TERRA SANCTA

During the ‘Blitz’ (1940-41) my brother and I were sent from our home in London to the relative safety of a small country town in Hertfordshire where we stayed with a local family.

I recall a particular event from that time, namely, being taken to church one Sunday. The family we were staying with knew we were Jewish, so I can only assume they hoped the ‘exposure’ would have a lasting effect. They were right, I was overwhelmed by the Christian house of worship, albeit a modest country church.  In the eyes of a 6–7-year-old it appeared to be a huge edifice. The inner expanse filled with rows of pews, the aisles, the altar and the stained-glass windows, fascinated me.

With the passage of time my interest in churches hasn’t changed. But then as now, the structure interests me more than the liturgy.

In the Holy Land churches flourished and foundered at differed times.  With the decline of the Ottoman empire European powers became more assertive demanding renewal and reconstruction of damaged and destroyed churches. The reconstruction continues. However, more recently it is mostly repair work and conservation.

At this juncture I want to quote from previous posts I wrote about Holy Land churches.

“Twelve years ago, I took a group of visitors to see nearby Christian holy sites. We stopped first to view  the Franciscan Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.

Inside the basilica a group from Uruguay had gathered at the lower level by the grotto to conduct mass.

At the upper level, we admired the magnificent cupola with its thirty-two petals patterned like an inverted Madonna Lily. It was raining outside but light entering through the area above the dome diffused through the massive basilica creating an ethereal atmosphere.

Many churches and hospices built during the post-Ottoman period were designed by the renowned Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi. However, the new Basilica of the Annunciation was the one church he wanted to build more than any other. The plans he submitted for a new basilica to replace the old church were repeatedly shelved and finally rejected by the Franciscan Custodians who favoured the design presented by another Italian architect, Professor Giovanni Muzio. Antonio Barluzzi broken in spirit and health by the rejection died a few years later.

Our last stop on the tour was the Basilica of the Miracle of the Transfiguration on the summit of Mount Tabor. The first and probably the most impressive church Antonio Barluzzi built in this country. Most of the materials used in the construction were imported from Italy. The innovative architect wanted to create an ethereal light effect reminiscent of the transfiguration by tiling the roof of the basilica with thin slabs of semi-translucent alabaster. The effect was achieved, but unfortunately at that time (1924) Barluzzi lacked a suitable sealing material to bond the alabaster. An unusually heavy downpour that winter caused the roof to leak. and the alabaster slabs had to be covered with terra cotta tiles.

Seventy years later another mishap occurred that no epoxy sealant could fix.                           In 1994, ahead of the millennium commemorations the Nazareth municipal council with the support of the Israeli government embarked on a programme to significantly upgrade the city's tourist infrastructure in anticipation of a hoped-for record number of tourists. One of the plans called for the demolition of an old Ottoman school adjacent to the Basilica of the Annunciation and turning the vacant plot into a Venetian-style piazza. However local Islamic Movement leaders claimed the school was built on waqf (Islamic trusteeship) land and that it should be handed over to the waqf. The local and state authorities rejected the claims and in December 1997 they went ahead with the demolition work. Almost simultaneously thousands of Muslims moved in and occupied the disputed plot of land. They erected a large makeshift tent mosque and put up a billboard showing an illustration of a mosque they planned to build on the site.

On the north side of the piazza-to-be there's a small tomb which tradition holds is the burial place of Shehab el-Din, nephew of the famous Muslim warrior Saladin. Shehab completed his uncle's work and drove the last of the Crusaders from the Holy Land (for awhile). The tomb lies a mere 100 metres from the Basilica of the Annunciation. For more than eight hundred years Shehab el-Din rested peacefully, an almost anonymous figure. For almost four hundred years the children and their teachers in the Ottoman school let nephew Shehab rest undisturbed. Then suddenly with the approach of the millennium there was an urgent need to honour his memory by building a mosque.

One journalist described the proposed place of worship as follows: ‘The minaret of the mosque would be topped by a laser-lit crescent and would tower over the already imposing cone-shaped dome of the adjacent basilica.’

The plan to build the mosque was clearly a case of Islamic one-upmanship.

The Israeli High Court of Justice dismissed the Muslim claim, but did grant permission for a smaller mosque to be built on the lot. The Solomonic decision to divide the land for use as a mosque and tourist plaza frustrated both sides and led to three days of rioting during Easter 1999, in which 28 people were injured and a number of shops were torched.

