Switching Sides: The Flip Flop Journal for Thinking People

For The People We Despise

Steve Tobias — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:07:00 GMT

Listener sponsored KPFT 90.1 FM broadcasts an eclectic and often fascinating variety of programs that appeals to a wide range of listeners. It is especially popular with those that enjoy hearing views from the far left side of the political spectrum. Though I can't stand listening to most of their extreme left wing politics, the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall resonate with me: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Constructive discourse is what makes America great. A city like Houston needs to hear from all of its citizens in order to stay robust and healthy. That includes KPFT.

Well, defending to the death might be a bit extreme, but when painted into a corner in front of an audience I did reach into my pocket and pledged a donation to the station ("Are you a member of KPFT? No? Would you like to join and make a donation?"). It happened a few weeks ago at the ironically named "Anti-Racism and Diversity committee" or ARDC. My wife and I were there along with a representative of the ADL to give testimony on a very divisive issue, namely the shameful way with which "progressive" KPFT listeners had picketed, blogged and petitioned against the first-ever "Israel show", the “Voice of Peace”. Many KPFT listeners were enraged that management decided to air the show, which was created in reaction to an embarrassing program where callers compared notes on different Jewish conspiracy theories. The "Voice of Peace" was supposed to be a twice-monthly spot designed to lower the temperature by giving some exposure to those parts of mainstream Israeli society that deal with many of the same progressive issues that are of interest to KPFT listeners: ethnic diversity and multiculturalism, women and gay rights, democracy in the Middle East and environmentalism. "Fluff! It's a fluff show!" many KPFT progressives complained. Though progressive talk is what KPFT is all about, that talk is clearly not welcome when it has an Israeli accent.

My Israeli born wife and I shared our opinions with the ARDC. We strongly believe that the founders of KPFT would have been proud of management's decision to air the program. Why? Because the KPFT mission statement demands that they must "...contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations." Like it or not, we reminded them, Israel dwells among the brotherhood of nations. The mission statement would seem to demand that KPFT establish some sort of two-way communication to help foster lasting understanding with this particular nation. To insist that Israel of all nations has a voice that is beneath contempt not only violates the KPFT charter, but it violates the views of many that truly seek peace through communication and understanding. We were upbeat: by not canceling the show, KPFT was displaying some of the finest qualities of our democracy, we said. We complimented them. We made that pledge. We were proud to do so.

No sooner did we make that pledge than some of the ARDC members let us have it, but good. One board member gave both of us goose bumps when she refused to look at us as she announced to the room that she was "offended" that we were allowed to speak. She was followed by someone who informed us that contrary to what we believed, management had already caved in and the Israel show had been cancelled (it was indeed!). We were stunned. Another shared her thoughts that if there was to be an Israel show, there should also be a Hamas show. I couldn't make this stuff up, it really happened. I asked her if she ever read the Hamas charter. She said no. I briefly covered the main points for her and the board (anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-feminist, anti-democratic, pro-Sharia for all) and suggested they read it first and then we'd have another talk about whether the progressives at KPFT should host the Hamas hour. The ADRC chairman promised that he would contact us to do an on-air debate on the subject, and we left (no, he never called).

KPFT has no time for Israeli voices. However, they have plenty of time for anti-Israel voices. During the next two weeks I heard plenty of them.

On "Arab Voices", Rice historian Ussama Makdisi weighed in on the "Israel show" controversy, explaining how counterproductive it would be for KPFT to broadcast views by local Israeli representatives since then "... how are Americans going to be truly informed about the situation on the ground in that region in an objective manner?" He then shared his version of objectivity through outrageous allegations about ubiquitous and systematic ethnic cleansing by Jews. These accusations have been thoroughly refuted by historians much more qualified than Makdisi, something his listeners (and sadly, students) may never hear. I heard Adam Horowitz and Lizzie Ratner on Democracy Now "educate" KPFT listeners on last week's astounding turnaround by Judge Goldstone, who absolved the IDF of the slanderous charge of deliberately targeting civilians. To Horowitz and Ratner, this profound development was inconsequential: "He talked about one small point.... this is one small issue". What mendacity!! What a total lack of intellectual honesty! I also heard an hour long speech on "Alternative Radio" by Kathleen Christison, who detailed the zombie-like control that Israel's supporters have on Barack Obama and others in the US government. To emphasize Israeli racist attitudes, she quoted Israel's Tzsipi Livni: "She (Livni) has explicitly said that we couldn't be a state of our citizens, because that would mean making Christian and Muslim Palestinians equal to Jews". There's only one problem with that quote: it was entirely fabricated. There was never such a quote, nothing even close.

KPFT has lost its way. They have become bullies. They gang up on that one segment of the Houston community that supports Israel and pummels them, and then denies them a voice. They mislead and ultimately marginalize their listening audience through a steady diet of unchallenged dogma. Though many in the KPFT community selflessly reach out in service to many different segments of Houston's population, it is also filled with bigots. There's no other word for them. They shout down voices that challenge their preconceived views, as bigots tend to do. Worst of all, they betray the strongly held values of their founders through their use of double standards, fabricated history and outrageous bully tactics. These hypocrites at KPFT need to bone up on their Noam Chomsky: "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

steve@switchingsides.com

J-Pac

Steve Tobias — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:04:00 GMT

When J-Street first came out, I was pretty much on the fence. Though I didn't agree with some of its actions and platforms, I had to admit that it seemed to appeal to the younger generation. That accomplishment covers a multitude of sins in my book: capturing the imagination and attention of the next generation is just so very important. Though I never joined the organization, I have defended them to their detractors on the fairly solid ground that supporters of the Middle East's only democracy need a wide spectrum of organizations to capture a wide spectrum of values. Importantly, I do not question the motives of ardent J-Street supporters. For the most part, I think their hearts are in the right place.

Nevertheless, my support for J-Street has eroded significantly in the past few weeks, a direct outcome of what transpired at their DC conference. A very "progressive" young person that I have a lot of respect for caught my attention by storming out of the conference after hearing one too many panel discussions. "They're not moderate any more. They've been hijacked" he said. So I went online and listened for myself to the ten videos on the J-Street web site. Please start here: go to http://conference.jstreet.org/What_about_Hamas and fast-forward to 40 minutes. If you do, you will hear thunderous applause when one panelist expresses his disgust that Dennis Ross was invited to speak — Dennis Ross, the quintessential moderate who has done more to bring warring parties together than anyone else. You will hear the same panelist clearly and unequivocally state that the root cause of the problem is the existence of Israel: “Hamas, like the settlers, like Likud ... is a result of this framework, whether it’s as I said is Israel’s existence, Israel as a Jewish state, or Israel’s occupation and the Palestinian dispossession.”

He wasn't alone. A platform was given to a variety of radicals, including the "Jewish Voices for Peace", a group listed by the ADL as one of the top 10 anti-Israel groups in the US. They argue for sanctions, divestment and boycott of all things Israeli, up to and including university professors. Listen to the other videos as well. You will hear an Arab panelist cheered as she complains that fellow Arabs "for years have been suffocated and strangled by dictators supported by Israel". You will hear a radical Israeli say "I would like to see an Israeli uprising against our government, but unfortunately it won't happen" to thunderous applause. You will hear a UN representative defend endless UN condemnations against Israel, and you will hear a moderator wrap up a panel discussion with a lament about "the erosion of western values within Israel". You will not hear about Palestinian terrorism, Palestinian corruption, the current missile buildup in Gaza, Gilad Shalit or how a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza led to over 6500 missile and mortar launchings. Of the forty or so lectures and discussions at the J-Street conference, not one dealt specifically with the need for democracy in Palestine. Talk about a lost opportunity: J-Street has totally avoided asking the tough questions about the lack of Palestinian democratic reform even though a peace treaty signed with a democratic Palestine is much more likely to last.

Though my support for J-Street has eroded in the last few weeks, my affection for typical J-Street supporters remains undiminished. They have an important role to play. They offer a complimentary alternative to the view of "old fashioned" pro-Israel advocates who believe it correct to support the democracy known as Israel regardless of who runs it. These “old fashioned” supporters argue that America's role is to support democracies, full stop. They contend that it is the role of each democracy to govern fairly as only their citizens see fit, not Americans or anyone else. J-Street supporters see things differently and are prepared to criticize Israel's government and citizens, and withhold support until such time that Israeli behavior lives up to their expectations. The first group supports the Middle East's one democracy no matter what, while the other treats both parties to the conflict equally, respecting the non-democratic form of Palestinian rule as something inherent to Arab culture, something which should be respected and not criticized publically in a patronizing way.

Which approach makes more sense? As much as I respect the good intentions of the typical J-Street supporter, I'll argue that the days of treating Arabs as being incapable of embracing democracy are over. This is an intensely bigoted view that is being disproven in real time by current events, seemingly everywhere in the Arab world except for Palestine. I would argue that J-Street leadership would do well to demand that Palestinians incorporate the institutions of democracy as a condition for J-Street support: under PM Salam Fayyad's inspired leadership, that day is much closer than many would think. But by refraining from criticizing Palestinian society while attacking only Israeli positions, J-Street ironically discourages the democratic revolution that is so needed for peace.

It is time for all sides of the American pro-Israel community to show some real creativity and intellectual courage. J-Street supporters must decide whether they want to continue to support an organization that has two utterly different sides, one of which gives voice to radicals that are clearly and unequivocally antagonistic to the continued good health and even existence of Israel. If that path disturbs them, then they need to consider other avenues by which to voice their criticisms of Israeli policies, ways that can bring peace to Israel and lasting peace and democracy to Palestine. AIPAC needs to consider how to embrace these people and their beliefs in novel and creative ways while also voicing support for Palestinian democratic institutions. I think it's time to talk.

steve@switchingsides.com

Original Sin

Steve Tobias — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:53:00 GMT

It's not hard to imagine the existence of a pair of parallel universes in which two different Turkish flotillas set sail for Gaza. In one, all six boats are peacefully diverted to Ashdod by the Israeli Navy where they offload their cargoes. The world nevertheless loudly criticizes Israel for its aggressiveness and lack of humanitarian concern. In the second universe, dozens of genuine peace activists are magically transformed into hardened mercenaries who ambush the boarding SEALs and savagely attack them with knives and metal rods, all of which is caught on video for the world to see. In this universe, much of the world tempers its criticism of Israel since it is clear that they were reluctantly drawn into bloody violence by vicious and premeditated actions.

Yeah, right.

The "two parallel universes" ploy is a helpful way to deconstruct an event to gain insight, and in this case it hits the mark. When wildly different events in both universes yield similar results, the objective observer is forced to conclude that it is simply irrelevant whether or not Israelis show restraint: they are still going to be the bad guys. Something else besides “unacceptable behavior” must therefore be in play in generating condemnation. In this case that something else is the widespread and growing belief that Israel is an illegitimate entity, a pariah state awash in original sin and ultimately responsible for all consequential damages that arise from its ill-gotten existence. Thus the “embedded thugs” on the peace boats are to be forgiven their sins of violence, since they are battling evil occupiers. Thus Hamas should be forgiven their sins of targeting civilians with missiles because they too are battling interlopers with no rights to their land. It all goes back to the notion of original sin.

In case anyone doubts the prevalence of this narrative, the newly retired White House “dean” of reporters, Helen Thomas, set the record straight a few days ago. Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine” she said. “They should go home, to Poland, and Germany, and America, and everywhere else". She has underlined for all of us here in Houston what is on the mind of many in the global media, namely that the core problem is not the blockade, the separation fence nor the presence of controversial settlements. It is Israel’s existence.

Of the dozens of lessons to be learned from this episode, here is a very simple one for Israel. Condemnations will stop and peace will occur only when all neighbors choose to embrace a reality that includes Israel as a neighbor, as was boldly done by Egypt’s Sadat and Jordan’s King Hussein. For the Palestinians, the lesson is simpler still: stop being used and manipulated by others for their own agenda. The Turks care nothing for the true welfare of Palestinian Arabs. They occupied Palestine for centuries where it remained an inconsequential backwater, and they rank 26^th in donations to the UNRWA Palestinian relief fund. They are rallying to the aid of the Palestinians as part of a new strategy to expand their sphere of influence and possibly aspire to leadership of the Islamic states, something that worries many in Europe and the Middle East. Turkey is close on the heels of Iran, another player that cares even less for Palestinians – remember that Iranians have killed more Arabs in the twentieth century than any other non-Arab actor. Both the Turks and the Iranians have regional aspirations, and Israel-bashing is the quickest way to deflect internal criticism and curry favor with both the Arab streets and Islamist elements in their own countries. Scapegoating is an old trick, but it works like a charm. It’s a trick that the Jews of Europe knew all too well. Maybe someone should tell Helen that it feels more like home every day.

