Where do I start? I just returned from a dozen country, 30 day journey to talk to people, hear their views, try to get answers to questions and report back to you. Following this visit to Europe and the Middle East, I hope I have some useful thoughts to share. I am not going to repeat the information contained in the trip journal but will use this space to tell you what I think of that which I observed, and use the trip journal to stick to the reporting aspect.
I have decided to join the digital revolution and beginning with my next trip, I am switching to a digital camera because you can now take good quality images that can be reproduced at a photo lab into photographs up to 8×10 size. I am also updating the packing list to reflect changes in the way we travel.
It has been a nerve-racking week and I will tell you about it. A week ago Thursday my business partner’s father died and within hours he was on a flight to Israel and back to bury the body. Last Wednesday night, his wife had a boy but he was still sitting the 7 days of mourning and 3 rabbis told him he couldn’t leave his house to be with his wife at the hospital. I spent a weekend with a friend and we were making some plans for the coming days and month, and then she gets a midnight call that her grandfather is critical and she left later that day to Australia to sit with her mom for what will now be the 7 days of mourning. Life turns on a dime, doesn’t it?
I do my best to avoid funerals but one every few years is good if it reminds you of the things people take for granted and to remember what is truly important. My partner mentioned that he at least had the honor and privilege of burying his father; his father didn’t have the same privilege because he lost his parents to the Holocaust. People then were taken away and you simply didn’t see them again.
The Middle East – The Coming War with Iraq
Suppose you go to an 85 year old guy and offer him a free trip to anywhere he wants to go and he refuses, saying I just want to stay home because when I get up at 2am to go to the bathroom, at least I know where it is. That’s life in the Middle East today. Everyone is sitting in a pile of shit and they know it. They don’t know how to get out of it. They are afraid of anyone cleaning the pile which would force them to get up and move because they are not sure they wouldn’t wind up in a different shitpile that might be worse.
There are Israelis who, no matter how much they have, will never feel secure enough to compromise. There are Arabs who have been complaining about the artificiality of their borders for the past 50 years as set by the Western powers but fear a war in Iraq will open up a pandora’s box that might lead to – horror of horrors – self-determination by various elements of Iraq that might lead to different borders.
First impressions count for something. When you land in Amman, the first thing you see and have seen for the past decade is the rows of Iraqi Airways planes sitting on the tarmac. In Doha, Qatar, you see the Golden Arches of McDonalds even before the plane touches down on the runway. My first thought was next time I come around, those Iraqi Airways planes will be gone, one way or the other.
Since I have started visiting this region a decade ago, there is now e-mail, satellite tv, internet, cellphones and even more English in use. But that doesn’t mean people are more open-minded or less ignorant. It’s actually worse in some ways. Today it is not the openness of your system but the openness of your mind that determines the person you are. I know people sitting in America who are very closed minded and people sitting in Saudi Arabia who are very open minded. I heard half a dozen educated people in Amman tell me how the Zionists were behind 9/11 based on what they heard; when you showed them how ridiculous the stories were (ie: that 4,000 people were told not to go to work that day and that not a single Jew was killed in the attack), they had to agree but note that they hadn’t really thought about the stories they had been fed.
I see a Middle East filled with unhappy people who can’t figure out how to get out of a hopeless situation. People want the US to impose a solution with regard to Israel/Palestine; they would prefer an Arab solution in Iraq but know that is impossible and at this point they and the Europeans hope the US will get the war over with as cleanly and quickly as possible.
Iraq is a shadow over the region. Investment is on hold and people know that the day Iraq has the bomb is the day they are subject to blackmail. They agree that if Iraq had the bomb in 1991 it would have been unopposed after it had invaded Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. They fear scuds and Israeli anti-missile instruments flying over their country dumping biochemical shit all over them; if the Iraqis send smallpox to Israel and it lands anywhere other than where it is supposed to, the Israelis will be vaccinated but the Jordanians and Palestinians will die — but will Saddam care?. Jordanians live in a country that is more free than it was 10 years ago and is freer than the other Arab countries, but it is still not free and Jordanians are afraid of Iraq even though it doesn’t rule Jordan. Talk about Iraq in a public place and you will make your Jordanian friends nervous; they glance around to see if anyone is listening. Arabs are accustomed to the idea that power shifts and they are always hedging their bets because people in that region like to take revenge when they take over.
For this reason, what Arabs, particularly in the Gulf, fear more than anything is that the Americans will attack Iraq, declare victory, pull out before they actually win, and leave the region in chaos. They accuse the Americans of doing the bare minimum in Afghanistan. If so, the Americans will have absolutely no credibility left in this region. So the Americans have to win and can’t afford to lose. On the other hand, they don’t want the Americans to hang around in Iraq, rule the place like a colony and milk all its oil wealth. They say they believe that the danger posed by Saddam is exaggerated, that Israel with its nukes and Sharon at the helm is more of a threat to them (and want to know why America isn’t bothered by that), and that if the Americans didn’t deal with Saddam a decade ago, they don’t see why they should be declaring him Enemy #1 right now. “Why, Why, Why…” is the way they pose each of these questions. These are conflicting demands from an insatiable constituency – you want to repair mistakes and they tell you No because they fear more mistakes. They want it big but not big, small but not small…
I believe taxi drivers and one of them in Bahrain said to me that every Bahraini knows who Saddam is and wants him out and that I should ignore all the Bosses who say otherwise because none of the people in charge want to lose their chairs. The only person I ran into this trip who believed that the people in Iraq actually like Saddam was the daughter of a diplomat in Brussels who was pretty intelligent but thought of herself as super-intelligent and was in certain ways profoundly out of touch with reality. I personally believe that Arabs are exaggerated in their fears of instability in their region and that the Iraq war is not going to result in any of the horror stories coming true. Governments are not going to fall, things are not going to change drastically in any immediate way and the infrastructure and people of Iraq are not going to be ripped to shreds. I also don’t think that Saddam will manage to cause much damage to anyone else either.
