Yet, if the Yom Kippur War was a turning point, it wasn’t as bleak as it appeared at the time.
The war ended with direct Egypt-Israel military-to-military talks. These were the harbinger of a dialogue that led to disengagement agreements and ultimately to the 1979 peace treaty – Israel’s first with an Arab country.
In the decades since, Israel has normalized relations with Jordan and Morocco, both of whom sent forces to fight the IDF in 1973 – the former to the Syrian front, the latter in support of Egypt.
And of the Arab petroleum producers who weaponized oil against Israel, the 2020 Abraham Accords saw agreements reached with the UAE and Bahrain. Today, there is even talk of a breakthrough with Saudi Arabia.
If in 1973 Israelis worried that petroleum gave their enemies a colossal advantage, it wasn’t to last. The global energy market has changed in ways that have diminished Arab ascendancy. Simultaneously, Israeli technological innovation has made the Jewish state a sought-after partner. (In the 21st century, is technology not competing with fossil fuels for being the number one driver of economic growth?)
In contrast to the diplomatic isolation of 1973, Israel has returned to Africa, augmented its ties across Asia, and built strong partnerships in Europe – as was seen in the recent $3.5 billion deal for the supply of the Arrow-3 missile defense system to Germany.
Furthermore, those who forecasted an inevitable decline in American support for Israel have, thus far, been wrong in their doomsday predictions. Over the past five decades, the trajectory of Israel-US ties has been indisputably positive, despite all the bumps along the road.
At the end of 1973, Israelis were hurting, apprehensive, and unsure. Although the country had successfully resisted a powerful assault, there was no celebration, but rather a pervasive dispiritedness.
We know today that the postwar gloominess, though certainly understandable, was unjustified in historical terms. Perhaps this fact can give Israelis a measure of succor as we deal with today’s seemingly existential divisions.
In a pre-Yom Kippur missive to IDF personnel, released to the public today, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi reflected on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war.
“The failure of warning on the eve of the war is the worst failure in the history of the State of Israel,” Halevi wrote. “Its roots are in arrogance, lack of understanding of the abundant intelligence information, and disregard for the enemy.”
Turning to Israel’s foes, he added: “Our enemies should know that the spirit of the IDF soldiers and the unity of its ranks do not fall short of those of the soldiers who fought in the Yom Kippur War, and that the IDF is as ready as ever for a multi-arena military conflict if it is required.”
Reassuring as his words were no doubt intended to be, that Halevi felt compelled to address the spirit and unity of the IDF and its readiness for war in a public letter marking the anniversary of the most devastating war in Israel’s history should be cause for concern, and it should drive us to reflect on the impact of the impassioned national discourse on the very body charged with our nation’s defense.
Fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, we are older, wiser, more battle-scarred, and better established as a nation than we were then. We are a technological superpower and an economic success story and our military has few peers anywhere in the world.
But as we reflect on the deep trauma of those fateful weeks half a century ago, we would do well to keep our hubris at bay. We are only as strong from without as we are from within, and we rely on our leaders to do what they must to ensure our continued ability to confront any threat.
Our enemies know those basic truths. Let us hope our leaders do, as well.
As the Arab world celebrates the 50th anniversary of their "victory" over Israel in the Yom Kippur War, it is worth looking at what they celebrate as victories today. Things like Arabs at sporting events refusing to compete against Israelis.
Similarly, today Kuwait is celebrating another huge victory over the Zionist enemy.
The UN General Assembly held high-level meetings on health this week, and health minister from many countries attended. Many of them gave brief addresses.
But when Israeli Minister of Health Moshe Arbel began delivering a speech to the assembly, the Kuwaiti health minister, Ahmed Al-Awadhi, walked out.
This was covered in Al Jazeera. Here is Al Jazeera's dramatic video where it appears as if he is simply going to the restroom. But the music tells us this is an historic moment.
The video, and the article, shows four different "activists" praising Al-Awadhi on X.
One said, "An honorable position from the Kuwaiti Minister of Health, no matter how principles change and ideas change, believing that normalization is treason and there is no peace with the occupying entity.”