A Pivotal Moment (Peel Commission Series, 4 of 4)

Steve Tobias — Thu, 06 May 2010 20:22:00 GMT

Dr. Marc Ellis spoke at the Rothko Chapel this past week. Some in attendance were understandably steamed at his suggestion that fellow Jews follow his example and drop to their knees to ask for “revolutionary forgiveness” from the Arabs.

Though I found this man creepy at several levels (especially interpersonal - he screamed and waggled fingers in faces at the after-lecture reception), I did not get steamed. I recognized that Ellis suffers from a psychological disorder described by Harvard historian/psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth Levin in his brilliant book, “The Oslo Syndrome.” Levin explores how intelligent and sensitive Jews often rely on coping strategies that numb the emo-tional hurt caused by chronic anti-Jewish or anti-Israel sentiment, strategies that resemble those found among abused wives and children.

Both groups deal with chronic stress by submitting to the dominance of the overpowering oppressor. Both groups blame themselves for the abuse heaped upon them.

For abused wives and children, submission sometimes stops the beatings. For Jews prone to self-delusion, submission provides a respite (and in Ellis’ case, a pretty darn good salary) from the pain of continuous and unrelenting hatred, the only cost being the occasional public display of masochistic catharsis.

But, this was supposed to be the final column of a four-part series on the Peel Commission, and not a review of yet another outrageous lecture at the Rothko Chapel. Summarizing this monumental document has proven to be a daunting task. But, the Ellis lecture eased the way considerably. Why? Because I now fully appreciate the profound importance that this forgotten document can make on today’s debate.

In a world filled with the likes of Marc Ellis and worse, it is essential that well-balanced people learn their history, and the Peel Commission Report is pure history. It describes a pivotal moment in time when early Palestine was fading and violent warfare was beginning. It essentially is a 412-page “report card” on how Jews and Arabs behaved towards each other in the 20 years following the Balfour Declaration.

It is a crisp, high-resolution photograph of 1937 Palestine, taken through a British lens that – and this is important – empowers modern Jews to utterly discredit the rantings of curiosities like Ellis.

Anyone who takes the time to read Peel will understand just how unfounded most of today’s anti-Israel propaganda really is. To the Englishmen of the Commission, the early Zionists were far from the thugs of modern myth. To the contrary, they were portrayed as nonviolent, law-abiding, astoundingly well-educated, ethical and serious in their efforts to reach an accommodation with the Arabs. With a pioneer spirit, they bought land legally, cleared the swamps, reclaimed the desert and increased the quality of everyone’s life to the extent that the Arab population almost doubled in size within two decades.

These are Peel’s words – read them yourself. Enjoy a long-overdue sense of pride that, yes, the early Zionists were also the good guys.

To Peel, there were only two core problems and neither had anything to do with deficiencies in Jewish character: The Arabs desperately wanted their own independent state, and they didn’t want to share it with a growing number of Jews.

There are many lessons to learn from that report. Here are a few:

1) A Martian can drop down to Earth and faithfully record what is going on, and then disappear for 73 years. People will discount or ignore his observations for the reason that those observations do not recall history as they wish to remember it. Lord Peel was that Martian.

2) It took the British decades to establish a cogent foreign policy in Palestine, and less than 24 months to unwind it with the infamous 1939 White Paper. How did that happen? Bad timing: Neville Chamberlain, the political weakling of the 20th century, took office within weeks of the release of the report.

Instead of embracing partition as the identical solution that successfully cured the Greek/Turkish impasse, he instead chose to appease Arab extremists by abandoning the Jews.

Don’t be shocked: Chamberlain also tossed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. He did both under the pressure of war. We too are now at war, and there are hints that decades of American foreign policy may be unraveling. Let’s hope that history does not repeat itself.

3) History needs to be learned before its lessons can be applied. Professors who read the “Cliff Notes” version of the Peel Report on some websites gain sound bytes, not wisdom. There are no shortcuts. The revisionist view of history whereby “Jews=oppressors” and “Arabs=victims” cannot stand the weight of historical detail, and that detail must be learned. Please rediscover the Peel Commission Report. They won’t.

Steve Tobias can be contacted at column@tobias.biz.

The Peace Plan You Never Heard Of (Peel Commission Series, 3 of 4)

Steve Tobias — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:19:00 GMT

Last week, I briefly reviewed Palestinian leader Muhammad Amin al-Husseini’s 1936 affirmation that a newly independent Arab Palestine would have no room for its 400,000 Jewish residents. I also reviewed Lord Peel’s reaction, which was a rather sober warning that the sizable Jewish minority would be under grave risk, should the British ever leave.

Both Lord Peel and the Jewish leadership recognized that in post-Ottoman Palestine, the Arab drive towards independence was unstoppable. Independent Arab states were popping up all over the Middle East and Palestinian Arabs did not want to be left out.

A Jewish homeland was clearly incompatible with this dream, and it was obvious that Jewish immigration was to be greatly curtailed, and soon. For the Jews, curtailment was a double tragedy. It meant that they would continue to be a vulnerable minority, and worse still, they would be unable to provide refuge for Europe’s persecuted Jews.

The clock was ticking: everyone recognized that continued immigration would put the Jews in the majority sooner or later, possibly within 10 years, according to Peel’s estimates. The Arabs wanted none of this, and were moving aggressively to halt immigration and gain independence before their future aspirations were eclipsed by those of the Jews.

And, so it was into this tense situation that the most unusual and forgotten peace initiative ever presented in the Middle East saw the light of day. It was described in the “Peel Report” on page 143, only to die an untimely death by page 144.

The proposal was presented to the Mandate government “by Chaim Weizmann and his colleagues on behalf of the Jewish Agency and the Va’ad Leumi.” It attempted to solve the unsolvable dilemma of the time: How can one land possibly fulfill the national aspirations of two peoples?

The proposal was bold. The idea was for the British to give their blessings to the creation of a newly independent binational state, run in partnership by both Jews and Arabs. The Arabs would be required to assign 50 percent of the legislature to Jews, even though they currently held the majority. In return, the Jews would guarantee 50 percent of the legislature to the Arabs in perpetuity, even though most agreed that with continued immigration, the Jews would soon achieve majority status.

Power sharing was a price that the Jewish leadership was willing to pay in exchange for undiminished immigration at a time when Germany’s Jews were fleeing the racist Nuremberg laws. It also undermined the Mufti’s plans to destroy the developing Jewish state, as it would empower moderate and enlightened Arabs to reject calls for unwanted violence by their more extreme brethren.

Together, Jews and “educated Arabs” would share equally in the governance of a new Palestine, for the betterment of all. I am not sure what is more astonishing, the sheer chutzpah of this proposal, or the fact that nobody in 2010 knows that it ever existed.

Though Peel was impressed with their argument that “the Jews did not wish to be dominated by the Arabs and neither did they wish to dominate them,” he felt that it was naive for two reasons. First, it underestimated the Arab passion for independence as an Arab-dominated state; and second, it overestimated the courage and influence of moderate Arabs. The plan was rejected.

The tale of this forgotten peace initiative refutes many arguments presented by the anti-Israel crowd. A common accusation of theirs is that the primary goal of the Zionists was to dominate the land and drive out the Arabs.

Clearly, this is a gross misrepresentation: the primary goal was to create a Jewish homeland, which is a very different thing. In order to achieve that goal, the Zionists of 1936 were ready to share power with the Arabs, on a permanent basis and on an equal footing. Sadly, the chances for a common future faded quickly as the Arab Revolt increased in savagery and intensity. Jews soon reciprocated in kind against their Arab neighbors, meeting murder with murder, massacre with massacre. Six wars later, there was no turning back.

The column next week will conclude this four-part series on the Peel Commission. The main lessons from this incredible historical
event will be reviewed, and eerie parallels to today’s situation will be explored.

Rolling Back the Clock in Palestine (Peel Commission series, 2 of 4)

Steve Tobias — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:15:00 GMT

The war in Gaza. The “Apartheid” Wall. Palestinian refugees. Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem. Roadblocks. Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Here are six reasons why Palestinians and, indeed, much of the entire world feel anger and even contempt for Israelis. Recent pressure on Israel by the international community (including Washington) is designed to roll back these irritants, once and for all. The goal is to return to a more simple time, perhaps to conjure up a “perfect world” where peace will flourish. Is that not unreasonable?

If you subscribe to the Palestinian narrative, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. If you believe the pro-Israel websites, the answer is an emphatic ‘no.’ But, there is a third way to get at the truth, one best suited for the innocent bystander who doesn’t mind spending a few afternoons reading a long-forgotten historical document.

That document, freely available on the Web, is the well-known, but rarely read, 1937 Peel Commission Report, a last-ditch effort by the British government to prevent the Palestine Mandate from exploding. It offered a brilliant analysis of the situation before there was an occupied West Bank, before there was a war in Gaza, or an “Apartheid Wall,” or roadblocks, or Palestinian refugees, or Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem. It was written at a simpler time, when the slate was relatively clean, and both sides had before them an uncharted future through which to navigate as they so wished. And, what did they wish for?

Lord Peel made that an easy question to answer. Starting on page 77, he listed 11 key policy statements from an assortment of British and Jewish sources, including Winston Churchill and the 1921 Zionist Congress. They all went on record advocating a policy of goodwill and peaceful coexistence between Arab and Jew, a state of grace that he termed “the assumption.”

Said Peel: “British Ministers, Commissioners of Inquiry and the spokesmen of Zionism had unanimously reaffirmed the assumption on which the successful operation of the Mandate had rested from the outset, namely, that somehow and at some time, Jews and Arabs would cooperate in promoting the peace and welfare of Palestine.”

He then wrote ominously of the Arab attitude towards that assumption: “Only one voice was missing from the chorus – the Arab voice. “Not once since 1919 had any Arab leader said that cooperation with the Jews was even possible.”

Peel drove the point home by sharing the minutes recorded during testimony by the supreme Palestinian religious and political leader of the time, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammed Amin al-Husseini.

Question: “Does His Eminence think that this country can assimilate and digest the 400,000 Jews now in the country?”

Answer: “No.”

Follow-up question: “Some of them would have to be removed by a process, kindly or painful, as the case may be?”

The mufti’s chilling answer: “We must leave all this to the future.”

Peel understood exactly what the mufti meant, and it wasn’t pretty. He immediately juxtaposed this interchange with a retelling of the recent massacre of Assyrian Christians in Iraq. He also reminded the reader of the massacre of Greek Christians by Turks in Smyrna. He knew what the risks were for a Jewish minority, should the British leave (which they later did). His warning was clear and unequivocal: “We cannot abandon them to the good intentions of an Arab government.”

For Peel, there were not six irritants, but only one underlying annoyance that inflamed passions in the area: living, breathing, Jewish immigrants.

Read the 1937 Peel Report. It is one of history’s best-kept secrets. It examines Arab-Jewish relations in that “perfect world” before refugees or settlements, walls or roadblocks. It recalls how early Zionists were nonviolent, generally law-abiding and prone to compromise. It also explains, in an understanding manner, how indigenous Arabs were threatened by an ever-increasing number of energetic Jewish immigrants and their entirely legal land purchases. It discussed the reasons why those Arabs chose the path of violence, bloodshed, terrorism and even massacres.

The Peel Report chronicles, as nothing else, what was and still is the core issue, namely the unwillingness of Arabs to live side by side and in peace with a vibrant Jewish state. Before rolling back the clock, our decision-makers in Washington need to read their history.

