John Donne and Barry Rubin on the Middle East

(Via Phyllis Chesler)

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
[Europe...] is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the [finger calls],
It tolls for thee.

If you have an hour or two, you might be interested in this video of a lecture by Barry Rubin on the rational-seeming delusions Western elites and their audiences tell themselves. We pretend to be pursuing peace in the Middle East, by focussing on one little island - Israel/Palestine - that is in reality of limited importance to the region and its future, to the greater regional and global conflicts of which it is but a part. One way of understanding Rubin's argument is that as long as we are thinking of bells tolling the end of the media and global elite posturing classes' favorite conflict, we are not dealing with huge swathes of human reality. Much better to think of the world in terms of the much larger complex of interlocking interests, and resentments (given the pressures that modernity poses to Islamic societies), resentments we must hope to mediate and defer in various ways but not presume to abolish in some Utopian fantasy. "Peace" means no kind of final solution but rather suggests the basis for holding lines and stopping really bad things from happening so that events can evolve, through the hard lessons that only long experience with failure can bring. These lessons, in Rubin's view, can only be minimally taught by outside interventions. The lesson that democratic societies - with their capacity to recognize more honestly and transparently the inter-relationships among a society's internal disputes and its external interests and conflicts - are going to be in time the only way forward, must be learned through observing internal failures.

Those obsessed with the present rise of revolutionary Islamism - something Rubin distinguishes from the conservative Islam of the established Middle Eastern regimes - those who believe Middle Eastern countries will never want democracy, do not have a sufficient regard, in Rubin's view, for the historical forces teaching failure after failure to those who resist liberal modernity, whether they are Arab nationalists or Islamists. It seems to me that either Rubin is more or less right, or the Islamists must somehow win and destroy modernity and return the world to some much more primitive place that can be controlled by Sharia and Islamic economics. Those who hold to the idea that Islam is what the Islamists say it is, or that Islam can never change, imply that the West must just give up on a billion plus people, and isolate them by force. But no one i have ever read with such ideas has convinced me that quarantining and maintaining the boundaries of an Islamic island is a very plausible strategy, for reasons we could go into.

The West must re-awaken to a proper regard for its own interests; and this may well entail some kinds of insular policies, in matters, for example, like immigration and defense of Israel, though it is also our interest to defend liberal freedoms, like free speech, everywhere. But it is a fool who thinks we can ever just isolate any large part of humanity and think we can forever control their tyrannical societies from being an unacceptable threat to freer societies. In this light, what seems impossible today cannot be forever, and so Rubin professes optimism. I might say, in the end, there really are only two serious options, two ways to point that finger.

David Solway and Franz Kafka: takes on Jewish faith

From whence comes the patience to recognize hard human realities and prepare to live with them, without having recourse to fantasies of a final victory? Clearly such patience is not found among those taking to the streets of Canada in hate-the-jew fests.

The ideal spirit for those defending Israel and Jews everywhere, it would seem to me, would be to be eternally vigilant but never despairing. Somehow, I don't think David Solway quite expresses the need for Israel to be open, for centuries and millennia to come, to the unexpected, responsible, responses to its ever necessary, evolving, deterrence. Solway:

Under existing conditions, the best the Middle East can hope for is a long cold peace and even this is probably an Arcadian notion. We must learn to live with the situation as best we can, just as people who are afflicted with serious illness must take the proper measures in order to survive, stick to their medications, expect relapses and seek treatment no matter how stopgap. There's no point wondering what might have been had they not contracted their infirmity by having acted differently in the past or expecting that somehow the disease will be pacified and magically disappear by some sort of “talking cure.” The Middle East is sick with an incurable disease; all it can strive for is occasional remission and approximate recovery after yet another malign episode. This is what Reality is telling us; pious hopes only make things worse, as the last sixty years should have made clear by this time.

In the real world there are some “problems” for which there are no satisfactory solutions.

Yes, this is true of every genuine problem, not just Israel's.

To believe otherwise, to assume that negotiation, dialogue and diplomacy can eventually resolve even the most intractable predicament or standoff, that it is only a matter of time until belligerents of whatever stamp or provenance can be made to see the light, and that all peoples desperately want nothing more than peace, prosperity and equitable arrangements between them, is a utopian delusion of the first magnitude. Its effect can be catastrophic and frequently is.

Perhaps, but then I think it wrong to suggest that our belief in negotiation always stems from the fantasy of some great peace just out of grasp. Perhaps we need to discover a faith in negotiation (starting with deterrence) as a process of eternal deferral of the problem, and not ever of its final resolution.

The Middle East has been ailing for 3000 years and will not be healed tomorrow, next year, or even next century, if we get that far.

Yes, but then what are the medications you speak of, as an alternative to this dream of complete healing?

One thinks of Irving Kristol’s insightful remark that “Whom the gods would destroy they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Some mistakes have to be abided—and controlled, if necessary, by aggressive countermeans, just as a chronic ailment requires constant supervision and appropriate remedies. As for Israel, it's only hope for survival is to bring about an armed truce from a position of deterrent power. Whether or not Israel is a “mistake,” as long as it continues to exist it will have to remain on a war footing.

Yes... but there must be more than one road to our only hope... what about those members of the Other who can learn from our "aggressive countermeans"? Can they help us keep the truce? Can they be rewarded? Can some even one day want to be us?

I, for one, do not believe that Israel is a mistake—its millennial hereditament alone renders it a legitimate nation. But even if Israel is regarded as a mistake by its critics and revilers, it would be no more of a mistake than some of its most intransigent enemies. As I replied to my correspondent, let us be honest for a change.

At times like this, a few Kafka aphorisms might be of interest:

There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgment by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. That is not the sort of belief that indicates real faith.

Expulsion from Paradise is in its main aspect eternal: that is to say, although expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in the world unavoidable, the eternity of the process (or, expressed in temporal terms, the eternal repetition of the process) nevertheless makes it possible not only that we might remain in Paradise permanently, but that we may in fact be there permanently, no matter whether we know it here or not.

Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man’s wish to rest for a moment — an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.

Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility. It can do this because it is the true language of prayer, at once adoration and the firmest of unions. The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself.

The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last day

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.