To Make Israel Safe, Give Palestinians Their Due. By Walter Russell Mead.

Change They Can Believe In: To Make Israel Safe, Give Palestinians Their Due. By Walter Russell Mead. Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 1 (January/February 2009).

The New Israel and the Old. By Walter Russell Mead. Foreign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 4 (July/August 2008). Also here.

Northern Ireland and Palestine. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 22, 2009.

Antisemitism Saturday. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 13, 2010.

Middle East “Realists”: Anti-Semites or Just Dumb? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 25, 2010. Also here.

The Night Yasser Arafat Kissed Me. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 9, 2010.

Don’t Blame the Jews. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 10, 2010. Also here.

The Israel Lobby and Gentile Power. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 11, 2010. Also here.

Is This Lobby Different From All Others? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 12, 2010. Also here.

The Israel Crisis. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 15, 2010. Also here.

Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 16, 2010. Also here.

Peace in the Middle East? Not Yet. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 24, 2010.

Settling Zion. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, March 25, 2010.

Why AIPAC Is Good For The Jews — and For Everyone Else. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, April 5, 2010.

The Middle East Peace Industry. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 11, 2010.

The Palestinian Predicament. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 12, 2010.

Silver Linings in the Middle East. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 14, 2010.

Israel’s Strategic Failure. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 3, 2010.

The World Must Do More For Middle East Peace. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 14, 2010. Also here.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have a lot to answer for in their 100-year-plus conflict over some of the most miserable and hardscrabble but somehow beloved land on the face of the earth. But the sad and sorry truth is that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are really responsible for the mess that they are both in — and neither party can solve the problem on its own.

We outsiders love to blame those two squabbling peoples for their long and vicious war. These days most outsiders blame the Israelis — stronger, richer, mostly descended from immigrants who’ve only been (back) in the land for a century or less. Obviously as the stronger and richer party, say these folks, the Israelis should make the lion’s share of concessions. It is up to Israel to make the Palestinians happy, says a large fraction of world opinion, and its obstinate failure to do so is a crime not only against the suffering Palestinians, but against all the rest of us whose comfortable slumbers are so often and rudely disturbed by this incessant and distressing conflict. Meanwhile the incessant Israeli settlements and land seizures inflame both Palestinian and world public opinion and the brutality and cost of occupation hurts the Palestinians, frustrates their prospects for economic growth, and infuriates people all over the world.

Other outsiders say that the big problem is the Palestinians: they “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” If they’d known what was good for them, they would have accepted either the British proposal or the UN proposal for partition back before Israel’s War of Independence. If they’d been smart enough to do that, there would be no Palestinian refugee problem today and they would have a lot more land. Failing that, they should have made peace in 1967 — they would have gotten every acre of the territories back without a single Israeli settlement. (Although there would have been some tough arguments over Jerusalem.) The chief cause of the endless prolongation of the conflict and of Palestinian suffering in this view is the repeated failure of the Palestinian leadership to accept compromise. The compromise they contemptuously reject today inexorably becomes the utopia they will dream of ten years down the road.

Again, there is some truth in both stories, but not enough. The largest and most expansive concessions that the Israelis can make (return to the pre-1967 borders, a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem with Islamic holy places under Palestinian control, compensation and financial aid to refugees) will not meet the true minimum Palestinian conditions for an acceptable peace. By the same token, no Palestinian leadership, however compromise-minded and moderate, can deliver what Israelis most crave in exchange: credible guarantees of security and the end of conflict and claims. That is the ugly reality at the heart of the conflict.

The U.N. and Us

The status quo in the Middle East isn’t Israel’s fault and it isn’t the Palestinians’ fault. If the world community seriously wants to understand, much less address this bitter, destructive and dangerous conflict it needs to spend some time looking in the mirror. It was decisions taken by the international community, not by the Israelis and not the Palestinians, that set the stage for this ongoing tragedy, and it is the international community and only the international community that can put this conflict on the long glide path toward final peace.

The conflict and the refugee crisis are both direct results of decisions made by the League of Nations (whose award of the mandate for Palestine to Britain incorporated the terms of the Balfour Declaration promising a homeland for the Jews) and the United Nations. The United Nations didn’t just propose a partition plan for Palestine in 1947 (accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs): when the British announced that they were giving up the mandate and going home, the United Nations made no provision for the security of the territory’s inhabitants during the transition period. In the absence of international peacekeepers or any other guarantees for their security, both the Jewish and the Arabic communities of British Palestine had to act in self-defense as each community best understood its interest. The resulting war led directly to the creation of the refugee problem as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their ancestral homes — and the poisonous and bitter aftermath of the war led to the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Israel from all over the Arab world.

Each community nourished its grudges; to some degree they are both still doing it now.

But the international community could have prevented this if it had either enforced the partition plan it endorsed or at the very least taken up its legal and moral responsibility to provide basic security in Palestine while discussions continued. Neither the Jews nor the Arabs could do this in 1947-48. Today, 0nly the international community has the resources to move the dispute toward some kind of closure.

This is the ugly and uncomfortable truth that the world so often ignores as we get on our moral high ground and lecture to the squabbling Israelis and Palestinians about their stubborn failures to make peace: Israeli concessions alone cannot bring dignity and a decent future for a significant group of Palestinians. There is not enough room in the Holy Land for all the Jews and Arabs who want to live there. The future Palestinian state based on the 1967 pre-war armistice lines cannot provide a place where all the refugees in the West Bank and Gaza — to say nothing of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere — can live decent lives. This is one reason why the right of return remains the third rail of Palestinian politics; even Palestinian leaders trying to negotiate a two state solution with Israel cannot abandon this central demand from their public speeches and sloganeering — although they have always known that the two state solution means that most Palestinians will never go “home.”

If it were just a question of the West Bank, we could probably fudge a solution. An Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank (including Arab Jerusalem), plus compensation to refugees and financial and development assistance to help the new state get on its feet, would likely provide enough satisfaction to enough West Bankers to make the peace stick. Violence would continue, but in a worst case scenario the future might look something like Northern Ireland’s past. That’s not brilliant, but it’s not disaster. Better Belfast than Beirut.