When Peace was at Hand: (Peel Commission Series 1 of 4)

Steve Tobias — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:11:00 GMT

As the security situation in Palestine began to disintegrate in 1936, an independent royal commission led by Lord William Robert Wellesley Peel arrived in the country. Peel’s task was to find a way out of the deteriorating mess for all parties, Arab, Jewish and British. I have just finished reading his 412-page report, and am taken by both its balance and insight.

The report is breathtaking in scope. It looked far into the past for context, while gazing into the future in ways that only can be described as prescient. It was written in a dispassionate, subtle, yet powerful manner. It confidently identified two, and only two, causes for the Arab-Jewish conflict.

The first cause was Arab nationalism: Palestinian Arabs were caught up in the passion of the times and fervently wanted their own independent state. The second was a mixture of Arab chauvinism and xenophobia or, as Peel put it: “[T]heir hatred and fear of the establishment of the Jewish National Home.” Peel asserted that all other factors, both internal and external, were secondary.

The commission’s radical and unexpected solution was a call for major surgery. To Peel, the “races” had clearly demonstrated that they could not live together, and partition was the only answer. In modern words: a “One-State Solution” was unworkable. Arab and Jew needed to part ways and accept two states as the only viable answer.

To justify partition, he cited the 1923 precedent that followed the bloody Greco-Turkish war. As part of a very successful peace agreement that remains effective to this day, 1.3 million Greeks left Turkish rule to live on Greek soil, while 400,000 Turks left Greece. Peel wrote optimistically that for Palestine, “the number of people involved would be very much smaller” (about 225,000). All that it would require, he said, was that the “Arab and the Jewish leaders might show the same high statesmanship as that of the Turks and the Greeks and make the same bold decision for the sake of peace.”

Peel had a mastery of facts on the ground, and the honesty to acknowledge that the analogy with Greece was limited. In contrast to Palestine, Greece possessed adequate tracts of uninhabited, but cultivable, land upon which refugees could settle. That’s where his genius showed. Peel looked beyond the present reality to recognize that “barren” Palestine was, in fact, probably quite fertile. He called for urgent studies that “justified the hope that the execution of large scale plans for irrigation, water storage and development in . . . Beersheba and the Jordan Valley would make provision for a much larger population than exists there at the present time.”

A casual drive through modern Israel shows how much of a visionary the man truly was: All the areas he mentioned are now green with life. Peel was right on the money, and the 1923 Greco-Turkish model for peaceful population transfer indeed was an equally valid solution for the 1937 quagmire that was Palestine. Peace was at hand, and it took a creative thinker of Peel’s caliber to recognize this.

David Ben-Gurion pushed hard for acceptance of Lord Peel’s solution, but the Arab leaders would have none of that. They dismissed his recommendations out of hand and, within several weeks, sought their own solution: an onslaught of savage violence against their Jewish neighbors and the British authorities.

The Second World War started shortly thereafter, and the desperate British sought to shore up their southern front by appeasing Arab sentiment. They abandoned Peel’s recommendations and reversed themselves on earlier promises for a Jewish national home. Ten years and countless lives later, a variation of Peel’s partition ideas was promoted by the United Nations but, again, Arabs chose violence over compromise. The price this time was much higher: the bloody 1948 War of Independence, known to Palestinians as “the Naqba,” left deep scars that may never heal.

In 1937, peace was at hand, but only one side was prepared to compromise. And now? Read the papers. At last week’s Arab League conference, Syria’s Bashar Assad urged the Palestinians to stop negotiations and restart violence. His words sound familiar: “The price of resistance is not higher than the price of peace.”

The Unmissed Millions

Steve Tobias — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:08:00 GMT

One of our three globe-trotting daughters currently is studying in Beijing, and she just sent us a fascinating article that tries to explain the mystery of why many Chinese families save so much money, compared to Americans and others. The new explanation is surprising: It seems that it stems from the great imbalance in the Chinese sex ratio (100 girls for every 122 boys). The parents of boys are saving like crazy so that they can attract a wife for their sons. The competition gets worse as the sons age: Consider that after 80 marriages, the remaining 42 boys have to compete for the last 20 girls. After 95 couples pair off, the ratio climbs to five-to-one.

The big story here is not the plight of the single Chinese boy or even how the “frumpy” Chinese girls over 30 have great social lives. The big story is the missing women. Not only Chinese women, but also Indian, Korean and Vietnamese. A 2007 United Nations report pointed out that “[i]f the continent’s overall sex ratio was the same as elsewhere in the world, in 2005 Asia’s population would have included almost 163 million more women and girls.” The reasons are obvious: The ready availability of ultrasound makes it quite easy for parents to selectively abort female fetuses.

I, for one, have a real problem with 163 million missing girls and women, and would like to see something done about it. Many readers surely must feel the same, especially when they consider that many of these ultrasound-driven abortions occur in the second trimester. But, not everyone shares this sense of revulsion. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada responds to this issue by noting that “being pro-choice means supporting a woman’s right to decide whether or not to continue a pregnancy for whatever reason, even if one personally does not agree with her reason.”

A similar sentiment is echoed by other organizations, such as Human Rights Watch. HRW believes that banning sex-selective abortion will not eliminate the practice and, hence, should not be implemented. HRW points out that the source of the problem ultimately is cultural and historical, and the long-term solution is tied to changes in cultural values and norms. In their words, “[C]riminalization of sex-selective abortion would put the full burden of righting a fundamental wrong – the devaluing of women’s lives – on women.”

Clearly, there are two ways to stop this. One is to remove sexism in Asia altogether; the other is to stop sex-selective abortions. Both have their role, and international involvement can help reach these goals. But, let’s get real: While the achievement of world peace, along with the elimination of sexism and racism, are lofty goals for which we all should work, the attainment of these goals is far off. Until that time, there are things that we can do in the here and now. One of those things is to press for the effective elimination of sex-selective abortions through the targeting of those responsible – and not just the poor conflicted mothers. External pressures that arise from loud international protests will help make that happen, especially in this age of Internet-enabled youth.

But, protesting against genocide in Darfur is easy compared to protesting against rampant sex-selective abortions in Asia. Not abortions, mind you: sex-selective abortions. Think about it – how can we vigorously voice objections over the right of Asian women to abort healthy female fetuses while we simultaneously fight for our wives’ and daughters’ right to personal choice? Short answer: We can’t, and we don’t. It would be the height of hypocrisy and cultural narcissism to hinder sex-selective abortions in Singapore at the same time that we condone abortions for reasons unique to our own culture. And so, no one wants to talk about the missing millions, and the shocking statistics generally go unreported and ignored.

When my wife was expecting our third daughter, a friend told me that any man who says he doesn’t want a son is a liar. Well, I always wanted a boy, I admit it. But, I cherish and love my three girls, and I hope that others also will cherish them and their progeny for generations to come. In contrast, there are 163 million missing girls and women in Asia that no one seems to miss. Their absence is met by a deafening silence, and their ranks continue to grow.

By the Numbers

Steve Tobias — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:04:00 GMT

I am currently enrolled in a six-week course at Rice University titled, “A Middle East Primer: History and Current Developments at a Crossroad.”

The first lecture by Rice Historian Dr. Lisa Balabanlilar, “The Origins of Islam,” was carefully prepared, well thought-out and excellent. The second lecture, last Tuesday by Prof. Ussama Makdisi, “A Brief History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” was a by-the-numbers exhortation devoid of balance and a sense of fair play.

I must admit, it was truthfully advertised in the course description, promising to be a lecture that dealt with “. . . the creation of the modern state of Israel in territory regarded by many Arab nations as belonging to the Palestinians.” Indeed, it dealt largely with arguments of why the Jews have no right to the lands that currently comprise the State of Israel.

Without our own Max Blankfeld reminding the lecturer during that Q&A that Jews were the majority occupants millennia ago, all semblance of balance would have been totally lost. I do not begrudge Prof. Makdisi his passionate feelings for the plight of the Palestinians: As the nephew of the late Edward Said, I would expect nothing less. What frustrates me is how he leverages his position at a highly esteemed university to advocate his positions without so much as a pretense of balanced history.

Take, for example, his insistence early in the lecture on repeating (no fewer than four times) the infamous statement attributed to early Zionists: “A people for a land, for a land without a people.” He drove this point home to set the tone for the rest of the lecture, namely to communicate clearly that the early Zionists were self-serving colonialists that denied the existence of any indigenous people.

Yet, had Makdisi chosen to be less of an advocate and more of a historian, perhaps he would have researched the roots of that phrase. If he had, he would have found that the origins were attributable not to European Jews, but rather to American Christian Zionists. These words were first uttered by William Eugene Blackstone in 1881, someone who felt that Palestine was a land without “a people” in the sense of an established nation: He never meant to imply that the land was uninhabited.

More to the point, many scholars insist that this interpretation – largely championed by Edward Said, and now his nephew – is misleading, if not outright disingenuous. One Columbia University professor recently has gone on record as stating that, far from ignoring the existence of Palestinian Arabs, “In fact, the inverse is true. Zionists never stopped debating Palestinian nationalism, arguing with it and about it, judging it, affirming or negating its existence, pointing to its virtues or vices . . . . The accusation of ‘denial’ is simplistic and disregards the historical phenomenon of a polemical discourse revolving around the central axis provided by Arab or Palestinian nationalism.”

And yet, Manichean simplicity is what Makdisi was selling. His goal obviously was to frame his arguments in terms of colonialism and racism, not balance and objectivity.

The most egregious example of this was his summary of the Peel Commission’s final recommendations. This British commission that was set up to solve the Arab-Jewish problem 75 years ago recognized what many are choosing today to again forget: that a “one-state solution” is not possible, full stop. It recommended partition with population transfer similar to what followed the Greco-Turkish war of 1922. And yet, the extent of Prof. Makdisi’s discussion of this momentous event was to simply list the reasons why this was a bad deal for the Arabs, and how the British consequently appealed to the Arab’s “well-known sense of generosity” to make it happen.

Gone was any mention of the Peel Commission’s profound findings that many Arab complaints largely were unfounded: “Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased. . . . There was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.” Furthermore, the commission found that the main Arab complaint about land shortage “was due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews, than to the increase in the Arab population.”

Did the Palestinian Arabs have reason to reject the Peel Commission’s recommendations as presented? Of course they did, and that part was adequately covered. But, how can Rice expect its undergraduates, graduate students or the community, at large, to gain a fair understanding when only one side is presented?

Rice has a problem, and I think it knows it – or should. When a tenured professor of history presents lecture after lecture with maps boasting the logo of passia.org, a leading Palestinian advocacy group, Rice needs to understand that one of its tenured professors has inextricably conflated intellectual honesty with advocacy, intellectual laziness with stimulating academic challenge.

So, do you wave in the driver or not?

Steve Tobias — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:59:00 GMT

It was a rainy night when I got off of 610 at the Braeswood exit, that free-for-all intersection where cars jockey madly for position. A car to my left maneuvered to cut me off, and I chose to wave it on. Because of the rain and bad lighting, I couldn’t see whether or not he gave me the customary “thank you” wave, or just chalked up the gain. That irked me to no end. Those little waves makes it so much easier to deal with the next pushy driver, while being made the fool makes it just as easy to be tough as nails. My thoughts quickly drifted to the Middle East, where many believe that concessions are seen as weakness. No wonder negotiations there always seem to be stuck in gridlock.

Last week, I attended a lecture hosted by the American Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. There were three speakers: a Canadian, an Israeli and a Jordanian, all describing an exciting new program to train Jordanian paramedics in Beersheba. By all accounts, it is off to a great start, with future plans to include students from other Arab countries. The star of the evening was Mohammed Al-Hadid, president of the Jordanian Red Crescent and chairman of the Standing Commission of the International Red Cross. He helped to midwife this new program, and sees it as the first of many such programs between the two countries. An unabashed Jordanian patriot who understands the value in peaceful coexistence, Al-Hadid is the kind of visionary leader who can make a difference for generations to come.

And then, the next day, I read how Hamas spokesman Hammad Al-Ruqub promised that his organization would spare no effort to liberate Palestine, and “would not concede a grain of Palestinian soil.” He boasted (advertised?) that Hamas will “remain the spearhead in the land of Jihad defending the Arab and Muslim nations’ dignity on their behalf,” a transparent appeal for support aimed at the greater Muslim and Arab world. So, while Al-Hadid is touring the world to raise funds for an Israeli-based center to teach emergency medicine in Arabic, Al-Ruqub is advertising his services to those who share his view about the liberation of Palestine. The two represent opposite-end members on the core issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict: namely, whether to embrace Israel or destroy it.

