Ariel Sharon: The Lion of Israel

The name "Ariel" in Hebrew means "lion (ari) of God (El)." It could not have been a more fitting name for Ariel Sharon, who died on Saturday at the age of 85. A tough guy, a brilliant and hard-headed soldier who fought in every Israeli war since 1948, the "Father of the Settlements", the architect of the 1982 war in Lebanon, the fierce counterterrorist, and, ultimately, a politician forced to confront his own principles - this, and so much more, was Ariel Sharon.

Sharon was born to Belorussian immigrants in Kfar Malal, north of Tel Aviv, on February 26, 1928. As a young commander in Israel's War of Independence, Sharon led men in battle several times in 1947 and 1948. He fought in the first (of five) battles for Latrun, a strategically important village. Jewish Jerusalem was besieged and the road from Tel Aviv had to pass through Latrun and other villages inhabited by Arabs. Therefore, the capture of Latrun was necessary to keep the road safe for convoys traveling to Jerusalem. Ultimately, it remained in Jordanian hands and was not part of the Jewish state until 1967. At Latrun, in May 1948 (about two weeks after David Ben-Gurion announced the independence of the State of Israel), Sharon was left for dead before being rescued by a 16-year-old comrade. 

Although later in life Sharon was seen as the star representative of Israel's right wing, he was really, in his own words, a "pragmatic" Zionist as opposed to an "ideological" one: he cared more for the clearing of swamps, the building of houses, the raising of animals, and the planting of olive trees than for high-flying intellectual debate about the nature of Zionism and the Jewish state. When one reads his autobiography, one is struck by his dedication to the professionalization of the military and to doing everything in his power to protect the State of Israel. There is no political philosophizing to be found, very little about his views concerning the intense political debates between the  Revisionists and Mapai in the 1940s (although he does say that he sympathized with and even envied Irgun militants). The settlements needed to be built to protect Israel, and not for any real ideological reason (more on this below). Israel could not depend on anyone else's charming words; it had to depend on itself, its own hard work and ingenuity. Sharon was more of a doer than a thinker, which is not to strike a blow at his intelligence, which was considerable; rather, it is to illustrate the stunning activeness of the man. 

In 1953, Sharon became the leader of Unit 101, a special forces unit within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) whose purpose was to conduct raids across the Israeli border in retaliation for attacks by the fedayeen - Palestinian guerrillas who attacked Jewish population centers from bases in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. In one such raid on Qibya, in the Jordanian-administered West Bank, dozens of Arab civilians were killed when Israeli soldiers demolished buildings. Sharon would later say that he specifically had his men call into the buildings to make sure no one was in them before setting the charges, but was surprised to discover the next day that 69 Arab civilians had been killed. The raid on Qibya was in retaliation for the murder of a young Jewish mother and her infant children. The killers had infiltrated Israel by way of Qibya. This reprisal was particularly intense because it was intended to be a major deterrent against further fedayeen raids. Instead, however, these forays continued (as did Unit 101's counter-actions) and were ultimately one of the reasons for the Sina Campaign of 1956 (Israel's reasons for fighting that war were: 1) fear of Nasser's new arsenal from the Soviet Union, via the Czech Republic; 2) the fedayeen raids; 3) Egypt's closure of the Straits of Tiran).

During that conflict, Sharon sent a reconnaissance unit into the Mitla Pass, a narrow gorge in the Sinai that was heavily-defended by Egyptian defenders. Thirty-eight Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting. This decision has been heavily criticized to this very day, including by men who fought in the pass, as entirely unnecessary, either from a tactical or strategic point of view. Sharon, for his part, argued that his position at the eastern entrance of the pass was untenable, and he sent the unit into the pass to seek better ground.

Eleven years later, Israel fought in the momentous Six-Day War. Sharon, now a general, made his mark by capturing Egyptian fortifications stretching from Abu Ageila to Um-Shihan in the Sinai Desert. This was a hugely important accomplishment that allowed the Israelis to control the logistical supply routes in Sinai. 

Sharon, already proven a tough, even foolhardy, commander of men, earned his major achievement in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In that conflict, Sharon launched a successful counter-attack against Egyptian armored forces and succeeded in crossing the Suez Canal (infuriating his commander, Shmuel Gonen, who wanted to establish a wider corridor on the east bank of the canal before crossing). In doing so, his forces encircled the Egyptian Third Army, which was only saved by the intervention of the United States: Henry Kissinger wanted to take this opportunity to help "flip" Egypt into the U.S. camp of the Cold War (this was ultimately successful). Sharon's accomplishments in this war, and photographs showing his head wrapped in a white bandage, solidified his image in Israel as a military hero. He was now a living legend of the IDF.

Sharon, up to this point associated with the Labor Party, became a co-founder of the center-right Likud Party with Menachem Begin, for whom he served as Minister of Agriculture and later, controversially, as Minister of Defense. This in and of itself was a revolutionary move, because up to this point, something like 99% of all leading military figures in Israel were Labor Party members. As Minister of Agriculture, Sharon was a leader of the settlement movement. While individual settlements had been established in the environs of Jerusalem and the West Bank after 1967 under Labor governments, their number astronomically increased under the patronage of Sharon. Sharon told the settlers to "grab every hilltop" in the West Bank to secure Israel's eastern front against potential aggression from Jordan, Iraq, and the Palestinians. It is clear that his motivations in building and populating the settlements lay in security and "creating facts on the ground" - if Jews lived in the West Bank, the land would essentially become part of Israel, significantly broadening the tiny country's waist with hilly terrain. Israel required the West bank's hilly spine to provide it strategic depth. Sharon, a secular man, was certainly not motivated by a messianic fervor: while he respected the Jewish history of the place, he was not one to go on at length about that history and how it gave the Jews the right to be there. Begin was known to speak at length on this topic, as was, interestingly, the fiercely secular Moshe Dayan. Nonetheless, Sharon was highly regarded by many of the fundamentalist religious settlers, who are motivated by such a messianic fervor, until he led Israel's disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

In 1982, Sharon's most controversial moment arose. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had been kicked out of Jordan in September 1970 and had succeeded in creating a state within a state in southern Lebanon. PLO fighters launched rockets at towns and villages in Galilee. Using the pretext of the assassination attempt on Israel's ambassador to Great Britain in June 1982, the Israeli army launched an invasion of Lebanon, pushing through the south of that country beyond the Litani River and, ultimately, besieging Beirut. Many speculate that Sharon had kept Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the dark as to his intentions in Lebanon which were, essentially:

1. Destroy the PLO in Lebanon
2. Change the balance of power within the chaotic Lebanese political environment so that the Maronite Christians would take control of the country and, following that, sign a peace treaty with Israel.

