Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: honor/shame

Showing posts with label honor/shame. Show all posts

Monday, November 23, 2020

Arab honor/shame diplomacy and a game of phone-call chicken between Palestinian and Bahraini leaders

'The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reports:

President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, received this evening, Sunday, a phone call from the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa .

During the call, the King offered his condolences on the death of the great fighter, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat.

In turn, the President offered condolences to King Hamad bin Isa, on the death of the Bahraini Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa.

Here is how Bahrain's news agency wrote about this:

His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa held a phone call with Palestinian President, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas.

President Abbas offered to HM the King condolences on the passing of His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, praying to Allah the Almighty to rest his soul in vast paradise.

HM the King also expressed condolences to President Abbas on the death of PLO Executive Committee Secretary-General Dr. Saeb Erekat.

They don't say who called whom, and they switch the order of the conversation to prioritize condolences over Khalifa first and then Erekat.

Erekat died on November 10.

Prince Khalifa died on November 11.

The phone call took place on November 22, an exceptionally long time after both deaths to offer condolences.

This looks a lot like a game of diplomatic chicken, with each leader wanting the other to call them first to offer condolences so they feel more powerful and force the other into a position of subservience. In this case, Abbas "won."

Here we have the stupidity of the honor/shame culture in full view.

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The death of the honor/shame culture, part 2

I wrote last week how it seems possible that the UAE (and now Bahrain) acceptance of Israel has the potential to severely damage the honor/shame mentality that has reliably guided the Arab world for a very long time.

I think that the news is vindicating this opinion.

One of the corollaries of the honor/shame system is the refusal to accept win/win solutions, because if your enemy wins, then you lose by definition - and what you lose is honor.

The New York Times has an article about Mahmoud Abbas' continued refusal to accept tax money that Israel owes the Palestinian Authority - out of a bizarre, misguided sense of honor.

The normalization deal with the U.A.E. was not made in coordination with the Palestinians, who adamantly opposed it. And from the Palestinian perspective, suspending annexation wasn’t enough: They wanted it to be canceled.

As a result, Mr. Abbas has refused to go back to the way things were.

Diplomats who have met with him say that Mr. Abbas is intent on extracting some new concessions from Israel with which to assure the Palestinian public that his rejection of the money, and their summer-long hardship, were not all in vain.

Mr. Abbas’s office and several of his most senior aides all declined to comment.

When the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, encouraged Mr. Abbas to take the money in a meeting in Ramallah last week, Mr. Abbas responded, “In return for what?” according to a person familiar with details of the exchange.

He is treating accepting hundreds of millions of dollars as a concession!

This is honor/shame in its purest form - accepting the money is an affront to Abbas' honor, even if that means hurting his own people.

It is obvious to all that accepting the tax revenue is a win/win - Israel doesn't want the money and wants a stable Palestinian Authority, and the PA needs to pay salaries and other expenses.

The European Union, the United Nations, Britain and several Arab countries have all urged the Palestinian Authority to resume accepting the transfers from Israel, according to officials briefed on the talks.

Abbas' bizarre idea of honor is not shared by "several" other Arab countries. They are being practical and want what is best for ordinary Palestinians; Abbas is adamant that honor is more important than his people.

Now, how do you think Arab nations will react to that kind of thinking? A decade ago, they would accept it as a basic requirement to maintain honor. Now they are telling him that some things are more important than honor (or, perhaps, that Abbas' sense of honor is hopelessly skewed.)

The UAE and Bahrain see peace with Israel as a win/win. Mahmoud Abbas sees it as an affront to his honor.

At any rate, Abbas is not gaining any popularity either with his own people or with other Arabs with his refusal to accept the tax money - because Israel wants to give him the money.

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The beginning of the end of the honor/shame culture

I have discussed at length how critical the understanding the Arab honor/shame culture is in interpreting how Arabs act, specifically towards Israel. Israel's very existence has been an intense source of shame for the Arab world, since the seemingly powerful Arab armies were defeated by the weak, second class Jews - who then took up residence in the very heart of the Arab world, dividing it in half.

As long as the honor/shame culture exists, real peace is not possible.

The UAE, by publicly embracing Israel, is puncturing not only the Arab world's united anti-Israel front, but the entire honor/shame culture as well.

Honor/shame relies to a large degree on the ability to lie - both to others and to oneself. This is because the honor/shame society is more centered on appearances than on truth. As long as one can hold oneself high, and everyone else is willing to play along, the facts aren't what is important. Lying is necessary to maintain honor when reality doesn't agree, and to avoid humiliation. Lying is part of the culture.

Another aspect of the honor/shame culture (although not exclusive to it) is the inability to admit mistakes. This blocks nearly all progress. People and societies grow from acknowledging mistakes and learning from them, but the fear of being shamed usually is much worse in the Arab world than repeating the mistake.

The system works quite well as long as everyone plays along, and as long as those who don't play can be shamed and marginalized by the system. But we now live in an interconnected world, and in the Western world it is embarrassing to be caught in a lie or to be revealed to be a hypocrite.

I always thought the honor/shame mentality was built in, and it could never be changed. I felt that since it was immovable, the West should not pander to it but to use it to advantage, to shame Arabs by confronting them with their own moral failures in public. This has worked to an extent - honor killings and female genital mutilation are now considered shameful in the Arab world in no small part because Arabs do not want to fall short of Western standards of morality, and it is shameful to defend such practices.

But the UAE deal with Israel has the potential not of only remaking the Middle East, but of seriously damaging the honor/shame culture altogether.

The UAE is telling the rest of the Arab world the truth: Israel is here to stay. It is powerful. It is modern and advanced. Pretending that we will defeat it is ridiculous. Jews are not evil. We can gain a lot more by partnering with it rather than opposing it. The Palestinians are, to a large extent, responsible for their own problems.

The honor/shame culture can paper over some truths when everyone knows and plays the game, but it cannot ignore what one of its most powerful players says. The usual response to Western criticism is screaming "how dare you insult us!" which often results in the Westerners backing down to show respect for Arab culture. But when fellow Arabs drop truth bombs on their brethren, the explosion is huge - and can cause a chain reaction.

Already, other corners of the Arab world are gingerly discussing what the world would look like if they, too, recognized or normalized relations with Israel. There is almost a palpable relief at not having to continue to lie to themselves. Truth is contagious, and taking responsibility for mistakes is empowering.

