The State of Israel and the Israelis, engaged in a bitter struggle for survival, are being criticized from all sides. Prominent among the critics are liberals and pacifists. Many of these critics are also environmentalists and conservationists. The latter criticize Israel not only for its “occupation” and “settlements” but also for “destroying” Palestinian culture. These people, who may feel guilty about the destruction of Native American cultures, project their guilt feelings on Israel. They accuse Israelis of arrogance and disrespect for “Arab Palestinian culture,” which is reflected, in their opinion, in Israeli reluctance to negotiate with Palestinians as equals. Arab culture must be preserved, they say, like any other aspect of nature.
It is wrong to draw an analogy between environmental and cultural conservation. These are not the same. Human culture is not similar to innocent flora and fauna we wish to preserve in a pristine state. Cultures do change by contact with other cultures much faster than biological species, and not all features of a given culture are worth preserving.
Israelis do not dismiss or belittle Arab culture, which encompasses hundreds of millions of people and is the culture of its surrounding neighbors. Most Israeli universities have sizable academic departments dedicated to Arab Islamic culture. Many books were published in Israel about different aspects of Arab culture and most of them deal with the subject in an objective, even favorable manner. However, it is important to note that there is no distinct Palestinian culture different from Arab culture – there are no distinct “Palestinian” language, religion, literature, art, music, cuisine, etc., except for a new subculture fashioned by Arabs in the historical Land of Israel in the last 40 years, under the cultural influence of the Jewish state. This new subculture is characterized by a desire for a national self-determination, emulating the Jewish Zionist aspirations. Self determination has never been part of Arab culture – practically every Arab country – Iraq, Egypt, Saudia, Syria, Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan, Nigeria, you name it, has sizable oppressed ethnic and cultural minorities, none of which has achieved self determination or recognition as an independent nation.
Before 1967 the “Palestinian” Arabs did not have any subculture at all, and there was no urge for self-determination. Even when the disputed territories were under full Arab control, between 1948 and 1967, no local Arab nationalistic movement emerged. The hatred of Jews in the Land of Israel was manifested in the unprovoked indiscriminate massacres of Jews in 1921, 1929 and 1935-39. Later, Haj Amin al-Housseini, the spiritual leader of the Palestinian Arabs (1921-1945), urged Hitler in Berlin to kill all Jews worldwide. Those have been typical expressions of the prevailing, militant Arab Islamic xenophobic culture. The PLO was established in Egypt in 1964 as a political tool to get rid of the State of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants and not in order to preserve any “Palestinian” culture.
There is little doubt that many aspects of the “Palestinian” Arab culture have changed in the last hundred years. The Arabs in the Land of Israel, on both sides of the “green line,” speak Hebrew, many speak English, read newspapers, listen to radio, watch TV, some even use the Internet, often dress in Western style, etc. These are characteristic manifestations of Western culture. This is the way history treats cultures in general – they keep changing. However, in its basic set of values that new “Palestinian” subculture seems to remain very close to its Arab Islamic cultural roots.
Like any other culture, Arab culture has its language, religion, literature, art, music, apparel, and history, shared by all Arab nations. However, unlike Buddhist, Jewish, Taoist or current Christian cultures, Muslim Arab culture encompasses inherent elements of aggression and violence, which have been manifested recently worldwide. This is not a new phenomenon in Arab culture. The spread of Islam by militant Arabs from the Pyreneans in the West to India in the East, and from North Africa to the Danube, over a period of less than two hundred years, did not occur by intellectual persuasion or by benevolent missions.
The indiscriminate brutal terrorist attacks on defenseless civilians perpetrated by Palestinian Arabs in the last two years show that the value system of that new Arab subculture is not significantly different from that of classical Islamic culture, which has its roots in the bloody Qur’anic traditions that depict the Jews as the mortal enemies of the Prophet. But Jews are not the only targets of Islamism. Within the last two decades, very similar unprovoked indiscriminate massive brutality against innocent civilian “non-believers” or “not true believers” has been manifested in Iraq, Syria, Algiers, the Sudan, Kashmir, India, Afghanistan, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria and East Timor.
The “Palestinian” subculture, which often shows a Western-like façade, has not adopted as yet Western ethical values. Suicide bombings of the “enemy”, including innocent citizens, is a characteristic of Islamic Arab culture. The atrocity of 9/11, 2002 was preceded by blowing up the US barracks in Beirut in 1982, by demolishing the US embassies in East Africa, by the attack on the USS Cole, and by numerous bombings in Israel. The destruction of the WTC was followed by suicide bombings in Israel and Kenya and by the bombing in Bali. In brief, there is no distinction between the ethical values of the “Palestinians” and other Muslims.