What I got out of this trip is (1) the Americans must win this war unambiguously, (2) must initially stay involved in Iraq to get the country on its feet and arrange an orderly transition of power but that this transition should involve people from outside the US so that it does not look like the US is running the show on its own, and (3) must use the standing it will get as a result to get the Israelis and Palestinians to accept a compromise along the lines of the Clinton Plan which they want to be pushed into even though they say they don’t.
If the Americans don’t finish the job in Iraq, the following will happen: (1) Iraq will go nuclear and the future for any Arab in the region is over, and I will explain why later. (2) The Palestinian conflict will never end because the Iraqis, along with the Syrians and Iranians, have an axis that pours money to radicals in Palestine to keep the pot boiling so that moderates can never make peace. Every time I hear of someone saying something moderate, the next day I read he had a heart attack and is in hospital for a month in Qatar. If Iraq is taken out of the equation, the Syrians will soon be out of business and the pace of change in Iran will accelerate. (3) Saudi Arabia’s monarchy will be out of business in a few years, no matter what happens in Iraq – the question is what kind of country it will become. If America is strong in the region via Iraq, Saudi Arabia has a better chance of managing change.
Let me explain in detail the first and third points. Every time I am in an Arab country, I feel that something around me isn’t real and I can’t quite figure out what it is. You watch the TV and it is surreal; you see pictures of monarchs receiving visitors and signing proclamations with kingly music in the background. It is the adult version of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood in 2002 in a world where this kind of bullshit no longer exists. (Mr. Rogers is a children’s TV show that features a king and the kingdom of Make Believe consisting of puppets.) The newspapers read like party organs and in the whole region people watch satellite TV stations to know what’s going on inside their countries because they know that nothing published inside their countries is free thought. People are afraid to talk in public spaces, to be quoted, to photograph or be photographed, to point their finger at things that might be considered sensitive such as embassies or palaces (even inside their cars late at night), and they are really afraid of retribution by real or supposed enemies or public officials. There is no real rule of law here; the system is rigged to favor the ruler and his friends. The tourist might feel welcome and safe and people here are not exactly tied to the clock or feeling a sense of urgency, but people know in the back of their minds that the system of government could change tomorrow, that they could be picked up and thrown out without any rights or reason, and that there is no justice in the world for them. Their futures are not theirs to determine; nobody wants their opinions, they have no vote, and outsiders will shape their destiny. The Israelis have to fear terror, but they are free people who can speak their minds and do whatever they please in a country in which words mean what you say they mean (instead of some kind of code), and Arabs would prefer to be in the Israeli system any day of the week. Albert Einstein was asked in the 1940’s how he, a pacifist, could support war against the Nazis and the building of the atomic bomb. He said that if we don’t fight the Nazis, we will be defenseless and we will be enslaved. When Americans used to think of what would happen if the Commies took over the world, their first vision was of being enslaved in some kind of work camp and walking under a gate with a hammer and sickle overhead. In the Arab world, it is ironically the opposite — too many people not working either because they are overqualified, underqualified or disenfranchised. In any event, not realizing their potential and not being able to express themselves without restraint or codes. More than people realize, the Arab world is enslaved both mentally and physically; the challenge is how to set things free. If it is insulting to say the Arab World is not free, then say it is restrained and repressed. Whatever word suits you. Bin Laden and Saddam are guys who make things happen. They represent Freedom in this dysfunctional state of affairs. So the challenge is to bring freedom that unshackles this dysfunctional state.
Before I left, I complained about the nonresponsiveness I was getting from people in the region and wondered why. People ask me how come I am not terrified to go to Arab countries and talk to Arabs? Here are the answers to the two issues and they relate to the previous paragraph. Arabs are more afraid to talk to me and host me than I am to go and see them. They are afraid of what I might ask, say, photograph or do. I leave the next day; they are stuck there and at the mercy of the authorities. (A few years ago I posted to the website a distant photo of a palace in Jeddah and if my amigo could have reached across the Atlantic and strangled me, he would have done so. This year, I was actually asked to not post a photo of several people and I eating dinner in a restaurant in Amman. They were concerned someone with malicious or suspicious intent might see it. I didn’t know GlobalThoughts had become so (in)famous!) I have done some outrageous things over the years in these countries and maybe I am just nuts, but I have properly assumed that nobody is that interested in me to stop me and that any idiot can sit around and discuss the weather but it is with your friends that you talk about real issues and that you learn something. (I recall this year my mom’s friend of over 40 years saw her husband go bankrupt, delisted her number and wouldn’t return phone calls. Obviously she was embarrassed, but my mom was saddened — what then are your good friends for if not to turn to when the world around you goes kaput?) As for the first issue, I think people in this region are afraid to send e-mails and talk on the phone because they think they are being monitored. They think they might lose their job or attract the suspicions of someone because they are talking to me. They think they might be called in for questioning the next morning. I can sit here and call them cowards but that wouldn’t be fair since I’m not in their shoes and I don’t have to worry about someone calling me in for questioning here in New York. Whether or not people here are truly hostile is something we won’t know until after people are at least free enough to let you know how they really feel. For the time being, I won’t take offense at the nonresponsiveness that sometimes exists. It’s one reason I keep getting off my butt and going over in person; it’s the only way to really take the temperature in the region (and I think these reports are vital to making sense of this region). I’ve managed to keep my friends regardless of the ups and downs of the emotional roller coaster people in the region have had to ride, and I think things have been fairly consistent in my personal sphere at least for the past decade.
Here’s an episode about fear in the region. This week I spoke to someone who offered some opinions about democracy and corruption with regard to Saudi Arabia, I wrote them up without mentioning his name, country or company, but he still freaked out figuring someone might deduce whose opinions they are, crack down on him and close up his company, even though he doesn’t live in Saudi Arabia and his company is not inside that country. The guy was truly sweating until I made the changes he asked for. Every time I call someone in these countries, you hear that pause on the phone while they decide whether to take the call or slam down the phone.