Unfortunately, even on the West Bank it’s not about just the West Bank. That is, West Bankers feel that they are part of a larger whole, and unless a solution is found for the problems of the Palestinian people (on the West Bank, in Gaza, and scattered abroad in the Palestinian diaspora) the West Bank could not permanently settle down as an independent Palestinian state.

And make no mistake about it, the two state solution as currently advocated does not solve enough problems for enough Palestinians in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere to be viable. The Palestinians in Gaza live in a desert without resources and practically without hope. There are other densely inhabited, resource-poor territories whose inhabitants have become rich thanks to geography, culture and good leadership, but Gaza is not and likely never will be Singapore. (And Singapore has resources like a world class harbor and a natural location on the world’s major shipping lines that Gaza does not.) Currently many Gazans depend on outside charity for food, housing, education and medicine (the United States gives more to Palestinian relief than any other country); presumably once there is a two state peace treaty and the Palestinians enjoy the “right of return” to Palestine, they will no longer count as refugees and will no longer receive the kind of international assistance they now get. The right to starve in your own hovel under your own flag is not and never has been the goal of the Palestinian national movement and there can be no stable or lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that does not meet the essential needs of Gazans. Currently Gaza is a deeply dysfunctional welfare state sustained largely by international charity and under harsh military rule. For many Palestinians in Gaza it is overwhelmingly obvious that the two-state solution without a right of return to pre-1967 Israel is no solution at all. They have been fighting for more than sixty years to get out of the camps in Gaza and back “home”; they will not stop because Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu sign a piece of paper on the White House lawn.

The Palestinians scattered abroad have even less to gain from the two-state solution.  The “right to return” to an overcrowded, under-resourced Palestinian state is derisory. What passport will Palestinians now resident in Lebanon (and deprived of basic economic rights by the local Arabs who, while working themselves into frenzies over Israel’s sins against Palestine, treat their own Palestinians worse than the Israelis treat Arabs in Israel) carry? What rights will they have? Where will they go to university, what businesses and professions can they enter? Where can they live? (Currently, Palestinians in Lebanon face severe restrictions in every one of these essential aspects of life; there is no international human rights movement to gain them their rights, no Turkish aid flotillas sail to their rescue.)

Quite naturally and understandably, these Palestinians will reject any peace agreement that ignores their rights and needs; many other Palestinians will share their outrage and the outrage of the Gazans at what will be perceived as an unprincipled sellout of the Palestinian national cause. Between the financial resources of the Palestinian diaspora and the much larger resources of the regional troublemakers who will see political advantage in supporting the Palestinian cause, violent resistance against the pro-peace Palestinians and against Israel will continue and perhaps even grow.

Israel cannot solve these Palestinians’ problems; neither can the conventional, Camp David two-state solution. But unless these problems are addressed, the Palestinians who sign peace agreements will lack legitimacy among Palestinian nationalists, and Israelis will continue to live with the threat of violence — and will continue to be blamed worldwide for Palestinian grievances.

Send Visas, Jobs and Money

If the international community is serious about solving this problem, as opposed to making moralistic statements and giving vent to its feelings of moral superiority, it has to come up with solutions to the problems that millions of Palestinians will face even after the creation of an independent Palestinian state covering about 22% of Mandatory Palestine. We need a Camp David Plus approach to the two-state solution.

That solution will involve two things that the international community does NOT want to provide: visas and money. The human problems of the Palestinian people cannot be solved unless hundreds of thousands and quite possibly more than a million people have the opportunity to emigrate to countries where they will enjoy full economic, social and citizenship rights. None of the other mass refugee problems of the 1940s (in India, Pakistan, Germany, Poland and many others) was solved without giving refugees full citizenship and economic rights and the ability to build new homes and new lives for themselves. This one won’t be solved without that either.

Some think that integrating Palestinians should be the responsibility of the Arab or Muslim worlds alone.  This is wrong. The whole international community helped cook up this stew, and the whole international community must help make things right. Self-righteous Europeans will have to interrupt their Israel-bashing to make room for some new Palestinian immigrants who will have the full right to become citizens.

Money also matters. There has been much talk about refugee compensation even in the conventional peace process, but much more remains to be done. Money is important for two reasons. First, the Palestinians need and deserve the recognition and justice that monetary compensation affords. The dignity of the Palestinian people needs to be recognized and their suffering acknowledged. Some of the money needs to come from Israel, but the international community as a whole must also make good — and also assume responsibility for any further financial claims. (I also believe that Jewish refugees from the Arab world should be compensated at the same time and to the same measure; this would not only do justice, but it would create support for peace and concessions in Israeli politics.)

Second, Palestinians need money to start new lives. Peace for Palestinians means that every Palestinian will have a passport and enjoy full citizenship rights in a recognized state, with full economic, social and political rights wherever he or she lives. But to make those rights effective, Palestinians must have the means to get started.  Even the very large financial payments needed to provide symbolic as well as actual justice pale into insignificance compared to the costs and risks of prolonged conflict — to say nothing of the continuing cost of maintaining the original refugees and the growing number of their descendants in a kind of refugee limbo in settlements and camps.

I wrote about some of these ideas in Foreign Affairs as the Obama administration took office. Obviously, that advice was not taken. I still think that the Obama administration has a unique opportunity to advance the cause of peace in ways that allow it to be more pro-Palestinian without becoming less pro-Israel. Developing a vision of a Camp David Plus peace proposal and building the international support that can make it a reality would strengthen American leadership, improve relations with the peoples of the Islamic world and advance the cause of just and lasting peace. The alternatives, frankly, are not very appealing.

Even if the United States decides to lead the world toward this kind of comprehensive approach to Palestinian suffering, peace is unlikely to come quickly. The idea of the right of a literal, physical return by refugees and their descendants is deeply etched into Palestinian history, culture and emotion. To accept anything else will feel like betrayal to many people whose lives have been shaped by this struggle. But moving the world to recognize a common responsibility to the Palestinian people and to take the lead in developing just and dignified solutions to their problems will help strengthen the bridges between the United States and thoughtful Muslim (and European) opinion without forcing the United States into politically unsustainable confrontations with Israel.

