RUTHFULLY YOURS

Multiculturalism – which celebrates the diversity of cultures and treats them as all equally worthy of respect – is all the rage in academia and other precincts of the Left. Yet that celebration of diversity often is little more than a cover for intellectual sloth, and a total lack of interest in the actual nature of any particular culture.

And where that sloth prevails, its corollary is likely to be an unfounded projection of one’s own culture onto others.

Nowhere is that phenomenon more evident than in American foreign policy on the Middle East.

Last month, I attended a panel in Jerusalem titled “Why Have ‘Peace Plans’ Backfired: How Honor-Shame Dynamics Affect Arab-Israel Relations.”

Anthropologists have applied the term honor- shame to societies organized around clan and tribe, in which group identity takes precedence over individual identity. Those societies are governed by elaborate codes of honor, the breach of which requires expiation in blood. If, for instance, someone outside one’s clan kills a member of the clan, it is incumbent on members of the clan to avenge that killing, regardless of who initiated the conflict or why, because the death of the clan member weakens the clan.

In honor-shame cultures, win-win thinking is absent; rival clans bear a zero-sum relationship to one another – whatever brings honor to one, of necessity brings shame to the other; honor is achieved by defeating and thereby shaming the other. Disputes tend to last forever. Harold Rhode of the Gatestone Institute, who served as a Middle East analyst in the US Defense Department for nearly 30 years, noted that in Hebrew the verb for payment comes from the same root as completeness and peace. The payment represents the end of a transaction in which ownership passes once and for all to the other party. In Arabic, the three-letter root for payment is the same as that for pushing – in other words, the transaction is never complete, what is yours today may be mine tomorrow; your possession is only temporary.

Soon after 9/11, I wrote a column about Immanuel Kant’s connection to that act of war against the U.S., against the West. I cannot recall when or where it was first published; it was long before I began penning articles for Rule of Reason; it was certainly before I had finished writing Sparrowhawk, which is also the subject of the essay. That essay and this one share the same title.

At any rate, I wish to thank John Webb in Britain for jarring my memory about the essay here and about the source of this column’s title by referring his correspondents to a site called, Counting Cats in Zanzibar and “Nick M’s” column on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, a conflict which heralded the self-destructive decline of the West. As John points out in his comments on the article, the chief culprit was a German (or Prussian) philosopher, Kant. He quotes Heinrich Heine’s response to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, aided and abetted by David Hume, who sustained a “philosophical mutual admiration” society of two with Kant. John noted:

“Hume’s principle contribution to philosophy was to invalidate the conceptual faculty…. In the process he reduced man to the level of an animal dependent on instincts.

He denied the validity of the senses, undermined our awareness of entities, he destroyed the the law of cause and effect, made reality unknowable, volition unsustainable, abstraction impossible. and turned all necessary truths into mere conventions…..

Kant just took the very worst of Hume and combined it with the very worst Plato – destroying the Enlightenment and setting the future Germany on its inevitable crusade against mankind.

Heine was no hero either but when he described Kant as “world-annihilating” he wasn’t wrong.”

I couldn’t have put it better. I can always count on John to synthesize essentials.

I’m writing this also on the occasion of the “ceasefire” between Israel and its mortal enemy, Islam, this time in the person of Hamas, the terrorist gang, and because the Foreign Policy article by former President Jimmy Carter and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson is a perfect example of the lunacy rampant in today’s political climate. Read the article. I would say that their article not only incorporates Kant’s and Hume’s principal tenets, but goes them one better by believing that a Hegelian melding of “thesis and antithesis” is possible, workable and in the interests of world “peace.” (I dramatize the essentials of this Ouija board philosophy in my detective novel, Presence of Mind., available on Kindle, as a print book, and on audio.)

A senior Hamas official and spokesman for the terrorist organization has once again rehashed a medieval, hate-filled, anti-Semitic blood libel. Speaking in Arabic to an Arabic audience on the Lebanese Al-Quds TV channel on July 28, Osama Hamdan stated the following; “We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence.”

