Getting to Yes is the title of a well-known book instructing itsreaders in the ways and means of negotiating a satisfactorycompromise between two sides. The book assumes that each sidesincerely wants to strike a deal, accepts the legitimacy of theopponent, recognizes the validity of the other's arguments, andregards any resulting compromise as final. This is an eminentlyrational and liberal method to reconcile conflicting interests.
Attempts to introduce the Getting to Yes way as a means ofresolving the Arab-Israeli dilemma have been made for nigh on half acentury, yet the likelihood of a satisfactory compromise seems dimmerthan ever.
The real reason for this failure lies deeper than merelydifferences over Getting to Yes.
Whereas one side desperately wants peace, acknowledges the other'slegitimacy, respects its validity, and has offered immenseconcessions, the other side refuses to recognize its opponent'sexistence, its legitimacy (let alone validity) and blatantly declaresits desire to annihilate it.
Even if a compromise were achieved, hints the latter, it wouldsimply be a tactical respite before the strategy of destruction isresumed at a more propitious moment. To have a chance of achieving ageneral Middle Eastern peace, the Arab/Muslim states are first goingto have to convince themselves that they want to start consideringeven thinking about getting to yes.
Here in Washington, an independent, nonprofit organization calledthe Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) performs thesterling task of translating Arabic-language newspaper articles.These MEMRI transcripts are not excerpts from weird fringepublications and do not quote random lunatics muttering on streetcorners.
Rather, they are directly translated from articles appearingprominently in the mainstream Egyptian, Syrian and Palestinian press--the Chicago Sun-Timeses of the Middle East, if you like--or frompublic pronouncements by prominent politicians and clerics. Many ofthe op-eds are written by the cream of the Muslim intelligentsia andby high-ranking government figures. In other words, we can glimpsewhat passes for normal, civilized, balanced, rational discourse.
The sheer accumulation of MEMRI material, and the picture thatconsequently emerges of what the Arab countries are really thinking,should finally explode the naive and uninformed news coverage of theMiddle East peace process that appears in most media outlets.
To take just one example, another organization, the Committee forAccuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has noticed aremarkable instance of the difference between what is said there andwhat is reported here. On Oct. 24 last year, the New York Timesreported a speech as follows: "Whether Likud or Labor, Jews areJews," proclaimed Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya in a live broadcast from aGaza City mosque.
It is a nasty little slur, granted, but, according to thebroadcast on official Palestinian television, here is what the sheikactually said: "They are the ones who must be butchered and killed,as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them; Allah will torture them atyour hands, and will humiliate them . . .' Have no mercy on the Jews,no matter where they are, in any country.
"Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them.Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are likethem."
Analytically speaking, the greater part of the MEMRI translationstend to fall into three categories:
(a) Anti-Semitism.
(b) Conspiracy.
(c) Final Solution.
A primordial anti-Semitism is taken as read in the Arab MiddleEast, often masquerading as being scientifically derived or based onscholarship. Last December, Hassan Sweilem, a reserve general in theEgyptian army, contributed a two-part series to a government-sponsored weekly titled "The Jewish Personality and the IsraeliAction." According to Sweilem, "historians, race-studies professorsand sociologists agree that humanity . . . has never known a racesuch as the Jewish race in which so many bad qualities--base andloathsome--have been gathered." One particular quality distinguishesthe Jews from other races: "Whenever they gathered in a particularplace and felt comfortable there, they turned the place into a den ofevil, corruption, incitement to internal strife, and the spreading ofwars." There follows an idiosyncratic history of "the Jews' plots andtraps" since the time of the Assyrians, the basic thrust of which isto justify their annihilation, expulsion, captivity and exile. Thesetook place, says the general, "when the [host] peoples feltendangered." Among the typical "Jewish characteristics" are"violation of agreements, constant paranoia and reliance on lies as ameans of achieving goals."
An editorial in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad weekly, Al-Istiqlal(Feb. 26, 1999), shows that Sweilem is not entirely alone in thesesentiments. Hence, "[Jews] were made of treachery and deceit and weremarked by perfidy and treason. . . . Their love of life and of moneypushed them to collect illegal usury." Further, "the evil rooted inthe depths of their souls and their pressing desire to accumulatemoney in order to satisfy their unrestrained passions toward evil[and] their inclination to destruction, drive the Jews into"continuous aggression."
Even more medieval is the resurrection of the "blood-libel" myththat pops up frequently in Syrian and Egyptian papers. A few monthsago, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Said Al-Kurdi alleged in the Egyptian governmentdaily, Al-Akhbar, that "the Talmud, the second holiest book for theJews, determines that the 'matzos' of Atonement Day [i.e., YomKippur] must be kneaded with blood from a non-Jew. The preference isfor the blood of youths after raping them!!"
