Muhammad and the Movies

I am expected to condemn violence and incitement to violence. But I have a problem with chicken and egg scenarios because they represent an insoluble conundrum. What came first?

I have read the Koran on more than one occasion and each time it made me itch.  It is a blue print for conquest, it invites the faithful to commit violence and murder against Christians and Jews, and it is the personification of intolerance.

It scares me like no other book I have ever read.

Page one is an act of supplication and affirmation; page two an affirmation of intolerance and exclusion; by page three we, the disbelievers, are warned and then threatened and by page four the faithful are averred the right to kill those that disbelieve.  Murder as an act of faith is justified in four pages and there are many hundreds more pages through which we must wade to the bitter end. Much of the account is poetic and none of it is time specific. And here is the problem.

The Bible was written over many centuries but it ends, depending upon your faith, at the latest, by the end of the second century of the Common Era.  Few people believe in either the literal meaning of the first or second Testament (The Torah or the Christian Bible).  But the Koran is not time specific so then, as now, in the sixth century of the Common Era and in the 21^st Century of the Common Era the narrative and its instructions are neither changed because of circumstances nor alterable for the passage of time. The enemy is the same enemy, destined for turning, or designed for death.

Does this mean that we in the civilised West should keep to our principles and condemn that which offends them as we would expect them to condemn that which offends us?  It was after all Hillel who in the first century before the Common Era proclaimed as the article of Jewish faith, "do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you".

When the followers of the Prophet Muhammad will stone the fundamentalist who rapes the child (because it is not his right to take a bride for the sole reason that she is able to menstruate); and will bludgeon to death the cartoonist drawing caricatures of Jewish apes and Christians pigs (because anthropomorphic representations are the way the Koran depicts us in order to ridicule us); and when the burners of Churches and the bombers of Buddha’s are hanged from the tallest of Cranes (and the Episcopal Church demands a boycott of the makers of the cranes), then perhaps we may share our experience of existential pain and discover a collective humanity that demands a mutuality of respect.

But while in Pakistan a developmentally disabled child can be falsely accused of blasphemy as a pretext to the ethnic cleansing of all Christians in the neighbourhood; and while in Dubai (and throughout the rest of the Arab world) human slavery is alive and well because we are all of us inferior and unworthy of anything but penance for the crime of our birth, then please, do not demand of me a respect that you are incapable of reciprocating.

And when the Imams that spew hate from their pulpits with every breath proclaim that we have no right to protest their evil words because they are the words of their god Allah and the writings of the Koran, his writings as delivered by his most holy servant, the Prophet Muhammad, then please do not ask me to condemn a movie that portrays the Prophet in a less than friendly way.

Duplicity demands conditional tolerance, but peace will accompany a narrative that is sincere because from it will emerge mutual respect.

Scandal at London Metropolitan University

Last week, here in the UK, a scandal erupted, like a volcano, and damage done, it just as quickly subsided. Perhaps this is because all the interested parties are desperate for the wreckage to be discretely cleared with as little fuss as possible so that there is no lasting harm to the environment, in this case the higher educational environment.

London Metropolitan University (LMU) had its authority to issue student visas to people outside of the European Community revoked. It means that up to 2,600 students will need to either find a new university willing to take them or be deported, and they have till December this year to do it. Unsurprisingly, the University has cried foul and is suing the customs authority!

Some facts:

1. The British university industry was worth £40 billion last year. Let me say that again. British universities (not colleges, just universities) did business this last year to the tune of forty thousand million pounds sterling.
2. Foreign students contributed £13 billion last year to the UK economy.   They paid a minimum of £12,000 each, per year, to study here (English students now pay up to £9,000 per year for the same privilege). But all this is in payment for an inadequate and substantially devalued education, more about that later.
3. It is a scam which encourages a corrupt education system because the bigger the number of students, the greater the prestige for the UK industry as a whole and the higher the salaries that will be demanded by the professors for their services.
4. I object to this arrangement because those that can afford to come here are under no obligation to demonstrate tolerance towards the natives with whom they interact nor do they need to leave behind their repugnant prejudices.  And their professors will bow down in worship to anyone who aids them in increasing their prestige and their power.  As a consequence, heightened anti-Jewish radicalism has not been discouraged by universities that view the contribution of their client roster to their wallet or purse as infinitely more important than integrity, or the safety of their fellow citizens.
5. The London Metropolitan University has objected on the grounds that:

a)     everyone was doing it

b)     the rules changed 14 times over 3 years so they couldn’t ‘cope’

c)  LMU students spoke 100 separate languages, the standards were never standardised, it is therefore ‘impossible’ to deliver a test that is accurate for everyone.

First a reminder.  This is an Institution of Higher Education. The state, your taxes and mine provide hundreds of millions of pounds to each institution because it is understood that they are ALL capable of doing research and coming up with solutions.