While the first goal was achieved, the second goal was hugely ambitious and came to naught. In September 1982, Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon's president-elect, a Maronite Christian, and the head of the Phalange group in Lebanon, was assassinated. In retaliation, Elie Hobeika, one of Gemayel's commanders, sent some of his troops into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in West Beirut. The consequences were horrifying: several hundreds of Palestinians, men, women, and children, were slaughtered. An Israeli inquiry later found that, although Sharon was not directly responsible for the massacre, he did allow the Phalangists into the camp and he should have been aware of what would have happened to the Palestinians there. Sharon initially refused to resign from his post, but eventually did so in 1983. This essentially cast a shadow over Sharon for the next two decades - while he served in the Shamir and Netanyahu governments, he was decidedly not in the limelight and was ultimately never able to attain his mission: to become the IDF Chief of Staff. This is the major reason why Sharon is, to this day, considered the main "Israeli butcher" by Palestinians, Lebanese, and many anti-Israel activists and thinkers around the world. TIME magazine even accused him of actively perpetrating the massacre, for which Sharon sued the publication for libel.

In September 2000, Ariel Sharon made a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. He did not enter any of the buildings of the complex. Immediately afterward, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel proper exploded in the Second Intifada (or "Al Aqsa" Intifada because of Sharon's perceived slight of that Muslim holy site). While at the time many viewed Sharon's visit as needlessly provocative, and considered it the immediate cause of the Second Intifada, it has since come to light that the uprising and terror campaign was something that Yasser Arafat and the head honchos of the PLO had been planning for several months. Sharon's visit was simply a convenient pretext and alibi.

After a rash of suicide bombings in Israel, the country's frustrated and frightened electorate brought Sharon to the premiership in March 2001. While certainly controversial, he was also seen as a man who could be trusted to protect his country. In Operation Defensive Shield, the IDF successfully crushed terrorist centers throughout the West Bank. Also controversially (although not in Israel, where Sharon's hands were forced), it was under Sharon that construction of the West Bank barrier began. It should be noted that the idea of separation between Israel and the Palestinians had originally been a Labor idea, and had been explicitly urged by Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s. Sharon and others in Likud were opposed to the idea of separation because it implied that Israel did not have sovereignty over the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Jews were just as entitled to live in Maaleh Adumim, Ariel, and Efrat as they were to live in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Netanya. Sharon and others on the right wing of the spectrum did not want to build a barrier because they felt that, in doing so, it would become the de facto border between Israel and the future state of Palestine - and they did not want this to happen, given the reasons mentioned above. However, under relentless public pressure (over 90 percent), Sharon agreed to the construction of the separation barrier. This barrier has been castigated as an "apartheid wall" since its inception, and has been a stick with which to beat the state of Israel. But it is undoubtedly true, as statistics illustrate, that the barrier has been effective in preventing suicide bombings in Israel. The vast majority of suicide bombers, prior to its construction, had originated in the West Bank, easily infiltrated into Israel proper, and then exploded themselves in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The barrier put a stop to all that.

In 2005, Sharon made another decision that caused him to go against long-held principles: namely, the decision to remove not only the IDF, but Israeli civilians, from their homes in Gaza (and four small settlements in the northern West Bank). For the "Father of the Settlements," this assuredly could not have been easy. Because Sharon did not trust his Palestinian interlocutors one whit, and felt that there was no true partner for peace, this move was made entirely unilaterally. He argued that in the final analysis, this meant that Gaza would be under Palestinian sovereignty, so that if rockets continued to be fired into Israel, the IDF would be able to declare war against another sovereign entity and not be seen to be oppressing a subject people. This, however, did not, and does not, prevent many individuals from claiming that Gaza is still, de facto, occupied because it is under siege by Israel. Many settlers and their supporters were concerned that the Gaza disengagement was but a dress rehearsal for withdrawal from the West Bank, which would have involved many more people and many more financial resources. It would be even more difficult emotionally because it is the West Bank, not Gaza (or anywhere in Israel's heavily populated coastal plain) that is the cradle and heart of Jewish civilization. Hebron and Bethel are important locations in the Tanakh, not Ashdod and Hod HaSharon. Ultimately, Sharon bolted Likud and formed a new centrist party, Kadima, whose members supported his push for disengagement.

We will never know the full extent of Sharon's intentions because he suffered a stroke in December 2005 and then a massive follow-up stroke in January 2006, which left him in a vegetative state until his death this past Saturday. But it was the disengagement that made Sharon at least somewhat respectable again in international discourse. It helped to rehabilitate his image as a brutal war criminal, at least in Western eyes (many Arabs, on the other hand, celebrated his death by handing out sweets). I don't necessarily think that it was a 180 degree turn. Sharon was a man dedicated to the protection of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and he did what he thought he had to do to make that happen. Not trusting his Palestinian counterparts, yet tired of having to protect small Jewish settlements amidst a hostile population, he decided on unilateral disengagement. The intifada proved to him that there could be no peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians and, therefore, that Israel's presence in Gaza, and even in the West Bank, was untenable. For this, the settler movement now holds Sharon in considerable contempt - one MK of Jewish Home recently said that it had been the will of God that Sharon went into a coma when he did so that he did not give up the West Bank.

Sharon was, by all accounts, a larger-than-life personality whose nickname "The Bulldozer" was decidedly apropos. When he thought something needed to be done, he did it, even if it meant circumventing orders in the 1956 and 1973 wars, deceiving his own prime minister in 1982 (as many contend), or undoing what he had built up with his own hands (namely, the settlements). He stood up for what he believed in, even in the face of the severest criticism, whether it came from the right or left. He was known to get in fierce debates with his superiors and peers in the IDF, including Dayan, Gonen, Chaim Bar-Lev, Yigal Allon, and David Elazar. He was truly a maverick. Ultimately, Sharon's legacy is that he was, first and foremost, a fierce protector of the Jewish state. He was the shield that absorbed the blows. He loved the people and the land. He did not mince words about his hatred for Israel's enemies and he did what he could to utterly crush them. These principles informed his controversial decisions to build settlements and invade Lebanon up to Beirut. He was not a warmonger: he said once in an interview with The New Yorker that he would much rather labor at his farm than fight Israel's neighbors. While undoubtedly a roughhewn, brusque man, he was, according to many accounts, very charming as well - a perfect example of the legendary Israeli sabra. He was, indeed, the Lion of Israel and lived up to the name "Ariel." 

Peace Talks

The Israelis and Palestinians are currently in peace negotiations discussing the possibilities for a two-state solution. This is the latest iteration in a process that began with secret negotiations between Israeli academics and PLO officials in the early 1990s, and the first step culminated in the signing of the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn in September 1993. Since then we have seen Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Memorandum, the Camp David talks, the Annapolis conference, etc. In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas the following:

• 93.5% of the West Bank (5.8% of the balance made up in land swaps with Israel and 0.7% in a corridor connecting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).
• The entirety of the Gaza Strip 
• Sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which would become the Palestinian capital (with the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif placed under the auspices of the future Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and Israel)
• Token amount of Palestinians given the "right of return"- about 3,000. 

Abbas said that he would study the proposal but ultimately never signed it. According to him, "the gaps were wide" between the Israeli and Palestinian positions. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted as saying, "Olmert...said: 'We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin [the Old City, Mt. of Olives, the City of David, and the Arab neighborhood Silwan].' Abu Mazen [Abbas] too [in other words, like Arafat] answered with defiance, saying, 'I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine - the June 4, 1967 borders - without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places.' This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign..." [note the lack of any mention of Jewish holy places in Jerusalem. That was not by accident.]

