Romney Lays It Out: Progress and Success Versus Name-Calling And Bragging About Being Victims
I have quoted this at length so that when I say that this is utterly lies and rubbish you will have heard both sides. Note, however, that the AP did not present the other side.
The fact is that in economic terms the West Bank and Gaza Strip did well in the years of occupation, as can be statistically documented, except during periods of high-level, Palestinian-initiated violence. Especially egregious is that the AP highlights a blockade on the Gaza Strip without explaining why that happened. How can Hamas be a victim if you are the perpetrator of the problem by continuous rocket, mortar, and cross-border attacks against Israel?
In addition, by turning to violence instead of negotiating — remember the Palestinians could have negotiated a two-state solution as early as the late 1970s after Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat’s initiative — they damaged their own situation. Repeated intifadas, terrorism, corruption, and the Hamas-Fatah war, plus Hamas’s attacks on Israel, have a lot more to do with economic damage than anything Israel has done. Why were there once tens of thousands of Palestinians earning good money by working in Israel daily, and now only a handful? Racial discrimination or the fact that some used the opportunity to commit terrorist violence?
Far from being victims, the Palestinians have been coddled by the international community for more than two decades. The Palestinian Authority has not been held responsible for corruption and squandering money, behavior that had no effect on the flow of proportionally huge cash payments. Nor has it been punished politically for its incitement and intransigence. And it refuses to resettle people from refugee camps into regular housing. Only Palestinians in all the world receive refugee status and UN welfare payments over many generations.
While Israeli economic pressure has played a role, Israel has also transferred millions of dollars of customs and other payments to the PA while always opposing cut-offs in international aid because that might destabilize the Palestinian regime and lead to even more violence. Moreover, World Bank and International Monetary Fund reports have repeatedly said that such pressures were a relatively secondary factor in comparison to the internal flaws of the Palestinian governments and economy. In other words, the Associated Press has dishonestly misrepresented the contents of the reports.
And finally there is one simple, decisive argument. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, for example, have not been under Israeli occupation. So why haven’t they flourished?
Whining eternally that you are a victim and putting your priority on getting sympathy and hand-outs get in the way of doing what’s necessary to start being successful. Those Third World peoples and countries who have learned these lessons have done well; those who haven’t done so have become basket cases.
The bottom line is this: Romney is bringing us back to the proper argument on the causes of economic development and stagnation. Indeed, his standpoint is the same as post-colonial liberal development theory in the era before radicals, drawing on Lenin and Marxist ideology, redefined it by blaming everything on some endless imperialism.
Romney’s points also apply to America as well as to the Middle East. The main problem is not Israel, or capitalism, or a racial group meanly oppressing someone else, but on bad and undemocratic governance along with demagogic leaders encouraging their followers to adopt behavior not conducive with progress and prosperity.
And what can we say of the Western intellectuals, “experts,” journalists, and politicians who encourage the Third World and many other groups to continue going down the road of poverty, hatred, violence, and instability?
Note: A large number of mainstream media outlets and columnists have attacked Romney for his statement mainly, echoing the AP story, because he didn’t talk about the negative effects of Israeli policy on the Palestinian economy. Because, you see, nobody can be successful and prosperous unless they stole it from others.
To my knowledge not a single one pointed out: 1. Statistics showing major advances during the period of Israeli occupation; 2. Palestinian violence has been the main cause of Israeli roadblocks and interventions; 3. A comparison to non-oil rich Arab countries showing that the Palestinian Authority has not done at all badly in comparison to those where Israel had no effect; 4. The massive corruption and incompetence of the PA; 5. The massive inflow of international aid to the Palestinians; and 6. The large transfer of funds (as provided in the Oslo agreement but PA behavior did not make Israel violate the agreement) from Israel to the PA regarding refunds on customs duties and workers’ fringe benefits. This is how shameless the coverage is on these issues. It’s funny to think that only a couple of months ago, the same media outlets were talking about a big economic boom on the West Bank.