The writer, it might be noticed, has confused "Atonement Day" withPassover, the holiday when matzos, made of flour and water, areeaten. In this instance, the good doctor was repeating theallegations made in a 1983 book, The Matzah of Zion, written by theSyrian Minister of Defense, Field Marshal Mustafa Tlass, one of thehighest-ranking members of the Syrian Ba'athist regime. Currently,there are reports that an Egyptian producer wants to turn the storyinto a movie. Tlass has pledged to donate his profits to thePalestinian uprising.
In official Palestinian schoolbooks, it is de rigeur to teachninth-graders that "treachery and disloyalty are character traits ofthe Jews and therefore one should beware of them." They are also"thieving conquerors" who must be erased from Palestine (in maps inPalestinian Authority textbooks, "Israel" does not exist), and anyancient connection between the Jews and the Holy Land is omitted.Thus, an eighth-grade literary text denies any link between theWailing (or Western) Wall and Judaism: It's just a wall.
These sentiments, while illuminating, are not particularlyoriginal. A more interesting note is struck when the writers usetheir own anti-Semitism to springboard into the realm of conspiracytheory. Thus, with utter seriousness, last year an investigativereport in the Egyptian government weekly, Al-Ahram, "revealed" thatthe Jews dished the chances of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ahmad Zuweil tobe proclaimed Scientist of the Century.
"No one could have imagined that Zionism would [again] perform itsusual trick in marginalizing and minimizing the achievement of thisextraordinary Egyptian scientist. As they could not find anycompetitor with him from his own generation, nor any weak point, theyrummaged around in graves and resurrected the dead to bring up theJewish scientist Albert Einstein as the scientific personality of the20th century."
The government weekly, Akher Sa'ah, charges that the "huge Zionistpropaganda machine" is "forging" Egyptian history by claiming thatthe pyramids were built by "aliens from other planets andextraterrestrial cultures." The opposition daily, Al-Wafd, reportedthat a "Jewish Company" is starving Egyptian babies of milk bycausing prices to rise.
In Iran, the government has published the notorious Czaristforgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, along with its ownhelpful commentary: As revealed in the Protocols' nefarious blueprintfor Jewish world domination, "a boundless passion for usurpation andhegemony is typical of these professional criminals of history; apassion which they try to satisfy through their fickle logic of 'Fromthe Nile to the Euphrates.' " Indeed, "for the last 35 years, inconspiration with the equally murderous superpowers, they have beengetting closer and closer to their devilish objective."
Naser Ahmad, an official at the PA's Orwellian "Political GuidanceDirectorate," observed in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida newspaper, has observed"a survey conducted by [Jewish] scholars, on the legacy and customsof non-Jewish nations, taught them that the latter were afraid ofmoney and sex. These are exactly the two instruments Zionists use.First, they have propagated Freemasonry and Rotary Clubs all over theworld, in order to hunt for influential people . . . Zionists trap[them] due to their circumstances, shortsightedness and greed."
Indeed, it appears that President Clinton, apparently beingblackmailed over his sexual relationships, fell victim to the Jewhounds: "He started complying with the dicta of World Zionism" andhis Middle Eastern policy accordingly discriminated against Muslims.
In recent years, there has been a shift away from these datedallegations toward Holocaust denial in the Arab press, whichhabitually run respectful pieces on so-called historians who believethere was no such thing as the Holocaust, or if there was, it isexaggerated. Holocaust denial in the Middle East is not merely anti-Semitic, however, but serves to sever the link between attemptedannihilation and the post-war desire of the Jews for a safe homelandpromised to them in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Thus, if the"Holocaust Myth" is a conspiracy, then so too must be theestablishment of Israel; if a state is built and sustained on a BigLie, then it is illegitimate. And if a state is legitimate yetthrives, as does Israel, then its continued success must be due tothe plotting of outsiders and devilish cabals to undermine thevirtuous Arab states.
Holocaust denial articles typically begin with an error-filledrundown of "Jewish Control of the World Media" (see Seif Ali Al-Jarwan's article in the largest PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July15, 1998). "World public opinion, manipulated by the Jews, tookadvantage of these [persecutions], disseminating stories about acollective massacre. They concocted horrible stories of gas chamberswhich Hitler, they claimed, used to burn them alive. The pressoverflowed with pictures of Jews being gunned down by Hitler'smachine guns or being pushed into gas chambers. . . . The truth isthat such persecution was a malicious fabrication by the Jews."
According to Syrian texts, such as an article in the officialEnglish-language Syria Times by Mohammad Daoud titled "Holocaust!!!??Again" (Sept. 6, 2000), gas chambers "only existed for purification .. . clothes and personal tools were put in [them] to sterilize them"as "the Germans were afraid of diseases and infestation of lice."Despite the lies and deceits propagated by the Zionist Imperialists,"since the invention of this word [Holocaust], they have been livingon it and blackmailing the whole world" to justify their presence inPalestine.
