKYOL: The holiest shrine in the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the birth place of Islam. But the interesting thing is, and you leave the Kaaba and you go to Burger King or Starbucks, which is next to the shrine, you have to be separated. Men and women go two different ways because the Saudi Kingdom physically separates men and women in every public space. Thinking that that’s the pious thing to do. But if there was – except in Kaaba.  So, if you want to talk to a lady in Saudi Arabia freely, that is the only way that you can – the only way you can do this, the only place you can do this, is the Kaaba.

 

ZAKARIA: What do you say to people who said fine, Christianity was intolerant 500 years ago. Right now what we’re dealing with is that Islam is going through a very intolerant phase and it is, therefore, the problem?

 

AKYOL: Well, I would agree with that, unfortunately. Not about all Islam. But we have Islamic groups, movements that are really intolerant and sometimes even violent. My argument – I’m not someone who says there’s no problem with the Muslim world.  I accept that there are big problems especially from a liberal point of view, but I think they can be changed and reformed as Catholicism has changed immensely over the centuries as other religions have changed.

 

ZAKARIA: And how do you do that reform? Is there something that the West can do, that America can do or is this essentially an internal debate within Islam?

 

AKYOL: This is essentially an internal debate within Islam. But in my book I argued that the West can help indirectly, first by supporting principles of democracy, and not supporting militant or autocratic regimes in the Middle East like it happened for a long time. Secondly, support the market economy because one thing that transformed minds is the economy. In Turkey, for example, one of the reasons that Turkey is a successful country, democracy, with some flaws, you know, that we are discussing these days, is that Turkey has a market economy, which raised the middle class, which made people more rational, more pragmatic about their attitude to world and also in religious matters as well. In the Arab world you have sometimes – you have oil money, which, really, is a curse as you also wonderfully explained in your book, so we need to have education and West can help in that regard. We need to have cultural exchanges. These are all very helpful, but violent confrontations do not help. Like occupying a country to liberate it, it does not really that help that much.

 

ZAKARIA: Mustafa, pleasure to have you on.

 

AKYOL: Pleasure to be on the show. Thank you, Fareed.


Mustafa Akyol: Islam Without Extremes. Video. warwicklibertarians, November 23, 2011. YouTube.




Mustafa Akyol: The Commercial Heritage and Contribution of Islam. Video. misesmedia, March 12, 2011. YouTube.




Does Islam Need Reformation? Debate at SOAS: Mustafa Akyol vs. Abdullah al Andalusi. Video. Muslim Debate Initiative, April 3, 2012. YouTube.

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? By Robert Nozick.

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? By Robert Nozick. Libertarianism.org. Originally published in Cato Policy Report, January/February 1998.

“Remember Who the Real Enemy Is.” By Peter Blair.

“Remember Who the Real Enemy Is.” By Peter Blair. The American Interest, December 13, 2013.

Kerry’s Peace Framework Versus Reality. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Kerry’s Peace Framework Versus Reality. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, December 12, 2013.

We Really Need to Talk About Palestinian Corruption. By Jonathan Schanzer.

President Mahmoud Abbas faces a permanent crisis of confidence. Photo: Ahmad Khateib/ Flash90.

We Really Need to Talk About Corruption. By Jonathan Schanzer. The Tower, December 2013.

Schanzer:

The U.S. has made Israeli-Palestinian peace into a top priority. But how can you build a legitimate, peaceful state out of a kleptocratic regime?


If peace were suddenly to break out in the Middle East, John Kerry would undoubtedly assure his place in the Secretary of State Hall of Fame. Defiantly challenging a chorus of naysayers at home and around the world, Kerry launched a new round of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy on July 29, 2013, and believes he can conclude a deal between the two sides by the end of April 2014.

 

He has his work cut out for him, however. Extremely difficult, almost impossible issues remain to be resolved, such as the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugee claims, and final borders.

 

But one obstacle is almost never discussed in public, yet has the potential to make even the most successful negotiation end in a spectacular failure. The present efforts to create a Palestinian state are built entirely atop a Palestinian political system that has long suffered from endemic corruption, abuse of power, nepotism, and waste. This problem has dogged the Palestinians at least since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, radically undermining the most basic elements required for successful governance—including the faith of individual Palestinians in their leaders. This hinders the ability to administer international assistance, encourage investment, or build effective institutions.