The reality is a little more complicated.  I completed a course at my wife’s former college and the lecturer used her own slides, they were grammatically incorrect and some were misspelled.  She gave answers to questions on the test paper because she did not cover the material during the course.  Some 500 colleges have had their licences to sponsor international students removed (because the new rules made it too difficult for them to manage the process ‘safely’).

It would appear that the initial premise of higher education authorities being entrusted with devolved authority to authorise applications by foreign nationals to study in the UK was based on a logically flawed, in fact wildly naïve idea that Universities would behave with legal probity, in contradiction to their own self-interest.  In fact all that happened is that the UK Border Agency was once again scapegoated for what must have been a cynical Foreign Office ploy.

What is the difference between a college and a university? In theory a university carries out research while a college should only teach vocational courses. In practice most colleges offer lots of courses unconnected to vocational training.  The problem becomes focussed when we realise the slight of hand that government carried out some years ago when it reclassified some 200 colleges as universities. They did not seek to demonstrably increase the quality of education provided but for the newly reclassified universities their revenues sky-rocketed. Today there are 147 ‘Universities’ in the UK (that is the number I was able to find listed via web search).  Some of those ‘universities’ are the amalgamation of former geographically unconnected colleges.

The penultimate audit carried out 6 months ago stated that London Metropolitan University had not carried out audits of its own as required: It failed to adequately monitor classroom attendance, barely knew who it had on its classroom registers, did not monitor the level of English knowledge its students had and did not check to see if its students were legally permitted to reside in the UK (many were not). This is incredible because what it means is that the university took students money but:

1. Did not bother to check that students attended classes (one has to assume that if they were not in receipt of bursaries then they were earning very good money to make up for their annual fees)
2. Many of LMU’s students had so incomplete a knowledge of the English language it was simply inconceivable that they should be accepted to study a course taught in the English language.
3. Britain’s Universities are the lungs of Islamic radicalisation. Three heads of University Islamic Societies in London have been convicted of terrorist offences (one tried to blow up a British plane). If they are so irresponsible that they accept people they cannot be bothered to monitor in the way a normal university monitors its ‘real’ students then they become complicit in terrorism and, murder.

Secret files obtained by The Daily Telegraph and Wiki Leaks early in 2011 disclosed that at least 35 terrorists held at Guantánamo Bay were indoctrinated by extremists in Britain.

And now London Metropolitan University is complaining because it may be forced to repay funds provided for fictitious students.

Six months on from the first Border Agency Audit Report they found that none of the faults or criticisms cited had been addressed.  Unsurprisingly, they withdrew their license.

But it gets worse.

A friend’s elder son graduated recently from a three year degree course in Psychology.  He is lucky to have had a steady part time job that (when he completed his degree) has now become his means of making a living. He works as a store-man, check-out jockey and general shop assistant at his local supermarket but he now has a degree to prove he can do it. 

His degree cost £8,500 per year excluding accommodation and living expenses. It started each year at the end of September, in theory going through to mid July the next year (which would be ok because after 2 term-breaks, again in theory this is equal to 8 months study). In practice, excluding term-breaks of over one month, his course ended each year at the Easter break (end of April) so he effectively paid for a degree course that lasted at most 6 months. That is English university education!  What also has to be factored into the overall cost of education is that he will have been paying rent for 12 months and not 6 months.

There is a far more serious issue here as well.

Some 35 years ago a study was commissioned that revealed some surprising results. 80% of all jobs that were filled by university graduates could as easily have been done by those who left school at the end of high-school and did not continue their studies.  But the lobby for the commercial sector vigorously promoted the idea that it was the responsibility of government to prepare the young for the world of work.  Taxation had already paid for this unquantifiable benefit. Education was simply, not their problem. Government failed to argue against this proposition but it could not afford to fund higher education on its own. Hence we created a monster that grows ever more bloated by the year and with increasing corpulence has come greater arrogance and a high-minded self-aggrandizement that disfigures the national economy as it is destroying society.

Those people who want to learn are being failed by an academic education system that has no ethical responsibility towards the society that hosts it.

I feel sure that length of semester (term) and exorbitant pricing of academic study are world-wide phenomena; let us call it a contagion.   Not everyone can be a shelf-filler with a Bachelor of Arts degree (BA) but this is also a worldwide curse.  Similarly, to do a basic secretarial or administrative job with typing, filing and timetable coordination for the boss requires a BA whereas 5-10 years ago an 18 year old could have done it blindfolded. They still could but without a degree they are more likely to now be unemployable.

And that is the tragedy that awaits our youth today.  Too many of them are doomed to drifting and hopelessness.  Democratic Society has betrayed its contract with its citizens.

This is the urgent problem that society is desperately in need of addressing.