Another: “We are moving away from normalization and we are not getting close, praise and grace be to God, and all goodness is in moving away from the usurping Zionist entity.”
Such bravery! What a victory!
Al Jazeera does mention that some Arabs on social media questioned exactly how this helped the Palestinian cause. That part was removed from a Jordanian reprint of the story.
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The former head of the Egyptian army's reconnaissance service and strategic expert, Maj. Gen. Samir Farag, confirmed that "what the Egyptian soldier Mohamed Salah did is the biggest blow dealt to Israel since 1973."
Speaking to RT, the retired general said that "Egyptian soldier Mohamed Salah dealt the biggest security blow to Israel since 1973, when he attacked the Israeli army forces and shot down 3 soldiers with a rifle that contained only 100 rounds."
Major General Al-Masry stated, "Israel is trying to justify the biggest blow it has suffered since Egypt's victory in the October War, by saying that what happened was not a security breach, and that it was only smuggling."
Faraj added, "The Egyptian youth, Mohamed Salah, attacked the smugglers crossing the Egyptian border, and entered the occupied borders with a rifle and 100 bullets. It is certain that the 'Israeli' leaders are involved with the drug smugglers."
Throughout the interview, he spoke as if Israel was Egypt's enemy. But in reality the murders are the equivalent of someone dressing up as a medic and then using that as a way to shoot people, or pretending to surrender and shooting behind a white flag.
Looking at Farag's resume, one can see that he is not a fringe character. He was the governor of Luxor and is the former Assistant of Ministry of Defense for Egypt.
And from 1993-1999, Farag was head of the Army Moral Affairs Department.
So this person praising a murderer is an expert on Egyptian morality.
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The FBI’s latest annual report shows a decline in violence against Jews, findings that are at odds with Jewish watchdog groups who say anti-Semitic hate crimes have hit their highest levels in history during the past two years.
The FBI’s 2021 findings, released at the end of last year, have sparked accusations the federal law enforcement agency is deflating these statistics at a time when the American Jewish community is facing an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism. At least one watchdog group is calling on Congress to investigate how and why the FBI underreported anti-Jewish hate crimes.
"At a time of record anti-Semitic hate crimes, it is appalling that the FBI's data-gathering has been so badly botched," said Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a watchdog group that combats Jew hatred. "This massive failure has undermined the purposes of hate crimes data precisely when we most need the data. If the FBI doesn't quickly correct this problem, congressional committees will need to ask some serious questions."
Marcus said the FBI’s 2021 statistics on hate crimes against Jews are "essentially useless" due to new reporting procedures that omitted statistics from organizations typically included in the federal agency’s yearly assessment. While the FBI claimed that violence against Jews decreased last year, groups such as the Anti-Defamation League reported that 2021 saw the highest levels of anti-Semitic violence on record. A report from the AMCHA Initiative, a Jewish advocacy group, last year found that assaults on Jewish students and their identities doubled in the 2021 and 2022 academic year.
Marcus, an attorney and former staff director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, said the FBI’s inaccurate reporting is likely to prompt congressional oversight.
"In my experience overseeing federal civil rights data collections, congressional committees have historically taken a keen interest in the completeness and accuracy of governmental information provided to the public," Marcus told the Washington Free Beacon. "It is hard to imagine that a failure of this scope would escape the notice of congressional oversight staff."
"I am hopeful that the Department of Justice and FBI will clean up this mess on their own," Marcus said. "If DOJ and the FBI do not fix this problem, however, by providing corrected and complete data to the public, we should not be surprised if Congress should get involved."
Ben & Jerry’s Israel and Magen David Adom have begun a joint project to raise awareness and encourage young people to join MDA’s regular pool of blood donors in Israel.
To sweeten the project, Ben & Jerry’s set up ice-cream carts at four blood donation stations across the country where anyone who donated blood received free ice cream.
