Yo, Friedman,

How about this narrative? Does America know about it?

The Anglo-American-Wahabi Alliance

http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=88774

Or this one here?

Sanctions, Genocide, and War Crimes

http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/showthread.php?
p=147761559#post147761559

Hmm? What sez u?

Here is a better link:

Sanctions, Genocide, and War Crimes

http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59548

There are more "narratives" if Mr. Friedman wants.

This is so ironic it would be hilarious--if it wasn't tragic.

Just this afternoon I happened to be perusing articles that together made a persuasive case that a serious political movement in the United States is underfoot, being driven by the Christian Dominionist movement. If you cannot see the connection between the rise of this movement and the increase in anxiety in the Muslim world, I suggest you take a remedial course in common sense.

Perhaps you hadn't noticed that Sarah Palin's popularity is out of all proportion to her basic competence, intellect, curiosity, balance, and equanimity. Maybe the headline from this recent Washington Times article will give you a clue as to why, and why that same popularity might be fostering a less-than-benificent reaction in the Muslim world:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/04/palins-evangelical-faith-drives-pro-israel-view/

Care to review what's behind the recent interest in, and rise in popularity of movies and so forth about demons, vampires, endtimes, Armageddon, etc?
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/1273

Another Times article detailed the influence wielded by the Catholic church in the debate over the health care bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/us/politics/20alliance.html?_r=1

Upon reading such material, how is a Muslim, or anyone else with a foreign perspective, to interpret the news? How else but that the Church exerts undue influence upon American politics? Is it really such a stretch, therefore, for them to imagine that proponents of such a quasi-, or actual, theocracy might favor a crusade against their own religion?

It's as though people like Tom are saying, "we have 2 over here to our left, and 2 over here to our right, but there's no way they add up to 4." Why on earth not? Wake up! It's not 2 and 2 we're playing with; it's fire and gasoline.

And to those who accept no blame, who say it's all about their gasoline and not our fire: Shame on you. We want neither our fire, nor their gasoline. Either alone is dangerous, to say nothing of the combination. It's not an either/or, falsely dichotomous situation. The world needs to be rid of both the fire AND the gasoline.

Two words sum up the "blame them and accept no fault" game: immaturity and self-enteredness. These are the two biggest things religion was constructed to defeat--and at which it has failed, miserably.

It's the Islamist "Dominionists" who are driving the World to War with that 12th Imam, jihadi, caliphate, fatwa, "islamophobia" crap - or isn't that on your radar?

"this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand "American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" to keep Muslims down..."

Here is from an interview with one of Friedman's old colleagues, I daresay, Al-Jazeera Editor-in-chief (!), done by Pierre Heumann, the Middle East correspondent of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche. His interview with Ahmed Sheikh originally appeared in German in Die Weltwoche on Nov. 23, issue 47/06:

"It's not only the lack of democracy in the region that makes me worried. I don't understand why we don't develop as quickly and dynamically as the rest of the world. We have to face the challenge and say: enough is enough! When a President can stay in power for 25 years, like in Egypt, and he is not in a position to implement reforms, we have a problem. Either the man has to change or he has to be replaced. But the society is not dynamic enough to bring about such a change in a peaceful and constructive fashion.Why not?In many Arab states, the middle class is disappearing. The rich get richer and the poor get still poorer. Look at the schools in Jordan, Egypt or Morocco: You have up to 70 youngsters crammed together in a single classroom. How can a teacher do his job in such circumstances? The public hospitals are also in a hopeless condition. These are just examples. They show how hopeless the situation is for us in the Middle East.

Who is responsible for the situation?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most important reasons why these crises and problems continue to simmer. The day when Israel was founded created the basis for our problems. The West should finally come to understand this. Everything would be much calmer if the Palestinians were given their rights.

Do you mean to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, that the public clinics in Jordan would function better?

I think so.

Can you please explain to me what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to do with these problems?

The Palestinian cause is central for Arab thinking.

In the end, is it a matter of feelings of self-esteem?

Exactly. It's because we always lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West's problem is that it does not understand this."

______________

Let's recapitulate: The existence of a vibrant, economically and technologically successful Jewish democracy in the region causes Arabs to feel pathologically inferior and inadequate. So all 350 million of them neglect their civil commitments, their projects for individual freedom and advancement, the basic education of their children, the economic viability that will reduce poverty in their countries.

