Augean Stables

Efraim Inbar wrote an article for the Jerusalem Post at the beginning of May which bears close consideration.

What went wrong?

Jerusalem Post, April 2, 2006.

The recently published study “The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” by two important professors of international relations, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, blames the Jews for pushing the US foreign policy into the wrong direction at great cost to Washington. The researchers portray themselves as “realists” whose cold analysis has only the national interests of America at heart.

The main thrust of the argument is easily refutable. The two professors are clearly wrong in their ascription of US support for Israel to the machinations of the Israeli lobby.

All polls show consistent support for Israel over many years on the part of a large majority of Americans from all walks of life, and most of them were never exposed to the Israeli lobby. Americans like Israel for what it is: a vibrant and embattled democratic society, which is a natural ally for the US. The proposition that the US would be better off by not lending its support to Israel betrays ignorance of what the Middle East really is, and of the real causes of anti-Americanism in the region. The negative attitudes towards the US and the West are deeply rooted in Arab and Muslim culture and have little to do with American aid to Israel.

In reality, the case for supporting Israel as an important strategic ally due to its strategic location and political stability, as well as its technological and military assets, is almost self evident. Methodologically, it is strange to see realists, whose powerful intellectual paradigm relates little importance to domestic politics, ascribe such a powerful role to any lobby.

To put it slightly differently, the power of the Israel Lobby lies not in its money (Arabs have much more) or its numbers (there are already many more Muslims in the USA than Jews, and Jews don’t vote in a block for pro-Israel candidates), but on the compelling logic of the case, on the deep similarities in values and commitments between Israelis and Americans. Not only is Israel the only reliable ally in the Middle East (something W-M seem to have no clue about), but it is America’s only ally not subject to the politics of resentment.

As to the bizarre anomaly of “realists” ascribing importance to domestic lobbies, I believe that Noam Chomsky has weighed in against the W-M thesis on just that basis.

But the methodological anomaly is important — as Imbar explores below. It signals a deep level of self-contradiction in the paper. On the simplest level, the paper is based on the astounding “realist” notion that Arab allies are as good as Israel (and far wealthier and more powerful), and therefore since it makes more “sense” to ally with them, only the nefarious impact of some mysteriously effective “lobby” can explain how US foreign policy could be so far out of wack. As I’ve noted before: this is the basis of French (and more broadly European) foreign policy, the heart of the Eurabian “deal.” If the shape of Europe isn’t enough evidence against such foolishness, I don’t know what is.

However, despite its shallow analysis and the probable desire of the authors to be provocative and take the spotlight, it would be a mistake to ignore the Mearsheimer-Walt paper. This study is not just the result of the frustration experienced by senior academics when their advice against going to war in Iraq went unheeded. The Mersheimer-Walt study is serious because it is symptomatic of the mood in many intellectual circles in the West. Its value judgments are a great source of concern.

These researchers and others have stopped seeing Israel as morally superior to its foes. Unfortunately for Israel, Palestinian interpretation of the conflict is increasingly gaining credibility in the West. Israeli new historians, whose publications were quoted in the Mearsheimer-Walt study despite their poor scholarship, also provide ammunition to the Palestinian case. For many, Israel has become the culprit in the Arab-Israeli conflict. While Israel still has strong bastions of public support, public opinion in most Western countries - America is a clear exception - has shifted in the past decades and is critical of Israel, often taking the Palestinian side.

This is a good a description of the long-range influence of Pallywood, and particularly the impact of Al Durah. It bespeaks the enormous impact that media, especially systematically inaccurate media can have on our thinking.

There is a long-range danger in the emergence of an international consensus questioning the legitimacy of Israel. A new Zeitgeist, which accepts the position that Israel was born in sin, and blames its behavior for the subsequent negative regional repercussions, would make Israel’s elimination expedient - indeed even morally acceptable – to Western regional interests.

And of course the obverse of this is the role of Anti-Zionism as cultural AIDS. As long as you see Israel as the Middle Eastern villain, with all the implications of a reasonable but unjustly treated Arab world as the victim of Israeli perfidy, you’ll come up with the lame and self-destructive foreign policy thinking of W-M, dupes to demopaths, wandering blindly through the straights of Scylla and Charybdis.

Israel is a strong state, but because it is a small country it is more dependent for its well-being than large powers on the vagaries of the international community. Becoming a pariah state is dangerous.

To some extent, Israel itself is at fault for the change in attitudes. Israel bailed out the PLO from its crisis, and brought Yasser Arafat from Tunis to the lawn of the White House in 1993, bestowing unprecedented legitimacy upon him and his cause. Israel’s reluctance to remove the mask of the corrupt and authoritarian PLO leader, who turned a blind eye to terror, allowed the Palestinians to deny their blatant violations of the “peace process.” In fact, its continuation was contingent largely upon Israeli self-delusion.

The frequent references to the casualties of Palestinian terror as the “sacrifices for peace,” helped Arafat hide Palestinian cruelty and cynicism. Portraying the Palestinians as reasonable partners for peace, rather than a society mesmerized by violence, united by abysmal hatred towards Jews, and largely partner to widespread Arab anti-Western sentiments, undermined Israel’s case.

At home, Israel’s undue tolerance of organizations that side with the Palestinians and obstruct Israel’s war effort has played a role in the deterioration of Israel’s moral standing. For example, while various organizations encourage draft-dodging and accuse IDF officers of being war criminals (causing great public relations damage as well as violating Israel’s penal code), the authorities are reluctant to bring such groups to court.

In addition, an education system that exposes the Israeli student to the fabrications of the new historians has undermined the main asset of Israeli society: conviction of the justice of the Zionist cause.

This whole process has been analyzed well by Kenneth Levin in The Oslo Syndrome. And it’s not uniquely Israeli, rather it’s part of a wider pattern of liberal cognitive egocentrism in the grip of an aggressive form of political correctness. It’s a kind of “moral perfectionism” that the Jews have historically excelled at — prophets blaming Israel for being conquered by nasty imperialist regimes like the Assyrians, Babylonians, etc. — and now permeates a wide range of thinking, notable for its foolish inability to appreciate the time for such moral perfectionism and the time to gather stones together.