In October 1999 the Vatican's envoy to Israel criticised the compromise decision. He said that it jeopardised the pope's visit in the year 2000.His words have a particular relevance, bringing to mind the Ground Zero mosque imbroglio. ‘The plans to build a mosque are a provocative act. The Vatican has expressed its opposition. If a mosque is needed, very well, but not in that place.’ ….. ‘The Holy Father has a position of strong solidarity with the Christians of Nazareth and with the Christians of the Holy Land. He would like to see them duly protected in their rights and in their dignity.’

In November 1999, Bishop Joseph Fiorenza, president of the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, protested the decision by the Israeli government to allow the mosque to be built. He wrote that the Christians in Nazareth are ‘fearful that the building of the mosque will only worsen their already insecure place in the community.’

 Let’s leave that no-win situation and return to consider the Basilica of the Annunciation from another aspect.

“The Italian architect Giovanni Muzio of Milan, one of the leading architects of the Novecento style came to Israel for the first time in 1958. Muzio planned the church as a fortress, to contrast the new church with the remains of the earlier churches – he meant to convey that its fate, unlike that of its predecessors, would be different. The fortified nature of the church is evident in its size and strength, its seclusion from the urban surroundings, and the details of the building, like narrow windows, almost slits. The outer walls are covered in light-coloured combinations of local stone with modern reliefs and engravings that decorate the southern and western façades. 

Muzio actually built two churches, one on top of the other. The lower church protects the valuable archaeological remains of the Byzantine-era church which are displayed next to the holy grotto, the perimeter of the modern church follows the outer limits of the walls of the Crusader-era church. The upper church is designated for the celebration of the liturgy. The upper church is connected to the monastery by a suspended courtyard that protects the underlying remains of the ancient village of Nazareth from the time of Jesus that was discovered during excavation work in 1955.

The church is decorated by works of art dedicated to Mary and to the Annunciation that were donated by every nation of the Catholic world.

There’s an ironic twist in the final chapter of the saga of the Basilica of the Annunciation

The Basilica of the Annunciation, Nazareth

The man whose design was rejected; Antonio Barluzzi had a prior association with Mussolini's Fascist government. The chosen architect Giovanni Muzio was also tainted with Fascist affinities via Novecento Italiano. However, the church was built by the Israeli construction company Solel Boneh during the years 1960-69 at a cost of 2 million USD.

I’m inclined to give the constructors the benefit of the doubt and say that they were more concerned with steel and concrete than the one-time political leanings of the architects.

Nevertheless, Novecento deserves more than a passing mention.

Novecento Italiano (lit. 'Italian 1900s') was an Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 to create an art based on the rhetoric of the fascism of Mussolini.

Arguably, Mussolini's most important mistress bar none was the wealthy Venetian socialite and erudite Margherita Sarfatti. More recently she has drawn interest from historians because she was his closest confidant and, in many ways, a founder of fascism — but also because she was Jewish. Although mostly unknown to the wider public, the brilliant and cultivated Sarfatti can be rightfully called the woman who picked up a modest newspaper editor and moulded him into "il Duce," Italy's dictator.

Margherita Sarfatti was many things — art critic, journalist, political activist. But it was her position as Benito Mussolini's mistress and her subsequent related projects that catapulted her to international fame, thanks in no small part to her intimate knowledge of the future dictator's life.

However, when Mussolini began to align himself with Adolf Hitler the once influential Margherita Sarfatti sought a safe haven elsewhere. After her son Amedeo left Italy for Argentina in 1938, Sarfatti followed him, first traveling to Switzerland to deposit Mussolini’s letters in a safe place. In Argentina she continued to be involved in art criticism but did not meet with the same success she had enjoyed in Italy.

Returning to Italy at the end of 1947, she continued to write, publishing an unapologetic memoir in 1955. She died at her Il Soldo residence on October 30, 1961.

I originally intended writing about Hannukah and Christmas and how they sometimes overlap. This year that overlap was too close to get more than a glimpse of  the Christmas tree in the square by the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.

 Let’s hope 2023 will be a better year.

 

Beni,               29^th of December, 2022,

 

 

 

 

POLITICS AND PROSTHETIC ARMS

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, it seems that the electronic news media is far more widely accessed than the printed news format. Just the same, once a week I read Yediot Aharonot’s Friday supplement. I enjoy feeling the texture of the paper almost as much as reading some of its news content.

