RUTHFULLY YOURS

My starting point was from the observation that major countries of the west were disappearing. I then began investigating why that should be the case. During the last few years, some really authoritative research showed the relations between religion and fertility. I don’t think that this is so much a religious issue but a sense of confidence in the future. Religious faith is one expression of confidence in the future.

You surprised me in all that regards Islam. It has been known for some time that Europe is sinking demographically, but that this should be extended to the Muslims, too?

Indeed, Muslim birthrates are falling even in Europe. The single factor that best explains fertility across the whole Muslim world is literacy. Just on a purely statistical basis one can explain 60 percent of the variations of fertility on the base of literacy. And where you have detailed data, for example in Iran or Turkey, you can show a very strong differential in fertility between women with an elementary school education, a high school education and a college education. This is also exactly what is happening in Israel, and in Judea and Samaria. I am aware that convergence of fertility is an enormously controversial issue. Yet it is clear that there has been a convergence.

What about Iran?

In the case of Iran, we have something that has literally never been seen in all of world history, astounding demographers. The average Iranian comes from a family of seven children. For the average Iranian today, if you exclude some of the minorities, fertility is 1.6 to 1.7.

The Iranian leadership speaks about this issue publically and warns against a demographic catastrophe. Now, the west has a demographic problem too, but for a rich country and a poor country this is somewhat different. On current trends, by 2040 Iran will have an elderly-dependent ratio of 30%. And this is in a country with a personal income of merely a tenth of the United States! Going from 8% of elderly dependence in 2005 to 30% in 2040 — this is a catastrophe. No poor country in the world can deal with that kind of problem. So at this point it becomes a major strategic factor. From the grim viewpoint of the current Iranian leadership, this encourages adventurism.

I do not view demographics as destiny, but I do think that it is an important factor in Iranian calculations. They are at the peak of their power; they have a big young generation; they feel they have the historic opportunity to establish Shiite dominance in the Middle East. If they lose this opportunity now, they may never have another. So their willingness to take risks, including risks related to developing weapons, supporting terrorism, intervening in Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is all the greater.

And this is out of their understanding that they are shrinking?

They are indeed shrinking. They are at the maximum of their demographic power now. Look at it from the Iranian standpoint — next door to them is Pakistan, which still has a very high birth rate. The military-age population of Pakistan is three times that of Iran. In another generation it will be even larger. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is in dispute with Iran over Baluchistan. Iran’s other neighbors, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, will also swamp it demographically within a generation. If Iran does not maximize its power now, it may never have another opportunity to do so. So from an Iranian standpoint, there is a certain element of rational calculation in its conduct.

There is no reason to attribute apocalyptic religious beliefs to the Iranian leadership. However, if they do not establish their Shiite crescent dominance in the next 5 or 10 years, their historical opportunity to do so may have passed forever, and I think that that encourages their adventurous behavior and makes them more dangerous. Accordingly, I suspect that the Iranians want to develop nuclear weapons no matter what they say.

How do you understand the recent negotiations of the five superpowers with Iran?

I believe that the Iranians are simply trying to buy time to acquire nuclear weapons. I think they are pursuing a North Korean strategy. Once North Korea got their nuclear weapons, everyone had to be nice to them. Even the Chinese are afraid to tamper with the North Koreans. If, God forbid, Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will be a real disaster and an intractable problem. As an American, my view is that the United States should stop them from getting nuclear weapons by any means we can, including force.

How do you explain the Obama administration’s behavior on this issue?

Well, I think Obama has a deeply sentimental attachment to anti-colonialism. There is a passage in his autobiographic book “Dreams of My Father” in which Obama writes that although in Indonesia people were very poor, and might have to carry firewood for hours to cook their dinner, but they had a culture, traditions, and a sense of identity that Americans lacked, and in a sense, were thus better off.

His identification with third world peoples fighting colonialism is something which he talked about quite openly. That is his family background. His father was a Kenyan Marxist Muslim. His stepfather was a Muslim, too, and his mother spent her life defending local Indonesian craftsmen against globalization. So that was how he was brought up.

This is why I think Obama will give the Iranians the benefit of the doubt. He clearly thinks that the west was in the wrong with the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh [Iranian prime minister in the early 1950s]. You know, the CIA actually issued an apology for having overthrown Mossadegh. That is quite unusual. The Obama administration clearly believes that the Iranians have a reason to be suspicious and resentful of the west. As for myself, I believe his sentimentality and ideology overwhelm his good judgment.