Fouad Ajami wrote about this pathology. Here's Martin Kramer's review:

It was Ajami's earlier book, The Arab Predicament (1981), that finally broke the spell of The Arab Awakening. In it, Ajami probed the discontent that spread with the failure of the nationalist project following Arab independence and the debacle of 1967. It was a harsh indictment of the post-colonial Arab condition — a condition that has continued to deteriorate, necessitating another regression report. This new book draws its title from the claim by T.E. Lawrence that he had acted in Arabia to give the Arabs "the foundations on which to build an inspired dream palace of their national thoughts." If the dream has become a nightmare, and the palace a prison, who must accept responsibility? For Ajami, this has never even been a question: It was not the Lawrences, the well-intentioned or malicious foreigners, but the Arabs themselves who put bars upon the windows of their "dream palace," and posted executioners in the gardens.

Frum wrote:

How else but that the Church exerts undue influence upon American politics?

And Islam (Sharia) does not exert "undue" influence on Muslims?

Friedman wrote:
What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.

By now people should be aware that any Muslim aware of his religion and a faithful believer will have sufficient knowledge of the Qur'an, Hadith and Sira, the three holy books.

His being born in America will not make Islam subordinate to his citizenship. Now you've got people with dual loyalty problems.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11.

So why did the "Islamists" try to blow up the WTC in 1993? Bomb the Cole etc? Because of a Narrative that was to come years later?

Friedman wrote:

If this is not Islam, then why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God?

Because one is against Infidels where they have the courage to protest, the other amongst themselves where they dare not enrage those inciting the bombers.
These Islamists who he writes about are not afraid, as he appears to be in admitting the reality.

Yikes.

YWN, give us a break please. Blaming Israel for all the problems of a vast and highly stressed region, and for its conflicts with modernity and the West and its internal warfare, is counterproductive and even silly. Think about it!

However I think Mr. Frum above has some points. Religious extremism and ignorance of other cultures in the West as well as Soviet/Western Cold War issues and economic/industrial issues have certainly have played a role in victimizing and terrifying the people of the area.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement in itself caused a lot of present-day problems including the borders of Iraq which make no sense actually, including as they do 3 warring states. So did British support of the House of Saud and its fundamentalist religious allies.

It's true that the British in particular but also the Russians, the Germans, the oil industry and the US have been exploiting extremists and playing people off against each other and this is now biting us in the rear. It's also by the way harmed Israel which has also been a victim of proxy wars and oil economics.

In any case the people we armed and funded in the late 1970's and 1980's are now the people we're fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. BTW we also armed Iran even during the Iran/Iraq conflict.

What's really scary is that the Carter Administration and later Reagan/Bush "realists" happily sacrificed Afghanistan in order to harm the Soviets (and it's unclear to me how we're going to escape a similar fate, ie we could be in danger of going down the tubes.)

Certainly the ugly discourse in present day America as well as our economic problems and the ongoing threat of terrorism and the huge expense of these endless wars don't look real hopeful at the moment.

People talk about the budget in re health care but overlook the enormous cost of war.

In fact Republican leadership is speaking of the health care debate in terms of a "holy war", I kid you not:(

Anyway, I think probably hundreds of thousands maybe millions of Middle Eastern and Central Asian people have been killed in 20th and 21st century wars alone, some due to the West/Russia/Soviets.

But also there is strife among religious and ethnic and tribal groups and also clan warfare so the strife is internal as well as having external causes.

Ignoring internal ethnic, nationalist and religious strife and blaming all the violence on outside influences is just innaccurate though such ignorance is part of a certain "counter-narrative" that blames colonialism/imperialism, Zionism, etc, for all the problems and ignores local and very bloody warfare and bigotry and antipathy to change.

I think the attacks on "Zionists" and Israel are similar to the rantings of Henry Ford and his assertions about International Jewry.

He actually blamed the Jews for America's problems with alcohol (and most other things) and of course this echoes The Protocols which blamed Jews for trying to "destroy Gentile society". Now radical Middle Eastern groups and even popular Middle Eastern TV shows and discourse are based on The Protocols.

Similarly YWN's comments attempting to reduce Israel to a cost-benefits analysis is sheerly bogus.

But if you'd like let's say the US attacks and dismantles or otherwise undermines a fellow Western democracy which not so incidentally is also a creative society that has contributed enormously in many fields including agriculture, desalinization techniques, medicine and technology as well as music and film and other arts.

How on earth would this help the US let alone the people of the Middle East? Let's forget all the moral implications and just talk economic turkey.

Would destroying Israel make things better for the world's people? How? Did the Shoah make things better for Europe? How? Cheap mattresses maybe from Jewish hair? Slave labor? Stolen gold?

