Traditional hierarchies and perceptions of the Middle East

Sar Shalom

In a blog post, Paul Krugman wrote about a unifying theory of what leads to broad spectrum of ideologies on both the right and the left. The theory he adopts is that the position one takes on any issue is generally determined by one's position on relating to traditional social hierarchies. If one believes in challenging traditional social hierarchies, that would lead to one set of policy positions, and a set of opposite positions would result from a belief in supporting traditional social hierarchies.

The examples Krugman offers are social insurance and social policy (gay marriage and the like). However, in principle, this could also apply to the Middle East. However, applying this principle to the Middle East would require first identifying what is meant by "traditional social hierarchy."

For much of the Left, there is only one "traditional social hierarchy" that matters in international relations, and that is of Europe dominating everyone else. Thus, if one views international relations through the lens of whether or not to support European world domination, a supporter would side with Israel while a challenger would side with the Palestinians. Hence, we see that much of the Right, which tends to support traditional hierarchies, sides with Israel while much of the Left, which challenges traditional hierarchies, sides with the Palestinians.

However, there are other traditional social hierarchies in play in international affairs. Within the Middle East, there is the region's internal traditional social hierarchy which placed believers at the top, Jews on the bottom, and Christians occupying a station any place in between. Viewing international relations through this lens, supporters of the Middle East's traditional hierarchy would side with the Palestinians while challengers of that hierarchy would side with Israel. Thus we see that right-wing racists like David Duke support the Palestinians while left-wingers with a perspective on Middle Eastern history like Paul Berman support Israel.

A further observation is that it is very difficult to oppose both traditional social hierarchies. Nearly any action taken to challenge Eurocentric hierarchy would have the effect of buttressing, in actuality if not by intent, the Middle East-centric hierarchy. This provides an explanations for an observation Elder of Ziyon made some time ago that leftist Israel-haters take great pains to emphasize that they have nothing against Jews while rightist Israel-haters are open about their Jew hatred. Support of the Middle East-centric hierarchy is inherently judeophobic. From the Left, hatred of Israel is not motivated supporting that hierarchy, even if their actions inevitably lend it a boost. In fact, anti-racism gets to the heart of their identity. Thus, they circle the wagons to defend their anti-racist self-image by asserting that their motives have nothing to do with the support to the Middle East-centric hierarchy that they invariably provide. In contrast, the right-wing supporters of the Middle East-centric hierarchy have no problem with the judeophobia that that hierarchy entails and thus have no need for the mental gymnastics to deny it.

Another example of which traditional hierarchy to select as one's lens comes from Peter Beinart. When he was promoting Crisis of Zionism, he said at interviews that the Zionist establishment was lecturing the younger generation that they should sacrifice liberalism on the altar of Zionism and discovered that their children had instead sacrificed Zionism on the altar of liberalism. This statement only makes sense through the lens of the Eurocentric hierarchy. The typical response to Beinart has been to emphasize everything that has happened in European Jewish history or the contributions that Israel has made to the world. For the likes of Beinart, this can all be summarized as saying that there should be an exception where the Eurocentric hierarchy should be tolerated.

However, we do not need to imprison ourselves in this lens. Viewed through the lens of the Middle East-centric hierarchy, there is nothing incompatible between Zionism and liberalism. However, view world affairs through this lens requires a greater scope of history than is required for the Eurocentric hierarchy. Thus, we need to teach history sufficiently to identify the pillars of the Middle East-centric hierarchy.

The Middle East is not the only region where the Eurocentric hierarchy is opposite the local-centric hierarchy. Indeed, in any non-western locale with an illiberal social hierarchy, challenging that hierarchy would be imposing Western values and thus establishing the Eurocentric hierarchy. Hence Ayaan Hirsi Ali who was a clear victim of the social hierarchy of her native Somalia is vilified by the Left because her escape from that culture exemplifies the triumph of European values of those of her native Somalia. Similarly, today's young Britons today question the authority of their country to outlaw sati in India on the grounds that they should not impose their values on other cultures.

Follow-up to this Sunday's EoZ post

Sar Shalom

Mike's post this Sunday at Elder of Ziyon raised the important question of what use would an alliance with the Left be for us. In the comments, I pointed out that the Left encompasses those who are irreconcilable, those who are committed to our side, and those to whom we must reach out. Mike replied by asking how I propose to reaching out to that segment of the Left.