Israel has to recapture the upper moral ground in its conflict with the Palestinians. With a Hamas-led PA in power the task is easier; but Jerusalem needs clarity of purpose and a sophisticated strategy, as well as determination and resources, to help the enlightened world appreciate that we are fighting the bad guys.

The writer is professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.

Okay, but what does that last paragraph on the agenda mean? Part of the problem is that merely stating the obvious — the immense moral gap between Arab/Muslim/Palestinian commitment to the values of justice, fairness, civil rights, tolerance, etc. and the Israelis — does not work very well.

Even pointing out to people that in their anti-Zionism they are contributing to their own self destruction has limited effect.

Part of the answer, I think, lies in making clear to people what’s at work in the culturally rare (but in civil society over-abundant) trait of self-criticism. When Israeli “post-Zionists” self-criticize, they manifest, perhaps in pathological quantities, this very rare ability to listen to the outside voices, to accept responsibility, to introspect. This takes maturity and emotional courage, especially when done in public. For people to interpret the work of these men as a blot on Israeli claims to moral superiority when, in fact, they illustrate the immense gap between Israel’s mature and self-critical culture and the demonizing and scapegoating reflexes of Palestinian society, is a colossal mistake.

Part lies in a deep analysis of the psychological resistance to serious moral reasoning… scapegoating (sorry LB), moral Schadenfreude, the roots of moral envy and the politics of resentment.

Part lies in an ability to keep a compass when people seem to have gone morally mad.

Patience, however, may not be a virtue we can afford.

Joel Fishman writes in Makor Rishon:

Joel Fishman
Makor Rishon
21 April 2006

Twentieth-Century Turmoil and the Iran Nuclear Crisis

From time to time, people have asked if the study of the past is relevant and if practical lessons can be learned from specific historical precedents. There is a certain consistency in human behavior and in that of societies in the context of tradition, interaction with their neighbors and geographical realities. Therefore, in certain instances, the study of the past may offer information helpful to policy-makers. Similarly, a systems analyst endeavors to identify things that can go wrong in a business and industrial setting, suggests a range of outcomes, and offers the means of dealing with uncertainty and its consequences. An historian does the same, using the historical method. However, it is necessary to bear in mind that “the study of the past provides no answers unless questions are first asked.”

[and the better the questions, the better the answers… RL]

Our question is: what insights can the examination of historical precedents offer in the case of the present Iranian nuclear crisis? There are two types of answers: 1) One with regard to the dynamic of illegal rearmaments following the precedent of Nazi Germany in the early thirties, and, 2) The stakes involved in the event that Iran should succeed. Who would benefit most from an Iranian success and at what cost to others?

Leopold Schwarzschild, a German Jewish journalist who fled Germany in 1933 when Hitler came to power, lived in Paris until the summer of 1940 when he emigrated to England. In 1943, he published a book entitled, World in Trance, which described the interwar period, particularly Germany’s preparations for war during the Weimar and Nazi eras. One of Schwarzschild’s most valuable insights was that during the process of rearming Germany experienced a state of acute vulnerability which offered a brief but unparalleled opportunity to those who wished to stop Germany, if only they only had the will to do so. He described the situation just after Hitler’s rise to power, as follows:

No gift of prophecy was needed to see this [the official policy of going to war], no genius needed to understand its implications. Germany would now begin to arm as fast as possible, because the first stages of rearmament would be the dangerous period. A certain amount of time was required to make her newly emerging mass army capable of putting up a serious fight. This period was also the period of reprieve for Germany’s opponents, their last opportunity to stop her. It could be done only by force, certainly not by words or pieces of paper, but still without any real bloodshed….

The game for both sides was simple. For Germany and the other powers there was only one question: Would Germany be permitted to go through the period of military weakness unmolested? Or would she be forced to abandon her fatal path?

Despite current Western abhorrence of fascism and war, it should be remembered that certain leaders view Nazi Germany as a model for emulation and the use of war as a legitimate tool of state policy. We may observe that the case of Nazi Germany would serve as the classical model for any state intending to rearm illegally. It is more than likely that Iran has been following the model of Nazi Germany, so our appreciation of this historical precedent is all the more valuable. In the light of the above, it is possible that Iran’s loud threats of retaliation in the event of outside intervention are a calculated bluff, whose purpose is to win time and divert attention from its current weakness. Furthermore, in light of Iranian goals and determination to achieve them, any American “diplomatic package” or a “Grand Bargain,” as in the case with North Korea, will not be effective. “Words and pieces of paper” will not solve this problem.

If we look at the broader historical significance of issue, it is not entirely coincidental that both Russia and China, who have been selling Iran nuclear technology and material, are interested parties in the outcome of this dispute. Both are members of the Security Council who possess veto power and have supported Iran’s challenge to the mechanism of non-proliferation. Although major changes have taken place in the former Soviet Union since 1988 and the Soviet empire has ceased to exist in its traditional form, Russia’s policy has shown a remarkable continuity over the decades. The KGB, its ruling political elite has kept its grip on the levers of power in a manner similar to that of the German General Staff during the Weimar era.

A long-standing objective of Russian policy – which coincides with that of Iran – has been to eradicate the American political, military, and economic presence in Iran and to make its weight felt generally in the region. Thus, selling nuclear know-how and conventional weapons to Iran has become an effective and profitable means of pursuing this objective. A secondary, but considerably important objective which dates back to Lenin is the Russian desire to destabilize and undermine the Western and European orientation of the world state system, which, from 1815 to the First World War, generally succeeded in maintaining a condition of order and equilibrium. According to the Princeton Sovietologist, Robert C. Tucker, “The basic fact of contemporary history to which the new ‘Eastern orientation’ in the Russian communist mind and the new post-Marxian working theory corresponded was the collapse of the Europe-centered international order in and after World War I. As this working theory saw from the beginning, the defection of Soviet Russia from the European system [during the First World War] signalized most dramatically and consequentially the collapse of the old order.”

