The Jews of Israel
(about five million) are among the world’s most addicted buyers, readers and
authors of books, but the Koran is least-seller No.1 among them, according to a
Christian bookseller in Jerusalem. “Few buy translations, and fewer still the
Arabic original”, he said. In their secondary schools English is part of the
curriculum, Arabic is optional. The Hebrew media, printed or spoken, report and
comment daily on current Arab affairs, both domestic and Middle Eastern.
Interest in Islam, in Arab history and literature however is slight, compared
with an enthusiastic dedication to
all forms of Western art, past and present. Distant Europe is Israel’s nearest
cultural neighbour, the nearby Arabs the most distant. Television, films and
computers strengthen “occidentation”. We are using this term rather than “orientation” which in this context
would invert the geographic and intellectual direction.
The cultural gap
between Israel as a Western cultural enclave and its Oriental environment seems
to be widening. An examination of the causes suggests that they are mainly
historic. Three Arab wars against Israel since 1948, the ongoing
political-violent conflict and the cultural gap are not the main reasons for
this voluntary isolation. Israel today is a Western society whose European
roots were transplanted to the Middle East like those of Britain were to
America, Australia or New Zealand.
It was a national,
largely secular Jewish revival movement in Eastern Europe well over 100 years
ago that sparked initiatives for a return to the ancient homeland,a movement
called Zionism.(“Zion” is a Biblical synonym for Jerusalem since its occupation
about three thousand years ago by King David who made it the capital of ancient
Israel, and for the Holy Land as a whole). The movement spread to Western
Europe and led to the creation of a “Zionist Organization” founded by a writer
and journalist in Vienna, Dr. Theodor Herzl, early in 1900. His declared aim
was the revival of sovereign Jewish statehood in the ancient homeland, in his
days a backward province of the Ottoman-Turkish empire. He and his followers
saw in revived Jewish statehood a promising national solution to widespread,
centuries old discrimination against Jews in Europe and beyond.
His ideas
caught the imagination of mainly the poor and underprivileged Jewish minority
in strongly repressive Czarist Russia. Before the First World War hundreds of
thousands of Russian Jews left for Western countries, most for the U.S.,
thousands for the Biblical homeland where they settled on land bought for them
with funds raised worldwide by the Zionist Organization. In 1917 Britain and
France divided the defunct Turkish empire in the Middle East between them to suit
their imperial interests, Biblical Israel became “Palestine” (as the ancient
Romans called it), and the newly created League of Nations made it a “Mandated
Territory”. Its administration was turned over to Britain which in 1917 had
promised to set up there a “national home” for the Jewish people.
Jewish
emigrants from Europe brought with them to Palestine their Western cultural
heritage and the tastes, skills and languages of the countries in which they
had grown up. Most of them had to learn Hebrew as an everyday language and
skills new to them like farming, industrial and construction work, leaving them
little leisure for learning about their new ethnic environment.In daily contact
with Arab neighbours many learnt to speak the local Arabic dialect, but only a
few scholars took up classical Arabic and its literature. The Koran and Islam
have to this day remained for most unknown or at best little known territory.
Cultural interest in foreign countries remains centered on Europe.
When in 1947
Britain decided to relinquish its League of Nations mandate over Palestine, the
United Nations Organization divided the territory into an Arab and a Jewish
state. The Arabs rejected partition, the Jews accepted it and in May 1948
proclaimed the state of Israel. It took in at once hundreds of thousands of
survivors of the German holocaust and Jews from Middle East countries who found
themselves exposed to Arab hostility stirred up by the creation of a Jewish
state.
Eastern
Jews spoke and read Arabic as their mother tongue. Their experience of
discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities in Muslim environments
drove them to flee their countries, with or without official permission,
despite the loss of most of their property. Within a few years these Oriental
Jews in Israel equalled in numbers those from the West. After three generations
Arabic ceased almost entirely to be heard in their homes. Basic education for
boys and girls in Israel, compulsory for Jews and Arabs up to the age of 14,
raised the literacy rate to about 95 p.c.
An
educational gap between Jews of western and eastern countries of origin is
slowly shrinking, Israel sociologists say, mainly as a result of higher levels
of education. At the same time the acculturation of young people in the Israel
melting pot and the loss of the Oriental background of their grandparents and
parents is steadily advancing – typical for countries with a history of
immigration of diverse origins like the United States, Canada or Australia.
When Islam spread westward into the Middle East, Spain and the Balkans over
thousand years ago the process of assimilation took the opposite direction:
nations long under Western (Roman-Byzantine-Christian) influence became
orientalized, Islam their religion, Arabic their language and even their
personal names.
One
of the results of this East-West cultural gap in the Middle East today is a
dangerous level of mutual incomprehension between the Arabs and the Israelis on
many aspects of their conflict. According to public opinion polls a majority of
the Israelis believe that “peace is a natural interest of both sides” - a
typical case of an unfounded “attributive assumption”. “Because I (we) in
Israel regard peace a universal rational desire and human need, it must
obviously be the same among the Arabs.”
This expectation of an equally shared interest that will eventually make
the current diplomatic “peace process” a success runs counter to the historic
experience. Twice in the 20th century Europe was plunged into armed
conflict because of very unequal interest of the two camps in maintaining
peace. As we know today the German governments of 1914 and 1939 did not only
not shrink from starting war, but took pains in planning and preparing for it.
Yet despite all evidence of it the British and French governments of the
thirties persuaded themselves that it could avert war by a policy of appeasing
and accommodating Hitler’s complaints of “injustice against the German nation”.