Look at this Lebanese video released by MEMRI where a former minister drops more truth bombs on a shocked hostess:

This sort of thing is happening all over the Arab world today, and it was unthinkable a mere month ago.

The Palestinians and Iranians are trying mightily to shame the UAE and to pre-emptively shame any other Arab nations from following suit. But that weapon is losing its effectiveness more and more every day.

In some ways, the UAE's normalization and willingness to deal with the truth is much bigger than peace with Egypt or Jordan was. It has the potential to completely remake the Middle East - and to change the mindset of hundreds of millions of people.

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Honor/shame and Arab reactions to the Israel-UAE agreement

As with everything else in the Arab world, in order to understand the events of the past week one needs to view them through the prism of the Arab honor/shame mindset.

Since at least the 1940s, there has been a strong myth of Arab unity. It is nonsense but its falsehood has had no impact on its importance, with virtually every Arab constitution emphasizing how each country is part of the greater Arab nation. While there have been no shortage of intra-Arab disagreements and even wars, only rarely has the Arab world publicly split.

It has become a point of honor to present to the non-Arab world the myth of Arab unity.

No one has benefitted more from this myth that the Palestinian leadership, because the only issue that the entire Arab world could agree on was its hate for Israel. The zenith of the success of the myth was during the 1970s, when Palestinian airplane hijackings combined with the Arab oil embargo prompted Europe and much of the world to give in to terror and to elevate the Palestinian cause, especially at the UN.

The Egyptian peace treaty with Israel was a major blow to this unity, but eventually the Arab world learned to live with it, knowing that Egypt – a hugely antisemitic country – was not going to normalize relations, and it will keep a cold peace for its own reasons. After some turmoil the Egyptians were welcomed back as full members of a seemingly unified Arab collective.

The cracks in Arab unity about Israel began with the Oslo process and the PLO refusal to accept a state. It accelerated during the Arab Spring. Individual Arab nations had major internal issues to deal with, and the Gulf nations became upset at Palestinian demands for more and more money. The PLO was refusing to even speak to Israel, the Arab leaders had to guard against revolutions and all the while oil prices were plummeting.

Then the Obama administration decision to get closer to Iran and throw the Gulf states under the bus made them realize not only that Palestinians were a liability, but that Israel could be a friend.

Honor is important, but it is not more important than self-preservation.

The Palestinian leadership didn’t get the memo. They were the poster children of Arab unity and they believed that this will never change. Their media even today emphasizes the tiniest pro-Palestinian demonstrations or statements from mediocre columnists, and reacts angrily at any criticism, always emphasizing the Arab world’s unity in support for their cause and how shameful it is for anyone to disagree.

In fact, Palestinians are referring to the UAE/Israel deal as the “shame deal” in a naked attempt to appeal to the Arab sense of shame – mainly to discourage other Arab nations to follow the UAE.

Notably, the Palestinians cut off coordination with Israel in order to pressure Israel to stop the “annexation” plan. That plan is off the table for the foreseeable future – but the Palestinians are making no move to resume coordination with Israel, even at the expense of the well being of their own people. The only reason is because it would be shameful to even appear to do something that would benefit Israel, even though it hurts them much more.

Shame works two ways, though. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the UAE timed this announcement only a month after the Palestinians very publicly rejected planeloads of COVID-19 aid from the Emirates, ostensibly because the plane landed in Tel Aviv. This was a huge insult to the UAE.

The flip side to Arab shame is evident in other ways. Now that the UAE has publicly come out in favor of normalizing relations with Israel, other Arab nations are reluctant to criticize the Emiratis – because of the same interest in maintaining the illusion of unity! And given a choice of publicly supporting a non-state entity of “Palestine” and a very real United Arab Emirates, nearly all of them would rather stay on the UAE’s good side.

This is why the Arab League is not meeting to denounce the UAE, as the Palestinian leadership has been demanding. In the past, they could get the League to hold “emergency sessions” at the drop of a hat, but that organization also needs the myth of Arab unity and it will not embrace the division that the PLO is now insisting on.

That would be a source of shame.

Israel and the US need to always keep the honor/shame mentality in mind when dealing with the Arab world. Israel in particular needs to remain strong both militarily and economically, because just like the Arab world has long ago realized the benefits of aligning with the powerful Christian world, they can swallow their antisemitism to ally with the Jewish state when it is in their own interests.

Now is not the time for "honor/shame" to distort the prevalence of coronavirus in Arab countries

Besides Syria denying any cases of the coronavirus, Egypt is threatening anyone who says that the virus is more prevalent than its own official numbers.

Egypt has withdrawn the licence of a correspondent for the Guardian newspaper after a report suggested that cases of coronavirus in the country are likely much higher than official statistics.

According to an official statement by the State Information Service (SIS), an agency linked to the Egyptian presidency, the government has also issued a warning to the New York Times's Cairo bureau chief Declan Walsh over tweets citing research by Canadian disease specialists estimating the actual number of COVID-19 cases in Egypt to be closer to 20,000.

The health ministry has so far reported 166 cases and four deaths from the novel virus, which has killed over 7,500 people globally.

But infectious disease specialists at the University of Toronto believe the number of infections in Egypt is likely to be much higher than the official figures.

On Tuesday, the SIS said it had cancelled the licence of the "Guardian correspondent", without naming her, over "repeated and deliberate offensive behaviour", and accused the NYT correspondent of "professional violations".
It also demanded that the Guardian newspaper publish an apology for the article, which it described as "full of professional mistakes".
If the newspaper does not issue an apology, the SIS said it will withdraw the newspaper's permit to operate in the country.

Egyptian state media is trying hard to put the genie back in the bottle:

SIS emphasized that the reporters’ hastily published wrong info with only one obscure source that is not recognized by any prestigious entity and without getting back to the concerned parties, especially the Egyptian Health Ministry and the WHO bureau in Cairo. The service considered these actions as proof of their “ill intentions” towards Egyptian interests and the perception of conditions in the country.

The paper extrapolates from the number of Egyptians who were found to have the virus after traveling from Egypt and estimates from there that things are far worse within Egypt than is being reported. One of the authors say that it is more likely that there are 6000 cases rather than 20,000.