Thank you for your well thought out comments, I am glad you were able to better clarify Romney’s comments. He has tried explaining it but it was falling upon deaf ears. Having another educated perspective helped set things straight and differentiating between these different variables opens up a new dialogue.
Alot of Western intellectuals, “experts,” journalists, and politicians are at the Daily Beast…screaming at David Frum. They’re quite hillariously niave.
As long as the highest aspiration in your society is to be a suicide bomber, then yes, you are culturally inferior to a society that celebrates life and encourages all to fully use their talents for good.
The Palestinians are not considered people by the other Arabs or their western apologists. They are a weapon to be aimed at Israel and by extension Western civilization. The lack of introspection has been the Muslim world’s greatest weakness since the reconquista. As mentioned in the article, the first step to fixing a problem is acknowleging that you have one.
As an aside, anyone notice how there is never a hue and cry when someone proclaims the superiority of Confucian values or Islamic values over western ones?
Another possibility is that the term ‘racist’ was used by Palestinian authorities simply as a convenient epithet, since this is a term Americans are particularly sensitive to. It is the same reasoning they call Israel an ‘apartheid’ state, where there is absolutely no parallel with South Africa.
Otherwise, this is another great article.
The Palestinian leadership has stated that on the establishment of a Palestinian state that the West Bank will be made Judenfrei (“free of Jews”) or Judenrein (“clean of Jews”)…Is this not racist? Has western media notice? Not that one would wish to offend the Arab Muslim world…
Ya’acov – Although I know it’s a rhetorical question, it’s never racist when a non-American says something so egregious. And, no, the media will never notice. To prove my point, will Barry’s article ever get reprinted anywhere else? Besides a blog reference, that is?
No. I didn’t think so.
Romney did not say one word about Palestinian culture. While “some” may subjectively determine that by commenting about Jewish or Israeli culture, Romney left the impression that he was saying that Palestinian culture was inferior, but that is NOT what he said. Accordingly, Romney’s assertions that he did not discuss Palestinian culture were correct, and any implications or inferences drawn by others are merely opinion or supposition by the “some”.
he didn’t talk about palestinian culture because there is no such thing as palestinian culture.
…and historically, archeologically, never was.
Romney’s comment on the income differential between Israel and Palestinians, is a bit like telling the French in 1943 that they should pull their socks up and create as much wealth as those Germans (who happened to being occupying them).
Actually, Victor, since the Arabs started the war against Israel (inrending the genocide of its Jewish inhabitants), just as the Germans started World War II, the more appropriate analogy would be telling the occupied Germans after 1945 to pull their socks up and work to make themselves economically and in political culture more like the US. And what do you know, they did just that.
Indeed, if the Arab countries had agreed in August, 1967, to give a positive response to Israel’s offer to make peace on the basis of returning all the conquered land (except Jerusalem) for recognized boundaries and a negotiated peace treaty, there would have been no occupation. Instead the Arabs’ response were the “Three No’s of Khartoum:” No negotiations, no recognition, no peace. Since then they have continued to push towards their goal of genocide of the Jews. They haven’t been very effective at that yet, but they keep trying. Soon Iran’s nuclear bombs and guided missiles will be available for attaining this goal, unless somebody does something drastic to stop it.
There is nothing Israel can do to bring peace; there is no concession she can make, no deals she can cut, nothing. The war will go on as long as Israel’s enemies want it to go on, and it will stop only when Israel’s enemies get sick of it and decide to stop it, or when they achieve their evil goals.
So what about Arab lands that Israel did not occupy? How do they stack up against Israel?
The CIA World Factbook lists Israel’s per capita GDP, on a purchasing-power parity basis, as $31,400. Lebanon’s is $15,700, Egypt $6,600, Jordan $6,000, Syria $5,100, Iraq $3,900. The tiny Gulf sheikhdoms, with lots of oil and no people, are higher, but even Saudi Arabia has a per capita GDP significantly lower than Israel’s — $24,500 — and Libya (also with oil and few people) is at $14,100.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/312654/re-culture-not-race-mr-erekat-mark-krikorian
With all their oil wealth, the per capita GDP of the Saudis and Libyans lags behind Israel too. What accounts for that?