So, do you wave in the driver or not? It depends on who is driving. The secret is to know when to be gentle, when to be tough, when to yield and when to brandish steel. There are many players in the Middle East, and only the well-meaning ones should be engaged and supported. It’s a lesson that many forget.

44 ways to support jihad; one way to stop it

Steve Tobias — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:55:00 GMT

An amazing and controversial book called “Understanding Terror Networks” was published in 2004 by Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and counter-terrorism specialist. He presented some novel ideas about the nature of terrorism, claiming that modern terror networks are organized more like computer networks than corporations. In his view, terrorists today rarely follow “top-down” directives by the likes of “CEO” Osama bin Ladin but, rather, behave as individuals or loosely formed “groups of guys” that eventually commit what Sageman calls “leaderless terrorism.”

What is fascinating about Sageman’s book is the methodology that he employed to reach his surprising conclusions. He compiled statistics on 172 captured or killed jihadists and showed that about three-quarters were solidly upper or middle class. Most of them were not brainwashed in madrassas as young children but, rather, joined the jihad well past adolescence, when they could think for themselves. More than 60 percent had some college education; they largely were devoid of any mental illness and, as a group, had very little emotional trauma in their lives.

An astounding 78 percent of these terrorists joined the jihad while living overseas, when they tended to be particularly lonely and emotionally alienated. Joining the jihad followed a three-stage process. The first stage was the most critical, and was social in nature. In this stage, the future terrorist found friendship and kinship through “mutual emotional and social support, development of a common identity and encouragement to adopt a new faith.” Next, their beliefs were intensified, eventually leading to an acceptance of jihadist ideology. Finally, they gained formal acceptance through the encounter of a “link” to the jihad, often through the Internet.

When reviewing the details of Anwar al Awlaki’s “44 ways to support jihad,” it becomes clear that Sageman’s arguments cast this work in a fresh and frightening light. Fully 23 of the 44 ways cited by al Awlaki involve social, emotional, physical and philanthropic support of the society within which the future jihadist lives. Another nine ways stress motivation, education and indoctrination. Thus 32 of the 44 ways to support jihad directly address Sageman’s most critical first stage of the radicalization process, when the disillusioned Muslim youth first is bonded to the jihad through a supportive social network. Clearly, Al Awlaki understands that the way to spread jihad is through the nurturing of potential warriors from within a radicalized Muslim community.

This story really should worry our Muslim neighbors. Like all Americans, they, too, will suffer from any terrorist attacks that hit our soil. However, unlike other Americans, the fabric of their close-knit community actively is being targeted by nefarious elements that want to spread Salafi jihad. These elements are trying their best to exploit disenfranchised Muslim youths and young men through tried-and- true methodologies. As the Fort Hood tragedy shows, their efforts are all too effective.

As Sageman pointed out convincingly, the tougher life is for these youths, the easier it is for them to be attracted to radical ideologies. When young people are alienated, underemployed and discriminated against, they feel a sense of grievance and humiliation. They respond by seeking a cause that gives them “emotional relief, social community, spiritual comfort and cause for self sacrifice.” For the case where these youths are first- or second-generation Muslims, the allure of jihad can be irresistible.

So, what can be done to help reduce this risk of radicalization? I think it’s obvious. Young American Muslims need to be engaged by non-Muslims in a way that is less paranoid, less hostile and much more accepting. They need to feel that they are liked and valued by their fellow Americans to such an extent that a kindred spirit pulls them in the right direction. The juggling of ethnic and national identity is something that Jewish Americans have experienced in one form or other for generations.

Is there a supportive role for Houston’s Jewish community here? Maybe. It needs some thought and discussion.

The Wrong Questions

Steve Tobias — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:49:00 GMT

The most memorable part of the San Antonio marathon last week was not in finally stumbling over the finish line in high heat and 95 percent humidity but, rather, in what occurred at the very beginning. The race started with a stirring prayer to honor the 13 men and women who were butchered at nearby Fort Hood two weeks earlier. You could have heard a pin drop: all 30,000 runners stood with bowed heads, many of which sported military crew cuts. There were lots of soldiers and airmen running that day: San Antonio is their home, and the dead were their brothers and sisters. The tragedy at Fort Hood suddenly became more personal.

This past Friday, The New York Times had an article about Anwar al Awlaki, the Muslim cleric who acted as spiritual advisor to the shooter. He was born to Yemeni parents in New Mexico, was the Muslim chaplain at George Washington University and now lives and writes from hiding somewhere in Yemen. His writings are getting a very wide audience: the Times article noted that most of the recently arrested jihadists in the English-speaking world have been inspired by Al Awlaki. Maybe because I had just finished sweating and struggling in the heat alongside a bunch of fine young soldiers, I wanted to know how an American-raised “man of the cloth” played an instrumental role in the killing of unarmed service men and women. I downloaded his treatise, “44 Ways to Support the Jihad,” and set to work reading it.

Al Awlaki is intelligent, writes wonderfully and thinks big. The bulk of his document speaks to the motivation of the jihadist and the importance of supporting these fighters and especially their families. It is a blueprint for the long-term sustenance of a fighting force by a general population. Al Awlaki recognizes that a jihadist is not simply a member of a commando team, but rather one small part of an entire society that includes noncombatant philanthropists, medical personnel, wives and children. He exhorts Muslims everywhere to contribute to the cause in any way they can. In some ways, this document is an upbeat outline for how all societies should cooperate as they strive to overcome challenges.

But, in other ways, it is bone chilling. He clearly states that co-existence is not a goal of militant Islam. “We need to realize that Allah will not grant us victory,” he writes, “as long as we still have love toward his enemies in our hearts.” His attitude toward children is just as disturbing. He relates fondly how Mohammed’s companion, Zubair bin al Awam, gave his young son, Abdullah, a small knife so that he could “. . . go around the battlefield searching for injured disbelievers in order to finish them off.”

We’re not asking the right questions about the Fort Hood massacre. The focus should not be on Major Hasan’s psychological makeup, nor on how a country can defend itself while protecting the rights of decent Muslim Americans. Rather, the question to ask is why and how quickly this new spiritual leader is gaining traction in the English-speaking Muslim world. The implications of his writings pose a clear and present danger to our society, and they must be understood and discussed – something I will start doing next week. These writings are nothing less than a blueprint for the weaponization of the Muslim world, and we ignore them at our own peril, as well as the peril of all decent Muslims who live among us.

The Greatest Generation (The Oslo Syndrome Series, 3 of 3)

Steve Tobias — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:45:00 GMT

In the last two columns, I discussed how a “chronic siege” mentality weakens oppressed minorities in ways that resemble how abused wives and children weaken over time. Both groups will do anything to stop the beatings, forever currying favor by being “good” along lines dictated by the tyrant. In the process, they inevitably embrace the accusations of their oppressors, deluding themselves into believing that this gives them control over their fate.

I cited experts who assert that years of chronic siege have taken a toll on people, both in and outside of Israel. Some Israeli academics rewrite history to absolve their grandparents’ enemies of guilt and take it upon their own shoulders: Suicide bombers sometimes are seen as victims responding to an intolerable situation in understandable ways, and young Jews, the world over, are losing a sense of pride over who they are and what Israel really stands for.

We need to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the big picture. That picture will be brought into focus at the end of a process that has three parts: awareness, education and bonding. These three parts each lie at the ready within our community, and all we need to do is to combine them together with a clear and deliberate effort.

First, awareness. We need to explain to our children that there is a siege underway, and that it’s there to see if only they look. And, they will look with our guidance – beyond our comfortable home in America toward other countries where Jews in general, and Israelis in particular, are a minority who widely are despised. The numbers say it all: For every Israeli Jew, there are about 50 Arabs, most of whom are hostile, to some extent. Our children must understand that this overwhelming Arab majority is not inherently evil, but like any other geo-cultural group, they have their own unique political and social needs. Sadly, the fulfillment of those needs never has been compatible with an embrace of a Jewish state. We all must understand that peace with Palestinians only will occur when the Arab world decides that peace is in their own interests, and not before.

The only way to instill this awareness is through education, the second part of this process. Children and their parents must be taught how communities such as ours are in danger of splintering because of the unremitting hatred and bloodlust aimed in our general direction. They must be taught about self-defeating behaviors that are essentially delusional, that Israel is not the center of the universe and that the tail never wags the dog. They also need to learn more about the Arab world. They need to learn about the large Arab heart and its capacity to give generously, but they also must study the Arab tendency toward political tyranny and oppression. This education is incomplete without a thorough review of inflammatory Palestinian textbooks and anti-Semitic tirades coming out of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Sweden and elsewhere. This is painful to do, so we must softly kiss our children on the cheek, place our hand under their young chins and gently raise their gaze in that direction, whispering not to be afraid. Look, we must say. Learn.

And finally, our children have to take heart by learning what has kept the Jewish people together under adversity for centuries. They need to learn and understand the depth of our history, the beauty in our traditions, the strengths of our values and the goodness of our souls. Our children need to know in their bones that Jews and Israelis yearn for peace more than anyone on the planet, and we must strengthen their backs to the point that no one can tell them otherwise, ever. This is the bonding part of the process, the part that gives our children the strength to stand strong to the onslaughts that they’ll be facing when they’re in charge, when we’re gone. Can they handle it? What a question. This is the only Jewish community in America whose football team can take home the city championship. They can do anything. They may have to. Our job is to show them how.

To Rise Above The Haze (The Oslo Syndrome Series, 2 of 3)

Steve Tobias — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:40:00 GMT

Last week, I introduced Haaretz reporter Amira Hass as an example of an intelligent and sensitive Israeli who had clearly switched loyalties in the grand conflict in the Middle East, and asked the question: Why? I reviewed the work of Dr. Kenneth Levin, a psychiatrist/historian who sees remarkable parallels between the coping strategies of despised minorities (especially Jews and Israelis) and those of abused wives and children. Levin describes how abused wives often choose not to hate their overpowering husbands but, rather, despise themselves and their own behavior. In a similar way, some radical Israeli journalists and intellectuals no longer hate the suicide bomber but, instead, choose to despise and criticize that part of their society that causes otherwise peace-loving people to take such desperate measures.

Both coping strategies are intensely delusional. These victims often are unable to rise above the emotional haze long enough to ask lucid questions, such as “Are my actions (or my country’s actions) really the underlying cause of this bloodlust?” They delude themselves into thinking that they can be in control, whether the tyrant is a drunken husband, the 22 members of the Arab League or, lately, the ruling Ayatollah. These victims employ a defense mechanism first described in 1936 by Anna Freud: They “identify with the aggressor” as a way to stay in control, at least in their own minds.

Confusing? Perhaps. But consider: How many think in terms of an all-powerful Israel bounded by a weak Palestinian people? While that’s true to some extent, it’s essential to remember that Israel is also entirely surrounded by a quarter of a billion hostile Arabs. This overpowering majority is the real source of the endless hostility. The ruling paradigm of an all-powerful Israel acting irresponsibly is an upside down paradigm. It’s really not that hard to understand: If the Arab League decided tomorrow that peace with Israel was in its interest, then there would be peace, tomorrow. The sad fact is that despite the presence of some progressive voices in the Arab world, its leadership has never accepted the existence of the Jewish state. Instead, they prefer the ultimate liberation of Arab land or, at worst, a status quo that provides a convenient scapegoat for their oppressed masses. Thus, the aggression against the despised minority never stops, and Hamas and others are supplied endlessly with money, weapons and moral support.

Until that “payoff” becomes outdated, selfless measures by well-meaning Israelis are nothing more than delusions: they are exercises in narcissism. And, for as long as overpowering Arab anger and hostility edges Israel ever closer to pariah status, we all can rest assured that the Amira Hass’ of the Jewish world will be there to help us cope, through repentance, self-introspection and unending compromise.