Columnist Ben-Dror Yamini often writes something quotable. Last week he cited Likud Knesset member Ofir Katz’s Twitter post. “It’s about time the ‘Left’ got used to the new political reality-‘Nobody counts you anymore!’” Katz asserted. He was referring not only to Meretz, and Labour, but to almost the whole outgoing coalition government. The political swath Katz calls “Left” provides much of the financial backing for Israel’s industries, exports and hi-tech sectors. In fact, the “Left” that Ofir Katz has excluded numbers 49.5 percent of Israel’s citizens that didn’t vote for the Likud-Haredi bloc. The same “Left” pays about 89 percent of the taxes which are used to pay Ofir Katz’s salary and to transfer monies in accordance with the new coalition agreement’s directives that will encourage Haredim to ‘dodge’ military service and avoid productive work. In addition, it gives them carte blanche exemption from including core subjects - English and Mathematics in their schools’ syllabus. Clearly it will increase poverty in the Haredi sector depriving their children of the benefits of a modern education.

Soon, maybe sooner than expected, prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu will tell President Isaac Herzog- “I have succeeded in forming a coalition government. Yet his success might be a Pyrrhic victory! Some commentators claim he will have to keep or break promises he has made to both Likud party members and especially to some of his more extremist coalition partners

According to a Politico report published on Tuesday citing two U.S. officials, the Biden administration plans to hold Netanyahu personally responsible for the actions of cabinet members. This is in part due to Netanyahu's reassurance that he will lead and navigate the government despite fears that far-right lawmakers will lead and navigate him.  

At this juncture I want to digress and mention a news item best described as ‘trivia.’ 

Joseph Trumpeldor lost his arm while serving in the Russian army, fighting in the Russo-Japanese war in 1904. More than a century after his death Trumpeldor remains the nation’s most iconic hero. Nevertheless, conflicting accounts of the events that took place at Tel Hai where he died, continue to reverberate, providing material for numerous multimedia productions, articles, books etc.,

 Moreover, Trumpeldor’s prosthetic arm became perhaps the image most associated with the man himself. In the early 1950s a fierce debate was waged regarding where it would be exhibited: in the museum at Kibbutz Tel Yosef that bears his name or in the Tel Hai courtyard museum. A special committee was convened to settle the matter and in 1955 the prosthetic arm was transferred from the Zionist archive to the "Beit Trumpeldor" museum at Kibbutz Tel Yosef.

However, in recent years the "Beit Trumpeldor " museum has ‘lost a lot of its lustre’ attracting fewer visitors. The condition of the prosthetic arm was deteriorating and the Zionist archive decided to reclaim the exhibit fearing that that it would deteriorate further beyond repair.
In an online interview the archive's curator Jessica Levine described the restoration work carried out in order to preserve the prosthesis and how she made an exact replica of the arm. 

However, it transpires that Trumpeldor had a number of ‘spares’ including a ‘dress’ model with a glove like hand. There is some confusion regarding the original prosthetic arm. According to one account he received it when he was a prisoner of war in Japan. However, after he was repatriated he was recognised as a Russian war hero. He was the first Russian Jew to receive an officer’s commission and was decorated by Tsar Nicolai II. It’s recorded that Tsarina Alexandra pinned the medals on his uniform and presented him with a prosthetic arm. I’m sure I haven’t exhausted this topic.

Likewise, the debate concerning Trumpeldor's dying words. Did he really say in fluent Hebrew “It’s good to die for our country” or, a variant of the same phrase. Avraham Avidan, and others, were with Trumpeldor when he died. Avidan claimed that he swore in Russian when he realised the gravity of his wound. Later on Avidan joined Ein Harod and is reported to have insisted that Trumpeldor grunted his dying  words in Russian and not Hebrew.

That being said, the poetic “It’s good to die for our country” remains the accepted undeniable traditional version.

I’ll conclude with a personal anecdote. I don’t remember exactly when, perhaps twenty years ago, I took two non-Jewish Russian visitors on a tour of Upper Galilee.

I pointed out landmarks along the way while driving near Tel Hai. One of my guests recognised the name and said referring to Trumpeldor, “Yes, one of our heroes is buried here. Anyway, we agreed to share the glory. But, I couldn’t resist the temptation to repeat the Russian phrase Avidan used when quoting Trumpeldor’s last words - "yob tvoyu mat.
" Both my guests burst out laughing. I’m not sure if it was because of Avidan’s vulgar remark or my faulty pronunciation.