The Problem With J Street. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, October 16, 2010.

Report From the Middle East: Part One. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, September 25, 2011.

America, Israel, Gaza, the World. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 18, 2012. Also here.

From this perspective, in which war is an elemental struggle between peoples rather than a kind of knightly duel between courtly elites, the concept of proportionality seems much less compelling. Certainly if some kind of terrorist organization were to set up missile factories across the frontier in Canada and Mexico and start attacking targets in the United States, the American people would demand that their President use all necessary force without stint or limit until the resistance had been completely, utterly and pitilessly crushed. Those Americans who share this view of war might feel sorrow at the loss of innocent life, of the children and non-combatants killed when overwhelming American power was used to take the terrorists out, but they would feel no moral guilt. The guilt would be on the shoulders of those who started the whole thing by launching the missiles.

Thus when television cameras show the bodies of children killed in an Israeli air raid, Jacksonian Americans are sorry about the loss of life, but it inspires them to hate and loathe Hamas more, rather than to be mad at Israel. They blame the irresponsible dolts who started the war for all the consequences of the war and they admire Israel’s strength and its resolve for dealing with the appalling blood lust of the unhinged loons who start a war they can’t win, and then cower behind the corpses of the children their foolishness has killed. The whole situation strengthens the widespread American belief that Palestinian hate rather than Israeli intransigence is the fundamental reason for the Middle East impasse, and the television pictures that drive much of the world away from Israel often have the effect of strengthening the bonds between Americans and the Jewish state.

This automatic Jacksonian response to the Middle East situation overlooks some important complexities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in the past America’s Jacksonian instincts have gotten us into trouble. But anyone trying to analyze the politics of the Middle East struggle as they unfold in American debates needs to be aware of the power of these ideas about war in American life.

The Key to Peace: Selling the Two State Solution in Palestine. By Walter Russell Mead. NJBR, January 5, 2013.

The False Religion of Middle East Peace. By Aaron David Miller. Foreign Policy, May/June 2010. Also here (JSTOR copy), here, here and here.

Five Reasons Why the Two-State Solution Just Won’t Die. By Aaron David Miller. Foreign Policy, July 16, 2012.

Peace Offensive. By Aaron David Miller. Foreign Policy, June 5, 2013.

Preserving Israel’s Uncertain Status Quo. By Aaron David Miller. New York Times, August 14, 2012.

The Secular Society. By David Brooks.

The Secular Society. By David Brooks. New York Times, July 8, 2013.

Al Aqsa Foundation Declares All Biblical Archaeology to be Lies.

Al Aqsa Foundation declares all Biblical archaeology to be lies. The Elder of Ziyon, June 27, 2013.

Muslim site explains why hating Jews is important. The Elder of Ziyon, July 4, 2013.

Mondoweiss’ Editor at Large claims no evidence of Jewish Temples on Temple Mount. The Elder of Ziyon, July 6, 2013.

Anti-Semitic Hatred for Kids . . . and Adults. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Anti-Semitic Hatred for Kids . . . and Adults. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, July 8, 2013.

Why is the peace settlement that’s so obvious, so elusive? By Richard Landes. The Augean Stables, July 11, 2013.

Palestinian Authority Uses Young Girls to Promote Hatred and Demonization of Jews. By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik. NJBR, July 8, 2013.


Tobin:

Prior to his wife’s illness, the assumption was that Secretary of State John Kerry would be returning to the Middle East this week for another round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at reviving the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. But whenever Kerry does get back to wandering between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the same obstacles that have prevented peace will still be there. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas knows that if he does as Kerry bids and negotiates with Israel and signs an agreement ending the conflict, he will be running up against the Palestinian reluctance to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn. But while the media continues to focus on the deadlocked talks about talks, they rarely devote much energy to determining what exactly is driving the Palestinian culture of rejection.

 

Part of the answer to that puzzle is supplied from those who, unlike the mainstream media, do pay attention to what is written and broadcast in the official Palestinian media run by Abbas’s PA. Those wondering why anyone would think Palestinians would reject peace offers including an independent state (as they have three times since 2000), could do no better than to view this PA TV excerpt brought to our attention from Palestinian Media Watch in which two little Palestinian girls area asked to a hateful poem that refers to Jews in the following manner:

“Most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs,” condemned to “humiliation and hardship.”

It also went on to say the following about the Jewish presence in Jerusalem:

Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity

Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate

And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure.

It is shocking that the official media of the group that Kerry considers a partner for peace would be broadcasting hate and using children to do it. But, of course, as anyone who follows the PMW Website regularly knows, there is actually nothing unusual about the PA acting in this manner.

 

The PA media has broadcast a steady diet of hatred against Israel and Jews since its inception after the Oslo Accords brought it into existence with numerous examples of them employing children and broadcasts specifically aimed at youngsters to do so. One of the great tragedies of the last 20 years has been the way Israel’s supposed peace partners have sowed the seeds of future conflict by inculcating their youth with doctrines that treat Jews as subhuman monsters with no rights or claims upon the land that both sides claim as their own.

 

There will be those who will argue that similar hatred exists among Israelis as occasional incidents inside the green line and so-called “price tag” attacks on Palestinians in the territories indicate. But the difference between the two sides is actually illustrative of the way Israel has embraced hope for peace while Palestinians have not.

 

The point is hatred of Jews by Palestinians is something that is officially endorsed by the Palestinian Authority while hatred of Arabs is incessantly condemned by the Israeli media and the government. Jewish prejudice against Arabs exists but only as the actions of a minority while mainstream Palestinian culture endorses hate. While Israeli schools adopted curricula seeking to promote “peace education,” the Palestinians schools still use textbooks that are filled with the same kind of vile delegitimization seen on PA TV.

 

But such hatred isn’t limited to just the Palestinians. As the Elder of Ziyyon blog reports today, the American website Mondoweiss seems to be competing with the PA in the effort to delegitimize Jewish rights.  In the course of a blog post alleging that Jewish settlers were infringing on the rights of Arab worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Mondoweiss editor and contributor Annie Robbins made the following claim in response to a comment from a reader who pointed out that the Tomb is an ancient site of Jewish worship that even predates the Holy Temples in Jerusalem:

allegedly. there’s no proof that was the location of some grand temple. maybe lots of jewish stuff retroactively lands itself right underneath islamic structures. did you ever think of that? jealous much?