It should be remembered that the Soviet Union, which was relatively weaker than the United States, adopted an indirect strategy of engaging in a “prolonged conflict” against the West which became known as the Cold War. The type of asymmetrical warfare included waging wars and staging confrontations simultaneously in different parts of the world and endeavoring to weaken its adversaries from within.

One of the main Soviet methods was using proxies, which permitted denial of direct responsibility for its actions and their consequences. It is noteworthy that Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reportedly studied at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, the Communist Party’s elite school for revolutionaries. In the present case, Russian support for Iran has been understated and covert, because Iran is a state, as opposed to a revolutionary movement, and the degree of “deniability” is limited. This is one of the risks which Russia must minimize and which exposes it to considerable vulnerability.

In light of the most obvious historical precedent and of a wider international perspective, it is clear that there are several important questions at hand: 1) Will Iran succeed in arming illegally? 2) Will the world allow it to do so at Iran’s moment of maximum vulnerability? 3) What will be the ultimate effects of Iran breaking out of the international system? The consequences of the first two are clear enough, but the effects of the third are less obvious. If the international community cannot enforce the existing nuclear non-proliferation agreements, and two of its strongest members undermine this effort, it is more than likely that the United Nations, which has not distinguished itself, will go the way of the League of Nations. Fear and terror will become the governing principles of the new order, replacing the fabric of the international relations based on law and trust. As Lenin hoped at the beginning of the twentieth century, the center of gravity of international relations in their new form will move from the Occident to the Orient. If enlightened leaders find this prospect unacceptable, they will have to act effectively and soon.

Dr. Joel S. Fishman is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Comments (RL)

This analysis recoups the one I’ve been laying out in terms of “waking up.” In the case of Iran, not only do we have the problems of defecting “allies” like USSR and China, but also the warping impact of Bush/American Derangement Syndrome. People are so worked up about Bush lying to us to get us into Iraq, than any argument about intervening in Iran is immediately met with scorn and fury.

As a result of the massive European objection to Western troops in Iraq, there’s no chance of doing anything in Iran, no matter how indicated it might be. Now, those with BDS can say, “that’s all Bush’s fault, blame him.” And those of us who may not like Bush but are not deranged by a self-destructive desire to see him humiliated, say, “it’s at least as much Europe’s fault for wishing failure on this enterprise.”

But that still doesn’t help us to attack the problem. One of the USSR’s great advantages in the Cold War was countries like France who, pursuing their own grandeur, were only too happy to do things that harmed the colossus they so resented, the USA. As I’ve said before at this site, I’m not sure we can afford such politics of resentment this time around.

As for the decline of the UN, I know many people who, filled with indignation at the way the the Anti-Zionist agenda has kidnapped UN deliberations and made it a by-word for moral insanity, and for corruption and hypocrisy, would be only too happy to see the institution fail. That, in my estimation, would be a kind of UN Derangement Syndrome. Those historians who know how long and hard visionaries fought to have an institution where wars could be avoided by serious dialogue before a world community of nations committed to treating each other fairly, understand how dangerous its failure might be.

It would, to take liberties with Joel Fishman’s analysis and jump to an implied conclusion, unleash the dogs of war. Once unleashed, no one can control how wild and long they may rage.

Steven Emerson reports on a demonstration of the Islamic Thinkers Society in front of the Israeli consulate in NYC. The website is classic “civil society”:

Our struggle is always intellectual & political non-violent means.

The slogans chanted tear aside any mask of civility.

Zionists, Zionists You will pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
Israeli Zionists You shall pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real Holocaust is on its way!

We are not your average Muslims, We are the Muslims of Was al Sunnah

We will not accept the United Nations, they are the criminals themselves
They get paid by the Israeli and the US government to do their job.
We don’t recognize United Nations as a body
We only recognize Allah

Israel won’t last long… Indeed, Allah will repeat the Holocaust right on the soil of Israel
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!

* * *
No wonder they call you sons of apes and pigs because that’s what you are.

We know many government services are watching us
Such as the FBI…CIA…Mossad, Homeland Security…
We know we are getting on their nerves
And so are you….
So we say the hell with you!
May the FBI burn in Hell
CIA burn in Hell
Mossad burn in Hell
Homeland Security burn in hell!!

Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution
Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution [editor’s note — purely by non-violent means of course!]
Takbeer!
La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur Rasool Allah

Another mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel!
Takbeer!! Allahu Akbar!

Dan Pipes wonders if this might not be salutary in waking people up to the real agenda behind their previously civil facade. It seems to be a race between the cognitive egocentrism of the liberals who refuse to believe any American Muslims could really be this base, and the triumphalism of Islamists who, encouraged by the slowness of Americans to realize what they’re up to, start to speak more freely.

The real problem for the West is: how do we wake up to the danger without becoming fascists? And the time constraint is, the longer we take to wake up, the more likely we will fall into fascism when we do. Right now, the politically correct view that insists on seeing the best, no matter how unrealistic, actually makes the situation much worse.

At Pennsylvania State University, a serious case of politically correct suppression of free speech emerges. According to an Article by Jessica Remitz in the PSU’s Digital Collegian, the University has decided to cancel an exhibit by Joshua Stulman on terrorism because the exhibit:

“did not promote cultural diversity” or “opportunities for democratic dialogue”

Such logic, despite Stulman’s claim not to understand, is fairly clear.

Cultural Diversity — By criticizing Palestinian terrorism, Stulman showed his cultural imperialism, since by more diverse cultural standards, one could call these folks “freedom fighters,” or, with a bit less cognitive egocentrism, “martyrs for Jihad.” Who are we to impose our cultural uniformity on these people, and their countless supporters in Palestinian and Arab culture? (Answer, for those who might be confused here… we shouldn’t.) Such an exhibit, by criticizing Palestinians for siding with suicide terrorists, was implicitly if not explicitly aggressive and negated their culture.

