Barry Rubin's List of Wrongs

Here's Prof. Barry Rubin's list of wrongs committed by "arrogant Middle East experts":

To Those Always Wrong About the Middle East and Who Never Lose A Gram of Arrogance or A Moment of Sleep Over the Tragedies They Create

On the occasion of your supporting Palestinian unilateral independence despite the dangers this presents for Israel...On the occasion of your ignoring the fact that Turkey is ruled by an Islamist party engaged in massive repression and the transformation of the country into a dictatorship...On the occasion of your whitewashing revolutionary Islamism andglorifying anti-Western forces that will yield a harvest of bloodshed and misery in future. And most of all on the occasion of your ridiculing, censoring, or ignoring far more accurate assessments of the situation.

Here’s the record

1970s

You were wrong about Iran’s revolution.

You were wrong about Saddam not invading Iran.

1980s

You were wrong about Saddam becoming moderate and wrong about him invading Kuwait.

1990s

You were wrong about the 1990s peace process (me, too, but I learned real fast in 2000).

You were wrong about the unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

You were wrong about the promise that you’d support Israel if it took risks for peace and then things got bad.

Early 2000s

You were wrong about the rise of a stealth Islamist regime in Turkey.

You were wrong about Islamist terrorists attacking America (ridiculing the idea before September 11)

You were wrong about Iran’s nuclear program (during the initial years, you said it wasn’t happening when Israel was warning about it).

You were wrong about letting Hamas participate in the Palestinian election even though it didn’t qualify.

You were wrong in thinking Fatah would win the Palestinian election.

You were wrong in not supporting moderate force in Lebanon and strenuously opposing the power of the Iran-Syria-Hizballah alliance there.

You were wrong in encouraging or even participating in a massive campaign of slander against Israel.

You were wrong in encouraging or even participating in a massive campaign of slander against the United States.

Obama Era

You were wrong about the Egyptian revolution.

You were wrong about Turkey (being Islamist).

You were wrong about Iran again (engagement).

You were wrong about Syria (being winnable from Iran).

You were wrong about Lebanon (not being taken over by Iran, Syria, Hizballah).

You were wrong about Obama (sorry, I only get 800 words total here).

You were wrong about Israel, (a country you never understand).

You were wrong about Islamism (understanding what it’s all about—revolution, not hurt feelings).

You were wrong about Pakistan (helping in a war against terrorism when it sponsors terrorism).

You were wrong about Obama’s policy in the Middle East making America popular there.

You were wrong about flattering Islamists into becoming moderate.

You were wrong about the whole settlement freeze mess (including the wrong claim that it would win moderate gestures from the Arab world).

You were wrong about throwing a tantrum regarding east Jerusalem construction which you’d already agreed was okay to continue.

You were wrong in not throwing a tantrum about the Turkish regime’s sponsoring terrorists on the Gaza flotilla, sabotaging sanctions on Iran, an creating a virtual state of war with Israel.

You were wrong in opening the door to the Taliban in Afghan politics.

You were wrong in opening the door to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian politics (saying the United States had no objection to its being in government without anyone even askin).

You were wrong about moving away from Israel making Arabs and Muslims more moderate and pro-American.

You were wrong to waste almost a year by not dealing with the Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence strategy.

You were wrong in sabotaging any possibility of America becoming more energy independence.

You were wrong in not pressuring the Palestinian Authority to negotiate seriously with Israel.

You were wrong in not giving Israel strong support when it has faced broken agreements, a massive terrorist onslaught, and the rejection of peace in response to its concessions.

That’s just a partial list.

Rub it in, Rubin!

^

Blackboard Jungle

Yesterday, a group of 32 visiting students, participants of the Middle East Studies Program based in Cairo, a program sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, were my guests. I addressed them for 90 minutes on the theme of the history of Israel's accomplishments and rights in Judea and Samaria, including theological, political and cultural aspects.

The evidence left behind:

The Brainwashing of College Students on the Middle East

From An Area of Darkness, recollections by Jay Nordlinger

When I was young, I was quite the little Arabist — cocksure, arrogant, wholly misguided. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich., and there were many Arab students — most of them Palestinian — in my high school. I befriended them, loved them. Was intensely interested in them. Some wore keys around their necks, and they claimed that these were the keys to the homes back in Palestine their families had been forced to abandon. I was mightily impressed. Later on, I knew to doubt the authenticity of those keys....I was taught to believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict was very much like the American South: a civil-rights struggle. The Arabs were the blacks — the victims, the oppressed. The Israelis were the whites, the oppressors. Menachem Begin was pretty much George Wallace; his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, was Bull Connor (they even looked alike). Arafat, of course, was Martin Luther King. It seemed very clear.

In due course, I grew up, but it took a while. I enrolled in the Near Eastern Studies Department at the University of Michigan, where I took several courses, including the Arabic language. The department was dominated by extremists. The graduate assistants, certainly, were Arabs to the “left” of the PLO, meaning, they took Arafat and Co. to be sell-outs, untrue to the cause. There was no discussion of the legitimacy of Israel: It wasn’t discussable; Israel was illegitimate, and every worthy person knew it.

One day, we trooped into an auditorium to see a documentary on the conflict. I can’t remember the name of the documentary or of the documentary-maker, but I can see her, and she was on hand to introduce her film and to take questions. The film featured mainly radical Palestinians talking about dismembering Israel.

During the Q&A, a middle-aged white woman — a little fat — raised her hand and asked the following question: “These were such extreme voices. You’ve made a wonderful film, but couldn’t you have found some softer, more moderate voices?”

In the row in which I was sitting were several Arab students — older ones, graduate students — and one of them, in front of everybody, stood up and said words I will never forget. I won’t forget the words, or his face, or his relatively quiet, determined tone. He said: “I will kill you.” (This was directed at the woman who had asked the question.) His buddies got him to sit down.

But that’s not the important part — what he said is not the important part. The important part is, no one said a word. No one reacted. We all sort of coughed, and looked away, nervously. We all pretended that what had just occurred had not, in fact, occurred — or that it was normal, acceptable. We simply ignored it.

Eventually, I took another path, both at the university and in my own thought. I could never be convinced that America and its influence were evil. I could not be convinced that Israel was illegitimate. And I could not accept the “I will kill you” and our complete cowardice, or complicity, in the face of it.

I sort of vowed, inwardly, that I wouldn’t be afraid, wouldn’t be intimidated, by Arab extremism. We all dance delicately around it. We tend to sweep it under the rug. We look away, all politically correct, and cough. I further vowed that, unlike my fellow white liberals, I would pay Arabs the compliment of treating them as full human beings, accountable for their words and actions, capable of good or bad, like everyone else — morally responsible. I wouldn’t treat them as children, unable to help a certain savagery. I wouldn’t “understand” that savagery, in the sense my teachers intended. I wouldn’t have double, or triple, or quadruple standards. All men were equal.

I can only presume it has gotten worse.