Love of the Land: Rubin: The West’s Foreign Policy Theme—Like Me Before You Kill Me—Applied to Israel

Rubin: The West’s Foreign Policy Theme—Like Me Before You Kill Me—Applied to Israel

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
18 May '11

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/05/wests-foreign-policy-themelike-me.html

Recently, it was revealed that President Barack Obama had consulted Tom Friedman in formulating his Middle East policy. Here’s an example of where disastrous policy comes from.

Friedman writes:

“Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel is always wondering why his nation is losing support and what the world expects of a tiny country surrounded by implacable foes. I can’t speak for the world, but I can speak for myself. I have no idea whether Israel has a Palestinian or Syrian partner for a secure peace that Israel can live with. But I know this: With a more democratic and populist Arab world in Israel’s future, and with Israel facing the prospect of having a minority of Jews permanently ruling over a majority of Arabs — between Israel and the West Bank, which could lead to Israel being equated with apartheid South Africa all over the world — Israel needs to use every ounce of its creativity to explore ways to securely cede the West Bank to a Palestinian state.”

By the way, the picture of “a minority of Jews permanently ruling over a majority of Arabs” has not been accurate since 1994, that’s 17 years ago. The Palestinian Authority rules over the West Bank Arabs. Hamas, which has now merged with the Palestinian Authority, rules in the Gaza Strip. The only non-citizen Arabs that “Jews” are ruling over are those in east Jerusalem, according to an agreement that Israel made with the PLO.

So a big part of Israel's difficulty is that people like Friedman are perpetuating anti-Israel lies instead of attacking them.

In other words, if your enemies lie about you does that mean that you must take huge risks? There’s a clever bumper sticker that says: Never apologize. Your enemies don’t care and your friends don’t need it.

But leaving all of that aside, let’s start with Friedman’s opening sentence. I certainly don’t speak for Netanyahu and didn’t vote for him, but I really doubt he’s wondering why these things are happening. He knows the reasons, as do most Israelis, even those critical of his policy:

The greater international weight of the Arab world; oil money; well-intentioned but ill-placed sympathy for an apparent underdog; aspects of Islam rejecting ever accepting a Jewish state; Arab nationalist rejection of a Jewish state; a clever anti-Israel propaganda campaign; Western leftist sympathy for its enemies; the rejection of Zionism by some Jews; the honest belief that if you resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict by Israeli concessions the whole world will be stable and terrorism will disappear; antisemitism; and more.

There’s no mystery here.

But there is a problem. If you equate that hostility to one cause and one cause only: Israel is “permanently ruling” over a majority of Arabs. That’s it. Solve that problem and everything else will fall into place.

Yet what if you know that giving up the West Bank will not solve every problem—a viewpoint almost never aired in the Western mass media and universities nowadays? Then Friedman’s concept and that of most Western policies immediately collapses.

Israel has conducted extensive experiments with this concept, experiments that have cost about the same number of Israeli lives as September 11 took American lives. Since the population of the United States is approximately 40 times that of Israel you can calculate the impact of those costs.

After all, Israel already acted “to securely cede” (the split infinitive is Friedman’s) the Sinai to Egypt, with the result that this peace treaty is about to be abrogated. It tried to “securely cede” the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, getting rockets and mortars and cross-border attacks in return. It also sought “to securely cede” southern Lebanon and got rockets and cross-border attacks. To see what would happen it acted “to securely cede” much of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority and then received in return incitement to violence, terrorist attacks, and intransigence.

Might there be a pattern here?

Yes, it would be better to have a stable, two-state solution that ended the conflict and made Israel’s neighbors friendly. But here’s where the gap is between Israel and much of the Western political elites today:

We tried it and it didn’t work.

That is not a “right-wing” statement. It is an Israeli consensus statement. And even if Israel tries and tries again, this doesn’t mean that people don’t know that.

Now, there are people in the Middle East—millions of people—who openly make my point every day. These include the governments of Iran, Syria, Turkey, and the Gaza Strip, as well as probably Egypt’s next government and those running Lebanon. Islamists openly proclaim that no matter how much territory Israel cedes they won’t be satisfied until it has ceded everything and gone out of existence altogether.