For anyone commenting on the Middle East to not know that the Muslim Conquests involved the planting of mosques on top of the holy sites of other faiths in places like Turkey, India as well as Israel is to demonstrate historical illiteracy on an Olympic scale. The line that separates stupidity from religious prejudice in such assertions is nonexistence since the only possible motivation for these statements is malice rooted in anti-Semtic hatred.

 

But while we know that Mondoweiss represents the views of denizens of the fever swamps of the left, it is important to remember that it is quite common for Abbas to make similar statements denying any Jewish connection to Jerusalem or the existence of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah or the temple. So long as hate speech is mainstream among the Palestinians, peace with Israel is not something that can be conjured up by a hard working secretary of state.

The Arab World Needs Capitalism More Than Democracy. By Fraser Nelson.

It is capitalism, not democracy, that the Arab world needs most. By Fraser Nelson. The Telegraph, July 4, 2013.

Property rights for aid: this could be the most effective anti-poverty strategy in history.

A Global Middle Class Strikes Back. By Nayan Chanda.

A global middle class strikes back. By Nayan Chanda. The Times of India, July 6, 2013.

Obama’s Middle East Policy Making Skeptics of Believers. By Walter Russell Mead.

Obama’s Middle East Policy Making Skeptics of Believers. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 8, 2013.

Mead:

The Washington Post is following the lead of the NYT’s bleak new take on the White House’s Middle East policy. As Libya seethes, Egypt crashes, and Syria burns, fewer and fewer of the President’s erstwhile disciples in the media understand his administration’s continuing fixation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The WaPo editorial board writes:

The intense focus of Secretary of State John F. Kerry on the long-moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process when neighboring Egypt is collapsing into chaos and Syria’s civil war rages unabated provokes more than a little head-scratching among diplomats from the Middle East. What, they ask us, could possibly possess Mr. Kerry to so intently pursue such an unpromising initiative, even as the United States refuses to exert leadership on crises of paramount importance to the region? […]

Like previous failed U.S. initiatives, Mr. Kerry’s diplomacy ignores the powerful Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, opposes a peace deal and is capable of disrupting negotiations at any time by resuming missile attacks against Israel. Mr. Kerry banks on the support of Arab states, but two of Israel’s Arab neighbors have no functioning government, while the other two — Jordan and Lebanon — have been all but overwhelmed by the spillover of refugees and fighting from Syria.

The MSM’s newfound skeptics may have some more meat to chew on this week, as Secretary Kerry reportedly plans to return to Jerusalem and Ramallah for talks—his sixth visit to the region in three months. More interestingly, Haaretz reports on some details in the Secretary’s plan:

The London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat reported on Saturday that Kerry has formulated a plan to renew talks whereby Israel would freeze construction outside the major settlement blocs, release 103 Palestinian prisoners within six months, advance Palestinian economic projects in Area C of the West Bank ‏(the area under full Israeli civilian and security control‏), and that the talks would be based on the 1967 borders.

One Palestinian official gave an insight into how well this might play among the Palestinian brass:

A Palestinian official told Haaretz that, even if the plan has been correctly reported, this does not mean the Palestinians will accept it as is. The Palestinians particularly object to recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, and to a construction freeze only outside the large settlement blocs, the official said.

There are some understandable and even commendable reasons for maintaining the peace process as a priority in US Middle East policy. And the Middle East is a place where surprises can happen. But we hope the White House is paying attention: Even some of its staunchest fans don’t see much logic in the current policy mix.

 

 

Palestinian Authority Uses Young Girls to Promote Hatred and Demonization of Jews. By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik.

Little girls on PA TV: Jews are the “most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs,” condemned to “humiliation and hardship.” By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik. Palestinian Media Watch, July 7, 2013. Video at YouTube.

Anti-Semitic Hate for Kids . . . and Adults. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, July 8, 2013.

See also, The Blaze, The Times of Israel, The Commentator, Opposing Views.





Transcript, Palestinian Authority TV, July 3, 2013:

PA TV REPORTER: Let’s meet these girls who want to recite a short poem.

GIRL 1: I do not fear the rifle because your throngs are in delusion and ignorant herds.

Jerusalem is my land, Jerusalem is my honor

Jerusalem is my days and my wildest dreams.

Oh, you who murdered Allah’s pious prophets (i.e., Jews in Islamic tradition)

Oh, you who were brought up on spilling blood

You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship.

Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations

Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs

GIRL 2: Jerusalem is not your den

Jerusalem opposes your throngs

Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity

Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate

And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure.

I do not fear barbarity.

As long as my heart is my Quran and my city

As long as I have my arm and my stones

As long as I am free and do not barter my cause

I will not fear your throngs

I will not fear the rifle.

 

Dismal Jobs Report as Obama Kills Full-Time Jobs and Hurts the Opportunity for Young People to Have Careers. By Rush Limbaugh.

Dismal Jobs Report as Obama Kills Full-Time Jobs and Hurts the Opportunity for Young People to Have Careers. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, July 8, 2013.

Rush:

Another way to look at a full-time job is a career. You know, there’s all kinds of work. There’s entry level work, which is minimum wage, where you enter the workforce and just learn what it's all about, getting a paycheck for showing up on time and all that. And then there are jobs you do to help supplant your existence, when you’re in school, if you do that. But then at some point in your life you figure out what you want to do. At some point in your life, if you’re lucky, you learn what you love. A lot of people never do, so their job never is any more than a job, something they have to do.

 

Some people actually find out what they love. And that takes on a whole different meaning to them than just the job. It’s a career, and it’s the definition of who they are. Other people find full-time work, and it is a career in the sense that there is advancement if you do well, but they may not be doing what they love. And that’s the group I’m talking about. The opportunity – you know, a job is one thing; a career is another. Because a career is where you devote yourself to improving and advancing, climbing the ladder, as it were. I’m sorry; with only 47% of working adults working full time, we’re not even developing careers for people to exploit and to experience and to conquer.

