Howard Epstein – Part II THE WISDOM OF 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.
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In Part 1, of this two-part examination of the paradigms and mores of the competitors for the Holy Land, I looked at the modern history to examine how those two parties had acted in the context of the three proverbs set out above. Now, borrowing from my forthcoming book on modern America in which I consider the poverty of political leadership, I focus on the Arab leadership that has dictated the Palestinian narrative. We shall see how people are badly served by their political leaders.
PART II: THE POVERTY OF LEADERSHIP
An Awakening in the Arab Mind?
Now that there are twenty-two institutions of higher (tertiary) learning on the West Bank and in Gaza (all but one having been founded since the Six Day war of 1967, perforce under Israeli administration), is there an awakening in the Arab mind – or soul? Unfortunately, the evidence appears to negate that possibility.
On March 31, 2016, Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan interviewed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (nom de guerre, Abu Mazen, he of the Moscow university PhD which amounted to a lengthy denial of the Holocaust) for Israeli TV’s Channel 2. In the interview, Abbas came over as a political pussy-cat: opposed to the “Stabbing Intifada” (thus: “it is not permissible to kill a human being under any circumstances”), committed to the continuation of security coordination between Israel and the PA (because without it “chaos” and “a deadly intifada” would ensue) and prepared to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu at any time.
In heartbeat, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu took Abbas at his word, and said that he had cleared his diary so that he was immediately and continuingly available to see the Palestinian President. He is still waiting for the phone to ring. The wait could be a long one.
Meanwhile on the Street
What was the reaction of the man in the street – or as the western press like to say “The Arab Street”? Abbas, ten years into his four year term as President of the PA, appears to have increased his own unpopularity by talking in mollifying, compromising terms. The Street rejected his realistic approach, one that Israelis have yearned to hear for decades. Abu Mazen will be fortunate if he survives the fury his reasonableness has unleashed.
And why might that be? Why has he been vilified for coming over – on Israeli TV, that is – as a moderate? (He has backtracked on Palestinian TV at such a rate since, he makes the Road Runner look positively slothful). Could it be a result of teaching Palestinian kids that Jews are descended from apes and pigs?
Could it be the anti-Semitic cartoons that borrow heavily from Der Stürmer that enliven (or are rather a dead hand upon) their media? Could it be the absolute rejection of any compromise that has perpetuated the desire to push the Jews into the sea even as Israel expanded its strength and range of talents and they did so little with theirs? Might the policy of their leadership, to deprive the people of anything resembling progress so that they could live the perpetual lie of victimhood, have anything to do with it? (You decide for yourself, for you can discern my views.)
Do I write with derision or sadness at the failings of the Palestinians? It is the latter – as, for me, human nature is the same the world over. So too, I believe, is innate talent. But the latter can be blunted, not to say emasculated, by a malign leadership. And this is exactly the problem of the Palestinians. They could have had their state many years ago had the Oslo Accords been pursued with mutual (and not one-sided) constructiveness.
The curse under which the Palestinians have labored has been, at all times, their leadership. Unwilling ever to settle for less than the whole, they put progress on the back-burner – for some 70 years. So far.
Unfit for Purpose – Not Only Arab Leaders
Of course, the Palestinians, and Arabs generally (given the state of their States), are not alone in having poor leadership. As I examine in my forthcoming book, several American presidents have been unfit for purpose. For example:-
- Nixon was seriously paranoid, as well as a crook (to borrow the wording of his denial[1]), who, to clinch his election as president contrived and conspired to extend the war in Vietnam (where he pursued for a while the “Madman Theory”). His cover up of the Watergate scandal, and his cover up of the cover up, would have ended in his removal by impeachment, had he not become the first (and so far only) US president to resign his office.
- Carter, manifested psychopathic tendencies[2] with his lack of antennae as to the position of the Shah of Iran (which led to the latter’s downfall) and a lack of empathy for the 52 hostages, whose incarceration he catalyzed when he failed to prevent the Shah from being treated in a New York hospital, only to expose his vanity, unpleasantness and psychopathy in Business Insider, August 20, 2015 edition, thus:-
“I’ve had a wonderful life. I have thousands of friends.
I’ve had an exciting, adventurous, and gratifying existence.”
By boasting to the world in this way, plainly he did not stop to consider whether 444 days of captivity had taken the edge off the happiness of those (the former hostages) to whom he had stood in a position of ultimate responsibility. That inability to empathise, particularly with those whose misfortune he had set in motion, is one of the characteristics of a psychopath.