Anyway, back to the main point. Right now Iraq is a shadow over the region and it is one reason things don’t move forward. Prime property in Amman is sitting dormant or vacant because money is on the sidelines. You can’t have a conversation in a restaurant or drive around downtown Amman at night without seeing Iraqis or worrying about their presence. Bahrainis remember that in the last war the scuds fell from Iraq on them too. Everybody knows the Iraqis are paying off government officials and media inside the various countries to toe their line. If Iraq goes nuclear, people will never have reason to think their countries could ever be free. If Iraq is out of business, then people could think of a future in which they could be free. Right now, they are so fearful and cynical that they can’t fathom the idea that anything good could actually happen. But something good needs to happen because in the past 10 years most young Jordanians I know have left the country and increasingly no longer think about going back there. Older people even think of leaving the country.
Now let’s talk Saudi. This is a country that 20 years ago had a GDP that was equivalent to the USA; today its GDP is that of Mexico. What an incredible failure for a country that is one of the greatest oil producing countries on the planet. 80% of Saudis are watching satellite TV. Market research from the region shows that contrary to what people in the West think, there is tremendous alienation among significant sectors of young people at traditional values within the Kingdom. (This research is discussed in a separate article posted today.) The rulers appear to be out of sync with the country, have failed miserably in bringing progress, and created a Frankenstein with the mullahs. They have been kept in power because the US kept them there this past half a century as a result of a cynical oil-first policy. 9/11 destroyed the calculus; Americans now intensely dislike Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis dislike America. Bin Laden is actually going to get his wish as a result of 9/11 – the regimes in the area are going to be pushed out, the Americans will ultimately come in strong in the short run and then later leave in a more permanent way once the region becomes more stable and the Americans are not needed, but I think that instead of an Islamic superpower there will be democratic states along the lines of the Israeli political system where there is theocracy but where minority rights are respected by law. It won’t happen overnight – the monarchs will create parliaments that over time will become more significant and relegate the monarchs to figureheads. Like England; maybe like Palestine.
What the Americans should do (but they won’t) is to take the risk of respecting people’s aspirations in the region to have free and fair elections and to pledge to honor those elections instead of rigging and overturning the ones they don’t like as in Pakistan and Venezuela. (In Pakistan, the Islamic party had never gained more than 5%; in the last election they got 30%.) If America would do this and Arabs would feel that their vote actually counts, they will vote in a moderate government in Saudi Arabia and Palestine. If they think the Americans are playing with them, they will go out of their way to vote fundamentalist as an expression against American imperialism and interference. The Americans tried to make a point in this direction a month ago in Egypt but it was viewed cynically because the person the Americans were trying to promote was an Egyptian-American instead of an Egyptian.
One thing I am afraid of is that there are too many Reagan-era ideologues sitting in Washington in powerful places who want this war to happen because they are hoping the anti-missile system in Israel turns out to be the Star Wars baby they have been waiting to give birth to the past 20 years and that it will fuel the defense industry for the next decade (and an arms race as well). If Israel does take some hits though, it may force everyone to take a step back and decide that if Israel can’t defend itself, nobody else can. (I personally believe these air-defense systems won’t work.) This is one of those times where I hope God is watching and will decide how he wants the world to proceed. I’d like to think that all this craziness from 9/11 leading through whatever happens now is part of some Big-Bang Plan from Above to finally set this region on some kind of path leading to a better future.
Speaking of which, honorable mention goes to the Christian evangelical community and the strange bedfellow alliance that has arisen between these people and right-wing ideologues in Israel. I spent time abroad explaining this phenomenon and I suppose some details belong here for the record. Bush is a Christian evangelical; a few years ago he said in an interview that he believed that Jews who didn’t accept Jesus Christ wouldn’t be saved. You may think that Jews run Washington, but it is more so Christian evangelicals who do. And what they want is for Israel to conquer all of the Biblical Land of Israel, rebuild the temple, bring on the Armeggedon (the apacolypse) which will bring on the Judgment Day at which time the Jews must all convert to Christianity or die. At last year’s rally for Israel, I’m standing near the capitol steps and this evangelical broadcaster gets up and starts screaming from the podium: We will not give into terrorism! (Everybody goes AHHH!) We will not give back the territories. (AHHH!) We will not give back the Golan (AHHH!)… Wait a minute…Who is this “We?” She ain’t Jewish or Israeli. No Jew could have said that at the rally because half the Jews there don’t agree with those policies. Anyway, I’ve asked people from the Israeli and religious-Jewish side how they can reconcile themselves to an alliance with these people who are clearly as interested in Jews as Saddam is in Palestinians. Their answer: If and when Jesus shows up, we’ll give him serious consideration. After all, if he ever does show up, he must be pretty serious.
At the time of my visit, people were still debating whether or not the Americans would go to war in Iraq. That debate is over, I said then. Now we know it is over. The Congress, UN and midterm elections have come in supporting Bush. No further votes are needed. At this point, leaders in the region have already discounted the war and regime change into their strategic plans. The Israelis and Palestinians are in a holding pattern knowing that they will be dealt with after the war. The supposed UN-resolution negotiations were in fact a negotiation between the US, UK, France and Russia about divvying up the Iraq concessions. Russia is a business not a country, and we now know that Foreign Minister Primakov (remember him?) was on the Iraqi payroll at the time. I do believe that the Americans are committed to doing whatever it takes in Iraq, that Bush will not take Yes for an answer from Saddam and that we will remove him no matter what he does. I would go so far as to say that if the Russians engineer a coup, the Americans will move in the next day because the calculation is that removing Saddam is easy – the Day Afterward is the hard part and the Americans have to be on hand to help manage it in the manner that the various parties, including Turkey, have agreed to. The major advantage the Americans have is in night-fighting technology.
