---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 13:55:26 +0000 From: MER <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: MER <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Israel's Patronizing Ways _______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ ISRAELI ISOLATION AND SELF-IMAGE http://www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! - - - - - - - - - - YOU ARE WHAT YOU KNOW AND WHAT YOU DO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The 'Israeli on the street,' after all, knows close to nothing about the Arab world - so little, in fact, that we can all easily recite in our sleep those three or four cliches that sum up all-that-we- didn't-want-to-know." "It is both pathetic and heartwarming to see the confidence and immediacy with which we perceive ourselves as distinctly "Western," rather than as part of the Third World - a self-image rooted entirely in relativity, a triumph of hope over experience." NEIGHBORS AND OTHER STRANGERS By Doron Rosenblum Ha'aretz, 16 June 2000: Whenever our television screens show a grave-faced speaker beginning his remarks with "we must remember that ..." it's fairly certain that something has happened in one of the Arab countries. "We must remember that ..." is a kind of verbal adapter, used to link the "input" conveyed to the Israeli public to the somewhat chaotic "output" provided by the Arab world. The right to use "we must remember that" or "we must understand that" at the beginning of every insight into Arab affairs is reserved for a select group of people: a handful of academics, military correspondents, and the media's in-house Arab affairs experts. Our perception of the Arab world is thus revealed in all its voluntary alienation: how close those places are to us, and yet, how very far away. "We must remember that Assad was not a young man for the Arab world"; "We must remember that in Arab countries, even tears are never shed by chance"; "We must remember that the Arab world places a high significance on mourning customs" ... This seemingly illuminating, even humble explanation, intended to make "the subject" more accessible to us, nevertheless involves some degree of distancing and estrangement. After all, that "Arab world" is right here under our noses, if not actually among us, and yet we only enter it with the help of authorized guides - passing through the "Fatma Gate" of expert commentary, crossing the "Allenby Bridge" of simultaneous translation and ironic smiles. It is all done on such a meager stream of insights, such a narrow bridge between ourselves and that place where everything is different. We like it that way. How soothingly distant it all comes to seem. Yes, tell us more about those other nations and peoples living right alongside us, but talk of them as you would talk of Patagonia. 'In inverted commas ...' So exotic and happily distant is the Arab world to us, that the mere human shield provided by the commentators is not enough. We need yet another insulating layer, achieved through the commentators' semi-didactic, semi-comic dialogue with the television anchors. The latter play (play?) the role of the perfect ignoramus, the so-called "Israeli on the street." "Why don't you tell us in a few words what Syria is," the anchorman thunders, "and let's perhaps begin with this question: How many people live there, anyway?" (The answer to that ranged freely from 13 to 30 million in this week's media coverage). "I wanted to ask you, and please answer briefly: Who was this man Assad?" And, "In one sentence, before we move on to the weather: What do most ordinary people in the Arab countries want? Food? Work?" At times, the anchorman deviates from the role of the ignoramus drinking up droplets of knowledge, and instead sprinkles the expert with a dash of sarcasm: "Do they even understand the concept of a change in government?" he might skeptically ask. This week, for example, Channel One's Yaakov Achimeir interrupted an Arab affairs expert, who was describing the spontaneous demonstrations in Damascus, in order to say: "But that's 'spontaneous' in inverted commas, right?" Patronizing? Not necessarily. It's more of a habit, a kind of "learned truth" any of us might have inadvertently blurted out, like a cough. The "Israeli on the street," after all, knows close to nothing about the Arab world - so little, in fact, that we can all easily recite in our sleep those three or four cliches that sum up all-that-we-didn't-want-to-know. (And on second thought: When are our demonstrations ever spontaneous enough to dispense with the inverted commas? Is it when the spontaneously organized buses bring right-wing protesters in from West Bank settlements, or in the equally spontaneous rides transporting left-wing demonstrators from their kibbutzim? And what about their respective signs and slogans, all of which look as though they were simultaneously approved by some impromptu organizing committee?) 'A Western education' How pleased we are with the new generation of Arab leaders, as with the fact that many of its offspring spent years in British or American schools. "At least he has a Western education," we say, as though we ourselves were sitting in some gentlemen's club in Piccadilly rather than munching Mediterranean snacks in our Israeli living rooms. You might almost think that our own political elite was raised entirely on the cricket fields of Eton or in the halls of the Ivy League, rather than emerging from East European Bolshevik parties, Jerusalem hummus joints, student thug associations, or - in the most refined case - army snack bars. It is indeed somewhat comical that the Arab leaders' Western education is noted - somewhat patronizingly - by precisely those Israeli politicians whose erudition leaves something to be desired, who in the same breath might also ridicule Israel's "professors" and its "elite." These are the people incapable of saying one reasonable phrase in a foreign language, whose "Oxford" education is limited to shopping on Oxford Street - not to mention those enamored of spells and amulets, or those who stand guard over Israel's theocracy. Indeed, it is both pathetic and heartwarming to see the confidence and immediacy with which we perceive ourselves as distinctly "Western," rather than as part of the Third World - a self-image rooted entirely in relativity, a triumph of hope over experience. 'He uses the Internet' "As far as we know" - our "government sources" revealed this week, not without pomposity - "As far as we know, Bashar Assad is a serious, educated, modern man, open to the free world and familiar with its ways." How many of our own politicians live up to that description? "As far as we know," not many. Even more comforting to us was the fact that the late Assad's son and heir was "connected to the Internet" - a fact cited over and over with great amazement, as though the world had just discovered a pipe-smoking ape. Or as if "connecting to the Internet" (just like "putting a computer in every classroom") was in itself a guarantee of humanity, enlightened views, and/or willingness to make diplomatic concessions. The question of how the medium is actually used was completely ignored. It is as though someone were to be filled with great hope because General Franco "used the telephone" or because Ceausescu "listened to the radio." It must mean something, this "using the Internet," but it isn't everything. But our expectations of the Arab world and its leaders are low enough to make the very fact that someone there uses a modem seem like a light at the end of the tunnel (just as the act of switching on a computer - even if it's just to read a horoscope, gamble, or look at naked girls - is viewed here as the height of education, a kind of start-up activity). 'Unstable regimes' Sometime between their cheery and unexplained vote in favor of new elections and their unequivocal refusal to join the government (for the same unreasoned reason), Ariel Sharon and the Likud wheeler-dealers found time to declare that Assad's death only proved "we must deal carefully with these unstable regimes around us." "Deal carefully" indeed ... like elephants in a china shop ... But what of our own unstable regime? The political life expectancy of our prime ministers is shrinking to a year or two. The assassination of prime ministers has become part of the political discourse. We are faced with daily upheavals governed solely by opportunism and ego; with violent militias preaching insurrection against the government; with patchwork coalitions that leave the quilt of national identity straining at the seams; with frequent shifts and turns that reverse not only the basic principles of our foreign and security policy, but our education and national ethos as well. But from this great height, from our own "island of instability", we cluck our tongues at the fickle and capricious nature of the Arab world, whose regimes, rigidly frozen for 30 years, might be called by any derogatory name - except "unstable". So why should we act patronizingly toward our surroundings? A matter of habit, most likely. As Sigmund Freud once put it, while analogies determine nothing, they do make us feel more at home. MID-EAST REALITIES http://www.MiddleEast.Org Phone: 202 362-5266 Fax: 815 366-0800 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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