The problem is that the Israelis and Palestinians should be "in a marketplace or a bazaar." After all, one negotiates in a bazaar. These should be negotiations, not dictations by either side.

This very brief history shows that one should not be too excited about this latest round of negotiations. Abbas has already come out saying that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, will not permit an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, will not accept any interim agreement, never accept an agreement where the Palestinians get less than 100% of East Jerusalem (including the Jewish holy sites), etc. This is essentially the same rejection made by Abbas in 2008, and that the late Yasser Arafat made in 2000. In other words, despite the recriminations of the blame-Israel crowd, Israel has been quite willing to give up land in the quest for peace. The Palestinians have said no. And this time will be no different. 

In order to please the Palestinian Authority, Israel has agreed to release 104 prisoners in four tranches. Israel is releasing the third tranche, which consists of 26 prisoners, as I write these words. The men being released have done nasty things. No one seems to be asking themselves the larger question: if a sticking point of negotiations is for Israelis to release prisoners guilty of stabbing women and old men, and murdering fellow Palestinian "collaborators", that speaks to a deep sickness in Palestinian political culture. No country should be forced to release prisoners of this type: we are not speaking of political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. Rather we are speaking of men who have committed the most atrocious of crimes, many against innocent civilians. Furthermore, these prisoners, like prisoners before them, will be greeted with garlands when they return to their homes (and in official festivities in Ramallah). This is very disturbing, and I would venture to say that it is this mindset, combined with the "all or nothing" Götterdämmerung mentality of Palestinian nationalism, that is the cause for the failure of the peace process, not the construction of settlements in the West Bank. The latter are an irritant, but they are not the cause of the failure of talks. 

However, the international community at large does not see things this way. Our own Secretary of State has suggested that if the talks fail, there very well may be a Palestinian intifada, and implied that it would be justified. So in other words, if the Palestinians enlarge their demands (as they have historically done) and the Israelis consequently say "forget it", the Palestinians will have been implicitly permitted to launch a violent campaign against Israel. The onus, in other words, has been entirely placed on Israel. There is very little reason to believe that any peace agreement will be signed. With the combination of Palestinian/Islamic nationalism, Israeli fears and cynicism, and the lens through which the international community sees the conflict, it is not difficult to see why.

UPDATE: Here is the celebration in Ramallah, attended by Mahmoud Abbas himself.

Another Example of the BDS Movement's Obsession

The American Studies Association, a group of scholars, has voted to endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. As the article points out, this is merely symbolic: it has zero real meaning lacking a support from the broader university or college. As the article also mentions, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has come out condemning boycotts of Israel (he supports the boycott of goods produced by settlers in the West Bank). So, looks like the residents of the ivory tower of academia are more radical in this sense than the Palestinian government itself.

This is another instance of the obsessions of the BDS Movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction), an international group of anti-Israel activists, scholars, and so on. One of its most prominent supporters is Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame, who said recently that the Jewish Lobby is "particularly" powerful in the rock n roll industry. This feeds into the martyrdom complex of Waters and others who are similarly obsessed with Israel. He has compared Israeli policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians to Nazi Judenpolitik in the 1930s and even into the war period. His comments about the Jewish lobby (Note: not the "Zionist lobby"; he might have slipped) mark him as an outright anti-Semite, whether he thinks of himself consciously that way or not. He continued in the interview: "I would not have played for the Vichy government in occupied France in WWII, would not have played in Berlin either during this time...There were many people who pretended that the oppression of the Jews was not going on. From 1933 until 1946 [sic]. So this is not a new scenario. Except this time its the Palestinians who are being murdered."

Where to begin?

1. World War II ended in 1945, not 1946. This is obnoxious on my part, sure, but it needs to be emphasized just how historically ignorant this man is. Everyone with even a modicum of education knows this.

2. Jews were not being systematically murdered as early as 1933. Yes, the first concentration camp (Dachau) was established then, but its early prisoner population consisted of left-wingers and at this early stage was not remotely comparable to what the concentration camps later became (and what the concentration camps later became is likewise not comparable to the extermination camps, which were worlds different from concentration camps like Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen). This is another quibble, but I get annoyed when people do not know of what they speak.

3. There is, obviously, no systematic extermination of the Palestinians. Rather, their population has increased since they've lived under the Israeli occupation. Certainly, the Palestinians have suffered hardships and, at times, harsh Israeli policies, but seriously: there is absolutely zero parallel between anything the Palestinians have suffered, from 1948 to the present day, and the extermination of the European Jews. The obnoxious, and repetitious, assertions to the contrary do not change this fundamental fact. It is simply outrageous to compare systematic genocide to policies instituted in defense of a people, even if those policies are often harsh.

The BDS movement is much more popular in Europe than in the United States, but it is surely popular among many in academia. The movement is hypocritical, as it does not have anything bad to say about truly nasty governments. Occasionally, there have been token resolutions against the former junta in Myanmar and Mugabe's Zimbabwe. But the overarching purpose of the BDS movement is to delegitimize the State of Israel and to isolate it from the broader international community, including its cultural, educational, and scientific achievements. It sees Israel as morally equivalent to the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it wants the international community to shun Israel the way that it did South Africa. In the past, groups that make up this informal BDS movement have expressed their solidarity with Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution," hoisted placards of the late revolutionary Che Guevara, and shown absolute, utter indifference to the viciousness of countries in the broader Middle East, such as Syria, Qaddafi's Libya, Sudan (whose government has literally perpetrated genocide), Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq, and other brutal regimes outside of the Middle East. While some universities, such as the University of Johannesburg, have canceled ties with Israeli universities, there has been no change in the status of ties with universities in dictatorial countries such as China. (Oh, and China is also an occupying power; it has occupied Tibet since 1959). The University of Johannesburg had actually issued an ultimatum to Ben-Gurion University to conduct joint research projects with a Palestinian university within six months (which would be done in consultation with UJ); if not, relations would be cut (and they were).

This is another manifestation of the obsessive fixation on the Jewish state, which I wrote about in my last post. These movements write long tracts on Israel's misdeeds against the Palestinians; the very term "BDS" brings up a gazillion hits about Israel but nothing about any other country, because no other country has an international movement designed to "BDS" it; and has been very blunt in its desire to isolate Israel from the world. For example, Britain's University and Colleges Union made Israel the target of a whopping 41% of all international resolutions. For another example, here is a letter written by Mona Baker, an Egyptian professor of translator studies at the University of Manchester who kicked two Israeli academics off the board of her journal:

“My decision [to fire you] is political, not personal. As far as I am concerned, I will always regard and treat you both as friends, on a personal level, but I do not wish to continue an official association with any Israeli under the present circumstances."

I could go on and on. There is no need to hear anything from Israeli academics because of the occupation (even though many Israeli academics are vociferous critics of the occupation themselves). Meanwhile, many of these same BDSers proudly wear the Palestinian kaffiyah (which in its origins was worn by the commoner toiling in the fields, but has become associated with the Palestinian resistance since it was adopted by Arafat), have nothing negative to say about the Palestinian Authority (whose corruption and human rights abuses are atrocious), or even Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who have nothing in common with any of these BDSers except for their hatred for Israel. These groups do not even pretend to care about other peoples under occupation or without their own state, such as the Tibetans or the Kurds.