Would destroying Israel make oil cheaper?

Swell. If so I can just imagine the impact on the environment:(

The ott accusations regarding Israel and "apartheid" are inaccurate and disregard the fact that Israel has been existing in a non-stop state of war since before it was a state.

One cannot compare the racist white regime of South Africa with the status of a people trying to protect their lives and their nation from attack and possible extinction.

Similarly the "racism" model just doesn't hold up in re the Arab/Israeli conflict - unless it's blind hatred and fear of Jews. That I think is a type of racism isn't it? - yet it's ignored as a part of the equation.

I think though there's been a reflexive sort of rage against Arabs and Muslims, it's afflicting the West as well as Jewish Israelis and Diaspora Jews, which is more a result of war/terrorism than innate racism "against brown people" as claimed by Greenwald in his response to Friedman's column in Salon:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/29/friedman/index.html

That doesn't make it right but understanding where it comes from might make it possible to change it.

Definitely, religious, cultural and ethnographic bias are real factors not just in Arab/Israeli strife and Muslim/Western strife but in most of the world's wars including wars in Africa and between Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries and factions.

So that's something we should deal with on a global scale and not reduce the focus of these ills to Israel!

Finally this "narrative" blaming Israel for the world's ills ignores the history of the Jews completely, including the fact that the war on Israel dovetailed almost exactly with the Shoah during WWII and thus is a continuation of it and even included some of the same players (al Husseini but also European Nazis).

How is it that the anti-Israel voices, right and left alike, somehow miss this fact?

this a hadith,
“Surely, this religion will reach the boundaries of the day and night and Allah will not spare a rural or an urban dwelling except that he would cause Islam to enter it by elevating some and degrading others. A glory with which Allah elevates Islam and a humiliation with which Allah degrade Kufr (disbelief).”
(Ahmad and Ibn Hibban, saheeh)

“O you who believe, be upright for God, and (be) bearers of witness with
justice!...” (Quran 5:8)

and i am a wittness to what happend to palestinians. and that friedman is opposer of justice.

YaWN, You are presenting Arabs/Muslims as a people who...

- are robotic, slavish, backward, incapable of knowing right from wrong

- too primitive to be held to civilized standards of behavior

- whose thirst for blood, Infidel or Muslim blood, is insatiable

- are easily manipulated by Infidels/Kuffars (JOOOZ)

YaWN, why do you hold Arabs/Muslims with such little regard?

And, if as you say the Israelis, CIA, MI5, CREATED hamass the Frankenstein, then the responsibility for DESTROYING hamass lies with the Israelis, CIA, MI5...

I assume for you Andalucia is also "Arab land".

Ywn Fromkin's history is correct to the best of my knowledge - thanks for the link - but that doesn't obviate the fact that Israel and also Jews per se continue to be blamed for Arab and even global problems just as The Protocols and other misojudaic blood libels blamed Jews for all manner of disasters in the past.

This makes it nearly impossible to find peaceful solutions to the Arab/Israeli conflict because there's so much incitement and as Fromkin says so many misconceptions.

Above, Sol linked a piece about Olmert's overtures to Abu Mazzen. It's asked if ANY Israeli offer can be accepted by the Palestinians and the fact is, given the current mindsets and all the propaganda, probably not or at least not by all (Hamas for example) and therefore more wars seem tragically inevitable.

Well maybe a miracle will occur and people will opt for life and hope.

As for the claim that Israel is "Arab land", well Noga is right on about Andalucia.

But that in itself reflects an attitude about Israel, that it constitutes "theft" or "rape" merely by existing, so how can the Arabs make peace without losing honor?

In fact though Arabs are quite successful imperialists. Check out the huge regions of Africa that are hardly indigenous Arab territory. Yet Israel (size of Delaware and less than .01% of the land in the Arab League states) is accused of being an "empire".

It's really quite ridiculous. But where prejudice, honor, religion and preconceived mindsets are involved reason doesn't seem to have a chance.

The modern academic habit of trying to lump Israel in with British or other Western imperialism is absurd and prejudicial and it's blinded people to the problems confronting Israelis, and which drove Middle Eastern Jews out of the Arab world, then Iran. Focus on Western antisemitism and Western history have also caused us to neglect our studies of Eastern history including the study of prejudice against Jews in the East, and how those have overlapped.

There's a war criminal, accused of working at a Nazi death camp - on trial in Germany now. People think this is ancient history but it isn't.

It's also claimed that this is unrelated to the modern Middle East but that is a false assumption, the persecution of Jews extended also to North Africa during the war and continued after the war and it most certainly involved Arabs including Palestinians.

