Author Archive
On Anne Frank and Justin Bieber
by David
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Though teen pop sensation Justin Bieber is a fellow Canadian, I’m not usually in the business of defending him. I do not have “Bieber fever.” I can’t say I know any of his work, except for “Baby” featuring Ludacris, a song so catchy you’d have to be without a soul not to hum along. I know Bieber hails from western Ontario, I know that he was discovered on youtube, and I know that there is a website dedicated to lesbians who look just like him.
So I was pretty surprised when Bieber came up today in the context of every Jewish studies student and scholar’s favourite inescapable topic: the Holocaust.
You see, apparently Bieber and buddies were over in Amsterdam, and they decided to pay an after hours visit to the Anne Frank House (presumably they weren’t baked at the time). Anne Frank House is museum set up in the house where Anne Frank, the most famous victim of the Holocaust, stayed hidden for two years in the early 1940s. The teenage girl chronicled her life in her famous diary before the Nazis finally captured her and sent her to a concentration camp. I visited Anne Frank House in 2001. It’s a pretty moving place. And apparently Bieber was moved too, so moved that he left this note in the museum’s guest book:
Truly Inspring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.
At first glance, this story seemed more like an incident from a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, a show with a distinguished record of hilarious Holocaust humour. It mixed the solemn with the silly so effectively it had to be some kind of joke, right? But no, it was the real life Justin Bieber expressing his genuine feelings after visiting Anne Frank House. He hoped she would have been one of his screaming, adoring fans. A belieber. So what are we to make of this?
Many have remarked that Bieber displayed an amazing degree of narcissism. He went to a museum that highlighted the horros of the Holocaust, and yet he made his reaction all about him, indeed, all about his celebrity. Unbeliebable!
And yet, and yet… here’s the other thing. Justin Bieber may have been right.
If you look at Anne Frank’s journal, later titled The Diary of a Young Girl, you’ll notice how incredibly normal she was. Frank was, in many ways, your typical teenager. She cared about her appearance. She had a crush on a boy hidden with her. She complained of boredom. She gave gifts to her family. She was aware of the latest fashion and literature and music. And so, in another setting, in another lifetime, Anne Frank might very well have been a belieber.
Inadvertently, through his arrogant and asinine message, Justin Bieber reasserted and clarified the central message of the diary. Frank should be remembered for her resilience, for her nobility in the face of mortal danger. She was indeed “a great girl.” Butt she was great precisely because she made her life so relatable, even under a Nazi occupation to which few can relate. Her diary is an account of her struggle for normalcy under hideously abnormal circumstances. But under other circumstances, she’d probably be singing along to “Baby’ just like the rest of us.
Restaurant Review: Zahav’s “Modern Israeli” Cuisine
by David
The Philadelphia restaurant Zahav is a bizarre place. The name means gold in Hebrew and the intent is to provide “modern Israeli” cuisine, whatever that means of country not yet 70 years old.
Let’s get this out of the way: the food at Zahav is delicious. I had a lovely time there and would go back in a heart beat, particularly if somebody else was willing to cover the bill (it’s not cheap). The service was good, the decor and ambience delightful. In short, I liked it; maybe even loved it. But that doesn’t mean my experience didn’t raise some questions worth pondering here at the ol’ Octopus.
To begin, they served octopus. I kid. They don’t serve octopus, or any shellfish, or any pork, or any food specifically forbidden by the Jewish laws of kashrut (those that determine what is or isn’t kosher). And yet, they might as well have. Because Zahav is NOT a certified kosher restaurant. The meat they do serve: beef, lamb, chicken, and duck, has not been properly ritually slaughtered, and is considered traif (unkosher). And while they do not mix meat and dairy together, they do serve as separate dishes alongside each other, which also qualifies as a no-no.
I went with my parents, who are not particularly adventurous eaters. We had some hummus-tehina, which was delicious. That was an appetizer of sorts. Then we ordered small plates. We got some fried cauliflower, and an assortment of chicken, lamb, and duck dishes. We also got some crispy haloumi, a kind of cheese, ensuring that our meal was not kosher. We got some ice cream for dessert for good measure.