 

 Chag Hanukkah Sameach

 

Beni,               22^nd of December, 2022

 

A HANNUKAH TALE

About 2,200 years ago, somebody hid a wooden box with 15 silver coins in a cave in the Judean Desert. The box remained hidden until earlier this year, when it was found during a survey conducted by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority.                                 The find was made in the Muraba’at Cave, now part of the Nahal Darga Nature Reserve by the Dead Sea. Jews fleeing the Romans at the end of the ill-fated Bar Kochba revolt are known to have “holed up” in the cave. However, these newly unearthed coins are the first solid evidence of people using the cave to hide centuries earlier, at the end of the Hasmonean period.                                              

Now as we are about to celebrate Hannukah the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) decided to publish the discovery of the silver coins cache. It’s reasonable to assume that the owner of the wooden box was killed in battle before he could return to the cave.                                                                                                                    

Over the past six years the IAA’s survey has yielded thousands of archaeological finds. The work has also saved them from destruction by would be looters.            

No less remarkable than the coins is the wooden box that contained them. The receptacle was crafted using a hand-operated wood turning lathe, presumably by its hapless owner. Similar boxes have been found in other places, but none of them so well made and so well preserved. Concealing the box in a cranny in the wall of the cave and the prevailing dry atmosphere probably helped to keep it intact. The owner-craftsman-warrior went to great pains to hide the coins covering them with layers of dirt, pebbles, a piece of woollen cloth and placing them at the bottom of the box wrapped in a clump of sheep’s wool.

Hannukah brings to mind an unusual incident that occurred many years ago during my reserve army service in an IDF liaison unit attached to UN observation forces in Lebanon and the Golan Heights. The commander of the IDF liaison unit invited the commander of the Finnish UN observation forces and his adjutant to celebrate Hannukah at the IDF base near Katzerin in the Golan Heights.

It's important to add that all liaison communications were conducted in English, so all the personnel were required to have a reasonable working knowledge of the language. The Hannukah party went well, that is up to the point when the Finnish battalion commander asked why we celebrate Hannukah. I noticed that our liaison commander was struggling to phrase a reply, so I cautiously volunteered to reply for him.

Two days later the Finnish battalion commander invited our liaison commander to experience a Finnish Sauna. After receiving the invitation, he ordered me go with him. “There’s no way I can carry the conversation on my own.” He said.                

 We arrived at the UN base and were invited to prepare for the traditional sauna ritual. The sauna was a commercial structure imported from Finland. The door faced westwards in the direction of the Sea of Galilee/Lake Kinneret. “You know we have more than 188,000 lakes in Finland” The Finnish commander said. “Most are small ponds, but about two hundred are about the size of the Sea of Galilee” He noted. “Yes, you are right of course, but does any one of them have so much history,” I added, alluding to the lake’s many-layered history including its association with Christianity.  

After showering we joined our hosts, all four of us naked. Fortunately, there were no birch branches available, so we had to forgo the customary self-flagellation. While our hosts ladled cold water over the hot stones, we chatted drank a few glasses of Finlandia Vodka, showered again before our driver arrived to take us back to our base.

Wishing you a happy Hannukah

Beni,               15^th of December, 2022.

 

 HEAD IN THE SAND

This week I’m going to stick my head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich and  ignore Israeli politics completely. Before you rush to correct me, I know ostriches don’t stick their heads in the sand.

First of all, I want to point out that when I quote sources, I invariably use quotation marks. Often, I add a comment, a personal observation. Usually as a margin note intended to be read outside the main text.

I mention this because in the feedback from readers I occasionally receive credit I don’t deserve.

Having said that, I will take credit for a knack I have for finding unusual source material. My daughter Daphna Whitmore has a similar aptitude.  Recently she referred me to an article written by Richard Landes for Tablet Magazine - “Why the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba, and How We Keep It There”

Professor Landes is an American historian and author who specialises in mediaeval millennial thinking. Until 2015 he taught at Boston University, and then began working at Bar-Ilan University where his current interests include arguing Israel’s complaints about media manipulation by Palestinians.

Although the article was published eight years ago, it is just as relevant today, perhaps even more so.

I am including here some of the points Richard Landes emphasised:  

“But even before literary critic Edward Saïd  heaped scorn on ‘honour-shame’ analysis in Orientalism (1978), anthropologists had backed off an approach that seemed to make inherently invidious comparisons between primitive cultures and a morally superior West. The reception of Saïd’s work strengthened this cultural relativism: Concerns for honour and shame drive everyone, and the simplistic antinomy ‘shame-guilt cultures’ must be ultimately ‘racist.’ It became, well, shameful in academic circles to mention honour/shame and especially in the context of comparisons between the Arab world and the West. Even in intelligence services, whose job is to think like the enemy, refusing to resort to honour/shame dynamics became standard procedure.

