Pointing the way with headscarves

Thomas Friedman recently visited Turkey, and came away dismayed as the Islamist direction it's taking, writing about it in a NYT column. My comment:

Adding to the general grief are the facts that most Western leftists (in America and Europe) vehemently agree with Erdogan--and that Israel seems to be stumped by the Palestinians' demographic time bomb (also by the intransigence of Israel's own religious fanatics).

I bet you'll be able to gauge the path Turkey takes by the percentage of women who "take the veil" or worse. That's what happened in Egypt. And Afghanistan (well, in Kabul, which was quite western up until the Soviet departure). And Iraq (before we "liberated" it, ironically).

The first ones to pop up are a brave religious statement by conservative women. But after the tipping point, those who don't put one on get more and more pressure, regardless of their own convictions, and finally it becomes physically dangerous (i.e. you're risking your life) to not wear one in public--as is the case in Iraq today, for example.

As go headscarves, so goes the nation.

Middle eastern intransigence--here's why

The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer wrote an op-ed piece justifying the Israeli's raid on the blockade-buster flotilla headed towards Gaza from Turkish-occupied Cyprus (a bit of unintentional irony there, to be sure).

My reaction, after a thousand frenzied responses:

pleaseshutup wrote:

Jews and Arabs lived together peacefully prior to their bloody take over of Palestinian LAND

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This is true--in exactly the same way that Southern Whites and Blacks “lived together peacefully” from 1865 through the 1970s.

You see, the Islamic world classifies Christians and Jews as “dhimmis,” with a long list of laws and customs regulating their existence in Muslim lands. These laws are pretty much the same as the South’s Jim Crow laws were: dhimmis were accepted unless they got “uppity.” Though lynchings and pogroms occurred fairly frequently, for roughly the same range of reasons that they occurred fairly regularly in the South.

This is hard for Americans to understand because it’s so different from traditional American stereotypes about Jews—and from the way the European Jews who settled in what is now Israel felt.

Imagine the reaction a group of sophisticated, educated, armed American Blacks from Harlem in the 1950s would get if they moved to, say, Huntsville Alabama in that era. Imagine the sort of culture clash you’d get.

This is exactly the situation from the Arabs’ point of view. These uppity SERVANTS dare to march around on our land with their noses in the air, acting as if they’re as good as us—even better than us. Insufferable!

On the other hand, the European Jews mostly didn’t know about their dhimmi status, and just saw a bunch of illiterate camel jockeys—i.e., people fit at best to be servants—acting all uppity towards them. I'm not justifying their attitude, just trying to put myself in their shoes. (Not to mention the fact that Hitler killed all the gentle, sensitive Jews he could get his hands on. Guess what kind of person survives concentration camps? The tough one.)

So for each side, each was each other’s uppity servant class acting above their station.

How’s that for a forumula for mutual misunderstanding and hostility?

Augmenting this mutual hostility was the appearance of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands, ethnically cleaned from Morocco to Iraq in response to Israel’s declaration of independence. They arrived stripped of their lands and goods, often with horror stories of themselves and neighbors abused or even murdered—and the Israelis’ attitudes congealed. These people and their descendants account for around 40% of Israelis.

As did the other side, when the Arabs who left their lands—or were run off them—arrived in the refugee camps with their own stories.

The difference being that the Arabs who now represent one out of five Israelis chose to stay and were allowed to, while almost none of the Arab countries’ Jews were given that choice, whether they wanted to stay or not. Arab apologists claim that all 750,000 or so Jews left their ancestral homes in Arab countries voluntarily. I find that improbable in the extreme.

None of this justifies either sides’ deeds or misdeeds. But it does help explain the intransigence of both sides, and both sides’ absolute belief in their historical grievance-narrative.

And if Americans want to help the goal of peace in the Middle East, the worst thing they can do is swallow either side’s “we’re 100% right—they’re 100% wrong” narrative. Yet over 80% of the comments here do just that.

It doesn’t help the Israelis to write op-ed pieces like this that justify anything and everything Israelis do. Nobody’s perfect. But in my book it’s even worse to adopt the Arab grievance narrative, because it has American leftists acting like Southern Whites from the 1950s—even though they think they’re being the exact opposite.

