Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumWhy the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba, and How We Keep It There
By ignoring the honor-shame dynamic in Arab political culture, is the West keeping itself from making headway toward peace?
Anthropologists and legal historians have long identified certain tribal cultures—warrior, nomadic—with a specific set of honor codes whose violation brings debilitating shame. The individual who fails to take revenge on the killer of a clansman brings shame upon himself (makes him a woman) and weakens his clan, inviting more open aggression. In World War II, the United States sought the help of anthropologists like Ruth Benedict to explain the play of honor and shame in driving Japanese military behavior, resulting in both intelligence victories in the Pacific Theater and her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Taking her lead, the great classicist E.R. Dodds analyzed the millennium-long shift in Greek culture from a “shame” culture to a “guilt” culture in his Greeks and the Irrational, where he contrasted a world in which fame and reputation, rather than conscience and fear of divine retribution, drive men to act.
But even before literary critic Edward Saïd heaped scorn on “honor-shame” analysis in Orientalism (1978), anthropologists had backed off an approach that seemed to make inherently invidious comparisons between primitive cultures and a morally superior West. The reception of Saïd’s work strengthened this cultural relativism: Concerns for honor and shame drive everyone, and the simplistic antinomy “shame-guilt cultures” must be ultimately “racist.” It became, well, shameful in academic circles to mention honor/shame and especially in the context of comparisons between the Arab world and the West. Even in intelligence services, whose job is to think like the enemy, refusing to resort to honor/shame dynamics became standard procedure.
Any generous person should have a healthy discomfort with “othering,” drawing sharp lines between two peoples. We muddy the boundaries to be minimally polite: Honor-killings, for example, are thus seen as a form of domestic violence, which is also pervasive in the West. And indeed, honor/shame concerns are universal: Only saints and sociopaths don’t care what others think, and no group coheres without an honor code.
But even if these practices exist everywhere, we should still be able to acknowledge that in some cultures the dominant voices openly promote honor/shame values and in a way that militates against liberal society and progress. Arab political culture, to take one example—despite some liberal voices, despite noble dissidents—tends to favor ascendancy through aggression, the politics of the “strong horse,” and the application of “Hama rules”—which all combine to produce a Middle East caught between prison and anarchy, between Sisi’s Egypt and al-Assad’s Syria. Our inability, however well-meaning, to discuss the role of honor-shame dynamics in the making of this political culture poses a dilemma: By keeping silent, we not only operate in denial, but we may actually strengthen these brutal values and weaken the very ones we treasure.
Few conflicts offer a better place to explore these matters than the Arab-Israeli conflict....
more:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=1b1fba0379-6_23_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-1b1fba0379-207040653
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Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)
King_David
(14,851 posts)King_David
(14,851 posts)Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)snip* Let me start with the bad news: First, the European democratic civilization can fall before the Islamic challenge. Do not say that this will never happen in Europe and that Islam will not be able to take control of Europe. If Europe continues its current path, the fall will be sooner. Second, the mainstream media has been assisting the Jihadese by their biased treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As the eyes and ears of the modern society, the mainstream media has fallen into many failures by emphasizing the violence and the hatred in the region, helping the Muslim propaganda, and misinforming and betraying the trust of the public. As a result, whenever Israel and the Jews defend ourselves we tend to make the situation worse.
The good news is that there has been an increase in international interest and a growth of independent audience in recent years towards the issues in the region. There are people who want to hear how Israel is fighting for their dignity as a people and a nation. The increasing use of internet and the growth of blogsphere inexpensively helped to improve the public opinion on Israel and the Jewish people.
What can Israel and the Jews do? Know who you are. Do not allow the left-right political differences and the religious-secular conflict blind you from the values all of you share. With your mouths and hearts speak up for the truth. What can the Israeli government do? Take charge. The government can challenge the media to do their own review before the reports conveniently divide the public and become damaging to Israel's public opinion.
http://www.herzliyaconference.org/eng/?ArticleID=1785&CategoryID=223
Richard Allen Landes is an American historian and author, specializing in Millennialism. He is most famous for coining the term "Pallywood" for what he considers the practice of "Staged filming" of "evidence" against Israel for the benefit of the Palestinians. He currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Boston University. Landes was the director of the now quiescent Center for Millennial Studies.
Israel and "Pallywood"
Landes is also notable for views on the use of film footage related to conflicts in Israel, in particular his use of the term Pallywood (Palestinian Hollywood), which is described by Ruthie Blum, writing in the Jerusalem Post, as a term coined by Landes to refer to "productions staged by the Palestinians, in front of (and often with cooperation from) Western camera crews, for the purpose of promoting anti-Israel propaganda by disguising it as news." Landes himself describes Pallywood as "a term I coined... to describe staged material disguised as news." Landes cites the film of the shooting of Muhammad al-Durrah, the Gaza beach blast and Hamas's alleged exploitation of electricity shortages during the 2007–2008 Israel-Gaza conflict, as incidents of Pallywood. [1]
He maintains two web sites:
Second Draft depicts the perceived pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bias in some media reports from the Middle East.
Augean Stables includes more in-depth articles about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and related issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Landes
shira
(30,109 posts)So, alongside the nakba (catastrophe) that struck hundreds of thousands of the Arab inhabitants of the former British Mandate Palestine, we find yet another, much greater psychological catastrophe that struck the entire Arab world and especially its leaders: a humiliation so immense that Arab political culture and discourse could not absorb it. Initially, the refugees used the term nakba to reproach the Arab leaders who started and lost the war that so hurt them. In a culture less obsessed by honor and more open to self-criticism, this might have led to the replacement of political elites with leaders more inclined to move ahead with positive-sum games of the global politics of the United Nations and the Marshall Plan. But when appearances matter above all, any public criticism shames the nation, the people, and the leaders.
Instead, in a state of intense humiliation and impotence on the world stage, the Arab leadership chose denial—the Jews did not, could not, have not won. The war was not—could never—be over until victory. If the refugees from this Zionist aggression disappeared, absorbed by their brethren in the lands to which they fled, this would acknowledge the intolerable: that Israel had won. And so, driven by rage and denial, the Arab honor group redoubled the catastrophe of its own refugees: They made them suffer in camps, frozen in time at the moment of the humiliation, waiting and fighting to reverse that Zionist victory that could be acknowledged. The continued suffering of these sacrificial victims on the altar of Arab pride called out to the Arab world for vengeance against the Jews. In the meantime, wherever Muslims held power, they drove their Jews out as a preliminary act of revenge.
The Arab leadership’s interpretation of honor had them responding to the loss of their own hard zero-sum game—we’re going to massacre them—by adopting a negative-sum strategy. Damaging the Israeli “other” became paramount, no matter how much that effort might hurt Arabs, especially Palestinians. “No recognition, no negotiations, no peace.” No Israel. Sooner leave millions of Muslims under Jewish rule than negotiate a solution. Sooner die than live humiliated. Sooner commit suicide to kill Jews than make peace with them.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)but I know you admire his scholarship 
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=47919
shira
(30,109 posts)...so long as honor/shame continues to be ignored. This is the big disconnect between Israelis, who are all too familiar with their hostile neighbors' culture, and clueless foreigners who are not dealing with reality.
Israelis know that no matter what they do, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and friends will never quit with their genocidal ambitions. Naive critics of Israel seem to think all will be well once Israel reverses 1967. But it's not about 1967 and never has been. It's about reversing 1948 and making the Jews pay for it big time.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)You think he's wrong about honor/shame?