We should start by dividing education at aged 14 (or younger) into vocational and scholarly tracks that permit our youth to decide on going forward into a university path or apprenticeship.  The jobs that we may learn via apprenticeship (and most jobs fall into this category) should be returned to industry. If we have to, give them tax breaks.

If society is to be saved we need to approach this subject with brutal honesty, not personal ego and prestige.

Labelling

We are all born with labels. Some labels are inherited from our parents (even though not all are genetically forced upon us) and some labels are imposed on us by society.

The labels we are born with denote our genetic disposition: white, black; red-head, blond; blue-eyed, brown eyed; short, tall; fat and thin.  The labels we inherit without any biological markers are the religion of our parents, our prejudices, and more critically, our feelings of self-worth (you’re over-weight, your stupid).

Some are legal and some insidious.  They denote our status in society, for instance, married or divorced, single or spinster. Being a spinster denigrates womanhood and there is no similarly disparaging term for a man in the English language.  We are old and young, a goody-goody or a cad.  Labels are used to reinforce class divisions. And then there are the judgements of society: retarded, slut, lazy and over-sensitive.

As often as not these latter names serve no more than to impose the values or prejudices of one group onto another. Very soon after 9/11 Britain’s Labour government introduced legislation intended to stifle speech that it defined as inflammatory. The Imam of the Central London Mosque stated that if the new law protected Muslims from violence it was ‘acceptable’ as long as it did not impede the Islamic right to free speech.

What he inferred was that religious prejudice was acceptable when it served an Islamic purpose while anything opposing it was incitement. When the head of the extreme British National Party or ‘BNP’ was tried in court for a speech that was deemed to have incited hatred against Muslims he won the case because he proved to the court that he was simply taking quotes from the Koran and pointing out the danger inherent in what Islam itself allows its followers to say and do. After the courts failure to convict, the government responded that it would have to consider ways to tighten up the law. Few supported this Liberal-Left attack on free speech. It implied that Islamic racism and its incitement to violence was acceptable while protesting against it was not. And we have seen this principle used against Israel, here in the UK.

In this case labels have been used to criminalise those who practice free speech and to attempt to assign privileges to one group over another.

But then labels are far too often used to reinforce comfortable prejudices. By their repetition these sound bites serve only to benefit the mentally lazy.  They are a short-hand for those determined to remain ignorant; those to whom ‘thought’ must be served up as a convenience food. One must not disturb that which intolerant people regard as serving a purpose.

When society applies different rules to separate groups it is a form of legalised and intermittent apartheid (another label).  Rape and murder become words with flexible meaning (more labels) because they help to explain justifiable cultural requisites. If some justify this as necessary political correctness in order to actively support minority rights the problem is in the despotic nature of its result. Throughout history the wolf pack has been dominated by the alpha male whose active participation rarely encouraged justice but often rallied support for terror.

More labels.  Football clubs have their supporters, trains their train-spotters, and of course society has its Philo and anti-Semites. Bimbos and Feminists are labels we use to denigrate women or raise them, and Essex girls in England have their equivalent in American princesses.  How many of us know a nerd or an ‘anorak’? Political labels define us as Zionists and anti-Zionists, Liberals and Conservatives, extremists or moderates.

The labels we use define our society and they are necessary because without them we could not maintain a consistent approach.  They are a short-hand which defines our condition.  Democracy is dependent on the transparency of justice but labels define the Law (by which they too often limit justice for the sake of consistency of purpose and incorruptibility) just as labels define the system of government we use. 

All these labels make up our identity. 

Identity was initially defined by tribe, then by religion and then by nationality. In the 20^th Century the Nazis attempted to replace German faith with a state religion that it incorporated into the national ethos. In totalitarian societies labels are used not simply to define limits but also to compartmentalise those who are empowered, those who are disenfranchised and the multiplicity of identities in between.

For those who declare ‘their way’ to be the only legitimate form of expression, it makes sense that those who do not follow them are opposed to them.  Dissension becomes illegal and must be obliterated, order is essential, it is linear and hierarchical.  Dictatorship craves order, is all predictable and operates within defined limits.  Identity is us and them, and the ‘them’ are inevitably inferior, demonised and persecuted. There is no grey area in these societies.

There are forces in all societies that will strive for there to be only one way and their calling card is intolerance and fear.  But the failure of democracy may well come about because in trying to be all things to all people we satisfy no one.  A fragmented national identity will disintegrate under the burden of fear and hopelessness which is fed by the collapse of confidence in society.

We need an identity, no matter how complex it may be, to identify the path to travel; we need a road map to arrive at the destination.  We may take various paths to arrive at our destination but without consistent rules our paths will inevitably and violently collide.

If there is one thing that is killing Western Society it is that we have lots of labels, but no depth of vision in which to position our labels onto our road map so that it secures justice for everyone.