The Arab Middle East is awash in oil, yet the per capita wealth of their peoples lags behind Israel, a nation which (until very recently) had no discovered oil reserves.
I’ve challenged all the multiculturalist liberals to explain that one. So far, no answers.
sinz – you’re a racist for asking those questions and pointing out those facts.
/sarc off.
The Left is quite aware of the importance of culture and their definition is not the acummulated knowledge and traditions either. No, those might create a pining for the past when they have long envisioned a transformed collectivist future for the rest of us. They always see themselves as the nomenklatura.
The Left defines culture as the prevailing feelings, beliefs, and practices in a society. Change those, what the Left calls the Noetic System, and you undermine the basis for capitalism. It requires an independent spirit that educational practices like Outcomes based Education seek to undermine. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/oh-good-grief-now-i-need-to-know-what-a-noetic-system-is-because-it-is-under-attack/ is the story I wrote about this attack on the Left’s view of culture.
For Romney to point out that the prevailing mindset of a people matters when the Left has been actively targeting this quietly via UNESCO all through the Cold War and the after must have been quite galling. They think their attack is not known or understood. Now all of a sudden people are appreciating the subjugation subterfuge and fighting back.
Good. This is the battle we must have and we are about to have it. It will not help the Palestinians as people begin to appreciate just how much of the poison came from the UN.
The sooner our gov’t officials decide to send the UN packing, the better, as they don’t deserve to be on our soil.
@ 9. sinz54
Re my comment
” Romney’s comment on the income differential between Israel and Palestinians, is a bit like telling the French in 1943 that they should pull their socks up and create as much wealth as those Germans (who happened to being occupying them).”
Romney was talking specifically about the Palestinians and Israelis- not the larger Arab, Muslim, Asian, African, Easter Island etc population-he was talking about the Israelis and Palestinians
If you narrow the focus to the Israeli Jewish population then you will see a massive gap between secular Israelis and the Ultra Orthodox population-Haredi.
The ultra orthodox-Haredi have a negative contribution to the economy and they do not serve in the IDF-they live on welfare.
Currently 25% of primary school children are Haredi
In a few years 27% of 18 yr old males in Israel will be ultra orthodox-Haredi
The Haredi population will increase dramatically from then on-
-the Haredi earn no money, create no wealth, pay no tax and do not serve in the IDF
Demography is destiny-
- Israel is facing a demographic, economic and defense disaster via the Haredim
there you go again your wonderful Turkey GDP $14,700 (2011 est.)https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html
spew your Jew hatred elsewhere!
Another element of successful culture still has not been mentioned. While my wife and I were walking through various neighborhoods in and around Jerusalem, my wife said, “The big difference here is the Israelis value and educate their women.”
It’s the islam, stupid.
“And finally there is one simple, decisive argument. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, for example, have not been under Israeli occupation. So why haven’t they flourished?” I would add one additional interesting question: how have assimilated Arab immigrants fared in Western societies (no, not Europe where they maintain a strong subculture), but for example in the US or Australia? I don’t have any data, but if they have done as well as at least some other immigrant populations (for which I do have some anecdotal evidence), that would again put the lie to the racist argument, and pinpoint the problem on the political culture prevalent in most Arab countries.
…leaders who are out of touch with the realities of the Middle East and human history.
Mitt told the truth in London and it was pronounced a gaffe, even though the English press had been running headlines with the same same evaluation the week before. The “gaffe” was who could tell the truth, and under what circumstances.
In Jerusalem, Mitt went out on a limb and dang if he didn’t tell the truth again. But this time there were no preceding headlines packaged in real-time hypocrisy. He spoke something that few if any dare say, or at least strongly implied it. Mitt has violated the central myth of the Middle East “problem,” that the Palestinians predated the return of the Jews, and stole the land of innocents who’d been living there for two thousand years after the Jews for some unexplained reason decided to split from the area.