What Friedman calls “a more democratic and populist Arab world” means a more radical and Islamist Arab world. In fact, the radicals will remain radicals (Syria, Iran) while the formerly moderate become more extremist (Egypt). Why, then, should Israel make dangerous concessions when these will be taken advantage of to attack it more effectively? Why give things to people who want to kill you no matter what you do?

But there’s one point that is so overwhelming in Friedman’s piece, so symptomatic of everything wrong with the Western vision of Israel, the Middle East, and even the entire world (and especially with the Obama Administration’s policy), that it should resound with everyone who reads that article:

Friedman is telling us that a good public relations’ image is more important than material security. Israel will survive an infinite number of nasty articles or sneering professors without great difficulty. It would not survive concessions that make Israel weak and vulnerable, more than ever at a time when—let’s face it—American and European guarantees are worthless.

Golda Meir already dealt with Friedman’s idea decades ago: Better a bad press than a good epitaph.

That’s a principle which North America and European countries should think about adopting as their motto.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

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Love of the Land: Rubin: The West’s Foreign Policy Theme—Like Me Before You Kill Me—Applied to Israel

Love of the Land: If the EU seems fragmented, take a look at the Arab world

If the EU seems fragmented, take a look at the Arab world

Michael Young
The National (UAE)
06 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

(It's good on occasion to take a look around the neighborhood. Y.)

The discussion over the future of the European Union offers a useful window through which to examine the destiny of the Arab world. European states are facing a major crisis of meaning as they decide what their intervention to save Greece from financial ruin says about EU solidarity in the future, where other shipwrecks lurk.

The platitudes of Arab unity have long jarred with the reality of Arab states driven apart by mistrust and competition. However, nationalist reflexes notwithstanding, the EU, even in an existential emergency, has not lost sight of what it was set up to achieve. Arab divisions, in contrast, threaten to undermine a unified response to the major existential challenge faced by Arab regimes today: a nuclear Iran.

Iranian hegemony and Greece’s debt are very different things. But they are both good tests as to whether it’s better for states to stand united, warts and all, or fall divided. Surveying the Arab world today, it is difficult to see who might become the engine of a cohesive Arab policy to contain Iran. And here, the EU experience becomes useful.

Arab unity, whether writ large or pertaining to specific events, has always coalesced around certain states. In the same way that EU policy must earn the acquiescence, above all, of Germany and France, traditionally Arabs have looked toward Saudi Arabia and Egypt to build a consensus, with Syria and Iraq having a greater or lesser say depending on the situation. Arab power has fluctuated, however, so that at times poles of influence were built around rivalries between Egypt and Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Egypt and Syria, and so on.

Today, the Arab state system is in disarray. Saudi Arabia and Egypt no longer lead as they once did. Both have seen less powerful states, for instance Syria and Qatar, seize the initiative. Last year the Saudis were forced to give Syria a green light to return to Lebanon politically in the hope that this would draw Damascus away from Tehran and facilitate Syrian co-operation with Riyadh over Iraq. Qatar has also punched above its weight by mediating in conflicts and playing on regional contradictions. The emirate has maintained good ties with Tehran while hosting the largest American military base in the Gulf.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: If the EU seems fragmented, take a look at the Arab world

Love of the Land: Secular western tolerance for Muslim intolerance

Secular western tolerance for Muslim intolerance

Bataween
Point of No Return
14 January '10

Secular liberals are quick to condemn any expression of 'Jewish bigotry', while ignoring the antisemitism rampant in the Arab press and media. They provide no contextual counterbalance, such as a discussion of the history of discrimination of Jews in Muslim Society, where Jews were treated no better than in Christendom, and often worse. This must-read piece by Matthew M Hausman comes as cold shower of realism to anybody who believes in the Golden Age myth of tolerance between Arabs and Jews. Via Israpundit:


Former Israeli Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef recently took a public flogging for allegedly describing Islam as “ugly,” specifically with respect to its laws concerning marriage and divorce. The liberal blogosphere had a field day, calling the Rabbi a bigot and labeling his comments hate speech. But the bloggers provided no contextual counterbalance, such as a critical discussion of the defamation of Jews and Judaism that occurs routinely in the Arab press or the historical discrimination of Jews in Muslim society. Nor do they ever. Although these folks cry themselves hoarse concerning their right to free speech whenever challenged for their demonstrably biased reporting on Israel – or for lambasting comments such as those by Rabbi Yosef – they are silent whenever the subject is Arab or Muslim incitement or intolerance. (...)