To summarize my point from my comment at EoZ, opposition to Israel from the Left generally stems from a combination of a conviction that whatever positions the Left takes, anti-imperialism trumps all, and that Israel is an outpost of Western imperialism. The Left consists of factions that are committed to those two points, factions that are ardently opposed to those two points, and factions that have not made their assessments on either point. In actuality, there is a fourth group on the Left, that which doesn't really care about any of the Left's agenda other than demonizing Israel and Jews, but wants to couch its judeophobia in the language of basic human decency that the Left ascribes to anti-imperialism.

With that, the challenge is to move as many members of the non-committed factions of the Left to one of the factions opposing the notion of anti-imperialism trumps all and/or the notion that Israel is a colonialist outpost. I don't have sufficient information to answer the question of how to reach out to them for that effect. However, I would like to suggest what information would be needed in order to formulate an outreach strategy. The main criterion is interfering with how the BDS activists seek to convince the non-committed elements of the Left to support their side.

Getting more specific about how to reach out to the non-committed factions, there are two possible ways to sway them. One is to convince them that while opposing imperialism is a positive value, it should not trump all other liberal value. This avenue might be tricky because the relative importance of opposing imperialism compared to other liberal values is strictly a matter of opinion. The one suggestion I can offer would be to highlight the motives of those who are pushing the notion that anti-imperialism should trump all. Specifically, we could point to the sector of the Left that does not care about any of the Left's objectives, but latches onto the Left in order to exploit the language of anti-colonialism for the purpose of promoting their judeophobic ends.

The other potential way to sway the non-committed Left would be to challenge the notion that Israel is a colonialist outpost. There is an objective case to be made that Israel is not an imperial entity, but not within the eurocentric narrative. The reality is that for any wrong committed by Europe against us throughout history, including the Holocaust, the BDS activists will claim that answering them by "dispossessing" the "Palestinian people" by the establishment of Israel constitutes answering a wrong with another wrong. What's needed is a focus on Middle-Eastern Jews and their history. The purpose of doing so would be to cast the Middle-Eastern Jews as the historically dispossessed people and Zionism as the movement which as a side-effect brought them dignity.

Jews and the Left, the Left and Israel

Sar Shalom

A common theme on this blog is about why, when the Left is so hostile to Israel, Jews continue to support the Left and its causes. While there are Jews who support the anti-Israel agenda of the Left, the more pressing question is why the Left takes a strong position on Israel. That is, why is that those who favor gay rights are antagonistic to Israel? Why are those favoring firearm public-safety (aka gun-control), progressive taxation, public support for health insurance, or any other liberal domestic agenda-item, so antagonistic to Israel? If the link between all those items and Israel-antagonism were severed, interest in Jews' support for the Lefts' agenda would wane. So what follow are my thoughts on what connects the Left to antagonism towards Israel.

While the Left likes for foreign entities to enact policies consistent with its domestic policies, its top foreign concern is countering western imperialism. In and of itself, a focus on western imperialism is not problematic. There are legitimate grievances against the history of Boer rule in subsaharan Africa, the British Raj, and other manifestations of European empire. However, the Left has largely bought the Arab propaganda that Israel was founded as a colonial project and remains the last outpost of European colonialism. In the absence of any other extant imperial holdings, the Left has no place else to demonstrate its opposition to western imperialism, with the possible exception of American influence on governments around the world, which is also a target of the western Left. Further, a faction of the Left has elevated anti-imperialism to a trump issue, meaning that if one side of a conflict represents what they call western imperialism while operating according to their priorities in everything else and the other side is what they consider imperial subjects flagrantly violating every other priority they have, the fact that they see an outpost of western imperialism in conflict with an imperial subject would trump all.

While one faction of the Left prioritizes anti-imperialism over its domestic concerns, there is another more virulent faction associated with the Left. This faction could not care two figs about any of the items on the Left's domestic agenda, but is solely interested in appropriating the language of the Left for the purposes of waging political war against Israel. This group has two objectives in its association with the Left. One is to promote the notion that Israel is a western colonial outpost, the second to be to convince the genuine followers of the Left that they should elevate anti-imperialism to a trump issue. If they can achieve those two goals, they can assure the Left's support for their hirabah (Arabic for "unlawful warfare" - editor's note) against Israel.

While substantial portions of the Left subscribe to the international agenda I described, there is a different group with a different worldview on international affairs. I am not familiar with activist groups, but it includes commentators like Alan Dershowitz, Richard Cohen, and Bill Maher and elected officials like Charles Schumer and Barbara Boxer. For the most part, this group is more moderate in its support of the Left's domestic agenda than the anti-Israel wing as is the case with the DLC, but this is not a strict rule. Motivating factors can include emphasizing liberal values abroad such that claims of being under the heel of imperialism would not constitute an excuse for illiberal behavior and philosemitism.

