Proto-Aeolic Capital Associated with Judah’s Longest Spring Tunnel. By Noah Wiener.

A stylized palm tree motif is carved onto this proto-aeolic discovery associated with a remarkable Iron Age spring tunnel system near Jerusalem. Photo courtesy of Binyamin Tropper.

Proto-Aeolic Capital Associated with Judah’s Longest Spring Tunnel. By Noah Wiener. Bible History Daily, January 15, 2014.

Investigating royal iconography and large-scale construction in Iron Age Judah.

The Origin and Date of the Volute Capitals from the Levant. By Oded Lipshits. The Fire Signals of Lachish: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian Period in Honor of David Ussishkin. Edited by Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011.

From Megiddo to Tamassos and Back: Putting the “Proto-Ionic Capital” in Its Place. By Norma Franklin. The Fire Signals of Lachish.


Wiener:

There has been a lot of talk recently about a “covered up” proto-aeolic capital. I’ll admit: I indulged in a bit of this myself last April. Last week, the conversation was reopened when Arutz-7 reported that the location of the site—sensationally (and without any substantiation) labeled “King David’s Castle”—would be announced Friday, January 17.

 

The capital is part of an undoubtedly important archaeological site just over five miles from Jerusalem’s City of David and four miles from Bethlehem. The find itself—a one-of-a-kind proto-aeolic capital still attached to its base—is a rare-yet-iconic First Temple period type. The iconography is familiar in Israel; proto-aeolic designs are etched on modern Israeli five-shekel coins.

 

The capital is associated with a 525-foot-long tunnel system, the largest and most impressively hewn spring tunnel in the region of Jerusalem. This labor required to carve such a system opens new questions regarding the Judahite administration and agriculture around Jerusalem. Unfortunately, most of last year’s discussion hinged on media reports of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) response to the Kfar Etzion Field School’s attempts to publicize the find. The archaeological significance was all but ignored.

 

Last summer I had the chance to meet with Binyamin Tropper, the Kfar Etzion training coordinator who recognized the capital in February 2013, and Daniel Ein-Mor, the IAA archaeologist who previously surveyed the area, identified the capital, explored the water system and recently published the site (see notes below). Media articles last spring portrayed the Kfar Etzion and IAA camps in a pitched battle over the discovery’s public presentation. I saw no indication of hostile contention—both Ein-Mor and Tropper were cordial and enthusiastic in sharing information about the site.

 

Before discussing the ancient evidence, we need to address the elephant in the room: the articles last year suggesting that the IAA “covered up” the discovery. While there are modern political sensitivities surrounding the location of the site, Bible History Daily is not the place for such discussion. It is a place for the presentation of archaeological data, so first and foremost, it is important to rectify the notion that this site remains quietly unpublished. Last year, Daniel Ein-Mor and geologist Zvi Ron published the article “An Iron Age Royal Tunnel Spring in the region of Nahal Rephaim” in Guy Stiebel et. al (eds.), New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region. Ein-Mor also published a shorter free online report “Walajeh (‘Ain Joweizeh)”  on the IAA  Hadashot Arkheologiyot website last summer.

 

The Proto-Aeolic Typology

 

In his article “The Origin and Date of the Volute Capitals from the Levant,” Tel Aviv University Professor Oded Lipschits introduces the type:

The Iron Age volute capitals (the so-called “Proto-Aeolic” or “Proto-Ionian” capitals) are among the most impressive and special finds discovered in archaeological excavations in Israel and Jordan. The size of the capitals, their weight, the quality of their carving, and their impressive design provide an indication of their function in the gates and palaces of the ancient kingdoms of Israel, Judah, Moab, and Ammon.

The capitals—an architectural term usually referring to decorative supports on top of columns—are widely associated with monumental sites but are poorly understood, in large part because they have rarely been found in situ. Proto-aeolic capitals are decorated with curving date palm tree motifs, associated with the Near Eastern “Tree of Life,” and the architectural style was influential in shaping later architecture from classical Greece to Mesopotamia.

 

Where have these capitals been found? In the Hadashot Arkheologiyot article “Walajeh (‘Ain Joweizeh),” Daniel Ein-Mor succinctly lists the existing evidence of proto-aeolic capitals, citing a Hebrew article published by Oded Lipschits in 2009:

Twenty-four stone capitals decorated with a Proto-Aeolic design from the First Temple period are known from the main cities of the Kingdom of Israel: Samaria, Megiddo, Hazor and Dan. Eleven others are known from the Kingdom of Judea [Judah]; ten capitals were found at Ramat Rahel where remains of a palace from the late eighth–early seventh centuries BCE were excavated, and one capital comes from the City of David excavations in Jerusalem (Lipschits 2009). Five capitals are known from the site of el-Mudeibi’ – Mudaybi in Moab, and a capital was found in secondary use in the village of ‘Ain-Sara, west of Kerak, next to a spring of the same name. Two fragments of capitals are also known from the citadel in Amman (Lipschits 2009). The capitals from the Kingdom of Israel mainly date to the ninth century BCE and those from Judea and Jordan to the late eighth or early seventh centuries BCE. Although the central motif is identical, the capitals from the various sites differ in some features.

In “The Origin and Date of the Volute Capitals from the Levant,” Lipschits suggests that capitals were first made during Israel’s Omride dynasty in the 9th century B.C.E. He proposes that after the Assyrians invaded Israel, the capitals’ “size, esthetics and quality, attracted the attention of the Assyrian rulers who were known for their adoption of artistic and architectural elements, and for incorporating them in the local Assyrian tradition.” We have artistic depictions of these capitals at numerous palatial Assyrian sites. Lipschits goes on to suggest that the proto-aeolic capitals found in Judah, Moab and Ammon, which were built later than the examples found in Israel, reflect “Assyrian encouragement, approval or sponsorship.”

Proto-aeolic capitals have been uncovered at dozens
 of Israelite and Judahite sites. The proto-aeolic palmetto iconography
 is often associated with Israelite kingship,

and the motif is minted on the modern Israeli five-shekel coin.

 

 

However, to understand the type, we also need to look west. Haifa University scholar Norma Franklin draws parallels between the capitals and Cypriote architecture, focusing on the similarity between the proto-aeolic motifs and those found in tombs at Tamassos in Cyprus. In her article “From Megiddo to Tamassos and Back: Putting the ‘Proto-Ionic Capital’ in Its Place,” Franklin suggests that these “capitals” were never, in fact, used structurally as capitals. Instead she notes a variety of functions from site to site: they served as column bases, support for wooden objects or other non-structural roles within monumental architecture. There is little evidence that proto-aeolic capitals were ever used as structural column capitals, and the phrase persists more due to common usage than accuracy. The proto-aeolic “capital” associated with the Judahite water system is actually a design carved into a monolithic rock.