The mainstream media in the United States is quick to denounce any perceived affronts to Arab or Islamic culture, and just as quick to condemn any alleged expressions of Jewish or Israeli chauvinism. But the media is reluctant to criticize antisemitic expressions from Arab or Muslim sources, draw any connection between Islamism and terrorism, acknowledge the history of Arab expansion and colonialism, or discuss the supremacist implications of jihad – even as it openly plays out in Europe. Rather, liberal pundits often wax dreamily poetic when discussing the so-called “golden age of Islam” or the myth of Islamic tolerance. Moreover, they tend to rationalize any antisemitic or anti-Western expressions in the Arab world as reactions to Israeli intransigence or American colonialism.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Secular western tolerance for Muslim intolerance

Love of the Land: Strong horse politics

Strong horse politics

Talking to author Lee Smith

Tony Badran
Now Lebanon
12 January '10

(An excellent read, covering a very wide scope.)

Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He is a longtime observer of the Middle East and has written extensively about the region, where he has lived and traveled. His book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, was just published by Doubleday.

NOW sits down with Smith to talk about America, the Arab World and strong horse politics.

Tell our readers about your new book. What is its main thesis and what prompted you to write it?

Smith: The title comes from Osama Bin Laden’s observation that people by nature prefer the strong horse to the weak one. I was writing for an American audience and what I wanted to try to explain is how politics works in a region like the Middle East, where, with very few exceptions, there are no peaceful transitions of authority, and power is not shared but rather is typically passed from one family member to another, or taken in a military coup.

I suspect this thesis will be confused with the notion that “Arabs only understand force,” except I believe that violence and coercion is something much of the world has had to deal with throughout history, and modern-day Americans are exceptionally lucky insofar as this is not an issue for us. I was trying to explain to them that this is not the case around the world, and certainly not in the Arabic-speaking Middle East.

How do you see the strong horse principle playing out in the region today?

Smith: I think it’s the same as it ever was, with various actors vying for regional supremacy. On one hand you have the Islamic Republic of Iran, which wants to rewrite the regional order to its own advantage, and on the other you have Washington and the American-backed regional order, including Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, along with Egypt, Jordan, and of course Israel, that wants to maintain its position.

Tehran, at least until the June presidential elections, has been very confident in its status as a rising power, while the US is now led by a president who has expressed his discomfort with power. In his UN address, Obama even argued against the balance of power, which is a strategic principle about as old as politics itself. Even if you find it desirable, I doubt it’s possible to rewire human nature in this way by emptying human beings of their political ambition and quest to exercise power. I guess we’ll see how reality catches up with the White House and what kind of adjustments the administration is capable of making on the fly.

(Read full interview)

Love of the Land: Strong horse politics

Israel Matzav: In the Arab world, hope and same from Obama

In the Arab world, hope and same from Obama

As President Obama meets with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak at the White House, Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim rips the President for his hope and same policies in the Arab world.

Mr. Obama only has to read the latest Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Program to note the steady drop in Egypt's regional and global ranking. Likewise, the annual reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House all focus on the lack of democratic governance and the massive violations of human rights under Mr. Mubarak—including torture and coerced disappearances.

There has also been an exponential rise in sectarian violence against the Christian Copts. Since Mr. Obama's celebrated speech at Cairo University two months ago, there have been more than 40 attacks.

Yet Mr. Mubarak has continued to get a free pass from the U.S. and has even received outright praise from senior members of the Obama administration. The tiny fraction of U.S. aid that is earmarked for Egypt's civil society is subject to the Mubarak regime's veto.

Egypt could be a pivotal player in regional politics. Instead, Mr. Mubarak has squandered his country's potential in exchange for control over the Egyptian people. Schemes to pass down power to his son, Gamal, are now out in the open.

The most disheartening part in all of this is that Washington under President Obama is conducting old-style foreign policy with Arab tyrants from Libya's Moammar Gadhafi to Syria's Bashar Assad. Except for his optimistic rhetoric, Mr. Obama is increasingly perceived by Arabs and Muslims as yet another American president interested in maintaining the status quo.

After his eloquent and moving talk in Cairo, many wonder whether Mr. Obama will walk the walk as forcefully as he talks the talk. He has the chance to do so today at the White House

Read All at :

Israel Matzav: In the Arab world, hope and same from Obama