Cultural boycott is disgusting. It goes against the grain of what should be the focus of academia: the fostering and cultivation of knowledge through free and intellectual discourse. Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple, has long been an anti-Israel activist and BDSer. She even said that she does not want her novel to be translated into Hebrew. She also tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent Alicia Keyes from performing in Israel. Walker's personal biography finds her peculiarly obsessed with Israel, calling Israel "the greatest terrorist in that part of the world." Certainly, she has nothing negative to say about Arafat's legacy or Hamas. She explains away the firing of rockets into Israel (and would certainly do the same for suicide bombing) because it's a "David and Goliath" situation and that is all the Palestinians have.

There is very little rational about the BDS phenomenon. One BDSer, Naomi Klein, has admitted that Israel is easy to pick on because of its small size and dependence on international trade. In other words, she has made it frank that the BDS movement is a bully. What a cowardly way of thinking.

This is yet another shameful episode for those who cherish the freedom of intellectual pursuit and the marketplace of ideas.

The Fixation on Israel

One of the things that most fascinates, and disturbs, me about popular attention on the Middle East is that the vast majority of it focuses on a tiny sliver of land in the southwestern Levant and north of the Sinai Peninsula: namely, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

There are legitimate reasons for this. Modern Israel is home to locations that are holy and important to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Jesus' family was from Nazareth and he was born in Bethlehem - the former is in Israel proper and the latter is in the West Bank, just south of Jerusalem. Jesus preached throughout what is modern-day Israel and was crucified in Jerusalem. Christians descended upon the Middle East to wrest the Holy Land from Muslims in the Middle Ages. Young men fought their way through Anatolia and southern Europe to secure Jerusalem for Christendom. This is all rather mind-boggling to modern sensibilities, so we say that religion could not possibly have been the motivating factor for the Crusaders: it was greed for territory and for treasures, it was a genocidal hatred for the Muslims. While there were individual crusaders who did set out for land and wealth, and hatred for Muslims certainly did exist, these were not the main motivating factors for the Crusades. The reason was very simple: Jerusalem was holy and by right it belonged to the Christians. It also surely helped that Pope Urban II announced that any Crusaders who died fighting for Jerusalem would receive automatic salvation from God. Westerners have long been fixated on the Holy Land, in other words.

For Muslims, Jerusalem is the third holiest city. It was their original qibla (direction of prayer) and they did much to restore the city, and particularly the Temple Mount, upon their conquest in 638. The Christians, in utter contempt, were using the site of the destroyed Temple as a garbage dump. The Muslims, under Caliph Umar, cleaned this up. In 692, the magnificent Dome of the Rock was constructed at this very spot under the orders of Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Caliph, whose court was in Damascus. Much of the aesthetically beautiful calligraphy in this shrine is dedicated to sneering at Christianity's notion of the Trinity. The much bandied-about Al-Aqsa Mosque was completed in 705. "Al Aqsa" means "the farther" or "the farthest" in Arabic, and it refers to a Quranic verse, specifically 17:1, which refers to Muhammad's Night Journey: "Blessed is He who took  His servant [Muhammad] by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al-Aqsa..." "Masjid" simply means "Mosque." Al-Masjid al-Haram is the mosque that surrounds the Kaaba in Mecca.  The meaning of "Al-Masjid al-Aqsa" ("the farthest mosque") was a bit more cryptic. The Quran does not identify this location with Jerusalem or even with Palestine. This identification came later, with the Umayyads, who were the rulers of the roost in Syria. "Syria" at the time encompassed a much greater land mass than the modern state with that name, and Palestine was the southern part of it. The Umayyads sanctified Jerusalem for political reasons: to divert the Muslim hajj (pilgrimage) from Mecca to Jerusalem, which would bring in tax revenues and provide the Umayyads with political legitimacy. The mosque built on the Temple Mount was named "Al-Aqsa" to give retroactive consecration to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The Night Journey story in the Quran was interpreted to refer to the Temple Mount: it is there from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven. The importance of Jerusalem to Muslims has waxed and waned throughout history, with significant increase when the city belongs to someone else. Hence, the importance ascribed to the city during the Crusades and now, under Israeli rule.

Palestinians have also been profoundly adept at getting the world's attention to their plight: Yasser Arafat was singularly successful in this goal. While the Palestinians' struggle with Israel was, and is, all over world headlines, struggles in other parts of the globe have been relegated either to the back pages or not noted at all. This is, of course, a function of the importance of the region in Western and Islamic tradition. That was certainly helpful to Arafat's cause.

But there is also something a bit more sinister going on here. Israel is internationally vilified in a unique way. The UN has an unhealthy obsession with the Jewish state, going after it with much more frequency and hostility than any other member nation. The EU only agreed to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group this past summer, and this only concerns the organization's "militant wing". The Europeans like to deceive themselves that groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have different "wings": militant, economic, social, political, etc. This is a fiction.

There is almost a sense of glee in reporting on Israeli misdeeds, whether real, exaggerated, or entirely fabricated. Hence the media orgy over the death of Muhammad al-Dura or the Jenin "massacre," both of which occurred during the Second Intifada. The same with the war against Hezbollah in 2006 and Operation Cast Lead - there was a sense that the press was salivating. I highly doubt this would be the case if there were renewed fighting between India and Pakistan in Kashmir.

Not to repeat myself, but I do, again, want to give the benefit of the doubt and point out Israel's religious importance. Americans and Europeans are familiar with names like Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Jericho in a way they are not with names like Srinagar, Kigali, Sarajevo, or South Ossetia. However, even with this benefit of the doubt, and with the understanding that Israel/Palestine will be under a stronger microscope, it does not explain the bias with which the conflict is reported. It does not explain why the fixation is on Israel's wrongdoings and not the Palestinians'. I could give reams and reams of examples. Just this morning I read about a disturbing rise in honor killings in the West Bank. The Reuters reporter did not hesitate to lead the analysis with this: "Some activists believe the rise in honour killings indicates social and economic problems are mounting in the territories, where Palestinians exercise limited self-rule but Israel holds ultimate sovereignty, including over commerce." Of course there are "some activists" who would say this, but come on. This is right after the author had just written of honor killings being a "social menace that occurs throughout the Middle East" and had examined the phenomenon in Jordan, which is decidedly not under Israeli occupation. But, yeah, it's still Israel's fault. The Palestinians are not wholly responsible. Even something that is a broader cultural phenomenon and has nothing to do with the conflict is still blamed on Israel. I can see arguments that the Palestinian economy is not as healthy as it could be because of the security barrier. I can also see, but argue the exact converse of, the notion that Palestinian violence is a consequence of Israel's occupation. But what I have just quoted is ridiculous. It just goes to show how determined many in the media are to slip in anything, anything, detrimental to Israel. 

