The Arab Delusion
WHITEHEAD, K. D.
PERSPECTIVES The Arab Delusion By K.D. Whitehead In one of His latest rodomontade pronouncements concerning Israel. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt declared, "There is no substitute, no...
...A friend of mine evacuated from Egypt in 1967 was seriously asked by his native secretary how the Israelis could be bias enough to let the Americans and British fight for them...
...What does this all mean...
...The same unreasonable passion motivated the multitudes in Amman, Jordan, who protested the Jerusalem fire by marching on the American Embassy and the U.S...
...There remains just enough substance in Israel's well-known ties with the West to prevent the truth from ever breaking through...
...The leader of Lebanon's Sunni Moslem community...
...Today, the Arabs continue to believe they suffer not only at the hands of Israel, but from the concerted power of the West...
...They were convinced of close American-British-Israeli collaboration, of what they like to call "Tripartite Aggression...
...Even if he had not explicitly said so...
...Read their books...
...The Arabs simply do not want to make peace except on their own terms, and these are beyond the bounds of reasonable debate...
...Similar unreal ism makes the average Arab believe that the mostly blundering and inefficient Palestin-ean commandos represent a force on the order of the Vietcong...
...Wouldn't a settlement be better for all...
...listen to their radios...
...During the 1967 conflict...
...It relates very specifically to the immediate situation...
...The Arabs, after their resounding defeat in the War of June 1967, lashed out at the United States and Britain, holding them largely responsible for the debacle...
...President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt declared, "There is no substitute, no hope, and no way...
...The Arabs will never believe that the Israelis have been able to do them in alone...
...Though, as nature's original anarchists, the Arabs will suffer terribly from a Soviet takeover if it ever comes, they hold the West responsible for their predicament and demand that it extricate them...
...The imperialist bogey is one of those established a priori delusions so congenial to the Arab mind in all fields of thought...
...The cultural and political madness of Red China has given the world some uncomfortable moments...
...There are 90 million Arabs and less than three million Israelis...
...read their journals...
...Take an even more blatant case...
...But there is reason to wonder whether this was a genuine confession of error or duplicity designed to secure the diplomatic recognition the U.S...
...Even if by some miracle the Arabs did agree to talk, little would be likely to come of it because the real Arab problem is not really a matter of borders, refugees...
...New homes could be found for the Palestinian refugees, and with Israeli technical help the whole desert could be made to bloom...
...Even today, the attitude lingers...
...The permanent crisis is perhaps farther from settlement now than in 1948...
...In the face of such political infantilism, the Israeli hope for "direct talks" is surely vain...
...While Sheikh Hassan's approach to American politics was refreshingly nonpartisan, the paranoic quality of his explanation seems to exceed the normal bounds of political rhetoric...
...being automatically lumped together with Israel whenever any calamity occurs...
...Why don't the Arabs want peace...
...it means "to conquer," and is also a reverse acronym of Hizb Tahreer Filisteen, the Palestine Liberation Party...
...How, the Arab asked himself, could little Israel destroy the Arab air forces on the ground, defeat the Arab armies in the field and occupy such large stretches of Arab territory...
...would not afford him so long as this canard was on record (He still hasn't gotten it, of course, but because of other considerations...
...hardly one of them doubts that a vast malign plot has been mounted against his people, nor do many question the official enumeration of the forces behind that plot...
...For the Arabs the allegations were not lies at all...
...the retreat to fantasy is easier...
...Baghdad radio, announcing the execution of Iraq's latest "foreign spies," called them "proven criminals and traitors who conducted espionage for the U.S...
...This missed the point...
...The Israeli authorities, aided by descriptions and evidence from Moslem guards on the scene, arrested a young Australian Christian who has confessed to setting the fire...
...This should not be confused with the anti-Americanism endemic to so much of the Third World...
...and for the nth time, the continuing armed clashes in the Middle East clearly manifest the Arab refusal to reconcile themselves to Israel's obvious military superiority...
...The basic irritant is a profound feeling of humiliation which prevents the Arabs from recognizing or admitting their true situation...
...but Arab force...
...And the sad but bedrock truth is that in a very important sense, even Gamal Abdel Nasser believes the stories about British and American warplanes, just as the witchdoctor believes in his own spells and potions...
...Take, for example, the recent burning of Jerusalem's Al Aksa Mosque...
...but they simply do not believe the fantastic excesses...
...Sheikh Hassan Khalid, undoubtedly expressed a widespread sentiment when he blamed not only Israel but also "those who supply Israel with Phantom jets, arms and money . . . such as Johnson and Nixon...
...In the end, it could prove to be a much more serious threat to Israel's future than any Arab army...
...Even while the horselaughs echo west of Suez, the Arabs, who may hold in their hands the key to war or peace for all mankind, continue to employ "pure reason" unsullied by reality in their analysis of the world around them and their place in it...
...The very word Falah typifies their self-deception...
...Crowds marched only in the Jordanian capital because there are at present no diplomatic relations between the U.S...
...Often, in conversation with Arabs I know, I have tried to break through the hothouse where their special views of Israel, Zionism, and the rest of the world is nurtured...
...Life is altogether too painful...
...This is disturbingly similar to the constant pica of neurotics and the immature...
...To think that way, however, is to misconstrue the Arab mind—admittedly not an easy mind to understand...
...Indeed, the Conspiracy Theory is institutionalized among Arabs...
...with the CIA ahead of Israel...
...At the time, puzzled American officials explained these accusations as examples of the "Big Lie...
...did not participate in the June '67 attack on Egypt...
...What does one do when confronted by a whole people wallowing in this state...
...similar to the simultaneous British-French-Israeli attacks on Egypt in 1456...
...reparations, rights—or any other things that can be negotiated...
...and most other Middle Eastern states...
...The Israelis have been grappling with the same societal schizophrenia in the Middle East...
...Never to any avail...
...it is not surprising to find the U.S...
...It means what we have witnessed in the 21 years since the Israel's War of Independence, and especially since the Six Day War: an uninterrupted series of Israeli military victories, followed each time by greater Arab intransigence...
...Arab communiques regularly spoke of the "tripartite forces" as if they were the most obvious thing in the world...
...Information Agency Library...
...They see no reason to make concessions when, in their opinion, the failure of the imperialists to recognize their rights is the main obstacle to peace...
...Nasser did finally admit, in an interview last year with Look's William Attwood, that perhaps the U.S...
...Central Intelligence Agency and for Israel...
...It stands to reason that the Jews could never possibly do all that alone...
...This did not satisfy the Arabs...
...Some people in the West do...
...Mere facts about the actual military situation can only with the greatest difficulty shake the conviction that Israel simply cannot pack a sufficiently mighty wallop to defeat them all at the same time...
...Israel's situation thus obliges it to deal with a mind that betrays all the classic symptoms of collective neurosis—if not psychosis...
...For those who know the Arabs...
...This answer, eminently logical, if one could isolate logic from all other considerations, was the one spontaneously offered by most Arabs...
Vol. 52 • September 1969 • No. 17