In principle, I see nothing wrong with ostensibly Jewish restaurants serving non-kosher food. There is no more Jewish act than eating a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Delicatessen in New York’s lower east side (it’s much holier than putting on tefiilin at the Kotel) and Katz’s pastrami is strictly traif. Speaking of Traif, the Brooklyn restaurant of the same name is, in my mind, a thoroughly Jewish establishment. By explicitly defying the laws of kashrut, it’s implicitly asserting their cultural significance. It’s not unlike the Yiddish-speaking Jewish anarchists of New York of a hundred years ago who threw lavish balls on Yom Kippur, thereby honouring the sacred day with their sacrilege.
So no, it’s not Zahav’s lack of kashrut that offends me. Nothing about the restaurant offends me. It’s great. But I would assert that the restaurant is hardly Israeli, and barely Jewish.
Let’s start with the food. The two tasting menus (neither of which we ordered) were given Hebrew names, one called “Ta’im” (meaning tasty) and the other “Mesibah” (meaning party). The meats were called “Al Ha-Esh” (on the fire, or on the grill). All very cute. And yet apart from the hummus, nothing jumped out as me as especially Israeli. I recognize that “Israeli” cuisine is really a hodge-podge of culinary traditions from all over the Jewish world: Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Mizrachi, and Ethiopian. But this felt more “nouveau” than “Israeli.”
According to my advisor Hasia Diner, there’s no such thing as Jewish food at all, except for matzo (the bread of affliction I’m suffering with now). All other ostensibly “Jewish” food is actually Polish, or Moroccan, or Rumanian, or from wherever Jews lived, but kosherized for Jewish consumption. But I really didn’t recognize Zahav’s food as very Jewish or Israeli. If you had told me it was a Spanish restaurant, I might have believed you, though I’d have wondered what happened to all the pork.
Then there’s the fact that the food at Zahav is served tapas style, in small plates. Small plates?! No Jew ever wanted a small plate of anything. I heard Jackie Mason‘s voice kvetching in my ear: “You call this a portion?” If I’m going to order something, I want mountains of it so I can stuff myself silly, not have one bite and be left hungry for more. Have you seen the sandwiches at Katz’s or Second Avenue Deli? That’s what a portion looks like.
And then there’s Zahav’s decor. It’s perfectly pleasant. There are a few Jewy markers, like the stained glass panels above the kitchen, the mezuzah on the front door, and the Hebrew writing on pictures on the bathroom door. There’s also a large photograph of an Israeli shuk, or marketplace, though you’d only recognize it as such if you knew what you were looking for. But for the most part, it just felt like your typical chic restaurant: lighting a little too dim, music a little too loud. And that music? Modern pop and hip hop, without an Israeli tune to be heard. Which is weird because Israeli music is actually quite good. I did catch one Matisyahu song, but that doesn’t really count.
And the lack of Jewish content in the food and decor was matched by the lack of Jewishness in the clientele. There were people of all different races and ethnicities and religions eating at Zahav. And that’s a good thing, and equally true of a place like Katz’s. But the difference, I think, is that everyone knows Katz’s is a Jewish deli. But I wonder if the non-Jewish clientele of Zahav realized that it was an Israeli restaurant, or was supposed to be an Israeli restaurant, or whether they just thought it was fancy, creative, exotic food in a swanky setting.
So to conclude, everyone should by all means go to Zahav. The food is delicious and makes for a wonderful dining experience. Just don’t expect it to be too Israeli, or too Jewish.
Sergio Martinez, Noble Fighter
by David
Sergio Martinez
Boxers are often thought to be thugs. Not so for Sergio Martinez, the Argentine middleweight (160 lbs) superstar who cemented his legacy last night with an exciting unanimous decision victory over the younger, bigger, and stronger Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., the son of the legendary Mexican fighter. Martinez, 37 with movie-star good looks, took the 26-year-old Chavez to school for 11 rounds, but then nearly got knocked out in the 12th. Amazingly, Martinez ended the bout on his feet to get the points win.
I was rooting for Martinez. Though he was the favourite, he was also the naturally smaller man, as Chavez has famously put on upwards of 20 pounds after the weigh in, and appeared clearly larger last night. But the main reason I rooted for Martinez is because he’s a rags-to-riches story, he’s a really nice guy. Earlier this year, before a fight at Madison Square Garden, he spoke the Dominican Women’s Development Center and a safe house for victims of domestic abuse in the Washington Heights neighbourhood of New York. And he even appeared in an anti-bullying “it gets better” video.
Boxing can be brutal. But some of the fighters are actually pretty good people. Sergio Martinez is among the better ones. And that’s why he’ll likely remain one of my favourites for a long time.
