Arab intellectuals and Israel

An excellent column in Israel's Yediot Aharonot, translated by IMRA, on the absolute refusal of Arab elites to countenance any possibility of co-existence with the Jewish state:

Throughout the Arab world the "Palestinian problem" still serves, as it did
40 years ago, as an excuse for conservatism, silencing of criticism, dictatorship, isolationism. Tyrants and religious clerics use it to tighten their holds: they are not interested in resolving the conflict, because then they would have to confront the real miseries of their citizens. Readiness to part with territories for the sake of peace has been the banner of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli intellectual community for a generation now. It played a crucial role in persuading Israeli public opinion and politicians of the authenticity and legitimacy of Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own.

On the Arab side, however, there is absent a broad cultural and professional elite that would push hard for compromise, peace, and full recognition of Israel. In recent years there has even been a process of hardening among the intellectuals in the Arab countries to the point of categorical denial of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. The overwhelming majority of Arab intellectuals have not only not engaged in any parallel peace actions, but they have even refused to internalize the fact that Zionism was and still is the Jewish people's national liberation movement.

In Israel, the "Women in Black" demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, but there is not one single "Woman in Black" demonstrating against suicides in front of the Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus. Israeli Jewish poets protest against the occupation in their poems; Arab poets write paean of praise to terror acts.

The Arab poets and their colleagues urge the Palestinians in Gaza to maintain "a continuous intifada," an intifada that serves their frustrated intellectuals as a kind of spiritual elevation in which they are not required to sacrifice anything but words dripping with hate. Thus the Arab "spiritual nobles" betray first and foremost their Palestinian brethren.

I'd like to be as optimistic about the "road map" as most of the mainstream media, but until the Arabs change - and until Western liberals stop making excuses for them - nothing will really change. When the Jordanians can't even bring themselves to fly the Israeli flag alongside the flags of Jordan, the US and the PLO during the latest summit, how can we say they're serious?

Posted by damian at June 5, 2003 12:47 PM