 

Put simply, the current Palestinian regime, led first by Yasser Arafat and now by President Mahmoud Abbas, is ossified, brittle, and distrusted by the Palestinian street. The failure to address this problem would most likely lead to the birth of a failed state that crushes Palestinian freedom and economic growth, threatens Israel, and fosters radicalism—making American diplomatic efforts today seem, in retrospect, tragically flawed despite the huge investment of resources and political credibility.

. . . .

 

It seems clear that, despite being rejected by both the ballot and the gun, Abbas has failed to learn his lesson. He has failed to reform the dysfunctional Palestinian Authority, and does not show any signs of attempting to do so in the near future.  And the West, addicted to top-down peacemaking, shows little interest in genuinely helping the Palestinian people attain a government dedicated to coexistence with Israel, nor one built on the open, fair and transparent civil society and legal system required to build a successful state.

 

Abbas, it should be noted, is not going anywhere. Four years past the end of his presidential term, with no elections in sight, despite regular tantrums in which he declares his departure is imminent, Abbas appears determined to continue in office until he is no longer physically able to govern. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Abbas has no heir apparent and, according to Palestinian law, his designated successor is a Hamas member who became speaker of the Palestinian parliament following the 2006 elections.

 

Washington appears distinctly unconcerned by all this. Indeed, Kerry’s new peace initiative is marked by a strong willingness to throw money at the PA without a plan to bolster its ability to govern or end decades of financial mismanagement. In fact, the cash is already on the proverbial table: In May 2013, Kerry announced that the PA will be rewarded for reaching a peace agreement with $4 billion in aid. More recently, the White House’s Middle East Coordinator Phil Gordon stated that “stabilizing the Palestinian Authority’s finances” was an urgent goal for the administration, while also noting that the U.S. has already contributed $348 million to the PA this year.

 

Sadly, this means that the administration is now unlearning what past administrations took years to understand: Ignoring the issue of Palestinian governance is a mistake. Ambassador Dennis Ross, for example, who spearheaded the Clinton administration’s peace efforts, has said that “We should have been focused on the state-building enterprise. … We didn’t really focus on that until, in effect, after the collapse of Oslo.”

 

Aaron David Miller, who worked closely on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking for over two decades, has said that Washington often turned a blind eye to the PA’s abuses of power, so long as the Palestinians maintained a public commitment to peacemaking diplomacy. “State security courts and human rights abuses?” he said. “Terrible. But you’ve got to keep the peace process alive. Corruption? Terrible. But you’ve got to keep the peace process alive.” Miller has expressed regret that Washington’s approach was transactional rather than transformational.

 

Elliott Abrams, who served as an advisor to George W. Bush, has also acknowledged that the problem of PA mismanagement and poor governance was well known to the administration, but “on corruption, we never had a program. We did not have a five-point plan.”

 

Indeed, for a time, the only plan the U.S.—and the West in general—had was to bet on Salam Fayyad and his efforts to clean up the PA. But now that Fayyad has been pushed out, there appears to be no plan at all.

 

Theoretically, the United States could steer the Palestinians back to the Fayyad model, since it doesn’t really matter whether the effort is led by Fayyad himself, or by another competent leader with a commitment to reform and institution building. Unfortunately, this seems very unlikely to happen.

 

Today, American diplomats are falling all over themselves to placate the wrong Palestinian leaders. Washington’s goal is to reach a peace deal, pure and simple, even as the Palestinian government suffers from the same endemic corruption and abuse of power it always has. The failure to address these issues will inevitably give rise to the same wave of frustration that elected Hamas, an outcome that would threaten the very peace deal Washington hopes to foster.  Furthermore, the best possible way to encourage the civil society needed for a stable state, let alone a durable peace, may be better achieved from the bottom up, rather than simply hoping that corrupt leaders will make it happen from the top down against the interests of their profitable patronage networks and their own continued enrichment.

 

In other words, administration officials continue to ignore the Palestinian struggle for good governance, despite the lessons learned from the election of Hamas and the Arab Spring movements that have recently toppled multiple Arab regimes similar to the PA.