Similarly, last month there was another Reuters article whose headline and lede read that Israelis had killed a Palestinian in the aftermath of John Kerry's statements that, if the peace talks fail, there very well could be a third intifada. Clearly, if one was just browsing, the indication would be that the Israelis had shot some random guy because of their anger at Kerry's remarks. In reality, the man had run at them with a knife. This was absent from the headline and the lede (please note that the article to which I've linked has been updated and its lede is much less biased, and headline less misguiding, than was originally the case). This was a conscious decision that someone made, and the intent is pretty obvious. 

So why the fixation? I think there are several reasons. In no particular order of importance:

1) The importance of what is present-day Israel to global religious traditions.

2) The Palestinian success in garnering world attention, beginning with Arafat and continuing full force. The Palestinians have legitimately suffered, but their suffering has been so fetishized as to elevate it from the (worse) suffering of other peoples in the world. While a lot of it is propaganda, there is also legitimate concern about Palestinian well-being.

3) The Schadenfreude at seeing Jews having the upper hand and using force. This has often been combined with outright distortion to make Israel look even worse. This helps to expiate the guilt that many Europeans feel about the Holocaust, which was planned and primarily perpetrated by the Germans but could not have been carried out without wider European collaboration. "You see, the Jews aren't any better!" To quote psychiatrist Zvi Rex: "Germany will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz."You can substitute "Europe" for "Germany" and it's just as true.

4) The idea that the conflict is racial. Westerners like their conflicts racial because (they think) it makes them easier to understand. Many Americans think they understand the conflict because of our own awful history of segregation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is territorial, religious, and ethnic, but not racial. If you put an Israeli and Palestinian side by side, with no indicative markers of their identity, you would often not be able to tell them apart. 

5) Anti-Semitism. Let's be real here. In modern parlance, "anti-Zionism" is simply an alibi for anti-Semitism. What anti-Zionists say about Zionists is literally indistinguishable from what anti-Semites say about Jews. The "Zionist lobby" controls our politicians and the media, for example. This is the same thing thought and said about Jews. You never hear of other lobbies (Armenian, Greek, Tibetan, etc) "controlling" Congress or the media. You never hear of other small nations "controlling" American foreign policy. Hmm, I wonder why.

Syria and its Discontents

Sometimes we need a little reminder of what's going on in Syria, which has taken to the back-burner in the U.S. media in recent months. Briefly: the Syrian regime has made headway in the Qalamoun mountains north of Damascus, although it's been contested hotly. Maaloula, for instance, has fallen back into rebel hands. The regime has been successful in capturing Qara, Deir Atiyeh, and is now pushing on Al-Nabk. These are all cities on the strategic Damascus-Homs highway, which the regime seeks to keep open and the rebels hope to cut. The reason for the road's importance is simple: not only does it connect two important urban centers to one another, but it also is the regime's outlet to the Alawi heartland on the Mediterranean coast: the environs of Latakia. The Assad family itself originates in Qardaha, a village not far from Latakia. The regime's clearing of the highway is important because, in the event that the Assad regime falls (this looks less and less likely every day), it's an escape route. The regime, with the significant assistance of Hezbollah, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iraqi Shiites, has also made headway in the suburbs of Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's two most important cities.

The Syrian regime has followed an intelligent strategy in the course of this war. Instead of stretching itself thin and trying to defend everything at once, as it was doing initially, it has concentrated its forces on keeping several important cities, especially Damascus and Aleppo. This has allowed the spread of Islamist groups in other parts of the country, particularly in the northeast, but the regime has been able to hone in on what is truly important. Keep the major cities, clear the major arteries, and, yes, starve the enemy, and innocent people, into submission. I never said the regime was nice, just smart. Assad was able to cross the international community's red line, agree to a deal to destroy his chemical weapons, and move on. As it stands, 99% of the dead in this conflict have been killed with conventional means: gunfire, artillery, helicopter gunships, and so on. While the chemical weapons were always a fear of the West, in this particular conflict, Bashar al-Assad does not need them. If he can starve out the opposition, let them continue to bicker with one another, and maintain his alliance, he should be able to weather the storm. The fact will remain, however, that he will have next to zero cachet among the Syrian people, with the exception of religious minorities, particularly the Alawis; members of his military/intelligence/political apparatus; and members of the business community, including and especially wealthy Sunnis, who he has managed to keep on his side. Syria is, and will continue to be, however, a scarred country and a fractured polity. I honestly wonder if the best solution would not be partition. Syria itself, like many of the states of the modern Middle East, is an artificial state.

It can be broken down into a few important zones:

1. Jabal Druze - "Mountain of the Druze", in the environs of Suwayda in southern Syria bordering Jordan, also known as the Hauran. This region is a volcanic plateau that is, unsurprisingly, populated largely by Druzes. The Druzes are a sect that has split off from Islam. They are intensely exclusivist: there is no conversion, and very little toleration for intermarriage. The Druzes have traditionally sought areas in the Levant where they can hold off more powerful forces (the tried and true practice of the region's minorities), and they now predominate in areas such as the Hauran, the Carmel region of Israel, the Golan Heights, and Mount Lebanon. In order to maintain internal cohesion and prevent the backlash of stronger enemies, the Druzes have a tradition of being loyal to whoever is in power: they are loyal Zionists in Israel, backers of Assad in Syria, awkwardly split in the Golan Heights (because Israel is in power now but what if the Golan is returned to Syria at some point), and they are a perpetual ping pong ball in the labyrinthine politics of Lebanon. Always trying to keep ahead of the curve, Lebanon's Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, switches his stance on Syria once every few years, even though Hafez al-Assad killed his father in 1977.

2. The Damascus-Aleppo corridor - this is the heart of Syria, and the heartland of its Sunni Arab majority. It contains Syria's four largest cities (Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo) and represents the industrial and commercial backbone of the nation (Homs is industrial, Aleppo in particular commercial).

3. The Syrian Desert - scarcely populated, but with nice ruins (and torture chambers)!

4. The Golan Heights - in the southwest of Syria, not far from Damascus, this is a Syrian territory currently occupied by Israel. As is well known, it was captured in 1967 and successfully defended by Israel in 1973. It's been quiet since 1974, with a few exceptions of random mortar and gun fire during the current civil war, and when the Assad regime bussed out protesters in June 2011. The region's main city is Quneitra, which the Syrian regime keeps in ruins to showcase "Zionist barbarity" (it is literally a tourist attraction with this purpose). The region is supposedly the focus of the Assad regime, but this is all politics: Assad's "resistance" against Israel was once the card he could play to placate his people; the pining for the Golan was essential to his regime, although not its actual return. Now, I am not sure where that issue stands, to be perfectly honest. It's not like Assad has to worry about placating Syria's people anymore; after all, he has been shooting them like rabid dogs for two and a half years.

5. The northeast - this is part of the Jazira region, which also encompasses southeastern Turkey and northwestern Iraq. The Euphrates River runs through it. It has a heavy Kurdish population and has, in parts, become sort of a Wild West for Islamists. This is particularly the case in al-Raqqa, an important city that is run by the thuggish Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), an Al-Qaeda affiliate. Because of the regime's (intentional) non-presence in northeastern Syria, there is a power vacuum. The Kurds and the Islamists are the main antagonists here, and there have been clashes.