Locations included the Dizengoff Center, where 71 units of blood were donated; in Rishon Lezion, which collected 119 units; at Rupin Academic College, where 80 people donated units of blood; and at the Knesset, which collected 120 units. The donated blood can conceivably help save the lives of about 1,000 people in less than two months.
Able to save the lives of around 1,000 people in under 2 months
MDA vice president of blood services Prof. Eilat Shanar said, “In order to maintain a proper blood supply in the State of Israel, MDA’s blood services are required to collect about 1,000 blood units from volunteer donors every day. We are very happy about the cooperation with Ben & Jerry’s and we hope to continue this activity in other places throughout the country and encourage more and more people to donate blood and save lives.”
On December 1, 2022, Britain’s Office for National Statistics released the latest 10-yearly census, carried out in 2021, showing that the fastest-growing population in England and Wales is Muslims. According to the census: “For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as ‘Christian’…”
“It’s not a great surprise that the Census shows fewer people in this country identifying as Christian than in the past,” the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said in response to the findings, “but it still throws down a challenge to us not only to trust that God will build his kingdom on Earth but also to play our part in making Christ known.”
The Muslim community in Britain reacted otherwise. Zara Mohammed, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “Whilst the Census does look at religion, the lack of wider religion-specific monitoring prevents us from fully understanding how acute the issue of under-representation of Muslims is in British society.
“These initial figures give us an opportunity to now make meaningful change and create a better Britain for all.”
In 2013, British journalist Vincent Cooper wrote: “By the year 2050, in a mere 37 years, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation.”
The census taken 2021 has revealed that while fewer than half of people (27.5 million) in England and Wales now describe themselves as Christian, those claiming “No religion” rose by 12 points to 37.2% (22.2 million). Those identifying as Muslim rose from 4.9% in 2011 to 6.5% (3.9 million) in 2021. The next most common responses were Hindu (1.0 million) and Sikh (524,000), while Buddhists overtook Jews (273,000 to 271,000).
Religion seems a far more important part of life for Muslims than for other Britons: it appears central to their sense of identity. According to a report from 2006: “Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law…. Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state.”
An article by Abdul Azim Ahmed, published by the Religion Media Centre in September 2021, admitted that within Britain all the divergent schools of Islam are present — although Salafism has grown in recent years, particularly among younger Muslims.
Trevor Phillips, former head of Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality and Equality and Human Rights Commission, found that the followers of Islam hold very different values from the rest of the society; many apparently want to lead separate lives. “Muslims are creating nations within nations,” he said.
Next year will mark fifty years. Fifty years ago, as a young, almost twenty-three-year-old, I had the experience of a lifetime.
Was I a foolish idealist? Perhaps. I had wanted to be “kravi,” a warrior soldier. I had wished for a combat unit. I excelled and had all of the recommendations that accompanied that excellence. Although assigned to guard an IDF intel unit and fully aware of what was happening “de facto” in front of my eyes, nothing prepared me for the brutality of what was to come a few months later, Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1973. Nothing.
The sounds, the deafening roar of low-flying fighter jets, the explosions of artillery and mortar shells all around, the firing of my own weapons. The smell, cordite and death, fire and destruction smoldering everywhere, along roads and fields. The sights, yes, those sights, leaving indelible imprints on my memory to this very day.
And yet, the war itself prepared me for my love of peace. After countless days in Syria, after a new call to duty to become a tank commander, after so many deployments to Israel’s southern front, the Sinai at first, later Egypt and the new border, and then the Gaza Strip and Gaza City itself, all that prepared me for the love of peace.
I served with farmers, kibbutzniks like myself, and like myself watched as we collectively allowed our idealism to slip away. I served with small-town entrepreneurs, small business owners, calculating their economic losses while they bravely defended the homeland. City dwellers, bankers and professionals, CEOs and police detectives, we all wore green and we all came when we were called. And with our own eyes, we saw the dire poverty within the Strip and the contrasting opulence of the villas in Gaza City.
And then Hebron, where some residents of Kiryat Arba went on nightly excursions to vandalize Palestinian property. And, the next morning it was our small two-jeep patrols who would pay the price, having rocks and Molotov cocktails hurled in our direction.