Breaking from Oprah’s great show on the subject, let us remember that the Palestinian race didn’t exist before 1967, and was created at about the same time Nixon created the Hispanics. When the Jews showed up many decades earlier and began buying land from absentee Moslem landlords, word spread that there the Jews were here and there was gonna be some propserity and homeless Bedouins naturally began pouring into Israel in order to share in the wealth. Then the unprovoked 1967 attacks and the subsequent fair takings of territories, most of which the Jews have since stupidly returned in exchange for nothing, except maybe to please the State Dept.
Now, everybody talks about the right of return and fairness. The Arabs living under Jimmy Carter’s supposed apartheid are gaining weight from all the good food, healthcare and welfare money. Trouble is, who’s gonna take care of them after the Ayatollah lands a warhead on the big Intel fabrication plant in Tel Aviv, the Saudis?
It wouldn’t be hard to move ‘Palestinian’ GDP per capita to a figure of our choosing. Zero divided by zero can be any number you want. The exiled Jordanian Arabs (for that is what they are) need to understand that they exist at Israel’s sufferance. Imagine for one moment their lot if Israel pursued their destruction with the same reckless hatred that Hamas and Hezbollah direct against Jews. This is really a remarkable aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict: that the casualties among Israel’s enemies have been so trifling. Woe betide Islam if Israel ever takes the gloves off.
actually the Economist does tell the truth about our looming demographic catastrophe because of the Haredi population explosion in the homeland.
You can call The Economist a nazi pamphlet if you want to
But that just cancels all your credibity
A frank discussion of the real looming demographic catastrophe in Israel via the our dramatically escalating Haredi population will never take place
Until it is too late
It is hard work trying to explain Romney and make him look good, isn’t it? One can hope that what he actually believes is more or less what his biggest boosters say he believes, but it’s just as likely there’s little of ‘the vision thing’ in his head.
I understand the need to redress the biases of the media, always and everywhere and as loudly as possible, but Romney frankly sounds a little …er… thin when thinking on his feet. Example: the allegedly controversial statement to Israeli donors — the quote at the start of the article — is remarkable for its sloppiness. You have to guess at the exact meaning of what could and should have been a straightforward statement of a simple truth.
Great communicator he ain’t. Well, how about clear, conventionally formed sentences, even a structured argument? Not a chance. Some defenders try to bluster — we never speak like we write blah blah blah. To the extent its true (not very, not often), most of us sound a lot better than Romney. Many find Romney unthreatening, but the bar is too low. The lesser-of-two-evils argument won’t restore our country, not even close.
FWIW, I have no problems with what I think Romney meant, either in London or in Israel. But the campaign attack dog visible during the primaries — directed against fellow Republicans — seems to be licking its anatomy again.
Romney is thin? Please see a recording of Obama when he goes off the teleprompter and tries to answer questions. By that comparison Romney is Thomas Jefferson.
The country needs an orator who can inspire, preferably one who can do it on the fly. We face stark choices that must be put to voters clearly and forcefully. This is emphatically not about happy-clappy notions of unity, togetherness and ‘can’t we all get along?’. Nor is it about an empty bag of bad gas like Obama, or a desiccated marionette like Romney.
Romney = Thomas Jefferson redux? You won’t find many buyers there.
the Hareidi issue in Israel actually exemplifies the differences between Israel and her neighbors. The Israelis recognize that they have a problem (including some hareidim)and are working slowly and painfully to fix it. The Arabs have been ignoring their problems and working diligently to blame them on someone else thereby absolving them of the responsibility to even try and fix them.
In the 2005 Palestinian film Paradise Now, one striking element was the stark visual differences between the run down West Bank (Ramallah)and modern Israel.
It seemed an implicit point of the film that glaring economic disparities played into the motivations of the 2 suicide bombers who were its subject.
Muslims and American Leftists alike seem to take offense when the truth gets too close to their noses.
Of course Romney is 100% correct. Customs, traditions, cultural view points are the cornerstones of any society. The last I checked neither Jordan nor Syria ever were under Israeli occupation. How are they doing? Never-mind oil rich Iraq. Once more The American Left wing (i.e mainstream) media showed its disdain for Israel and The Jewish people. If Romney ever moves the U.S embassy to Jerusalem then watch the hateful left in full motion. What you are seeing now it’s a child play compare to what’s to come.