The paper has been accepted to be published by the Lancet Infectious Diseases Journal.

There is a big difference between publishing false information that can mislead people into panic - which in times of emergency can arguably be prohibited - and publishing information that a government does not want the public to see, especially in autocratic regimes that want to control all information.

This study that Egypt wants censored is based on real statistics and is important for the world to know.

Both the Egyptian and Syrian stories show that for many Arabs, "honor" is still more important than human lives. They are afraid that if the truth comes out it will reflect badly on their nations, and innocent people are caught in the culture of honorable lies versus shameful truths.

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Palestinian Arabs lie. All the time.

Back in 2009, I wrote a post that noted that Palestinian Arabs - including people the media calls "eyewitnesses" - lie. All the time.

It was after B'Tselem, admitting it could not verify the story, parroted an absurd claim that Israeli soldiers forced women in Gaza to line up to enter a house, and then shot the first one in the head.

I noted others:

September, 2008: "Eyewitnesses" reported seeing a settler shoot a boy at point blank range 20 times. It turns out he had been killed by a grenade, and no Israelis were involved.
July, 2008: A Hamas work accident levels a house and kills 7. "Eyewitnesses" said it was an Israeli airstrike.
June, 2008: "Eyewitnesses" say that Zionist settlers release wild pigs to destroy their crops.
February, 2008: "Eyewitnesses" reported that an explosion in the Bureij camp that killed 8 was caused by Israeli airstrikes, but it was an work accident.

Nothing has changed in eleven years.

Later in 2009, Palestinians claimed 40 civilians killed in a tank shell attack on an UNRWA school. In the end it was 9 Hamas members and three civilians.

In 2012, AFP reported that a supposed airstrike that killed a 15-year old boy never happened and he died when an explosive device he was carrying went off.

Kids killed by Hamas rockets that fell short have been routinely falsely blamed on Israel. Also, kids who died of pre-existing conditions had their deaths blamed on Israeli tear gas.

Even Amnesty International noticed that "eyewitness" claims by Palestinians are unreliable.

Over the past couple of days another insidious lie was publicized. An Arab child in Jerusalem went missing, and the family initially claimed he was kidnapped by Jews. They later recanted that claim but it was too late - social media pushed the lie and continued the lie after the boy's body was found, drowned.

Someone with no credentials at all named Seif Bitar tweeted the lie, where thousands of people retweeted it - including Hanan Ashrawi and Rashida Tlaib.

Bitar isn't a journalist. He isn't an official. He wasn't claiming to be an eyewitness. Yet his lie was swallowed whole and repeated by Palestinians in power in the PA and in the US.

Without a modicum of fact checking.

The only explanation is that Tlaib and Ashrawi want to believe the worst about Jews in Israel and they will uncritically accept even the most vicious lies that fit their antisemitic viewpoint.

It turns out that Bitar has been doing stuff like this for years. In 2018, he posted a video he claimed of Jews chasing a poor Palestinian woman, and said they beat her up later. I researched the incident and saw that it was a Palestinian woman with a knife who stabbed one Israeli and was trying to stab more, and a crowd tried to keep her at bay until one managed to disarm her without firing a shot.

Just this past week we saw another Palestinian tweeter claim a photo of his "grandpa" that was really taken in Turkey. But that's just social media. Far worse is that official Palestinian media this past week claimed that Israel opens non-existent dams to flood Gaza, and that the Holocaust was not as bad as the Nakba. Those lies are not being reported by mainstream media and not being retracted.

This is only a tiny sample of Palestinian lies over the years, many by Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat directly.

Palestinians lie because of the honor/shame culture they live in where appearances are more important than the truth. Ordinary Palestinians are taught from birth that they must not tarnish their cause. Hell, we saw Arafat threaten reporters who broadcast Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks on America. The cumulative lesson for Palestinians is to avoid shaming their leaders and their people at all costs.

The leaders themselves lie, knowingly, because they know they can get away with it. It is rare that mainstream Western media calls them out on their lies (here's one example, where Abbas was forced to walk back a blood libel.) And even when Western media is quite aware of the lies, they will keep quoting these Palestinian leaders with no caveat the next time, and the lies will be multiplied by anti-Zionists.

The truth is the only thing that any real peace can be based on. As long as their leaders are addicted to lying, nothing will change.

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Rashida Tlaib blames Israa's honor killing on everything (including Israel) EXCEPT honor/shame cultures like Islam

Rashida Tlaib tweeted:

"Isra’s death illustrates an ever-present toxic masculinity and control over women’s bodies and lives."

Help get #JusticeforIsraa by exposing the truth: https://t.co/YghpBO6l0V pic.twitter.com/QkrpBRx63h
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) September 1, 2019

The article, by a female of Palestinian ancestry, is truly amazing in doing everything to exonerate Islam, and Palestinian/Arab culture, from worldwide honor killings like Israa's:

Honor killings are not Muslim and they are not Arab. This is a universal phenomenon which takes places in nearly all corners of the globe, from the United States to Europe. The US president stands accused of rape. Honor killings were legal in Italy until the 1970s and still happen today. Do not use this narrative to reinforce dangerous stereotypes of Arab culture and Islam. Patriarchy exists every where.

It is true that honor killings are not exclusively a Muslim phenomenon - they also occur in Hindu and Sikh cultures and occasionally elsewhere (as she almost says, southern Italy specifically tolerated such acts until the 1980s. Every notable example of honor killings of women in Italy since the 1960s has been done by Muslims.)

But the author and Tlaib are simply lying by implying that it is a universal phenomenon, or that it is an inevitable result of the patriarchy. Patriachical societies are literally everywhere but honor killings are not. They are specifically in societies whose culture is based on the honor/shame dynamic, not the guilt dynamic of nearly all of Western culture. In honor/shame societies, one's sense of self-worth is tied up in how one is perceived by others, while in guilt societies, it is largely based on one's perception of oneself.

This article calls for "justice for Israa." It in fact is a major injustice for Israa Gharib by diverting the blame on everything but the real causes of her death: the honor/shame culture in Arab, Muslim and Palestinian society. If one wants justice for Israa, one must tackle the actual causes of her death, not whitewash them.

The article in fact blames everything but Palestinian society - including blaming Israel, as if the "occupation" is responsible for the honor/shame culture throughout the Middle East and other parts of Asia.

