Steve--

Thank you for all you are doing.
It is truly a public service.
We await your report.

After reading Peretz's short bio, I am impressed. One hopes he has competent bodyguards, and an army of them, because if this guy is as presented, he is a definite target.

It is fascinating to read of these travels and ideas. Best luck to Peretz--he sounds like a politician of a different color. Stay safe, things and people are being blown up not so far away.

I know some college folks going to Israel in January -- to learn, and do some work in the Palestinian areas planting olive and almond trees. Seems to me there are many, many people working for peace in the area.

Politicians can be very seductive.

I can already imagine the wheels are turning in your head about how to pass along all you have learned. You always act in good faith, so we know that the benefits of this significant trip will be worth the wait.

“Look at how the Palestinians refuse to give up the right of return. The Israelis seem to start targeted assassinations every time a successful ceasefire is negotiated…Mustafa, you're probably familiar with Ataturk. Do you think the ideal of a benevolent dictator, say for instance an idealistic imam or clergy as in Sharia law, is more of a shared value for the muslim Middle East than the independence that the western ideal of an open democracy affords?”

Don,

Sorry I put this in an old threat below and then realized that you my not notice it. So here it is. I’m taking some time off the blog but am glad that I bumped into the thread and noticed your question to me.

1. I don’t think the Palestinians will give up their right of return, and I’m concerned about both them and Israeli Jews. As you know, the Palestinians have been in Canaan since long before Abraham and his small tribe trekked in, being pushed out of Ur by northern tribes.

From William Dever and other anthropologists we know that the Palestinians and other Canaanites were living side by side for centuries with the people who became known as the Hebrews (Let’s not get hung up on the Exodus, Mosaic covenant and other historically untenable myths), and every time the Jews came in from other places (Babylon, Spain, central Europe, etc.) they were welcomed by the people of Palestine. This time, though, Ashkenazi Jews -- most of them really are Europeans -- roared in as European conquerors and, instead of trying to live as peaceable neighbors, created an ethnically cleansed settler state.

The Anglo-Saxons could pull off similar ethnic cleansing projects in the United States, Canada and Australia and New Zealand in the early colonial era among dispersed and far-too-backward populations. The question is whether that recipe will work in the 21st century in the heart of a resurgent civilization. I’m concerned because of Israel’s decision to live by the sword, whose limitation has been exposed by its withdrawal from southern Lebanon and now Gaza and northern West Bank.

2. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was indeed an exceedingly capable army general who liberated Turkey by defeating the victors of World War I (which sent Winston Churchill into depression and lamentation). He was the Turks’ George Washington. The problem was that he wasn’t content to remain a George Washington and wanted also to become Islam’s Martin Luther, Marquis de Condorcet and V.I. Lenin in one piece. He had little formal education, either Islamic or Western, but became excited after reading Thomas Carlyle in the army barracks and decided to spark the French Enlightenment in Turkey through a Bolshevik-style revolution.

Ataturk is adored in the West because of his radical Westernization and anti-Islamic campaign, but in reality he was as naïve a social reformer as Paul Wolfowitz. Like the neocons he didn’t know that you can’t replace a traditional social or political order overnight with an alien one, that a society has to evolve from its roots.

The result has been that with the introduction of full-fledged democracy, Turkey became the world’s first and only Muslim country yet in which an Islamist-oriented political party came to power through free and fair election. But Islamism is voodoo politics, and it doesn’t have solutions to people’s economic or social problems. And so the real modernization of Turkish society, which had begun in the late 19th century and was in fact interrupted by the laicist dictatorships of Ataturk and his followers, has finally resumed, albeit through the Islam-oriented party. I recounted the Turkish experience to make the point that Muslim societies have to modernize from within, just as Western societies have.

Meanwhile, I am wondering – I hope and pray that I’m wrong – whether Islam finally is going to have its own (Shiite-Sunni) “Thirty Years’ War” in the Middle East before ushering in its “enlightenment.”

(I will be busy and may not visit this blog for a while. If you wish to contact me, please feel free to e-mail me at: mmalik41@comcast.net.)

I have a technical question:

Any possible nuclear attack launched by Iran at Israel would have to be big enough to prevent a counter-attack yet small enough to prevent damage to the Palestinian population, not to mention the land they wish to inhabit. Is this possible? Geographically speaking, Israel is not a big place (and I can't get the 'fallout calculator' on fas.org to work).

Sue,
I don't think you could take out the country with a single nuclear bomb as you seem to be thinking. The country, though small, is too big and anything that big would cause a real fall-out problem for the rest of the world.

Normally Iran would have to launch multiple attacks on Israeli air force bases and probably Dimona. But with the rumors of nuclear armed Israeli subs, there's probably no way to stop a reprisal.

They could create a lot of havoc, but not prevent a counter attack.

Even with all the craziness, I have a hard time believing the Iranian leadership would perform a pre-emptive nuclear attack.

But possessing nukes would certainly make other countries think twice before attacking Iran. The North Korea/Iraq lesson.

Don,

Thanks for the response. So then the danger isn't actually from a nuclear attack from Iran, but Iran using the threat of a nuclear response as cover for other unsavory activities. But as for the "North Korea/Iraq lesson," you've got to wonder what other countries learned that lesson as well... Law of Unintentended Consequences? Wouldn't a nuclear armed Tiawan be a pretty pickle?

Interesting point. And suitcase nukes would certainly be a concern.

I'd guess all other countries learned the lesson that their sovereignty would be better respected nuclear armed. US attitudes towards Germany, France, and Turkey certainly were evidence that even old friends aren't safe from US belligerence.

India and Pakistan's new attitude of cooperation is interesting after the brinksmanship of just a few years ago. One wonders what might happen once bullying and martial solutions are no longer tenable.