In order to achieve peace between Arabs and Jews in the Land of Israel “Palestinian” culture must change. It should not only to accept genuine democracy, which is alien to autocratic theocracy, but also incorporate Western values of ethics. There is nothing wrong in cultural change. The civilized world has lost very little by the disappearance of the Germanic cultures of the Vandal and the Longobards or of the Hun culture of Attila and Genghis Khan. Likewise, it is hoped that in less than one hundred years very few will shed tears over the demise of the culture of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Yassir Arafat. At present, these three despots are being supported and even admired as role models by Arab and other Muslims worldwide. Aggression, deceit, duplicity, religious zealous intolerance associated with indiscriminate violence, i.e., “holy war,” manifested in suicide bombings of innocent people, are characteristic expressions of that culture. These attributes of primordial Arab Islamic culture, which are unacceptable in Western culture or in the predominant cultures of India and China, must be discarded before we can all live in a more peaceful and harmonious world.
If one wishes to preserve traditional Arab culture, for ethnographic or whatever other reasons, this cannot be done in the Land of Israel. One would have to establish some isolated culture reservation, free of any manifestation of Western culture, in the middle of the Arab Peninsula or in the Syrian Desert. However, the world will be much better off if the Muslims dispose of the violent features of their culture and adopt the Western values of respect for human life, Muslim and non-Muslim. Adhering to or reviving a violent past is not an asset for contemporary Islam; it is not a solution to the retarded status of Muslims all over the world, and therefore, this destructive trend should be given up.
Cultural change is generally a slow evolutionary process very much like biological evolution. Like biological species, cultures change, appear and disappear. Western culture has not been forcefully imposed on the Arabs, including those in the Land of Israel, as Muslims did to other cultures they encountered (remember the Taliban). Israel did not destroy Arab culture by force. The “Palestinian” Arabs absorbed many features of Israeli Western culture, unfortunately not sufficiently until now. It is much easier to purchase a TV set or blue jeans than to change one’s ethical values. The same process of apparent Westernization is occurring in most other Muslim counties all over the world, but it seems to be only skin-deep. For instance, many Arab countries have parliaments, like Western democracies, while being ruled by brutal dictators with absolute power. The Internet and American movies have introduced new tunes to the Arab street, but women are still second-rate citizens.
Muslim fundamentalists are raising vehement objection even to those superficial imitations of Western culture. This is a major factor in the current violent revisionist convulsions in the Muslim world. What the fundamentalists are mostly worried about is not whether Muslims will drink alcohol or east pork, they are worried that Muslims may adopt the non-Muslim ethical values of the West. That would be the end of Islam, as they perceive it.
Israelis are being told to be tolerant to their Arab neighbors and respect their culture. But in view of the current worldwide indiscriminate violence aimed at Islamizing the whole world, following the Arab doctrines of the Seventh Century, this would be suicidal indeed. Muslims must urgently be helped to change those destructive aspects of their culture before millions of innocent people die all over this planet.
Preservation by itself is a noble cause, and so is tolerance of other cultures. We wish to preserve wild beasts, venomous snakes and predatory fish, but they must be kept far from humans whom they will kill if only given the opportunity. However, the 9/11 experience and the Arab terror in Israel and recently in Bali and Kenya teach us that in our modern world, wild militant cultures cannot be tolerated or contained in isolated habitats – they must be eradicated or dramatically changed for the benefit of the human race.
It may be naïve to think that all that must be done is to eliminate the current militant Muslim factions. This may not be enough. If Islam does not abandon and bury its violent historical past, changing its ideology and values, as Judaism did to its perceived ancient history, new Bin Ladens, Arafats and Saddams will grow out from the Islamic bedrock like the ferocious warriors that spontaneously grew out of the earth in Greek mythology.
The current political problem in Israel does not stem from disrespect for the “Palestinian” subculture by the Israelis. The problem is that some Israelis do not realize that Arab culture is very different from their own, in terms of basic values of integrity and respect for human life. They do not realize that the language and external Western looks of their adversaries do not reflect their internal precepts. This has led to the political miscalculation made at Oslo and to the inexplicable (from a Western viewpoint) breakdown of negotiations at Camp David. The Arabs, on the other hand, are fully aware of those basic cultural differences and use them to their advantage.
Michael Anbar Ph.D.