Captivated by Arab Charm

...According to former coworkers in Washington," AlRoy declares, "Kissinger must have spent close to half his time with it...

...It is true that in personalizing American foreign policy to the degree that he has, the Secretary has left commentators with little alternative but to study Henry Kissinger himself, and AlRoy was right to attempt a character-portrait...

...Personal sympathy often turns into political bias...

...It regards as some brand of liberal Protestantism one of the most politically aggressive civilizations in history, having neither the code of personal conduct and social morality of the West nor its concepts of international order...

...They are now saying the Arab states-especially, although not exclusively, Egypt-have "tacitly" recognized Israel's legitimacy (just as in 1949 it was said that, by not withdrawing from the United Nations after the world organization admitted Israel, the Arabs had granted it de facto recognition...

...This book is perhaps most valuable, though, in demonstrating how the deplorable level of U.S...

...Today, their distorted appraisals pass for knowledge and their opinions influence American policy in the area...

...Some of the evidence AlRoy marshals in support of his accusation is rather telling: As a student at Harvard, Kissinger used to criticize his teacher, Carl Friedrich, for being pro-Zionist and therefore anti-American...

...Self-censorship accounts for failures fully to cover the man and his policies at least as much as any conscious effort on his part to orchestrate the news...

...He writes: "American Protestant missionaries went to the Middle East over 150 years ago, establishing the main American 'interest' there for nearly a century...

...When one encounters evidence of unwholesome intent by individuals one really likes, the tendency is to resolve this 'dissonance' (as social psychologists term it) by discrediting the evidence (it isn't 'true, or when the authenticity of the statement is unchallengeable, 'they don't mean it...

...AlRoy accuses Kissinger of trying to appear "more American" than "most conventional Americans" and, in the process, of deliberately slighting or disregarding vital Jewish concerns...

...Arab civilization is not a variant of Western civilization but a radically different one in respect to basic concepts, values, mentality and behavior, each making sense in its own, very different terms," the author cautions early on...

...Nonetheless, psychoanaly-sis-at-a-distance remains a very dubious proposition...

...The answers, AlRoy submits, are to be found in a complex set of circumstances which he calls The Kissinger Experience...

...When pressed, these State Department "experts" offer virtually no evidence to support their contention beyond allusions to secret conversations held with "moderate" Arab leaders...

...Why is that policy's executor regarded with such awe...

...seek another who could cover Kissinger, rather than back their own man...

...A second major aspect of the "Kissinger Experience" is the Secretary's personality, notably his Jewish background...

...Yet some of the criticism is simply unfair-for instance, quoting an unnamed Harvard colleague who said, "I feel certain that if a proper mental diagnosis had been made in 1962, [Kissinger] would have been declared sick...

...He sees them serving largely as apologists for the Palestinian side, and attributes their behavior to an infatuation with Arab charm: "The graciousness of Arab hospitality is captivating...

...Why is a policy at least 27 years old, formulated by an intellectually discredited clique of bureaucrats, currently being hailed as a major diplomatic breakthrough...

...Hence, too, officials in the Near Eastern Bureau of the State Department have always argued that American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict is profoundly misguided and that the Arabs are far more pro-Western than might appear to be the case...

...One congressman has described their response as "fawning gratitude.' Where a reporter is so foolish as to lose access to Kissinger, either for being too tough or too critical, says AlRoy, "his editors...

...after serving as neutrals in the area, many of these men took up in their home countries a militant, pro-Arab public position, some becoming full-time activists...

...Central to this is the Secretary's highly sophisticated manipulation of the media, itself a minor masterpiece of personal diplomacy...

...For most correspondents, the dilemma has not been noticeably agonizing...

...Middle East policy written to date...

...The same was true for the civilian and military officials of the several United Nations teams after the establishment of Israel, most of whom, assigned between Jews and Arabs, preferred to live among the latter...

...Reviewed by Joseph Shattan Former director, Youth Institute for Peace in the Middle East Gil Carl AlRoy, a distinguished Orientalist and professor of political science at Hunter College of the City University of New York, is no less concerned about the roots of American policy in the Middle East than he is about its current execution...

...and among his first acts as head of the State Department was an unprecedented order to Jewish employes to work on their High Holidays...

...AlRoy shows, for example, that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's widely acclaimed maneuvers there are not really "Kissingerian": "Seeking American hegemony and peace in the area by wooing the Arabs with Israeli-held territory was an ancient State Department approach, indeed the only one it ever knew and approved...

...Mideast scholarship affects Washington's policy in the region...

...But though they failed to convert many Arabs to Christianity, the missionaries did come to control virtually every important American institution dealing with Middle Eastern affairs, e.g., the Middle East Institute, Friends of the Middle East, the Holy Land Center, and the Near Eastern Bureau of the State Department...

...The tendency to translate Arabs in terms of Western experience and mentality forever produces 'moderates' such as Arabs themselves never knew and acceptance of the Jewish state where the very idea is nauseating...

...AlRoy is especially concerned about the Arabists' approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict...

...A basic rule-that only he could talk to journalists-was emphatically put to his staff at their first meeting, in January of 1969...

...Jerusalem, the Arabists continue, should be made to reciprocate by withdrawing from all occupied territory...

...The several American proposals for peace since 1948 invariably envisaged some cession of land from Israel proper in return for Arab acceptance (and amity for America...

...Hence the perennial practice of State Department 'Arabists,' missionaries and members of the American and British residential colonies in the region (those who 'know' it) to apologize for Arabs...

...This reservation aside, however, AlRoy has provided us with an extremely readable and well-documented account...

...But by establishing himself as the sole authoritative and accessible source of information, Kissinger, in effect, has very subtly and adroitly presented the press with an ultimatum: Either you play the game by my rules, or we don't play at all...

...AlRoy carefully distinguishes between the genuine, and very rare, Orientalist who possesses the training necessary to understand the Arabs in their own context, and the professional "Arabist," whose views, he insists, are highly ideological, deriving from the Protestant missionary experience in the Middle East...

...Lest one mistake the pressure for Israeli withdrawal as occasioned by the unprecedented circumstance of...

...The Kissinger Experience, in fact, seems to me the most searching-and damning-critique of U.S...

...But what invariably goes on in these intimate meetings is really no secret anymore, observes AlRoy, "for they have proved over the years to be highly ritualized exercises in cross-cultural misunderstandings, particularly in gauging Arab attitudes toward the Jewish state...

...Throughout the British rule of Palestine it was common for government officials, policemen or soldiers to turn pro-Arab almost as soon as they arrived in the country, not on political grounds so much as on personal sympathy...

...And why has the normally aggressive and inquisitive press been so restrained in its criticism...

...Having failed to convert virtually anyone to Christianity, they stayed to minister to Arab nationalism, forever apologizing for it and 'explaining' it at home with what Elie Kedourie termed the 'Missionary Version' of Islam and the Arab world, a patronizing version that distorts their essence...

...the Jewish State holding large occupied areas since 1967, it must be recalled that the same approach was pressed by the State Department before...

...Editors were amazed by their reporter's access and were often fascinated to get a call themselves from Kissinger with some apparent privileged information offered with a suggestion of intimacy...

...This brings certain questions immediately to mind...

...He takes great pains, therefore, to emphasize what he feels has traditionally been misunderstood, the autonomy and integrity of the Arab world...