The Real Disney World

The Real Disney World




I’ve always been interested in the general U.S. perception of “them.”

By “them” I mean: “they,” “the other,” “the enemy,” “the ones who hate us,” “the terrorists,” “those who ‘aren’t with us,’” and, in the case of some who like to have a specific enemy, “the Muslims,” “the Arabs.”

Truth be told, even since September 11, 2001, despite the ferocity and hideousness of those attacks, I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with the rhetoric against anyone who dislikes the U.S. or disagrees with U.S. foreign policy, especially as I’ve heard that rhetoric grow increasingly vituperative and violent. At this point, after having spent a total of two out of the last five years in the Middle East (amongst “them”) I personally grow increasingly angry about that rhetoric for a number of reasons. I just hope that that anger doesn’t turn to bitterness and despair, because if anger alone is a wasted emotion then bitterness and despair are worse.


One of my original goals was to limit display of ideological bias, but I realize that the last few posts have broken that initial intent. I think that was a goal as a result of influence from my best teachers, both at Oak Ridge High School and at West Point; they never let on their ideological biases. And trust me, being someone who tries incessantly to deconstruct everything I learn, I tried my utmost to identify any shred of bias in what I was being taught.

I justify this new turn of mine for two reasons. The first is obvious; I’m not a teacher imparting knowledge, I’m someone who is trying to have an immediate impact on the world, in whatever small way I can, in the direction of what I feel is right. The second is more personal in that my time as a Rotary scholar is coming to a close, more or less, though I must remain in the area to finish my degree for a few more months; that prospect is adding urgency to my message.

To begin the real discussion, I’m going to throw all of us Disney lovers back to one of the best Disney films of all time: The Lion King. This movie was awesome. It had the plains of Africa, complete with background singing in Swahili. It had zebras, hyenas, mere cats, wild boars, apparently what is a ‘mandrill-baboon hybrid,’ and of course: lions. It had action and drama, love and treachery.

As any Disney lover will certainly remember, The Lion King was a Hamlet story except much better than Hamlet for two reasons. The first and most important: it was with lions, obviously. Second, because in the end, as opposed to Hamlet, the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

The good guys win and the bad guys lose. In our story, these bad guys are the voracious and unconscionable hyenas led by the treacherous and ambitious Scar. Evil just exudes from this lethal combination of characters. When Scar and the hyenas make their evil plot to conquer Pride Rock, we know that they are the bad guys. Why? It doesn’t matter! For us, it’s simply enough that “they are evil.” It doesn’t matter why they are evil; evil is purely evil. It is illogical and the result of something rotten inherently intrinsic in “them,” whoever “they” are.

I begin to wonder though. Why would the hyenas harbor dislike and hatred for Mufasa? As the hyenas state in the film at one point, Mufasa essentially drove the hyenas into the elephant graveyard to live off of scraps and bones. I wonder what other perceived injustices the hyenas suffered at the hands of the lions? I’m not asking about what REAL injustices they suffered, I’m asking about perceived injustices. Because whether or not those injustices are real, the perception is what the hyenas will act on. Right?

I remember during the 2004 Presidential campaign an advertisement for the incumbent president’s reelection. It featured dark woods… moving through the dark woods… low speaking voice… quick moving dark shapes…And then… a Bear!

Oh wait, sorry, no that was a Reagan commercial 20 years earlier.

And then…

A pack of wolves!

(Kind of like… a pack of Hyenas!)

The obvious message of the commercial was that America was under some unsaid threat from something similar to a pack of wolves. I think it’s safe to assume “the terrorists” were the intended message.

I’m going to jump to my point. I’ve heard critics of U.S. policy in the Middle East, during the War on Terror especially, be accused of “living in Disney World” (amongst other, much less palatable insults). Yet I would argue very vehemently that, in truth, it is actually very much the other way around.

The world which many of our pundits rant about, which many of our “political knowledgeables” write of, and which Huntington and Lewis attempt to conceptualize and explain: that world is the real Disney World.

Theirs is a world in which “we” are the good guys and “they” are the bad guys. We are right and they are wrong. “They” are the enemy. They are incomprehensible and illogical, they are evil. And as such, there is no conceptualizing their perspective; they have no valid complaints, perceived or real, they only have hatred for us. Why do they have hatred for us? For various reasons, but most of all because we are free, of course… because we are powerful…because we are good and they are bad.

That is the world constructed by many of the voices I still hear coming from the United States, especially while I’m here in Amman, Jordan. That is the world that was constructed following the September 20, 2001 address to the joint session of Congress. That message, backed by the “scholarship” of Bernard Lewis, said unequivocally that the reason for hatred of America was simply:

They hate what they see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. [Our] leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

That makes it pretty clear: they are illogically against us. They hate freedom. That means they are evil, and thus illogical. That means that we are the good guys.

And in the end, the good guys always win.

I argue that reality is much more complex. We do not live in this Disney World created during the early years of the War on Terror and perpetuated to this day. The perpetuation of this fantasy world of good and evil is made painfully obvious to me every time I turn on the international news, usually the BBC, from here in Amman, Jordan.

