Democratic and Islamic Pavlovians
Paul Eidelberg
In her May 11 article, Carline Glick was correct in saying “For ten years Israel has been paying the price for its withdrawal from Lebanon.” This was indeed a strategic and tragic error for which she rightly blames Ehud Barak, who was Israel’s prime minister at the time. Whatever else one may say of Barak, he caved in to the harping of Israel’s leftwing media.
The withdrawal of the IDF from southern Lebanon in May 2000 opened the floodgates for the entry of Hezbollah and the amassing of thousands of Iranian missiles, many of which struck Israel in the Lebanon War of 2006.
However, this lack of political stamina and foresight on the part of Israel’s present Defense Minister—to say nothing his betrayal of our allies, the South Lebanon Army—was preceded by a similar display of funk and folly of the Americans. Recall the withdrawal of American (“peacekeeping”) forces from Lebanon four months after Hezbollah truck-bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 marines in October 1983.
The truth is that Iran has been waging war against America ever since the Khomeini revolution of 1979, when the Carter administration betrayed its ally, the Shah who did not come up to America’s liberal democratic standards—as if the latter had descended from Mount Sinai. A useful idiot paved the way for the ascendency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose genocidal imprecations, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” meant nothing to those who invited him to speak at Columbia University. Carter also promoted the godfather of international terrorism Yasser Arafat who was embraced by Shimon Peres, another useful idiot.
Americans and Israelis—or at least their ruling elites—simply do not understand what we are up against in the Muslim Middle East. MIT and Harvard graduates have been so democratized and secularized that they are incapable of understanding or dealing with an enemy like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, or Palestinian-Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, or Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon who boasted that Muslims love death more than life.
That Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of “reciprocity” in dealing with Mahmoud Abbas indicates that the former is as much a democratic Pavlovian as the latter is an Islamic Pavlovian. One can’t think outside the cave of democracy, the other outside the cave of Islam. The outcome of this democratic and Islamic “determinism” may be decided (God forbid) by the Bomb, concerning which Israel is at a disadvantage, to put it mildly.
Hence I’m disappointed in the policy assessment of the Middle East expert Daniel Pipes (whom I otherwise highly regard). After reviewing a study of four Middle East regimes—Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan—a study indicating that 20 percent of the Arabs and Muslims polled would accept Israel as a Jewish state, Pipes arrives at the simplistic conclusion that winning over another 40 percent should, in effect, be a centerpiece of Israel’s foreign policy. (See his “Accepting Israel as a Jewish State,” Jerusalem Post, May 12, 2010, p. 15, and my critique of May 11, which Dr. Pipes magnanimously included in his website, www.Daniel Pipes.org).
It’s exceedingly difficult, even for well-informed scholars raised and educated in a liberal democracy, to transcend the democratic mind set, especially if they have not plumbed the depths of Plato and Aristotle—although one would think that either Machiavelli or 1,400 years of Islamic history would be more than enough to enlighten them. (I think Pipes knows better, but sees no practical way of curtailing the onward march of Islamic imperialism.)
In any event, Israel’s government must stop deceiving its people, must cease appeasing their enemies, and must tell the unvarnished truth about the implacable and venomous nature of Islam. It has been giving Islam a free ride.
Meanwhile, Washington has given Iran free rein to pursue its goal of hegemony in the Middle East, the lubricant of its drive toward a new Persian Empire. Thus, while the obtuseness of so many Americans has catapulted a virtual Muslim to the White House, the pusillanimity of Israeli prime ministers has paved the way for an Islamic state in Israel’s heartland.
I see here the chronological smugness and moral decadence prevalent in the college or university education of American and Israeli elites. Let me explain.
In the early decades of the American Republic, statesmen were also intellectuals, both learned in history and both had proud of the Judeo-Christian roots of what is now only the ghost of Western civilization. Today, the statesman and the intellectual have been sundered. Whereas the former is usually a shallow pate, the latter has become a mere “adviser”—a functionary given to “political correctness” vis-à-vis his country’s Islamic enemies—a Martin Indyk or a Dennis Ross or a Michael Oren (all riding the Palestinian horse). You might call them diplomatic Pavlovians serving Pavlovian politicians.
What needs to be stressed, however, is that the secular democratic state not only conduces to this Pavlovianism, it also incites Islamic Pavlovianism. We will not overcome Islam until we transcend the secular democratic state. The trouble is, our politicians and intellectuals and journalists bore us to death with the same old policy questions and avoid regime questions. Soon, the former will be relegated to the dust heap of history.
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