 

A New Proto-Aeolic Capital

 

The recently announced proto-aeolic capital, associated with the ‘Ain Joweizeh water system, is the first ever found still attached to its base. Originally identified as a lintel in a 1982 survey of the water tunnel, the hewn proto-aeolic decoration is part of a massive, partially buried rock that likely weighs several tons, suggesting that it hasn’t moved far from its original location. The decorations—which are undoubtedly carved in the proto-aeolic style—are actually part of a monolithic rock that may have been part of a monumental entranceway.

Proto-aeolic capitals have rarely been discovered in situ,

 and despite the name, there is little evidence

 that the capitals sat atop columns as architectural elements.

This new find is carved from a monolithic rock—while

 still attached to its base, it is not part of a traditional column.

 Photo courtesy Binyamin Tropper.

 

In terms of style, the proto-aeolic decoration is most similar to examples from nearby Ramat Rahel and the City of David, but parallels can also be drawn between the capital and examples from Moabite el-Mudeibi‘ and Cypriote Tamassos.

 

The capital sits in a “seam” (to borrow a phrase from Daniel Ein-Mor’s Hadashot Arkheologiyot report) between an earlier and later phase of the water tunnel’s construction. It sits across from another unexcavated massive stone monolith. One likely possibility is that the capital marked an entrance to the water system after the first phase of construction. If this marks an entrance, there is good reason to believe that the nearby-but-unexcavated stone across from the proto-aeolic capital may be another capital, and the two together framed a monumental entrance to the tunnel or the system’s reservoir.

 

The Walajeh or ‘Ain Joweizeh Water System

 

Daniel Ein-Mor was quick to caution me: “We don’t want to overlook the importance of a site because one aspect is attractive—the capital is attracting attention, but the water system itself is at least as interesting.” I have to agree.



The ‘Ain Joweizeh tunnels are the largest and most elegantly carved
 karstic water system in the region. Despite the massive effort
 required to carve such a tunnel,  it did not draw a great deal of water.

 Photo courtesy Binyamin Tropper.

 

We know of over 100 spring tunnels in the area, and none is even half as long as the ‘Ain Joweizeh system. It is a massive effort to cut through hard dolomite rock. The even and measured chisel marks in the Iron Age tunnel reveal that it is a masterpiece of construction, one that would have required a great deal of funding. Unlike Hezekiah’s tunnel, which carries water drawn from Jerusalem’s Gihon Spring, the Joweizeh tunnel drew its water from springs en route. The Joweizeh tunnel is the longest tunnel of its type in the region. Because of the similarity in workmanship, it is worth comparing this tunnel with Hezekiah’s, as Todd Bolen notes on the Bibleplaces blog.

 

Despite the extensive labor required to carve the tunnel (which includes a side channel used to regulate uneven water flow), the spring itself is relatively low flow, raising questions about its purpose. Who would have cut the hard dolomite rock and haul it hundreds of feet out of the tunnel? The tunnel does not reach Jerusalem. Where was this water going? Why was this elaborate tunnel marked by a proto-aeolic capital, a type often associated with royal construction?

 

Interpreting the Finds

 

This site has not escaped the attention of the Israeli archaeological community. Binyamin Tropper mentioned the site’s visitors, and his list included some of the most esteemed names in the field: Nadav Na’aman, Israel Finkelstein, Yuval Gadot, Amihai Mazar, Yosef Garfinkel, Norma Franklin and several others.

 

Such a water system suggests the presence of a nearby settlement or wealthy estate (Daniel Ein-Mor specifically mentions the possibility of a royal palace or estate similar to Ramat Rahel), but so far there is no archaeological evidence of such a place. A proto-aeolic capital at ‘Ain-Sara in Jordan may be associated with a spring. Assyrian reliefs from Khorsabad and Nineveh show proto-aeolic capitals associated with gardens and springs. Following Oded Lipschits’s proposal that the capitals originated in Israel and were subsequently adopted by Assyrians before being introduced into Judah and other nearby territories, perhaps the usage shown in Assyrian reliefs would have been familiar to anyone considering constructing proto-aeolic capitals in Judah.

 

Of course, archaeologists have not yet uncovered anything resembling a Judahite or Assyrian-style garden estate in the area, and we can’t base assumptions about the nature of the region from a few foreign artworks. What we know now is that the construction of this water system required a great deal of labor, and someone—perhaps the Judahite government—was willing to invest a great deal in an as-yet archaeologically inconspicuous part of the hinterlands of Jerusalem.

This Assyrian relief from the palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh (now housed at the British Museum)

 shows a structure with proto-aeolic capitals atop a garden and a stream.

 Some believe this artistic comparison could help archaeologists understand

 the relationship between the water tunnel and capital.

Was Harry Truman a Zionist? By John B. Judis.

Seeds of Doubt: Was Harry Truman a Zionist? By John B. Judis. The New Republic, January 15, 2014.

Judis:

Harry Truman’s concerns about Israel and Palestine were prescient—and forgotten.


As president, Truman initially opposed the creation of a Jewish state. Instead, he tried to promote an Arab-Jewish federation or binational state. He finally gave up in 1947 and endorsed the partition of Palestine into separate states, but he continued to express regret in private that he had not achieved his original objective, which he blamed most often on the “unwarranted interference” of American Zionists. After he had recognized the new state, he pressed the Israeli government to negotiate with the Arabs over borders and refugees; and expressed his disgust with “the manner in which the Jews are handling the refugee problem.”

 

Of course, there were good reasons why Truman failed to achieve a federated or binational Palestine, and I don’t intend by recounting Truman’s qualms to suggest that he was wrong to recognize Israel. But Truman’s misgivings about a Jewish state and later about the Israeli stance on borders and refugees were not baseless.  Truman was guided by moral precepts and political principles and concerns about America’s role in the Middle East that remain highly relevant today. Understanding his qualms is not just a matter of setting the historical record straight. It’s also about understanding why resolving the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians needs to be high on America’s diplomatic agenda.

 

Some of the same people who portray Truman as a dependable supporter of a Jewish state also describe him as having been a proto-Zionist or a Christian Zionist along the lines of Britain’s Arthur Balfour or David Lloyd George, who in 1917 got the British government to champion a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Truman biography Michael T. Benson says that Truman’s support for Israel was an “outgrowth of the president’s religious upbringing and his familiarity with the Bible.” But Truman’s love for the Bible was partly based on his flawed eyesight. The family Bible, with its extra large print, was one of the few books at home the young Truman could read. By his teens, Truman’s favorite author was the irreverent Mark Twain, and like Twain, he would come to have no patience with religious piety.

 

Truman was not a philo-Semite like Balfour or Lloyd George. He was skeptical of the idea that Jews were a chosen people. (“I never thought God picked any favorites,” he wrote in his diary in 1945.) He had the ethnic prejudices of a small town Protestant Midwesterner from Independence, Missouri. He referred to New York City as “kike town” and complained about Jews being “very very` selfish.” But Truman’s prejudice was not exclusive to Jews (he contrasted “wops” as well as “Jews” with “white people”) and did not infect his political views or his friendships with people like Eddie Jacobson, his original business partner in Kansas City. He was, his biographer Alonzo Hamby has written, “the American democrat, insistent on social equality, but suspicious of those who were unlike him.”