 

Seemingly desperate for a peace deal and disinclined to challenge the Fatah leadership, Washington now appears only too willing to enter into yet another transactional relationship at the expense of a transformational one, and at the expense of a sustainable two-state solution.

Jews Can’t Stop: A Right-Wing Israeli Parody of Miley Cyrus. By Orit Arfa.

Inshallah, the Jews won’t stop. By Ami Kaufman. +972, December 13, 2013.

Yes, “Jews Can’t Stop” Is a Miley Cyrus Cover by Israeli Settlers. By Yo Semite. Heeb, December 12, 2013.

Pro-settler video parodies Miley Cyrus. By Renee Ghert-Zand. The Times of Israel, December 14, 2013.

Ghert-Zand and Arfa:

Arfa contends that political leaders “torpedo normalized relations between Jews and Arabs in the West Bank,” and that left alone, the two national groups would figure out how to live and prosper together.

 

So, would this mean that Arfa would be willing to live in a West Bank that was under Palestinian authority or even a Palestinian state?

 

“The governing body concerns me less than the mode of governance and if it would respect individual rights,” she says. “If by some miracle a Palestinian government emerges that would treat the Jewish minority the way that Israel overall humanely and equally treats Arab citizens, I would be fine living under it.”

 

But in the next breath, she clarifies that she doesn’t think that is going to happen any time soon, if ever. In the meantime, she believes Israel must retain control of the West Bank.

 

“As it now stands, Israel is the country that is more suited to ensure, inspire or install humane civil law throughout . . . The corrupt and oppressive Palestinian Authority . . . is not suited in its current state, as most totalitarian Arab governments in this region, to ensure stability, peace, advancement and freedom for its own people, let alone Jews.”

 

Arfa believes the time has come for Israeli Jews, particularly settlers, to speak their mind. “Jews are especially concerned with how they are perceived and being politically correct,” she says. “I think what many people need to get over is the fear of what other people think.”

 

One look at Arfa’s video and it’s obvious she has gotten over it.


Can Miley Cyrus Save Israel? by Orit Arfa. The Times of Israel, December 11, 2013.

Orit Arfa website.

Miley Cyrus: Wrecking Ball. NJBR, November 26, 2013. With link to “We Can’t Stop” video.

Orit Arfa: Jews Can’t Stop. Video. Orit Jean Arfa, December 9, 2013. YouTube.
 



“Jews Can’t Stop” Is the Worst Miley Cyrus Parody Video Yet. By Caroline Bankoff. New York Magazine, December 13, 2013.

We’ve Reached Peak Miley: Strange Parody Music Video Declares “Jews Can’t Stop.” By Josh Feldman. Mediaite, December 13, 2013.

Israeli Releases Miley Cyrus Parody “Jews Can’t Stop.” By Ashley Ramnarain. Shalom Life, December 13, 2013.

Settler siren channels Miley Cyrus in bulldozer vid. By Philip Weiss. Mondoweiss, December 13, 2013.

Jeffrey Goldberg Twerks John Kerry’s Butt. By Orit Arfa. Jewish Journal, December 11, 2013.

Can a settler be against the occupation? By Orit Arfa. +972, October 24, 2013.

Pinchas. By Orit Arfa. OritArfa.net, November 9, 2012.

Orit Arfa painting Pinchas.

Description:

And when Pinchas, the son of Elazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation and took a spear in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel to the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. And the plague that struck the children of Israel ended. (Numbers 25: 7-9).

Orit’s experiences in Israel during the Palestinian terror war that started in 2000 prompted her first politically tinged painting. Pinchas is a blistering critique of Jews who “sleep with the enemy,” with an allusion to the Oslo Accords, which only led to more Jewish bloodshed. While this political message is often associated with observant Jews, Orit purposefully used image an R-rated image of couple fornicating to appeal to a more secular mindset. The painting asks the basic question: at what point is the use of force a desired and moral option?


Why Israel is Losing the PR War. By Orit Arfa. Arutz Sheva 7, March 4, 2013.

Arfa:

At almost every pro-Israel lecture I attend, someone feels compelled to ask an unrelated question at the end: “Why does Israel have such bad PR”?

