Dear Mr. Rubin,
I recently attended a talk by you on my campus. While I envisaged an intellectual who has at least heard of the idea of “Orientalism,” or the Enlightenment and the wonders of logic for that matter, instead I found myself listening to an incoherent prattle the pervades both reasoning and historical context. You spoke more generally about President Obama’s policy towards the Middle East and the importance of understanding such a complex place. So far, so good. However, specifically your speech devolved into resting the entire peace process on the shoulders of what you painted as an intransigent and irrational Middle Eastern (mostly Arab) political community. You paused at the absurdity of Syria supporting Hezbollah, while competing with Iran as a regional powerhouse, which also supports Hezbollah. X country or Y group does not want peace, because it perpetuates its self-interest in power and regional hegemony. Is it too many contradictions for the simple-minded, or too erratic for the “rational” powers that be? Far be it for Western powers and Israel to promote such divisions and dissonance, or from avoiding such short-sighted contradictions themselves. Did we not just discover that the C.I.A. has been funding Karzai’s brother who invests in poppy fields, which aid the Taliban? Did Israel not bolster Hamas back when the PLO was public enemy number one? I am not as interested in the blame game as you are, Mr. Rubin. I’m only interested in unraveling your puzzling logic.
To claim that you are biased is to truly diminish the meaning of the word. Biased implies a certain degree of ingenuity in what you believe. A professional who educates individuals and who has undoubtedly read many books bears a degree of responsibility to her or his audience. Your dismissal of Palestinian victimhood was nearly as laughable as dismissing of the victims of wars throughout history. It’s not very funny to shrug the death of Palestinians merely because you do not value their lives. What was your logic for denying Palestinian claims to victimhood? You said, “At first they would say, ‘We will kill the Jews,’ and now they say, ‘The Jews are killing us.’ It used to be, ‘We will drive the Jews into the sea,’ now it’s, ‘The Jews are driving us out of our lands.’ ‘The Jews have no right to exist,’ and now it’s, ‘The Jews are taking away our right to exist.’” You implied that Palestinians have manipulated the message to appear like the victims by simply inversing their original rhetoric. Did you, in this strange argument, prove that Palestinians are not in fact killed by Israeli occupation? Being driven out of their lands (where Israeli settlers take over their homes in front of their eyes)? That Palestinians are in fact being denied the right to exist? No! You didn’t.
You went on to attack Obama’s fixation with the settlement issue. Why freeze settlements? Why now? This has never been an issue before, you claim. You even cite the 1993 Oslo Accords, where Palestinians never brought up the issue of settlements as “deal breaker.” Please tell me, Mr. Rubin, that you believe that there has been a radical expansion of settlements since the Oslo Accords sixteen years ago. Israel has since built a wall that both grabs more land and segregates Palestinians lands from each other. You continued with this faulty logic by claiming that the Palestinians had everything handed to him at the 2000 Camp David with then PM Ehud Barak, but a recalcitrant Arafat let it all fall apart. Where have I heard that before? That’s right, from people who do not actually discuss what Israel refused to give an incipient Palestinian state: control over their own roads, resources, borders, right of return, and removal of checkpoints. “Palestinians were given 96 or 97 percent of what they wanted,” the conventional wisdom exclaims. But what if 1% of that was water? Does that upset your orientalist conception of the Middle East, Mr. Rubin? In another instance, you discuss the one-state solution as a distant dream since pre-creation of Israel that has been revived recently. But really, do you think anything happened between 1930s and today that may have transformed the conceptualization of a one-state solution? Your historical references belie your knowledge of history, the series of events that have taken place, and the reality of the situation today.
Absent from your speech was a hearty debate about the role of both Israelis, Palestinians, and external forces alike in the situation today. Obama’s “sympathies” for Arabs or Muslims is no more illusive than his ties to pro-Israeli lobbyists. Perhaps Obama is not talking to you, Mr. Rubin, but rather to a generation of conscientious Israelis, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, and Christians who are much more aware of the complications of this conflict, including its dyanmic history. In fact, it was not your arguments that surprised me; rather your complete objectification and of Israelis and Jews in your analysis. You spent a great deal demonstrating the mess that is the Middle East complicating their image in the most inane way. However, your simplification of Israelis and the absence of their intricate history shows that your entire speech was a strange encounter of orientalism and occidentalism, which simply produces an hour and a half of babble session.
Regards,
Manar