Barack Obama: Jackie Robinson of Black Presidents
by David
Barack Obama
For the most recent issue of The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates has penned a superb essay on Barack Obama as Black president. Coates argues that Obama, by not talking about race while sitting as president, has taken an accommodationist stance against white racism. You should read the whole thing, because it really is a spectacular piece of writing. Indeed, it’s an essay that is much better than this blog post in response to it, an essay that so impressed me that I will likely assign it to my “Race and Identity in Judaism” class.
And yet, it’s an essay that I have some problems with, on historical grounds.
As Coates correctly notes, “Obama is not simply America’s first black president–he is the first president who could credibly teach a black-studies class.” In short Barack Obama is an intellectual. America has long been uncomfortable with intellectuals, as can be evidenced by the cult of anti-intellectualism surrounding Sarah Palin and other figures on the far right. I think Black intellectuals make this sector of white America even angrier than than the poor black underclass does, because they want to feel superior to Barack Obama, but they can’t.
Obama’s status as intellectual makes me wary of lumping him in the same accommodationist category as Booker T. Washington, as Coates does. For Washington displayed an anti-intellectualism of his own, as he preached industrial education, economic self-development, and acceptance of segregation for the black community of the South. Washington’s antagonist, W.E.B. Du Bois, argued in favor of integration, in favor of civil rights for African Americans, to be led by a “talented tenth.”
So is Obama an accomodationist in the vein of Booker T. Washington? As president, when he has dealt with race, it has been to engage in the “time-honored tradition of black self-hectoring, railing against the perceived failings of black culture.” Coates is most angry about Obama’s treatment of Shirley Sherrod, who was forced to resign from the US Department of Agriculture after the late Andrew Breitbart aired selective moments of an interview with her to make it appear as if she harbored anti-white sentiments. By failing to stand up for Sherrod, Obama followed in Washington’s footsteps by backing down in the face of white racism.
Booker T. Washington
And yet I think there might be another way to understand Obama here.
First, there are important differences between Obama and Booker T. Washington beyond the purely intellectual. The latter preached a doctrine of group uplift through industry and agriculture. His was a separatist, if not segregationist schema. It’s no wonder that Marcus Garvey, who led an even more radically separatist group in his “Back to Africa” movement, looked to Washington for inspiration. Washington, Garvey, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, these leaders and movements rejected integration. Obama, whether he discusses race or not, is an apostle of integration.
Obama’s story, then, is not one of accommodation and separation, but of accommodation and integration. In order for this integration to occur, Obama has had to avoid the perception of succumbing to “black rage,” of being an “angry black man.” And in that way, the black leader he most resembles is baseball player Jackie Robinson.
Jackie Robinson
When Jackie Robinson entered the major leagues in 1947, he made a promise to Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey, the man most responsable for signing him in the first place. Robinson promised Rickey that no matter how many taunts he received from players and fans and teammates, no matter how many baserunners slid into him spikes high or pitchers who threw at his head, he could not fight back. He had to take it, grit his teeth, and remain silent. Robinson promised to do this for three years. Rickey knew that if Robinson retaliated, he would be labeled an angry black man, other owners would refuse to sign African Americans, and the great experiment at integrating America’s national pastime would be rendered a failure.
Barack Obama is the Jackie Robinson of the white house. He has effectively integrated the presidency. But in his first term in office he has behaved like Jackie Robinson did in his first three years in the majors. After those first three years, Robinson was free to retaliate, to yell and fight back, and he did so vociferously. The metaphorical gloves came off. He succeeded in integrating baseball, and could then assert himself, as a black man, and as an individual.
Obama has not faced the degree of racism that Robinson did, but he has faced racism, both overt and subtle, in large part coming white resentment in the face of a changing national makeup. He is living in the post-Civil Rights era, indeed, HE IS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. One would think he would have the ability, the power, to speak his mind more forcefully on racial questions.
Or maybe it’s precisely because he is president, because he is blazing a trail, that he needs to keep a low profile on race issues. The question remains: will Obama, if elected for a second term, take the gloves off? Will he be the tough-as-nails player that Jackie Robinson was his whole career, while still putting up Hall of Fame numbers?
This question may be related to the left’s criticism of Obama, that he promised change but then governed from the center. If a re-elected Obama changes course on race, will he change course and veer left on other policy arenas?