Yes, the Yom Kippur War, fifty years less one ago, prepared me for all that and prepared me for peace. Do not mistake my love of peace. I remain a hawk when it comes to dealing harshly with those who wish to harm the citizens of Israel. Do not mistake my love of peace for weakness in the face of terror. I have seen it. I have experienced it. I have lost dear friends to terror.
One of the first decisions that Gen. David Elazar faced when he was appointed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff in 1970 was whether to continue resting Israel’s front line on the Suez Canal. Gen. Ariel Sharon and others warned that such a deployment in an area dominated by massive Egyptian artillery and anti-tank weapons could become a trap – not just for the soldiers in scattered outposts along the 100-mile-long canal but for the tanks that would undoubtedly be sent to rescue them if war broke out. Sharon recommended establishing the front line well back from the canal, beyond Egyptian artillery range, to reduce the danger of a surprise attack. But Elazar decided to remain on the canal where – for political reasons – Israel could “show the flag.” Of the 500 Israeli soldiers manning the line, a third would be killed, a third taken prisoner and a third would manage to escape at night through the Egyptian encirclement.
THE SAGGER
The Armored Corps had been informed by AMAN that the Arab armies had acquired large stocks of a new Soviet anti-tank weapon, the Sagger. Unlike the ubiquitous RPG, which could kill a tank within 300 meters, the Sagger could be fired accurately by a soldier lying in the sand a mile away, virtually invisible to the Israeli tank crews. The armored corps was attempting to devise tactics to deal with the threat but meanwhile it had not informed the corps as a whole about the Sagger’s existence. When Israeli tanks attempted to reach the beleaguered Bar-Lev Line in the opening hours of the war many were knocked out by Saggers without the tank crews knowing what hit them. For several days, these weapons succeeded in keeping Israel’s formidable tank units at bay just as the air force was being kept at bay over the battlefields.
Despite the war’s nightmarish opening, the IDF succeeded, after the ground steadied under its feet, in staging one of the most dramatic turnarounds in military history, a feat too complex to be described here. The war ended with the Israeli army on the roads to Damascus and Cairo. It was a victory not only over Egypt and Syria but over the Arab world, from North Africa to Iraq, which sent fresh contingents to the battlefronts, even as Israeli troops were being steadily eroded. In Iraq’s case, two tank brigades blocked the Israelis who had reached artillery range of Damascus.
The cost of the fierce battles on both fronts would be high. Israel suffered three times more fatalities per capita in 18 days of combat than the Americans suffered in Vietnam in a decade.
It would be years before Israelis could view the war as anything but a disaster. Eventually, however, most would concede to themselves that it had been a military victory. In fact, Israel’s greatest. If the country could overcome the terrible hand it had dealt itself on Yom Kippur it would survive. The war was an extraordinary demonstration of Israel’s resilience and the Arab world would see it too. Six years later Israel would sign a peace treaty with its most formidable opponent, Egypt – the first with an Arab country but not the last.
Why have so many years gone by since the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and so few Israeli filmmakers have turned their hands to depicting it? There have been a plethora of television documentaries about bereavement and about the soldiers – those who survived and those who didn’t – but, not many feature films have been made about this important war in Israel’s history.
Why have our most successful filmmakers, all of whom have made serious (anti-)war films, not made fictional accounts of the Yom Kippur War?
The answer is certainly complicated, mostly dealing with the deep and long-lasting trauma of the war, which makes it so difficult to confront.
According to Aner Preminger, who teaches cinema studies at Hebrew University and is a well-known filmmaker, the Yom Kippur War is “the most traumatic war that Israel ever went through, for a number of reasons: its intensiveness; the number of deaths, wounded, and victims of shell shock during such a short period; the surprise; and the downfall after the euphoria of the Six Day War,” he says.
“In fact, we are still today in the post-traumatic period of this war,” Preminger says. “Dealing face-on with such a difficult wound of trauma is complex and complicated, psychologically speaking. It is more natural to hide from it and to deal with it only from afar.”