The Saudis and Kuwaitis are hedging against American action even though they are also afraid of Saddam; they are more afraid of their own chairs and the uncertainty of the Day Afterward, and considering that they don’t care at all for their own people and would just pick up and move to chalets in France if the going ever got tough, we really shouldn’t listen to them. And we increasingly aren’t, especially since when we do call them, they don’t pick up the phone, return e-mails or respond to requests for visits to discuss issues. A word for the Kuwaitis in particular – well, I can’t decide. Either they are just total cowards who are so afraid of everything they are beyond useless, or they have a right to be afraid since we didn’t finish the job last time we were there. Right now, they are sitting on the fence as best they can. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because of what we didn’t do right a decade ago. But it is clear that Kuwaitis and their rulers are not liked by others in the region, didn’t do squat to reform anything in Kuwait beyond putting themselves back in power and cleaning up physical damage, they are so spineless that they drive the Americans crazy there not to offend this and that sensitivity, and I think that among the American military and elite today there is a greater opinion that if Kuwait went down the tubes the Americans wouldn’t see it as any great loss especially if we have Iraq under control. The Kuwaiti royals would be well advised to be a bit more sensitive about our own sensitivities – we don’t need to see Dick Cheney visit the region, get shafted by everyone and then see pictures of the Kuwaiti and Iraqi ministers hugging each other at the Arab League summit in Beirut. We feel like we gave them a country and they gave us a 10% discount in their shops for 2 years.
People ask me a good question: why does America stand with little troublemaker Israel when there are 22 other countries with a billion moslems? I’ve never had a real good answer but one morning on this trip I was with Bernard in the Galilee and we hit a fork in the road and the scenery was just beautiful and I suddenly came up with the answer in the middle of a conversation we were having. This year, more than ever, the Americans need to know who their friends are. There are only about 5 countries in the world that America knows it can count on as being true friends – Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. With these 5 countries America doesn’t have to worry about fence-sitting and double-dealing behind its back. With everyone else from France and Germany downward, America never knows what to expect. (Flash back to the Kuwait minister I just mentioned a paragraph ago.) In Germany the leader ran his last campaign against America in order to win; no Israeli politician can win by running against America. One important reason Sharon became popular is that he made a 180 degree turn viz. Washington and got in good with the White House. The Americans can’t outright interfere in Israeli politics but Israelis will not vote for someone that can’t find favor in America. The Arabs may be allies but they have never really chosen sides and have never really been loyal friends to the U.S. (not to mention each other). The Israelis may not have much of a choice in the matter and the U.S. is not always true blue to Israel either, but overall the countries are true friends and the people of both countries share the same values. Today in America, the main reason that the Arab world is so alien to Americans is that Americans don’t feel that Arabs share their values. Just an hour ago I was listening to my taxi driver, a Hungarian, lecture me for 20 minutes about how we have to destroy Islam — kill them all — and hold the Arab world by the balls until they bring themselves to get rid of these Islamists themselves. That’s where political discourse is in New York taxicabs today.
I realize that in the current environment some people will never be convinced that this war of choice is the right choice. It is a unique moment for America – past wars in this century were meant to preserve the status quo; this one is meant to change the status quo. But that is because the calculus changed; we are no longer in a carefully regulated world where the Soviets and Americans controlled the balance of forces and kept everyone in line. Bush Sr. was not that off the mark when he called for a New World Order; a decade ago it was an aspiration, today it is a necessity to keep people safe. A neighbor named Chris is totally against this war and demonstrated his prowess in the martial arts to prove that because I couldn’t land a punch on his hand (he’d move his hand away), this showed that threats to America by evil forces could be dealt with. I said well maybe you are quicker than I in terms of hitting your hand, but I know where you live and if I threaten to suddenly send a missile over and nuke your house (heck, your whole neighborhood) and you can’t stop that, then you will have to pick up and leave it and all your belongings and maybe you don’t have a place to go. And maybe you’ll be fried inside your house. Chris preferred not to talk about these possibilities. But the rest of us can’t afford to ignore them.
To be current, the inspection process of course is a sham. We will never find anything. During the previous inspection regime, over the course of nearly 1,000 inspections, the inspectors only surprised the Iraqis about half a dozen times. The only break will come from a defector or someone the inspectors pull out of the country, along with his family, so that he will talk. We will keep the military busy in the air taking out his defenses, use the inspection teams as a diversion to keep the Iraqis busy chasing after them, allege violations, pick a pretext and go to war sometime in the next 2-3 months whenever the military says it is good and ready. Rumsfeld will prefer a smaller footprint and a more agile method of attack; Powell wants overwhelming superior force. Rumsfeld has enemies in the Pentagon because he challenges conventional military doctrine, and if the war goes badly he will be blamed mightily. Powell has a temporary victory due to our looking good with solid UN backing instead of coming off acting alone. Which of them will come out on top remains to be seen based on the results of the war.
Israel Elections / Palestinian Affairs
The outgoing defense mister, Fuad ben Eliezer, just wrote this year’s edition of the textbook on how to throw away everything you had in less than a week and take down your friends and party with you. The guy is no longer head of his party, no longer in government, lost any chance he might have had to ever become prime minister, and a bloody fool to boot. He cost close to 50 people their Volvos and expense accounts. The new man, Avraham Mitznah, has some things going for him: He gets along with the religious, Arabs, seculars, and the army. He is a uniter and has a track record of being a reasonable person in various military and political situations. He resigned from his position in Lebanon during the 1980’s in protest of Sharon’s war in Lebanon, came out of Intifadah I in the 1980’s with a good reputation, ran Haifa for close to 10 years and made few enemies. He is backed by businesspeople who feel he is the right kinda guy to run the country. He has kept a beard since 1967 which he grew stating that he would not shave until Israel made peace with the Arabs in the territories. He is not Barak; he would bring Arabs into the government and would go into negotiations with the Palestinians with the kind of attitude that is necessary, meaning he would view them as partners to get along with rather than errant children to be brought under control.