IDF Abuses and the Wider Issue

I have been reading with interest the recent flurry of articles about IDF abuses – there was one article about hazing (the practice of harassing or physically abusing a new recruit or low ranking soldier) in which one soldier almost died, another mocked a units long held tradition of individuals carrying a small vessel around their necks – we won’t discuss what was allegedly stored inside each vessel. There have been other controversies but the latest article (as reported in Ynet news) concerns an initiative undertaken by an Israeli organisation called “Breaking the Silence” whose aim it is to shed light on the abuses suffered by enemy youth at the hand of Israeli soldiers.  In the organisations own words:

“Deterioration of moral standards finds expression in the character of orders and the rules of engagement, and is justified in the name of Israel’s security. While this reality is known to Israeli soldiers and commanders, Israeli society continues to turn a blind eye and to deny that which is done in its name”.

The down side is that at the time of the UN Goldstone Report fiasco “Shovrim Shtika” (its Hebrew name) was wholly foreign funded and supplied Goldstone’s investigators with information later proven to be fabricated but which succeeded in damning Israel internationally. 

I read a commentary on the latest revelations in the British national newspaper “The Independent.” Next to the article was another article but about the Holocaust. (“The Holocaust: How relevant is it to today’s society?”) The juxtaposition was deliberate. If there is one reason to hate “The Independent” - it is its insensitivity and reprehensible bias.

I do not believe that submitting the report to the army before publicly releasing it would have generated a response that addresses the issues that are raised.  Any organisation faced with systemic failures will prioritise its budget to addressing what is important to its survival and not what it regards as either peripheral or inessential to its continued vitality.  But what is at issue is that unchecked power corrupts and without the application of ethical controls any organisation will lapse into morally dubious practices on an institutional level.

The more serious consequence is that it is unreasonable to assume a delineation of boundaries between work and private life.

I know that Israeli soldiers do acts of amazing kindness towards our enemy and theirs under extreme conditions of threat and violence.   But this is neither going to be reported nor if it was, would it assist in countering the propaganda value that a negative story presents.

All the excuses in the world do not negate the obvious –I do not care what the Arab world thinks about me. I do care about the ethical well being of Israeli and Western society.   Prolonged conflict desensitises everybody to the harm done to society’s values.  Remorse is of no consequence if we are unable to address the wider issue of power and its misuse.

Jewish Identity & Israeli Exceptionalism (P II)

The State of Israel provides the platform for all people to worship freely. That includes Israel’s Arab minority.  This is in opposition to the intolerance and persecution of minorities that is central to Islamic culture and an Islamic theological pillar of conditional tolerance which can be revoked at any time.  Every state (including Israel) is entitled to embrace its past, celebrate its present and anticipate a positive future.  That is how we retain our identity.

A Jewish identity does not require a law of return and it is time for it to be abolished.  A constitution that recognises the historic Jewish identity of the State does not preclude the provision of equal rights to all of its citizens irrespective of their race, creed or colour. The minority population in Israel has equal rights. It doesn’t have the right to support the enemies of the State.  This also should be spelled out. Israel has a Jewish identity and it should be enshrined in its constitution.  Any discrimination must be addressed. However, action by the Israeli-Arab leadership that undermines and challenges the Jewish nature of the State is unacceptable. The right to democratically seek superior status at the expense of the majority Jewish population is a betrayal of the State.  It is a right that no one demands of the Saudis, or any other Muslim nation. And Israel is a nation surrounded by Muslim nations that respect only that which is enunciated without ambiguity. The State of Israel should take the bold step to declare that Judaism is part of its national identity.

I hope that I do not promote hatred of Islam – promoting ones own past does not have to be at the expense of others.   However, in the West, particularly in England we are fighting a battle against the revision of Jewish history that denies Israel any past as a means of ensuring that it has no future.

History is the whole past not just the bits that the anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish bigots want to celebrate or rewrite. Separate education and separate housing must also be abolished.  While the Arab think-tanks have effectively called for the setting up of voluntary Arab Bantustans – autonomous Palestinian areas within Israel, this is a fundamental challenge to the independence of the State.  On a wider note, it is one the ultra orthodox would support because they actively desire the same separation and for similar reasons that the Arab sector desires it. And it must be opposed for the same reason.

Israel’s basis for establishment is recognised in the universally accepted right of all peoples to national self-determination and statehood. This was acknowledged by UN resolution. The state of Israel has been and continues to be the only nation-state of the Jewish people. The Islamic world has been fighting a proxy war against the existence of a Jewish State via allies that have overwhelmingly accepted the argument of a Jewish ‘oppressor’ while dismissing the obvious issue that the (Arab) ‘oppressed’ are also the oppressor. That complicates matters.