A separate issue from the rank-and-file of the Left and liberal elected officials is the perspective of the media. Outside of Jewish or Israel-centric and right-wing media, most of the media subscribe to a specific worldview about how the Middle East works and frame their coverage in order to conform their presentation to that worldview. Without speculating on the details of their worldview, the result is that domestic-liberals who do not seek out Israel-centric sources and who do not trust conservative media will get only one perspective on the war against Israel. Even domestic-liberals who monitor conservative media, such as Jonathan Chait, to keep abreast of what the Right is saying might come to view coverage of Israel in the right-wing media the same way they view the Right's coverage of Obamacare.

As to what to do about the divide in opinion on the Left, it would help to take the perspective of Jews who support the Left's domestic agenda, something which is not objectionable from an Israel-perspective, while holding pro-Israel views on foreign affairs. The first item on the agenda should be to stop forcing pro-Israel domestic-liberals to choose between their domestic principles and their support for Israel. This means remaining engaged in intra-Democratic Party politics, supporting pro-Israel candidates in the primaries. While netroots groups are an issue, it is not necessary to win every group. What is necessary is to develop domestic-liberal groups with a clear pro-Israel stand. Otherwise, pro-Israel domestic-liberals going to the polls will have a choice of holding their nose as they vote for someone whose stances on Israel are completely anathema or hold their nose as they vote for someone whose domestic agenda is anathema across the board and those citizens will be bombarded with challenges to their support for Israel while they remain blissfully unaware of the compelling case in Israel's defense as it would only be carried in the right-wing media that they don't consume.

Being Liberal and Zionist

Sar Shalom

As he began his campaign to reconsider what it means to support Israel, Peter Beinart described the problem facing the Jewish community thusly, in asking the next generation to sacrifice its liberalism on the altar of Zionism, the next generation instead is sacrificing Zionism on the altar of liberalism. This raises the question of what does Beinart mean by liberalism, and does he mean the same thing by liberalism in both parts of the proposition. As an extreme case, substituting these definitions of liberalism would convert Beinart's statement to this, the establishment is asking the next generation to sacrifice its notion that the Palestinians are humans on the altar of Zionism and instead the next generation is instead sacrificing Zionism on the altar of accepting every claim the Palestinians make in the course of their narrative.

Herein lies the crux of the Zionist-liberal, that is of the leftists who don't come out and claim to be anti-Israel, platform, they conflate recognition of the Palestinians as humans with acceptance of their narrative and the facts they cite to support it, using the same term to describe both.

Beinart probably would deny that liberalism requires accepting the Palestinian narrative without question. However, his actions demonstrate something else. Two examples demonstrate this. One is Beinart's citation for praise of the Israelis protesting the eviction of the al-Kurd and other families in Sheikh Jarrah for what Beinart calls making another plot available for Jewish settlers. Here, Beinart is clearly accepting the Palestinian narrative that the disputed properties in Sheikh Jarrah belong to the al-Kurd and other Arab families. However, this claim can be independently checked. According to Wikipedia, the issue is one of whether or not the Jewish deed from the late 19th century is valid. Further inquiry would show that since 1967, the Israeli courts recognized that the disputed properties in Sheikh Jarrah are owned by Jews, but held that the Arab residents there would be able to retain their residence by paying rent to the owner. However, in the 00's the residents received word that the Jewish ownership deeds were invalid and stopped paying rent. That led to the court case and ultimately the Israeli Supreme Court ruling that the deeds were valid. When the Supreme Court ruled on the ownership of the properties and the tenants continued to withhold rent, they were evicted.

If Beinart want to make the case that the Israeli courts erred in ruling that the Jewish deeds are valid, any facts supporting that claim would be welcome. The issue is that Beinart does not see that the Jewish deeds have to be recognized. Instead he latches onto his frame that Jews are gobbling up land and the investigation into any issue touching on the matter ends when it comes across the first fact consistent with that frame. The issue is Beinart's accepting the Palestinian narrative, and their factual claims supporting it, even when externally verifiable information can be compared against it.

