Howard Epstein – ARAB PROVERBS. OXYMORON OR SELF-CONDEMNATION?
THE WISDOM OF ARAB PROVERBS. OXYMORON OR SELF-CONDEMNATION?
إصلاح الموجود خير من انتظار المفقودProverb #1:
It’s better to fix what you have than wait to get what you don’t have.
وآخره ندم الموجود خير من Proverb #2:
A mirror held up in Ramallah is opaque in Ramle
أول الغضب جنون وآخره ندمProverb #3:
Anger begins with madness, but ends in regret.
One of these three Arab proverbs is wholly fictitious, yet observed by the Palestinians.
The other two are honored by them – but more in the breach than the observance.
PART I: THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Accepting What is on Offer
Interesting (is it not?) that the Arabs have some of the best proverbs, yet it has been the Jews who appear to have acted on them. One would not think that those who preach so constructively (as reflected in Proverb #1) would indulge in continuing nihilism, yet the evidence is that that is exactly what has happened. Conversely, those who have evidently observed and practised the maxim have been the very people to whom the Arabs have been implacably opposed. Let us consider these assertions in reverse order.
Ever since Jews began to arrive here, in the First Aliyah around 1882, to what was a barren and neglected backwater of the Ottoman Empire, they have observed the Arab axiom (Proverb #1) which amounts to “make do and mend”. The heroes who were our forebears never sought perfection, but set out to make the best of what they had.
In 1936, the Peel Commission offered the Yishuv, a state in waiting, a few assorted jigsaw pieces of an excuse for a would-be state. The Yishuv response amounted to: “As unviable as it appears, yes please”. Literally, Ben Gurion’s response was: “A Jewish state must be established immediately, even if it is only in part of the country. The rest will follow in the course of time. A Jewish state will come”.
Next, in 1947, the Yishuv accepted the UN Partition lines, which offered, with a few more bits of the jigsaw, the prospect of a state in a hardly more feasible part (actually parts, and disjointed ones at that) of Palestine. Again, the Yishuv was pleased to take whatever was on offer.
Finally, following the War of Independence, in which five Arab armies invaded the land recently vacated by the British and assumed by the incipient Jewish State, there were the Armistice lines of 1948. These, too, were acceptable to the Jews even though, at the wasp’s waist (between Jaljuliya and Herzliya Pituach), the territory measured barely 12 kilometers, from the frontier (with the West Bank) to the Mediterranean Sea – and fully one half of the new country was comprised of the Negev and Aravah deserts. Still, they were determined to make something of what they had in hand,
The Nascent State
The Yishuv, to which repeated reference has been made, comprised a fully-functioning government-in-waiting, comprehensive trade union movement, school system, universities and many other institutions. Once Israeli Independence had been achieved, it became the Jewish State, which buckled down to several important and ambitious projects, outstandingly:-
- the construction of a national water-carrier;
- the draining of the Hula Valley malarial swamps; and
- nationwide tree-planting (to raise the water-table, reverse desertification and protect the fields from the ravages of hot winds).
All these schemes were hugely impressive, but, even altogether, they paled by comparison with the on-going in-gathering of the people, which started after WWII, continued through the War of Independence and went on afterwards in varying volumes. It continues to this day with Jews still being brought to their rightful home from Yemen and Ethiopia. The early arrivals, as Yishuv became State, were those brought via the “Displaced Persons” camps (to which the scraggy survivors of the European hell had been despatched by the British), directly or indirectly, but nevertheless from the concentration camps and extermination camps of Europe. (Even as they arrived on shore, they joined in a war of survival.) Others were brought from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world.
Satisfying Over-Weaning Ambition
Fortunately, no-one stopped to question then whether this disparate collection of Ashkenazim and Sephardim, Europeans and Mizrachim, having had little contact, if any, over the millennia, would or even could form one nation, largely speaking one language, solidly-democratic and committed to moving forward in all their endeavours, coping all the while with wars and terrorism – or, conversely, whether they were pursuing an overreaching project, so outrageous in its ambition that it must fail for its hopeless impractibility. Yet here we are, not yet seventy years on, generally regarded as a regional super-power, head and shoulders in every field above our disintegrating Arab neighbors, and a massive contributor to the well-being of the entire world. As we shall see, we even became the facilitator of tangible improvements in those territories which we were forced to occupy by winning a war that had, in June 1967, threatened our annihilation. Is all this not acting on the Arab proverb: “It’s better to fix what you have than wait to get what you don’t have”?
The Palestinian Perspective
What were the Palestinians doing all the while? Were they acting upon that Proverb? Regrettably, not. They self-pityingly invented their victimhood – and then institutionalised it by failing to demand that those who were gathered into the refugee camps in Arab lands be absorbed into the general society of those countries. So their people festered in refugee camps whilst the leaders pursued nihilism, terrorism and war against Israel, confident that it would be defeated or wither away. They aimed for a zero-sum solution: Never would they accept anything less than the whole of “Palestine” (by which they meant the whole of Israel). The last thing they were prepared to do was make do and mend.
Living off the charity of the UN, and later the EU also, the Arab leadership pursued a policy of brutalisation of their people, not merely by accepting refugee status as the norm, but also by consciously ensuring that the bulk of their people would produce and earn little for themselves – and by eschewing all opportunities to create, let alone spread, general wealth – so as to maintain the paradigm that they had little to lose by constantly indulging in conflict.
Post WWII Exchanges of Population
Following WWII, millions of people were displaced and resettled. Thousands of ex patria Germans returned from eastern Europe to the Fatherland, to make the best of the little with which they were left. Millions (yes, millions) within British Empire India criss-crossed the sub-continent in 1947 to start life afresh in the three post-Raj entities: India, Pakistan and East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh). Similarly, Jews from Arab countries left their ancestral homes to journey into the unknown and start afresh in the new, possibly unfeasible, and certainly minute, State of Israel, whilst similar numbers of Arab Palestinians left their homes, most if not all at the bidding of their leaders who promised them an early return in victory over the Jews, for the refugee camps we have mentioned.