6. The Latakia District - this district, although not the city of Latakia itself, is predominantly Alawi. Brief historical context: the Alawis are a secretive sect that is a spin-off of Islam but also follows Christian rituals, including the taking of the Eucharist and the celebration of Easter. After the First World War, there was briefly an autonomous Alawi territory (from the beginning of the French Mandate, in 1920, until 1936, when the territory was brought back into the larger Syrian fold). The French followed a policy whereby they recruited religious minorities, including Druzes and Alawis, to fight in their colonial forces. This began a tradition whereby the Alawis, traditionally discriminated against and treated like second-class citizens, were able to serve in the military with distinction. Other than being sharecroppers answering to Sunni landlords, or having their daughters serve as maids or prostitutes to the elites, this was really their only avenue. Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez, followed this path and entered the Homs Military Academy, eventually leading the Syrian Air Force. After a series of coups, Hafez al-Assad became the most prominent of Syria's Baathists (a pan-Arab political group that was supported by many religious minorities because of its emphasis on Arab unity and de-emphasis on Islam). The problem is that Syria remains 2/3 or 3/4 Sunni, and many of them do not recognize the Alawis as Muslims at all. Assad pére was able to attain important political cover in the early 1970s when Imam Musa al-Sadr, an important Iranian cleric in Lebanon, declared the Alawis to be legitimate Shiites. Nonetheless, the Syrian regime has had consistently to be the loudest anti-Israel voice in the Arab camp; it could not afford to be outflanked in this regard. Being the loudest voice was born of the regime's weak claims of legitimacy. A once-despised and -discriminated against people had taken control of Syria, and they would not be letting go, as they very clearly displayed in 1982, when Hafez al-Assad's brother Rifaat decimated the city of Hama, killing anywhere from 10,000-40,000 people. After that, there was basically not a peep of protest until 2011. And here we are. This is a battle to the death, in a region that is not "post-ethnic" or "post-religious" or any of those feel-good things we like to think we are in the West. Assad has nowhere to go. He either stays in power, or he falls, and his people fall with him. In his thinking, if he falls, the Sunnis will commit genocide against the Alawis. And with reliable supporters, the international community off his back because of the chemical weapons deal, and breathing room after his patron Iran signed the nuclear deal with the P5+1, Assad has absolutely zero reason to negotiate.

Because of the artificiality of the state, with so many different sects (in a part of the world where, yes, there are multiple cultures, but no, there are no tingly feelings about it), it sits on a volcano (like next-door Lebanon, which is very similar in many respects). Until the mid-20th century, "Syria" always represented a very broad, vague geographic area: "Bilad al-Sham" encompassed present day Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestinian territories, Jordan, parts of Turkey and Iraq, etc. The major port that fed Damascus was Beirut, now inconveniently in a different country. The traditional trade route of Aleppo to Mosul, in northern Iraq, was similarly made inconvenient. The current political actors in Syria, and the region, have a lot at stake in these modern borders, and Assad will not relinquish them and be satisfied as a petty dictator in some tiny Alawi statelet in northwestern Syria. The borders of Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, etc are similarly arbitrary. I am not saying that this is wrong. Most of the world's borders are arbitrary, and it is impossible to draw a line that will leave all of people X on one side and all of people Y on the other. Yet it also helps to clarify some of the issues with which we are dealing when confronting modern Syrian (and regional) politics.

Disturbing Naivete

Although I hope that much of this blog will be historical in nature, in order to contextualize current events, and to have it focus on the Middle East itself rather than American policy toward the region, from time to time it will be necessary for me to discuss American foreign policy. I do not think that we have a grand strategy or policy toward the region, other than "Stay out as much as possible, and get out, if possible" and "Let's be hard on our friends and soft on our enemies." Because that is exactly the case. It's become quite clear that Obama wants very little to do with the region - we have no troops left in Iraq, we will soon have none in Afghanistan, and Obama is and has been decidedly standoffish about the civil war in Syria. President Obama is not an isolationist, but he wants out of the region. The most that he wants to do is fire a missile from a drone at Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen and Pakistan, and here and there give the go for a SEAL raid.

The purpose of this post is not,  however, to criticize President Obama's grand strategy toward the Middle East. Rather, it is to discuss the absurd naivete and, frankly, idiocy of his Secretary of State, John Kerry.

While in Israel recently for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the two disagreed vociferously about upcoming negotiations with the Iranian regime concerning its drive for a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians over the past months have gone nowhere. Kerry vented his spleen on Israel's Channel 2, putting the entire onus for the failure of peace on Israel, called the settlements "illegitimate" (rather than "unhelpful", which is usual American rhetoric), and said that, should the peace process fail, Israel will likely be faced with a third intifada. This was a very clumsy, immature attempt to bully the Israeli government into making concessions that it is not prepared to make. By putting the onus on Israel, John Kerry infantilized the Palestinians, as Western politicians do often. They never have agency - they only react to what the Israelis do or do not do. By saying that a failure of the peace talks would lead to a third intifada, John Kerry more or less gave a green light for such an eventuality. Should anyone need a reminder, the Second Intifada killed thousands of people. For Kerry to air his frustrations in such an immature fashion, in public, was a diplomatic faux pas of the highest order.

Kerry's statement is historically inaccurate and feeds into Palestinian propaganda. That propaganda suggests that the Palestinians will play nice so long as there are concessions, but if Israel continues to play the obstructionist by building housing in settlements and not budging on other matters being negotiated on, then the Palestinians will have no choice but to return to "resistance." In other words, this argument gives carte blanche for acts of violence. The fact remains, however, that this "argument" is propaganda - its exponents know that, realistically, the Israeli government is not going to stop building apartments in East Jerusalem and settlements close to Jerusalem, including Maale Adumim, the Etzion Bloc, Har Gilo, etc. And even if the Israeli government did permanently freeze such construction (it will not), the exponents of this propaganda could argue that because of Israeli obstructionism on other issues - say, the right of return, or the final status of Jerusalem, or a million other things - there will still be the right to "resistance." This line of argument puts the entire onus for the success or failure onto the Israelis, and depending upon what the Israelis do or say, or do not do or say, the Palestinians will be justified in either waiting patiently or in launching an intifada.

