“We don’t live in Scandinavia or Switzerland, we live in the Middle East!” exclaimed thespokesmen of our security establishment, when the Supreme Court ordered last week to releasethe Lebanese held in prison as potential “bargaining chips” for the release of Israelisoldiers missing in Lebanon.
This means that Israel, surrounded by gangs, should behave like a gang. But the Supreme Courthas decided that Israel must behave like a civilized state, according to the norms of theWestern democracies.
However, the reaction has a deeper significance. It concerns the basic attitude towards theArab world. The spokesmen see it as a wild area, devoid of culture and law. As Ehud Barak, thechief spokesman, has said several times: “Israel is a villa in the middle of a jungle.”Meaning: We are civilized, all our neighbors are savages.
Many Israelis will be surprised to hear that out of all persons, the most unpopular Israeli inthe Arab world today is Shimon Peres, he of the “New Middle East”. Throughout the region,writers mention again and again a statement made by Peres at an international conference onecology: that Israel is an island of cleanliness in a polluted region. (The very term “MiddleEast” is, of course, of British-colonial coinage. East from where? East for whom? Some 54years ago I proposed to adopt the term “Semitic Region”.)
Once I asked a well-known cartoonist to draw a map with a long arm coming out of Greece andextracting Palestine from its location, so as to place it in Europe. That seems to reflect thehidden desire of many Israelis.
Lest we conclude that this attitude is the result of a hundred years of war, let us remember thatbefore it all started, the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, wrote in his booklet”Der Judenstaat” (1896): “For Europe we would be (in Palestine) a part of the protective wallagainst Asia, we would serve as the vanguard of culture against barbarism.” (“Barbarism”presumably includes Eastern Jewry too.)
Israelis wonder why nearly all the Arab intelligentsia, from Iraq to Morocco, furiouslyrefuses to have anything to do with Israel. After peace agreements have already been signedand contacts established with several Arab countries, this attitude of Arab intellectuals,writers, journalists and scientists becomes more and more extreme.
There may be a number of reasons for this, such as the widening gulf between the Arab regimes andthe intelligentsia, guilt feelings about the betrayal of the Palestinians, a sense offailure because of the inability of the Arab world to cope with the modern economy. But aboveeverything else, it is a reaction to the insufferable arrogance of Israel, thisWestern-colonial villa in the middle of the jungle.
Many in the Arab world are keenly conscious of the many conspicuous faults in some parts ofIslamic-Arabic society, such as public executions, the amputation of limbs, the terrorismof fanatic groups. They find solace in the torture, hostage taking, occupation and expulsiontaking place in the Israeli villa. And among Arabs, as among Israeli, the struggle for humanrights in growing.
With the ascent of Ehud Barak, it seems that Israeli arrogance has reached a climax. When hecame to power, he resolutely put forward plans for peace with Syria and the Palestinians,fixing in advance terms and time-tables. Arab attitudes did not interest him a bit. Hebelieved that everything will be settled between him, Assad and Arafat. He did not understandthat Arab leaders, too, must take into account public opinion in their countries. Because ofthis, his plans collapsed.
For example: Barak did not understand the deep spiritual significance of the Jerusalemquestion, and even less the profound feelings evoked by the refugee problem. He was convincedthat Arafat would give all of this up for a few percent of West Bank territory. As most of Barak’sadvisors understand even less than him (and, anyhow, he takes advice from no one), it was notdifficult for him to convince himself. Now he faces complete failure.
In order to save what can be saved, I would advise him to get rid of the whole bunch of overbearingcounselors surrounding him and to turn peace-making over to people who do not believe thatArabs are jungle-dwellers. It would be worthwhile for him to read some good books about hisinterlocutors. He could do worse than start with Fuad Ajami’s book, “The Dream Palace of theArabs”. (Even more so as the author is a Shi’ite born in the present “security zone”.)
An old joke has it that Moses was not only “hard of tongue”, as the Bible tells us, but also hard ofhearing. When God told him “Take my people to Canada,” he understood “Take my people toCanaan.” And so, instead of being a Western people in the land of snow, we live in the land ofHamseen. On the eve of Passover, let’s reconcile ourselves to this fact. We cannot live insidethe region and pretend to be outside. We cannot voice on every occasion an utter contempt forthe peoples of this region and make peace with them – not if we mean real peace and not just atemporary cease-fire.