 

Now, this is massive change from what the American jobs universe used to be. The American jobs universe contained all the jobs and types of jobs that we have today, but there were certainly far more career opportunities than there are today. And the career opportunities are directly relatable to the number of jobs that no longer exist. Now with Obamacare and companies converting full time to part time, you can wave good-bye to a career as a part-timer.  You’re not gonna conquer anything part time.  You’re not gonna climb a ladder part time.  And you’re not gonna get health care part time. And that’s why you're being converted to part time.  Because Obamacare is so expensive that companies are weighing staying in business or going out of business, staying profitable or not. And contrary to low-information voter beliefs, a company is not there to provide you health care.  It’s there for a whole lot of other reasons.

. . . .

 

Plus, 101 million Americans are getting food aid, which is a number larger than the number of people who have jobs. This is why, folks, some people have said that I sound like I’m a little cold-hearted when I talk about this. I’m not. If you’re on unemployment in America, you’ve got your car . . . The way to put this is: The unemployed are still eating, and so what’s the problem? The unemployed have their cell phones, they have their cars, they’ve got their flat screens and food.

 

Being unemployed is not what it used to be.

 

When you were out of work, you were in dire circumstances, and your unemployment compensation didn’t come close to substituting what you had lost when you lost your job. I’m talking about incentives. What’s the incentive to work? It’s not nearly as big. There isn’t anywhere near the necessity. I’m telling you, I can’t emphasize enough: You take away the whole notion of careers from the American jobs experience, or universe, whatever you want to call it?

The Authoritarian Surge. By Lilia Shevtsova and David J. Kramer.

The Authoritarian Surge. By Lilia Shevtsova and David J. Kramer. The American Interest, July 3, 2013.

Shevtsova and Kramer:

The spreading contagion of protests and demonstrations across the globe demonstrates a new phenomenon: popular dissatisfaction not only with authoritarian regimes but also with democratic systems that are failing to guarantee the people their rights and dignity. We saw this with the European crisis in countries like Greece and Spain. How democratically elected leaders seek to address these challenges will be a key test. Will they resort to authoritarian means as Erdogan is trying to do and Rousseff tried at the beginning? Dissatisfaction can also manifest itself elsewhere, as with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in the United States, or the protests in France.

 

All this leaves us with two interdependent questions: What can stem the new authoritarian tide? How should street rebellion in democratic societies be handled? This “dual” problem could become the big challenge of the 21st century, and responding to the first challenge will depend on how democracies handle the second. We tend to agree with James Traub, who wrote in Foreign Policy that “the era in which citizens will accept a return to autocracy, much less clamor for it, is drawing to a close.” For example, Russia’s system of personalized power is showing signs of decay.

 

To staunch the authoritarian surge, the West must find ways to end its crisis—the sooner, the better—so that it can be in a stronger position to push back against the authoritarian challenge. Some Western countries need to think about serious restructuring of their political systems to guarantee the rights and dignity for all of society, not just a ruling minority. In addition, the liberal opposition in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian societies should consolidate their efforts and offer a viable alternative to authoritarianism. Easier said than done, of course, but necessary nonetheless.

 

Presently, we appear to be stuck in the doldrums, with little reason to be optimistic about either the West’s capacity for reinvention or turning back the authoritarian tide. Leadership and a strengthening of the democratic model are crucial not only for fending off threats from protests but also for challenging the rise of the authoritarian alternative.

The West Must Help Build Mideast Democracy. By Tony Blair.

Democracy doesn’t on its own mean effective government. By Tony Blair. The Observer. Guardian.co.uk, July 6, 2013.

Blair:

What is happening in Egypt is the latest example of the interplay, visible the world over, between democracy, protest and government efficacy. Democracy is a way of deciding the decision-makers, but it is not a substitute for making the decision. I remember an early conversation with some young Egyptians shortly after President Mubarak’s downfall. They believed that, with democracy, problems would be solved. When I probed on the right economic policy for Egypt, they simply said that it would all be fine because now they had democracy; and, in so far as they had an economic idea, it was well to the old left of anything that had a chance of working.

 

I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn’t on its own mean effective government. Today, efficacy is the challenge. When governments don’t deliver, people protest. They don’t want to wait for an election. In fact, as Turkey and Brazil show, they can protest even when, on any objective basis, countries have made huge progress. But as countries move from low to middle income status, the people’s expectations rise. They want quality services, better housing, good infrastructure, especially transport. And they will fight against any sense that a clique at the top is barring their way.

 

This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon. And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don’t have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they’re in trouble.

 

In Egypt, the government’s problems were compounded by resentment at the ideology and intolerance of the Muslim Brotherhood. People felt that the Brotherhood was steadily imposing its own doctrines on everyday life. Across the Middle East, for the first time, and this is a positive development, there is open debate about the role of religion in politics. Despite the Muslim Brotherhood’s superior organisation, there is probably a majority for an intrinsically secular approach to government in the region.

 

Society can be deeply imbued with religious observance, but people are starting to realise that democracy only works as a pluralistic concept where faiths are respected and where religion has a voice, not a veto. For Egypt, a nation with an immense and varied civilisation, around 8 million Christians and a young population who need to be connected to the world, there isn’t really a future as an Islamic state that aspires to be part of a regional caliphate.

 

So what should the west do? Egypt is the latest reminder that the region is in turmoil and won’t leave us alone, however we may wish it would. Disengagement is not an option, because the status quo is not an option. Any decision not to act is itself a decision of vast consequence. At its crudest, we can’t afford for Egypt to collapse. So we should engage with the new de facto power and help the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people. In that way, we can also help shape a path back to the ballot box that is designed by and for Egyptians.

In Cairo’s Cafés Egyptians Believe Morsi was in League with Israel. By Eldad Beck.

Egyptians believe Morsi in cahoots with US, Israel. By Eldad Beck. Ynet News, July 6, 2013.

Brotherhood website: Egypt’s interim president is Jewish. By Roi Kais. Ynet News, July 5, 2013.

Time to Break Out of a Rut in Egypt. By Robert Kagan.

Time to break out of a rut in Egypt. By Robert Kagan. Washington Post, July 5, 2013.