In Palestine, our legal system is the result of a century of occupation and political turmoil. It is a combination of Ottoman, British, Egyptian (in Gaza), Jordanian (in the West bank), and even no system (Area C). Despite various and continued efforts over the last decade, there has been very little reform to this outdated and dysfunctional legal system for two reasons: Israeli military occupation and a corrupt Palestinian Authority both hinder any legal, economic, and social progress.

Israel has literally zero influence over Palestinian law. More importantly, honor crimes are no more prevalent in Palestinian-controlled territories than in the surrounding Arab states.

The author mentions pinkwashing - and in so doing, shows that she is guilty of X-washing far more than Israel is:

When it comes to power structures, women’s bodies are always tools to reinforce some sort of ideal, whether honor, or pink-washing...doubtless some Hebrew articles being published by some Zionist news outlets to try and pink-wash occupation (again lol).

The entire point of this article that Rashida Tlaib recommends is to whitewash the responsibility of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims to rid their societies of the honor-based thinking that caused the murder of Israa Ghareb by universailizing - and therefore minimizing - the real reasons for her death.

This article recommended by Rashida Tlaib reinforces and justifies Palestinian violence against women by blaming everything but Palestinian culture for her death.

That is injustice for Israa.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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How the IDF used the honor/shame mentality against Hezbollah by faking injured soldiers near Lebanon

For the past week, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has been threatening Israel with an attack as retaliation for last weekend's IDF attack against Hezbollah targets in Syria, and, reportedly, in Lebanon.

What is the point of such retaliation? It is purely to restore Hezbollah's honor. it serves no strategic interest, and in fact could easily escalate into something Hezbollah doesn't want. But the Arab concept of honor is so strong that logic is not important - the shame of being attacked is too great to go unanswered.

Unlike most of the West, the IDF understands Hezbollah's honor.shame dynamic. And it devised s plan to use it against them.

This morning, Hezbollah claimed that it hit an IDF patrol and killed or injured at least two soldiers. It based this on its own pbservations, which may have included this video apparently taken from Lebanon:

#Israel Air Force S-70A-55 Yanshuf-3 helicopter evacuating two #IDF soldiers who were wounded during #Hezbollah's attack. pic.twitter.com/vnq03Y5JeC
— دودول طلا (@LievanTem) September 1, 2019

But it was all a ruse. The IDF faked blood on the soldiers' shirts, faked an evacuation and faked a helicopter taking them to the hospital.

The #IDF's deception operation: The helicopter didn't evacuate actually-injured soldiers as the entire exercise was planned in advance as a trick aiming to convince #Hezbollah that it succeeded in harming IDF troops: @RoySharon11 | #Israel #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/ZDjy5dSzxE
— Hezbollah Watch® (@HezbollahWatch) September 1, 2019

The obvious question is, why admit to the trick? Won't Hezbollah want to attack again once it finds out? Doesn't it cancel the advantage?

But that logic doesn't work in an honor/shame universe.

Hezbollah already announced it achieved its objectives of successfully attacking the IDF and injuring soldiers. It said "the group of the martyrs Hassan Zbeeb and Yasser Daher destroyed a military vehicle on the road of the Avivim barracks, killing and wounding those who were inside" the vehicle. It would be shameful for Hezbollah to admit that it was tricked, and therefore it won't say a word further about it. If it attacks again as a response to last weekend's strikes, it is tacitly admitting that its first attack did not kill anyone as they claimed - and that would be shameful!

So, in this case, the IDF was a step ahead of Hezbollah. It appears it may have even placed the empty vehicle there just to attract fire, making a calculated risk that Hezbollah won't attack the actor medics and helicopter - which would also be shameful.

Understanding how the enemy thinks is a huge advantage in warfare. In this case, Israel seems to have done it perfectly, in a way that saves lives on both sides of the Blue Line.

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The Nakba of Shame

One cannot understand Arab society without understanding the honor/shame dynamic.

It is not racist to point out that Arabs are brought up in a culture where receiving honor, and avoiding shame, are the top priorities. Westerners, on the other hand, are raised in a "guilt" society. In the West, what you do has inherent value even if no one else knows about it; in the Arab world nearly everything is dependent on how you are perceived as opposed to what you are.

In Arab culture, shame must be avoided at all costs. This is why there are so-called "honor killings." Even someone's life can be sacrificed to preserve one's supposed honor.

Arabs historically regarded themselves as warriors, with romantic Islamic artwork showing Muslims on horseback with swords fighting their enemies.

Yet Arabs and Muslims have lost wars many times in their history to the Christian West, possibly starting in 732 with the Battle of Tours.

After a while, it was not considered so shameful to lose to the Christians and their powerful armies.

This never applied to Jews, though.

Muslim antipathy to Jews is as old as Islam itself, and Arab hate for Jews goes back to Ishmael. Under Muslim rule, Jews were regarded as despised and weak second class citizens.

In 1948, the combined Arab armies not only failed to push the hated Jews into the sea, but they lost, convincingly, to these weak dhimmi Jews.

This is the reason the loss, alone among all Arab and Muslim losses in history, is called the "nakba." The scale of the military defeat isn't the important factor - the fact that it was so humiliating is.

There are two reasons the Arabs of Palestine who fled were never integrated into the Arab world and remain a separate, stateless people 71 years later. One is that their very existence reminds the Arab nations of their impotence in war, and the Arab leaders want to blame the Palestinian Arabs for fleeing rather than fighting for their lands. The other is the realization that a large refugee population can be weaponized itself in the insistence of the "right to return." The hope that Israel can still be destroyed through a combination of terror, demographics and politics remains.

Israeli concessions for peace are invariably looked upon as evidence of weakness and they embolden Israel's enemies, rather than appease them.

Something interesting has happened in recent years. Arab nations have slowly gotten used to the fact that Israel is strong and will not disappear so soon. As they did with the Christian West, they are recognizing that they cannot defeat Israel militarily and therefore it starts to make sense to begin to cooperate with Israel in cases of common interest.

Palestinian Arabs have not reached that point. Their classrooms still teach that they will one day "return" and claim all of the land from the river to the sea. They still pretend that symbolic support from the Arabs is meaningful. They have created an entire mythology around a Palestinian nation that never existed. Their need for pride precludes their ability to recognize reality.