He is expected to lose big-time to Sharon in the upcoming election. If he does any better than expected, he will actually lose respectably and be in a position to hang around for the next election, which could be sooner than people think. Right now, Sharon is actually viewed as a moderate, Bibi is viewed as a radical right-winger and Mitzna a liberal before the right time. Right now it is the “wrong time” because Arafat is such a creep and the terrorists keep attacking so Sharon is viewed as the only realistic alternative. This is so even though people in Israel realize that the terrorists are striking now in order to make people stick with Sharon. But let’s say that (1) the Americans win the war; (2) Sharon wins the election and either goes back into coalition with Labor or more likely forms another narrow right-wing unstable government; (3) Arafat is then replaced either by bullet or otherwise and then Israelis feel they have somebody to talk to; (4) Sharon’s government falls; and (5) Mitznah is then elected with a clear mandate. That to me looks like the next 8-12 months. When I left Israel 3 weeks ago, hardly anyone thought Mitznah was electable. That may still be true; but I think the situation may change. Remember, 3 months before the last election, Sharon was thought to be unelectable.
In a poll taken at the weekend, 40% of Labor voters said they would vote for Sharon. After the Kenya events of this week, people will like having Sharon around. They expect him to send the Mossad after Al-Qaeda and bring back heads on a platter. Bin Laden might have succeeded in bringing Israel into the war against terror, but the Israelis now have the green light for international operations where they have been forced to lay low for the past few years. Me thinks Bin Laden can hide from the Americans but not from the Israelis.
Let’s look at that 40% figure again. How did it get that way? Yossi Sarid is the leader of the opposition and thus is Sharon’s natural enemy. But Sharon has neutralized Sarid and just about anyone else from taking him on. He shows up on time to meetings, returns phone calls, gets up when a woman enters the room, engages in personal small talk at every meeting, never raises his voice, and shows a personal interest in the people he deals with. On the day his government was installed, he was at the home of an opposition leader till after midnight, consoling her as she sat mourning the loss of her father. Remember I mentioned that Peres and Sharon have spent Saturday afternoons in their respective homes for years. Here is Sarid as quoted in Haaretz this weekend: According to the law, he and Sharon have to meet once a month. Sharon said to him, “Why don’t we break the law and meet more frequently?” Of course, Sarid was thrilled to do so. Sarid continues: I will tell you what doesn’t happen during these private meetings. I don’t deliver a speech about the territories and he doesn’t lecture on the settlements. We sit, we eat, we drink, we tell jokes. We gossip. The prime minister has a fine sense of humor. By the way, there are usually no substantial differences of opinion between us in our assessments of the ministers and other office holders. He opens everything to me; he has great trust in me.” Sharon also treats the media correspondents well; this has helped him get the benefit of the doubt and hold off hostile stories.
I don’t want to waste too much time on Israel; the situation there is fluid and the impossible might become possible over the next few months. The one thing Arabs should understand is that they may not be able to elect their own leaders but they are in a position to determine who will run Israel. Sharon is doing a brilliant job of painting Bibi into an unelectable corner and if Sharon did nothing else these past 2 years he is owed a debt of gratitude for doing this; it is the Arabs who must make Mitznah seem realistic by making it seem probable that they are ready to make peace with him. Terrorism plus Arafat keep Sharon sitting pretty. Right now, Sharon has convinced Israelis that he is stable, a consensus builder and a possible peacemaker, that everything is the Arabs’ fault, and he promises nothing so they expect nothing. They at least feel they are not being lied to or being promised the moon. He is anti-charismatic, a salty man of the earth from the old school, a farmer, and this is what they want right now.
As far as the Israelis are concerned, everything is on hold until after the war with Iraq. There is a feeling that Iraq is overrated as an enemy, but that until the Americans prosecute the war and regain the initiative in the region, there is nothing to do except wait. There is concern that Hizbullah will use the situation to attack from the north but that the Syrians and Lebanese will have to think real carefully before exposing themselves because Washington would not be expected to reign Israel in on this front and serious retaliatory damage could be imposed.
Recapping a Few Points from my Trip Journal
Before leaving the region, I want to summarize a few points contained in my trip journal that deserve special notice:
1. The observation made by several friends that Al-Jazeerah is losing its audience because it is becoming too preachy and sensational. Radio Sawa, a product of the US Information Agency, is now the #1 radio station in Arab capitals because it is pop and talk with straight news. Moral: Don’t insult the intelligence of your audience and they will pay attention.
2. If the Americans or Israelis say the sky is blue, the Arabs think it must have become green as the result of some conspiracy and will insist that it must be green. The level of trust anywhere in this region and the willingness to give someone the benefit of the doubt is presently below zero and this is true in Israel as well with regard to the Arabs. The Americans might gain some currency with a convincing victory in Iraq because strength is always respected, but right now nobody in Arabville likes the American government and this is going to be a problem because it is hard to mediate if one side feels you are not an honest broker.
3. People should not underestimate the progress being made in the Israeli economy despite the situation. The Israelis are moving ahead much faster than the countries around them, even though the countries around them are themselves progressing. It’s not just where you are today versus where you were yesterday, it’s also where you are in relationship to the guy next to you. Also, people should be aware that in certain areas, the Israelis are taking decisive steps to create facts and improve their situation. Time is ultimately working in Israel’s favor and Sharon is doing a good job of masking the facts on the ground that he is creating. The Western Wall Tunnels, closed circuit TV systems in the Old City, the new contiguous zone to be built from Kiryat Arba to Hebron (to capitalize on the recent terrorist attacks there) are achievements of the Sharon government that are advancing the Israeli position on the overall chess board. There is a feeling as well on the military level that despite isolated victories by terrorist organizations, the Israelis have done a better job of making life hell for the Palestinians in the territories and improving Israel’s strategic position than the Palestinians have done at making life hell for Israelis in Israel or improving their strategic position. This last Intifadah has been a loser for the Palestinians on all counts.
