|
|
|
Jewish World Review Feb. 13, 2001 / 20 Shevat, 5761
 |
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
Thomas L. Friedman may be the journalist who has the most influence on the
way the outside world understands the Arab-Israeli conflict. His reporting
in the 1980s for The New York Times from Lebanon and Israel was widely cited
and won him two Pulitzer Prizes. His 1989 book From Beirut to Jerusalem was
a huge bestseller and won a prestigious award for non-fiction. As the
"Foreign Affairs" columnist at The New York Times since 1995, Mr. Friedman
has a uniquely prominent platform to expound his views.
Given his importance and the originality of his ideas on Arab-Israeli
relations, Mr. Friedman's analysis of this topic deserves a look.
His signature concept is applying globalization theory to the conflict.
"Globalization" is short-hand for aligning one's educational, financial, and
governmental institutions in line with the demands of the international
marketplace, so to compete effectively in the world economy. If Arabs and
Israelis would concentrate on fulfilling the imperatives of globalization,
argues Mr. Friedman, they would not only live better but also find themselves
too busy making money to hate each other.
Computers, the Internet, prosperity, and modernity are his solution to
nationalistic feuding. Educating one's children beats having them throw
rocks; raising one's standard of living means more than maintaining sovereign
control over holy places. In brief, economics trumps politics.
Mr. Friedman's writings often argue this thesis. A visit to southern
Lebanon after the May 2000 withdrawal of Israeli troops, for example,
prompted him to declare that war with Israel "is over as far as Lebanon is
concerned." The occupation done with, old hatreds could now "be balanced by
other interests and aspirations for growth."
He offers many proofs. "Computers and English-they're the keys to
success now," a teacher in Nabatiyeh explained. "If you don't know computers
and English that means you're nothing in this world." Another Lebanese
downloaded articles from an Israeli newspaper website. A camera-wielding
traveler turned out to be a Lebanese-born computer programmer on vacation
from Los Angeles.
From such signs, Mr. Friedman draws large conclusions: "underneath the
old, encrusted olive-tree politics of this region," he writes, "is another
politics bursting to get out, to get connected and to tie into the world of
opportunities."
Mr. Friedman's favoring of policies that disentangle Arabs from
Israelis cause him to lavish praise on President Clinton for doing "the
Lord's work" by pushing the parties so hard to reach an agreement.
Unfortunately for Mr. Friedman's thesis (and Mr. Clinton's Nobel Prize
aspirations), many Middle Easterners are still preoccupied by those
"encrusted olive-tree politics" he has relegated to the dustbin of history.
For a while, the columnist could blow them off as irrelevant anachronisms.
Thus, he in 1999 dismissed Syria's Hafiz al-Asad, the all-powerful Syrian
dictator, as "the leader of a failing state" and (no less) as "a deer frozen
in history's headlights."
Of late, however, Mr. Friedman has woken up to Middle Eastern
realities. How could he not? The Palestinians' intifada, which has cost
them hugely in economic terms, reveals how destroying Israel remains a higher
priority to them than the good life. To make sure none of their money
reaches Israel, Egyptians are back-pedaling from the world economy. Saddam
Husayn opts for weapons of mass destruction over a decent life for the Iraqi
people.
To his credit, Mr. Friedman has candidly acknowledged his
mystification. "I don't understand" the Arab masses' enthusiasm for Saddam
Husayn, he writes. Palestinian violence has left advocates of the Oslo
process, he admits, "feeling like fools." "Goodbye, Syria. Goodbye, Nasdaq.
Hello, oil crisis" is his bewildered response to Syrian saber rattling along
the Lebanese border with Israel.
Actually, his puzzlement runs yet deeper, to the very premises of
globalization: "What troubles me most about the mood on the Arab street
today is the hostility I detect there to modernization, globalization,
democratization and the information revolution." Why, he wonders, are
Egyptians, Palestinians, and Iraqis unwilling to forgo political dreams for a
nice apartment and a late-model car?
The answer is simple. Arab hostility toward globalization was there all
along but Mr. Friedman (along with Bill Clinton) did not want to see it. He
overlooked the Middle East's realities and instead imposed onto it an alien
pattern.
Sadder but wiser, Thomas Friedman is learning a deep truth about the
Middle East. This is one region where politics trumps
By Daniel Pipes
JWR contributor Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes from. Let him know what you think by clicking here.