Until they reach the point of knowing that Israel is a Jewish state and will remain there for a long time, the Nakba will remain a catastrophe to them.

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Honor/shame dynamic: Palestinians to send patients to Arab hospitals instead of Israel

In a cabinet session today, Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Ashtiyeh spoke about a decision to stop medical transfers to Israeli hospitals and instead to send patients to Arab countries.

"Delegations were sent to Egypt and Jordan to study the start of remittances to Arab countries and to dispense with remittances to Israel," he said.

This would involve significant delays for the patients themselves. Not to mention that the hospital facilities in Arab countries are inferior to Israel's.

Which means that the main reason for this decision in not what is best for Palestinians but what is considered "honorable." Saving patients' lives is shameful, if Jews have anything to do with it.

The appeal to honor, and to avoid shame, is so important to Palestinian leaders that they have started to rename President Trump's "deal of the century" to the "deal of shame" in their media in order to stop any chance that some reasonable Palestinians might publicly support it.

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Israel looks for win-win solutions. Palestinians only want zero-sum wins. Another reason the world cannot understand the Middle East.

This week saw a relatively minor story from Israel's perspective, and one that was heavily reported in Palestinian Arab media.

Arab prisoners went on a hunger strike last week because Israel put cell phone jamming devices in prisons, making illegal cell phones impossible to use. Palestinian Arabs freaked out, claiming that the devices would cause cancer or other illnesses.

The reason cell phones are banned is obvious. Terrorists can plan new attacks from prison. They can recruit new members of terror groups. They can speak via teleconference at terrorist gatherings and incite more hate and violence. Indeed, Israel has evidence of 14 recent attacks planned via illegal prison cell phones.

Instead of telling the prisoners to drop dead from their hunger strike, Israeli prison officials negotiated with them. And they came up with a solution that seems to address all the issues: Israel agreed to install public telephones in the prison wards where the Arab terrorists are kept, and to allow prisoners to make regular calls to first degree relatives that Israeli officials can listen in on.

Israel no longer has a security issue and Arab prisoners are happy they can speak to their families, which makes prisons a safer place for guards as well. This is a win-win situation.

But that is not how Palestinian media is looking at this.

Today is Palestinian Prisoners Day and Palestinian media is saying that the compromise was a "qualitative victory" for them. (Suddenly the fears of the supposed radiation from the cell phone jammers, which presumably will remain in place, have dissipated.)

Palestinian Arabs simply cannot think in terms of cooperation and compromise with Israel. They can only frame this incident as a victory for them - and a loss for Israel.

This is only a minor example of how the entire conflict has gone. For the Palestinian Arabs, perception is more important than reality (a corollary of the honor/shame culture they inhabit) and therefore they cannot accept anything but what can be framed as total victory - and, just as importantly, a total loss for the Jews.

From Israel's perspective, making a concession is evidence of how strong and secure it feels. From the Arab perspective, Israeli concessions is evidence of their weakness in the face of Arab power and resolve. The two attitudes are not compatible except in minor situations like this one where the actual facts can be papered over.

This difference in attitudes is one important reason peace is so difficult. Every time Israel compromises, the Palestinian Arabs assume that this is evidence of weakness, and it invites further demands and concessions. Only Israeli strength minimizes that attitude.

Western insistence on Israeli concessions ignores this dynamic and how they don't make Israel more secure - as they would with a like-minded negotiating partner - but they endanger Israel by making her appear weak to her enemies.

The EU and UN demand Israel act like a modern Western state when negotiating with people who have not evolved psychologically from the days of Mohammed. Israel's strength allows it to make concessions at times - but it has to balance them with the long term effects on how it is perceived by its enemies, not just the immediate easing of tensions.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Malaysian rally proves that "pro-Palestinian" and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin

From The New York Times:

A protest in Malaysia against President Trump’s decision to designate Jerusalem the capital of Israel brought together political foes on Friday, illustrating how solidarity with Palestinians has united disparate forces in the Muslim world.

Prime Minister Najib Razak headlined a rally of more than 1,000 people in the Putra Mosque compound in Putrajaya, the country’s administrative capital.

Also in attendance were former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old opposition leader, who has led a campaign to oust the scandal-plagued Mr. Najib, his former protégé, and Khalil Abdul Hadi, the head of the youth wing of the country’s main Islamic party. Mr. Mahathir joined a prayer service at the Putra Mosque, along with other politicians.

“Today, regardless of our political beliefs, we gather to show that as Muslims in Malaysia we are united in opposing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Mr. Najib said Friday.

"There are 1.6 billion Muslims,” Mr. Najib said at the Malaysian rally, to vigorous applause. “There are only 13 million Jews. It does not make sense if 1.6 billion lose to the Jews. If we don’t unite, we will be looked down upon.”

That is honor./shame in a perfect little nutshell. It shows that the issue isn't Israel or Jerusalem or Palestinians - it is Muslims losing to the Jews.

And the prime minister's political opponents are even more antisemitic:

Lawyer-cum-activist Azhar Harun has suggested that Prime Minister Najib Razak is wrong in the way he is looking at the issue of Palestine and Jerusalem, following comments made at the “rally for Jerusalem” in Putrajaya yesterday.Firstly, the 1.6 billion has never lost to the 13 million. The 1.6 billion have lost to themselves. They are busy trying to kill each other, whether figuratively or even literally.
“Secondly, and more importantly, many among the 1.6 billion are absolute hypocrites. They lack the absolute and sincere willingness to free Palestine and the Palestinians from the clutch of the 13 million,” Azhar said.
He added that there has been no proper plan, if any, from Muslim leaders and nations other than making fiery speeches.
Azhar then asked Najib to accept the fact that social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, through which he has “voiced his disdain against the 13 million”, is owned by the 13 million.
He also made the distinction of how the Jews now hold economic power and indirectly, political power, including among Muslim leaders.
“They, themselves, rely on the Jews and the friends of the Jews, to make money and to pursue their selfish agenda. They lack altruism,” he said.
Azhar explained how the Jews had plotted their way back from the “pogrom and holocaust” to persevere and eventually gain “world dominance”.
“They did that, first by gaining control of the economy through the financial system, international trade, properties and the world’s essential productions.
“Then, with the wealth that they created, and the essential services that they excel in and even monopolise, they made themselves indespensable to everything that moves in this world, including politicians who were too eager to pursue their own agenda, even at the expense of the Palestinian cause.
“With that, they become an absolute necessity. With that they control the politicians and the politics,” he said
Azhad added that there were no fiery speeches or “sad poems” involved in the Jews’ efforts.
“They had a plan. They worked to execute that plan quietly. And that is why, the 1.6 billion ‘lost’ the plot. And they ‘lost’ to the 13 million.”