This is all hogwash, however, because the Second Intifada, which was appallingly violent, was launched after the Israelis had agreed to unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians. Ninety plus percent of the West Bank (with the balance made up with land now in Israel-proper), all of Gaza, and East Jerusalem (which includes the Old City) would have come under Palestinian control. The Palestinian Authority would have had custodianship over the Temple Mount and Israel would keep control over the Western Wall, the one area in East Jerusalem in which this would be the case. The Israelis agreed to a token "right of return" for the descendants of Palestinian refugees (up to 100,000) and also agreed to financially compensate all of the descendants, with the assistance of other countries (this fund would amount in the billions). Arafat, however, refused, and in September 2000, on the flimsy pretext of Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada was launched. It was not spontaneous - it was preplanned by Arafat and his officials within the Palestinian Authority. There were killings of Israelis, including the famous lynching of two reservists in Ramallah; suicide bombings in major Israeli cities, most of whose perpetrators originated in the West Bank; and so on. This ultimately led to Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which sought to wipe out "terrorist nests" in major Palestinian cities in the West Bank, most famously Jenin (where many Palestinians and anti-Israeli Westerners falsely accused Israel of committing a massacre), and to the construction of the security barrier between Israel proper and the West Bank to keep out suicide bombers. It should be noted that this barrier has nothing to do with racism or apartheid, and it was not a right-wing dream; Ariel Sharon only gave in to building it under immense (north of 90% approval) pressure to build it in the face of Palestinian violence. The right wing of Israel had historically opposed any separation between Palestinians and Israelis; conversely, it sought to maintain territorial contiguity between Israel and the West Bank, which would allow Israelis to live on either side of the Green Line. Rather, it had been the Israeli left (including Yitzhak Rabin) who began to call for such a barrier in the early 1990s. Just want to clear that up so that the nonsense of it being an "apartheid" wall conceptualized by the racists in Likud can be laid to rest.

All of this violence happened even though Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave Yasser Arafat everything he could have possibly wanted (minus a full right of return, to which no Israeli government, even a left-oriented one, will ever concede). It did not happen because of Israeli obstructionism. Similarly, Israel has had to go back to every single place from which it has ever withdrawn, with the marked exception of Sinai (into which it has made brief incursions, however). For example, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000; it returned to fight Hezbollah in 2006. The IDF withdrew from cities in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords; the Palestinians immediately destroyed Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, as one example, and then launched suicide operations from the West Bank. The IDF returned with massive force in 2002, as mentioned above. In 2005, Israel disengaged from Gaza; it has carried out three military assaults, most intensively in 2008-9 in Operation Cast Lead, since then. In other words, the pattern seems to be that, the more Israel concedes, the more violence that it faces. This is because, when Israel makes these concessions, their enemies smell blood and try to press for the kill. This pattern is the exact opposite of what John Kerry stated on Israeli television; however, his statement may in the end become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Please note that the First Intifada is not relevant in this case as it did not occur in the aftermath of Israeli withdrawals or of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks).

Secondly, we need to discuss John Kerry's performance concerning the talks with Iran in Geneva. This is not only Kerry, mind you - it reflects much of the thinking within the Beltway, particularly in Foggy Bottom, as well as the European powers sans France. The thinking is hopelessly naive. I understand the desire to come to an agreement with the Iranians on their nuclear program - no one wants to go to war with Iran. Every reasonable person strongly prefers a diplomatic solution. The talks in Geneva were to be the first phase; they would call for Iran to freeze its nuclear activities for 6 months in return for the unfreezing of Iranian currency reserves abroad. This would ease the pain of sanctions, which have had significant impact on the Iranian economy, which is experiencing inflation and a devalued currency. The problem is that Iran is probably already close to break-out capacity - it has 19,000 centrifuges, 3,000 of which are of a more advanced model that can enrich uranium at a quicker pace. Iran would have had to stop enriching uranium, especially at a 20% level, but it would not be required to get rid of the uranium that has already been enriched. In other words, the agreement does not have the teeth necessary to get a good deal. Eventually France stepped in because of its concerns about Iran's heavy water reactor in Arak (whose waste product is plutonium - an alternative route to a nuclear bomb) and Iran protested its "right" to enrich uranium. New talks will begin on November 20, so we shall see where it goes.

The ironic thing is that Kerry, since the failure of the talks, has tried his best to convince congressmen that they must not pass a new sanctions bill because that would be warmongering. This is stupid. If the congressmen wanted war, they would call for war. They are calling for sanctions precisely because they weaken Iran and provide the U.S. with more leverage in diplomatic negotiations - they serve the purpose of diplomacy, real diplomacy - not the diplomacy that is talking for talking's sake, photo ops, cocktails while overlooking Lake Geneva, and putting one's head in the sand. The only reason that the Iranians are agreeing to these talks to begin with is because the sanctions are really biting. So how are sanctions opposed to the spirit of diplomacy, as Kerry and the State Department argue? Beats me. There is an obsession in Washington to get an agreement, any agreement, with Iran, and now there is an opening because of the "moderate" Rouhani. I understand that this was to be but a preliminary stage in a series of stages of diplomacy, but the six months on the table would provide Iran with vital time and at the same time ease their economic pain. In return for...maintaining their nuclear infrastructure and not building anything for six months.

Lastly, there is Kerry's championing of the Geneva 2 talks (why always Geneva? God, that lake must be something) concerning the civil war in Syria. These would, hopefully, create a transitional government for a postwar Syria. The problem is that it doesn't make any sense. At all. The civil war right now is basically a stalemate, but Assad, with the assistance of Iran, Iraqi Shiite militias, and Hezbollah, has made military advances in Aleppo and in the Damascus suburbs. He literally has no reason to talk with anyone about anything while he has the upper hand. He knows that, should his regime fall, he is done for - even if there was a hypothetical agreement with some of the rebel factions in Geneva to keep him somehow within a postwar government - because, the fact is, the rebel factions that count are boycotting Geneva. The most militarily effective opposition brigades are not interested in talking with Assad - they want him fallen from power and dead, and they want the destruction of his regime. Even if there were an agreement with Bashar al-Assad and some of the more willing-to-talk rebels, because of the unorganized and decentralized nature of the rebels (who are fighting each other on the ground), there would be no enforcement mechanism for the agreement's stipulations. Who is going to enforce it? The UN? The U.S.? The weaker rebel factions in the face of strong opposition from Islamists and others who will not talk? And what would happen should Bashar al-Assad and his backers continue to shell civilians areas and continue their onslaught? Because there is no enforcement mechanism, it's kinda useless. And because the U.S. and its Western allies have little to no leverage in Syria at this point, I don't think either side really cares what we have to say any more. The states that have leverage are Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey because they are actively arming, financing, and/or actively fighting on either side of the civil war. Because we have remained so standoffish, and because we erased whatever leverage we had left after President Obama backed off from striking Assad and agreed with Russia to get rid of Assad's chemical weapons (although 99% of the dead have been killed with conventional arms), we don't pack any punch. The Geneva 2 talks are deeply unserious, as our Secretary of State increasingly seems to be.