Similarly other religious and ethnic minorities have been attacked in the East - Armenians, Assyrians, the Kurds lack self-determination, the Berbers and other African peoples were conquered by the Arabs, etc.

Yet, modern Israel is somehow mixed in with the crimes of imperial Britain, France, Russia, etc etc when in fact the Yishuv was victimized by the British which armed the Arabs even though millions had just been killed in the Shoah and the Palestinian Jews had fought for Britain and many Arabs sympathized with and even fought for the Nazis.

It doesn't make sense that Britain's "original sin" should somehow become Israel's burden.

Yet I get the sense, reading British and hard left papers and blogs, that Israel is the scapegoat now for British crimes past.

Unfortunately this amplifies rather that mitigates Arab grievances - regardless of the fact that huge regions, resource rich, were liberated for the Arabs from the Turks by the Brits, Israel is just too much to accept regardless of how small it is or might become.

Is there anything that can be said or done to change this?

As for the "questions for Zionists", I have read a lot of history including the notes of WWII era rabbis and have never heard of that stuff.

I would take it with a huge grain of sand.

First place I seriously doubt Spain would have accepted ANY Jews at any price. Spain is one of the most antisemitic countries in the world even today, in fact a Spanish paper recently blames you know who for the problems in South America.

Go figure.

Also why should Jews or anybody else have been forced to surrender their homes and their property? You don't see something wrong with this picture? I think you should study the Shoah and the Nazis very carefully before you blame Zionist Jews for the Holocaust.

Further, refugee ships, ships full of Jews trying to flee Europe, like the St. Louis, were turned away from "civilized" countries like the US. The Canadians, asked how many Jews they would accept said "any" were too many.

Other refugee ships were bombed on the high seas. Others were turned away from Haifa Harbor in sight of salvation, some were returned to Europe where the people on them were killed by the Nazis.

A priest today is studying the murders of Jews in the Ukraine and thinks that the 6 million is a low figure. Do you think the Jews in the Yishuv caused this? Seriously?

After the war ships like Exodus 1947 were returned to Europe and the survivors put into concentration camps by the British. The Jews in the Yishuv were disarmed and blockaded and the Arabs were armed. Jerusalem was besieged and the British wouldn't even help patrol the roads so food and water could get through.

No doubt this is the fault of the Jews also.

Sir, I am quite sure Zionists in the Middle East would have been happy to see their families saved by America, by Canada, by anybody.

I wonder if this rabbi is Neturei Karta? I will have to study this more. But I think you're presenting a distortion of reality.

Rest assured there are many blood libels and outright lies about WWII era Jews and especially Zionists.

What these effectively do is blame them for the Shoah.

That is disgusting.

PS Zmag and Counterpunch publish a lot of innaccurate stories, extremely biased. They have a clear political agenda and it is anti-Israel, full stop. I would say their agenda is actually antisemitic.

Certainly the claims that Zionists were responsible for the Shoah are reinforcing Nazi propaganda rather than clarifying facts of history.

You should check your sources more carefully. They are cloaking fascist ideology in expressions of concern for the Palestinians.

Of course fascist even Nazi ideology isn't exactly extinct in the Middle East. Please be aware of this before you swallow propaganda and assume it's fact.

Noga,

Here is a quote from Goldstone, a hero of yours, I suspect:

Yes, he should know having been a supreme court judge upholding South Africa's rules of Apartheid at the time.

He damns with feint praise but does not give any examples to prove his points.
As Dershowitz pointed out, he speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

... as part of a grand "American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" to keep Muslims down...

Can someone explain to me why no journalist or TV anchor guy/gay/girl has ever pointed out the chronology of events regarding the Crusaders with regard to Arabs?

Firstly the Arabs under the guidance of Mohammad went forth from the seventh century invading and slaughtering millions to occupy foreign lands.
Then some centuries later the Crusaders unsuccessfully tried to regain control of their former homelands and this is today regarded as disgraceful by the Arabs?
No wonder they make such lousy sportsmen.

Jews and Arabs are close relatives (also Kurds apparently).

Unfortunately religion has created a huge rift between us, also propaganda. This is cleverly exploited by people who like to play games with little people so they can control us. Think about the incitement - it's making people crazy, making people kill instead of create.

This doesn't help anybody, it's just destructive.

Perhaps it is time to start looking past the divisions between us and start finding our common ground? The overlaps between Arabic and Hebrew and between our cultures and of course, our religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - make us brothers. We shouldn't be enemies.