According to this view, the trauma of the surprise attack and the terrible losses on the battlefield of the Yom Kippur War remain very much with us, and therefore it is very difficult to portray it in fictional films.
Another reason that Israeli filmmakers have kept away from the difficult subject matter of this war has to do with the fact that this particular war was accepted – throughout Israeli society – as a war of defense, a war for which we had no choice, thereby making it difficult to look at it critically: cinematically, politically or militarily.
In contrast, the War in Lebanon from 1982-2000 lent itself to criticism from the very beginning. It was a war of choice, a war entered into recklessly and without forethought about the long-term implications, which provided excellent material that filmmakers could easily dig their teeth into.
5. About 2700 IDF soldiers were killed - a horrific amount. But Syria and Egypt lost over 11,000 soldiers.
By any objective measure, the Arab side lost badly. Calling it a "victory" is ridiculous. But when people have a zero-sum mentality, and they can see that Israel was hurt - which it was - they cannot distinguish between "Israel hurt" and "Arab victory."
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Arabi21, a pan-Arab news channel, published an unusual op-ed by Abdullah Al-Ashaal, a former Egyptian presidential candidate and former assistant to the Egyptian Foreign Minister. He is described as an ambassador, but I cannot find to where.
Al-Ashaal argues that Egypt should abrogate is peace treaty with Israel - and that Sadat was under Zionist influence when he decided not to destroy Israel completely in the Yom Kippur War.
His delusions are apparent throughout the article:
"Israel is not an ordinary country, but rather the spearhead of the Zionist project and was planted in this particular region to destroy Egypt."
"Israel insisted on forcing Egypt to violate the principles of international law in many of its provisions" of the peace agreement.
"If Sadat had better planned the October War with the best of the Egyptian military,.... the end of Israel would have been the October War, but there is a contradiction between the management of the war in the first week and the setback [in following weeks.]"
"The [peace] treaty does not prevent Egypt from supporting the resistance, nor does it prevent Arab solidarity and the restoration of the joint Arab defense treaty. Egypt can, at its own will, amend the peace agreement...A state may review or cancel some provisions of the treaty or suspend some of its provisions."
He says he is writing a book about how terrible the peace treaty is.
Al-Ashaal is apparently still living in 1975.
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A few moments ago, at exactly 11 am, I went up to my roof to stand at attention for two minutes during the siren that honors the 23,928 people, soldiers and civilians, who have died since 1860 in the struggle to create and defend the Jewish state.
Today, Wednesday, is Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. It’s been said that on Yom Hazikaron we consider the price of having a state, while on last week’s Yom Hashoa, we think about the price of being without one. Most Israelis understand that the latter’s cost would be much greater, but still, the pain of those who have lost loved ones is almost unbearable. And that pain is worsened when the loss was avoidable, perhaps caused by incompetence, laziness, or selfishness on the part of political or military leaders that failed those who put their trust in them (and who mostly had no choice in the matter).
The 1973 war is considered the most prominent example of unnecessary losses in the history of the state. Repeated failures by military and political officials (including the PM, Golda Meir) to take seriously the warnings from numerous sources that an attack was imminent – even King Hussein of Jordan personally warned Meir – led to the catastrophic lack of preparation for the joint Egyptian-Syrian attack. At least 2,500 Israeli soldiers died in the war that followed, many of them in the first hours of the war when inadequate Israeli forces faced large invading armies on the Golan Heights and the Sinai.
After the war, a commission of inquiry (the Agranat Commission) investigated the failures, and after the release of its report, several military commanders were forced to resign, as well as Meir and her cabinet. Although Meir’s government was succeeded by one led by Yitzhak Rabin, it’s generally thought that the debacle of 1973 led directly to the end of the left-wing monopoly on power, the triumph of Menachem Begin’s Likud Party in 1977.