In your book you criticize political science and the American attempt to put civilizations, cultures and nations in rationalistic frames of work.

Yes, there has been an underlying consensus in the U.S. between democrats and republicans that the American political system can be exported. That if you establish democratic institutions the democratic forms will transform attitudes. In Marxist terms: being determines consciousness. When the Arab spring came up, this was the mainstream view of both political parties in the U.S. — namely, that if you had Islamic democracy, the democratic elements will outweigh the Islamist elements, and that the natural evolution of the Arab world would come to resemble something like Turkey. As we have seen more recently, Turkey is not a democratic successful story.

At the same time, the so-called Arab spring has collapsed completely. Egypt got the best deal it could possibly get, with the support of Saudi Arabia. This is a country that cannot feed itself, and the Saudis are willing to subsidize Gen. [Abdel-Fattah] el-Sissi but not [Mohammed] Morsi. As you know, both the Obama administration and Republican figures deplored the military takeover on account that it stopped the evolution of Egyptian democracy. That in my view is a characteristically American flaw. This is not a Democratic or Republican view. It is a distorted American view of the world.

In America everybody gets along well. We get on fine with Muslims, Hindus and everybody. Consequently, we assume that if everybody gets along here why shouldn’t everyone get along outside of America? But it must be remembered that America had a very different history. The people who came to America did not care so much about their ethnic identity. In America, your ethnic identity becomes diluted. American Muslims are typically better educated and earn more than native-born Americans. On the other hand, they have less control over their children than they would have in a Muslim country. Yet, although there are some Muslim extremists in America, the American Muslim minority chose to become Americans. The same is not necessarily true for the Muslims who stayed home, in the countries of origin.

American democracy is unique. We created a new kind of ethnicity which is not ethnic at all. This is a country built on a legal philosophical principle. Other countries which are rooted in ethnicity have much greater difficulty putting the emphasis on individual rights, as opposed to collective identity. Collective identity has been the norm for most countries. The idea of individual identity, however, is a rare thing. The idea of covenant as the foundation of western democracy is built into American history and founding, into the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This is what makes America a very hospitable place for everyone, particularly for Jews. But this covenantal idea is very hard to export, even perhaps impossible to export.

How do you explain that out of all world problems, the U.S. secretary of state chooses to concentrate mainly on the dispute between ourselves and the Palestinians?

Because he thinks he can push Israel around. The U.S. is completely impotent in regards to Iraq, to central Asia. Obama won’t do anything about Iran, but thinks that because Israel is dependent on the United States it can force Israel to be part of their social experiment, their great utopian social experiment. That is what people like [U.S. Secretary of State] John Kerry do — they try to make the world better by forcing people to conform to their ideological inclinations.

This is really a terrible situation for Israel because it clearly is in need of the United States. I don’t get involved in Israeli politics, but as a simple matter of logic, I think it would be very dangerous for Israel to accept what Kerry is talking about. Certainly if there is an imposed settlement that Israel will reject, there will be penalties. Yet, whatever the penalties are, I prefer to accept those penalties than commit suicide. I think it is a real disgrace.

Where is the U.S. Jewry in all this?

I am very disappointed in the American Jewish community in the U.S.

What the data shows is that liberal Jews are soon to be former Jews. The rate of intermarriage, assimilation, loss of Jewish identity, is unprecedented. U.S. Jewry is gradually sinking into the general population.

So how do you explain their behavior?

You know, I came from a left-wing, secular background myself. I was born in New York City. Like most Jews, my observance consisted merely of a limited number of rituals. Americans have enormous pressure to assimilate and be part of the general mass of America. The idea of identifying with the Jewish people in America looks like an ethnic identification. Thus, among the younger Jewish generation there is a tendency to be embarrassed by Israeli passion, drive, and intensity. Culturally they are very different.

The situation of contemporary American Jews can be compared to German Jewry at the end of the nineteenth century. I see many similarities.

I think you are exactly right. And if American Jews are “whoring after strange gods,” this god is [Emanuel] Kant; the idea of universal peace and the thought that rationalism is the solution to all problems. That’s the reigning ideology. Kant was the substitute god of German Jews from Hermann Cohen on. And although most American Jews don’t know who Kant is, they nonetheless have adopted his way of thinking. That is why I wrote this book.