 

There were two aspects of Truman’s upbringing and early political outlook that shaped his view of a Jewish state. Truman grew up in a border state community that had been torn apart by the Civil War. That, undoubtedly, contributed to his skepticism about any arrangement that he thought could lead to civil war. And Truman, like his father, was an old-fashioned Democrat. His political heroes were Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, and he shared Jefferson’s insistence on the separation of church and state. He blamed Europe’s centuries of war on religious disputes, which, he said, “have caused more wars and feuds than money.” That, too, contributed to his skepticism about a Jewish state.

. . . .

 

Was Truman right that Morrison-Grady was the “best possible solution” all along? Certainly, as an American, one has to believe that the best possible solution is one where peoples of different religions and nationalities get along in one country. And it remains, perhaps, an ideal solution, but it was not going to happen in those years after World War II. Even if one sets aside the fierce political opposition in the United States to the proposal, there were ample reasons why the plan for a federated or bi-national Palestine was not feasible.

 

The Arabs and Jews in Palestine both rejected the plan. The Arabs, who, in Rashid Khalidi’s words, had been “envenomed” by their failed rebellion against Zionism and the British, saw the arrival of more Jewish immigrants as a harbinger to a Jewish-controlled Palestine, while the Jews saw any restriction on their sovereignty (or the size of their state within Palestine) as a threat to their survival in the wake of the Holocaust. Still, in the year before Britain gave up trying to mediate between the contending forces, there were hints of compromise from the Arabs and the Jews. What was finally lacking, however, was an outside power capable of imposing and then enforcing a compromise.

 

Britain was crippled by its war debts after World War II. It could no longer support an overseas military, and in February 1947 announced the withdrawal of its troops from Greece and Turkey. It threw the future of Palestine into the lap of the U.N. in the hope of being able to remove its troops from there, where it was in the midst of war with Zionist forces. The British believed they could only oversee Palestine if the United States contributed money and troops. They could have believed, with some justification, that they could intimidate the Arabs and that the Americans could intimidate the Jews into co-existing with each other. Truman, however, was willing to contribute money but not troops. The United States had undergone rapid demobilization after World War II, but the Cold War had begun. By 1947, Truman and the State Department were preoccupied with having enough troops to defend Europe against Soviet communism. As the final debate over partition was occurring in the United Nations, the U.S. was in the midst of the Berlin crisis with the Soviet Union. There was no support in the American government, or in the public, for sending troops to Palestine.

 

Truman rejected sending troops to enforce Morrison-Grady and later to enforce the original U.N. partition plan. Without American troops, the British and then the U.N. were powerless to prevent a civil war and to alter the final results, which left the Jews with almost 80 percent of Palestine, and the Palestinian Arabs stateless and dispersed as refugees throughout the region. Even with an American-led intervention force, the U.N. might still have been unable to prevent a civil war from breaking out or the subsequent war between Israel and the Arab states, but without such a force, there was simply no chance of realizing the Morrison-Grady plan or the original U.N. plan of November 1947. Truman’s nostalgia for the Morrison-Grady plan was based on a fantasy.

Proposed partition of Israel/Palestine in 1947

 

But the considerations that led Truman to favor a bi-national or federated Palestine were not fantastic, and remain relevant today. There was always a strong moral streak in Truman’s foreign policy. He thought of the world divided between underdogs and bullies and good and evil. He genuinely hated Nazis and sympathized with Jews as their victims. His support for the right of the refugees to emigrate to Palestine reflected his moral conviction rather than any concern about electoral support. And in Palestine, he wanted a solution that was fair to the Arabs as well as to the Jews.

 

Truman didn’t know all the details of the history of Palestine, but he knew that the Jews had come to Palestine a half century before to establish a Jewish state where another people had lived, and had made up the overwhelming majority for the prior 1,400 years. He was offended by the proposal, pressed by Silver and American Zionists, that a minority should be allowed to rule a majority. He wanted an arrangement that would respect the just claims of both Jews and the Arabs.

 

After he dropped his public opposition to a Jewish state, and supported some form of partition, Truman continued to be guided by moral considerations. In October 1947, he had endorsed a partition that would more accurately reflect the size of the existing populations. After Israel was established, and had defeated the Arabs, he supported a peace agreement that would allow some of the 700,000 Arab refugees from the war to return to their homes. (The Israeli ambassador to the United States complained that Truman was “sentimentally sympathetic” to the refugees.) In each case, however, Truman backed down under pressure from the Zionist lobby. In August 1949, Truman and the State Department finally gave up trying to influence the Israelis.

 

Today, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict remains a moral issue. The Jews got their state in 1948, but the Palestinians did not. After the 1948 war, Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt Gaza, and the term “Palestine” was banned from Jordanian textbooks. After the Six Day War, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and took over the West Bank and Gaza. It evacuated its settlers from Gaza after 2006, but continues to control its outer access and air space. The Israeli government has allowed over 500,000 Jews to settle in Palestinian areas of Jerusalem and in the West Bank. The “underdogs,” as Truman once put it in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, are now acting like the “top dogs.”

 

Truman and the State Department were also worried that the attempt to create a Jewish state in an Arab-dominated region would lead to war and continued strife. Many of their concerns have become outdated. They were worried originally that the Arabs would slaughter the Jews and that the United States would have to prevent a second Holocaust. They worried for decades that American support for Israel would drive the Arabs into the arms of the Soviet Union. But their underlying concern—that a Jewish state, established against the opposition of its neighbors, would prove destabilizing and a threat to America’s standing in the region—has been proven correct.

 

That’s been even more the case in the wake of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, a Muslim holy site, and its occupation of the West Bank. Opposition to the Israeli occupation was central to the growth of Islamic nationalism in the Middle East in the 1970s and to the rise of international terrorist groups. Osama bin Laden’s 1996 Fatwa was directed at the “Zionist-Crusader alliance.” America’s continued support for Israel—measured in military aid and in its tilt to Israel in negotiations with the Palestinians—has fueled anti-Americanism. In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2010, General David Petraeus, then in charge of operations in Afghanistan said publicly what many American officials privately believe:

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Operations]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.

Resolving the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians would not necessarily calm the turbulent Middle East, but at a time when Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and even Lebanon are in chaos and could become havens for international terrorism, it would remove an important source of unrest and allow the United States to act as an honest broker rather than a partisan in the region.

 

Truman’s solution to the conflict was, of course, a federated or binational Palestine. If that was out of the question in 1946, it is even more so almost 70 years later. If there is a “one-state solution” in Israel/Palestine, it is likely to be an authoritarian Jewish state compromising all of British Palestine. What remains possible, although enormously difficult to achieve, is the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That is what the last three American Presidents, sometimes facing opposition from Israel’s lobby in Washington as well as from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Hamas organization, have tried unsuccessfully to promote, and what Secretary of State John Kerry is currently trying to negotiate.