A second area where Beinart accepts the Palestinian narrative irregardless of externally verifiable data concerns Susiya. The issue that Beinart raises in Susiya is that Israel refuses to give the Palestinians permits and then when the Palestinians build in Susiya without the permits that Israel withholds, Israel tears down the structures. What Beinart misses is that Susiya is in a part of Area C not far from Area A where Israel exercises no control over the Palestinians' right to build. Further, aerial photos from 15 years ago show that there was no historical community where the Palestinians are trying to build now. Instead of trying to satisfy their need for housing, which can be done within Area A, or reestablishing an historical community, which doesn't exist, the Palestinians are trying to establish facts on the ground in order to force a change in the border between Area C and Areas B/C.

By all means, we should not let our support for Israel to cause us to forget that the Palestinians are humans. This means that when there are genuine outrages committed by our side, such as "price-tag" attacks committed by Jews (that is, not actions done by the Arabs to frame the Jews), we must condemn the actions. However, we must also be vigilant in not allowing recognition of the Palestinians' humanity to be conflated with accepting every claim they make. Given their pattern of disingenuousness, both in terms of presenting details that did not happen and of obscuring details that would change a reasonable person's understanding, we should press that Palestinian allegations not be automatically accepted at face value.

Radical Islam: From Right to Left

When I think about Radical Islam and the chopping off of Daniel Pearl's head and the taking down of the Twin Towers and the various Islamist attacks throughout Europe and India and Israel and throughout the Middle East, I realize that... oh... we have a little problem here.

And then when I think about American and western politics and the various approaches, from Right to Left, taken by westerners toward Radical Islam I realize that the problem becomes even more complex than the problem of Radical Islam, itself.

In a nutshell, both the Right and Left suck when it comes to Radical Islam.

Here's why:

The Right tends to think that the problem is not just Radical Islam, or Islamism, but Islam, if not Muslims, in general. Not everyone on the Right feels that way, but plenty of them do or use language that leans in that direction. For example, this is why Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the set of The View when conservative / libertarian political commentator, Bill O'Reilly, claimed that "Muslims killed us on 9/11."



On the one hand, of course, O'Reilly is correct. The people who attacked the World Trade Center were Muslims. Thus it is more or less correct to say that "Muslims killed us on 9/11." Or, really, Muslims attacked us on 9/11.

The problem, obviously, is that by saying "Muslims killed us on 9/11" O'Reilly makes it sound like it was Muslims, as a group, as a whole, who did the killing. As I often say, the vast majority of Muslims, here, there, and everywhere, are simply not in the Jihadi Business. Most Muslims are too busy putting bread on the table to bother themselves with hatin' on Jews and the West.

Therefore, to lay the blame for Islamist violence at the feet of Muslims, in general, or Islam, in its entirety, is not only false, and not only entirely unjust to both Muslims and Islam, but it sets up a situation in which America and the West must be in conflict with 1.5 billion Muslims. Those on the Right who finger Islam, rather than Radical Islam, drag us into a fight that we cannot possibly win and that we should not want to have to begin with.

We cannot fight 1.5 billion Muslims and we shouldn't want to, anyway. Would it be nice if more moderate Muslims came out against Radical Islam? Certainly. Radical Islam's foremost enemies are not westerners, but moderate Muslims. Radical Muslims think of regular Muslims as "hypocrites" or the "near enemy." And it is the near enemy that is the foremost foe of the Islamists.

So, this is primarily a fight within Islam, not between Islam and the West. The solution will come primarily from the Islamic world, because we cannot impose a solution on a problem as massive as this. Or, if we can, no one has yet put forward a practicable way of doing so.

In this way the Right tends to have their heads almost entirely up their asses when it comes to the problem of Radical Islam. The only people on the planet who are even more screwed up when it comes to Radical Islam than the political right-wing in the West is the political left-wing in the West.

If the Right often views the problem as a problem with Islam, the Left tends to go all Ostrich on us, sticking their heads in the sand. The Left sees no evil and it hears no evil. The Left is not whistling past the graveyard, it seems not even to realize that the graveyard actually exists. The Left is even more worthless than the Right when it comes to the problem of Radical Islam because they refuse to really acknowledge that Radical Islam is a genuine problem and then when people who do recognize this problem speak up, the Left starts screaming their heads off about "Racism!" and "Islamophobia!"

Taken as a whole, this is why we cannot even begin to reasonably approach the problem, because the Right tends to misdiagnose and the Left is in denial.

Thus to my friends on the Right, I say:

Calm down. The problem is emphatically NOT 1.5 billion Muslims.

And to my friends on the Left, I say:

Snap out of your coma, your vegetable torpor, and, yes, Wake the Fuck Up.

{That is all.}