 

People offer answers—or guesses—that don’t speak to the heart of the issue:

“Israel doesn’t spend enough on PR.”

 

“The world is anti-Semitic.”

 

“We are doing just fine.”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Part of the problem with Israel’s PR is the fact that we even refer to an intellectual defense of Israel as “public relations.” It’s not a matter of mere PR or image. It’s a matter of our core values and our willingness to stand up for what we believe and know is right and true, no matter what the cost. We could have exponentially more effective PR if we spent less money, but tapped into our other hidden treasures: our conviction, passion, honesty, and fearlessness.

 

Israel’s enemies are good because they offer “black and white” messages, using humanitarian language that makes Israel’s enemies sound like the oppressed and downtrodden. They do not sugarcoat their lies. They say:

Israel is an apartheid State

 

Israel is an occupying power

 

IDF soldiers are war criminals

And how do Israel’s spokespeople—both in and out of the Israeli government—fight these lies?

They give long, arduous facts to debunk those claims

 

They assert that Israel simply wants peace

 

They assert that “it’s complicated/complex”

 

They boast that Israel is a leader in hi-tech. (Without Israel, you wouldn’t have cell phones!)

I’ll tell you why these strategies rarely make a dent. The general population doesn’t care about drawn-out facts, especially in this television/Facebook obsessed, fast food/fast consumption culture. We need to answer such claims with strong messages as simple and pure as the ones that Israel’s enemies use - except ours will be honest. You can’t fight lies with “it’s complicated.” You have to throw the intellectual attacks back in their court, with statements like:

The Arab world consists of apartheid states

 

“Palestine” is a made-up nation and the “Palestinians” are a made-up people

 

Palestinian leaders are war criminals

But, people argue, you’ll only turn people off that way! Not if you’re consistent. Not if you don’t falter. The Palestinians and their friends are consistent, unified, and—worse—have no qualms about being deceptive.

 

It is a holy war for the jihadists, with victory in mind: the destruction of Israel. For Jews and Israel, depending on whom you ask, it’s merely an ongoing battle or “peace process.” Jihadists will die for their cause. Most Jews will at most part with some time and money for the Zionist cause.

 

Regarding appeals to people’s love of technology—sometimes, statements boasting of Israel’s wealth and accomplishments make people resent Israel more. Israel appears obsessed with material goods while it “oppresses” the Palestinians. Actually, we may even consider telling the world how Israel suffers because of all the Arab wars against the Jewish state, how Israel is, in fact, the oppressed, beleaguered country, with its citizens struggling with poverty, evidenced with rising housing costs and low wages.

 

But most Israelis and Israel-advocates are shy of these strong, passionate messages because they are afraid to fight dirty. They’re afraid to be labeled “right wing” or “extremist” or “Islamaphobe.”They’re afraid it will turn off their bosses or colleagues, and they might lose some money or friends, who don’t like them for who they really are anyway.

 

Here’s another reason Israel is losing. As generally rational and civilized people, Israel advocates don’t use smear tactics. A smear is not an argument, but a subtle character assassination. These include equating gun owners with murderers, Republicans with greedy businessmen, Israelis as oppressors. And no one wants to be called criminal, greedy, or oppressive.

 

What’s worse is that majority of Israel advocates and particularly American Jewry shun those people who actually speak the truth, who aren’t afraid to fight fire with fire, who put Israel’s enemies on the defensive. These include Jews living across the “green” line (the 1949 Armistice Line, ed.) and organizations and personalities who speak out against Islamic jihad. They’ll agree with these zealots in their hearts, but never admit it. Meanwhile, these courageous Israel defenders who speak the truth experience social ostracism.

 

But the main reason that Israel is losing is that Israel bashers control the culture, the arts, film, and academia. Artists and academics are the purveyors of ideas, and ideas shape the next generation. Meanwhile, the pro-Israel camp relies on booklets of facts, lengthy non-fiction books, and op-eds.

 

Art influences by touching emotion. Academia influences by calling forth ideas, which these days are influenced by the “black and white” messages of the jihadists and their sympathizers. If we are to win, we need to train a new generation of Zionist artists and academics. The new Zionist intellectuals.