When we stop calling the State of Israel, ‘The Jewish State,’ it does not stop being a Jewish State, because intrinsically, it is understood to be so, but to describe Israel as Jewish is superfluous and antagonistic to those who are not. This identity is what Islamic religious bigots and Arab racists will passionately fight against.  To deny the Jewish centrality of the geographic area of Israel and thus its narrative importance is also fundamentally racist.  Whether one is Jewish or not, the historical reality of Jewish history both in the Holy land and in the rest of the Near East is unassailable. It is the reason the Islamic world with the active complicity of its Liberal-Left allies have tried to erase it archaeologically, deny its historic authenticity and through its international organs of religious, financial and political control to rewrite history to deny Israel a legitimate place amongst the nations. As a consistent act of denial it is the apotheosis of political and intellectual betrayal.

The impact that Israeli actions have on Jews in London is only real because we allow it to be so.  Recently the BBC and the Guardian refused to acknowledge Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. The only group willing to fight them was “Honest Reporting” (and they are not even based in Britain). They alone issued a complaint against the Guardian while the British Jewish establishment did nothing. When the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) outrageously accepted the Guardian premise and in fact embellished its own ruling against Jerusalem being Israel’s capital, “Honest Reporting” sued the PCC.  Almost immediately the PCC withdrew their contemptible judgment. The Guardian was forced to publicly backtrack.  HR is allegedly continuing with its case through the British courts.

Making truth of the lie is the propagandist’s weapon and we in Britain seem to be unwilling to invest resources in defeating them.  It is only when we actively prevent racist British institutions from creating facts that the conditions will take form that allow us to change the narrative. Identity is how we feel as well as how we present ourselves to others. It is how we react perceptually to external conditions as well as how our institutions guide us to behave that continuously reinforces as it feeds our identity, both communally and individually.

Anti-Semitism can and often does exist and thrive in a state without Jews.  Israel is the excuse but not the reason for Muslim bigotry. However, Israel is the historic fountainhead of Jewish faith, even as it fails as the spiritual source for its continuity it remains the ethical epicentre of monotheism and the historic, undeniable emotional soul of Judeo/Christian identity. This represents yet another reason for Muslims to theologically oppose its existence.  Islam, to the Islamic faithful replaces all other faiths, it physically denies them the right to exist outside of an Islam which imposes inferiority through Dhimmitude and an identity stripped of its past.

A synthetic national identity that was unable to reconcile a jingoistic nationalism with eloquently expressed, historically anchored intolerance created the conditions under which fascism thrived and Nazism became the dominant German ideology.  Similarly, the tribal nature of Arab society continues to ensure that reconciliation with parochial Islamism is next to impossible to achieve.  The artificial creation of Islamic nation states under European imperialist endeavours, in particular in the Arab world, has created enormous instability that is wholly independent of the existence of any Jewish state in their midst.

The Congress of Vienna created the modern nation state based on centralised power and unified ethnic societies.  This is in sharp contrast to the catastrophe created by the Sykes–Picot Agreement which artificially fashioned the Islamic mess we have all inherited today in the Near East. It gave Arab overlords dominance over non-Arabs with European weapons exchanged for oil nourishing this symbiotic but poisoned relationship.  The Arab Spring, far from bringing enlightenment and freedom to persecuted minorities has filled in the barely papered over cracks within Arab ruled society with a toxic brew of fundamentalism and intolerance.  It has brought bigots to power across the Arab world. It will embolden them to celebrate their past ‘glories’ as they deny us ours.  

In terms of the universality of civilisation – there is a convergence of values where murder and theft are proscribed virtually without exception. In “A German Identity 1770-1990” Harold James described the progressive radicalisation that took place, a loss of inhibition contributed to its momentum.  This resulted in the ends justifying the means. In Nazi Germany it enabled genocide to be explained away as the fulfilment of a supreme purpose. Islam through its missionary zeal already possesses the religious framework for this purpose.

The Liberal-Left establishment controls debate in order to ensure conformity. McCarthyism has been intrinsic to a philosophy of control. How reality is presented can and does determine the direction that society takes.  The Jewish establishment is no different except that it fears being outside of the consensus. Perhaps this is understandable. Jews have always stood apart. It is both their greatest creative strength and the source of their greatest weakness.

The righteous hypocrite requires no excuse for their display of passionate anti-Semitic prejudice.  But in that case any lie will do as long as it is plausible, and after a few smears the implausible becomes reasonable.  I am not saying that we can or should avoid the issues that are debated within Israel but when we hold back from debating the issues that afflict our society, it is easy to acquiesce to the lies and the false narratives of our enemies. Then our lies forfeit any right we possess as a ‘civilised’ nation to criticise what occurs in Israel.

