Shortly after the Clinton administration ended and George W. Bush took office, and amidst the ashes of the Oslo process, Dennis Ross, Clinton’s Middle East envoy, was asked at a Washington Institute for Near East Policy talk what in hindsight he would identify as the greatest U.S. mistake in the long process to broker Arab-Israel peace. He was correct to identify incitement.
Whether it was the tendency of Yasser Arafat to say one thing in English and the opposite in Arabic, or the constant barrage of hatred which Palestinian textbooks and media indoctrinate, the State Department turned a deaf ear. Incitement was seen as secondary to diplomatic progress and was a headache which, if dealt with, might hamper the ability to get to yes on whatever interim agreement loomed at the time.
Diplomats reached agreements but, in practice, they meant little. Rather than prepare Palestinians for compromise, the Palestinian Authority used incitement to fan the flames of hatred, and then used that public disapproval of any peace as an excuse to avoid the difficult steps necessary.
It is not only the Palestinians who have been guilty of incitement. For many diplomats, the 1978 Camp David Accords suggest that perseverance against all odds can lead to peace. And, with Egypt-Israel peace now in doubt, some Israeli officials and scholars long for a return to Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Mubarak, however, bears much culpability for the current actions of the Egyptian public. As president, he oversaw a regime which used its state media to perpetuate anti-Semitism and crass conspiracies, and used its bureaucracy to quash any attempts by civil society to promote tolerance and interchange. The hatred which populists now channel against Israel is the result of more than three decades of unchecked incitement.
Alas, having turned a blind eye to incitement for so long, Americans will now feel its bite. After squandering the opportunity for four decades to reform, professionalize, and free the Egyptian media, Egypt’s new government now uses its media to incite against the United States and, specifically, the Americans the transitional Egyptian regime holds hostage.
Years of neglect suggest there will be no happy ending to the current crisis which increasingly appears as a repeat of the Iran hostage drama, but in slow motion. Perhaps it’s time for the State Department and Congress to have a fundamental rethink about the priority incitement has in its calculations. Should any country use public media to promote religious hatred or anti-Americanism, that country is not serious about peace nor is it deserving of American aid. Rather than treat incitement as a hiccup to ignore on the road to an agreement, perhaps it is time to address incitement as the primary hurdle which must be overcome before any aid can be expended or serious peacemaking can begin.
I'm afraid it's pointless. Arab and Islamic (and Persian) culture, governments and societies are completely beyond salvaging on this point. They racist to the core. They are antisemitic to the core. We shouldn't forget that in pure numbers, the level of ethnic cleansing against the Jews the Arabs and Persians were able to not only accomplish but happily get away with w/o comment or condemnation from the 'west', the EU and of course the UN, would make the Nazis blush. Ethnic cleansing of Jews across North Africa, the mideast and west Asia is, for all practical purposes 100%. Outside of Israel there are no more than 15,000 Jews, total. Down from a million. n nDemanding that these savages not be savages is silly.
I'm sure you meant to type another number than 15,000, because there are probably 15,000 Jews in New York City alone, let alone "the world." n nbut your point about ethnic cleansing is appropriate. just as many Jews as Arabs were displaced during the 1948 Partition, but the Jews re-settled themselves and quickly got on with their lives. since the Arabs chose instead to become permanent refugees, and devote themselves to killing Jews, they remain a constant reminder of the "evil Zionist entity," and therefore, are valuable politically to the cynical PA leadership.
Across the Maghreb and Mizrahi there's perhaps no more than 15,000 Jews total.
a simple google search told me that as of 2001 there were about 8.3 million diaspora Jews, and another 5 million in Israel. n nso I'm not sure what the heck you're talking about. (maybe you're being ironic but I'm just not getting it?)
The Maghreb and Mizrahi is North Africa, Iraq, Iran.
I was in a cab here in Northern Virginia and the cabbie seemed like a nice guy until the light switch clicked and whammo "Everybody in this country is afraid of the Jews" and on he went. He seemed surprised that his passenger was … a Jew. Next time I saw him he wasn't such a nice guy anymore. I met an Egyptian colonel en route to a USArmy language institute and the light switch clicked on, whammo, man oh man the Jews have it fine now but the Koran has promised that at the end of time they will get it but good. Weird. But hey, President O is going to give these chowderheads $800 mil.