 

So if you’re still wondering why Israel is losing the PR war, I ask one more thing: Look in the mirror. Think about where you could have defended Israel vigorously, but were too afraid to speak up, too desirous of being politically correct. Of messages you could have posted on Facebook, but were afraid of sounding too “political.” Of Zionist causes you could have supported, but decided to go to a party or make a business deal instead. Of arguments you could have made at a social gathering, but didn’t lest you sound too "militant" or “right-wing.”

 

I sure hope people will stop asking that annoying “Why does Israel have such bad PR?” question.

The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood. By Shelby Steele.

The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood. By Shelby Steele. PJ Media, November 14, 2011. Also at the Gatestone Institute.

Do the Palestinians Really Want a State? By Robert D. Kaplan. The Atlantic, April 21, 2009.

Why the Palestinians Don’t Want a State. By David Gutmann. The American Spectator, March 5, 2010.

What if the Palestinians Don’t Want a State? By David Bernstein. The Volokh Conspiracy, April 14, 2010. Part 2.


Steele:

The Arab-Israeli conflict, is not really a conflict, it is a war – a war of the Arabs against the Jews. In many ways, this conflict has been a conflict between narratives. We who strongly support Israel have done a poor job in formulating a narrative which will combat the story spun by the other side. We can do better.

 

The Durban conferences, the request for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, and the general animus in the Middle East and elsewhere toward Israel and toward the Jews, what are they really about? Is the Durban conference and the claim that Israel is a racist nation really about reforming the people of Israel and curing them of their racism?

 

I think their real interest is to situate the Palestinian people within a narrative of victimization. This is their ulterior goal: to see themselves and to have others see them as victims of colonialism, as victims of white supremacy.

 

Listen to their language; it is the language of colonial oppression. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claims that Palestinians have been occupied for 63 years. The word oppressed is constant, exploited. In this, there is a poetic truth; like poetic license, in a poetic truth a writer will bend the rules in order to be more effective.

I will give you one example of a poetic truth that comes from my group, black Americans. We make the following claims: America is a deeply, intractably racist society. It may not be as conspicuous today as it was before. Nevertheless, it is still there today structurally and systemically, and it still holds us back and keeps us from achieving the American dream.

 

To contradict this claim, one can come forward with evidence to suggest that racism in America today is about 25th on the list of problems facing black Americans. One can recount one of the great untold stories of America, namely, the moral growth and evolution away from that problem. This is not to say that racism is completely extinguished, but that it no longer prevents the forward progress of any black in the United States. There is no evidence to suggest that it does. Yet, this claim is still the centerpiece of black American identity – this idea that we are victimized by a fundamentally, incurably racist society.

 

Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does.

 

Why not? These narratives, these poetic truths, are the source of their power. Focusing on the case of the Palestinians, who would they be if they were not victims of white supremacy? They would just be poor people in the Middle East. They would be backwards. They would be behind Israel in every way. So this narrative is the source of their power. It is the source of their money. Money comes from around the world. It is the source of their self-esteem. Without it, would they be able to compete with Israeli society? They would have to confront in themselves a certain inferiority with regard to Israel – as most other Arab nations would have to confront an inferiority in themselves and be responsible for it.

 

The idea that the problem is Israel, that the problem is the Jews, protects Palestinians from having to confront that inferiority or do anything about it or overcome it. The idea among Palestinians that they are victims means more to them than anything else. It is everything. It is the centerpiece of their very identity and it is the way they define themselves as human beings in the world. It is not an idle thing. Our facts and our reason are not going to penetrate easily that definition or make any progress.

 

The question is, how do they get away with a poetic truth, based on such an obvious series of falsehoods? One reason why they get away with it in the Middle East is that the Western world lacks the moral authority to call them on it. The Western world has not said “your real problem is inferiority. Your real problem is underdevelopment.” That has not been said, nor will ever be said – because the Western world was once colonial, was once racist, did practice white supremacy, and is so ashamed of itself and so vulnerable to those charges, that they are not going to say a word. They are not going to say what they really think and feel about what is so obvious about the circumstances among the Palestinians. So the poetic truth that Palestinians live by carries on.

 

International media also do not feel that they have the moral authority to report what they see. On the contrary, they feed this poetic truth and give it a kind of gravitas that it would never otherwise have.