Sex and the Jewish Summer Camp
by David
As we enter the latter half of August, many Jewish campers all across the Diaspora are asking themselves an important question: “Have I gotten enough play this summer?” In this week’s issue of The Forward, the progressive Jewish paper published out of New York, Emily Shire has written a wonderful article titled: “Hooking Up at Summer Camp? Is a Little Nookie the Key to Jewish Continuity?” Shire, telling us what we already know, notes:
In addition to the kosher canteens and morning prayers, there’s another activity unlisted in any brochure but no less synonymous with Jewish sleepaway camps: hooking up. Ask any alumnus of the dozens of non-Orthodox Jewish overnight camps in North America, and you’ll get stories straight from an episode of “Glee,” with softball fields and squash courts as the backdrops to teenage hookups — everything up to but mostly excluding sexual intercourse….
Administrators at Jewish sleepaway camps say they discourage campers from getting frisky with each other. But former campers tell a different story, of counselors who turned a blind eye or even gently egged their campers on. The unspoken subtext, they say, is Jewish continuity. Like a PG-13 version of Taglit-Birthright Israel — during which Jewish 20-somethings are known to fall for each other while they fall in love with Israel — Jewish summer camps acquaint adolescents with their religious tradition, but also with each other. Many former campers say they had their earliest romantic episodes at camp, paving the way for adult relationships with other Jews. Today, hooking up at camp is a hallmark of the American Jewish youth experience.
I suggest you read the whole piece. It certainly resonated with me.
Though the message is more subtle than Birthright’s almost explicit efforts at matchmaking and procreation, Jewish summer camps without question seek to facilitate romantic relationships among Jewish campers and staff (but not between campers and staff). Particularly in the non-Orthodox camps, the Jewish content is fairly minimal. And teaching Judaism is not the real purpose of these camps. The real purposes is to encourage hookups and ultimately marriage between Jews, to keep things within the Tribe.
Think about it. Summer camp is the great equalizer. Everyone’s a little dirty, so hygiene becomes less important. Since the camp consists mostly or entirely of Jews, it’s easier to impress potential suitors with athletic prowess. Nobody has more money than anybody else, and there is no possibility of winning someone with a fancy date. Because hookups are officially frowned upon, there’s the thrill of doing something bad. And though there are lots of activities, from sports to arts and crafts to Judaica, there is still a lot of downtime. What else are young horny teenagers going to do?
As Shire notes, there have been no systematic studies of sexual relationships as Jewish summer camps. But there is evidence to suggest that Jewish summer camps offer something of a bulwark against intermarriage. Whatever the data reveals, there is no question that, as Shire writes: “for many, camp hookup culture was a formative part of their Jewish adolescence.”
There really is a fascinating historical/sociological book project that needs to be done about the role of summer camps in the North American, or perhaps even global Diaspora Jewish community. Hookup culture would be an integral aspect of that project. Maybe I’ll write it one day. On that note, Shabbat Shalom!
Aly Raisman and Jewish Women’s Sweat
by David
Aly Raisman
To follow up on Afrah’s excellent post on Gabby Douglas, I thought I would reflect a little bit on another American gymnast who won gold in London, Aly Raisman. The 18-year-old Raisman, an American Jew, proudly celebrated her heritage by performing her gold-medal winning floor routine to “Hava Nagilah.”
In winning the gold medal, Raisman also did her part in undermining certain stereotypes about Jewish women. Particularly in the post-WW2 period, two comic images of Jewish women emerged, both with a decidedly negative edge. The first was the overbearing Jewish mother, the second the Jewish American Princess, or JAP, personified in either the nagging wife or the spoiled daughter. These images were on display in American Jewish fiction, but they also caused real harm in gender relations between American Jewish men and women.
Ali MacGraw as Brenda Patimkin
In her 1996 essay “Why Jewish Princesses Don’t Sweat,” anthropologist Riv-Ellen Prell argues that the archetypical JAP is allergic to work. As an example, she points Brenda Patimkin, the leading lady of the 1959 Philip Roth novella Goodbye, Columbus. In both the book and the 1969 movie, Patimkin (as portrayed by Ali MacGraw) is seen playing tennis. To Prell, the message is that JAPs can sweat, provided that the sweat is not productive, i.e. that it comes from exercise or a leisurely activity like tennis. The Jewish woman is thereby denigrated as unproductive, lazy, and spoiled.