 

If Truman were still around, he would wish Kerry well. The same moral and strategic imperatives that led Truman to favor the Morrison-Grady plan for Palestine now argue in favor of creating a geographically and economically viable Palestinian state. And if it is going to happen, America, the leading outside power in the region, has to play a major role. It has to be “Cyrus”—not just for the Israelis, but for the Palestinians.

Common Traits Bind Jews and Chinese. By David P. Goldman.

Common Traits Bind Jews and Chinese. By David P. Goldman (writing as Spengler). PJ Media, January 11, 2014. Also at Asia Times Online.

Goldman:

JERUSALEM – The Chinese are connoisseurs of civilization. For thousands of years they have absorbed ethnicities into their own culture, eliminating on occasion tribes that proved too troublesome. They have watched other civilizations come and go; they have seen their younger neighbors adopt parts of their culture and then try to assert their superiority, and ultimately fail. They are the last people on earth to accept the liberal Western dogma that every culture is valid within its own terms of reference, for they have seen too many civilizations fail of their own flaws.

 

There is no greater compliment to any culture than to be admired by Chinese, who with some justification regard their civilization as the world’s most ancient and, in the long run, most successful. The high regard that the Chinese have for Jews should be a source of pride to the latter. In fact, it is very pleasant indeed for a Jew to spend time in China. The sad history of Jew-hatred has left scars on every European nation, but it is entirely absent in the world’s largest country. On the contrary, to the extent that Chinese people know something of the Jews, their response to us is instinctively sympathetic.

 

“I am always surprised by the expressions of affection that the Chinese show for the Jews. Both cultures, the Chinese emphasize, share respect for family, learning and, yes, money,” wrote the journalist Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore last year. ‘”Most Chinese will think Jews are smart, clever or good at making money, and that they have achieved a great deal,’ Professor Xu Xin, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at Nanjing University (one of over half a dozen centers in China dedicated to studying Judaism) told me last week,” she wrote. “This logic — that the Jews are admired for their success despite their small numbers and historical oppression — has also led to a burgeoning industry of self-help books that use Jewish culture and the Talmud to preach business tips.”

 

Family, learning, respect for tradition, business acumen: these are Jewish traits that the Chinese also consider to be their virtues. All this is true as far as it goes. One might also mention that China never has had reason to view the Jews as competitors for legitimacy.

 

Christianity began as a Jewish sect and has vacillated between the claim that is has superseded Judaism and the view that it is a daughter religion that should honor its parent. Islam claims that Jews and Christians falsified the revelations given to them and that their scriptures are a perversion of God’s true message, which Mohammed restored to its original integrity. But by no stretch of the imagination could China view the Jews as a threat to the legitimacy of its civilization.

 

The Chinese, in short, have no reasons to dislike or fear the Jews, and a number of reasons to admire them simply because Jews display traits that Chinese admire among themselves. A Jew visiting China, though, senses an affinity with Chinese people, more than can be explained by the commonality of traits. There is a common attitude towards life, and especially toward adversity.

 

A Chinese friend explained it to me this way: If you suffer a setback, even if through no fault of your own, and even if through the malicious acts of malevolent people, you must not feel sorry for yourself or blame others for your troubles. It is you who must take responsibility for overcoming them. You are required to redouble your efforts and work all the harder. Perseverance in the face of adversity is something Jews understand very well. Through two millennia of exile in the West, Jews maintained an autonomous high culture while succeeding at the highest level within Western culture, often despite persecution.

 

Civilizations fail when they become despondent, when they lose confidence in their history and their future, when their citizens cease to feel pride in and draw inspiration from their culture. Somehow, for thousands of years, Jews and Chinese kept their confidence in their civilization and preserved it through war and foreign conquest. Surely that helps explain their present success. The confidence to redouble one’s efforts in the face of adversity, even malevolence, cannot be explained by simple stubbornness. The grit required to excel even when the game is rigged against you is not only a cultural trait, but the trait of a culture, that is, a personal characteristic that draws on a culture’s self-confidence.

 

It may seem odd to compare the largest of peoples with one of the world’s smallest, but Chinese and Jews have something in common that helps explain their success and longevity. That is the ability to rise above ethnic conflicts.

 

Tribal warfare is the bane of human society. During the 40,000 years before the dawn of civilization, some anthropologists estimate, two-fifths of males who survived infancy died in warfare. The great empires of the Near East and the West failed because they enslaved the peoples they conquered rather than integrate them. European Christianity offered a compromise: the ethnicities that occupied Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire would join a universal Church in the spirit, but keep their ethnic nature in the flesh. Ultimately the flesh overwhelmed the spirit, and ethnocentric nationalism provoked the terrible wars of the 20th century.

 

Chinese civilization offered a different model: it integrated innumerable ethnic minorities into a unified culture centered on a written language and literary tradition, and offered the opportunity for advancement to everyone who came under the umbrella of this culture. Unlike Rome, it did not enslave subject populations to work giant estates, but emphasized the extended family as the fundamental unit of society.

 

Unlike Christianity, where the unifying language of Europe (Latin) was understood by a tiny elite, Chinese culture propagated a unifying written language. Literacy in ancient China was extremely high in comparison to the ancient and medieval West, between 20% and 30% by most estimates. China still has 55 ethnic minorities and a wide variety of spoken languages. The only people with a higher literacy rate in the ancient world were the Jews, who began a program of compulsory universal education during the 1st century BCE.

 

What distinguishes Israel from all the other peoples of the ancient world west of the Indus River? Uniquely, the ancient Hebrews believed that their nation was defined not by ethnicity and geographic origin but rather by a code of practice given by divine mandate.

 

Jewish Scripture describes the founding father of the Jewish people, Abraham, as a wandering Babylonian summoned by the single Creator God to leave his homeland and come to a land–the present-day Israel–where his descendants would multiply and endure forever. The generation of his great-grandchildren migrated to Egypt, and their descendants were enslaved. God’s intervention freed the Hebrews from slavery, and gave them the Torah (“teachings”) at Mount Sinai, instructing them to conquer the future Land of Israel.

 

The Jews are not an ethnicity but a people defined by a partnership with the Creator God, in which they are obligated to recognize God’s presence in the details of their daily lives, and empowered to help in the work of creation. Individuals of all races can be adopted into this nation by accepting its responsibilities; in today’s State of Israel one sees hundreds of thousands of black African Jews from Ethiopia, as well as Jews of all ethnicities.

 

The Jews are not an ethnic nation but a multi-racial family. The Jews were the first people to apply the same laws to the foreigner as to the home-born. Indeed, they are commanded to love the stranger in the same way that they love themselves, because they were strangers in Egypt. It is a particular nation–indeed, a “nation apart”–that nonetheless has a universal purpose for all of humanity. The Jews are “the paragon and exemplar of a nation,” the German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig wrote a century ago.