 

Consequently, we need to develop a narrative that is not poetic, but literal and that is based on the truth. What would such a narrative look like?

 

It would begin with the presumption that the problem in the Middle East is not white supremacy but the end of white supremacy. After World War II, the empires began to contract, Britain went home, France went home, and the Arab world was left almost abandoned, and in a state of much greater freedom than they had ever known before.

 

Freedom is, however, a dicey thing to experience. When you come into freedom, you see yourself more accurately in the world. This is not unique to the Middle East. It was also the black American experience, when the Civil Rights bill was passed in 1964 and we came into much greater freedom. If you were a janitor in 1963 and you are still a janitor in 1965, you have all these freedoms and they are supported by the rule of law, then your actual experience of freedom is one of humiliation and one of shame. You see how far you have to go, how far behind you are, how little social capital you have with which to struggle forward. Even in freedom you see you are likely to be behind for a long time. In light of your inability to compete and your underdevelopment, freedom becomes something that you are very likely going to hate – because it carries this humiliation.

 

At that point formerly oppressed groups develop what I call bad faith. Bad faith is when you come into freedom, you are humiliated and you say, “Well you know the real truth is I am not free. Racism still exists. Zionism is my problem. The State of Israel is my problem. That is why I am so far behind and that is why I cannot get ahead.”

 

You develop a culture grounded in bad faith where you insist that you are less free than you really are. Islamic extremism is the stunning example of this phenomenon. “I have to go on jihad because I am fighting for my freedom.” Well you already have your freedom. You could stay home and study. You could do something constructive. But “No, I cannot do that because that makes me feel bad about myself.” So I live in a world of extremism and dictators.

 

This is not unique to the Middle East. In black America we had exactly the same thing. After we got the civil rights bill and this greater degree of freedom, then all of a sudden we hear the words "black power." Then all of a sudden we have the Black Panthers. Then we have this militancy, this picking up of the gun because we feel bad about ourselves. We feel uncompetitive and this becomes our compensation. It is a common pattern among groups that felt abandoned when they became free.

 

This is the real story of the Palestinians and of the Middle East. They will never be reached by reason until they are somehow able to get beyond bad faith, to get beyond this sort of poetic truth that they are the perennial victims of an aggressive and racist Israeli nation.

 

Challenging their narrative with this explanation will enable us to be more effective. Until now, we have constantly used facts and reason and have not progressed.

 

Durban is a perfect example of bad faith because Durban is way of saying Israelis are racist and they are our problem. Durban really is a way of saying I am not free. I am still a victim. That is the real purpose of Durban. The Palestinian unilateral claim for recognition from the UN is also a perfect example of bad faith. If Palestinians proceed to the Security Council, they will very likely be turned down, and will respond by saying: “I told you we were victims. I told you the West is racist,” and so on. It refuels the same sad identity.

 

The irony and the tragedy of all this is that it keeps these groups in a bubble where they never encounter or deal with the truth. This becomes a second oppression for all these groups. They have been oppressed once, now they are free and yet they create a poetic truth that then oppresses them all over again.

 

How are you going to have good faith if you are raised being told that the society in which you are trying to compete is against you, is racist? It is always the Palestinians who suffer, and will continue to suffer, because all of their energy is going into the avoidance of their situation rather than into being challenged by it and facing into it.

 

The strength of our argument is that it gives the Palestinians a way out. Development is the way out. The West can help you to compete. It may take a little while. But the alternative is a cycle of violence and hatred and poetic truths about constant victimhood.

 

The pattern of bad faith in certain places comes to embrace a kind of ethic of death. As Osama bin Laden claimed: in the West, you are all afraid of death, but we love death. Why would you love death? If you are not afraid of death then you are aggrandized; all of a sudden you are a big man. You are not a little, recently freed, inferior. Instead, you are somebody who manages, who conquers his world, who has power. For terrorism is power, the power of the gun. This poetic truth leads to a terrible, inconceivable fascination with death and violence and guns and bombs. It consumes a whole part of the world every single day – rather than the boring things that good faith requires, like going to school, raising your children, inventing software for instance, making money.

 

This is the way the narrative must be retold.