Opportunities for democratic dialogue — here we slip over into the realm of Newspeak. The phrase means one cannot hope to dialogue with Muslims if one puts them on the defensive. To promote democratic (presumably understood as inclusive) dialogue one needs to be more open and less critical.

The professor from the Department of Visual Arts who cancelled the exhibit explained that Stulman’s controversial images did not mesh with the university’s educational mission:

The decision to cancel the exhibit came after reviewing Penn State’s Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment and Penn State’s Zero Tolerance Policy for Hate, he wrote.

In other words, for those still too thick to understand, to promote outrage and rejection of Arab Muslim practices (like suicide terrorism!) is actually a form of hate-speech because it encourages people to dislike this culture.

Sensing this implied concern about hate-speech, Stulman commented:

“It’s not about hate. I don’t hate Muslims. This is not about Islam,” Stulman said. “This is about terrorism impacting the Palestinian way of life and Israel way of life.”

This reminds me of when David Cook first submitted his manuscript on Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature for publication, two of the three readers recommended against publication since the book constituted “hate speech.”

Now it’s not that the book is not abouthate speech. Indeed, Cook remarked that every day he worked on this literature he felt like he needed to take a bath to wash off the relentless hatred that he encountered on every page. What they really meant was that the book chronicled such vicious hate speech on the part of Muslim thinkers that readers would be strongly influenced towards a dislike of Muslims — and certainly the kinds who join organizations like Hamas, Hizbullah, al Quaeda and Islamic Jihad.

Thus to preserve “cultural diversity” and to prevent the reading public from experiencing such negative feelings, these enlightened scholars, much like the administrators at PSU, feel that they should protect us and the potential objects of our disapproval. In so doing they make a category error. To denounce as hate speech that which reveals the presence of hate speech is like arresting the fireman and letting the pyromaniac escape.

This is also, as one of my students suggested to me last week, a form of left-wing fascism, a manipulation of the public that arrogates to itself the right to make up our own minds for us on what we should be exposed to and what we should feel. And it certainly reflects the kinds of problems that plague the MSM right now in their decisions on what we should see, and how to frame it. As one media mogul put it during the Frantifada last November:

“Politics in France is heading to the right and I don’t want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television,” says M. Dassier, owner of France1 TV.”

But, you might ask, this is the exact opposite of decisions made to allow certain forms of hate speech to flourish, as in the case of the Swedes and the imam of Stockholm. Isn’t that the opposite effect? And if so, why does it so often seem that the voice being strangled for the sake of keeping hate speech down is the voice pointing out the existence of the hate speech?

The article gives us a clue.

Stulman said advertisements for the event were defaced in the Patterson and School of Visual Arts buildings, one of which had a large swastika on it.

Stulman, who is Jewish, said he felt threatened and abused by the Nazi symbol and is concerned for his artwork and his personal well-being.

How much of this sudden and mysterious change of heart of the administration comes from aggressive Muslims students, angry at the negative exposure this exhibit might give to causes they hold dear to heart, invoking the “zero-tolerance for hate speech” clause even as they threaten violence if they don’t get their way?

And how much of the appeal to the law reflects a strategy of invoking laws they have contempt for (no sign here of denouncing hate speech among the suicide terrorists), thus creating a climate in which they can continue to spread their hate unopposed?

And how much of the reaction of Professor Garoian represents a real (if quite foolish) moral confusion and how much just plain cowardice?

Update.

Another article, presumably by someone who’s not a close friend of Stulman’s, in the CentreDaily finally gives us an idea of what the Nazi symbolism is:

In one of Stulman’s paintings, an Arab-looking man is extending his right arm in a Nazi salute. On his headgear is written type in Arabic, translated as “I am a murderer.” The colors of the painting match the colors of the Palestinian flag: red, black, white and green.

It is meant to shock and challenge, but it is not an anti-Muslim statement, Stulman said. The painting is to show “the appropriation of Nazi symbols and its use in Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” he said.

“This is a terrorist, and I think anyone who sees this painting will see a terrorist,” he said.

I still don’t know what’s going on here. But I do know, for example, that Mein Kampf is a hot item in both the Arab World and in Palestinian circles from before 2000; that in our Pallywood movie there’s a sequence near the beginning where the Palestinians unfurl a Nazi flag, and it’s hard to imagine that they’re doing this to say “The Israelis are Nazis”; that one of the members of the Hamas party team, known affectionately as “Hitler,” won by a landslide in the most recent elections.

I could go on and on. I am personally not inclined to play the Nazi card, but I will not have people pretend that somehow it’s as shocking to have the Israelis call the Palestinians Nazis, as vice-versa. That’s the worst kind of moral-relativist even-handedness. It’s the kind of sloppy thinking that has us in such bad shape.

Saudis to transfer $92 million to Palestinian Authority:

Today’s Globe has an editorial on the violence embodied in the suicide terrorism of yesterday’s attack in Tel Aviv. See Squaring the Globe for an analysis of the full range of the Globe’s mishandling of the incident. My specific interest is in a curious sentence imbedded in an effort to explain the “cycle of violence” from the angle of honor-shame culture.

It is in the nature of a vendetta that both sides try to justify as retaliation acts that otherwise would stand as sheer murder. The code of the blood feud assumes that every member of the enemy’s camp may be slain in the name of avenging the honor of one’s own clan, tribe, or nation. Whether innocent civilians are murdered by states, by their proxies, or by stateless terrorist groups, the threat is the same. The murders rip away at the civilized conventions that protect the innocent.