This is not to say that Israel is a saintly country, it is not. It is a flawed democracy like our own, and needs an adversarial press and an independent judicial system to keep its government in check. However, we must never fail to keep perspective, wisdom and common sense, if for no other reason than to stay firmly anchored to reality. Sadly, many Israelis and Diaspora Jews fall short of the mark, for reasons that were first understood more than 70 years ago.

If there is only one thing to take away from today’s column, it is that it is a mistake to lump together all of the most vocal critics of Israel. There certainly are those that are mean-spirited and hateful, but there are also those that are victims of this hatred. This second group identifies very strongly with being Jewish, and reacts in the same way that many ghettoed Jews have reacted for centuries. They react by deluding themselves to the true intent of their aggressors, and erroneously seek a solution from within.

The third and final part of this series will discuss how this awareness affects our community here in Houston.

Crisp Autumn Air (The Oslo Syndrome Series, 1 of 3)

Steve Tobias — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:37:00 GMT

Though I consider myself well read on problems dealing with the Middle East, I’ll be the first to admit that, at times, I miss the big picture. For example, I can’t grasp why it is that the same champions of human rights that consistently bash all things American or Israeli seem to apply a more relaxed (read double) standard when discussing conditions inside many Arab dictatorships. The list is long and ranges from Jimmy Carter to Amnesty International and the UN.

And, so it was like a breath of crisp autumn air that I read an icy condemnation of the recent behavior of Human Rights Watch by none other than its founder and former chairman, Robert L. Bernstein. In what was surely a painful op-ed in the New York Times, Bernstein criticized his own creation because it “has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel repeatedly has been attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields.” Finally: sober clarity for all!

The good feeling didn’t last long, however. A few days later, Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass went on Pacifica Radio brandishing her fresh “Lifetime Achievement Award” and calmly tore Bernstein apart. To Hass, his comments were so incomprehensible as to be “very Orwellian. It’s Israel which attacks the Palestinians.” In her mind “much of it sounded like propaganda of Israeli officials.”

I find it very disturbing to be so at odds with clearly intelligent people such as Hass. While there is the strong temptation to label her as a deluded self-hating Israeli, I really don’t want to go there. It’s too cheap and easy, and doesn’t shed any light on motivations. Is Hass an inherently evil person? No, not at all. As she stated later in her interview, she “takes from Jewish tradition the sense of alarm at such gross violations of rights, of human rights.” I do not fault her very Jewish humanity or sensitivity, and I, too, cringe at stories of Palestinian suffering. But, still I miss the big picture: Why do so many Jews of the “hard left” not feel as outraged by incidences of Palestinian and Arab violence, bloodlust, naked aggression and outrageous bigotry? Why always give “the other side” a free pass while they focus all their ire on Israel? Don’t they realize that in the process, they lose balance, context, wisdom and credibility?

A few years ago, I intuited that the relentless international onslaught against Israel reminded me at one level of the way abusive husbands consider their wives and/or children to be utterly worthless; their contempt for them often results in merciless beatings. Never a kind word for “these dogs,” only blows and insults. It was an insight without context and, while intriguing, I had nowhere to go with it. And then, last week, a friend forwarded me a fascinating piece by one Dr. Kenneth Levin, a brilliant psychiatrist and historian who explores parallels between abused children and abused minorities. Drawing upon both psychological and historical archives, he argues quite convincingly that constant, unrelenting terror takes a similar toll on both abused children and adult members of despised groups (read Israelis or Jews). The relentless terror ultimately warps behavior and beliefs in surprising, yet predictable ways, into a form of “Stockholm Syndrome.” The frightened victim – outmuscled by the drunken father (or the 22-member Arab League, or 192-member UN) – copes by changing the only thing they can: their own worldview and behavior. Their loyalties.

To be continued

Shalom, Salaam, Goldstone

Steve Tobias — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:24:00 GMT

One of today’s greatest ironies is that the two peoples that always seem to be in conflict have enlightened and nearly identical greetings: “Salaam Aleikum” and “Shalom Aleichem.” The irony is not so much linguistic, as it is in knowing that the “peace” in “peace be unto you” is only possible if your enemy is also free from war. It’s a magnificent philosophy of “we’re all in it together.” This begs the question that no one seems to ask: Is what’s bad for the Israelis really good for the Palestinians, and vice versa?

To many in the international community, the answer is a resounding yes. So, after Israel unilaterally “un-occupied” the Gaza strip in 2005, the resulting 7,200 or so Hamas rockets and mortars fired at Israeli civilians drew not one word of condemnation from the United Nations. Criticism would have been bad for the Palestinians, right? Wrong. Criticism might have halted the terrorism, and possibly would have prevented the inevitable military action by Israel last year. Now that the rockets have stopped and more than 1,400 are dead in Gaza, criticism of Israeli actions is good for the Palestinians and all G-d’s children, right? Wrong again.

Just as every city on Earth knows crime, elements of both sides of every conflict commit war crimes, to some degree. Yet, the “Goldstone Report” claims that Israel’s military actions “constituted deliberate attacks on civilian objects in violation of customary international humanitarian law.” If that indeed is true, then clearly Israeli leaders are liable. But wait: What if it’s not true? What if the Israeli military was up against a foe that systematically hid behind civilians in violation of every precept of Western ethics? If that is the case, then the wrong party has been singled out for punishment, and the world has just empowered terrorists the world over to continue using human shields, winking to them that they will not be held accountable by the UN.

Many JH-V readers have friends and family who have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. For those who have, ask them two simple questions: Have gunmen in these countries hid behind human shields, and have your loved ones nevertheless taken great care whenever possible to avoid civilian casualties? Now the punch line: If the UN nevertheless condemned and even went after these soldier or marine sons for Nazi-like war crimes, would you insist that they continue to put themselves at risk to avoid civilian casualties? I think everyone sees where this is going. If it can be shown that an army goes the extra yard to minimize collateral damage, then the UN owes it to the civilians in the area to act responsibly. Falsely penalizing an army that tries to minimize civilian casualties will lead to unnecessary deaths in the future, full stop.

While mulling this over, consider some third-party testimony that the Goldstone report ignored, such as that of the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and counterterror expert Col. Richard Kemp. His words: “During Operation Cast Lead [in Gaza], the Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare . . . the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. . . More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.”

Again, is what’s bad for the Israelis good for everyone else? Absolutely not. If the UN continues its one-sided criticism of the Israeli military, while downplaying improper behavior by Hamas, then the ultimate losers are civilians everywhere, as well as soldiers and marines fighting for peace. Rewarding good and fighting evil on both sides is an essential precondition for peace to flourish. Salaam Aleikum. Shalom Aleichem.

Two Nations Under Water

Steve Tobias — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:16:00 GMT

I’m pretty sure that it was during the Clinton administration that the right and the left in our country declared open war, or at least ended the uneasy peace. Bill Clinton came into office after the fall of communism, at a relaxed time when there seemed to be no pressing need for an aggressive U.S. president to continue our tradition of “American exceptionalism.” His new style and domestic agenda rubbed many conservatives the wrong way. Clinton became the subject of some pretty scathing attacks; he could do nothing right, in their eyes.

Payback came swiftly and lasted eight years, during which time Bush was on the receiving end of what became an ever-cresting tsunami of undisguised hostility from the left. And now with Obama – suffice it to say that we appear to be two nations under water, or at the least two estranged peoples lacking trust and mutual respect.

And, that’s too bad. A polarized America is a very unhealthy America, and that goes for Jewish communities around the country. It’s counterproductive; more importantly, it’s not necessary. There are great undercurrents of commonality between the groups, and all we need to do is to unclench our jaw muscles – and fists – to see and hear this.

Take for example one “commonality” close to my heart: religious tolerance. To many conservatives, religious tolerance is the sort of “touchy feely” subject that has “liberal agenda” written all over it. Well, maybe that’s partly true – and perhaps many liberals seem ready to claim this as their own. But, what’s also true is that religious tolerance is one of the building blocks for many modern conservatives who put human rights at the center of their worldview – a worldview that strives to spread representational forms of government and free-market enterprise.

At a recent presentation by Israeli Arabs, my wife and I heard one of them sing the praises of Benjamin Netanyahu’s enlightened (read tolerant) attitude toward Arab women: “Get them liberated, get them educated, get them working.” Netanyahu’s goal appears to result from a strong belief that economic growth cures a host of ills. But, the point is made: The left and the right can come from entirely different directions in their support of tolerance – religious and otherwise – and to deny that such an overlap exists is to deny an opportunity. What holds true for tolerance can also hold true for other subjects, as well – not all, but some.

I am honored that the Jewish Herald-Voice has asked me to write a periodic column to explore these and other themes, and to serve as a counterpoint to other opinions found on these pages. Over the next few months and years, I hope to explore the elusive commonalities that link us and those departures that strengthen us: liberal and conservative; religious and secular; Palestinian and Israeli. I hope that you will read these columns and find something useful in them.

But not just yet

Steve Tobias — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:21:00 GMT

And so it was that I became a spy for the Houston Palestinian community last Saturday night while attending the pro- and anti-Israel demonstrations at the Galleria. While sipping on a Starbucks among the Palestinian crowd, I met one of my Arab acquaintances, friendly and talkative as always. I inquired about her family in Gaza, and she told me the horrible news that her 14 year old cousin was just blown to bits by a missile that appeared out of nowhere. I gave her my condolences, and expressed my wishes that all the killing would stop soon. She thanked me, and then pointed to a sign at the Israeli demonstration across the intersection, the one that said “Palestinians for Israel”. She confided that everyone was very upset by that sign: either it was legitimate, which was bothersome, or it was a lie, which was infuriating. I promised that I’d check it out for her.

I returned in a few minutes to tell her that yes, there were in fact some Palestinians supporting Israel. She expressed disbelief: “I can’t believe it”. “Why not?” I countered. “Fatah and Hamas are at each other’s throats, and anyway there are signs over there that say “Jews for Palestine”. “That’s different”, she snapped. Her sentiments were echoed by two others that joined the conversation. They all explained that while it’s natural for Jews to support Palestine, only a Palestinian traitor would support Israel. I told them that there are two sides to every story, maybe three in Gaza, and that there will always be members of each side that sees the other’s logic. But she had a point: the Zeitgeist is that Israel is burdened by original sin while the Palestinians are fighting the good fight. While of course I don’t agree with that, I envy their passion and sense of loyalty every bit as much as I loathe those among us who offer unqualified, unchallenging and unquestioning support for all things Palestinian. Ultimately however the Palestinian’s strength is their weakness: by being more anti-Israel than pro-Palestinian, they are blinded by hatred to such an extent that they can’t see the big picture. As Golda Meir once said: “Peace will come when they love their children more than they hate us”.

As the number of demonstrators gathering around me grew to one dozen and then two, I tried to explain this point to the hostile but remarkably polite crowd of Palestinians and supporters. “You all tell your children to wear seatbelts, and would surely caution a drunken friend not to drive. But when Hamas fires hundreds of missiles against what is the mightiest military power in the region, you remained silent. Did you not know that this would happen? Of course you did. Tonight you all chant bravely in Houston for the fight to continue until “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!”, but the time to demonstrate was before civilians started dying: your friends and families are paying the price for your bravery.” We went back and forth on many issues. “The Qassam rockets are home made and crude: how does that balance against Israeli 2000 pound bombs?” one asked. “The Qassam 3 has a warhead of 20 kg that is packed with shrapnel” I countered. “Bombs that blow up busses use maybe two kilograms. Have you ever seen even 5 kg detonate, my friend? I have. It’s devastating. Homemade or not, a 20kg warhead is very deadly, especially if it detonates inside a school or house. But yes, the Israelis have 2000 pound bombs, and don’t forget the Apaches, the armed drones, the F16’s, the battle tanks. All the more reason for people that love Palestine to caution Hamas to stop arming to the teeth, to moderate.” Many were taken aback by my recollections of field work around Gaza in the early 1980’s, of how tens of thousands of workers would drive each morning into Israel during an oasis of peaceful coexistence. I shared with them that far from being an aberration, this bygone dynamic is in reality the natural state of affairs, that Israelis and Palestinians will one day team up, and watch out world when they do! “Your enemies are not the Jews – they are the Chinese and the Indians, who are teaching their children how to steal the future, while your children are traumatized by explosions and learn how to throw rocks and fire Qassams. You have to focus on the future, on getting both countries separated by internationally accepted borders as soon as possible. Imagine if Jewish and Palestinian talent, businesses and universities teamed up for mutual good instead of mutual destruction.” I must say, this type of talk seemed to resonate with quite a few. This line of dialogue needs to continue.