 

The proof that Jewish nationhood has a universal mission is the founding of the United States of America–the most successful nation in history–by radical Protestants who sought to walk in the footsteps of ancient Israel and drew inspiration from the Jewish Bible and later Jewish commentators.

 

What the Jews have in common with the Chinese, therefore, is a sense of loyalty to an ancient tradition that defines the obligations of each member of society and puts the family at the center of social life, as opposed to a mere tribal and ethnic loyalties. These are parallel ways of rising above tribalism.

 

There is an enormous distinction, to be sure: the Jews believe that they were summoned into national existence by the one God, the Maker of Heaven, for whom the universe is like a suit of clothes which he will replace when it wears out (Psalm 92). For that reason they are obligated to bring the presence of God into everyday life, through laws of diet and family purity, prayer, and Sabbath observance.

 

The religious life of ancient Israel was centered in the Temple at Jerusalem. It was an institution revered in the ancient world. As Dore Gold writes:

The Temple service reflected the universalistic role envisioned for Jerusalem. In dedicating the Temple, King Solomon said that prayers would be offered there by “a foreigner who is not of your people Israel, but rather comes from a distant land.” In Isaiah, God described the Temple as “a house of prayer for all peoples” . . . sacrifices were regularly offered to promote peace for the entire world. . . . According to biblical law, non-Jews were in fact permitted to offer sacrifices at the Temple, a practice that became particularly widespread during the Second Temple period (512 BCE to 70 CE ). . . . It was also common for non-Jewish leaders to send gifts to the Temple throughout the Second Temple period. Darius, King of Persia, and even Augustus Caesar both did this. Undoubtedly because of the Temple, [the Roman historian] Pliny the Elder wrote that Jerusalem was the most famous city in the East.

Christianity resituated the holiness and authority of the Temple in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As Pope Benedict XVI explained, Jesus claimed for himself the qualities of the Temple (Matthew 12:5). After the Romans destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Christian variant of the Jewish idea gained support, and ultimately was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire.

 

But it was the standing of Judaism and its universal appeal in the ancient world that made Christianity possible in the first place. That explains why it is more difficult for Christianity to take hold in China today than in the ancient Mediterranean; without the living memory of the Temple at Jerusalem and the unique role of ancient Israel, Christianity becomes an abstraction rather than an extension of Israel’s living presence.

 

By replacing the Temple with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Christianity spiritualized Jewish practice. In place of the sacrifices of the Temple, belief in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and his subsequent resurrection became the center of Western religion. Christianity appealed to the tribes of Europe by offering them a place in a “new Israel” of the spirit, while retaining their ethnic identity in the flesh. The tragedy of Western Christianity is that the flesh overcame the spirit, and the tribalism of the European peoples ultimately destroyed the universal ties of Christian culture.

 

It is instructive to contrast today’s Europe with today’s China. Europe has achieved a limited degree of unification without, however, overcoming national resistance to a unified government. China by contrast contains fifty-five distinct ethnic minorities and numerous spoken languages within a single political system. Despite the occasional eruption of separatist tendencies, China is in little danger of reverting to a loose confederation of ethnicities.

 

For all its great accomplishments, the European project of the past thousand years has failed. The greatest achievement of the West is the creation of the United States of America, which selected immigrants from all nations in a new, non-ethnic polity defined by a Constitution inspired to a great extent by ancient Israel.

 

When Christianity failed to overcome the residual tribalism of the West, its universalizing message was replaced by relativism. The reigning dogma in the secular West now states that every ethnicity is entitled to its own “narrative” and that all cultures are equally valid in their own terms. Relativism refuses to consider the obvious fact that some cultures succeed while others fail miserably; it insists on the absolute right of self-definition and self-termination for every tribe.

 

This post-Christian ideology motivates many attacks on China in the West, and justifies Western support for breakaway movements in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other Chinese provinces. The same ideology justifies attacks on the State of Israel. Liberal relativists argue that Palestinian Arabs have the right to their own self-defining narrative, which regards the State of Israel as an alien intrusion in the Middle East-despite the thousands of years of Jewish history and the unbroken Jewish presence in the country over those thousands of years. The relativists demand that Israel abandon its character as a Jewish State, or at least give up so much land as to become indefensible.

 

The State of Israel was founded in one of the many population exchanges that occurred after World War II: about 700,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries, including the ancient community of Iraq that predated the Arabs, and about 700,000 Arab refugees left the State of Israel. Israel integrated the expelled Jews but the Arab countries refused to integrate the expelled Arabs, maintaining them instead as a permanent “refugee” population in token of their refusal to accept the historical rights of the Jewish people.

 

The Arab countries began three wars of aggression against Israel-in 1947, 1967, and 1973–but failed each time. In 1967, Israel retook the eastern half of its capital Jerusalem, the site of the ancient Temple. Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since the middle of the 19th century, and a continuous Jewish presence–with brief interruptions after expulsions by Roman and Christian conquerors–for more than 3,000 years.

 

The same perverse logic that denies Israel the right to live in its ancient homeland in secure borders with its ancient capital city is used to condemn China’s sovereignty over Xinjiang and Tibet, among other places. The supposed right of self-determination for “Uyghur culture” or “Tibetan culture” is opposed to China’s historic sovereignty over those territories. If this argument were extended to its logical conclusion, the great accomplishment of Chinese civilization–its genius for integrating many ethnicities into a unifying culture–is a wicked form of imperial impression.

 

This begs the question: why are Western liberals so obsessed with the putative right of the Palestinian Arabs to their own “narrative”? The answer, I believe, is that the Palestinian issue is the thin end of the wedge. In the West, Israel represents the ideal of a civilization that rises above ethnicity. The historic continuity of the Jewish people is the foundation for Christianity, which has faded as a universalizing civilization in Europe.

 

If Israel’s historic rights to its ancient homeland are compromised, and if Israel can be portrayed as an imperial aggressor that violates the self-definition of ethnic minorities, relativism will triumph over the principle of unifying civilization. Israel has enormous symbolic importance for the West.

 

Founded just 65 years ago, the modern Jewish state has become a pocket superpower in technology, business and the arts, as well as the strongest and most stable state in the Middle East. It is also the only industrial country with a fertility rate far above replacement. Not just in the abstract, but in its concrete manifestation in the modern State of Israel, Jewish nationhood remains “a paragon and exemplar of a nation.”

 

The ambitions of liberal relativism extend far beyond the Middle East. It is much easier to drive the thin end of the wedge into Israel, a nation of just 8 million people, than into China, a world power of 1.4 billion people. Precisely the same reasoning that proposes to carve up the State of Israel justifies ethnic separatism in China.