Hamdan subsequently appeared on CNN and in an extraordinary exchange, was directly challenged by Wolf Blitzer who asked Hamadan if he really subscribed to these odious views. Hamadan punted and would not directly address the question instead claiming that his words were taken out of context and then predictably changed the subject. Blitzer then played a recording of Hamadan’s interview to reinforce the point and again Hamadan responded evasively prompting Blitzer to state derisively, “I was hoping to get a flat denial from you that you would utter such ridiculous words… that is an awful smear.”

Hamdan was clearly shocked by Blitzer’s query. He made his comments in Arabic and addressed them to an Arabic audience and did not expect or anticipate Western scrutiny. Arab officials routinely speak in forked tongues tailoring their narratives to the specific audiences being addressed. When speaking in Western forums, they appear polished and substantially moderate their tone. It becomes an entirely different affair when they are addressing Arab audiences, when the guard is down and full blown hatred and xenophobia excitedly come to fore.

Blood libels spewed forth by senior members of the Hamas organization should come as no surprise. After all, article 7 of the Hamas charter speaks of Jews hiding behind rocks and trees with the rocks and trees calling out, “0 Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!” Anyone capable of believing and indoctrinating themselves in such insanity is certainly quite capable of regurgitating blood libels.

But if you think that such outrageous talk is limited to Hamas or its cousin, Islamic Jihad, you are sadly mistaken. In fact, senior members of the Palestinian Authority, the group that the Obama administration considers to be “moderate,” have expressed similar views.

Dinner With Saba

Another Ramadan has past, but not without personal opportunity to examine a recent Muslim media darling, Saba Ahmed. The 9/11 Truther and other radical beliefs expressed by Ahmed and her associates during a recent interview make her aspirations of being the “head of the Muslim peace movement” not worthy of further consideration.

After achieving national notoriety with Brigitte Gabriel at the Heritage Foundation and in two subsequent Fox News appearances, further attention for Ahmed, such as a Nation interview, followed. Her lobbying firm “monitor[s] all congressional hearings related to national security,” Ahmed explained, “primarily targeting” everything thereby that “has to do with Islamists.” According to Ahmed, using this word “to define ‘terrorist’” contradicts Qur’an 2:256’s message that “there is no compulsion in religion.”

Ahmed’s recurring requests for interaction with me resulted in a July 17 invitation to an Iftar hosted by Make Space mosque, a “non-judgmental community” with a “strong focus on youth and young professionals.” Make Space emphasizes “universal as well as Islamic values of compassion, cooperation and service” as opposed to a “counter-productive focus on controversial issues” in Islam. At Alexandria, Virginia’s Dunya Restaurant I removed my shoes and entered to be met by mosque volunteers, including a South Asian-looking, unveiled American woman wearing business slacks and blazer.

Literature for Guidance Residential, the “Leader in Islamic home financing” for American interest-free “Home Ownership the Sharia Way,” filled a table near the entrance. A postcard featuring Justice Muhammad Taqi Usmani, Guidance Residential’s Sharia Board Chairman, caught the eye. A member of Pakistan’s Supreme Court since 1982, Usami played a key role in introducing sharia laws on blasphemy, corporal punishments, and other matters during Zia al-Haq’s dictatorship. The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims 2013-2014 edition ranks Usami 25th, a “leading scholar of Islamic jurisprudence” and “intellectual leader” of the Deobandi movement that gave rise to the Taliban.

Contrasting with laywoman Ahmed, Usami’s 2002 book Islam and Modernism does “not make excuses” for saying that the “command of jihad remains till the last day” and “killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah after they are humbled.” During jihad the “clear manifest truth is that taking slaves is permissible,” Usami’s Islamic slavery apologetic argues. “Fiercely anti-American” according to Investor’s Business Daily, Usmani has urged Muslim support for fighting American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Islamic teaching, however, “proves the impermissibility of playing backgammon,” another Usami article declares.