Contrast that to another experience I had two nights before when I called into the KPFT talk show “The Other Side”. I have never called in to KPFT, but some of their ranting was really over the top that evening. Of the two hosts, one (Staci Davis) was as clueless as she was outrageous. In second guessing Israel’s “end game” for Gaza, she mused “I guess you claim victory when they’re all dead… and there’s faster ways to do it, you know: they could build some ovens and just get it over with”. Even better, her reasons for justifying Hamas missiles: “When you’re in the Alamo and you’re surrounded by Mexicans, you fire on ‘em! If you’re under siege, you fire on the people that are under-siegeing you.” George Bush would be proud. Best of all were her musings that the war was being waged largely to curry favor with Israeli voters, as summed up with this blanket demonization of the Jewish State: “What does that say about the bloodlust of the Israeli people?” For ten minutes I went back and forth with them on a variety of topics. At the end, the more reasoned host (Glenn Urbach) thanked me and welcomed me back anytime, and to his credit also appealed for other callers with differing views (Houstonians – take notice!). KPFT offers a slew of incredibly biased and one-sided shows, and yet this one at least welcomes all callers. Do it! While the Staci Davises of the world may never see both sides, their listeners are, well – listening.

This is not a story about me, but rather a story about Houston, where passions are high right now. I do not begrudge our Palestinian cousins their right to demonstrate in support of their frightened, wounded and hungry families and friends in Gaza. To the contrary, Saturday’s non-violent demonstrations were quintessentially American, though their reliance on “Jewish-Nazi” rhetoric undercut their credibility considerably. By all accounts, Hamas is being devastated, and soon there may be a new status quo in the region. Will they recover? Maybe, maybe not. The people of Gaza have demonstrated the ability to throw out one corrupt ruling clique (Fatah): let’s hope they do it again to Hamas, which has brought so much destruction upon them. If and when that happens, I hope that Houston’s Jewish community will be ready to initiate joint academic, business and social initiatives with Houston’s Palestinian and Arab communities. We’re overdue for a paradigm shift.

But not just yet. Passions are too high. Now is the time for us to call in to the talk shows and dialogue with these folks with an eye on the innocent bystanders that are eavesdropping, not from weakness but from strength and knowledge. Not to score points, but to persuade and to shed light on falsehoods with reasoned historical context. We’ll never reach the extremists, but there are many that want to talk and listen. Events on the ground are about to change: we need to change with them.

Creating Tension Where None Exists

Steve Tobias — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:04:00 GMT

On Thursday night, April 10, the Baker Institute of Rice University held the last of its lecture series "The Arab World: History, Politics and Culture”. As I entered the lecture hall a few minutes early, I was amazed to see over two dozen members of the Jewish community scattered around the room. At the last lecture by Columbia's Joseph Massad, that number was three. The high turnout was in itself an event, and represented the first en masse reaction from the Houston Jewish community to what has been a controversial and troubling lecture series.

The lecture began as always with an introduction by history professor Ussama Makdisi. On this occasion, Dr. Makdisi was the epitome of professionalism, and chose to omit any and all references to Jewish organizations that obstruct academic freedom. His dignified introduction helped to set a tolerant tone that facilitated an exchange of ideas between the various peoples present. The lecturer Lara Deeb spoke about "Understanding Hezbollah" in a clear and strong voice. While many in the audience had very real problems with much of what she did and did not say, to her credit she had the decency to answer a great many questions. Deeb left the lectern beaming, clearly satisfied with her performance. The few Arab acquaintances I knew from previous events told me that they too were pleased with the evening. All told it was a dignified event characterized by cool tempers and polite manners, despite the fact that Deeb's lecture, as predicted, omitted any references whatsoever to Hezbollah's history of terrorism and anti-Semitism. Gone was the atmosphere where the audience felt empowered to outdo each other with Israel-bashing. Also absent were rude cat-calling or shouting from the Jewish listeners. Credit for this successful evening goes to those at Rice and the Baker Institute who were responsible for engineering an event free from viciousness and divisiveness. It sent a message to everyone in Houston that polarized segments of our community can in fact meet and engage with civility.

For many of the Jews it was a fascinating evening indeed, a first time exposure to an academic such as Deeb who has a world view so totally at odds with their own. She is a thoughtful woman who is deeply in love with Lebanon, an anthropologist closely bonded to the South Lebanese Shiites that represent her life’s work. Those civilians suffered greatly during the 2006 war, and perhaps because of that her anger at all things Israeli is overwhelming. Her narrative was as passionate as it was Manichean, a tale of good and evil, injustice versus righteousness.

You can't damn her for her loyalty to friends, but you can certainly criticize her for a lack of balance and intellectual courage. Deeb seemed incapable of leaving her comfort zone, of seeing anything from a viewpoint other than her own. To the question "Why did Israel enter Lebanon in the first place?" she either forgot to mention or chose to ignore what occurred three days prior to the first Israeli entrance into Lebanon, namely the Coastal Road massacre. On March 11 1978, eleven Lebanese-based Palestinians killed 35 family members on a hijacked bus, shooting many in the back as they ran to escape during the rescue attempt. Similar events preceded the 1982 Lebanon war, but were also omitted from her talk. When challenged to explain Hezbollah’s well documented and recurring anti-Semitism, she cited anecdotal conversations which in her mind refuted that idea. When confronted by Hezbollah’s distinction of having killed more Americans than any terror group besides Al Qaeda, she dismissed that because much of the killing occurred long ago. When asked to explain Nasrallah's call last week for the destruction of Israel – well, that was just rhetoric. The thousands of Iranian missiles currently aimed at Israel? Defensive - Hezbollah is only concerned with national defense. The bloody legacy of recently assassinated master terrorist Imad Mugniyah? Don’t really know much about him.

For me it was disappointing to hear an academic as bright as Deeb marginalize herself by consistently choosing to embrace one and only one narrative in a complex setting. As a Lebanese scholar she should know better. Lebanon is a country of diverse sectarian groups, and memories run deep. There are no comprehensive government-approved high school history textbooks in Lebanon: too many narratives compete for dominance, and repeated attempts to agree on a "national narrative" have failed. And yet the various Lebanese groups manage to coexist, each one embracing their own interpretation of events while acknowledging the alternative narratives. Why is that model of simultaneous, independent narratives so acceptable for the Lebanese, and yet so anathema to Dr. Deeb when it comes to teaching about the Lebanese/ Israeli conflict?

Is Lara Deeb entitled to her partisan position? Of course she is. Is there any way that her students can achieve insight and wisdom from someone as clearly biased as she? Of course they can – IF her views are effectively and consistently challenged by at least one other competent scholar with equal and opposite views. Intellectual tension is a wonderful device that stimulates the growth of bright and inquisitive young minds. Yet in the absence of that equal and opposite force, intellectual tension can revert into more pernicious alternatives that include intimidation and indoctrination. Sadly, there are too many stories being told by Jewish students at campuses around the country – including the Rice history department - that this is exactly what is going on. This lecture series has been a prime example of that bias: only one type of viewpoint has been welcomed to the lectern over its three year duration.

Academics like Lara Deeb and Ussama Makdisi are not going to suddenly offer their undergraduate students a more balanced learning experience, as much as we would all like to see that happen. Hence the new role debuted by many members of Houston’s Jewish community on Thursday night is an important one. That role is to provide the backpressure necessary to keep honest people honest, to create intellectual tension where none exists. The results last Thursday were palpable: the evening was civilized and everyone walked away with something. That would not have happened had all these people stayed home. Members of the Houston Jewish community need to make sure that this communication continues, grows, and remains a two-way street, since we can and should learn from those we don’t agree with.

Perhaps together we have stumbled upon a template that has relevance to other academic-community ecologies around the country. Unfettered discussion makes us all stronger. It’s the American way.

Incoming

Steve Tobias — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:09:00 GMT

It is a mistake to dehumanize one’s enemy, not only because it is intellectually dishonest, but also because it is self defeating. When an enemy is reduced to a simple dehumanized caricature, the ability to predict their actions becomes lost, as does any chance for reconciliation, compromise or at the very least, coexistence. This even goes for organizations that deliberately target civilians, such as Hamas, which is labeled as "terrorist" by the US, Australia, Canada and others. It may surprise you to hear this, but they are not all bad. For example, Hamas brings a refreshing alternative to the rampant corruption that typified Fatah, for years the self-described “sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people". Fatah was so thoroughly corrupt that their leader Yasser Arafat is thought to have squirreled away as much as $1.2 billion from much needed social and public work programs. His lieutenants were no better. Their corruption directly led to Fatah's demise on the Gaza strip, and might yet be their undoing on the West Bank. Hamas on the other hand has gained popular support though trustworthy leadership and a devotion to much needed social services. They pride themselves on their strict intolerance of corruption. Anyone who paints them as all bad does not really understand the whole picture. The Hamas charter may call for the abolition of democracy and civil rights and the utter destruction of Israel, and they may target Israeli teenagers at discotheques with suicide bombers, but they are good to their mothers. Talk about cognitive dissonance!

The same goes for Lebanon's Hezbollah. Next April 10th, Rice University will host Professor Lara Deeb of the University of Southern California for the last of its series: "The Arab World: History, Politics and Culture”. Professor Deeb will talk about “Understanding Hezbollah”. She will talk in more depth about the subjects I just raised. She will discuss "the social and cultural institutions and networks associated with the party and with its constituents in the southern suburbs of Beirut and the party's appeal for many of Lebanon's Shi'i Muslims.", as described on Rice's web site. I encourage everyone to go hear Dr. Deeb speak at Rice on April 10 at 6:30 PM. I also encourage everyone to listen with an open mind, since much of what she will be saying is based on field research and is undoubtedly true.

But if you go, and I hope you do, it is important to be aware of the things you will not hear at that lecture, so that you can raise these points at the Q&A. You will not hear that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused Hezbollah of committing war crimes against Israeli citizens, or how they have used human shields in Lebanon. You will not hear anything about the widely read book by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb of the Lebanese American University, a female Shiite Professor who has written extensively on Hezbollah and sees them as intensely anti-Semitic. Saad-Ghorayeb documents how Hezbollah sees their struggle not so much as being one against Israelis, but more importantly against the Jews "as a continuation of Mohammed's conflict of the Jews of his day". She cites abundant evidence for her assertions, including the chants at many Hezbollah rallies:"Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Mohammad will return". No fan of Israel, Saad-Ghorayeb nevertheless has the intellectual honesty to say that “…Zionism merely brought Hizbullah’s latent anti-Judaism, which is rooted in a vehemently anti-Judaic Islamic tradition, to the fore”.

But I don’t think intellectual honesty is what the Rice Lecture series has ever been about. It is about advocacy. Its string of speakers has represented one side of a Manichean world view, and its moderator Ussama Makdisi will set this tone next Thursday as he always does. When Lara Deeb speaks, you will not hear any balance. You will not hear about the infamous 1997 quote by Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: "if we searched the entire world for a more cowardly, lowly, weak and frail individual in his spirit, mind, ideology and religion, we will never find anyone like the Jew - and I am not saying the Israeli". You will not hear the many documented quotes wherein Hezbollah officials say over and over again that the Holocaust never occurred and was a Jewish conspiracy. You will not hear Nasrallah's quote in 2002 that "if they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” You will not hear his support for suicide bombing in Israel in 2002, when he said that: "in occupied Palestine, there is no difference between a soldier and a civilian, for they are all invaders, occupiers and usurpers of the land.”

