Arab Culture & the Arab-Israeli Conflict

acThe multi-faceted essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli-Palestinian war is territorial, political, ideological, and religious – a convulsive confrontation between the mutually exclusive claims of Judaism and Islam.

But a fifth dimension of the conflict is culture – popular culture – embodied in a code of identity that differentiates one human community from another.

Culture is not negotiable or alterable: it is the texture of the life people live, and the local rhythm of things they know from their earliest memories. It is an inbred code of behavior and, as for all peoples, precedes and precludes morality, thought, and judgment.

The reason why the cultural component of the conflict is ignored stems from the fact that in order to appreciate a culture, you basically have to know it from the inside; and outsiders, non-Arabs, are ignorant of Arab culture, and haughtily assume that it has no value.

Add to this obstacle the fact that a native always behaves differently when he is with a foreigner than with a fellow-native. Surface-like conversations between people from different cultures can reveal very little. To call the Arabs rhetorically flexible is a kind way to infer their masterful command of deception.

It is Arab culture in particular, atavistic and organic, encased in the old binding from its historical origin, which must be addressed in order to better explore the intractability of the long Arab-Israeli rivalry

1

Arab culture is a family-clan-national social reality. An Arab owes absolute and blind loyalty to the group of his birth. He belongs to family and village, as a Bedouin belongs to his tribe. You can’t change your tribe, and you don’t change your family; and no other social framework demands more adhesion than blood relations. It follows from this premise that the Arab mistrusts outsiders. For the Arabs, the Israelis are the ‘others’, suspected of manipulation and treachery, and a permanent adversary and enemy, as taught in the Arabic Koran.

2

For the Arabs, language reflects culture in a way that prevents it being a vehicle for direct and clear communication. Words are used to impress, deflect intentions, disarm interlocutors, confuse listeners, and offer promises never to be fulfilled. The cultural subtext in discussions and negotiations with Arabs is often garnished in polite commitments and even written agreements. But there is little conviction to adhere to the summary accord because the culture code calls for gingerly saying what the other wants to hear; then agreeing to an appointment never to be kept, or promising a phone call that will never come. The Israelis were enthused that the Palestinians moved toward peace in the Oslo Accord, but it was followed by blood and murder, not reconciliation and brotherhood.

3

For the Arabs, the past defines the present because history is the anchor for all aspects of identity and aspirations. There is a mythological fascination with ancestors – as for the contemporary Salifiyya movement – combined with an axiomatic belief that sees the future as necessarily emerging from and even repeating the glorious Arab past. This contributes to an iron-will and patience until victory is assured. For the Arabs — Israel beware — never forget any perceived ill act against them. The early Islamic days of conquest and caliphate will be renewed, even if the shift in power takes forever.

4

Arab self-consciousness, spared any identity crisis, provides a psychological foundation for imposing the collective will upon others. To be a Muslim and an Arab, as Allah’s chosen people, launches the Arab on a path of self-justification, whose flip-side is to blame the non-Arabs for all Arab misfortunes and failures. Israel is always excoriated for crimes of aggression and violence. The composed Arab never doubts that justice is on his side: he can do no wrong. Thus, all the Arab-Israeli wars since 1948 are blamed on Israel. Considering that self-criticism is an ancient Jewish practice, Arab self-justification creates an imbalanced ethical equation that demoralizes the Jews while radicalizing the Arabs. In short, the Arabs seek victory, not peace.

5

Islamic truth claims, as in Koranic deviations from Biblical narratives, do not require proof or evidence, or even common sense validity. The Arabs are not perturbed by the lack of facts; their discourse is internal and self-enclosed, as reality is in their mind and not in the external objective world. The Arab mind-set inhabits a world of entrenched fantasy or diabolical conspiracy theories. Note the revelatory comment by Anwar Sadat that ‘all life is play-acting’. He was one to know. In 1993 Arafat demonstrated his theatrical adeptness at the Oslo signing ceremony at the White House.

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It is essential to unlock the Arab culture code, and cease viewing the Middle East through a Western prism that leads only to delusion, disdain, and a host of ill-consequences and dashed hopes.

Dr. Mordechai Nisan writes and lectures on Israel and the Middle East. His most recent book Only Israel West of the River is available at amazon.com and createspace.com.

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  • 11bravo

    You mean the “don’t” want for their children the same thing we want for ours?
    I’m SHOCKED!!

  • Barbara Rossell

    Projection and mirroring seems to underlie most of our foreign policy these days, and it will be our downfall if we don’t learn to face our enemies as they are.

  • http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/ Jason P

    Excellent article. We here at FPM and similar venues often focus only on Islam but the broad cultural facets of Arab society are important to understanding Arab behavior. I highly recommend the book “The Arab Mind” by the late Raphael Patai. It is 30 years old but still a treasure-trove of Arab sociology. Nisan, in the above article, provides some excellent updates. I welcome more articles of this nature.

  • knowshistory

    amazing that the greatest “prophet” since jesus Christ never performed a miracle, never made an accurate prediction, remade all varieties of vile crime into the greatest virtues of islam, and did not offer even one divinely inspired suggestion regarding how to improve the lives of the criminal band that followed him other than inviting them to rob, rape, and kill for mohammed’s invented god. what islam deserves from the despised infidel is to be expelled from all western countries, routinely laughed at by the media, exposed as vile criminals by anyone who bothers to comment on them, and to be left alone to practice their criminal religion in the areas of the world they have already contaminated with their evil. is this really too much to ask from those slated by islam for extermination? must we really march into those Islamic gas chambers without putting up a fight, as our criminal “leaders” would have us do?

    • SoCalMike

      What he said.

  • 2wotvet

    This is a poorly written article. It assumes that every Arab
    is Muslim, completely ignoring Arab Christians as well as Arab religious minorities
    such as Druze.

    • Paul Gregory

      I think the article concentrates on the dominant culture of arabs. I’d heard something about arab christians etc being somewhat less than welcome in their own lands with their rights not always being fully considered.

  • Raymond_in_DC

    In Israel one finds several communities that exhibit the expected consequences of close-relation marriage and a restricted gene pool. The worst is the Bedouin community, which exacerbates the problems associated with first-cousin marriage with polygamy. The Druse community is also a closed community which rarely intermarries with non-Druse. I was recently in Israel, visiting a hospital in the upper Jezreal valley which serves the large Arab population in the region, and they do a *lot* of genetic counseling to try to stem the tide of birth defects.

    But a similar problem is found within the ultra-Orthodox community, which rejects 90% of Jews as being “not really Jewish” or at least not Jewish enough, so they too marry within a limited gene pool tracing back to a few locales in Eastern Europe. So both in Israel and the US one finds higher rates of genetic disorders among this population than found in the broader Jewish population.

  • Hktony

    Arab and culture always gives me a reason to tell my joke!

    What is the difference between islam and yogurt??

    There is no culture in islam!

  • reyol

    I recommend David Pryce-Jone’s “The Closed Circle” with a special emphasis on the chapter, “Shame and Honor”. This cultural concept of shame and honor reinforced by Islam ensures that Arab conflicts never go away. The Israeli/Palestine conflict will never go away until Israel doesn’t exist or Arabs don’t exist. Islam’s war with the West will never go away until one or the other doesn’t exist. Shame doesn’t go away until the cause of shame is irradicated. A daughter or wife that’s even rumored to have shamed the family MUST be killed. This is different from other cultures that consider themselves to have honor if they tried their best in war and failed and can, thereafter, live in peace.