In the comments of Empress Trudy's recent piece, The Shape of Groundhog Days to Come, a slightly acrimonious discussion erupted around the nature of Arab societies between JayinPhiladelphia and NormanF.
At the heart of the debate was this comment by NormanF:
And the Arabs too, will require a long time to become a productive and civilized people. You just can't expect a people who have never known civilization and the habits that accompany it to run a nation.JayinPhiladelphia found this offensive and said so:
This is not only wrong, it is offensive nonsense. I wish we wouldn't stoop to using the very same tactics the enemies of Israel and the enemies of the Jews use against us.Jay went on to say:
I separate the person from the people, and judge each of the former on their own merits... To state that over 300 million people are all this or that, however, is wrong and is offensive.Just below the main thread of conversation Trudy responded with:
Individuals don't concern me. Societies do.Trudy's position probably comes closest to my own, but Jay represents my ideological foundations. When Jay says that he separates "the person from the people" he articulates what is among the very foundation-stones of contemporary western liberalism.
The Jews were slaughtered in the middle of the twentieth century by Europeans in a genocidal movement spear-headed by the Germans. Because they believed that race was a matter of essence they felt it necessary to rid themselves of the Jewish people, because the Jews, as a whole, were considered immoral, rat-like, and detrimental to the well-being of the other 99 percent.
For this reason most well-meaning, liberal diaspora Jews, such as myself, opposed "broad-brushing" entire groups. Although I cannot speak for Jay, I feel reasonably certain that his objection to Norman's statement comes from a very similar ideological place.
Along with Jay, I believe that it is necessary to "separate the person from the people." There are something like 400 million Arabs in the Middle East. They are the mixed descendants of a great conquering nation that poured out of Saudi Arabia in the 7th century and that violently displaced eastern Christendom in the process over many centuries.
Since that time, Arab-Muslim cultures have proven themselves to be the most virulently racist and genocidally anti-Semitic cultures on the entire planet. The subjugation of the Jews and Christians and other non-Muslims within the history of Islam is among the very worst unredressed crimes against humanity ever perpetrated and it continues to this day. That being the case, it is not hard to understand Norman's disdain for Arab civilization.
We are the free children of the formerly oppressed. We, thus, have every right to denounce our former oppressors when they continue to seek us harm.
But this does not change the fact that among those 400 million Arabs are any number of individuals who simply do not share the traditional Islamic contempt for Jews and others. In this way Jay is correct and it is offensive to suggest that the entirety of the Arab nation is comprised of vicious genocidal racists or that the entirety of the Arab world is "uncivilized."
It is not.
But ultimately I have to come down on the side of Trudy on this matter.
Individuals don't concern me, for the most part, but societies do. Or, more accurately, cultures do and not all cultures are the same. Because cultures vary in their values and outlooks and religions and general sense of the world, people raised within different cultures have different sensibilities. The problem is not innate within the individual due to "race." Race doesn't even exist as a biological category of human being.
The problem, therefore, is not innate within the individuals of any ethnicity. The problem is cultural and religious and Arab-Muslim cultures have proven themselves to be almost entirely hostile to the well-being of the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East.
Individuals may be perfectly fine people, but it is the cultural tendencies that count.
When the Arab world holds Jews and non-Muslims to the same degree of respect that contemporary white American Alabamans hold black people, then we should not hold their anti-Semitic cultures in contempt. Until they become at least as enlightened as your average Alabaman "red-neck" we owe them nothing. Until that time we need to point out that their racism toward us has kept our numbers small, has ruined the lives of untold thousands - perhaps even untold millions - of their own children, and remains entirely unacceptable in the modern world.
Furthermore, now we have the capacity to fight back.
{G-d bless the IDF.}