Instead you will hear how Hezbollah reacted in a purely defensive manner to Israeli aggression in Lebanon, and how their actions justify the continued existence of an armed Hezbollah. Now everyone, both Israel and Hezbollah, has the right to defend themselves on their own territory. So when you hear that, be flexible and understand that in war things are not all black and white. But while you attempt that balance, also remember the thousands of Iranian offensive missiles that Hezbollah now points at Israeli population centers – remember because Lara Deeb will not talk about that. Neither will you hear a review of the life and deeds of recently assassinated Hezbollah master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, on whose hands stick the blood of 85 Argentinean Jews and Christians, many Lebanese Christians, sleeping American servicemen in Saudi Arabia, hundreds of Marines and French Paras in Lebanon, and many Israeli citizens.

It is a mistake to dehumanize the enemy, so let’s not be guilty of what the others do to us. But when a chronicler of an enemy focuses with tunnel vision on only the human side of actions, we owe it to ourselves and others to force intelligent people to use their intelligence. Go. Ask questions.

Brothers

Steve Tobias — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:42:00 GMT

What a great evening it was. My wife outdid herself with a great dinner last Saturday, and our guests wouldn’t leave our table or the lively conversation until way after midnight. It was the first time we invited only friends that were older than us, and it turned out to be the most energetic and fun evening we’ve had in a long time. The talk ranged over many topics, but when we got to the Holocaust, it became clear that our guests had memories of those years that were still raw. For me, that discussion brought back memories of growing up in New York City in the sixties, when the Holocaust was, more than anything else, a big hole in the lives of my brother and I. It was a hole that took many forms. It was “that something” the old people didn’t talk about, it was that book with the horrid photographs that our parents hid from us, it was the giant family we were supposed to have but didn’t, but most of all it was not knowing the answer to the big question: how would we have behaved? Would we have had the wisdom to run away early enough or the courage to fight? Would we have recognized it coming? Not a stupid question: many bright people didn’t see the last one coming until it was too late.

The next morning I received an email from a new friend (Asaf Romirowsky) who just published an excellent article about a tasteless anti-Israel photo exhibit making the rounds at some universities (http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/15438/). Asaf complained how the absence of any context or counterweight helped to destroy Israel’s good name. For me it was just the latest bad news, such as the Reuters piece last week that was extremely sympathetic to the plight of the brave Hamas fighters struggling against Israeli aggression. And that morning I also received an unsolicited email inviting me to protest the vicious Israeli assault on Gaza, omitting any reference whatsoever of the deliberate targeting of civilians by Hamas with their Iranian supplied Grad rockets, or the slaughter of the Yeshiva boys in Jerusalem. And on and on it goes, a relentless assault on common sense, fair play, and Israel’s good name. There is no question in my mind that if a maniacal “Son of Sam” type of serial killer were on the loose in Jerusalem, BBC, Reuters and probably CNN would somehow place that story into one of their slowly rotating "cycle of violence" reports. Blatant sociopathy is no longer recognizable when Jews are victims, and that should scare you.

And so all day Sunday, two unrelated belly aches competed for my attention. The first was all too familiar and caused by the relentless and mean spirited attacks that erode the good name of both Israel and her Jewish supporters. The second ache was that freshly remembered insecurity that my brother and I had shared, the nagging question of whether we would be clever enough to recognize the onset of another Holocaust if and when it reared its demonic head again. And then I remembered how the previous evening someone remarked that the Holocaust had waited for the advent of the railroad, the technological breakthrough that enabled anti-Semites to improve upon the efficiency of the simple pogroms from preindustrial times. What would be the modern analogue to the railroad, I wondered. The industrial age has receded, and we now live in the information age. Could that new breakthrough be the internet and global telecommunications?

“Holocaust” means completely-burned, and it is an apt description of what happened to our beloved brethren who were hauled away in railroad cars and murdered by the Nazi machinery in Europe. Can that happen again? I don’t think so, not like that. But does a Holocaust need to burn the body in order to murder the soul? Maybe not, according to the Talmud. While we all sit nervously on our hands as events swirl around us, it may be worthwhile to recall tractate Peah 1:1 in the Talmud that equates murder with the destruction of a person’s good name. Perhaps it would be in all our interests to swallow that bit of wisdom in a very serious way. A people whose reputation is ruined, one with no standing and no legitimacy, are a people one step closer to annihilation. Destroying our collective good name might not in itself be murder, but it sets the stage for swift destruction. And make no doubt about it, our good name is under attack as never before on thousands of web sites, blogs, newspapers and overseas TV reports. The onslaught is deafening: to hear it all you have to do is listen. If Holocaust 2.0 were underway, would we see the forest for the trees any better than did our grandfathers?

While you are contemplating that, consider this. Our European relatives of blessed memory were largely passive from the first stages of the Holocaust all the way to the gas chambers. Their passivity was not so much due to a lack of courage as it was due to a lack of awareness, leadership and perhaps imagination: they simply could not imagine that a civilization as advanced as Germany would be capable of such utter brutality. They simply did not defend themselves. But we’re not the sheep of Europe anymore; we are now part of a globalized world community, right? We have learned our lesson, right? When we are faced with vicious and unfair attacks, we respond forcibly and immediately, right? Or do we grumble among ourselves and keep our head down in an old and familiar pattern?

And so I return to the questions I started with: would my brother and I have had the wisdom to run away early enough or would we have found the courage to fight? Would we have recognized the Holocaust coming over the horizon? I still don’t know the answer to that question. For now.

The Dimona Solution

Steve Tobias — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:54:00 GMT

Last week a tragic event occurred in Israel that should serve as a wakeup call to us Americans. It was an event that quite possibly foreshadows the people that we are going to become, whether we want to or not. Though it was a tragic event, the reaction to this tragedy shows the positive way in which free societies such as ours can adapt to trying times.

The event I’m referring to unfolded in Dimona, Israel. After a suicide bomber blew himself up in a shopping mall, an Israeli doctor ignored the likelihood that a second suicide bomber was nearby, and rushed to the aid of one of the injured civilians, a Palestinian Arab. He cleared the airway of the unconscious blast victim, who then started to regain consciousness. The doctor then opened the victim’s shirt to check for injuries, and was shocked to find wires and charges – the man he had just saved was the second bomber! The doctor yelled, rose and ran, all of which attracted the attention of a nearby off-duty narcotics officer. What followed was captured on video and can be seen on “Youtube”. Though the wakening terrorist slowly moved his hand around in an apparent search for the detonator, the officer did not run for cover. Instead, he drew his weapon and pumped four bullets into the man's head at close range, killing him instantly. Both the doctor and the policeman were immediately hailed as heroes, and received considerable national attention.

Though these events received a lot of international media coverage, the real story was entirely missed. Israeli society now places equal value on two entirely contradictory forms of altruism, one manifest by a man that ignored personal risk to save the life of a wounded Palestinian bystander, and the other by a man that ignored personal risk in order to carry out the targeted assassination of a Palestinian terrorist about to kill Israelis. The surreal nature of this tale is that the two heroes performed their actions on the same Palestinian, and almost simultaneously. It is an intriguing story of how a modern, western-style society grapples with an insane world in a sane and logical manner, of how a society chooses to retain its humanity while coping with a long-term existential threat.

It can be argued that there is no precedent for what we are witnessing. Though history is filled with examples of both compassionate and warlike peoples, never have such extreme traits coexisted so seamlessly. Compassionate societies invariably lose their toughness, while warlike people usually find it necessary to dehumanize their enemies. Case in point: Europeans seem incapable of fielding armed troops to fight radical Islamists in Afghanistan, while Iran’s Ahmadenijad recently labeled Israel as a "black and dirty microbe". In contrast, anyone that has spent time around Israeli hospitals knows the great pride taken by Israeli medical personnel in their unflinching treatment of non-Israeli Arabs – whether combatants or civilians. Israelis may be in a nasty conflict with Palestinians, but most have not dehumanized them, despite what many critics choose to believe.

Whether Israel is now an utterly insane society or a healthy and robust one depends on your point of view. I personally think that the ability to instantly shift between compassionate and warlike behaviors is a healthy adaptation to unhealthy times. It is an unexpected yet logical development for a democratic society that finds itself in a long-term asymmetrical conflict. With time, this “meta-behavior” will be recognized for what it is, a hardness that can only be forged in free and democratic societies that boast a tradition of tolerance for the diversity of thought.

This is an important lesson for America. The war against militant Islamism may take decades, and a continual war footing will fatigue and weaken us if we’re not careful. Worse still, it can transform us into something that our founding fathers never intended. To keep our balance, both liberals and conservatives, right and left wingers, pacifists and militarists must play their own unique role in ensuring that our future will be both safe and fair. Our strength will come not from going in one direction or another, but rather through the simultaneous embrace of both our humanity and our toughness.

Common Ground

Steve Tobias — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:03:00 GMT

Buried in the international newspapers last week was a jaw-dropping warning made by the Egyptian Foreign Minister to the masses of Gaza Palestinians poised to make yet another break out into Egypt. He cautioned them that “anyone who tried to break through the Egyptian border would have his legs broken." Huh!? What’s that all about? It doesn’t make sense. Israelis are the ones that are supposed to want to break Palestinian bones, not fellow Arabs. And where is the international outrage? If the Israeli foreign minister had said that, or had Condoleezza Rice suggested that course of action, then there would have been a deafening international outcry. No outcry: Arab on Arab violence does not sell newspapers, and moreover, it’s too confusing a story: warnings like this do not fit the usual cartoon-like simplifications that most of us have come to expect from the media. Let’s take a look at what this means, and try to understand its real significance.

To begin with, the Egyptians are afraid of the Palestinians these days, particularly those in Gaza. To understand why, it’s necessary to go back some 80 years, when Egyptian nationalism was stirring as the yoke of British imperialism was being thrown off. It was also the time when the Turkish Caliphate finally dissolved, and there were forces at play whose goal was to re-establish the dominance of Islamic rule. In Egypt those forces were channeled into the Muslim Brotherhood by its founder, Hassan al-Banna. For 80 years, the Muslim Brotherhood has stayed “on-message”, wanting to replace secular and pluralistic forms of government with ancient Sharia rule. And for 80 years, the Egyptians have been fighting the Muslim Brotherhood and their goals. So while many of us see the Egyptians in a bad light - as a country ruled by a dictator that suppresses democracy - we forget who’s waiting in the wings to take over when they can, the Muslim Brotherhood. While we’re all for spreading democracy and fighting radical Islam, sometimes it’s hard to do both simultaneously. Nowhere is that harder to do than in Egypt.

So what’s this got to do with the Palestinians? Simple. Article 2 of the Hamas Covenant states quite clearly that “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine”. The Egyptians fear an open border with Gaza: they do not want a backflow of the most militant members of the Muslim Brotherhood into their country. Few remember that in 1979 Egypt refused an Israeli offer to hand over the Gaza Strip as part of the peace deal. In short, they fear their fellow Arabs much more than they fear their Jewish neighbors. For Egypt, hammering the Muslim Brotherhood trumps helping the Palestinian “victims of Israeli brutality”. It’s that simple.

While the Egyptians find themselves in a real bind, others see it as an opportunity. Chief among those is Iran, who can now see a cause and effect relationship between supporting the Palestinian cause and spreading their 1979 Islamic revolution to Egypt. To the Iranians, killing Israelis with Iranian technology now has the added benefit of undermining Egyptian society. But surprisingly, some in Israel also see this as an opportunity. The more Qassams that land, the more tempted the Israelis are to seal off the border with Gaza for good – no food, no electricity, no trade. This will pressure the Egyptians to tear down the Egypt-Gaza border once and for all, and create a defacto union between Egypt and Gaza. That raises the ante: the Israelis know that the Egyptians can deal with Hamas much more effectively than they can, while the Iranians and Hamasniks would hope that a “reverse takeover” of Egypt would be in the cards. Time will tell who will win this high stakes poker game.

Does all this have bearing on us here in Houston? Absolutely, to those optimists among us that are forever looking for common ground with our Arab cousins. Events playing out on the Gaza/Egyptian border these days emphasize the common enemy that we all face, namely the forces of radical Islam that are working to kill embryonic democracies and replace democratic reform with repressive Sharia rule. No one really wants to break Palestinian legs, but those legs have been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood, kissing cousins to Al Qaeda. We’re all in it together.