But even so, our identity is sullied by the constant assault on our senses of a false storyline and its relentlessly negative publicity. Only when Israel reasserts its rights to an Israeli narrative will it also be capable of fighting its enemies deceptions and begin to win the war of world opinion.   It is a fight that affects us all.

Identity and Israeli Exceptionalism

In 2011 Mick Davis, a leader of the Anglo Jewish community, created a firestorm of controversy when he urged the prime minister of Israel to “find a way to take a great advance” in the Peace Process.  His entreaties to Bibi Netanyahu would have had greater currency if he had acknowledged the issues that weigh down the Arab-Israeli conflict. This was a huge failure for him.  To understand why this relationship between Israel, Diaspora Jewish communities and the non-Jewish communities remain so sodden with complexity we need to examine it from Israel’s side.

Transparency is a difficult concept to reconcile with security in a country surrounded by enemies whose theological and philosophic constructs are racist (pan-Arab) and religiously supremacist (Islam). A nation that is reliant on secrecy and ambiguity to survive must display sophistication in its approach to both enemies and friends.  Israeli politics is unfortunately too often neither of these things. It is loud, intemperate and usually lacking in nuance.

Leadership has been undermined because Jewish values which should unite the nation have been relegated to the home where they have no chance of impacting the external environment.  Sectarian point scoring and one-upmanship has replaced ethical debate, leaving most secular people to have little faith in the religious establishment. But this also weakens identity. The clergy cannot reflect on matters of a spiritual nature while they sup at the table of government. The Rabbis of old often warned against the dangers of corruption that power wrought. The Jewish people were powerless for most of the last 2½ millennia. Today religious and secular politicians co-habit the same political space and they do so without reference to traditional Jewish values.  Ethical guidance is reserved for tribal kith and kin or is wholly absent.  Each speaks a language which is separate to and limits the possibility of communion with others outside of their community of interest.  Our politicians should lead from the front. By creating consensus they can unite not just their own ideological community but the nation too. Their failure to effectively communicate across multiple divides is an overwhelmingly political failure of vision, both personal and national.

My father said that you build your life around your family; you do not build your family around your life.  This works at every level of identity.  The politics of provincialism creates conflict and disequilibrium because there will always be winners and therefore losers in the whore-house of coalition government.  With increasing factional division there occurs an escalating probability of obstructed justice. Communities compete against each other rather than supporting each other.

The debate in the USA between isolationism and its opposite, American exceptionalism, is mirrored in Israel. The difference is that America is a willing participant in the debate. Israel is not. The idea that any country is unique (hence exceptional), that it has a mission to spread its world-view (in the case of the USA it is democracy, freedom and equality) outside its borders will only work when that nation willingly has a vision to extend past those borders.  The task of surviving in a hostile geopolitical neighbourhood does not prevent Non Government Organisation’s (NGO’s) from participating in Israel’s national debate nor does it prevent them from holding Israel to account when it violates its own laws. But one-sided criticism is not constructive; it is interference, and it inevitably achieves the opposite by highlighting the dishonesty and therefore the clear conflict of interest in the argument.  Preaching someone else’s values only works when one is consistent and not influenced by a perceptually dishonest agenda at variance with the truth, or at least, with a different version of the truth.

Israel, by virtue of its emergent identity constantly defines itself by comparing and contrasting its actions and behaviours with that of other nations. As a Jewish island buffeted by an Islamic ocean; as an ethnically kaleidoscopic state threatened by a monolithic and aggressive Arab hegemon; Israel is a society of immigrants and refugees, of Israelis whose history is denied and falsified for the convenience of others. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that most Israelis do not willingly engage in a debate about identity except at the fringes of society. And even then, it is with the intent to nullify any progress towards equality. For example, Neturei Karta (a Jewish anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox sect) regards the Jewish Nation as being obliged to live in exile until the coming of the messiah. But by their appearance at Holocaust denial conferences in Iran, in support of their passionate hatred of Israeli sovereignty, they repel most secular Israelis and keep them from the synagogue. A further example is the extreme Left which demands that Israel behave in an exemplary manner even while the pressures of external threat and nation building continues unabated.  By refusing to acknowledge any but a myopic Arab or racist Muslim narrative they lose any right to contribute to the debate.  This is the reason NGO’s object so strongly to their programs inside of Israel and the Palestinian Territories being distinctly identified with donor detail.   Israel is often forced to practise ‘havlagah’ (self-restraint) in the face of enemy action but belligerency by Israel’s ‘friends’ creates fatigue and diminishes the influence of those who demand it.

While I may be embarrassed by some of the more awkward acts carried out on behalf of the State of Israel I do not live there and my right to a visceral reaction is tempered by acknowledging the emotive and therefore personal nature of my response.