It seems much of the Arab press is pessimistic about being able toexpose the Jewish conspiracy. Instead, more extreme measures areneeded to oust the liars from Palestine. As the Iranian governmentputs it, "it should be strongly emphasized that as long as the rootof this deadly, cancerous tumor, Zionism, is not burned and whollydestroyed, peace and tranquility will never prevail."
According to Dr. Wahid Abd Al-Magid, editor of Al-Ahram's "ArabStrategic Report" (quoted in London-based Al-Hayat, July, 29, 2001),"we are capable of increasing the demographic threat against Israel,if we demonstrate the necessary determination." Basically, the Arabstates must focus on acquiring a right of return for millions ofPalestinians to the territories. This influx, combined with the highPalestinian birth rate, will be enough by 2035 to outnumber Jewsdrastically. "Therefore, there is a possibility that Israel wouldhave to expose its racism and try, in vain, to hide [the scale ofthis phenomenon] through policies of denying some of the socialrights of the 1948 Palestinians, or through various oppressivemeasures." This would provide an excellent excuse for a "serious Arabaction" (i.e., a general Middle East war) to save the Palestinians.
First things first, however. The current goal should be "anorganized action to . . . renew the UN resolution that equatesZionism with racism, in order to exercise external pressure on TelAviv that will decrease its ability to carry out domestic measures[to counter] that demographic threat." In fact, "today, there areArab efforts to launch a campaign against Israel in the UNInternational Conference Against Racism . . . in South Africa. Thisshould be the beginning of a continuous action and not a seasonalaction that will end with the conference."
The repulsive sentiments so freely expressed in the Arab presspresent a fascinating flashback to the European past, whencaricatures of Jews as money-grubbing, hook-nosed, diabolicallyclever aliens were common. But while the West has left thesecrudities behind, the Arab world has embraced them. The reason forthis newfound prevalence lies in the backwardness of Arab politics,which remain frozen in a pan-nationalist, aggressive, authoritarian,leftist time warp.
In this respect, the publication of the Arabic translation of MeinKampf in the PA (it reached No. 6 on the best-seller lists) isilluminating. In the introduction, its translator, Luis Al-Haj,admiringly noted that "we made a point to deliver Hitler's opinionsand theories on nationalism, regimes and ethnicity without anychanges because they are not yet outmoded and because we, in the Arabworld, still proceed haphazardly in all three fields."
Yet, despite all the golden promises of their leaders--the Assads,the Arafats and Nasser/Mubaraks--Arab countries are poor, oppressed,nervous, pitiful places that can only stare enviously at Israel, acountry that enjoys a standard of living approaching that of NorthAmerica. Unlike its neighbors, Israel is a thriving, noisy democracywith a high-tech sector greater in absolute terms than any othercountry apart from the United States. Fifty years ago, that land wasa desert. It has never lost a war.
In order to prevent their populations from raising difficultquestions about their own governments' incompetence, theauthoritarian regimes have relied on finding a permanent enemy toensure a constant state of war. Crucially, moreover, they mustprovide a credible reason explaining their failures. Hence theemphasis on conspiracy theories, which deflect blame to aphantasmagorical cabal plotting against all Arabs. It is interestingthat in a successful, vibrant Middle East state such as Turkey, thenewspapers do not give play to talk of Zionist domination.
It is interesting, too, that in the Middle Ages, when manyEuropean anti-Semitic attitudes were formed, Muslims had no time forconspiracy theories. At the time, Islam was extraordinarily dynamic,immensely civilized and all-conquering from Spain to India. Soconfident were Muslims at their divinely blessed worldly success theyignored European technological and military developments.
It was only after 1798, when Napoleon conquered Egypt, thatconspiracy-theorizing set in to explain the slow erosion of Ottomanpower and the rise of the "northern savages." After the establishmentof Israel, and the subsequent stream of failures, these paranoidimaginings were transferred onto the Jews.
Occasionally, thankfully, one can hear the voice of sanitysounding clearly amid the clamor for destruction. In Al-Hayat (Feb.28, 2001), the columnist Hazem Saghia observed, "the modern world isengaged in an unprecedented technological and communicationsrevolution. [But] we are busy with questions and concerns that belongto the Cold War or to the time of creation of independent [Arab]states in the 1940s, or the first encounter between the Arab worldand the West in the late 19th century."
"We gave priority to a policy of confrontation [with Israel] whilepostponing progress in the hope of completely achieving our rights.In order to justify this approach we said that progress is against usand is intended to plunder our treasures. Since then the treasureshave diminished and so did progress, as well as our rights. Onlydictatorship is spreading."
Until the disease of conspiracy, and the suicidal idea that agigantic war will provide the Final Solution it engenders, iseliminated, Arab-Israeli peace negotiations are not going to getanywhere--let alone to Yes.