Another, more recent example was the Second Lebanon War. The three men who managed the war in the summer of 2006 were unqualified to do so. The Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, had little military experience and went to war without a clear objective or exit strategy. The Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, was an Air Force officer who didn’t understand the workings of the ground forces, and how to get them to do what he wanted. The army, especially the ground forces, suffered from a long-term lack of discipline, which manifested itself in an abysmal lack of preparation. There were serious failures in intelligence, logistics, tactics, and execution. 121 Israeli soldiers died in the inconclusive month-long war, which ended in a UN Security Council resolution that proved worthless in preventing Hezbollah from rearming for a second round.
The theme of the tragic loss of young people in war pervades Israeli culture; it appears throughout popular music, films, and literature. It’s felt especially strongly on Yom Hazikaron – the newspaper, radio, and TV are full of stories about young men and women who were everything to their parents, who were full of plans for the future, had talents and dreams, but whose lives ended at the age of 23, or 20, or 19. And the thought that it may not have been necessary is excruciating.
Today Israel is facing Iran, a large country whose leaders seem to have a limitless hatred for us, a hatred greater than just their geopolitical ambitions. They have surrounded us with proxies, in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, armed and waiting for the conflict to begin. The Iranian regime is committed to building nuclear weapons, and we are committed to stopping them. For both sides, this is an issue that is not amenable to compromise. Unless something very unexpected happens, there will be war yet again, and yet again our young people will offer themselves generously on behalf of the am Yisrael. We know, beyond any doubt, that they will not all return to take their after-army trips around the world, or go to university, or marry their sweethearts. We know this for certain. This is the terrible cost of defending the Jewish state, which is still less expensive than the cost of not having one.
If there isn’t a way to prevent it – and I think there isn’t – at least we can do our best to minimize the number of those that will be lost because of incompetence, laziness, and selfishness in the higher echelons of the government and the military.
The present situation in which there is no permanent government, in which vital functions – including the military budget – are held hostage to the ambitions, fears, personal grudges, and egos of a few dozen people who lead our political parties and our legal establishment, must end now. Not after the missiles start falling on the unprepared home front, and not after reserve soldiers whose training was cancelled for budgetary reasons are thrown into combat.
You know who you are – Bibi, Bennett, Lapid, Sa’ar, Smotrich, Gantz, Lieberman, as well as Kochavi, Mandelblit, Hayut, and all the rest. You know that the state is in a perilous situation, and that it needs the attention of leaders that will put aside everything else except the good of am Yisrael and its nation-state, who will start earning the exorbitant salaries that we pay them. You know what you have to do. Do it. Now. Before it is too late.
Following the news of Israel's peace agreement with the UAE and Bahrain, we
had a laugh at John Kerry's expense when we watched the 2016 video of Kerry
assuring his audience that peace between Israel and the Arab world without
first resolving the Palestinian question just wasn't possible.
And Kerry knew this because he had, even a week earlier, spoken to
"leaders of the Arab community."
It would be interesting to know just what Kerry said to those Arab leaders
-- and what exactly they said to him in response.
Did he misinterpret what they said to him?
Did those leaders intentionally mislead Kerry?
It certainly wouldn't be the first incident of an apparent 'miscommunication"
between Arab leaders and a member of the US government.
Once again, Arab officials apparently misled a US politician as to what they
were thinking about Israel.
Joe Biden (YouTube screencap)
But apparently, this is not limited to US politicians.
As a matter of fact, Arab leaders have been known to mislead other Arab
leaders as well.
In his book The Arab Mind, Raphael Patai tells a story from the eve of the 1948
Israeli War of Independence:
Musa Alami, the well-known Palestinian Arab leader, made a tour of the Arab
capitals to sound out the leaders with whom he was well acquainted. In
Damascus, the President of Syria told him:
I am happy to tell you that our Army and its equipment are of the highest
order and well able to deal with a few Jews; and I can tell you in
confidence that we even have an atomic bomb...Yes, it was made
locally; we fortunately found a very clever fellow, a tinsmith...(p. 53-54)
[emphasis added]
Patai gives another example, this one from the Six Day War, when on the first
day (June 5, 1967) the commander of the Egyptian forces in Cairo sent a
message to the Jordanian front:
that the Israeli air offensive was continuing. But at the same time,
he insisted that the Egyptians had put 75 per cent of the Israeli air
force out of action. The same message said that U.A.R. bombers had destroyed the Israeli bases
in a counter-attack, and that the ground forces of the Egyptian army had
penetrated into Israel by way of the Negev! (p. 109)
If Egypt had been honest with Jordan from day 1, Hussein might not have
entered the war, and Jordan would have retained control of Judea and Samaria
-- and the Kotel.