Israel is only a disaster to those people who demand Israeli Exceptionalism, knowing it can never be delivered.  Nations may hold themselves to different standards and that is their crutch which we choose to share, or not. The Nakba (the Islamic loss of territory to the infidel in Palestine in 1948) is the narrative many in the West support even as they arrogantly interpret the event as a Jewish land-grab. But the Arab defeat in 1948 can only ever be viewed in theological terms in spite of its human costs.  In human terms it was a disaster for both sides. But disasters are easy to portray in Manichaean terms because facile arguments persuade facile people and sell ideas as easily as they sell ideologies and newspapers. Reductive journalism pulls at the heartstrings without necessitating any thought. It is ‘sound bite’ journalism at its ugliest. The Nakba is only a disaster for the racists who believe that Jews never had the right to free immigration, religious freedom and freedom from fear or threat of violence; in summary to self-determination. The Nakba is an Arab disaster. The Nakba is an Islamic disaster. Neither Arab nor Muslim sees fit to acknowledge the Jewish right to independence.  On 18th August 2012 Ahmadinejad in his speech to mark al-Quds day said that "The very existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to humanity." He added “Zionist presence on even one centimeter of Palestinian land was dangerous.” And today, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader and therefore the man controlling the strings of power in Iran blamed "many of the Islamic world’s problems” on Israel along with the usual obscene references to cancer.

Those Muslims that hang both Baha’i and homosexuals as proof of their tolerance cannot preach the superiority of their faith to anyone but themselves.   Those that commit rape against demonstrators will no doubt be honoured by the UN and courted by nations like China and Switzerland for their oil.  But if there is true evil in this world, it is they that uphold this delusional Iranian theocracy with every breath of their being. It is neither humanity nor politics that drives their zeal but religious mania, a theology that mandates captured territory as eternal Islamic patrimony (part of conquest philosophy known as Dar al-Harb). Mirroring ancient Israel’s relationship with ancient Rome, modern Jewish independence highlights deprived minority rights throughout the Islamic world.

The true narrative can either be that the Jewish ‘people’ are members of the family of nations or, of a nation, weak and isolated, confronted by a broad front of hostile Arab and Western nations, a diabolic conspiracy between Muslim states and a Western coalition of anti-Semitic and unreconstructed Liberal bigots.

Rhetoric helps to mould this view. Israeli self-defence is always communicated as revenge. Anti-Zionist propaganda is resolute in concealing any threats or prior provocations. Attempts by Israel to protect itself from its enemies are always condemned or qualified with a patronising debate about Jewish or Zionist paranoia. Israel has no right to constructively or dynamically protect its’ citizens, something that we take for granted when we permit every nation the right to security.

So we return to Identity. Israel’s detractors are more often than not preoccupied with masking their own prejudice by imposing peace-time standards on Israel while Israel is still at war or at best fighting a cold peace.  And the only way to justify their prejudice is to rewrite Jewish or Israeli (Zionist) history to fit their own bigoted narrative and agenda. (See my comments on Ilan Pappe - The Spy Chronicles. “There is no such thing as truth, only a collection of narratives”)

According to an essay by Evan R. Goldstein (“Reconciling the hyphens of identity”) “Harold Rosenberg argued that in a free society identity is more an act of will than an accident of birth and he defined it as ‘the problem of the voluntary aspect of modern identity.’ It is this very freedom that contains the seeds of so much terror, he continued. ‘People freely choose to subject themselves to totalitarian disciplines in order to be something,’ Rosenberg writes. ‘Perhaps even more, however, in order to quiet the anguish of possibility.’ It is the anguish of possibility - and the attendant feelings of isolation, homelessness, insecurity, and anxiety - that is at the heart of the crisis in Europe.  American citizenship, never a biological construct, extends a reciprocal offer to its immigrants: a national identity you can both assume and shape.”

Israel as a nation has a history in the region that is one of being a persecuted and ultimately eliminated minority as well as one of deep attachment to the land. By identifying with a history that is at least 3,000 years old and Jewish in terms of history, culture, civilisation and religion, it acts as a counterweight to an Islamic and Arab story that is one of ethnic invasion, conquest, cultural occupation, subjugation and denial.  An Arab and Islamic compulsion to rewrite history in their own image, to obliterate an unsavoury past is reason enough for Israel to continue to reassert its attachment to the land and, if anything, even more of a reason to reinforce its visual identity. Why should the State of Israel not have a Star of David on its flag?  It is the symbol of our political independence and the blue lines denote our religious identity (as in the strands of the talit). What is central to the identity of the majority of people within the State is nothing to which we need to be ashamed. Autonomy has been demanded by Muslim religious fascists in Birmingham and Leeds, both cities in Northern England with large Muslim populations.  Autonomy or institutional independence means forfeiting the right to a national vision.  Extremist elements within the Arab sector (whether of the left or the right) would soon exploit this with the active assistance of foreign agents and foreign NGO’s.  That is the nightmare scenario.  It is not multiculturalism nor is it Palestinian identification.