4. The future of Israel requires the integration of Israeli Arabs into the political system. Someone like Mitznah is the right delivery agent for this type of action. If the Israelis don’t bring the Israeli Arabs into the system now, it will hinder the resolution of the Palestinian problem. Solving the Palestinian problem without solving the problem of the Israeli Arabs will only create the prospect of hell breaking out the morning after the Palestinians get their state.
5. If you want to see what security is, go to the Mashbir in Nazareth. Fifty Arab kids walk into a Jewish-owned store but there are no security guards, police or army checking them there or anywhere else in the city. Everybody feels safe. Nobody even notices the fact that there are no security checks. If you want to see what security isn’t, go to downtown Jerusalem anytime or go to the Malcha Shopping Mall or the Azrieli Tower. At shopping malls, cars are lined up for inspection; humans go through one or two metal detectors. People are lulled into thinking they are safe once they pass the machines. Security is a state of mind; Israelis are like millionaires who are afraid to part with half their money for fear they might lose it all – no matter how much money they make, they will never feel secure enough to share half of it. The Moshe Yeffets of the world who say give up East Jerusalem because nobody goes there anyway and holding it is risking our vital interests (ie: the economy and vitality of West Jerusalem) are at this moment a minority but sooner or later someone has to convince people that the current definition of “security” is flawed. In my long-held opinion, Israel will be more secure with less, not with more.
6. Mohammed has a point: Sulha (reconciliation in the Arab cultural manner). If the Israelis keep pulling out their lawyers and want to make peace between governments based on principles of natural law and justice, they are never going to have that peace accepted by the Arabs on the ground. Just as Security is an emotional tripwire for the Israelis that cannot be satisfied in an objective manner (Security will come when Arabs say and do things that make Israelis feel safe and how they do so will be as important as whatever it actually is), Justice for Arabs is an emotional thing because it cannot be satisfied in an objective manner (Justice will come when Israelis say they’re sorry and promise to do right by those who were dispossessed). Points 5 & 6 therefore are the two sides of the coin that will make it or break it with regard to solving this problem. The problem is that they are not quantifiable; the opportunity is that creativity, leadership and personality can bridge the gap. If there’s a war of civilizations taking place, Mohammed is on the ball, because he is calling for a Sulha between the Jewish and Islamic people. But ultimately the conflict is not between the religions; it is a conflict between peoples and the reconciliation is suggested in the manner of local custom. The conflict today is between religious fundamentalists and everyone else, no matter which religion you subscribe to. He says that Bin Laden wants US troops out of the Middle East, and the local regimes replaced by an Islamic superpower that can impose its will and threaten the rest of the world.
7. Aryeh has a point: As long as nobody tries to get an Arab leader to resolve ultimate issues with Israel, there is a good chance to get that person to enter into a truce with Israel. If you don’t believe in peace, at least give a truce a chance. Truces don’t require the Arab to take on the various Arab interests that oppose peace with Israel or that have a laundry list of demands that must satisfy so many external interests that they interfere with the situation for the parties in interest. Aryeh figures that Israel could enter into truces with various chieftains and that as long as nobody has to stick their neck out on ultimate issues and risk being shot for agreeing to the truce, these truces could last indefinitely. Aryeh’s point works if you really believe that peace has no chance; I still prefer to be optimistic and I actually believe the region will be in a better position a year from now than it is today. And this is after believing a year ago that this year would be a bad year.
World Superpower Watch – America, China, Japan, Germany
From what I can tell from my various trips, America is still going to be the superpower to beat for the foreseeable future.
China has growth in its economy but its population growth is still very high. Its education is high-class and people are learning also to reason (not just to memorize), but there are still several big problems with this picture: (1) There are over 250 languages spoken in this country and many people can’t understand each other; (2) It is not a free country, there are more laws on paper but not yet in practice and there is no sense the system is fair; (3) The Chinese are cheating to get ahead and the rest of the world will cut them out of information exchanges and cooperation to the extent they keep acting this way; (4) The leadership change this year so far appears to be phony; many new faces but they are sycophants under the control of the elders and they owe their allegiance to the old leaders rather than the new one who heads them. Put all this together and you have a big powerful country but one that will be hampered because it will always be involved with the power-plays that are consuming its leadership trying to maintain control and a communist-oriented political system that is totally contrary to the capitalist economy taking root in the country. The fact that the country is very corrupt will also keep its economy perverted and there has never been a successful economy that is corrupt. For all the happy-talk surrounding the Chinese leader’s visit this year to Washington, here’s a fact about China: According to Chinese Communist party documents released this year in a book cited this week in the New York Times, over 60,000 people have been executed between 1998 and 2001 in China. That means that about 97% of the executions taking place right now in the world are taking place in China. Do you know that suicide is now the cause of one-third of all deaths among young females in rural China? This year there were over 2 million attempts; over 250,00 succeeded, a very high success rate. This is according to the first-ever national suicide report in China released this weekend. This is not healthy country.
Japan has been in free-fall for over 15 years and nothing has really changed, so there is nothing new to tell you. Japan’s leader has been made a fool of this year by North Korea, and either China leans on North Korea to get out of the nuclear arms business or Japan and everyone else in the region is about to start spending money arming themselves to the teeth. The latest news of the barter deal between Pakistan and North Korea (they both have been helping each other’s nuclear programs in defiance of US sanctions) is another reminder of the conundrum America finds itself in; Pakistan is not a good ally, but nukes in the hands of the Pakistani opposition would be very dangerous so we are stuck with them for the time being at least until we get rid of other nuisances.