- The Clintons – ah, the Clintons, they of the Whitewatergate, Travelgate, Filegate and Monicagate Was there ever a more corrupt political family in the whole of American history? The former FLOTUS who would be POTUS has the chutzpah to seek the women’s vote yet, in January 1992, she went on TV to say:-
You know, I’m not sitting here – some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together.
to defend her husband against the allegations of his infidelity made against him as Arkansas Governor, by Gennifer Flowers and others. Within a few months he was elected president and within another three years he started abusing female intern, Monica Lewinsky, less than half his age, in the privacy, not to day intimacy, of the Oval Office, after which she was hung out by the Clintons to dry. Still, Hillary, Wynette-clone or not, through and after the impeachment proceedings, stood by her man. This enduring misplaced loyalty, not to mention the immorality, on the part of Clinton האישה is not only contrary to every feminist precept but also amounts to psychopathic behavior – an inability to empathise with the feelings of women, let alone the feminists whose cause she affects to champion.
| Bill & Hill – Seeing Eye to Eye 1 |
As for Clinton הבעל, was there ever a more reckless President, prepared to prioritize his urges over the interests of the nation? Monicagate, started with the President lying through his teeth and ended by his avoiding, by the skin of his teeth, his removal by impeachment. The scandal, and the legal processes that emanated from it, appear to amount to an unforgivable distraction from vital presidential business. It was the Clinton White House that failed to heed four wake-up calls, all bombings perpetrated by Al Qaeda (including one in the basement of the World Trade Center in February 1993), all on Clinton’s watch, before that same organization went on to kill 3,000 Americans upon American soil on 9/11. (We had better not dwell on the 1999 reversal by Clinton of the Glass-Steagall legislation that had since 1933 prevented the banks from doing that which he thereby facilitated – bankrupting the country with their extravagancies by 2009.)
And now we see in real-time,
like a slow-motion scene from a horror movie, but all too authentic, the evolving head-to-head 2016 race for the White House between the oafish, and possibly maniacal, Trump and the corrupt Clinton האישה. (And I have not even mentioned Benghazi, or the off-piste email account. OK, so I just did. She won’t apologize, so why should I?)
Now, why all these lamentable facts about the poor quality of American leadership? Consider: If this is what the Americans have to endure, if this is the best leadership that that 325 million Americans can produce, what chance do a couple of million Palestinians have?
Generational Struggles and The Two-State Solution
It is said in the West that the War on Terror, now become the War on Da’esh and other manifestations of the struggle against Islamic terror – against Jihad – will be a generational one. So too will be the process of creating the necessary trust between Israel and its would-be neighbour, Palestine, for a workable Two-State Solution. For that, first the anti-Semitism must be abandoned, for its aim is our eradication – and abandoned not only because that aim is incapable of achievement but also because hatred is self-defeating. It rots the soul and it inhibits progress. After a generation has been reared without hatred, apply again within. The Palestinians will then have proved they will be worthy partners in the two way street that is the much-desired Two State Solution.
Consideration of Proverb #3
Arab Proverb #3, mentioned at the head of this piece is: Anger begins with madness, but ends in regret. The Second Intifada is behind them and we must hope that they will soon see, as does Abu Mazen when he speaks to Israeli TV out of one side of his mouth (and not the other when facing Palestine TV cameras) of the futility of the current wave of terror – and that they will soon regret them both. So we trust, for their sakes no less than ours, will the madness of their anger end. The regret they will no doubt feel keenly, but it can be assuaged and converted into a positive yearning for progress in this land. If they find it within themselves to abandon negativism and nihilism, they will release and liberate their talents and encourage their children to be constructive in all things. They will find that they are little different from us and can achieve much. They will also be able to make faster progress than we did for they will doubtless be showered by us with the gifts of our know-how and experience.
Oxymoron or Self-Condemnation
Now, to return to the title. Only the most cynical and gratuitously insulting would maintain that The Wisdom of Arab Proverbs amounts an oxymoron; but sadly, until now, they appear self-condemnatory. It is time for the Arabs to indulge in some self-improvement and proper respect for their own proverbs.
© Howard Epstein. April 2016
[1] https://youtu.be/sh163n1lJ4M
[2] Psychopathic behavior: a personality disorder characterized by continuing antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and uninhibited or bold behavior.