I for one think those calling for a return to Israel’s ’67 borders are right on – except they are off on the year by 1,000 – they should return to *these* borders:
http://tinyurl.com/3lclxev
Here’s the best and most succinct explanation of that cultural difference that you’ll ever read:
Noted historian Carroll Quigley, in the course of his examination of the failure of most Latin American / South American nation-states, delivered an astonishing analysis of what he believed to be the root cause of these failures in the first edition (1966) of his renowned Tragedy and Hope. Here, in almost an aside, he defines what he calls the “Pakistani-Peruvian axis” – a combination of Asian despotism and Arabic outlook (key word, that – outlook), both of which have their roots in Bronze Age antiquity, that pervade what Quigley calls the shattered cultures that dwell on its axis from Pakistan to the mountains of South America. This analysis makes an appalling sense out the cultural train-wrecks that persist to this day from the Arabic East, through the southern Mediterranean and Spain to South America – and in corporate boardrooms in Paris, London and New York.
If his analysis is correct – and I believe that it is largely so – it provides the perfect framework for the triumph of the greatest evil of modernity – the will to power as the dominating and driving force of those who would exterminate most of the world’s population and rule the remainder of humanity like cattle.
I fear for our civilization. Read on to find out why.
————————————————————————————————————————————————
The problem of finding constructive patterns for Latin America is much more difficult than the problem of finding constructive priorities. One reason for this is that the unconstructive patterns that now prevail in Latin America are deeply entrenched as a result of centuries, even millennia of persistent background. In fact, the Latin American patterns that must be changed because today they are leading to social and cultural disruption are not really Latin American in origin, or even Iberian for that matter, but are Near Eastern and go back, for some of their aspects for two thousand or more years. As a general statement, we might say that the Latin American cultural pattern (including personality patterns and general outlook) is Arabic, while its social pattern is that of Asiatic despotism. The pattern is so prevalent today (1960s era – WD) not only in in Latin America, but in Spain, Sicily, southern Italy (Fukuyama’s ‘low trust’ societies – WD) the Near East, and in various other areas of the Mediterranean world (such as Egypt), that we might call it the “Pakistani-Peruvian axis.” For convenience of analysis, we shall divide it into “Asiatic despotism” and the “Arabic outlook.”
We have already indicated the nature of Arabic despotism in connection with traditional China, the old Ottoman Empire, and czarist Russia. It goes back to the archaic Bronze Age empires, which first appeared in Mesopotamia, Egypt, The Indus Valley and northern China before 1000 BC. Basically, such an Asiatic despotism is a two-class society in which a lower class, consisting of at least (emphasis mine WD) nine-tenths of the population supports an upper, ruling-class consisting of several interlocking groups. These ruling groups are a governing bureaucracy of scribes and priests associated with army leaders, landlords and moneylenders. Such an upper class accumulated great quantities of wealth as taxes, rent, and interest on loans, fees for services or simply financial extortions.
The social consequences were either progressive or reactionary, depending on whether this accumulated wealth in the possession of the ruling class was invested in more productive utilization of resources or was simply hoarded and wasted. The essential character of such an Asian despotism rests on the fact that the ruling class has legal claims on the working masses, and possesses the power (from its control of arms and the political structure) to enforce those claims. A modified Asiatic despotism is one aspect of the social structures all along the Pakistani-Peruvian axis.