Kagan:

The United States has generally been a great force for the promotion of democracy around the world. But no one should be surprised that President Obama winked at last week’s military coup in Egypt. American support for democracy has never been consistent. The United States backed many “friendly” dictators throughout the 20th century and even toppled democratically elected governments or winked at coups against them — as Eisenhower did in the case of Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala, and as Nixon did in the case of Allende in Chile.

 

Obama, however, probably did not see himself as an upholder of this particular tradition when he entered the White House (though his advisers like to compare him to Eisenhower). At the start of his presidency, Obama apologized to the Iranian people for the overthrow of Mossa­degh. In “The Audacity of Hope,” he criticized previous administrations for viewing “nationalist movements, ethnic struggles, reform efforts” as threatening and for letting such fears outweigh “our professed commitment to freedom and democracy.” He noted, too, how “the removal of democratically elected leaders in countries like Iran” had produced “seismic repercussions that haunt us to this day.”

 

American embarrassment about past acquiescence to dictatorships and military coups is widespread. It is a major theme of high school history textbooks and college courses on foreign policy. In recent decades, leaders of both parties have tried to push U.S. policy in a different direction. Under Ronald Reagan, the United States lent support to democratic movements that toppled “friendly” dictatorships in the Philippines, Korea, Haiti and elsewhere (though not in the Middle East). The Clinton administration worked to hold the new democracies in Eastern and Central Europe to high democratic standards. The George W. Bush administration tried, albeit unevenly, to reshape American relations with the dictatorships of the Arab world, particularly Egypt. Across the ideological spectrum, one of the big lessons of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was that dictatorships helped breed terrorism and that the best cure would be an Arab political opening. Obama embraced that opening when it came and thus cautiously embraced the broad post-Cold War consensus.

 

Yet how quickly that consensus has crumbled in the face of its first difficult test — the election of the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. And yes, that was a very difficult test. Morsi was not only an incompetent ruler but also in many ways an undemocratic one. He imposed restrictions on the media and excluded the opposition from important constitutional decisions. He ruled not so much as a dictator but as a majoritarian, which often amounted to the same thing. With a majority in parliament and a large national following, and with no experience whatsoever in the give-and-take of democratic governance, Morsi failed in the elementary task of creating a system of compromise, inclusiveness, and checks and balances. He was the opposite of a Mandela. He also failed as a manager of the national economy, unwilling to make an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and to carry out difficult but necessary economic reforms.

 

For his incompetence, he deserved to be voted out of office at the next election. For his majoritarian and undemocratic practices, he deserved to be placed under sustained domestic and international pressure, especially by the United States, the leading provider of aid to Egypt. He deserved to have the United States not only suspend its bilateral aid to Egypt but also block any IMF agreement until he entered into a meaningful, substantive dialogue with his political opponents, including on amending the flawed constitution he rammed through in December as well as electoral law. He ought to have been ostracized and isolated by the international democratic community. Morsi is certainly not the only democratically elected leader to have acted undemocratically in recent years, and these are the kinds of actions the United States and other democracies have generally taken in response. And all this would have been a great deal more pressure than Hosni Mubarak ever faced except in the final two weeks of his 30-year rule.

But was a military coup the best answer? The good news is that a bad leader is gone. Yet that is where the good news ends. People talk cheerfully about starting over in building an Egyptian democracy. But the slate is hardly clean, and the obstacles to Egyptian democracy are greater than they were before the coup.

 

The military, having effectively deposed two Egyptian leaders in 2½ years, has firmly established itself as the only real power in the country. Mohamed ElBaradei and other secular leaders are happy to have been vaulted into positions of apparent power, but one wonders how real or long-lasting their influence will be. Live by the sword, die by the sword: If the military can depose one democratically elected government, it can depose another. What happens when Egyptian “people power” returns to confront the next government, as it surely will? Once again the military will have the choice of intervening or not. Its decision is likely to have a lot to do with how the military feels about that government. So who will wield the real power when the next crisis comes?

 

And the next crises are entirely predictable. The economic problems that Morsi inherited and failed to solve require significant sacrifices by average Egyptians, who have already sacrificed much. Such reforms would be difficult to implement even in a calm political climate, and the post-coup climate will be anything but calm. At least some portion of the millions who voted for Morsi have probably come to two conclusions: first, that democracy is a sham; and, second, that what matters in Egypt is who has the guns. Some followers of the Muslim Brotherhood may well decide that violence is their best and only recourse. And the military will in turn impose more-severe limitations on civil liberties to combat the violence, employing — along with the police — their traditional brutal methods. They may even attempt to prevent the Brotherhood from fielding candidates in the next election. After all, having deposed one Muslim Brotherhood government, the military may not think it wise to let another, possibly angrier Brotherhood government get elected six months from now. What will the secular liberal civilians now allied with the military do as these threats to personal liberties and democratic processes metastasize? On Thursday, as the military was arresting dozens of Muslim Brotherhood leaders, ElBaradei said he would be the first “to shout loud and clearly if I see any sign of regression in terms of democracy.” One wonders when he will choose to see it, and what will happen to him if he ever does start shouting.

 

Egypt is not starting over. It has taken a large step backward. And the Obama administration bears much blame. It put little or no meaningful pressure on Mubarak to make even minor political reforms that might have been enough to prevent the anti-regime outburst that exploded at the end of 2010. Then it put little or no tangible pressure on Morsi to end his undemocratic practices, which might have forestalled the most recent crisis.

 

It has become fashionable in today’s “post-American world” milieu to argue that the United States had no ability to shape events in Egypt. This is absurd. The United States is far from being all-powerful, but neither is it powerless. Americans provide $1.5 billion a year in assistance to Egypt, $1.3 billion of which goes to the Egyptian military. It has leverage over the decisions of the IMF and influence with other international donors on whom Egypt’s economy depends. The U.S. ambassador to Egypt wields so much potential influence that Egyptians obsess daily over whom she is meeting, and they concoct wild conspiracies based on trivial events. The assumption in Egypt, as in much of the Arab world, is that nothing happens unless the United States wills it. The problem is not that the United States has no power but that the Obama administration has been either insufficiently interested or too cautious and afraid to use what power the United States has.