President Obama has been rightly chastised for his proposed cuts to our military budget. Critics have gone after his Quadrennial Defense Review and its plan to shrink the armed forces, not to mention the clumsy optics of issuing pink slips to thousands of officers still serving in Afghanistan. More troublesome is the reduction of the military’s global mission from its traditional purpose of being able to fight and defeat two enemies at once, to only defeating one while keeping a second from “achieving its objectives,” a conveniently fuzzy criterion.

Worse yet, these cuts are coming just as China and Russia are flexing their geopolitical muscles, the Middle East is exploding in sectarian violence, and Iran is creeping ever closer to nuclear weaponry. As a bipartisan panel created by the Pentagon and Congress concludes of these latest reductions, “Not only have they caused significant investment shortfalls in U.S. military readiness and both present and future capabilities, they have prompted our current and potential allies and adversaries to question our commitment and resolve. Unless reversed, these shortfalls will lead to a high-risk force in the near future. That in turn will lead to an America that is not only less secure but also far less prosperous. In this sense, these cuts are ultimately self-defeating.”

As the national leader and Commander in Chief, Obama deserves much of the blame for this strategic blunder. But let’s not forget the role of us voters in these decisions. Historically democracies have had a bad habit of preferring butter to guns, privileging shortsighted interests over long-term security.

Consider ancient Athens, the first democracy. In the 4th century BC, the Athenians created a public fund to pay poorer citizens to attend the theater and religious festivals, which were celebrated on over 130 days a year. Soon a law was passed to divert surplus money into that fund instead of the military fund, and a bit later another law made transference of surpluses to the military fund a capital crime. Unfortunately, during this same period Philip II of Macedon embarked upon a program of aggression against the southern Greek city-states. With his defeat of Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip achieved his aim, and the Athenians lost their political freedom. Ancient critics linked Athens’ defeat to the decision to starve the military in order to finance “entitlement spending.” Three centuries after Chaeronea, the historian Pompeius Trogus wrote of the Athenians, “The state revenues they had once spent on the army and the fleet were devoted instead to holidays and festivals,” and public money “began to be divided among the people in the city. In this way it happened that in a Greece preoccupied with entertainment the previously lowly and obscure name of Macedon was able to emerge.”

The David Horowitz Freedom Center will be hosting an evening reception with “Making David into Goliath” author Joshua Muravchik on August 13, 2014. For more information, click here.

Empathizing with the underdog is a natural human instinct. When we see a little David facing off against a mighty Goliath, our hearts go out to the little guy. But what happens when Goliath pretends to be David and then accuses David of really being Goliath?

That is the situation that Israel finds itself in and it is also the topic of Joshua Muravchik’s new book, Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel.

Muravchik’s book looks at how the Arab Muslim countries swapped a hard military war for a soft political and cultural influence operation that combined murderous terrorism with economic boycotts and academic programming to convince the world that Israel was Goliath and they were little David.

It’s easy to spot the absurdity of the region’s intolerant and supremacist Sunni Muslim majority reinventing its identity as that of an oppressed people, but Muravchik also shows how this reinvention used the so-called “Palestinians” as a political vehicle for larger cultural goals. The current portrayal of Arab Muslims as an oppressed group stems in part from their association with the “Palestinian” cause.

“The Arabs, notwithstanding their regressive social and political practices, nor their recent alignment with the fascist powers, now, in the guise of the Palestinians, assumed a place among the forces of virtue and progress while the Israelis were consigned to the ranks of the villains and reactionaries,” Muravchik writes in Making David into Goliath.

Israel, as David, was able to leverage its limited manpower and resources in strategic military strikes against much bigger, but less centered opponents. Its opponents however learned to leverage the less demanding tools of soft power, such as the United Nations, to win soft power conflicts by demonizing Israel in as many international forums as possible.

War is a hard test of competence and courage. Influence operations in an international body are a matter of alliances. Academia, whose corruption Muravchik extensively chronicles in his chapter on Edward Said, specializes in the ability to infinitely invert ideas and distort their meanings.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/congress-needs-its-own-hippocratic-oath/print/ Congress is now in recess. We can now all exhale. While the media makes much of how members of both the Senate and House of Representatives have left Washington without accomplishing anything, I would offer a different perspective. Let’s be fair: everyone who works is entitled to vacation — even members of Congress. Here […]

He wants to use the ceasefire talks in Cairo to strengthen Fatah.

