I am sorry, but I am done with "paradoxes" of Israeli Arabs

Submitted by jerry michelson (Israel), Nov 25, 2017 at 21:48

I used to be very excited by those statistics - both about over-representation in certain medicine-related areas and about "Israeli" being part of Arab identity in this country - but am no longer. In fact, they leave me Arctically cold. The only thing that would nudge me south of the polar circle in this regard, would be some change in this cesspool of pathology called the Arab political culture. Voting in droves for this political obscenity called United Arab List ("Jungle in the Villa") while being proud of being Israeli? Let them first find a way to experience the pain of the cognitive dissonance induced by this "paradox" - for the time being it is I who bear the brunt of it. Why should I? Why not them? Hence my cold indifference.

I just watched this Kuwaiti journalist on MemriTV uttering something approaching the way normals talk about those things. It too left me clinically indifferent. All I could see and hear was the bottomless Arab political cultural pathology. Those thoughtful faces of participants in this "debate" while emitting the same absurdesque (absurd+grotesque) soundbites (What is Israel? Is it a country? A terrorist entity?). We've become so benumbed to these infantile idiocies, that we hardly even notice them - busy as we are hunting for any, ANY sign of "moderation".

Even the said Kuwaiti journalist, who from the point of view of his native audience sounded like an hostile alien from the planet Zordugo, even he,while saying something approaching normalcy, the rank odor of the said pathology clung to his every sentence. This compulsive-obsessive Quran quoting is particularly galling - again, my having gotten so habituated to this nonsense ("well, you know, that's how they talk...") renders it next to impossible trying to imagine something analogous in other cultures-religions (yes, there are US televangelists who talk like that, there are rabbis who see geo-political realities only when refracted through their peculiar mindsets, but they are not being invited to participate in political debates on national television).

Just finished re-reading for the umpteenth time three brilliant analyses of the pathology of Arab political culture: David Pryce-Jones' "The Closed Circle", Fouad Ajami's "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" (both were written in the late 1980 I think), and Lee Smith's "The Strong Horse". The continuing relevance is breath-taking and jaw-dropping.

My immense respect for Dr. Pipes as ME scholar is not diminished by one iota by what I consider his misplaced enthusiasm. I would love to quote the name of Larry David here, but will take a pass.

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