The idea that everyone’s problems can be solved by rational means is the dominant ideology of liberalism. If that’s true, Israel is an anomaly. My argument is that you cannot solve the problems of most people because most people don’t want their problems solved. They’ll cling to their prejudices, their ethnicity, their ideology, and eventually disappear. And the norm for peoples is to disappear. And most peoples disappear because they lose the will to live. That is typical of history. To survive is atypical. In my book I attempted to call attention to the facts that most peoples die because they lose the will to live; not because Emanuel Kant or some other genius did not come up with a solution to their problems. But this is antithetical to liberalism.

Why is this?

Because liberalism is a fanatical belief in the human intellect to solve all problems. It is a form of paganism. American culture, except for the 30% or so which is seriously Christian, believes in worship of the self. There are two ways to worship the self. You can worship your body or your brain. You worship your body — you are a narcissist; you worship your brain — you are a rationalist.

In your book, you write about the relationship between religious belief and political regime, differentiating between the Judeo-Christian culture and the Muslim culture.

We spoke earlier about the difference between a covenantal society and one based on collective identity. The idea of human individual worth and creativity is fundamental to Judaism. Judaism is based on the concept that the covenant is a partnership between God and man; That God condescends to become partner with man. Man has godlike qualities and in fact can change nature. This idea is somewhat attenuated in Christianity but the idea of covenant is still very much part of it.

The Muslim idea makes God absolutely transcendent, absolutely remote. Man is here below. God is absolutely powerful. God can arbitrarily shift and change laws of physics. God decides what will happen moment to moment. If I fire a bullet and it goes through your head that is Allah’s will. We have no real individual capacity. This religion does not favor the idea of individual freedom, individual self-determination or individual creativity. And for the past nine centuries, Islam has produced very little in the way of science, art, literature, or political innovation, whereas Jewish and Christian societies have done so, with all their flaws.

I am not saying that Muslim democracy is impossible, but we have never seen a real example of it. Turkey was supposed to be that example but failed in this. Democracy is not an easy system to maintain. Democracy means: I vote for someone I don’t know. He’s not a member of my family. Off that person goes to a capital, hundreds of miles away, and sits and bargains with other people chosen in a similar way, and this group of people might come up with a decision that I hate, but because I believe in the process I will be loyal to that decision.

In a Muslim society, where identity is first of all to clan and tribe, nobody trusts people they don’t know. They define their interests according to the interests of their group. The idea of a political process and a legislature is completely abstract. It is very hard to win that kind of loyalty. The idea of putting one’s faith in that kind of abstraction requires either a religious belief or something similar to a religious belief in the dignity and morals of the individual. That is the western idea.

What policy are you proposing to the United States and the west in general?

My argument is that it is not our job to fix these countries, but to secure ourselves against the consequences of their decline. Call this a cold-blooded and self-interested policy, if you wish. The west is not capable of fixing these problems as long as those countries are in the grip of an ideology which leads to their decline. Therefore, we should reward our friends and intimidate our enemies. We should make clear to the Iranians that developing nuclear weapons will cause them terrible harm. I think we should have used military force before this to interrupt the Iranian nuclear development.

How do you convince your average American that they have an interest to support Israel?

Well, I would ask the average American how they would feel if an Iranian nuclear bomb went off in an American city. Iran is the major state-sponsor for terror, so if Iran gets nuclear weapons, terrorism may get nuclear weapons. Israel is America’s most important ally in combatting terrorism. Just because we haven’t had a mass terror incident since 9/11 it doesn’t mean that we’re safe. So American security interests are served by strategic ties with Israel.

Secondly, I would say that, as a matter of justice, we Americans should be allied with peoples who share our values. And Israel’s thriving and vibrant democracy, founded on the same idea of covenant that is at the foundation of America, is a country we should support by virtue of our own principles. By supporting the peoples who share our principles we show that we take our own principles seriously, which strengthens us.

What do you have to say to the people of Israel, as a visitor to our country?

For all your problems, and Israel surely has many problems, by many standards you are the most successful society in the world. Certainly demographically Israel is the most successful society in the industrial world. Also in terms of technological and cultural achievement. Israel should think very deeply about what makes it so successful and cultivate those qualities, and not take to heart the criticism of the rest of the world — I would attribute a great deal of that to jealousy. Be proud of what you have accomplished and stick to your own identity, it is the source of your accomplishments.