Richard Landes* linked to an editorial by Robert J. Lewis that should be enlightening to those who profess to support Hamas and express sincere anguish over the plight of the Palestinian people.
THE REIGN OF CAIN falls mainly IN THE PLAZA OF GAZA
For a long time there was a time when I was sympathetic to the idea of a Palestinian homeland as part of a two-state solution. But in light of what can only be described as sustained, intransigent and transparent Palestinian folly, I have decided that thoughtless and reckless comportment should not be rewarded. As I write this, the Palestinians are getting hammered hard as a consequence of a series of decisions that reason and intelligence cannot account for.
Let us hypothesize a small man, weighing 150 pounds, who is unarmed. Facing him is an Arnold Schwarzenegger type, 250 pounds of sinew and muscle, who also has a machine gun slung over his broad shoulders. Since the two don’t like each other, you would expect the smaller man, as an act of self-preservation, to act in such a way so as not to rile the bigger man. But instead, throwing caution and IQ to the wind, the little man begins throwing rocks -- some of which are sharp enough to lacerate -- at the bigger man. He repeats the rock throwing the next day and then the next, seemingly intent on making a rite of a wrong. A neutral observer would conclude that only someone intellectually deficient would expect his bigger and more heavily armed adversary, now bleeding, to do nothing indefinitely, that at some point the big man is going to say enough is enough and pick up the little guy and hurt him bad, which is what he is doing now, in Gaza – without apology.
Robert J. Lewis apportions much of the blame for Hamas's stupidity to Iran. This reflects the usual liberal disavowal of moral agency to any victim. Certainly Iran has been a major factor in recent Palestinian intransigence, but the Palestinians have shown themselves supremely capable of intransigence since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Once the state of Israel was established the Arabs pledged genocide; for those with short memories or no sense of history, the Arabs vowed to throw the Jews into the sea in 1948 and did their best to make their dreams come true. Once they finally realized they could not destroy Israel using conventional means, Egypt and Jordan dropped out of the flight (though continuing the vicious anti-Semitic indoctrination of their people that is rarely commented upon but is a part of the zeitgeist of Arab culture in the Middle East.) The Syrian Alawites, who value their survival above all else, tacitly dropped out of the fight, though continued fueling unconventional forces with which to harry Israel, and after the Khomeini revolution in Iran and the Hezbollah ascendancy in Lebanon, the Shia took up the banner and strove to be the vanguard of those vowing to kill the Jews. Through it all, the Arab's genocidal fantasies and wishes that reside at the core of the idea of Palestine, were borne from generation to generation, by the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza. It bears repeating that the Hamas charter expressly continues in this ignominious tradition, pledging to destroy Israel (excuse me, the Zionist entity) and kill the Jews.
In Robert J. Lewis's thought experiment, the 150 pound man continually tosses rocks at Arnold Schwarzenegger type, perhaps in the belief that the Arnold Schwarzenegger type is a civilized "gentle giant", concerned about his own strength, who will tolerate such annoyance without responding. However, the Palestinians are even more removed from reality than the hypothetical 150 pound man.
They actually believe they can force the Jews to abandon their land if they toss enough rocks; further, they believe that if they can only toss larger and larger rocks, obtain a sling shot or a trebuchet, the hated Jews will either not notice until too late or will do nothing while they escalate.
This suggests a society that has a typical attribute of the angry adolescent. The final step from adolescence to adulthood requires an emotionally meaningful understanding of the concept that every cause has an effect. In other words, one's behavior has consequences in the real world. The Palestinians behave as if they do not understand this. The lack of a conceptual understanding of cause and effect animates much of Arab culture and is an integral part of Islam as currently understood in the fundamentalist world. The concept of Inshallah, Allah's will, specifically precludes cause and effect and free will. The codification of cause and effect, beginning with the early Judeo-Christian idea that G-d has established a rational universe, later as defined by Newton's laws of motion, especially the idea that "every action has an equal and opposite reaction", is part of the Western cultural core. Western children grow up in a milieu that includes an implicit understanding of cause and effect, an understanding that becomes refined through the years and ultimately is deeply internalized by the Western adult. When there is no cause and effect, the adolescent insistence on experiencing the world as one would prefer rather than as it actually exists, becomes extremely problematic. How can you teach a child that their behavior has consequences when they are explicitly taught by their teachers that all that matters is Allah's will? In such a case, like a Western adolescent, there is no agency, no free will, and no concern of consequences.
Their cheering section in the international media, on the left, within the international community, etc, does the Palestinians no favors by promising to rescue them from their own fecklessness. As well, Palestinian genocidal fantasies force them to escalate. During times of calm they merely prepare for the next round of fighting. They have no choice; without anti-Semitism they have no raison d'etre. If they wanted land and a state, the simplest thought experiment would suggest how to attain their goal: Stop firing rockets into Israel, start using their billions of dollars in aid to build a state, and before long, they would have peace with their neighbor and a state of their own. Hamas and the Palestinians do not want a state, despite the claims of those Western "useful idiots" who imagine they speak for, and know the wishes of, the so far silent aspirations of the beleaguered Palestinians.
Those who truly cared about the Palestinians as people, rather than as a cause or as a minimally rationalized surrogate for their own denied anti-Semitism, would do everything in their power to stop the Palestinians from repeating the same mistakes they have made so many times before. That so much of the world is ready, willing, and too often, able to protect the Palestinians from their own stupidity should cause their supporters to question their own motives, but self reflection is a rare quality. Even if you are completely convinced that the Jews are evil aggressors who have stolen Palestine from the poor, victimized Palestinians, the willingness to accept intolerable conditions and high casualties among the people you profess to support merely in order to facilitate killing a few Jews (with no real chance of achieving the state you believe they deserve and little chance of achieving the genocide they so fervently desire) should cause you to re-evaluate your approach; but again, self reflection is an uncommon trait.
The Palestinians show the the persistence of omnipotent fantasies and the failure to internalize the idea of cause and effect, typical aspects of adolescence. Their history, of continually being rescued by the international community from the consequences of their stupidity, as well as the largess showered upon them by the international community, allows partial gratification of the regressive fantasy of an all-powerful state of dependency, and the fantasy persists, along with the rage that typically accompanies the passive dependent position. Until the Palestinians and their supporters are forced to confront reality, as opposed to continuing to inhabit their preferred fantasyland, there will be no reasonably stable outcome of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
*RichardLandes has begun a new project at The Augean Stables.
I've started putting up interviews from CNN and BBC in their coverage of the operation in Gaza. I welcome comment and analysis from viewers on the nature of the problems in the interview style (confrontative with Israelis, supine with Arabs).
Ultimately I hope to do an extensive analysis of this coverage, in the meantime, hope to get suggestions and insights from readers. Would appreciate you help in getting them.
Recent Comments