The cultural roots of violence in the Middle East - nothing to do with "statelessness"

Yesterday I showed what an idiot Juan Cole was for claiming that "statelessness" is the driving factor behind terrorism (and, therefore, Israel becomes responsible for every terror attack against it.)

To see some real analysis, this article by a PhD candidate published in Now Lebanon highlights once again the difference between a real academic and a fraud like Cole:

The Middle East has developed its own identity-based hierarchal order through the centuries. From the Omayyad to the Ottoman Empire, political legitimacy in the region rested on Islam. Non-Muslims were tolerated in Muslim realms, but only as second class members of society – i.e. dhimmis. The first cleavage in the region’s hierarchy separated believers from non-believers, the kuffar. The second great dividing line established the dominance and superiority of Sunnis over heterodox Muslim sects, most notably Shiites, Alawites, Ismailis, and Druze. Heterodox Muslims were frequently portrayed as the “enemy within” and were repeatedly accused of collaborating with foreign invaders, whether Mongols, Crusaders, or Persians.

Frequently, heterodox sects found refuge in rugged mountainous terrains away from the direct control of Sunni imperial centers (e.g. Jebel Ansarieh for the Alawites, Jebel Amel for the Shiites, Jebel al-Dourouz for the Druze). In the relative security of their fiefdoms, they developed a strong sense of we-ness coupled with a suspicion of Sunni Islam, as well as a deep resentment of their inferior status.

The rise of modern Middle Eastern states did not upset old hierarchical orders as dominant elites paid only lip service to secularism and modernization. The rhetorical emphasis on Arab nationalism did little to transcend the sectarian cleavages of old but instead rekindled an additional line of fracture, this time separating Arabs and non-Arabs (e.g. Kurds in the Levant and Berbers in North Africa). In Iraq and Syria, the current battlefields of the region, it was better to be Muslim than Christian or Jewish, Sunni than Shiite or Alawite, and Arab rather than Kurdish. Beyond the emotional wounds stemming from inferior social status, belonging to the lower echelons of the hierarchy meant having restricted access to state services, educational opportunities, and professional advancement.

Like any other hierarchical order, the system was seen as fundamentally illegitimate by subordinate groups. Consequently, it could only be defended through violent means. From the time the British Royal Air Force was used to bomb restive Shiite tribes in southern Iraq in the 1930s to the mass slaughters of Shiites and Kurds by Saddam Hussein’s army in the early 1990s, the Sunni elite in Iraq upheld the status quo by brute force. Ruling elites hailing from the long-oppressed heterodox groups did not prove any better when military coups, or the exogenous shock of foreign invasion, allowed them to reverse the order: the Alawite-dominated regime in Syria, firmly established since 1970, was discriminatory and violent from the beginning. The same can be said about the Shiite-dominated regime of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.

In America, when the racial hierarchy was dismantled after the triumph of the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement, it was gradually replaced with an inclusive order, one that eventually allowed an African-American to become president. The tragedy of the Middle East is that each time a hierarchy has collapsed – such as when Sunnis lost power in Syria in the 1960s and in Iraq in 2003 – it was immediately reproduced, only with the previously oppressed quickly emerging as oppressors and vice-versa. Herein lay the cultural roots of the region’s continued civil wars.

Now, when a Jewish-majority state emerges in the middle of this already-existing friction between various classes of Arabs, how do you think they will think about the Jews who do not accept their second-class status with joy?

As I noted last week in my post about how different sects in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine hated each other in 1876, it was admitted that "all despised the Jews."

Anyone who pretends that Arab hate of Jews has anything to do with how Israel acts needs to explain why the Arabs hated the Jews before Israel existed. Cole, and the legions of Israel haters that he is a member of, cannot do that. So instead they spend their days and nights effectively justifying Arab antisemitism - and antisemitic murders - as if they are natural.