 

It is important to emphasize that this has nothing to do with the question of democracy in China. The Western liberals who support Tibetan separatism, for example, do not argue that Tibetans should have the right to vote in Chinese elections: they argue that Tibetans should have the right to restore the extremely undemocratic feudal system that prevailed before Tibet was integrated into China.

 

The instinctive affinity that Chinese feel for the Jewish people, therefore, is not a matter of happenstance. Nor is the fact that Chinese civilization and Jewish civilization have longer continuity than any other modes of human existence. Despite their great differences, they share a common purpose, to transcend tribalism through a unifying civilization. It should be no surprise that they have enemies in common.

Apartheid in Israel? Hardly. By Seth M. Siegel.

Apartheid in Israel? Hardly. By Seth M. Seigel. Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2014.

For Israel’s Arabs It Is Not Apartheid. By Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute, March 9, 2010.

A Jewish (therefore apartheid?) State. By Mark Lewis. Middle East Piece.

Lewis:

Knowing full well that Israel would exist as a Jewish state and even intending for it be so, the United Nations voted to create it. And yet, we still have to address complaints like freelance journalist Sherri Muzher’s: “How could anyone claim that Israel is not a racist state? It is even called the Jewish state of Israel.” A country being designated as Jewish is no more evidence of apartheid or racism than membership in the Arab League is evidence of apartheid or racism for any of its 22 member states, none of whom Muzher expresses any condemnation toward.

 

Muzher continues complaining that Israel “is a state for one religion,” apparently unaware of the Muslims, Christians, Bahais, Buddhists, Druze, and Hindus who freely practice religion there, and that “Unlike the United Kingdom, Greece, and Norway, Israel has no state religion . . .” Consistent with her previous hypocrisy of condemning the Jewish state as racist while giving 22 Arab states passes, she has nothing whatever to say about any of the 57 countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, or Catholic countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, and Venezuela, or Buddhist countries like Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, or Protestant countries like Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Liberia, and Norway, or even Hindu Nepal.

 

Nor does she, or like-minded complainants, seem to have a problem with the central role of race and religion in the pan-Arab and pan-Islamic ideologies punctuating Middle East politics. Why should the one, lone, Jewish country in the world be the focal point of so much racial controversy when other countries with names like the United Arab Emirates, Syrian Arab Republic, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Arab Republic of Egypt, Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, or the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan exist with impunity?

 

Just as hypocritical, though slightly more juvenile, comes the complaint that Israel’s flag embodies the state’s racism with its Jewish Star of David as the sole image. Presumably, the Jewish insignia exists not as a symbol of national pride, but to chase off gentiles similar to the effects of a crucifix on vampires. But neither Joseph Massad with Al-Ahram or the folks over at the Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid seem to be bothered by religious symbology elsewhere.

 

Their respective complaints (to pick but two examples among the critics who see fit to even refer to such a trivial grievance) are that “Israeli racism . . . manifests in its flag . . .” and that the “Israeli flag discriminates.” Even a cameo appearance of Egypt’s flag featuring the Golden Eagle of Saladin, Iran’s which has “Allahu Akbar” inscribed 22 times along with the Muslim proclamation “Laa ilaha ila Allah” and Muslim symbolism, or Iraq’s with “Allahu Akbar” in giant letters, or Saudi Arabia’s huge scimitar which represents the sword of jihad with the Muslim proclamation of faith hovering above, would have made for a more balanced critique. Any of the 12 flags with embroidered Islamic crescent moons would have been worth a mention as well. Or how about the dozens of flags proudly displaying the Christian cross in various sizes? Again, why is it that only when the lone Jewish state follows standard international practice does it become outrageous and deserving of condemnation?

 

All double standards aside, there should be nothing remarkable that a Jewish state caters to Jewish culture much like Arab states cater toward Arab culture, China caters towards Chinese, or Greece caters to Greeks. Contrary to the implication, one need not be a Jew to enjoy Israeli citizenship. Israel’s Proclamation of Independence enshrined “the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants” as well as ensuring the “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture . . .”


Racism: When Will We Face the Facts. By Sherri Muzher. Serendipity, [September 2001].

For Jews Only: Racism Inside Israel. Phyllis Bennis interviewed by Max Elbaum. ColorLines, December 15, 2000. Also here.

Is a two-state arrangement really fair and based on justice? By Phyllis Bennis. End the Occupation.

Bennis:

In the real world, historical injustices sometimes become permanent. They do not become just or fair because time passes or power consolidates, but some parts of them do remain. The massive historical injustice that led to the dispossession and near-extermination of Native Americans in the first three hundred years of what would become the United States is no less unjust now. But how that continuing injustice can be addressed did in fact change. In the year 1702 it might have been possible to legitimately advocate sending the European colonists back to Europe and returning all the land to the Native Americans; three hundred years later that is not possible. Combinations of national recognition, economic reparations, affirmative action, protection of remaining tribal-held lands, and more are the new demands of Native Americans.

 

Certainly the Palestinian case is different. At the beginning of the 21st century al-Nakba, the catastrophe, in which Palestinians lost their land was just over fifty years past. Many Palestinians, now in their sixties, seventies or eighties, remember fleeing their homes and still hold the keys to the door they long imagined re-entering. It is not something familiar only through history books or dusty engravings. However, history has moved much faster in the last half a century than in the many years before it. With the shifts of the twentieth century, Israel has been consolidated as a vibrant, highly technologically advanced, powerfully armed western-oriented society under the absolute protection of the United States.


Israel’s right to be racist. By Joseph Massad. Al Ahram Weekly, March 15-21, 2007.

Zionism and Israel Are Anti-Semitic. By Joseph Massad. NJBR, June 2, 2013. With related articles and video.

Egypt’s Quest for Itself. By Peter Harling and Yasser El Shimy.

Egypt’s Quest for Itself. By Peter Harling and Yasser El Shimy. Orient XXI, January 13, 2014.

Egypt’s transition is as contradictory and tempestuous as the current state of its society, and tells us much about it. What is still lacking is a sense of direction that could reassure both Egyptians and onlookers on where it is heading. Instead, a whirlwind of reversals, about-faces, and false starts has locked Egypt into a revolving cycle, if not a downward spiral.

Israel Needs Borders, Not Therapy. By Brent Sasley.

Israel needs borders, not therapy. By Brent Sasley. Haaretz, January 15, 2014.

Sasley:

The insistence that Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state is a Benjamin Netanyahu demand. Ariel Sharon hinted at it in the early 2000s, Ehud Olmert raised it as an issue in 2007, and others on the right and center-right have picked it up. But it is foremost a Bibi thing. To the extent that Netanyahu truly believes it is necessary for psychological comfort and to protect Israel’s Jewish identity, it is a valid issue to raise in peace talks.

 

The argument is that without formal recognition of Israel’s Jewish nature, Palestinians would continue to dismiss the Jews’ right to self-determination and would, therefore, continue to claim all of Israel for Palestine. But asserting that Israelis’ concerns might be eased because Mahmoud Abbas says so is questionable. Even more importantly, there are no legal or political mechanisms that can translate such recognition into protection against future claims. But there are legal and political mechanisms, as well as historical precedents, that can protect the State of Israel against claims on its territory—which is the real issue.