The editorial then goes on to urge Israel not to retaliate since that would lead to still further bloodshed:

The worst response to yesterday’s bombing in Tel Aviv would be to accede to the regressive rules of a vendetta. The crime must be denounced — as it was by governments around the world, by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Those who boasted of the crime or rationalized it as resistance to Israeli aggression — as did Islamic Jihad, the Hamas movement that now governs the Palestinian Authority, and Iran — must also be denounced as murderers or accessories to murder.

Having called for such verbal adherence to the code of civil society, the Globe then goes on to present its solution to the cycle of vendetta violence:

Nevertheless, the only way to prevent a descent into the inferno of a vendetta is to pursue a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. In the near term, this means that Israel, the United States, and the European Union should not cut off humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. An economic blockade of the Palestinian people is almost certain to magnify the rage and despair that the terrorist factions feed upon.

Etc. I’m sure most readers can imagine the final paragraphs… ending in:

If there is no progress toward a negotiated peace, there will be regression toward the barbarism of the vendetta.

Since I am teaching a course on honor-shame this semester, and part of it focuses not only on the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also on the lack of the use of honor-shame culture as an analytic tool in understanding the conflict, I must applaud the Globe’s effort to bring this kind of consideration to bear in their analysis.

But even if they get an A for effort, they get an F for product.

1) Both sides do not engage in the “vendetta” mentality. Anyone attentive to the discourse in Israel knows that even the slightest hint of behavior that sounds like revenge rather than preventive retaliation provokes howls of opposition from the press and talking heads. And anyone who compares the retaliation of the Israelis with the retaliations of the Palestinians (especially given the disparity of means of violence) knows the asymmetries of this conflict. On the contrary, if Israel were to engage in the kind of vendetta behavior characteristic of the Palestinians (two eyes for one, indiscriminate killing of civilians in retaliation for targetted killings of terrorists), then a) the conflict would have long been over, and b) the Palestinians would have some justification in accusing the Israelis of ethnic cleansing. To try and pin vendetta mentality on the Israelis is a classic case of even-handedness (a variant of moral equivalence), in which one dares not criticize the Palestinians without also criticizing the Israelis… lest one be accused of “taking sides.”

2) It is most decidedly not in the nature of vendetta to view anyone on the other side as a legitimate target. No honorable man engaged in a vendetta attacks women and children, and the rules of vendetta are quite strict about the acceptable proportions of retaliation. The Palestinian behavior embodied in suicide terrorism does not adhere in any way to the honor-code of vendetta, but rather represents a pathological form of behavior driven not by honor but by a rage at unbearable humiliation. This pathological behavior links up with some of the worst kinds of genocidal holy-war ideologies to produce attacks on civilians like the one the Globe editorial is supposedly trying to understand. So double error: misrepresenting pathological Palestinian vendetta behavior as the norm, and then trying to pin that norm on “both sides” when even the norm doesn’t apply to Israelis.

3) The Globe’s predictable solution: more negotiations and (you guessed it) don’t stop aid to the poor Palestinian people. I won’t go into a lengthy analysis of what’s wrong here. For those who want some background, consult our discussion of the Politically Correct (Globe) paradigm vs. the Honor-Shame Jihad Paradigm. What the folks at the Globe still don’t seem to get is that when you try to push negotiations between a pathologically demonizing honor-shame culture and a pathologically self-critical integrity-guilt culture, you get the kinds of back-firing that Oslo brought us, and that multi-cultural Europe is bringing us.

But to figure that out, the Globe’s editors would have to get at least a C+ in honor-shame culture. And given their learning curve as evidenced by their still pushing negotiations after the devastating results of that policy with the Oslo process, I’m not holding my breath.

It seems that the gay community in Iraq wants Saddam back:

In response to my posting about Honor-Shame culture and a Boston Globe editorial, Lawrence Barnes, regular commentator and skeptic about the value of the “honor-shame abstraction” posted a long and critical comment. Here is my response. [LB in block quotes, me in italics.]

I confess to confusion. It begins with my skepticism regarding the utility of the honor-shame abstraction (detailed elsewhere on this site), and continues with my embarrassing failure to grasp the point Mr. Forbes is making.

It seems to me as if perhaps Mr. F. refers to the mass murder policy of Nazi Germany; if so — and of course I could be wrong here — he seems to suggest that some overwhelming humiliation lies behind the death camps. Let me follow that possibility for a moment.

Was Germany humiliated by the Jews, homosexuals, career criminals, Gypsies and Poles? (Those were most of the main targets of Nazi rage.) Or was the humiliation the product of the treaty that ended WWI and imposed absurd penalties on Germany, and did the Germans then punish the Jews and other groups for the punitive peace?

That all seems pretty far-fetched to me. The Nazi rage was directed mainly at France, Britain and the USA, and there was some rational basis for it. After all, when the war ended, not a single enemy soldier stood on German soil. That precipitated the myth of the “Dolchstoss.” Whom to blame? Yes, the nations that defeated the German military and dictated the unjust peace, certainly; and later, the Nazi regime gave expression to the prejudices of much of the German populace.

I think part of the condition of experiencing helpless rage involves the search for scapegoats. As William of Baskerville puts it in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose: “When your true enemies are strong you have to pick weaker enemies.” And when your humiliation comes from a sense of impotence, you need to attack those who can’t/won’t strike back.

Nor do people in such a condition admit it to themselves. As we all know, for Hitler, the Nazis, and many Germans, the Jews were behind the “stab in the back.” We are dealing here with perceptions and compensatory mechanisms, not “reality” as some dispassionate historian might see it. The same is true for the Muslims. On the one hand the Jews are all powerful, on the other, only American support — LBJ parachuted tanks into Sinai in 1967 — could make Israeli victories possible.

But does that explanation mesh with the “humiliation causes mass murder” hypothesis? Suppose instead we simply note that Germany, inexperienced with democracy, fell into the hands of the worst Germans, who advanced their personal, confused, deviant, sadistic agenda.