The Importance of Conspiracy Theories

One of the most important phenomena in the modern Middle East is that of the conspiracy theory. It has been a hugely destructive force in the political life of the Arabs: it has prevented their political maturation and has inflicted their societies with a culture of violence. Conspiracy theories are not, of course, native or exclusive to the Middle East and are widespread in the West. The JFK assassination and the moon landing are two of the most ranted-about events: others include Roswell, NM; "chem-trails"; "lizard people"; "9/11 was an inside job!"; the Fed's noxious influence over the U.S. and its policies; and there have even been conspiracy theories about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. This but scrapes the tip of the iceberg, and to wade through conspiracist websites is to wade through a sewer of fevered imaginations, of obsessed people connecting dots that should be disparate foci, of unserious thinking and, in many cases, the daddy of all conspiracy theories: anti-Semitism (including, very prominently, Holocaust denial). I once read somewhere that "the conspiracy theory is the crutch of the ignorant." With a quick Google search, I was unable to find the origin of this quote, but regardless, it is true. For the conspiracy theorist, things are never what they seem and the simple answer is never the right one. It is the direct opposite of Occam's razor: rather, the more convoluted the story, the more sinister the imagined machinations, the more players supposedly involved, the more Rube Goldberg-esque it is, the more LIKELY that it is the truth. The conspiracy theorist is impervious to rationality or to logic, or to cold, hard facts; everything that you throw at them is just a smoke-screen. You're just plugged into the Matrix, you don't "get it," their facts are the only correct ones, you are either poor and misguided or, worse, in on the conspiracy yourself. Many people believe in at least some conspiracy theories, but they are most prominent on the fringes of the political spectrum (at least in the U.S.). This is not surprising because two of the most conspiracy-minded movements of them all were the Soviets and the Nazis.

It is also no coincidence that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were two of the most murderous regimes in history. When one believes in conspiracies against them, one lashes out at the "author" of the "conspiracies." It's a no-holds barred, all out fight against the enemy, who tries to wiggle and obfuscate, but is ultimately the source of all evil. In the early history of the Soviet Union, this noxious enemy was the kulak, the supposed wealthy peasant who exploited the lesser peasants and laughed all the way to the bank. The kulak was largely an imaginary phantasm of the fever-brained leaders of the Soviet Union. the kulaks were determined to exploit the peasants, come what may, and they sought to sabotage the Soviet system at every opportunity to hang on to their power. The word "kulak" became an infinitely elastic term under which anyone could be thrown into imprisonment or outright murdered. If your neighbor did not like you, he could denounce you as a kulak and have you taken care of. In the face of this insane policy, many people were indeed motivated against the Soviet system, so the Soviet accusation of the alleged kulaks' sabotage became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Millions of "kulaks" were deported to Siberia and/or killed.

The Nazis hated a lot of people, but as everyone knows the focus of their hatred was the Jews. In the imaginations of Adolf Hitler, his propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, and Nazi "chief philosopher" (and ridiculous crank) Alfred Rosenberg, the Jew was indeed behind everything that ailed the world: Bolshevism and Marxism of any stripe, capitalism, the immorality of modern society (including jazz, "degenerate" art, and so on), democracy, and so on. Hitler did not espouse anti-Semitism to attract popularity; rather, many were discomfited by the anti-Semitic Nazi message. The Nazis were elected in large numbers in the elections of June 1932 not because of their anti-Semitism but because they were seen as a party that would uphold German values and morality in the face of Communism and the despised Weimar Republic. They would unite Germany as one, strong Volksgemeinschaft that would overturn Weimar and the "Diktat of Versailles" and redress the supposed "stab in the back" that "occurred" in November 1918. Hitler and many of his top minions (particularly the aforementioned Goebbels, Rosenberg, as well as Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler) deeply and seriously believed in a Jewish-led conspiracy to undermine the German nation. In their imaginations, the Jews controlled the US and Britain as the puppeteers of international finance capitalism; and the Jews also were the true power behind the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union. Because of the absurdity of this notion, many failed to take Hitler seriously. Look at this crazed Austrian corporal and his nonsensical ranting. What a joke! Well, obviously, it was not a joke, and the conspiratorial mindset of Hitler, many of the top Nazis, and many within the SS and the German military helped lead to the onset of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

The Nazis were not in it for the money (although they did loot, especially Rosenberg and Hitler's second-in-command Hermann Goering, and they did steal businesses from Jews and the belongings of Jews after they had murdered them). The Nazis were very serious about reordering the racial map of a Europe under their domination, and the Jews had to go first. Not all of this was due to conspiracy theorizing, of course; there was a fervent belief in Lebensraum (living space) and it was to be in the East, which was rich in the production of agricultural commodities. This was an absurd Weltanschauung, perhaps, but was not in and of itself a conspiracy theory. But Hitler's fixed obsession with the destroying the Soviet Union (which made its invasion by Germany all but inevitable under a Hitler regime) and his murderous anti-Semitism certainly added to the bloodiness of Nazi terror. How could millions of innocent people be murdered, their only crime being a Jew? Because it was firmly believed that the Jews were doing their damnedest to destroy Germany; they needed to be destroyed first, and they needed to be destroyed completely. In the culmination of this Nazi logic, Himmler stated that the children needed to be murdered as well because otherwise they would avenge their fathers when they grew up. Better to take care of them now.

These are just two examples of conspiracy theories taken to a gruesome conclusion. Conspiracy theories go way back, of course. Look at the "blood libel": Jews were accused of killing Christian children and draining their blood for the purpose of baking Passover matzo. This was firmly believed. This initially European notion spread to the Middle East in 1840 when a Christian monk disappeared in Damascus and that city's Jews were blamed for it. It was, however, a strictly Christian notion until the 20th century, when references to the blood libel began cropping up in Muslim scholarship. Books on the noxious influence of the Jews, including the blood libel, are prominent in bookshops in Cairo and Damascus, among other cities (I can attest to personally seeing blatantly anti-Semitic books in the windows of bookshops in Damascus), as well as in Arabic media.

The blood libel is not the only conspiracy peddled in a conspiracy-obsessed Middle East. The Israelis poison wells and pass out gum that causes cancer and AIDS. In fact, the AIDS virus was purposefully invented by Israel to weaken the Arabs. The Israelis are always (and I mean ALWAYS) seeking a way to bring down the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The Arabic media is OBSESSED with this notion; there was a point where I would read at least one article about this supposed conspiracy to destroy Al-Aqsa every single week in Al Jazeera. Of course, if you very seriously believe that your enemy is out to destroy one of your holiest and most important places, you are not going to be very motivated to discuss peace with your enemy. And if you believe that the Jewish Temple is a fairy tale concocted by the Zionist Conspiracy, or that if it existed, it did so in Nablus (as Arafat maintained), you have zero reason to feel that you should negotiate over the status of Jerusalem. What can the Western Wall possibly mean to Jews if there was no Temple in Jerusalem? Many Muslims maintain this notion, and say that the wall is where Muhammad tied his winged steed Al-Buraq. All the Jewish ties to the site are untrue, they maintain. So if the Jews are mere interlopers, with no ties to Palestine or to Jerusalem, why negotiate with them? The only reason the Jews are able to control their territory is because the Zionist lobby controls foreign media and governments, poisons the Palestinians with cancer, AIDS, and toxins, they train sharks to kill tourists to ruin the Egyptian economy, etc, etc. Who would want to negotiate with such an enemy? If an enemy were so nefarious, so malevolent, so evil, how could you possibly peacefully coexist? It also serves as a convenient alibi; everything is the fault of your enemy. Your lousy economy, your domestic political foes, and so on, are all the enemy's fault, and not your own. There is no need for introspection, at all. This is, um, not good.

While there have of course been real conspiracies in history, the deeply embedded proclivity to engage in conspiracy theorizing in the Middle East is a truly disturbing reality, with an exceptionally dreadful history.