The further Muslims are from Israel (and therefore the Western media limelight), the more free they are to be public about their antisemitism. But make no mistake - deep down, the self-loathing and shame that came from weak, lowly Jews defeating the Muslims to gain Israel is the driving force behind all the political moves of the Muslim world towards Israel, and Palestinians are merely pawns.

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The difference between Muslims and Jews encapsulated

Earlier this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sent out a Yom Kippur message:

This seems to be sincere, and it is altogether a nice message.

Publicly asking for forgiveness is direct proof that someone lives in a guilt culture, where people take personal responsibility for their actions.

We've noted here many times that the Arab and Muslim worlds live with a different mindset, the honor/shame culture. where what you do it not as important as what others think you do. Your own actions are not relevant.

So how do Arabs look at this message from Zuckerberg?

In Al Quds al Arabi, this message is called an "embarrassing situation" for Zuckerberg! A person who publicly admits mistakes is a person who is shaming himself in public, in the honor/shame world.

The very thing that helps people improve themselves - looking honestly at themselves and trying to learn from mistakes - is anathema to most people who grew up in honor/shame societies, where the primary concern is not to put yourself down but to puff yourself up for appearances sake. The idea of a public apology sounds insane to those in the shame culture. The apology itself is shameful, whether or not it is warranted.

Between Zuckerberg's tweet and Al Quds al Arabi's response, you can learn a great deal about the difference between Arabs and even the most assimilated Jews.

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Applying honor/shame to the metal detector fiasco

Once again, Palestinians are behaving irrationally.

Once again, no one knows what to make of it.

And once again, once you apply the honor/shame construct, it all makes perfect sense.

Abbas didn't want to see the terror attack on the Israeli policemen. But he is bound by the social rules of his society, and once the events were set in motion, he has no choice but to act like a typical Arab leader who is too cowardly to face down the insane shame culture.

Israel closing down the Temple Mount for two days was a source of a huge amount of shame. It showed that Jews ultimately control the area, and the myth that the Waqf controls it was shown to be a lie. The idea that Jews control the purported third holiest site in Islam is a source of deep shame that has been buried for years by the fantasy of Waqf control.

Once the shame started, it cannot be erased.

The fact that Israel re-opened the area in less than 48 hours is irrelevant; the metal detectors - or cameras or extra guards or wands or anything - just add to the shame of reminding the Arabs of who is the boss of the Temple Mount in the sense of who ultimately provides security. All else is irrelevant.

Once we have entered the honor./shame universe, actual facts or logic are meaningless - all that matters are symbols. And symbols don't get bigger than pretending to "defend Al Aqsa." (Which is what the stabber in Petah Tikva shouted this morning, as he stabbed an Arab mistaking him for a Jew.)

Abbas cannot act in a way that diminishes his honor, so he needs to double down on demanding honor and refusing shame. He must use all the weapons in his arsenal to "win". Because the other aspect of honor/shame societies is the zero-sum game, and if Israel gets anything out of this episode that it didn't have before- like normal security that any society would demand - Abbas thinks he loses. Winning the zero-sum game becomes more important than human lives. Abbas therefore ups the ante and says he will end security cooperation - the biggest weapon in his arsenal. He feels he has to go for the big guns because if he loses, he is finished - his shame will end him as a leader.

So now a very reasonable Israeli expectation for basic security becomes a life-or-death pissing match to the Palestinian leadership. They cannot back down. If Israel would offer to compromise by painting a stick figure of a camera on all entrances to the Mount the pushback would be exactly the same. Actual facts are of no interest.

Meanwhile, the honor/shame dynamic is played out with more terror attacks. Hamas' leader called the father of the murderer of the father and his children in Halamish explicitly in terms of honor, saying that "Your son brought pride to the nation." Abbas cannot be seen as less interested in national pride than Hamas, to do so would be politically costly, although he cannot explicitly praise the attack either or risk alienating his Western friends. So he stays quiet. But he will pay the salary of the murderer for the rest of his life.

As often happens, the logical West is confronted with the irrational Middle East. Usually the West blinks before dealing with these seemingly crazy people who would happily start a war over metal detectors. Because crazy people are scary and unpredictable and passionate, while normal people just want to live their lives without that drama.

The interesting part of this saga is how the Western world reacts. Israel's requirement for security in the face of a proven threat reflects what every other nation would do. The PA's reaction is completely bonkers by any normal yardstick. If the world wasn't so reflexively "pro-Palestinian" it wouldn't coddle the crazy demands, but the Palestinians have made an art form of these kinds of crazy demands that end up sounding reasonable over the years of constant repetition.

This time might be a little too crazy for, say, Western Europe at least. Palestinians have been losing their support behind the scenes, especially in Arab countries but cracks are appearing in the West as well. Their UN victories are getting narrower, and European parties are pushing back more against the UNHRC bias. They believe in the two state solution but they are not quite as certain that the 1967 lines are so sacred. Palestinian intransigence is being seen more and more as an obstacle to peace.

This episode may hurt the Palestinians in the long run much more than a symbolic victory would gain them. And this can be accelerated if the West uses the honor/shame dynamic to shame the Palestinians into acting like responsible adults.

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Some thoughts about (another) "Day of Rage" and honor/shame

Fatah declared today, Wednesday to be a "Day of Rage."

This is supposed to instill fear in the hearts of the dhimmis, who presumably forgot that the last "Days of Rage" were only a couple of months ago. Almost every Friday in May was a "day of rage" in support of the prisoner hunger strike, an issue that faded so quickly it seems hard to remember how important Palestinians pretended it was.

Just like metal detectors on the Temple Mount.

It is important to realize that "Days of Rage" are not responses to events. To the contrary.