“simply note…” is strange language. All peoples at the beginning of that experiment in equality before the law that democracy consists of (eg, the opening lines of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address), are inexperienced. Not too many, and certainly not as late as the early 20th century in Europe, fell into the hands of a “confused, deviant, sadistic” leadership “simply” from “inexperience.” On the contrary, in order for Hitler and the Nazis to win, they had to play on a wide range of paranoid and sadistic fantasies whose exploration would bring us back to an analysis of the psychological dimensions of humiliation and rage. Any biography of Hitler has to deal with the psychological dimensions of his personality and its exceptionally powerful impact on the public. It’s not, should we study his psychological condition… it’s how well or badly do we do that inevitable task?

Further, how good are the parallels with the current mess in the Middle East?

I’d say not only close, but, if anything, the dynamics are still more acute. The humiliation of the Arabs at the hands of the puny, previously subject (dhimmi), and humiliated Jews, was far greater than that of the Germans at the hands of great and traditionally powerful enemies like France, England and Russia. Furthermore, the “strong enemies,” the primary source of Palestinian/Arab suffering is, I think, the Arab elites, who sacrifice the Palestinians to their strategies for attacking Israel, and more broadly oppress their masses as part of their prime divider notion of social order.

As Samuels says in his essay on Arafat, when Arafat and his band showed up in the West Bank and Gaza as a result of Olso, they looted the place and treated the Palestinians as occupied people. To attack these folks, who do not hesitate to use staggering violence against civilians, is asking for a whole lot more trouble than to attack the Israelis, no matter how powerful they are in their capabilities.

And in the grand picture, both the Nazis and the Jihadis have global millennial ambitions to rule the world, embrace paranoid fantasies about the Jews, as in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and see the “right order” of the world as the subjection of all others to their dominion.

It seems to me that fitting the facts into the theory takes some huge effort. In that sense, I am reminded of the Marxist approach to history — a fable fleshed out with misinterpreted data. It’s the imposition of a fanciful interpretation on events, and it’s not valid or accurate.

Well, if the choice is between your “simple” explanation above and the lengthy and complex discussion of the psychological dimensions of honor-shame-humiliation-scape-goating, I prefer the latter. Among other things it gives us factors to look for that are transferable to other phenomena, like the Arab dilemma. One of the most fascinating questions, which rational analysis just can’t explain, is the permanent appeal of the Protocols, no matter how false and destructive they prove to be.

In the current case, it seems to me that the ideas posted here depend on the claimed insights of psychology. Example: the concept that humiliation can cause hurt which causes anger that is generalized and seeks blameless victims. That’s very pat, very neat, very trendy and very suspect as a way of understanding history.

Surely you don’t want to argue that scape-goating is not a verifiable
historical phenomenon, however trendy and often misdirected the effort. Take a look at the burning of Jews and lepers in medieval Europe for poisoning wells at the time of the Black Death. If anything, scape-goating may well be one of the most common phenomena in the history of violence, and the fundamental force behind conspiratorial thinking.

As for the “reality” of humiliation as an emotional factor in the lives of people — especially men — see the description from Tom Wolf I posted a while back. Granted it’s “literature” not science, immeasurable and unquantifiable, but are you going to tell me that such things are not important to those who experience/repress them, that they do not play a role in men’s behavior either to avoid further such experiences or to avenge/eliminate the shame?

Psychology is a new discipline, not yet a science, and it is at war with itself; I don’t rate it as helpful in explaining human events such as wars, because it can only come up with facile “Just So” stories. It’s the Monday morning quarterback who always knows why his team lost, but can’t make a buck betting on the next game.

I’ll grant you your first point: Psychology is not a science (and never will be, despite it’s physics envy). But your second, I’m not sure I can agree with. Give me an example of a “Just So” story that psychology offers. I think it’s indispensible in explaining a phenomenon that I know we both are paying a great deal of attention to: self-destructive behavior. I don’t know how else to explain European behavior right now. Anything that does not pay attention to psychological factors fails to explain the deeply irrational (if rational is that which is to the advantage of the person exercising the rationality) behavior of the Europeans.

As for Monday-morning quaterbacking… I agree more or less but I’m not sure what that means. Few, if any, can consistently be correct in predicting the future when human behavior is concerned. We have to explain looking backwards. Give me an example of a more accurate way of predicting the future. Can you tell us when the Europeans will finally and decisively wake up to the danger of Eurabia (when the book by that name is still not published in the original French in which it was written)?

I don’t mean to offend or attempt a refutation. I think I’m so confused that I almost despair of understanding the contentions here. Maybe I should be enrolled in Prof. Landes’s class (though I don’t think he would like my paper!). Then too, I may be on target when I suggest that ultimately much of the thinking here depends on the quasi-scientific jargon of psychology (if so, big mistake, IMHO). Eh? Help, please.

I don’t take offense easily. I like challenges, so don’t hesitate to disagree.

As for quasi-scientific jargon, heaven forbid! I don’t think that the study of humans can ever be scientific, and the psychological and cultural approaches I take are exegetical, not scientific. There is no hard and fast answer to anything when dealing with the infinite complexities of the human soul and cultural phenomena.

Maybe you should be enrolled in my class. I’ll post the syllabus for the first part (general readings on honor-shame culture) soon. And as for your paper, I prefer one that’s in disagreement but well researched and well-argued to one that parrots me back. I think you’d do fine.

The Jerusalem Post has a review of a book by Efraim Halevy, former Mossad chief.

Man in the Shadows is in large part a memoir of the former Mossad director’s twilight years of quiet creative thinking, common sense and troubleshooting in the upper echelons of the Israeli intelligence community, and in small part a recipe for trying to sustain life on the planet in the face of al-Qaida style global terrorist aspirations.

The end of the review discusses Halevy’s thoughts on global Jihad. Note in particular his reflections on the difficulty to even conceive of the battle, much less its amplitude, and the ways that difficulty to wake up to the problem aggravates it.