In remarks Wednesday, Obama said, “I have no sympathy for Hamas. I have great sympathy for some of the work that has been done in cooperation with Israel and the international community by the Palestinian Authority. And they’ve shown themselves to be responsible. They have recognized Israel. They are prepared to move forward to arrive at a two-state solution. I think [PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, aka] Abu Mazen is sincere in his desire for peace.”

Obama’s plans for the ceasefire were spelled out in detail the day before in a column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. There Ignatius claimed that Secretary of State John Kerry has abandoned his previous position on the cease-fire. That position was harshly criticized by Israeli leaders and US media heavyweights, including Ignatius himself, for its clear bias in favor of Hamas.

In contrast to Kerry’s previous adoption of all of Hamas’s demands as official US positions, Ignatius wrote that “Over the past week, [Kerry] has been crafting a cease-fire plan that seeks to stabilize Gaza under the leadership of Abbas and the moderate Palestinian Authority….[The PA] (with the support of the international community) would have overall responsibility for the rehabilitation of Gaza.”

Ignatius continued, “The thrust of Kerry’s new plan is to leverage Hamas’s unity pact with Fatah and its pledge to transfer authority in Gaza to the [PA]. As a first step, the Palestinian Authority and its US-trained security service would assume responsibility for policing the Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt, as well as the passages into Israel.”

There comes a time when we have to start seeing the pattern, understanding its depth and meaning, and recognizing just how high are the stakes for the world we know.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

—Andre Gide
There is a Global Pogrom under way.

This is a terrible truth. And people tend to ignore terrible truths. So it must be said again: There is a Global Pogrom under way.

And another terrible truth must be spoken: The Global Pogrom has been under way for more than a decade. It has taken lives. It has destroyed property. It has injured, brutalized, and terrified Jews and Jewish communities in many nations. And it is creating a silent exodus, a de facto expulsion, an ethnic cleansing in slow motion.

To say again, because it must be said again, this is something almost no one wants to admit. A truth that almost no one, including many Jews, wants to speak or hear. But over the past month, it has become a truth that is impossible to ignore.

Yet even in the face of this, many continue to deny it, or at least to minimize it. And many, one regrets, have chosen to blame it on the Jews themselves.

A mere seven decades after the Holocaust, after the world was supposed to have learned its lesson, this is not only monstrous. It is not only evil. It is also an existential threat to the civilized world. Because the Global Pogrom presents the world with a stark choice: The Global Pogrom or civilization. And a civilization, any civilization, that cannot or will not say no to barbarism, is no longer a civilization at all.

Despicable! Outrageous! Do I have to dig back into my Thesaurus, Wolf Blitzer, to find more adjectives for your coverage over the past four weeks? You took sides. You fell flat on your face, disgraced yourself, disgraced everything that’s ever been taught in the schools of journalism.
In this topsy-turvy world this will probably win you an Emmy. Do I hear Pulitzer?

I swear, if soldiers are apt to be court-martialed, so too journalists for deception. Yes, I hold you criminally negligent for manipulating emotions to favor terrorism.

I watched your interview of yesterday with your chum Barghouti, wishing him all the best after he smeared Israel. You two need to get a room.

Where the hell do I begin? This minute? Okay this minute you admit that international journalists now emerging from Gaza are slowly saying what we always knew – that Hamas was firing from homes, schools and UN shelters. They were hiding behind women and children, their own women, their own children.

Journalists themselves were human shields, some willingly, some unwillingly. Either way, they were complicit, along with the UN.

But in a flash you and your man on the scene switched to Gaza suffering. Nice work, pal. That’s what you’re selling.

So it’s not about news, it’s about ratings. I remember how you kept chasing after that missing Malaysian airline. Got you good numbers, nearly catching Fox, so you kept after it round the clock — and now away we go with Gaza as long the Jewish State keeps getting hammered.