The other aspect of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis rests on its Arabic outlook. The Arabs, like other Semites who emerged from the Arabian desert at various times to infiltrate neighboring Asiatic despotic cultures of urban civilizations were originally nomadic tribal peoples. Their political structure was based on blood relationships and not on territorial jurisdiction. They were warlike, patriarchal, extremist, violent, intolerant and xenophobic. Like most tribal peoples, their political structure was totalitarian in the sense that all values, all needs all meaningful human experience was contained within the tribe. Persons outside the tribal structure had no value or significance, and there were no obligations or meaning associated in contacts with them. In fact, they were hardly regarded as human beings at all. Moreover, within the tribe, social significance became more intense as blood relationships became closer, moving inward from the tribes through clans to the patriarchal extended family. The sharp contrast between such a point of view and that associated with Christian society as we know it can be seen in the fact that such Semitic tribalism was endogamous, while the rule of Christian marriage is exogamous. The rules, in fact, were directly antithetical, since Arabic marriage favors unions of first cousins, while Christian marriage has consistently opposed marriage of first or even second cousins. In traditional Arabic society, any girl was bound to marry her father’s brother’s son if he and his father wanted her and she was not usually free to marry someone else until he had rejected her (sometimes after years of waiting).
In such traditional Arabic society, the extended family, not the individual, was the basic social unit; all property was controlled by the patriarchal head of the family and, accordingly, most decisions were in his hands. His control of the marriage and of his male descendants was ensured by the fact that a price had to be paid for a bride to her family, and this would require the patriarch’s consent.
Such a patriarchal family arose from the fact that marriage was patrilocal, the young couple residing with the groom’s father so long as he lived, while he continued to live with the groom’s paternal grandfather until the latter’s death. Such a death of the head of an extended family freed his sons to become heads of similar extended families that would remain intact, frequently for three or four generations, until the head of the family dies in his turn. Within such a family each male remains subject to the indulgent, if erratic, control of his father and the indulgent, and subservient care of his mother and unmarried sisters, while his wife is under the despotic control of her mother-in-law until her production of sins and the elimination of her elders by death will make her, in turn a despot over her daughters-in-law.
This Arabic emphasis on the extended family as the basic social reality meant that larger social came into existence simply by linking a number of related extended families under the nominal leadership of the patriarch who, by general consensus, had the best qualities of leadership, social dignity and prestige. But such unions, being personal and essentially temporary, could be severed at any time. The family units tended to make all political relationships personal and temporary, reflections of the desires or whims of the leader and not the consequence or reflection of any basic social relationships. This tended to prevent the development of any advanced conception of the state, law, and the community (as achieved, for example, by the once tribal Greeks and Romans). Within the family, rules were personal, patriarchal, and often arbitrary and changeable, arising from the will and often from the whims of the patriarch.
This prevented the development of any advanced ideas of reciprocal common interests whose interrelationships by establishing a higher social structure, created, at the same time, rules superior to the individual, rules of an impersonal and permanent character in which law created authority, and not, as in the Arabic system, authority created law (or at least temporary rules). To this day, the shattered cultures along the whole Pakistani-Peruvian axis have a very weak grasp of the nature of a community or of any obligation to such a community, and regard law and politics as simply personal relationships whose chief justification is the power and the position of the individual who issues the orders. The state, as a structure of force more remote and therefore less personal than the immediate family is regarded as an alien system to be avoided and evaded simply because it is more remote (even if of similar character) then the individual’s immediate family.
This biological and patriarchal character of all significant social relationships in Arab life is reflected in the familiar feature of male dominance. Only the male is important. The female is inferior, even subhuman, and becomes significant only by producing males (the one thing, apparently, that the male cannot do for himself). Because of the strong patrilocal character of Arab marriage, a new wife is not only subjected sexually to her husband, she is also subjected socially and personally to his family, including his brothers and above all, his mother (who has gained this position of domination over other females in the house by having male children). Sex is regarded almost solely as a physiological relationship with little emphasis on the religious, emotional or even social aspects. Love, meaning concern for the personality or developing potentialities of the sexual partner, plays little role in Arabic sexual relationships. The purpose of such relationships in the eyes of the average Arab is to relieve his own sexual desire or to generate sons.
Such sons are brought up in an atmosphere of whimsical, arbitrary personal rules where they are regarded as superior beings by their mothers and sisters and, inevitably, by their father and themselves simply on the basis of their maleness. Usually they are spoiled, undisciplined, self-indulgent and unprincipled. Their whims are commands, their urges are laws. They are exposed to a dual standard of sexual morality in which any female is a legitimate target of their sexual desires, but the girl they marry is expected to be a paragon of chaste virginity. The original basis for this emphasis on a bride’s virginity rested on the emphasis on blood descent and was intended to be a guarantee and was intended to be a guarantee of the paternity of the children. The wife, as a child producing mechanism, had to produce the children of one genetic line and no other.