Squandering the National Treasure

Steve Tobias — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:51:00 GMT

We are what we eat. It’s really a very interesting concept. On the plane back Stateside from Australia in 1992, I remember thinking how every single molecule of our precious new girl was Australian, and it made me wonder what it really meant to be an American. Clearly, the essence of America lies somewhere in the spirit of the land: instilling that essence into every new citizen is a process, not a given. Do we approach that process with the reverance it deserves? Hardly.

In pondering our choices in both food and learning for the young, we tend to forget that this freedom to choose is more than a cliché, and is in fact part of our national defense every bit as much as the Army and Air Force. Sound crazy? It's not. Consider the case of Trofim Lysenko, Stalin's infamous director of Soviet biology. Lysenko was a real quack, one who promulgated theories about crop growing that were absurd, and have since become universally ridiculed as such. But because of the nature of Soviet society, his dogma went unquestioned for decades. His belief that soaking seeds in cold water prior to burying them in very high concentrations in five foot deep furrows led to mandatory compliance and disastrous results. The communists in China also embraced his ideas and embellished them with even more crazy practices: they killed off China's sparrow population in an attempt to save crops, and in the process unleashed insect plagues never before seen.

The combination of Lysenko's leadership and the lack of a freedom to choose were devastating. The Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 took some 3 million lives. The starvation created during Mao's “Great Leap Forward” took a mind numbing 22-30 million lives, including a disproportionate number of "non-essential" young girls. Similar practices resulted in famines in North Korea, Cambodia, Somalia and Ethiopia.

So the earliest known WMD had a name, and that name was Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. But while Lysenko's ideas devastated the communist world, they made no inroads in the United States. We're made of different stuff. I suppose that some "progressive" farmer somewhere applied his ideas, but that situation would have solved itself with the first non-harvest. Face it, the freedoms we have in this country, freedoms we have learned to take totally for granted, have saved us in ways that we can only appreciate when we study international history. But we don’t study international history in any serious way. Probably not one high school student in a hundred could identify Lysenko, or write a 200 word essay on Stalin or “The Great Leap Forward”.

We live in a time when communication efficiency is exploding, a time when glib speakers are coming out of the woodwork - through websites, blogs and late night news/comedy shows, not to mention TV, cable and newspapers. And yet the ones we most need to hear from these days are the ones we are least likely to. I'm talking about those aging, ignored and often deeply scarred immigrant elders from the Jewish, Chinese, Russian and other communities, the ones that have lived through so much of this past century, the ones that knew the Lysenkos of the world on a first name basis, the ones that now live lonely lives in unwelcomed silence. You won't find “Facebook groups” geared to octogenarian survivors of twentieth century disasters, and you won't hear them on tonight’s Colbert Report either. Though their memories and their stories hold the promise to give us the strength and perspective that we so desperately need, those accented voices go unheard.

The Jewish community of Houston understands the importance of teaching lessons from the past. Gifted speakers have been visiting area schools for years, sharing firsthand accounts of the Holocaust. Who else then to take this valuable experience to the next level but the Jewish community, to organize a city-wide program that formalizes a sweeping, systematic, sustained and consistent effort to bring these shy elders out into the sunlight in a big way. Not just for school lectures, and not only for videotaped testimonials. Rather, for old-fashioned gatherings, small and large, where their stories challenge our beliefs and astound the audiences; not for shock value but for perspective. Not out of pity but out of need.

While becoming ever more adept at communication these days, we are forgetting how to listen… to the quiet voices, the soft voices, to the whispered stories that need to be heard. We are indeed what we eat, and its time we all remembered that, for us and for our children. Let’s work together to raise awareness of the national treasure that we are squandering and do something about it.

One Year After

Steve Tobias — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:53:00 GMT

Prior to the Bhutto assassination, the shocking news this month had been that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah pardoned a rape victim who was sentenced to 200 lashes and prison time for her crime of “mingling” - driving in a car with a man with whom she was not married - before the brutal gang rape that stole her dignity and her future. The story was so distasteful that US newspapers did not really know what to do: they dropped it soon after the shock abated. There were almost no follow-up stories. It raised too many tough questions - what type of country punishes the rape victim more severely than the rapists? Isn’t Saudi Arabia supposed to be a “moderate” Arab country? Why did the Saudi Justice Minister assure Al Jazeera television that the King issued the pardon in spite of the fact that he “…is convinced and sure that the verdicts were fair”? Where was the political opposition?

Saudi Arabia has a history that few in this country know much about. Ask anyone in Houston when slavery was abolished, and the answer is immediate: 1865. But ask that same person when slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia, and you usually get a blank stare. The answer always surprises: 1962 (and in South Yemen 1967, and in Oman 1970, as incredible as that is.) Freedom of speech as we know it does not exist in Saudi Arabia. Neither do churches nor any other non-Islamic houses of worship, foreign workers be damned. Conversion from Islam to another religion is punishable by death. Non-Muslims cannot be citizens. Women cannot drive, they cannot vote, they cannot testify in court and they make up a mere 5% of the formal workforce. Is it any wonder that women there are whipped for being raped?

Take a minute from your busy day, sit down, close your eyes, and imagine. Imagine the type of intolerance that must exist today in a country that still enslaved people when you were in high school. Imagine how well that country relates to nearby non-Islamic countries when the punishment for conversion from Islam is death. Now imagine what type of world leader could embrace the rulers of that country, reflect uncritically on their nature, accept their hospitality and friendship along with untold millions in financial support, yet describe his ideal society as one where “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” It’s time to open your eyes, dear reader. That person you’ve just imagined is none other than our thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s book “Peace not Apartheid” was published one year ago, and on this occasion I think it worthwhile to reflect ever so briefly on some aspects of the book that many of us have overlooked in the initial flush of emotions. For starters, the book was never about apartheid. The word was mentioned merely three times in the text, the third time (page 190) as a whispered caveat that the Israeli version of apartheid “is unlike that in South Africa - not racism…” No truth in advertising here, Jimmy chose a last minute ‘bait and switch’ title that was designed to provoke and shock, and to sell books. The book was also not scholarly: there are no footnotes. There are no references. This is not surprising, since several well known scholars say that the former president took many liberties with history - he invented events, misrepresented meetings that others carefully recorded, and plagiarized and redrew maps to fit his arguments. Most of all, the book was not fair. It applied a horribly unbalanced double standard that slung mud over the Jewish State while it whitewashed Arab terror, racism, misogyny and intolerance.

In his book, Carter devoted one section to Saudi Arabia. He set the mood by comparing the feudal monarchy to “The Arabian Nights”. He fondly described royal sessions in the desert where the King took counsel with tribal elders. He explained how oil income and medical treatment were carefully dispensed to loyal subjects. He wrote of the Saudi desire for stability, of their feelings of brotherhood for victimized Palestinians. He explained our challenge as Americans to understand their caution in dealing with controversial issues, a caution justified since they are militarily weak and surrounded by dangerous neighbors. He closed by explaining how the Saudis can be a “crucial and beneficial” force in the Middle East. Nowhere did he refer to Saudi repression, Saudi intolerance, Saudi brutality. He expressed no sympathy for the multitudes that have suffered and died under Saudi excesses. And yet the week after publication he wrote in the UK’s Guardian that “In many ways, this (Israel) is more oppressive than what black people lived under in South Africa during apartheid.” Nowhere did he refer to Israeli democracy, Israeli religious tolerance, Israeli freedoms.

Jimmy Carter is often presented as complex and at times unpredictable. I disagree. I find him all too ordinary, all too familiar. He is at once naïve and opinionated. He chooses his heroes and his villains with no more sophistication than would a simple uneducated farmer. He supports those choices with stunning pomposity and outrageous hyperbole. Though a self-described man of peace, he is nothing of the sort: he is a man of prejudices, a man that can turn on and off feelings of empathy as others would open or close a faucet. He should know better. An American president once remarked that "If the misery of others leaves you indifferent and with no feeling of sorrow, then you cannot be called a human being." That president was none other than Jimmy Carter.

Swallows and Hawks

Steve Tobias — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:23:00 GMT

Years ago, we lived in Melbourne, Australia, where I befriended a very talented and philosophical Irishman. In the Swallows Pub one day, he mused over a Guiness how the swallow had many enemies, but the most dangerous one wasn’t the eagle, the hawk or the cat – they just wanted to eat him. No, the worst enemy by far was his fellow swallow. He not only wanted to eat his food; he also wanted to steal his wife and occupy his nest. Escaping the hawk was relatively straightforward and involved inspired and frantic flying. But escape from the predatory swallow? Not so fast. Swallows need and rely on other swallows. There is no place to go – they have to stay and slug it out. That’s why they are so dangerous.

With each passing year, his insight made more sense to me. Deadly enemies appear anywhere and anytime – Americans and Japanese, Englishmen and Argentineans, French and Vietnamese. But the most enduring and blood-drenched of feuds occur between the swallows: Shiite and Sunni; Tutsi and Hutu; Tamil and Sri Lankan; Spaniard and Basque.

And what of Israelis and Palestinians? Are they more similar than different? Do they have at least as much hope for reconciliation as do quarreling swallows? It’s not as naïve a question as it sounds. Sure, Palestinians and Israelis have stark political and historical differences, but there also are profound similarities. Recent studies show how Palestinians have absorbed a wide spectrum of Western preferences from their Israeli neighbors over the years, ranging from dress and healthcare to eventual parliamentary systems. There is a shared love for the same blood-soaked holy soil. There is a passion for religious context that is unique to the region, and both groups share parallel everyday religious/secular struggles (Halal? Kosher? McDonald’s?). Most civilians on both sides cherish family above all – a September 2007 poll by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion showed that 73.8 percent of Palestinians place family well-being as their top priority. If peace ever comes, it may very well flow from the pressures exerted by loving parents in both Israel and Palestine. They are the ones who want their children to grow up to be happy, to have good jobs, get married and get rich – and are willing to compromise to get to those goals. Like swallows.

In contrast, the ones that bring such grief of late to the Houston Jewish community do not share those goals. They are the hawks. They are the aloof professors, the politically active retired Persian Gulf oil workers and the angry far-left activists. These take no prisoners; they demand nothing short of full “justice” on their terms, no matter how much Palestinian or Israeli blood is shed, no matter how many generations are lost. In that sense, they are no different from the Arab countries that have betrayed the Palestinians over the years, or the militant Islamists that put their global ambitions way ahead of the common good. Perhaps the most annoying ones are the retired international oil workers, whose agendas have little to do with getting Palestinian children grown, educated, married and rich. Rather, what drives them is fighting “the good fight” against the injustice of their real enemies – depicted stereotypically as the manipulative Jewish lobby, the all-powerful Jewish bankers and the sinister Jewish-dominated media. They are not the champions of peace; they do not offer solutions. Rather, they inflate self-destructive Palestinian myths that Israel can and should be destroyed, that compromise is not needed. They give Palestinians the resolve simply to wait the Israelis out, to hope for the day that they have defeated Israel by worldwide delegitimization.

If the Jews were the Palestinians’ prime enemy, then this might be a good strategy, but they aren’t. The real enemies of the Palestinians include the Chinese and the Indians, whose children are staking claim on the future, while Palestinian children learn how to throw rocks, despise their neighbors and fire Qassam rockets. The real enemies are the Muslim brotherhood and their offspring, from Gaza to Lebanon, who seek to impose Sharia law in place of freedom and growth. The real enemies are the Arab regimes that have betrayed Palestinian interests from 1948 onward, and that continue to refuse to provide constructive support unless it fits their own aims. The real enemies are the far left with their double standards of justice, their blindness to common sense and reason. And most of all, their immediate enemy is Iran, whose passion for regional hegemony will soon target nuclear missiles on greater Israel/Palestine – to kill them all and let God sort them out.

We have entered a period in Houston where unbridled anti-Israel and anti-Jewish talk is acceptable in certain quarters. It is easy to become paranoid, and believe that it’s us against them, again. But it’s not. What we are witnessing is an opportunistic alliance of disparate groups that seek to achieve their own unique aims at the expense of the Jewish state, and with disregard to the plight of the Palestinians. The message that we need to carry to the lectures and the forums is that we plan to stay focused on what is truly important, namely a lasting peace for the children of Israel and Palestine. My friend was wrong after all: The most dangerous enemy is not the other swallow. It’s still the hawk.