Of course, this stereotype is far from true: Jewish women work, and certainly sweat while working. This is where Raisman comes in. Here we have a wonderful real-life example of a Jewish woman whose work is athletic, sweat-producing, and medal-winning. Mazel tov Aly!
Scholarly Disputes and the Academic Crossfire
by David
Michael Kazin
In the latest round of “Historians Who Hate Each Other” I give you Michael Kazin and Sean Wilentz. Ok, so I don’t know if these guys actually hate each other. But it sure seems like they do. I’m talking about Georgetown US historian Michael Kazin (son of old Jewish left royalty Alfred Kazin) and Princeton US historian Sean Wilentz. The dispute goes back at least to the 2008 American presidential election. Wilentz backed Hillary Clinton, Kazin sided with Obama. They argued in The New Republic, ostensibly about Lincoln but in fact about Obama.
The latest battleground of this dispute is The New York Review of Books, where Wilentz has written a savage review of Kazin’s new book, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.
Wilentz’s review, titled “The Left vs. the Liberals,” runs like this: Kazin says the radicals did X, but actually it was liberals, or at least, mostly liberals. X could be emancipation of the slaves, the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement, you name it. I haven’t read Kazin’s book, but Wilentz’s attacks seem pretty devastating.
Sean Wilentz
The debate here is not just about liberals vs. radicals, but about top-down political vs bottom-up social history, Wilentz preferring the former, Kazin the latter. So who’s right?
The answer, as any good grad student should know, is both. There is no question that both radicals and liberals, both elites and the disadvantaged helped bring about progressive social change.
I’m sure these two historians would agree on that. The difference is one of emphasis, but that distinction is, well, academic. In any case, I’m in no position to declare a winner here, but I would like to lament the fact that the dispute has gotten nasty and perhaps personal. Wilentz refers to Kazin’s discussion of the Civl War as a “skimpy caricature” and later writes that Kazin’s analysis of the post-Civil Rights era “begins to go haywire.” (the New Republic exchange is even nastier). I hope that whatever animosity these two historians feel towards each other does not cloud their scholarship. Still, I can’t wait for the exchange of letters in The New Review of Books that is sure to follow.
Thinking about this dispute brings me to an interesting quandary for the grad student: what do we do when we are required to interact with scholars who intensely dislike each other? Should we pick sides? Try to stay above the fray? Deceptively placate both? What if we feel a greater affinity for one scholar’s position on a given topic, but we are working closely with another professor who takes the opposing view? Basically, in scholarly disputes, do grad students get caught in the academic crossfire?
Tommy Boy and Mitt Romney
by David
Tommy Boy, starring the late Chris Farley, is one of the funniest movies of all time. But it also provides us with lessons that are useful in understanding the 2012 American presidential election, particularly the question of Mitt Romney’s role as a “vulture capitalist” for Bain Capital.
In Tommy Boy, Farley plays Tommy Callahan III, a hard-partying recent college graduate (after 7 years) who inherits Callahan Auto, his father’s brake-pad company. The business is on the verge of bankruptcy, so Tommy has to travel across the country (with his sidekick, portrayed brilliantly by David Spade) to drum up sales for the company, which is the economic foundation of the small town in which it is located.
The point is that Tommy Boy is all about saving the American auto industry, the same industry that Romney effectively told to drop dead. And of course, Romney has had lots of experience dismembering businesses for his own profit at Bain Capital. Free marketeers will argue that Romney was just making the market more efficient by shutting down failing corporations. But, as we well know, presidents aren’t just interested in making the market more efficient, especially when that efficiency translates into big profits for the few, job losses for many, and without any noticeable improvement in productivity, reduction in consumer prices, or innovations that better our quality of life.
Beyond that, Tommy Callahan III could relate to the workers at his plant, whereas Mitt Romney cannot relate to anyone, least of all the vast majority of Americans who aren’t as wealthy as he is. Indeed, Chris Farley, perhaps America’s greatest slapstick comedian, could make everyone laugh, regardless of class or social background. President Obama has his flaws, and he’s more David Spade than Chris Farley, but at the end of the day, he’s a president who at the very least can relate to people across America’s socio-economic spectrum. So if you love Tommy Boy, you should vote for Barack Obama.