The emphasis on the virginity of any girl who could be regarded as an acceptable wife was carried to extremes. The loss of a girl’s virginity was regarded as an unbearable dishonor by the girl’s family, and any girl who brought such dishonor on a family was regarded worthy of death at the hands of her father and brothers. Once she is married, the right to punish such a transgression is transferred to her husband.
To any well-bred girl, her premarital virginity and the reservation of sexual access to her husband’s control after marriage (her “honor”) have pecuniary value. Since she has no value in herself as a person, apart from her “honor,” and has little value as a worker of any sort, her virginity before marriage has a value in money equal to the expense of keeping her for much of her life since, indeed, this is exactly what it is worth in money.
As a virgin, she could expect the man who obtained her in marriage to support her as a wife. As a matter of fact, her virginity was worth much less than that, for in traditional Arabic society, if she displeased her husband, even if she merely crossed one of his whims, he could set her aside by divorce, a process very easy for him, with little delay or obligation, but impossible to achieve on her part, no matter how eagerly she might desire it. Moreover, once her virginity was gone, she had little value as a wife or a person, unless she had mothered a son, and could be passed along from man to man, either in marriage or otherwise, with little social obligation on anyone’s part. As a result of such easy divorce, and the narrow physiological basis on which sexual relationships are based, plus the lack of value of a woman once her virginity is gone, Arab marriage is very fragile, with divorce and broken marriage about twice as frequent as in the United States. Even the production of sons does not ensure the permanence of the marriage, since the sons belong to the father whatever the cause of marriage disruption. As a result of these conditions, marriage of several wives in sequence, a phenomenon we associate with Hollywood, is much more typical of the Arab world, and is very much more frequent than the polygamous marriage, which while permitted under Islam, is quite rare. Not more than 5 percent of married men in the Near East today have more than one wife at the same time, because of the expense, but the number who remain in a monogamous union until death is almost equally small.
As might be expected in such a society, Arabic boys grow up egocentric, self-indulgent, undisciplined, immature, and spoiled, subject to waves of emotionalism, whims, passion and pettiness. The consequence of this for the whole Pakistani-Peruvian axis will be seen in a moment.
Another aspect of Arabic society is the scorn of honest, steady manual work, especially agricultural work. This is a consequence of the fusion of at least three ancient influences. First, the archaic bureaucratic structure of Asiatic despotism, in which the peasants supported the warriors and scribes, regarded manual workers, especially tillers of the soil, as the lowest layer of society, and regarded the acquisition of literacy and military prowess as the chief roads to escape from physical drudgery. Second, the fact that Classical Antiquity, whose influence on the subsequent Islamic civilization was very great, was based on slavery, and came to regard agricultural (or other manual) work as fit for slaves, also contributed to this idea. Third, the Bedouin tradition of pastoral, warlike nomads scorned tillers of the soil as weak and routine persons of no real spirit or character, fit to be conquered or walked on but not to be respected. The combination of these three formed the lack of respect of manual work that is so characteristic of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis.
Somewhat similar to this lack of respect for manual work are a number of other aspects of traditional Arab life that have spread the length of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. The chief source of many of these is the Bedouin outlook, which originally reflected the attitudes of relatively small group of the Islamic culture but which, because they were a superior, conquering group, came to be copied by others in the society, even by the despised agricultural workers. These attitudes include lack of respect for the soil, for vegetation, for most animals, and for outsiders. These attitudes, which are singularly ill-fitted for the geographic and climatic conditions of the whole Pakistani-Peruvian area, are to be seen constantly in the everyday life of that area as erosion, destruction of vegetation and wild life, personal cruelty and callousness to most living things, including one’s fellow men, and a general harshness and indifference to God’s creation. This final attitude, which well reflects the geographic conditions of the area, which seem as harsh and indifferent as man himself, is met by those men who must face it in their daily life as a resigned submission to fate and to the inhumanity of man to man.