Palestinians are completely defined by honor and shame. They cannot communicate except in those terms. Arabic media is filled with words like "humiliation." They are walking bundles of shame waiting for events to attach these "Days of Rage" to - because they want excuses to turn their shame into honor.

Their sense of self-worth is so pathetically poor that they look for excuses to start riots and to display rage to the world. They believe that by starting riots and causing Israeli security forces to deploy, they have achieved a tiny degree of honor. They are not as irrelevant as they fear - they have caused mighty Israel to notice them. They matter.

Rage is the only reliable product Palestinians have.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad can hold a rally with tens of thousands of people for any reason. Fatah's followers are not quite as fanatic, but give them an excuse to fight their shame, to show their rage, and they will come.

This is why this was never about metal detectors. Palestinians look at any Israeli display of control as evidence of their irrelevance, and there is nothing more shameful than being unimportant and impotent.

The reaction to such an affront is violence. Violent people are not impotent, they are doing something that makes it into newspapers and gets noticed by the world media.

The Fatah Facebook page has these posters:

# The Rage of Jerusalem

The world must know that we here are the owners of this land, and that we won't prostrate, and that we are returning

Indeed it is a revolution until victory... until victory
The Rage of Jerusalem

The rage of Jerusalem

The intifada is continuing... the revolution is continuing until (it reaches) Jerusalem

They are using these hashtags to push this "Day of Rage."

#إغضب - Get angry!

أبواب_ الأقصى _مغلقة - Aqsa doors closed

#الأقصى _بلا _مصلين - Aqsa no worshipers

#إغلاق _الاقصى - Closing of Al aqsa

Of course, Al Aqsa is open to Muslims. If anyone is closing it, it is the Waqf.

So why aren't any Muslims walking through the metal detectors to pray?

Because these daily, violent protests are really picket lines, and any Arab who dares to cross the picket line would be in danger!

Anyone defying the desire of the PA and the Waqf shows how irrelevant those groups are. Pretending to be important is a more important value to Palestinians than prayer at their supposedly holiest site in the region.

Palestinians are actively blocking Muslims from praying at their own holy site - and blaming Israel.

While on Sunday there were some Muslims who went through the metal detectors, since then I have not heard of any. Is it because, of the thousands that visit the site every day, not one thinks it is important enough to go to now?

Yet I cannot find any criticism of the Waqf and PA policy to intimidate every Muslim from going to the site.

This is not because 100% of all Israeli and Palestinian Muslims have decided to follow the Waqf instructions. It is because they are afraid of what could happen to them and their families if they even say they don't agree.

Solidarity is a very important part of the shame culture, and if anyone breaks ranks that is a source of shame. People must self-censor out of fear.

Westerners don't get how much that fear colors the interviews and even polls of Palestinians. They repeat what they think they are supposed to say; independent thinking is kept within.

When it is convenient to say that the Al Aqsa Mosque is a hugely important place for prayer, that is what is said. When it is convenient to say that it is not nearly as important as not allowing Jews to put up meta detectors, which means that it was never that important to begin with, then that becomes the story they say.

Can you imagine for a moment that religious Jews in the 1930s would boycott the Kotel because the British didn't allow them to blow the shofar there?

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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The importance of honor in the Arab world: Jordan chooses anniversary of attack to bomb ISIS

From Al Jazeera on February 4:

Jordan said late on Saturday that its warplanes bombed positions held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in southern Syria, two years after one of its pilots was captured and killed by the armed group.

Friday's strikes came on the second anniversary of ISIL's release of video showing pilot Moaz al-Kassasbeh being burned alive in a cage after his aircraft crashed in Syria in December 2014.

"Jordanian Air Force planes, in memory of our martyrs who have fallen in our war against terrorism, on Friday evening targeted various positions of the terrorist gang Daesh in southern Syria," the military said in a statement, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

I find it remarkable that a modern army, using drones and precision-guided bombs, chooses the date and time for an attack not for tactical advantage - but to coincide with the anniversary of an event.

This is a peripheral consequence of the honor/shame dynamic. Jordan's army was humiliated by ISIS burning its pilot alive, and the way to best cleanse this shame is to do a revenge attack that is explicitly tied to the humiliating event.

The army released this statement linking the two both to give a message to ISIS and, more importantly, to Jordanians so they could erase the shame they felt for the past two years.

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Oslo through the prism of honor/shame (Richard Landes)

At Middle East Quarterly, Richard Landes wrote an excellent overview of how Edward Said's outsized influence on Middle East studies has blinded the West to reality.

It is very long, but here is the section on how the West didn't understand - and still refuses to understand - the dynamics behind the Oslo process of the 1990s:

Few debacles better illustrate the folly of ignoring honor-shame dynamics than the Oslo "peace process," which based its logic on the principle of an exchange of "land for peace": Israel cedes land to the Palestinians (most of the West Bank and Gaza) to create an independent state; the Palestinians bury the hatchet of war since they're getting what they allegedly want, without the need for war.

Thus the accords banked on a Palestinian shift from their charter-defined commitment to regaining Arab and Muslim honor by wiping out the shame that is Israel, to a readiness to accept Israel's legitimate existence. Such a shift depended on their understanding that this promissory concession to Israel would bring what Palestinians "yearn for," namely the freedom to govern themselves in peace and dignity. A win-win so obvious, that, as Gavin Esler of the BBC opined, "it could be solved with an email."[32]

What the Oslo architects and their Western supporters so completely underestimated was the hold that his native honor-world held over Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat. This lack of insight not only dominated thinking in Western circles (not put at risk by such a gamble), but even Israeli political and intelligence circles, who had much to lose:

[I]t is clear that it was not only Israel's political leadership that was held hostage by the chimerical conception that an era of peace with the Palestinian Authority had begun: M[ilitary] I[ntelligence] and the Shin Bet security service had trouble liberating themselves from the same feeling. The intelligence officials were not always willing to let facts disturb a rosy perception of reality.[33]

Just because Western and Israeli analysts failed to pay attention, however, does not mean the laws of honor-shame ceased to operate. After the ceremonious signing of the deal on the White House lawn, PLO chairman Arafat found himself the target of immense hostility from his Arab and Muslim honor-group for having brought shame upon himself, his people, upon all Arabs and all Muslims. When he arrived in Gaza in July 1994, Hamas denounced him roundly: "His visit is shameful and humiliating, as it occurs in the shadow of occupation and in the shadow of Arafat's humiliating submission before the enemy government and its will. It is impossible to present a defeat as victory."[34] Edward Said, proud member of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO's semi-parliament, echoed the language of Hamas: the compromises involved a humiliating and "degrading ... act of obeisance ... a capitulation" that produced a state of "supine abjectness ... submitting shamefully to Israel."[35]Thus did the "post-colonial" intellectual speak the zero-sum, tribal language of Arab and Muslim honor-shame, attacking negotiation as dishonorable; this was the very language Westerners avoided discussing lest they "Orientalize the Orient."