Germany is more screwed up than I thought. The Euro would be higher against the dollar except for the fact that the European economies are performing so poorly and are talking about taking in all these Eastern countries that can’t pay their own way. As mentioned in my travel journal, the German system is a total disincentive to hire a worker (high taxes and impossible to fire), consume (high taxes), produce (again high taxes), or inherit (again high taxes). Imagine a country where taxmen count your closets and tax you on your furniture, the result being that people sit in homes that look unfinished from the outside, no one builds closets and people throw their furniture on their front lawns once a year for people to take it in order to avoid paying taxes. These are just a few examples of the silliness that is Germany today. Europeans are having fewer babies, as are the Japanese, and the population is skewing toward people reaching pension age with fewer working people to support them. The countries are on a pay-as-you-go system instead of the US trust-fund system, which means that if you expect working people to pay the pensions of retired people, the whole system falls apart if the ratio is not a good one. Looking to the future, Europe and Japan are disasters. America is in great shape because the birth rate is up, population ratios are better than expected according to the latest census (ie: more Latinos and the Church likes them to have more kids and the Republicans are against abortion), and America continues to be the leading place for innovation in the world.
America leads the world today not because it has the military power but because (1) the Dollar rules, and (2) American ideas are popular. If the economy wasn’t so powerful, the military couldn’t be supported. Russia has territory in 12 time zones but its economy is the size of Denmark and that’s why its military is kaput. The Saudis have talked big about reducing their foreign investment in the U.S. Let’s say they do that. Where are they going to walk with their money? Germany or Japan? Dump their dollars and hold Euros or Yen? The Americans made a killing off the Japanese a decade ago after they bought our real estate, lost their shirts and sold it back to us at a discount. Just look at the movie studios and record labels they bought and sold back, along with all those golf courses in Hawaii and Rockefeller Center. The Arabs can be our guests and do the same today if they want. Nope, they will stick with us because it is possible that we are going to kick ass in Iraq and one day Osama bin Laden will be dead and the Dollar will fly. If all the other bad things happen instead, the world will be in such dire straits that holding Euros or Yen won’t save them. So when you get down to it, the Dollar rules. I remember being in communist Poland in 1988; you watched TV commercials and the only thing that mattered then was being able to go into a Dollar store to buy things you really wanted. Poland switched sides, the Warsaw Pact is now in an increasingly irrelevant NATO, but the Dollar still rules.
The Bush Legacy: Cutting Out the Gulf and Changing Security Policy Dynamics
Bush will be remembered for having quietly but drastically reduced American dependence on Gulf oil by expanding American influence in Western Africa, Russia, the Caucuses and the development of resources in North America. This is the biggest fundamental change going on because America’s economy this century has been driven by oil and its foreign policy has been skewed by its dependence on the Gulf. This is a win-win; the Americans will be able to be less cynical about their foreign affairs and the Arabs of the region will become less hostage to the perversions caused by the unholy alliance between America and the monarchies that ruled the region and controlled the oil franchises. Also, Bush formalized the move toward pre-emption as a doctrine of foreign policy, away from the old policy of containment and steered foreign policy toward the recognition that rogues are more immediately dangerous than states, but that states must not be in the position to assist rogues and so the various states that support terror must be put out of business. Both ideas have been known to GlobalThoughts readers on this site since 1997. The new homeland security department is a crock; what America needs is a copy of Britain’s MI5 department; meanwhile, the Americans are at work rewriting laws that have kept the FBI and the CIA apart because it may have preserved the rights of Americans but it prevented intelligence sharing with regard to foreign threats operating inside America.
Tolerance versus Respect: Ideas and Applications (ie: Turkey/EEC)
Here is a thought about Tolerance. For several years the concept of Tolerance has been in vogue. It is politically correct for people to tolerate each other. I don’t like the term. It reeks of patronage: I think you are beneath me but nevertheless I tolerate you. I am more religious than you, my lifestyle is more acceptable than yours, your ideas are contemptible. But we must share our space and so therefore I tolerate you.
For people to really get along, we have to do better than this. Tolerating people is the equivalent of a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Syria. It might be the best they can achieve for the moment but it is not really the long-term solution. The more appropriate watchword should be respect and, if I might be daring, appreciation. If we can respect one another, view each other as equals with differences that ought to be appreciated and valued for their variety, tradition and the result of another intelligent person’s choice, then we are going to be less stressed out on the whole because we are going to get along better with our neighbors.
This does not mean that everything can or should be tolerated. It is a problem when something is held to be beyond the pale by one society and sacred by another (ie: martyrdom by suicide). Not everything is equivalent (North Korea having nuclear weapons and passing them around is not the same as France having nuclear weapons strictly for defensive purposes). Sometimes reasonable people will agree to disagree. Sometimes people will fight for what they believe is right.
But in those cases where it is an issue of people getting along with people, we could do better with an attitude that celebrates people’s individuality and differences instead of merely tolerating them. I have always believed that my religion is something I inherited and that it is not for me to conclude that one religion is better than another even though I might think positively about my religion. After all, I might have been born to a different tribe and how do I know how I would have grown up thus? In my journals, I like to note that abroad people sometimes think I am Arab. Some people think I’m Italian or French or Mexican and it’s comforting to me to know that we can just be anonymous people without taking ourselves too seriously for whatever it is we actually are. As a rule, 75% of the things you think other people notice about you – they don’t notice, according to research.
A step further — Why not just enjoy whatever you enjoy and not think too much about all the stuff that lies behind it? People deny themselves the opportunity to appreciate worthy stuff because they get hung up on politics that often has nothing to do with the matter before them.