 

First, international law provides no basis for states demanding recognition of their identity. It’s true that some countries do insert their peoplehood into their founding documents (the Turkish constitution) or official names (Syrian Arab Republic), but that doesn’t mean states that formally recognize them also accept their dominant ethno-national identity.

 

External recognition is a necessary component of statehood and acceptance into the community of states. But it is of the state itself—its borders and its existence—not of its identity. It’s been pointed out that the Palestinian leadership has recognized the State of Israel several times already. International law exists to protect states, not the character of states.

 

Second, there’s nothing wrong with Palestinians believing that ancient Palestine-modern Israel is part of their historical identity. After all, Jews around the world are always going to believe that large parts of an eventual Palestinian state are part of their biblical-historical identity; for some it will always be part even of their birthright.

 

But in protracted conflicts, in which two peoples believe the same piece of land is an integral part of their identity, such demands must be subject to practical need rather than emotional desire in order to reach a resolution. And for the most part, governments recognize that needs are predominant. Plenty of groups living around the world feel attached to territories that were once part of their empire, homeland, or identity (think of Germany and Austria, France and Canada, or Serbia and Croatia). Most aren’t rising up to reclaim them.

 

Finally, it’s certainly true that political agreements are sometimes broken and irredentist and secessionist conflicts do break out. Armenia and Azerbaijan, Eritrea and Ethiopia, or Syria and Lebanon are good examples.

 

But the assumption that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is the way to block Palestinians from either thinking about further claims on Israel or actually pursuing them is wishful thinking. If the fear is that without it, Palestinians will eventually abrogate the treaty or simply try to get around the end-of-claims element of it, why should inserting a clause about Israel’s nature not also be subject to the same possibility? In the cases noted above, the common denominators allowing for ethno-national claims to be translated into action were unprotected borders, weak state institutions, and governments perceived by their publics as illegitimate.

 

Ending Palestinian claims requires three further elements to a formal political treaty: A strengthening of Palestinian governance and state institutions; a powerful Israeli security force; and the backing of the Arab League, the strongest countries in the world, and the United Nations. Inserting into an agreement the nature of Israel cannot compensate for these components.

 

Having said all that, if it’s true that John Kerry really is pushing recognition as a necessary part of the framework agreement, then it’s likely Washington won’t back away from it in the future.

 

The only way forward, then, is for the two sides to agree to a trade-off: Some implicit acknowledgment of Israel’s Jewish character in return for Israel’s acceptance of partial responsibility for the nakba. Neither recognition will prevent violence from breaking out, but if addressing both sides’ abstract, psychological needs is what it takes to finalize a deal, let it be done so the conflict can end.


Comment by Naomi | 15 Jan 2014 |09:32PM:

We will only recognise the Arab Nakba when Arabs recognise the Jewish Nakba.

When the Arabs say sorry for expelling and pillaging the homes & money of Mizrahi Jews, we may reciprocate. But until then, all is FAIR in love and war.

Israel’s Arabs: Not Zionists, But Israelis. By Leon Hadar.

Israel’s Arabs: Not Zionists, But Israelis. By Leon Hadar. The National Interest, January 15, 2014.

That is certainly no way to integrate Israeli Arabs into the workforce. By Meirav Arlosoroff. Haaretz, January 9, 2014.

Israeli Arabs Want to Remain in Israel. By David Lange (Aussie Dave). Israellycool, January 14, 2014.

Israel-Arabs Prefer to Remain Israelis, Despite FM Lieberman’s Call for Territory Swap. By Joshua Levitt. The Algemeiner, January 10, 2014.

Israeli Arabs: We Do Not Want to Live in Palestinian State. By Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute, January 6, 2014.

Arab Israelis describe how they want to remain Israeli. Video. elderofziyon2, January 8, 2014. YouTube.


Hadar:

If the tens of thousands of mostly Serb residents of northern Kosovo were asked whether they would like to see their region annexed to and become an integral part of Serbia or would prefer to remain part of Kosovo, there is little doubt that a huge majority of them would vote for joining the Serbian homeland instead of co-existing with the Albanian majority in the unitary state of Kosovo, and that the Serbian people would enthusiastically support the idea of annexing northern Kosovo to their state.

 

In fact, irredentism, the drive to annex territories and people governed by another state on the grounds of common national, ethnic, or religious ties even if means redrawing existing borders, has been a powerful force in world politics, with the most historically explosive case being the annexation of the German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in 1938.

 

So how does one explain the rejection by the majority of Israel’s Arab minority, as well as by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, of the proposal that some of the county’s Arab towns and villages near the border of the future Palestinian state be handed over to Palestine in exchange for parts of the West Bank where Jewish settlers live?

 

The plan applies to about 200,000 Israeli Arabs who live in the towns and villages along the 1967 cease-fire line (Green Line) between Jerusalem and Ramallah, also known as the Triangle.

 

While it is true that the proposal of land and population swaps with the PA has been advanced by one of Israel’s leading ultra-nationalist figures, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, it should not be dismissed as a merely reflection of a radical right wing agenda.

 

Lieberman, after all, has not called for the forced transfer or expulsion of Arabs out of Israel and he based it on the expectation that it would be part of a deal with the government of Palestine and not a unilateral move on the part of Israel.

 

Moreover, Arab citizens of Israel have been complaining for years that they feel they are treated as second-class citizens by a state that defines itself as Jewish and has national symbols, including the flag and the national anthem, that give expression to that unique form of identity that merges nationalist, religious, ethnic, and linguistic components, in the same way that Arab nationalism and to some extent the Muslim religion are central to the identity of the Palestinian people.

 

Indeed, Arab Israeli public figures, including a member of the Supreme Court and the Knesset (parliament) admitted that they do not sing the Israeli national anthem (“Hatikvah”) that recalls the historical longing of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, and according to opinion polls, 22 percent of Israeli Arabs define themselves strictly as Palestinians; 45 percent identify themselves as Palestinian Israelis; and only 32 percent defined themselves as Israeli Arabs.

 

But then the result of a poll conducted by the Dialogue also indicated that 79 percent of Israeli Arabs are satisfied with their life as citizens of Israel, and that 53 percent of them oppose any proposal for a land-swap between Israel and Palestine, with about 65 percent indicating that they reject the idea a new Palestinian state annexing their towns and villages in Israel (with the strongest opposition expressed by the Arab residents of the Triangle).

 

The city of Umm al-Fahm, which is located in the Triangle, published a statement after a meeting of the city council calling on PA negotiators to disregard Lieberman’s offer, underscoring that while Israeli Arabs consider themselves part of the Palestinian nation, they “are unwilling to act as pawns in the service of Lieberman and the Israeli right.” A survey conducted in July 2000 by the Arab-Israeli weekly Kul al-Arab among the residents of Umm al-Fahm, found that 83 percent of them opposed transferring their town to the PA.