To the extent that Arabs were sold on the Oslo process, it was as a Trojan horse, not as a humiliating concession.

And yet Arafat used the same honor-shame language in Arabic, from the moment the accords were signed and the Nobel Prize granted.[36] Six months after returning from Tunisia in July 1994, to what had, as a result of the accords, become Palestinian-controlled territory, Arafat defended his policy to fellow Muslims in South Africa, not by speaking of the "peace of the brave,"[37] but rather by invoking Muhammad's Treaty of Hudaybiya, signed in weakness, broken in strength. To the extent that Arabs were sold on the Oslo process, it was as a Trojan horse, not as a (necessarily) humiliating concession; a plan for honorable war not for ignominious peace.[38] In cultures where, for honor's sake, "what was taken by force must be retaken by force," any negotiations are shameful and cowardly.[39]

By and large, Western journalists and policymakers, including the "peace camp" in Israel, and even intelligence services, ignored Arafat's repeated invocations of Hudaybiya.[40] Advocates of peace viewed them as antics designed to appease public opinion (itself a thing worth pondering) and remained confident that, in the end, the more mature call of the international community would sway Arafat to the side of positive-sum reason. Practitioners of "peace journalism" in Israel, for example, consciously avoided such discouraging news items in general and the meaning of Hudaybiya in particular.[41] In his 800-page memoir on the Oslo failure, Dennis Ross, the U.S. Middle East envoy most deeply involved in negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, has not a word to say about the Hudaybiya controversy, despite how consistent it was with his own assessment of Arafat's problematic behavior, his "failure to prepare his people for the compromises necessary for peace."[42] Worse. Arafat's sin was not of omission, but of commission: He systematically prepared his people for war right under the noses of the Israelis and the West.

Rather than consider the implications of this counter-evidence, those supporting the process attacked anyone who drew attention to them. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a so-called Muslim civil rights organization with ties to the same Muslim Brotherhood of which Hamas is a branch, led the attack in the name of protecting the Prophet Muhammad's reputation. Daniel Pipes wrote repeatedly about the Johannesburg mosque speech, the meaning of the Treaty of Hudaybiya, and the trouble Westerners found themselves in when they brought up the subject. Despite being studiously fair to the Muslim prophet on historical grounds, Pipes provoked furious condemnation and an early accusation of "Islamophobia."[43]

The outcry essentially forbade critics from examining evidence relevant to their pressing concerns. Instead, peace enthusiasts viewed Arafat and the Palestinian leadership as full-fledged modern players who wanted their own nation and their freedom, and whom one could trust to keep commitments. Most thought that Arafat would, when the opportunity presented itself, choose the imperfect, positive-sum, win-win, over the zero-sum, all-or-nothing, win-lose. They "believed" in the Palestinian leadership and shamed anyone who dared to suggest the Palestinians still clung tightly to atavistic revenge. Thus, even as Jerusalem and Washington prepared for a grand finale to the peace process at Camp David in the summer of 2000; even as Israel's media prepared their people for peace, Arafat's media prepared Palestinians for war.[44] And none of the key decision-makers paid any attention.

The inability to understand the dynamics of maintaining honor (through fighting Israel) and avoiding shame (brought on by compromising with Israel) doomed Oslo to failure from the start. People involved, who thought that they were "so close" and that if only Israel had given more, it would have worked, got played.[45] For the Palestinian decision-makers, it was never close. Even a successful deal would have led to more war. Indeed, according to that logic, the better the deal for the Palestinians—i.e., the "weaker" the Israelis—the more aggression will accompany its implementation.[46]

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Honor/shame and UNRWA budget cuts

I found this Ma'an article to be interesting:

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees on Sunday staged a sit-in in front of the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City to protest a reduction in services provided by the UN agency.
The sit-in was the second Sunday protest in a row, as refugees in Gaza faces cuts to health and educational services.

Protesters waved flags and posters as they chanted slogans slamming the reduction of UN services.

“We want schools! Stop the policy of humiliation and contempt!” the protesters chanted.

Notice that the slogans aren't about the importance of education, but that cutting services is the equivalent of humiliation.

The sign in this file photo says "We are not beggars! We have rights," again putting the issue in terms of humiliation and shame.

The subtext is that Palestinian Arabs have the right to unlimited funds from the West, and to not get billions of dollars is humiliating.

The Palestinian Authority is publicly saying that it is not their responsibility to educate their own people whom they call "refugees."

Secretary-General of the Palestinian Cabinet, Ali Abu Diak, Sunday rejected UNRWA’s proposal to postpone the start of the new academic year for over half a million students across the Middle East for a period of four months due to severe finical crisis.

He called on the UN, and the rest of the world countries to uphold their responsibilities toward Palestinian refugees’ issue

Abu Diak stressed the need for UNRWA to resume its work and provision of assistance to Palestinian refugees as long as there is no political solution to the refugees’ issue on the basis of international legitimacy resolutions, particularly resolution 194; the right of return and compensation.

The argument is not based on humanitarian concerns but on "rights" that simply don't exist. They aren't asking for money because they cannot afford schooling and medical care for their kids; they are demanding money because they believe that the world owes it to them, forever.

Meanwhile, Jordan has told the world not to expect them to pick up the slack for educating their own Palestinian Arab citizens.

Minister of Education Dr. Mohammad Thunaibat said that the Ministry of Education does not have the ability to accept UNRWA schools students in its schools. He said that Jordan is already stretched thin because of the many Syrian refugees that it has accepted.

But this begs the question of why there is a parallel UNRWA school system in Jordan to begin with for students who are nearly all full Jordanian citizens?