Any generous person should have a healthy discomfort with ‘othering,’ drawing sharp lines between two peoples. We muddy the boundaries to be minimally polite: Honour-killings, for example, are thus seen as a form of domestic violence, which is also pervasive in the West. And indeed, honour/shame concerns are universal: Only saints and sociopaths don’t care what others think, and no group coheres without an honour code.

But even if these practices exist everywhere, we should still be able to acknowledge that in some cultures the dominant voices openly promote honour/shame values and in a way that militates against liberal society and progress. Arab political culture, to take one example—despite some liberal voices, despite noble dissidents—tends to favour ascendancy through aggression, the politics of the ‘strong horse,’ and the application of "Hama rules"*—which all combine to produce a Middle East caught between prison and anarchy, between Sisi’s Egypt and al-Assad’s Syria. Our inability, however well-meaning, to discuss the role of honour-shame dynamics in the making of this political culture poses a dilemma: By keeping silent, we not only operate in denial, but we may actually strengthen these brutal values and weaken the very ones we treasure.

Few conflicts offer a better place to explore these matters than the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

At this juncture I’ll add two footnotes

* New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman coined the term “Hama Rules” to denote the brutality of the Assad regime and how it would respond if threatened.

** The Strong Horse – Power, Politics and the clash of Arab Civilizations, is the title of journalist- author Lee Smith’s non-fictional book.

The book's title is drawn from Osama bin Laden’s assertion that "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." Smith, who spent several years reporting from the Arab world, writes that "violence is central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East, and that Arab politics is driven by the "strong horse" principle." Smith describes the region's rulers as self-interested factors struggling by any available means to retain their hold on power, while constantly threatened by regional power holders and by a rising generation of would be leaders He denies that the region's problems are rooted in Western imperialism, "if we think that we are to blame for what is wrong with the Middle East - it is because of two things: our own narcissism and the tendency of Arab nationalists to blame outside forces for the problems of their region."

Back to the main text:

“In order to understand the role of hard zero-sum, honour-shame concerns in the attitude of Arabs toward Israel, one must first understand the role of the Jew in the Muslim Arab honour-group. For the 13 centuries before Zionism, Jews had been subject to a political status in Muslim lands specifically designed around issues of honour (to Muslims) and shame (to Jews). Jews were dhimmi, “protected” from Muslim violence by their acceptance of daily public degradation and legal inferiority. Noted Chateaubriand in the 19th century: “Special target of all [Muslim and Christian] contempt, the Jews lower their heads without complaint; they suffer all insults without demanding justice; they let themselves be crushed by blows. … Penetrate the dwellings of these people, you will find them in frightful poverty.”

For more than a millennium, Arab and Muslim honour resided, among other places, in their domination and humiliation of their dhimmi—and when the occasional reformer equalised their legal status, he struck a heavy blow to Muslim honour. Noted a British envoy on the impact of Muhammad Ali’s reforms: “The Mussulmans … deeply deplore the loss of that sort of superiority which they all and individually exercised over and  against the other sects. … A Mussulman … believes and maintains that a Christian—and still more a Jew—is an inferior being to himself.”

To say that to the honour-driven Arab and Muslim political player, in the 20th century as in the 10th century, the very prospect of an autonomous Jewish political entity is a blasphemy against Islam, and an insult to Arab virility, is not to say that every period of Muslim rule involved deliberate humiliation of dhimmi. Nor is it to say that all Arabs think like this. On the contrary, this kind of testosterone-fuelled, authoritarian discourse imposes its interpretation of ‘honour’ on the entire community, often violently. Thus, while some Arabs in 1948 Palestine may have viewed the prospect of Jewish sovereignty as a valuable opportunity, the Arab leadership and ‘street’ agreed that for the sake of Arab honour Israel must be destroyed and that those who disagreed were traitors to the Arab cause.

Worse: The threat to Arab honour did not come from a worthy foe, like the Western Christians, but from Jews, traditionally the most passive, abject, cowardly of the populations over which Muslims ruled.

So, the prospect of an independent state of should-be dhimmis struck Arab leaders as more than humiliating. It endangered all Islam. Thus Rahman Azzam Pasha, the head of the newly formed Arab League, spoke for his ‘honour group’ when he threatened that ‘if the Zionists dare establish a state, the massacres we would unleash would dwarf anything which Genghis Khan and Hitler perpetrated.’ As the Armenians had discovered a generation earlier, the mere suspicion of rebellion could engender massacres.