Some Hume-ility for the Austrian Economists
by David
David Hume
Back when I was studying Liberal Arts at Dawson College, I learned about a Scotsman who proved that you couldn’t prove anything. His name was David Hume, he lived in the 1700s, and he argued that all knowledge is inductive and empirical, that is to say, we only know anything from experience: if we see a hundred zebras with stripes, we can only make an educated guess that the next one we see will have stripes too. I remember reading Bertrand Russell’s 1945 book A History of Western Philosophy, where he said that nobody has ever disproved Hume’s epistemology, and I’m pretty sure that assessment has held up.
I didn’t really know it until recently, but I am a Humean. And apparently, I’m in good company. Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has listed Hume’s An Enquiry into Human Understanding as one of his major inspirations, which he read in college:
Then I read Hume’s Enquiry, this wonderful, humane book saying that nobody has all the answers. What we know is what we have evidence for. We do the best we can, but anybody who claims to be able to deduce or have revelation about The Truth – with both Ts capitalised – is wrong. It doesn’t work that way. The only reasonable way to approach life is with an attitude of humane scepticism. I felt that a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders when I read that book…. You look at people who are very certain, and have these beliefs of one form or another and you think, “Maybe they really know something!” And what Hume says is, “Actually, no. They don’t.”
Krugman argues forcefully for various economic policies in his columns, but I think that he would admit that his knowledge is provisional, and based on experience, rather than immutable truths. In this way, he’s like the man who inspired him, John Maynard Keynes. As The New Yorker’s John Cassidy wrote of Keynes:
At the heart of his vision, however, there is an elusive combination of boldness and humility. It calls not merely for the management of risk but for something politically and intellectually far more demanding: the acknowledgment of uncertainty.
And where did Keynes find his inspiration? Not from Karl Marx: Keynes (correctly) called Marxism “complicated hocus pocus.” No, Keynes built on the economic thought of another British empiricist, Adam Smith. And from where did Smith derive his empiricism? From his good friend and fellow Scotsman David Hume.
In Defense of Thomas Friedman (Sort Of)
by David
Some guy named Hamilton Nolan has an article on Gawker mocking Thomas Friedman’s latest column. How wonderfully clever and original! I’ve never seen that before, except when McSweeney’s did a far more impressive Mad Libs version titled “Create Your Own Thomas Friedman Op-Ed Column.” Friedman-bashing runs rampant through the left-wing media. You can even find this classy and sophisticated piece by Matt Taibbi that makes fun of Friedman’s mustache!
In 2012, however, the only thing more trite and repetitive than a Thomas Friedman column are pieces that point out how trite and repetitive Thomas Friedman’s columns are.
Look, I’m not going to argue for Friedman’s greatness here: many, perhaps even most of his columns are as banal as the critics say. Supporting the war on Iraq remains his (and my) greatest political blunder, for which there can be no apology.
Nonetheless, I won’t follow the herd and hate on Friedman. On Israel-Palestine, the only topic on which he is a true expert, he usually has interesting things to say. The chapter “Hama Rules” in From Beirut to Jerusalem, which I was assigned as an undergraduate, remains remarkably prescient in its criticism of Ariel Sharon and Anwar Sadat.
Also, in 2002, in a column titled “The Core of Muslim Rage,” Friedman made a simple but powerful argument. Basically, he noted that the Arab/Muslim world goes apeshit (I can curse like Taibbi too!) when Jews kill Muslims but doesn’t give a rats ass when Hindus/Christians/Muslims do the same thing on a much larger scale. As he wrote:
When Hindus kill Muslims it’s not a story, because there are a billion Hindus and they aren’t part of the Muslim narrative. When Saddam murders his own people it’s not a story, because it’s in the Arab-Muslim family. But when a small band of Israeli Jews kills Muslims it sparks rage — a rage that must come from Muslims having to confront the gap between their self-perception as Muslims and the reality of the Muslim world.
There are many reasons for Arab-Muslim antipathy to America and Israel: the poverty and misinformation endemic to parts of the Arab-Muslim world, as well as the daily violence and oppression perpetuated by Americans and Israelis on Arabs and Muslims are prominent among them. But to me, the most important reason is the “poverty of dignity” that Friedman identifies. Muslims imagine themselves in possession of the one true faith, yet they haven’t won a major victory with the West since the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1453.
We even see the legacy of this bitterness in the Arab Spring today. The Islamists seek a restoration Sharia law to restore Muslim dignity. Similarly, the secular segments of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt and elsewhere are revolting against a once mighty civilization that has fallen frighteningly behind much of the world. Friedman understands this, which is why when he writes about the Middle East, I will always read, even if I don’t always (or even often) agree.