But behind these examples of miscommunication, there are issues of Arab
culture.
For example, the story about the tinsmith is pure exaggeration, what Patai
refers to as the "spell of (Arabic) language," namely the "prediliction for
exaggeration and overemphasis [which] is anchored in the Arabic language
itself" (p. 55)
As for Egypt's deception of Jordan, Patai describes it as wajh, or
an attempt to avoid loss of face. In fact, Patai blames King Hussein's years
in England for his failure to see this for what it was:
Had Hussein not lost, during his formative years spent in England, the ear
for catching the meaning behind the words which is an indispensable
prerequisite of true communication among Arabs, he would have understood
that a real victory over Israel would have been announced by Amer and
Nasser in a long tirade of repetitious and emphatic assertions, and that the
brief and for Arabs, totally unusual factual form of the statement betrayed
it for what it actually was: a face-saving device, a reference not to a
real, but to an entirely imaginary victory. [emphasis in original] (p.
112-3)
But what about Biden and Kerry?
Again, without knowing what each side actually said, it is impossible to know
what went on.
But their misunderstanding of their Arab hosts might be due to the Arab
concept of shame.
Patai distinguishes between shame, which is "a matter between a person and his
society," and guilt which is "a matter between a person and his conscience" --
or as he puts it: "A hermit in a desert can feel guilt; he cannot feel shame."
One of the important differences between the Arab and the Western
personality is that in the Arab culture, shame is more pronounced than
guilt...What pressures the Arab to behave in an honorable manner is not
guilt but shame, or, more precisely, the psychological drive to escape or
prevent negative judgement by others. [p. 113]
We tend to associate the Arab concept of shame/honor with of 'honor killings,'
but there are implications on a national level too.
In his preface to the 1976 edition of his book, Patai writes that although
Egypt lost the Yom Kippur War, the fact that they caught Israel by surprise
and were able to initially gain the upper hand, allowed the Egyptians to
perceive the war as a victory, and cleared the way for peace negotiations:
A manifestation of this new Arab self-confidence is the willingness to enter
into disengagement agreements with Israel. It is, in this connection,
characteristic that it is precisely Egypt, the country that won what it
considers a victory over Israel, which has embarked on the road of
negotiation with her....It is quite clear that the feeling of having demonstrated strengh is for
an Arab state a psychological prerequisite of discussing adjustments and
reaching understanding with an enemy.
[emphasis added] (xxiii - xxv)
How would shame/honor manifest itself in discussions between Arabs and
Westerners?
In his 1989 book, The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, David Pryce-Jones writes about
Kenneth Pendar, an American intelligence officer whose task it was to
persuade Moroccans to side with the Allies during the last war, expressed
the difficulties of conducting a negotiation in which
he expected a yes or a no from people unable to commit themselves to
either,
because they could not tell who would win the war and acquire honor or who
would lose and be shamed. [emphasis added] (p. 45)
Pryce-Jones goes on to quote Henry Kissinger, who complained of the
difficulty of negotiating with the Saudis because of their style that was
"at once oblique and persistent, reticent and assertive" based on the
allocation of honor or shame.
Based on this, one can imagine that Kerry and Biden could each have easily
misinterpreted what they heard in accordance with what they wanted to pass on
to their respective audiences.
Interestingly, when Patai writes about the confidence the Yom Kippur Was
instilled into the Arab world in 1973, he contrasts Egypt -- which considers
the Yom Kippur War a victory -- with other Arab countries that either cannot
make such a claim or have never fought Israel, and are therefore opposed to
negotiation.