I really enjoy Arab pop music and videos; I don’t like American pop music or videos. I don’t understand the music, just the same that I don’t understand Israeli or even American music (especially rap) but I like the melodies, vocals, production and arrangements. What I just said was not very complicated and I hope people will not sit around trying to analyze its implications for my political biases and other assorted alleged flaws. Is it possible for other Americans or Jews to enjoy Arab pop or is it not worth listening to just because it’s Arab? Would they just tolerate it if it were playing in the background or might they actually go out and buy it and not obsess over the possibility that the artist might donate some of the proceeds to Palestinian militants? I remember showing a picture of a nice little Kuwaiti boy in a dishdasha holding a big panda bear in his tastefully decorated bedroom in 1998. “What do you see,” I asked. Everyone looking at the picture said “A picture of just another Arab.” The answer I was hoping for was “Isn’t he cute with that nice big panda bear?” Now flip the question and tell me if an Arab could listen to and appreciate nice music from Israeli artists without getting hung up on the politics.
In mid-August in the New York Times there was a beautiful picture of a 7 year old Afghan girl catching a baseball. She had a look of fierce determination in her eyes. She had the only baseball mitt and wanted to play with the boys but they wouldn’t let her. So she was finally allowed to practice on the side of the field. Just behind her in the photo is a blur of people who were American soldiers guarding the play area. Some day, they said, they intend to start a girl’s league. I loved this photo and I purchased a copy from the Associated Press, framed it, took it down with me on the airplane to Miami which is where my family lives, and gave it to my 6 year old niece with the inscription on the back “You can be anything you want to be. Love, Uncle Ivan.”
My niece liked the picture. She asked lots of questions. I told her that this girl lived in a far-away place where girls couldn’t go to school or leave the house or walk around without covering their faces, but that now she could do all of these things because America sent people there to help people be whatever they want to be. And that when she finds or thinks that girls are not always equal to men, my niece should remember that she can be what she wants to be, and that she is part of a country that helps make this happen around the world. Maybe this is not the complete truth, but it is a nice idea and we all know that we want to believe it is true and it is an important reason that people around the world think that America has some ideas worth having.
My parents didn’t like the picture. My mom thought it was too abstract, my dad didn’t get it either. They also didn’t think much of a picture of an Afghan girl. My brother and sister-in-law were polite to my face but I later heard from my mom that they both said “No way are we going to have some picture of an Arab hanging in our kids’ room.” Any American might say that in today’s climate. I mentioned to my sister-in-law who has a masters degree and teaches an honor’s class in political science to 12th graders that (1) Afghans aren’t Arabs and that when the Americans threw out the Taliban, the first thing Afghans did was go open season against all the Arabs; (2) not all Moslems hate Jews or Israel and that in fact India, Turkey and many of the Central Asian Moslem republics are quite friendly to Israel; and (3) would it have mattered if I told them that the girl in the picture was an Intuit Indian girl from Northern Canada? They agreed that they would have liked the picture better if I told them it was an Indian girl from Canada.
The point is that none of this political science mattered to my 6 year old niece who saw a picture of a girl catching a baseball and thought it was cool. Sometimes people who don’t know too much have more sense than we do and it is not a terrible thing sometimes to suspend judgment based on our experience and defer to our better nature as human beings who live on a fragile planet who just want to live life which is too short to waste it fighting for something that will not produce real benefit to us personally and instead just enjoy our lives. Right now you are reading the thoughts of someone who took off a month just to go around and see his friends and talk to them and find out what’s on their minds and not be so busy that he can’t think about the Big Picture and enjoy life.
Here is another amusing story. This white Jewish New York rapper gets up in a nightclub in Munich on stage in front of 2,000 German youth, clutches the mike and yells: “Do you know what year this is?” They respond: “It’s 2002.” “That’s right, and do you know what happened in these streets in the 1940’s?!” He continues: “I’m here for revenge, motherf—ers!!” he screamed. The crowd shouts back “Never again! Never again.” And thus began “Never Again,” an epic hip-hop song about the Holocaust by the popular rap group Remedy, which today has become a subtheme of rap music. Blacks and Jews have banded together against a focal point of oppression. Hmm, will Palestinian rap penetrate this industry in which Blacks and Jews rule? The point of this story is that in the most unlikely places you see people united by pop culture respecting and not merely tolerating their ethnicities and historical claims. There is something to be learned from this seemingly ridiculous story. It may not be the best example but it would clearly have been unimaginable even a decade ago and it does show that people can put politics aside and let loose for an evening.
Application of the Tolerance/ Respect Principle to reality: The most unfortunate stories I ever hear are when scientific or cultural exchanges between nations get caught up in the political happenings of a particular moment (and then the exchange gets called off). It would be a good start if nations and people could separate politics from art, science and culture. It would be a sign that people respect and not just tolerate one another.
In the international affairs department, Turkey is an excellent example. Europe has to come to grips with the fact that Turkey is not a Christian country, will never be one, but has to become part of Europe anyway. The EEC is not meant to be a Christian club; it is a union meant for countries within a geographic zone who undertake certain obligations and reach certain standards. I believe that the new government of Turkey is going to work extra hard to prove to Europe that it can be a good member of the EEC and that it will even compromise on the Cyprus issue in order to get it off the table. If Turkey can do this, it will take the lead that Pakistan might otherwise have held in showing how a moderate Moslem country can move ahead in the world in 2002. Turkey’s government reflects the overwhelming support of the people of Turkey and it is inclined to play a supportive role within NATO and Europe. It would be a huge mistake to keep raising the bar on Turkey and blowing the country off. It is true that Turkey is not a society that runs on the same level of civilization as the rest of Europe, but it is certainly not hostile and Romania is not exactly a paragon of sophistication either. Turkey’s progress or lack of it will be highly influential to many other countries in the region and beyond. It is in the West’s interest to welcome Turkey into the club and to integrate it economically, militarily and politically. This will follow from respect and appreciation for Turkey, not only tolerance of Turkey. (By the way, Istanbul is an exotic city to be appreciated and I enjoyed my visit there in 2000. Check out photos and journal elsewhere on this site.)