As Winston Churchill pointed out well in advance, this was an unfounded
assumption, its origin a mistaken belief that the Germans and their government
shared a British partiality for peace. “Convictions are more dangerous enemies
of truth than lies”, wrote Friedrich Nietzsche.
Another
example of attributive assumption concerns the observance of agreements,
treaties, even mere negotiations towards them. Most Israeli politicians sincerely
believe that once a peace treaty is signed with a neighbouring country,
especially if guaranteed by a third party, it will also be honoured, will last
and be followed sooner or later by normalization – as happened in post-war
Europe between France and Germany. This belief - that signing treaties between
nations is binding and tantamount to honouring them because they are so clearly
advantageous to both signatories -
can easily be shown to be unfounded not only in the Middle East, but
throughout Asia – and yes, even in Europe and the U.S.
The Israelis are not alone in making false assumptions.In 1921 Japan
agreed at the “Washington Conference” with the U.S. to respect the national
integrity of China. After several yearsof military preparation Japan began a
series of invasions in the Far East, first in Manchuria, then in China. Ten
years of rearming later Japan negotiated with the U.S., again in Washington, on
limiting their respective naval forces in the Pacific. The talks were stopped
by a well-prepared Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor on November 7, 1941. “A
day of infamy”, exclaimed President Roosevelt indignantly. Rather he should
have called it “a day of awakening from State Departmental self-deception.”
France’s first psychologist, the writer La Rochefoucauld, (1613 – 1680) observed:
“We are not mislead by others. We mislead ourselves with regard to others.”
Stalin too,
and through him the Soviet Union, became victims of his firm belief that
Germany, even Hitler’s, could be relied on to honour a ten years non-aggression
pact between the two countries signed by foreign ministers Molotov and
Ribbentrop in 1939. So unshakeable was Stalin’s conviction that he ignored even
the warnings of his own secret services against Germany’s imminent invasion of
the Soviet Union.
The record of
broken treaties between Middle East Muslim countries and of aggression in
general, does not seem to discourage Israel’s peace-minded governments and many
political commentators and academics to trust a peace agreement with the Arab
states they hope to reach by making far-reaching concessions. Like the majority
in Britain in 1938 with regard to appeasing Germany the Israelis honestly
believe in “peace in our time”, and like Neville Chamberlain and his cabinet
confuse a peace agreement obtained in return for territorial concessions with
peace itself.
The Israelis, collectively speaking, attribute to the Arabs a capacity
for their own Western-type rationality, their restless drive for economic and
social development, their quest for peace and distaste for senseless war. They
are puzzled when they see that Arab reactions do not conform to this
expectation. Yet in their wishful thinking they persist in believing that in
the long run the Arabs will see the light of reason and mutual benefit in the
fast-changing world of today and will agree to make peace as a ticket to their
own progress and prosperity.
Our Middle East Desk team believes that this unrealistic
conception of the Oriental mind will eventually cause the “peace process”, now
painstakingly nurtured by President Clinton and the State Department, to fail.
Some politicians in Israel, carried away by their own wishful thinking and
rhetoric, spoke at the conclusion of the peace agreement with Jordan of “the
end of hundred years of hostility” and “the dawn of a new Middle East”. We
could find no such enthusiasm for the peace process and for a “historic
mission” among the rank and file of Israel’s Arab neighbours. Yet even astute
journalists in the West share this illusion of “an open window of opportunity” for peace, growth,
coexistence and co-operation in the Middle East. “You haven’t seen yet
anything”, wrote an optimistic American journalist in the New York Times on the
prospects for prosperity in the
region. It sounds like an enthusiastic echo of perennial State Department
optimism that patience, persuasion and some economic bait will eventually douse
the flames of passion and conflict in the region.
With the scepticism of old age and our knowledge of Asian history we
dissent. For one, treaties – particulary of peace – concluded with autocratic
rulers often die at an early age. The Molotov - Ribbentrop pact lasted two
years. In the Middle East despots often change fast, sometimes violently, as in
Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. Modern history also suggests that
autocratic regimes, weak on scruples, strong on ambition, are more prone to
start wars of aggression than democracies. The rgentine military junta’s attack
in 1982 of the Falkland Islands, Iraq’s against Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990
are examples, as are the wars of the Arabs against Israel and among themselves.
The past 50 years of Middle East history also show that the Arabs as a people
have never been reluctant to fight the Israelis, for national or religious
reasons, or both. Fanatical, charismatic religious leaders calling the faithful
to a “jihaad” (holy war) against Israel enjoy a high degree of public
respect.
At
the roots of mutual misinterpretation is also the basic inequality between the
political regimes. As in many other domains Israel has adopted a Western style
of parliamentary democracy with most (but not all) essential accessories: rule
of law, independent judiciary, basic freedoms: of elections, association,
speech, media; and the right to public health services, social security and to
basic education. It is an open and disputatious society that looks alien and
often quite odd to its next-door neighbours. Arab members of the Israel
parliament (Knesset) enjoy a freedom of speech unthinkable in any Arab country.
From the dawn of history to the present day, whether in pagan antiquity, in the
500 years Christian period or, since their conversion to Islam the Middle East
peoples have always lived under and submitted to despotic regimes, have never
tasted the freedoms of citizens taken for granted in the West, and have never
risen in revolution to claim them.
Israel has made much progress since its start in May 1948 as a small
community of 700,000. The population has risen to about six millions, nearly 20
percent Arab. Their languages, Hebrew and Arabic, are closely related, but the
prospect for peaceful relations is dim, in the view of our team. The only
alternative for peace is an armistice enforced by an outside power as it was
under Ottoman-Turkish rule, or by mutual deterrence, as between the U.S.A. and
The Soviet Union, at the same great and unproductive cost to both sides.