That would seem to rule out Jordan and Sudan, on the one hand, and the UAE and
Bahrain on the other.
But King Hussein making peace with Israel is not surprising, considering his
tenuous control over his country, the majority of whom are Palestinian Arabs.
There was leverage the US could apply, even if the peace treaty itself could
cause trouble for Hussein at home.
Considering the leverage that the US applied to Sudan, that country also had a
lot to gain. But both Egypt and Jordan have a cold peace with Israel and the
Arabs in both countries have expressed their hatred of Jews and Israel. It's
not clear that the situation in Sudan is any better.
What about UAE and Bahrain?
Some have belittled the Abraham Accords because those 2 countries have never
actually been involved in a war with Israel.
But maybe that is the point.
Egypt and Jordan fought against Israel, and whatever the considerations on the
government level -- on a national level, Israel remains an enemy in the eyes
of the Egyptian and Jordanian people, regardless of the benefits Israel has to
offer and are nowhere near normalizing relations. There is an absence of a
state of war, but the mood of belligerence persists.
Not so with UAE and Bahrain, which has never fought Israel.
The intent of the Abraham Accords is not to bring peace in order to end a
state of war -- instead the point is to normalize relations, a goal that is
conceivable for UAE and Bahrain, but not for Egypt and Jordan, which still
cannot go beyond a 'cold peace,' let alone a full, real peace.
In November 2017, Mordechai Kedar wrote The Ten Commandments for Israeli negotiations with Saudi Arabia, which he described as "immutable principles" for negotiating with Saudi
Arabia "and any other Arab nations who wish to live in peace with the Jewish
State."
One of those principles is the need for normalizing relations as
opposed to just making peace:
10. Peace with the Saudis must entail more than just a ceasefire with an
attached document ("Salaam" in Arabic) . Israel agreed to that in the case of
Egypt and Jordan as a result of the ignorance of those running the
negotiations on Israel's side.
Israel must insist on complete normalization ("sulh" in Arabic), which
includes cultural, tourist, business, industrial, art, aeronautical,
scientific, technological, athletic and academic ties and exchanges, etc.
If Israel participates in international events taking place in Saudi Arabia,
the Israeli flag will wave along with those of other countries, and if Israel
is the victor in any sports competition in Saudi Arabia, the Hatikva anthem
will be played, as it is when other countries win medals. Israeli books will
be shown at book fairs, and Israeli products officially displayed at
international exhibitions taking place in Saudi Arabia.
An economic
document, whose details I am not in a position to elaborate, but which must be
an addendum to the agreement, is to be based on
mutual investments and acquisitions as well as a commitment to non-
participation in boycotts. [emphasis added]
This is what we are seeing now.
A foreshadowing for what is possible is in another comment by Patai, where he
addresses the "Arab street" that today we are told is supposedly ready at any
moment to rise up in protest, yet whose anger Trump has somehow been able to
avoid these past 4 years:
The volatility of Arab reaction to the October War was paralleled four years
later by the rapid evaporation of Arab wrath over President Satat's
initiative in establishing direct contact with Israel. This was observed by
Fuad Moughrabi, professor of political science and co-editor of the
Arab Studies Quarterly, in 1980:
The Arab world reacted strongly and passionately to Sadat's visit to
Jerusalem. But contrary to what many had expected, the intensity of the
reaction was not followed by any concrete, effective steps to neutralize
the conseqauences of the visit. Sadat did the unthinkable and got away
with it. (p. 339)
Moughrabi wrote this in 1980.
Sadat was assassinated in 1981 -- by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood.
Back then, Arab opposition to Sadat was not directed against the idea of
peace, but against the Camp David Accords themselves, which removed Egypt as a
participant in the war against Israel -- a war which was supposed to benefit
the cause of the Palestinian Arabs.
Today, with the Arab support for the Palestinian Arab cause at its lowest ebb,
there are genuine prospects for continuing what the Trump administration
started.
That is, assuming that this time around Biden actually listens to what the
Arab leaders are saying.
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Friday, September 22, 2023