The loss in 1948, therefore, constituted the most catastrophic possible outcome for this honour-group: Seven Arab armies, representing the honour of hundreds of thousands of Arabs (and Muslims), were defeated by less than a million Jews, the surviving remnant of the most devastating and efficient genocide in history. To fall to people so low on the scale that it is dishonourable even to fight them—nothing could be more devastating. And this humiliating event occurred on centre stage of the new postwar global community, before whom the Arab league representatives had openly bragged about their upcoming slaughters. In the history of a global public, never has any single and so huge a group suffered so much dishonour and shame in the eyes of so great an audience.

So, alongside the nakba (catastrophe) that struck hundreds of thousands of the Arab inhabitants of the former British Mandate Palestine, we find yet another, much greater psychological catastrophe that struck the entire Arab world and especially its leaders: a humiliation so immense that Arab political culture and discourse could not absorb it. Initially, the refugees used the term nakba to reproach the Arab leaders who started and lost the war that so hurt them. In a culture less obsessed by honour and more open to self-criticism, this might have led to the replacement of political elites with leaders more inclined to move ahead with positive-sum games of the global politics of the United Nations and the Marshall Plan. But when appearances matter above all, any public criticism shames the nation, the people, and the leaders.

Instead, in a state of intense humiliation and impotence on the world stage, the Arab leadership chose denial—the Jews did not, could not, have not won. The war was not—could never—be over until victory. If the refugees from this Zionist aggression disappeared, absorbed by their brethren in the lands to which they fled, this would acknowledge the intolerable: that Israel had won. And so, driven by rage and denial, the Arab honour group redoubled the catastrophe of its own refugees: They made them suffer in camps, frozen in time at the moment of the humiliation, waiting and fighting to reverse that Zionist victory that could not be acknowledged. The continued suffering of these sacrificial victims on the altar of Arab pride called out to the Arab world for vengeance against the Jews. In the meantime, wherever Muslims held power, they drove their Jews out as a preliminary act of revenge.

The Arab leadership’s interpretation of honour had them responding to the loss of their own hard zero-sum game—we’re going to massacre them—by adopting a negative-sum strategy. Damaging the Israeli ‘other’ became paramount, no matter how much that effort might hurt Arabs, especially Palestinians. ’No recognition, no negotiations, no peace.’ No Israel. Sooner leave millions of Muslims under Jewish rule than negotiate a solution. Sooner die than live humiliated. Sooner commit suicide to kill Jews than make peace with them.” ……..

“But culture is not a superficial question of manners. In the Middle East, honour is identity. Appeasement and concessions are signs of weakness: When practiced by one’s own leaders, they produce  riots of protest, by one’s enemy, renewed aggression. Benjamin Netanyahu stops most settlement activity for nine months. Barack Obama goes to Saudi Arabia for a reciprocal concession he can announce in Cairo. King Abdallah throws a fit and the Palestinians make more demands. And too few wonder whether basic logic of the negotiations—land for peace—has any purchase on the cultural realities of this corner of the globe. If only Israel would be more reasonable …

When we indulge Arab (and jihadi Muslims’) concerns for honour by backing off anything that they claim offends them, we think that our generosity and restraint will somehow move extremists to more rational behaviour. Instead, we end up muzzling ourselves and thereby participating in, honouring, and confirming their most belligerent attitudes toward the ‘other.’ They get to lead with their glass chin, while we, thinking we work for peace, end up confirming and weaponising the Arab world’s most toxic weaknesses—their insecurity, their embrace of all-or-nothing conflicts, their addiction to revenge, their paranoid scapegoating, their shame-driven hatred. And there is nothing generous, rational, or progressive about that.”

To conclude I’m adding a comment Lee Smith made:

“The daily circumstances of ordinary Palestinians are tragic. Most simply want to lead dignified lives, enriching and enjoying their families and communities. The fact that many can’t, however, is not the fault of Jerusalem or Washington, nor even primarily of the Arab regimes, which for so many years used the Palestinians as pawns to advance their own domestic and international interests. With the Abraham Accords, a coalition of prominent Arab states publicly and unreservedly gave up on the rejectionism that still drives the sclerotic ruling cadre in Ramallah, and embraced Israel’s dynamic economy, society, and military as models and partners.”

Have a good weekend.

Beni,                8th of December, 2022.