A national identity is dependent on having a basic vision of society while actively demonstrating tolerance for those who diverge from that vision.  There is a not too subtle difference between celebrating diversity and appeasing those whose aim it is to undermine and ultimately to destroy from within, the nation state.  That difference is the difference between mutual respect and a contemptuous minority subverting the host society in order to destroy it.

This is the first of two articles on identity and Israeli exceptionalism.

Marketing the Truth

Yossi Sarid is one of the grand old men of the Israeli Left.  On August 9^th 2012 he wrote an article for the much respected and frequently maligned Haaretz Newspaper, “Marketing the Truth has never been easy for Israel’s left.” It was both condescending and misleading.

The truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. There are few absolutes in life and even fewer in politics (Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1789 “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes".)  For instance, the taking of a life cannot be undone and therefore it is an absolute. But blood money has frequently been used to mitigate responsibility and to create layers within law that protect special interest groups. Blood money was first documented in the Code of Hammurabi some 3,800 years ago. The principle of reciprocity was class specific.  In the Hebrew bible (Leviticus) justice is applied across all social boundaries therefore, radically, slave and nobleman were equal before the law (“You are to have one law for the alien and the citizen” Leviticus 24: 19-22).

In the Dark Ages of Europe a payment to the grief-stricken family of the victim could both ameliorate and forgive guilt.  It was abolition of this clause in Western Law that helped us crawl out of the Sewers of the Dark Ages.  It is still part of the law in some nations. Its inherent potential for institutional inequality is well documented through its embrace in Sharia Law.

Nevertheless, in the Western World today, the taking of a life can be exonerated if it is defined as self-defence while the planned and deliberate taking of a life is defined as murder but may be extenuated under certain conditions. In between these poles a drunk driver who kills is treated by society as having committed the lesser offence of manslaughter.  So the truth is often absolute and conditional at the same moment according to the interpretation placed on it by the individual and by society.

The brutal killing of Dutch film producer Theo van Gogh in 2004 by a Muslim extremist was classified by the Dutch court as murder while at least 600 million Muslims throughout the world would view this taking of a human life as warranted by the act of incitement (perceived or actual) against Islam.

In his article, Yossi Sarid continues that “The left is often perceived as being elitist and condescending, but that’s not necessarily our fault”. Excuse me Yossi but politics is about action and perception. In politics nothing can excuse a failure to engage the public. Ideals are without value if we are powerless to exercise them and unless it is part of an effective opposition the party excluded from power is taking money from the public under political pretence.  Perhaps this is the reason Mr Sarid is a writer but no longer a member of parliament.

I can only speak from personal experience.  For a brief time I worked in a factory making car batteries. I complained to the Union Representative that we, the workers, were breathing in toxic fumes and yet we had no protective masks.  I was verbally reprimanded by the union rep who explained to me that I should have been grateful for the job I had.  The second anecdotal example occurred at a ceremony where senior Labour party officials, observed with patient benevolence the idealistic next generation enthusiastically appearing before them.  With naïve exuberance the group explained their future plans while one of these government officials stated, with sterile indifference, that their future was already decided for them.  That is the elitist approach. When government knows best, top down decrees are imposed for the supposed 'good' of all.

During the early part of the 20^th Century Left and Right was hegemonic and authoritarian.  Israeli politics developed during this period and has not moved beyond it. This is the reason that protest movements are so common and why splinter parties are a feature of the Israeli political landscape.  It is the only means by which the people may express their disapproval of the establishment.  It is also the greatest failure of Israel’s political system that people like Yossi Sarid are incapable of understanding this fundamental issue of governance.  A direct consequence of this failure is that ambiguity is institutionalised. It is the reason that Israel’s Supreme Court is so busy compared with other Western Courts. In an article in Stratfor (an Intelligence briefing service) dated 5^th April 2012 it is stated that “Government bureaucracies do not deal well with ambiguity.” Unfortunately for Israel it energises interested parties to abuse the law and neglect whole groups within society. Philosophers such as Noam Chomsky say that “Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose (American) hegemony.” We can apply this to any group that is sufficiently motivated to object strongly to any ideal or law with which they disagree. It may be the Revolutionaries justification for terror but is equally applied by special interest groups contemptuous of both law and society.

If, to quote Sarid (in the same article) “The music we produce isn’t pleasant to the terrified ear” then the failure is the failure of the likes of Sarid and Co.  The politics of betrayal is far too often fed by a lack of empathy, an intellectual inability to internalise the lessons of the past and an inability to communicate at the same level of discourse of the target audience.

Blaming it on the audience is vulgar and it is shameful.