Out of all those population exchanges, only that which saw Arabs move to Arab countries (one element of the exchange in this area) was deemed, or doomed, to be illegitimate and subject to reversal, as if their status quo ante could be preserved in amber, so that, in the fullness of time, as in Jurassic Park (the movie), the dinosaurs could be revived and released to rampage over the land.
Yet the preservation of refugee-hood and victimhood, and the desire to demand all or nothing at all, rendered the temporary permanent. Camps that were set up for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere, were maintained as such against for the fulfilment of a zero-sum dream that never came to fruition.
The West Bank and Gaza
It is important to consider what happened in the parts of British-mandated Palestine over which control was not assumed by Israel following its War of Independence, and survival, in 1948: the West Bank and Gaza, the former administered by Jordan and the latter by Egypt. Were they granted the status of The State of Palestine, and were its inhabitants left to govern themselves and to build a modern state? Not only were they not, but also the Palestinian Arabs living there never demanded that such statehood be granted them by their masters in Amman and Cairo.
So, did they, nevertheless, make do and mend? Did they fix what they had rather than wait to get what they did not have? Did they, for example, set out to build industries and institutions colleges and universities on the West Bank or in Gaza?
For dazzling illumination, merely Google: Palestine Universities and Colleges. You will find listed there 23 institutions of higher learning on the West Bank and in Gaza. Check each of them for its foundation date. You will find that, with one fascinating exception, all were established after 1967, ie under Israeli administration. So much for fixing what you have rather than waiting to get what you don’t have. When, had Israel not taken over those territories, would the Arabs ever have developed tertiary education on the West Bank or in Gaza?
(Which, you ask, was the sole example of a college established before the Six Day War after which Israel administered the West Bank and Gaza? Good question. The answer is the Kadoorie Institute Agricultural College in Tulkarm, formed in 1930 on the basis of a bequest from Sir Ellis Kadoorie, philanthropist – and Jew.)
Israel’s Critics
One despairs at the bloody-mindedness of Israel’s critics, whose views range from the down-right lie to the twisted illogic of moral relativism, that demands more and better of us than of the Arabs because… well, I have never been sure about the claimed justification, which actually amounts to a racism that belittles the inherent abilities of the Arabs. It is time the scales fell from European eyes, so it is time to consider another of the proverbs.
Proverb #2: A Mirror Held Up in Ramallah is Opaque in Ramle
A Jew venturing into Ramallah risks a repeat of the lynching in October 2000 by a Palestinian mob that killed, and then mutilated the bodies of, two IDF reserve soldiers, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami, who had accidentally entered the PA-controlled city. (The photograph shows the joyful celebration and exhibition of the resultant bloodbath.) Then look around Israel. Start in Ramle, for it is a “mixed” city with Arab-Israelis and Jewish-Israelis inhabitants living and working side-by-side, without bloodshed, and certainly without lynchings. Then go to, say, Ra’anana or Kfar Saba, to see Arab women in traditional headwear going about their shopping; thence to any other town or city in Israel to see Arab families, enjoying whatever Israel has on offer. Where is their fear of lynching? Nonsense, is it not?
The images reflected by the mirror held up in Ramallah cannot be observed in Ramle or anywhere else in Israel, thus giving the lie to the calumnic claims that Israel is an apartheid state. The extent of Arab integration in our society is as well-known as it is relaxed. (See my past blogs for examples.) Could their integration be improved? Of course, everything can be improved. And that is what is happening every day in Israel – and on the West Bank and in Gaza where 22 universities and colleges, facilitated by Israel governance, are operating to improve the lot and, one hopes, the mind-set of our neighbours. We shall see….
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Next week, borrowing from my forthcoming book on modern America, I shall be examining: “The Poverty of Leadership” and we shall see how people are let down and badly served by their political leaders.
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Coda:
The Israeli Prime Minister announced in the past week the attainment of full employment.
The Palestinians should ask themselves which is the better economic paradigm to follow: that of Israel, based on the Anglo-Judeo-Christian philosophies of the USA and the UK (followed by China and the once-lauded Asian Tiger economies, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), or, alternatively that of the surrounding Arab countries, none of which can hold a candle to the success of Israel. Turkey, alone in this region with a vibrant economy over several decades, is the most successful, yet now it is struggling with 11% unemployment, and a rate of 25% amongst their youth – a potential disaster.
Israel could arguably be taken as a rôle-model even for the USA and the UK, both holding on, after repeated bouts of QE (quantative easing, or the theoretical printing of money in exchange for fictitious government securities, to maintain liquidity) and in the hope (probably a vain one) that there will not be another economic crisis for some time. As against our annual balance of payments surpluses, the UK, traditionally in deficit, has just chalked up an all-time record trade deficit. The USA meanwhile is in hock to the world’s greatest creditor nation, China.
According to global consulting firm McKinsey & Co[1], in May 2015, the USA had a Debt-to-GDP ratio of 233% and the UK’s was 252%. Here is what it said about Israel (with a Debt-to-GDP ratio of 178%):-
Only five countries studied have deleveraged since the global financial crisis — Israel by the most, having reduced its national debt by 22 percentage points.
Instead of knocking and mocking Israel, the world should be beating a path to its door to watch and learn. Actually, that is what they have begun to do (as I shall report in a future blog.)
Now, if only we would address our unconscionable wealth gap….
© Howard Epstein. April 2016
[1] See: http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/debt-and-not-much-deleveraging