YET THERE is real, blood-racing drama in this memoir, nonetheless. It stems from Halevy’s sober and somber thinking on the stakes of the global conflict with Islamic extremism - his uncluttered assessment that we are in the grip of World War III and have no concerted international strategy for waging it….

What Halevy takes pains to point out, however, is that Israel is only one priority for the global Islamic terrorists, and not a major one at that. “Al-Qaida,” he writes, “has set its sights on the entire world with the goal of effecting an Islamic international revolution that will encompass the entire planet. It is as simple and diabolical as that.”

He notes that the perpetrators make no secret whatsoever of this agenda. “It is not a hidden blueprint. It is stated up front for everyone to read and absorb.” It is equally clear that the enemy will use whatever means at its disposal to achieve the goal - “from the roadside bomb to the civilian aircraft.” Were it to obtain non-conventional weaponry, it would have “no reservation about employing that device at any moment considered appropriate and against any target, civilian or military, across the globe.”

Halevy explains why it is proving so hard to forge an effective counterstrategy, a failure he argues is rooted in the disinclination of the general public “to come to terms with the reality of terrorism… no matter how horrifying the acts,” and the consequent reluctance of political leaders to lose their constituencies by endorsing the kind of radical policies required to prevail.

He calls for a “master plan” of offensive action to be agreed upon by all states targeted or perceived as likely terror targets, and to be implemented over a fixed time frame - an “extreme” strategy to “up the ante” and “accelerate the rate of physical confrontation before the terrorists have the opportunity to upgrade the sophistication of the weaponry they have at their disposal.” It seems an improbable suggestion, unless or until acts of terror still more extreme than 9/11 bring appalled new focus to the minds of presidents and prime ministers.

Beyond this, in any case, he acknowledges, the war cannot only be won through offensive action. It is primarily “an internal struggle within Islam.” And it is in this aspect of his assessment that Halevy is original indeed.

He distinguishes between movements like Hamas, and its “territorial” aim for the complete destruction of Israel, and the al-Qaida brand of terror which, he argues, belongs “in a category in itself… They do not wish to conquer country A or country B. They do not wish to secure this or that tract of land. Their aims and aspirations are universal.” Furthermore, he notes, the likes of Hamas have political and social interests, too. They have constituencies, property, educational programs, welfare agendas. “In their own way, they aspire to be part of the system and not, as al-Qaida aspires, to destroy it.”

Here I think I disagree. Hamas has its own explicit program and, as a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, sees Israel as the most immediate but not the only element in their millennial thinking. They may have a constituency, and social commitments, but I think that, were the occasion to go global to present itself, they would certainly have significant leaders ready to make the leap into a larger war, even at the cost of their “people.” It is an error, I think, to take the distinction between local and global too seriously. In matters apocalyptic, local is global and vice-versa.

Earlier in the book, Halevy briefly muses as to whether Hamas’s 30-year “truce” offer to Israel in the late 1990s might have been worth exploring. In these concluding pages he notes the Hamas pragmatism that saw it opt to enable an “ordered and dignified withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces” from Gaza last summer, rather than attacking the retreating army and demonstrably savoring victory, because it recognized that Israel would have hit back with a fury that would have jeopardized its major assets.

This may be cognitive egocentrism at work here. According to David Cook, the truce that Hamas offered in the 1990s for thirty years was in part based on the predictions of the demise of Israel according to Quranic calculations made by one of their major thinkers.

The Hamas leader Bassam Jirrar takes it one step further in a very popular book, Israel’s Destruction in 2022. Writing primarily while exiled by Israel in south Lebanon during 1992-94, he explores the Qur’an numerologically using the verses that mention Israel and a number of others. He finds a numerological pattern of nineteen and predicts that Israel will be destroyed in the year 2022. If God has really decreed the destruction of Israel in that year, it is sacrilegious to attempt to destroy it beforehand. Hence Hamas’ willingness to speak about a truce with Israel.

As for Israel hitting back with fury… that hardly seems like something predictable. Despite their constant and bitter complaints about Israeli cruelty, the Palestinians know well how unlikely such responses actually are.

In short, he argues, Hamas has much to lose. Indeed, right now, it is being given a choice, by Israel and the international community, between terrorism and politics - a choice that could never be put to al-Qaida which, by its very nature, could never be a political partner.

At present, Halevy stresses, “it is not politically correct for a responsible Israeli or American or European to contemplate bringing Hamas into the fold.” But the day might come, he believes.

Wow, that’ s an interesting use of “politically correct.” The issue is not whether Hamas is capable of keeping a thirty-year truce, but whether they view that truce something that will benefit them more than Israel in the next round of confrontation. My sense is that the Muslim Brotherhood, with people like Tariq Ramadan as their demopathic spokesmen, prefer to wait for another generation before waging battle, that now is too soon. The issue then is, will Hamas, over the next thirty years, become more “bourgeois” and, whatever their current commitments, grow moderate and abandon the purpose they launched the hudna or not. I personally don’t think the odds are good, and even if they were, in the next thirty years we can expect far more radical Islamic groups to emerge.

The notion that Hamas, and Hizbullah for that matter, might ultimately constitute a relative force for internal Muslim moderation, part of the solution to al-Qaida’s assault on global free society rather than part of the problem, “might seem, at present, entirely in the realm of fantasy,” Halevy allows. But at the beginning of his narrative, Saddam Hussein was the guardian of vital US interests in the Middle East, confronting Iran’s Shi’ite revolutionary zeal, and the Taliban and Osama bin Laden were miniheroes in the American celebration of victory over the Soviet Union.

And that was less than two decades ago.

I don’t follow the logic here. Because we got it wrong (i.e., we allied with people who seemed useful to us and whose radical Islamic commitments we didn’t take seriously), and are learning from that experience (i.e., isolate groups who openly declare their paranoid, megalomanic, apocalyptic intentions), we may be getting it wrong again? We actually had lots of people telling us to trust Hamas during the Oslo “peace process,” like Ehud Sprinzak explaining that terror was Israel’s fault and that treating Hamas better would change their attitude (see The Oslo Syndrome, p. 396). I don’t think this made much sense in the 1990s, and less so now.