Interestingly enough, these attitudes have successfully survived the efforts of the three great religions of ethical monotheism, native to the area, to change these attitudes. The ethical sides of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam sought to counteract harshness, egocentricity, tribalism, cruelty, scorn of work and of one’s fellow creatures, but these efforts, on the whole, have met with little success throughout the length of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. Of the three, Christianity, possibly because it set the highest standards of the three, has fallen furthest from achieving its aims. Love, humility, brotherhood, cooperation, the sanctity of work, the fellowship of community, the image of man as a fellow creature made in the image of God, respect for women as personalities and partners of men, mutual helpmates on the road to spiritual salvation, and the vision of our universe, with all of its diversity, complexity, and multitude of creatures, as a reflection of the power and goodness of God – these basic aspects of Christ’s teachings are almost totally lacking throughout the Pakistani-Peruvian axis and most notably absent on the “Christian” portion of that axis from Sicily, or even the Aegean Sea, westward to Baja California and Tierra del Fuego. Throughout the whole axis, human actions are not motivated by these “Christian virtues,” but by the more ancient Arabic personality traits, which become vices and sins in the Christian outlook: harshness, envy, lust, greed, selfishness, cruelty, and hatred.
Once individual responsibility comes into the debate, there is no longer a possibility of claiming victim status.
When there is even the possibility of contributory negligence, people start taking a look at the actual circumstances, and that is what scares the Left. It is like eating salted peanuts: hard to stop with just one.
I think other Muslims have little sympathy for the Palies. Islam is a success gospel: if you a good you get your cookie here and now. If not then not.
Well, I always sort of thought that human behavior was a complex interaction between nature and nurture, but if the Palestinian leaders want to reduce culture to a dependent variable predicated on the independent variable of race, that’s fine by me. I mean, it does rather simplify the “social problem.” Since they’re behavior is in their nature, they can’t be reasoned with, they can’t be re-educated, they can only be killed.
Orwell’s classic 1984 infers that it was a major act of courage to tell the truth about anything. Mr Romney is absolutely correct when he mentions the disparity between the Western and Islamic economies. The Muslim countries, the phony philistines, have nothing to offer the West except for death, darkness, and destruction.
All true, and well said.
Now, apply the same reasoning to the black ghetto culture.
Same results.
Not race. Culture.
Some cultures are not just inferior, but vile and destructive.
Oh, and yes, political and religious culture DOES manifest itself in the arts.
I find the remarks concerning the Haredi and Israel’s demographics offensive.
The Haredi are no less human than the rest of us and in their own way will contribute to peace and stability in the ME.
We owe a lot, as “Western” civilization, to Judaism. The Haredi are a living part of it.
The press in the West has become absurd. Many accused Mitt Romney of racism for stating the obvious.
Here is how Bernard Lewis explained, in his interview to the Jerusalem Post, why the economy in any Muslim country cannot reach its potential:
There’s one other group of people that I think one should bear in mind when considering the future of the Middle East, and that is women. The case has been made, and I think there is some force in it, that the main reason for the relative backwardness of the Islamic world compared to the West is the treatment of women. As far as I know, it was first made by a Turkish writer called Namik Kemal in about 1880. At that time an agonizing debate had been going on for more than a century: What went wrong? Why did we fall behind the West?
He said, “The answer is very clear. We fell behind the West because of the way we treat our women. By the way we treat our women we deprive ourselves of the talents and services of half the population. And we submit the early education of the other half to ignorant and downtrodden mothers.
Governor Romney’s remarks were spot-on. The Islamic culture of the Palestinians and other backward Middle Eastern countries is counter-productive to progress, technological advancement, and even basic human dignity. That’s why they will always remain trapped in the Dark Ages. But the truth hurts, so it’s easier to shoot the messenger.
What Romney said just as true in 1930 as today: http://solomon2.blogspot.com/2012/08/will-durant-palestine-1930.html
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