 

It has also become fashionable once again to argue that Muslim Arabs are incapable of democracy — this after so many millions of them came out to vote in Egypt, only to see Western democracies do little or nothing when the product of their votes was overthrown. Had the United States showed similar indifference in the Philippines and South Korea, I suppose wise heads would still be telling us that Asians, too, have no vocation for democracy.

 

So now that the military coup has occurred, how do we avoid the “seismic repercussions”? Any answer must begin with a complete suspension of all aid to Egypt, especially military aid, until there is a new democratic government, freely elected with the full participation of all parties and groups in Egypt, including the Muslim Brotherhood. The Obama administration then needs to work closely with other nations and the IMF to ensure that no loans or other forms of economic aid are provided to Egypt until democratic governance is restored. This approach runs contrary to the Obama administration’s instincts, which until now have been to work cooperatively with whoever holds power in Egypt and to avoid overt forms of pressure.

It is past time to get out of this rut of failure. Better to learn from our history than to repeat it. It will be sad if some future American president has to apologize to Egyptians for what Barack Obama did, and did not do, in 2013.

 

 

America – The Republic of Nothing? By Gil Troy.

America – The Republic of Nothing? By Gil Troy. History News Network, July 6, 2013. Also at the National Post.

Troy:

As the United States celebrates its 237th anniversary this week, the country is undergoing dramatic changes demographically, structurally and ideologically. Last week, the Supreme Court made historic decisions about race relations and gay marriage, while the Senate advanced a major immigration reform, proposing a 13-year-process for transforming 11 million illegal aliens into citizens. America’s face is changing. But as the country becomes more diverse, dynamic, and broadminded, the challenges of retaining some ideological glue, some social stability, and some cultural thickness are growing exponentially. As America builds a Republic of Everything, it must not build a Republic of Nothing.

 

The U.S. is now the third largest country in the world by population, with 316 million residents. It is a less white America, with 72.4 percent deemed white, 12.6 percent black or African American, and 16.3 percent considered Hispanic or Latino (some of whom are also “white,” some of whom are also “black,” which shows how artificial these categories are). And it is a growing America, attracting immigrants, especially from Latin America, South America and Asia – with 13 percent of the population foreign born. Despite an ongoing recession, legislative paralysis, aging infrastructure, and foreign policy headaches, the U.S. remains the world’s beacon, luring millions from impoverished dictatorships with dreams of prosperity and liberty.

 

Last week’s big moves celebrated America as a land of redemptive change. Ultimately, the battle over the Voting Rights Act was a fight over just how much progress blacks have made since 1964, and just how anachronistic remedies from the time have become. Similarly, the gay marriage decision and the proposed immigration legislation – which still faces hurdles in the House – revealed an America that is more pluralistic, more sensitive, more welcoming of difference. I have never seen such a major attitudinal turnaround occur so rapidly. Four years ago, many Democrats supported legislation banning gay marriage to appear as safe, mainstream politicians. Today, even many Republicans understand that fighting gay marriage is the politically riskier step. Similarly, in 2012, many Republicans learned that fighting immigration reform is a losing issue. Most Americans want to integrate those currently designated illegal into the country, without being inundated by more illegals.

 

The most unfortunate aspect of Windsor v. United States, wherein the Supreme Court invalidated part of the Defense of Marriage Act, was that the change originated with the Court – and overran a democratically enacted law. The decades-long abortion stalemate has taught that social change progresses best when it comes from the state legislatures, the Congress, the governors and the president, not the Courts. Still, in this case, more so than the abortion case of Roe v. Wade, the Court followed public opinion rather than pioneering it. This is not a legal argument about the constitutional rights or wrongs, but a pragmatic argument about the politics of change in America.

 

Even Americans who are uncomfortable with these changes can take pride in this kinder, gentler America; this looser, less exclusive America, this forgiving, open America. The legal changes prove that, as the sociologist Alan Wolfe explains, “Thou Shalt Not Judge Thy Neighbor,” has become American’s eleventh commandment.

 

Today’s America also has 2 million people in prison, and 4 out of ten babies born to unmarried women (with 7 out of ten African American babies born to unmarried women).

 

In this age wherein everything is disposable including family, Americans need more grounding, more moral fiber. Elements of the old morality propped up prejudices we now reject. But a life just based on tolerating others lacks internal meaning – and the kind of social adhesive necessary to make a nation great.

 

Americans should worry about the thinness of their collective cultural identity, the transience of many of their concerns, their addiction to trendiness and technology. Building a great nation requires a commitment to big ideas, transcendent thoughts, and altruistic ideals. Some of America’s greatest ills today, including rising debt, a declining work ethic, a tidal wave of selfishness, an obsession with popular culture, a compulsion to consume, an inability to compromise or plan or save or sacrifice, stem from today’s cultural and ideological flimsiness. In identity terms, the thinness of things can be liberating and welcoming; the thickness of things can be grounding and ennobling. Both individual and national greatness require a balance. On both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, we need a republic of something.

Egypt’s “Revocouption” and the Future of Democracy on the Nile. By Juan Cole.

Egypt’s “Revocouption” and the future of Democracy on the Nile. By Juan Cole. Informed Comment, July 4, 2013. Also at History News Network.

Hearing echoes of 1789 in Cairo. By Rami G. Khouri. The Daily Star (Lebanon), July 6, 2013.


Cole:

Egypt’s future stability and prosperity now depends on whether the officer corps and youth are mature enough to return to pluralist principals and cease persecuting the Muslim Brotherhood just because Morsi was high-handed. Their media has to be free and the 300 officials have to be released unless charged with really-existing crimes on the statute books. And it depends on whether the Muslim Brotherhood is wise and mature enough to roll with this punch and to reform itself, giving up its cliquish and cult-like internal solidarity in favor of truly becoming a nation-wide, center-right, democratic opposition party. If they take this course, they have a chance of emulating Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and one day coming back to power (an observant Muslim prime minister was forced out in 1997, but members of his party just regrouped and ultimately came to rule the country). If the Muslim Brotherhood adherents instead turn to terrorism and guerrilla actions, they will tear the country apart and probably blacken the name of political Islam for decades.