“The events of the last few years,” writes this most savvy of veterans, “have stretched the limits of imagination as never before.” The strangest of partners have come together under pressure from joint enemies.

And the most obvious allies have behaved like enemies.

In order to triumph against global Muslim fundamentalist terror, the world will need to muster all its imagination and all of its intelligence. Because the very act of living, he concludes, “is fast becoming more impossible than ever in human history.”

And I hate to say it, but it’ll take even more imagination than even this thoughtful meditation has produced.

I just posted on Bower’s article on Europe. Among the authors he discusses is Ken Timmerman, a journalist who writes for the Washington Times. Timmerman’s book, The French Betrayal of America, details the ways in which France under Chirac has betrayed the United States in the period after 9-11. Here are Bower’s thoughts which in many ways complement, sharpen, and intensify my own reflections on France.

As Ye’or recounts decades of behind-the-scenes Euro-Arab collaboration through dialogue, Kenneth R. Timmerman, in The French Betrayal of America, recounts decades of secret French-Iraqi collaboration through arms deals, kickbacks, and payoffs.19 Timmerman—an American investigative reporter who lived in France for many years—is no glib France-basher, happily acknowledging America- and Israel-friendly actions by France during the Cold War, mostly when François Mitterand was president. For example, Mitterand secretly assisted Israel when it took out Iraq’s French-built Osirak nuclear reactor, covertly arranged to keep strategic mobilization plans out of the hands of his Communist transportation minister (who would’ve turned them over to the Soviets), and, most impressively, shared with the U.S. a breathtaking trove of information acquired by French spies about Soviet attempts to acquire Western military technology. Though a Socialist, in short, Mitterand “chose America as his ally” and thus “helped President Reagan win the cold war.”

Yet if Mitterand stood by America’s side in the confrontation with the Soviet Union, he rejected U.S. involvement in North Africa (notably the 1986 attack on Libya), since his country’s political class regarded that continent, a rich source of “commissions and kickbacks to French political parties,” as “its baronial domain.” Nor did Mitterand’s staunch cold-war support last: in the late 1980s, pecuniary considerations led him to “switch sides” on the issue of military sales to the Soviets.

Still, he was a better ally than his predecessor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (whose government agreed, in a nuclear cooperation treaty with Iraq, to bar Jews from participating), or his successor, Chirac, who repeatedly called Saddam his “friend” and helped him skirt UN sanctions after the Gulf War. Chirac’s corruption, which would appear to be of Dantesque proportions, nearly destroyed his career; 9/11 saved it. The terrorist attacks, and America’s response to them, deflected attention from his sleazy shenanigans and enabled him to posture on the world stage as a statesman and peacemaker. And what the 9/11 terrorists couldn’t accomplish, the right-wing extremist Jean Le Pen did: in the 2002 election, Le Pen ended up as Chirac’s challenger, causing everyone in France except the Le Pen fringe to rally behind Chirac, who, after winning over eighty percent of the vote, was seen as his country’s savior, “the very incarnation of the permanent values of La France.”

All of which makes it even more fascinating to read Timmerman on Chirac’s shabby little demimonde of bribes and bagmen. From the cash stashes in Chirac’s office toilet to the Quai d’Orsay diplomat caught poking through garbage bags outside a Houston home to the classified U.S. and UN data that Chirac, unforgivably, shared with Saddam right up to the invasion of Iraq, Timmerman’s account makes the entire history of Washington scandals from Watergate onward look like a Girl Scout cookie drive. He makes a point that’s actually occurred to me before, too: that the French are so accustomed to their politicians being profoundly cynical and corrupt that they naturally assume all American politicians are like that, too. One recalls the cheers at Cannes for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, that pastiche of falsehood and cheap innuendo; the bitter irony is that the scale of French leaders’ real-life avarice and perfidy dwarfs even the worst of that film’s accusations against their American counterparts.

The French Betrayal of America, however, is not just a chronicle of unexampled greed. It is also a story of obsession with power and nostalgia for French glory. A U.S. official who works closely with the French tells Timmerman: “France is not the United States. And they just can’t seem to get over it.” Passages quoted by Timmerman from a book by Chirac crony Dominique de Villepin (now the French prime minister) provide disturbing insight into the mentality of a political elite that, as Timmerman puts it, has “consistently favored authoritarian regimes over democracy, not just in the third world but also in Europe.” He observes that Villepin’s naked envy of American power and his nostalgia for a return to a time (Napoleon’s) “when France was ruled by an all-powerful state, that had only to appear to be obeyed” bespeak “a dangerous delusion and a penchant for authoritarianism.” They certainly paint a picture of a government that seems to have learned little from modern European history. “French diplomacy today,” a French politician tells Timmerman, “continues to consider Iraq as a cake to be divided and not as a democracy to be constructed.” And get a load of this comment by a Villepin adviser: “We get all the blame [for making illegal arms deals], but not the signature [on the contract]! . . . We pass for a country that is cynical and immoral without getting the business such an attitude is presumed to bring.”

Timmerman agrees with Guy Millière that Chirac’s support for Saddam was based largely on the latter’s high standing among French Muslims. “French leaders,” he quotes Millère as saying, “will never take a decision that could make young radical Muslims angry”; had Chirac supported the Iraq invasion, there would have been “riots in the suburbs.” (Most Muslim neighborhoods in France are on the outskirts of cities.)20 In France, this appeasement mentality is reflexive. Timmerman quotes a local French official who, prior to the sixtieth-anniversary D-day commemoration, worried out loud in Le Monde that “What image will we send of Normandy to Arab and Islamic countries by receiving Bush and Putin with pomp and circumstance?”

It sheds interesting light on my thoughts about French lack of gratitude. They have to watch their backs.