 

One Israeli-Arab resident of Umm al-Fahm interviewed this month on Israel’s Channel 10 television channel explained that “I don’t want to be under [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas’ or the Palestinians’ rule. I want to stay here under Israeli rule,” explaining that he considered himself to be “a Palestinian, but also an Israeli.” An Arab woman shopping in a mall interviewed by Channel 10 said, “We love Israel. We love living in Israel. Our whole life is in Israel. We don’t want to live with the Palestinians and have nothing in Palestine.”

 

Lieberman has insisted that without territorial and population swaps, he does not intend to support any deal reached between the Israelis and Palestinians that could emerge out of the current negotiations conducted under American diplomatic auspices.

 

But it is also important to recall that similar population swaps were already proposed in previous peace negotiations and were dismissed by both Palestinians and Israelis as impractical, since Arab Israeli citizens could appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court if and when such a plan would be approved by the Israeli government and the court could support their petition, and at the minimum, would probably debate it for months if not years.

 

But the hostile response by so many Israeli Arabs to the idea of being annexed by a future Palestinian state and their determination to remain an integral part of the State of Israel despite the political and economic problems involved in their integration into a Jewish State whose national identity they do not share, may be a sign that they prefer the relative political and economic freedom they enjoy in a western society like Israel over a future in what even under the best case scenario would be an Arab state with third-world living standards and emergent democratic institutions.

 

“We are proud of our Arab-Palestinian identity but we are citizens of Israel, where we work here, and here we will die,” said Maazan Gaanim, the mayor of the Arab town of Sahnin in the Galilee in a recent interview with Haaretz. “Talk with us about social justice and building trust instead of [land swaps]. I bet you that not even one Arab Israeli is planning to move [to Palestine].”

The Twilight of Sykes-Picot. By Mark Donig.

The Twilight of Sykes-Picot. By Mark Doing. The National Interest, January 16, 2014.

U.S. Making Things Worse in the Middle East. By Fareed Zakaria. Washington Post, January 16, 2014. Also here.


Doing:

Before our eyes, the Levant region of the Middle East is coming undone. With the U.S. looking to avoid entanglement rather than engage with this fraught region, the consequences may be as irreversible as they are dangerous.

 

Bombs are rocking Beirut. Syria is ripping at the seams. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has in its crosshairs the Fallujah area of al-Anbar, which the U.S. surge of 2007 was designed to protect. Jordan continues to teeter. Sectarianism is once again rising up against nationalism in the Middle East. But this time, sectarianism is winning.

 

Today, what ties the violence in these Levantine nations together is precisely that the nations themselves are tearing apart along sectarian lines. If no internal or external forces stop the trend, multiple statelets will emerge where single nations once stood. Rather than wish Sykes-Picot’s downfall away, Washington would be wise to prepare for this increasingly likely scenario by gearing up for the challenges and opportunities likely to emerge in its wake.

 

In order to address the Levant’s disintegration, it is necessary to properly diagnose the violence’s roots. Until World War I, the region was administered under the Ottoman Empire as a series of provinces whose borders roughly ran along ethnic, religious and sectarian lines. In 1916, as the Ottoman Empire fell, the British and French powers divided the region among themselves, drawing new borders that fit their own geostrategic interests, with little regard for the disparate identities of each new states’ citizens. Hence, states like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and TransJordan (now Jordan) came into being for the first time in history.

 

Consequently, despite being forced together over the past century through artificial borders without historical antecedent, Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Shias and Alawis have never truly shared a sense of common fate. Instead, the British and French-drawn Sykes-Picot lines have been preserved through a combination of foreign military presences – with the U.S. leading the way since the end of the Cold War – and ruthless autocrats who propped up one sect while dominating others through fear.

 

But now, both of these ingredients have been removed. In the wake of a disastrous Iraq War and a still-recovering economy at home, Washington is bent on ending its current military campaigns in the Middle East, not starting new ones. Furthermore, Arab Uprisings have removed the hammer of fear from the Middle East dictator’s toolbox, and discriminated minorities have begun to take up arms alongside jihadist groups against their oppressors. The West’s diminished political appetite and economic means to compel through military actions or engage in pluralistic nation building, combined with this loss of fear, mean that the Arab Spring is also Sykes-Picot’s Autumn. The borders that have for a century comprised Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq (and perhaps even Jordan) may not be much longer for this world.

 

Are there benefits to the end of Sykes-Picot in the Levant? Theoretically, yes. New borders may provide new opportunities for long-oppressed peoples to finally gain autonomy. For instance, this may be the moment for the Kurds of Iraq, Syria and Turkey to finally form their own nation-state, offering them the self-determination they have long sought. Furthermore, Syria’s splintering would deal a blow to Iran, which relies on Bashar al-Assad’s service as willing intermediary for weapons and money shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

 

But the creation of myriad new statelets in an already unstable region is fraught with risks. Syria has amassed chemical weapons stored in dozens of areas across the country. Now imagine an Al Qaeda-run state in central and northern Syria sitting atop a vast arsenal of such weapons. Or a Sunni jihadi western Iraq lording over critical oil pipelines, bordered by a Shia eastern Iraq that controls major reserves and sits squarely in Iran’s sphere of influence. Or an entirely sovereign Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The Levant’s current state and the West’s desire to disentangle itself from the region mean that these nightmare scenarios are increasingly likely.

 

Given the implications of Sykes-Picot’s demise, Washington would be wise to devise a three-pronged strategy aimed at ensuring that Syria disposes of its chemical weapons as quickly as possible, empowering Sunni moderates to prevent jihadi-controlled statelets, and reducing our strategic dependence on Middle Eastern oil by investing heavily in alternative transportation fuels. Surely, the Obama administration’s primary regional goals of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon and forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord are noble and strategically important. But these aims must be matched with an equal sense of urgency toward a Levant that is falling apart; for Sykes-Picot’s autumn, like Iranian nukes and Israeli-Palestinian strife, presents critical national security risks for the United States.

 

The U.S. is understandably reticent, given our experience in Iraq and our need to present a plausible military option against Iran, to stretch ourselves too thin. But policymakers must understand that just as there is a cost for overinvolvement, there is also a price for remaining aloof. Washington cannot midwife every transition in the Middle East; our experience should caution us against such hubris. But if we do not seek a comprehensive strategy to forge the Levant we wish to see, the one that emerges in its stead may come back to haunt us.

Sir Hew Strachan: Obama Is Clueless About “What He Wants to Do In the World.” By Nico Hines.

Senior UK Defense Advisor: Obama Is Clueless About “What He Wants to Do In the World.” By Nico Hines. The Daily Beast, January 15, 2014.

Sir Hew Strachan, an expert on the history of war, says that the president’s strategic failures in Afghanistan and Syria have crippled America’s position in the world.