 

At the moment, neither of those two groups is demonstrating the maturity and high-mindedness that would reassure me about the prospects for a genuinely democratic transition.

How Depression Went Mainstream. By Robin Lindley.

How Depression Went Mainstream: Interview with Dr. Edward Shorter. By Robin Lindley. History News Network, July 8, 2013.

Review of Allen C. Guelzo’s “Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.” By Jim Cullen.

Review of Allen C. Guelzo’s Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (Knopf, 2013). By Jim Cullen. History News Network, July 4, 2013.

Apocalypse Watch: Israeli Cabinet Minister Calls for Third Temple. By Walter Russell Mead.

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Wikipedia.

Apocalypse Watch: Israeli Cabinet Minister Calls For Third Temple. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 6, 2013.

Mead:

The MSM will miss the significance of this story as it misses a lot of stories having to do with religion, but tens of millions of American Christians were jolted this week by the news that a member of the Israeli cabinet has called for the construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem on Temple Mount.

 

Political junkies saw this as a disturbing but not hugely significant development. Uri Ariel, the Israeli minister of Housing and Construction, is widely seen as an effective and charismatic figure on the fringe of Israeli politics. His inclusion in the Cabinet was a sign of just how far the balance has tilted in the current Knesset in favor of the settler movement. He’s a political provocateur who enjoys saying controversial things; he objected, for example, to having Chancellor Angela Merkel address the Knesset in German.

 

For people who follow Israeli politics, Ariel’s call to rebuild the ancient Jewish Temple on a site sacred to Muslims was a troubling indication that some taboos are crumbling as the settler movement moves into the political mainstream. It’s also a marker for any discussions on the future of Jerusalem should US Secretary of State John Kerry actually restart peace negotiations.

 

From a purely political point of view, then, this was a bad news story but not a big news story.

 

To the hundreds of millions of people around the world for whom Israel news is religious news as well as political news, it was something else. The Jewish Temple is not just another historical building, and any discussion about rebuilding it isn’t just another political story.

 

The Jewish Temple is unique in world religious history. It was a very different thing than the synagogues in which Jews pray today. In the Torah, God commanded the Hebrews to build a temple in the land he would give them; this command was carried out, the Bible tells us, by David’s son Solomon (who is revered as a prophet by Muslims). When built, the Temple was the only place where Jews could carry out the sacrifices required by Jewish law; it was the spiritual heart of Judaism in the way no church has ever been the central focus of Christianity, and its role can only be compared to that of Mecca in Islam.

 

The First Temple was destroyed when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem 587 years before the birth of Christ. The Second Temple was rebuilt on that site by Jews returning from exile and magnificently restored and embellished right around the time of Christ by Herod the Great. Under Greek and Roman rule, the Temple was the scene of great confrontations between the monotheistic Jews and their pagan overlords. The Second Temple was destroyed when the Romans crushed a Jewish revolt, and the site has since been occupied by a pagan temple, a Christian church and is now under the control of an Islamic religious foundation.  Muslims revere the site as the place where Abraham offered to sacrifice his son to God, as well as the place from which the Prophet Mohammed left the earth on the Night Journey.

 

Many Islamists will see Uri Ariel’s announcement as confirming a vision that links the behavior of the Jewish state with a religious and political crisis that will overcome humanity in the years leading up to the last battle between good and evil and the Last Judgement. Many Christians will agree, though of course the details of the two apocalyptic visions are not the same.

 

Since the 19th century, long before there was a Zionist movement among Jews, evangelical Protestants have been working out interpretations of the Biblical prophecies of the “End Times” based largely on the Book of Revelations at the end of the Christian Bible, and prophecies found in the Jewish scriptures in the books of Ezekiel, Daniel and some others. Roughly speaking, they concluded on the basis of their study of these books that the Jews would return to the Holy Land and establish a new Jewish state there. In time, though surrounded by hostile neighbors and threatened by powers like Russia, this state would rebuild the Temple. Once that was rebuilt, the real apocalyptic countdown would begin and a series of wars and tribulations would sweep the earth before Jesus triumphantly returns for the Last Judgement.

 

The degree to which the history has conformed to the early stages of these predictions was a powerful factor in the rise of evangelical religion in the United States during the twentieth century, and the impact grew after 1967 when the Israelis stunned the world by capturing the ancient city and Temple Mount from Jordanian forces.

 

Any sign that the Temple issue is moving to the fore in Israeli politics today will engage the attention of evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants around the world. In Africa, Brazil, the United States and many other places, this news, combined with the stories about unrest in the Arab world, will be read as a sign that the End Times are approaching and that God is at work.

 

A great many Muslims are also reading this week’s news and seeing signs that the End Times are coming. In Islam as in Christianity, many strains of apocalyptic thinking see the End Times as an era of apostasy and rebellion against God, of the forces of evil assembling themselves for one last battle against God and true religion. The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the bitter war between Sunnis and Shiites that now embraces the entire Fertile Crescent, and what will be seen by many as evidence that Israel is preparing to restore the Temple on a site holy to Islam: these developments will further strengthen apocalyptic, End Times thinking in the Muslim world.

 

This news will reverberate around the world. In places like Nigeria, where relations between Christians and Muslims (often exacerbated by tribal and economic competition) are poor, news like this helps drive the sense of conflict and nourishes the hotheads on both sides of the conflict.

 

As a piece of political news in Israel, Uri Ariel’s statement may not have been a big deal. But all over the world, people are pricking up their ears as word spreads. Like it or not, we in the 21st century live in an Age of Apocalypse, when hopes and fears connected to the end of the world play a growing role in world politics. Whether we are looking at greens who think that global warming will kill us off, others who fear nuclear apocalypse, Silicon Valley tech prophets predicting the Singularity, or old fashioned religious teachers predicting the Last Judgement and the End Times, we live in an era in which the end of human history as we know it is on the table.

 

For hundreds of millions of people all over the world, the end came a little closer this week. In our view, that’s news.

Why Israel Has No Newtowns. By Liel Liebovitz.

Why Israel Has No Newtowns. By Liel Liebovitz. Tablet, December 17, 2012. Also at Real Clear World.