Pretty ironic.

www.blogzu.blogspot.com

Read Tom Friedman's column on the Turkish-Israeli impasse

Tom Friedman wrote the most insightful column about this situation that I've seen so far. Because I'm on the West Coast, and given the way the NYtimes moderates comment threads, I usually have to post a comment before seeing any others. Hence this response:


I'm writing this before any comments have been posted. But I can tell you what you're going to see: hundreds of foaming-at-the-mouth denunciations of Israel as the reincarnated Third Reich, along with dozens of posts denouncing the spawn-o'-Satan Palestinians--and which staunchly defend anything Israel does.

What most of these posts will share is a failure to read Mr. Friedman's both knowledgeable and sensible assessment and recommendation: that both Israel and Turkey have painted themselves into a corner, and probably only America has a prayer of un-painting them.

After all, while Turkey falls far short of Western democratic standards, compared to the Muslim governments from Morocco to Pakistan, well, Turkey is Sweden.

Likewise, while Israel can act like a pit bull, it too is a democracy, and those are few and far between in that neighborhood.

And I'll add that anyone--anyone--who sees this as a black and white situation between Good guys and Bad guys is delusional. Such zealots have nothing to contribute to solving this extraordinarily difficult situation. They're the kind of "friend" of their side who's worse than an enemy.

Because face it: neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are about to fold their tents and steal away into the night. Moreover, no solution will avoid real, heartwrenching pain for both sides.

It would help if everyone involved could have their memories wiped. History is not our friend in this situation. Historical claims and historical grievances are piled so high on both sides that it's nearly impossible to see over them.

And don't accuse me of moral equivalence. I don't claim that the opposing claims are equal--doing so is like trying to slice a pie for warring children--you'll never make the cut such that someone won't cry foul. I only claim that both sides have "grievance narratives" that are routinely invoked in every situation, and which preclude any actual solution.

It's like all those Balkan nations still obsessing over the Battle of Lepanto, or the Fall of Byzantium, or...

Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors (Egypt's forbearance is mainly purchased by us). That's not a justification for all of Israel's actions. It is, however, a guarantee of Israel's intransigence unless America continues to have Israel's back.

At the same time if America rolls over for Israel like Bush II did, that's a guarantee that the Arab states won't see America as an honest broker (or as close to that as we can be without sacrificing Israel).

So as I'm certain Mr. Friedman would agree, the most adroit diplomacy is called for on our part.

In this particular event, the following things are already clear:

1. No one posting a comment here really knows what happened on that ferry, unless they were physically on the ferry's deck AND can be trusted not to lie on behalf of their side.

Yet many will write narratives about what happened as if they had been there and were objective observers. This is the confidence of the zealot, who derives reality from his preconceived ideas, instead of vice-versa.

2. Israel had nothing to gain from killing people on the ferry. If the Israeli forces had had an inkling of what awaited them on the ferry, they would have gone to some kind of Plan B (using frogmen to destroy the ferry's propeller?), not through humanitarianism, but through simply understanding what was best for Israel. In my book, therefore, Israel is probably guilty of bad military planning, but not of murderous intent.

3. Hamas had a great deal to gain from people on their side dying on the ship at the hands of Israelis--one dead pregnant Turkish woman would be more valuable to their cause than a thousand poster-waving protesters.

Points 2 and 3 are instantiations of the principles of assymetrical warfare; they aren't unique to this situation. They're standard operating procedure.

4. It's in both Turkey's and Israel's best interests to defuse this situation, such as by both agreeing on humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza, with Turkey agreeing not to include proscribed items and to allow Israels to inspect the cargo and ship it by truck via an Israeli port, with Israel agreeing to let Turkish inspectors accompany the cargo into Gaza, to guarantee that the cargo reaches its intended recipients.

5. Hard liners in both Turkey and Israel want to keep this from happening, even at the cost of armed conflict.

I don't need to know exactly what happened on the ferry to know these things, and you don't either.

All I ask others is that they actually read Friedman's article before posting their own comment--and realize that the best interests of most Turks and Israelis dovetail in this situation, just as the interests of both Turkish and Israeli hardliners dovetail.

So the "enemy" is hardliners on both sides, and the "friend" is reasonable people on both sides.

Right?