The “terrorists” are not evil hyenas, nor the wolves of the election commercial. They are human beings, just as we are, who perceive a tangible threat emanating from the United States. You might say, for security studies people, that they perceive a threat to their security: the security of their way of life, their homes, and even their quality of life. Whether or not that threat is real is irrelevant to the fact that, if nothing is done to change the perception, then those human beings that feel threatened will take up arms to fight the perceived threat.

 

I am by no means and in no way saying that those who committed the September 11, 2001, attacks are right. I am not saying in any way that their actions are in any way justifiable. Their actions are of the most reprehensible nature in the entire spectrum of possible human endeavors: the indiscriminate and sudden destruction of innocent human life on a mass scale.

I am saying that we continue to fail at understanding the causes for the attack. The general conceptualization, that there is no logical cause to be understood, is a fallacy.

My argument is very simple: in the course of reacting to the September 11 attacks, much of the United States , and the United States government in particular, became so caught up in this “they-evil hate us-good,” worldview that true, unbiased assessment has been discarded. In the course of creating this world of dichotomies, the United States in general has paint-brushed over any criticisms of its foreign policies and its role in the world, and furthermore refused to engage in self-critique on an institutional level. In this way, I argue that we only exacerbate our problems and ultimately seem intransigent as a whole.

The net effect of what I am saying above is that United States national security, the preeminent concern of foreign policy, is undermined: we become susceptible to “backlash.”

In order to avoid this deep and ultimately self-generated threat to our own security, the United States needs to engage in self-critique on a broader scale: on an institutional level and on a grass roots level. The enemy we face needs to be assessed based on the assumption that they are human and are essentially rational actors.

People who criticize the U.S., both within and without, need to stop being attacked and labeled as enemies of freedom or unpatriotic (yes, I have been attacked as unpatriotic for disagreeing with U.S. policies, despite the fact that I willingly volunteered to serve in the military). Only once these things get under way can we truly assess a clear path to addressing and neutralizing the threats we face, as well as deal with the (here we go- deep breath- wait for it…) the contradictions within our own, democratically determined policies.

 "Hakuna Matata, it means no worries." Though...my favorite character was always Rafiki.

The Revolutions

I guess it’s finally time to address the revolutions we’re seeing in the Arab world. Finally, meaning this attention comes a little late, as my purpose with this blog is to provide some perspective on the Middle East to people at home. Yet, while I can’t deny the monumental importance of the revolutions, every time I’ve sat down to write, I’ve felt that there are more important issues to address, such as the common “Westerner’s” perception of the common Middle Eastern person. This issue is so important because ultimately any perceptions of “the other” have a more lasting impact on relations; our supposed civilizational conflict is only fed by the belief in an irreconcilable body of “us” and of “them.”

 My defense of my lack of attention to the “Arab Spring” laid out, it seems appropriate to address the revolutions now. The fact that these are popular uprisings and are generally under the auspices of calls for freedom and human rights is fascinating but also largely a puzzle to many experts on “Democratic transition models” and experts on Middle Eastern politics alike. For this reason, I am going to insist on refraining from attempting to explicate the causes, roots, and implications of these revolutions. Even more, I will not try to postulate on the future of the Arab Spring. Any attempt to do these things would be unfounded in academia and knowingly dishonest intellectually.

My goal is to attempt to understand the violence that we are seeing in Libya and Syria and place these cases in a broader perspective of political science, particularly in terms of what is called “comparative politics.” In the end I will propose three inherent lessons we might extract from the violence we’re seeing.

To begin we need to deal with the concept of “politics” in a general sense. This concept, despite its widespread use, is not very clearly defined and its definition is hotly debated. The definition I consistently turn to is that of Patrick O’Neill: “politics is the struggle within a group for the power to make decisions for the larger group.” If we subscribe to the Clausewitzian conception of war- or really violence in general- as simply one among many political tools, then it becomes immediately apparent that what we are seeing in Libya and Syria between the governments and opposition is simply politics in it crudest form, that of violence.

Yet it makes some sense, particularly when viewed through the perspective of Mohammed Ayoub, who authored a very insightful examination of Third World Elites and their security concerns. State elites, and every state has them, might be equated to entrenched interests; those people and institutions that benefit from the established order. Elites, as entrenched interests, in any state seek to maintain the established order and to generate people’s loyalty to that established order. To do so they can draw on such things as ideology, ethnicity, history, nationalism, distraction, and, of course, force.

The problem in Third World states is that often they are built on weak national foundations, as holdovers from colonial times. In the Middle East this is particularly true, where the states are often referred to as “lines on a map.” These states were drawn from agreements all made in Europe, such as the Balfour Letter, the Hussein-McMahon Letters, the Sykes-Picot Treaty, the San Remo Conference, and the Cairo Conference. The joking name given to the little blip on Jordan’s southern border, “Churchill’s Sneeze,” poignantly underscores the argument: Middle East states were by and large determined by people not of the Middle East. Thus, here in the Middle East, the established order and the people who benefit from it have to use every tool at their disposal in order to maintain that order; oftentimes the last recourse for maintaining loyalty to the state is force and fear.

The thing people need to realize is that the process I just described above, the process of people who benefit from the established order using force and fear to maintain order, this is the traditional process. That is what states from their early beginnings were founded on. They may have resorted to other unifying factors, but overall the threat of violence from the state was the underlying unifying motivation for people to obey and be loyal to the state. Max Weber, an early German political theorist, described this as state’s having the monopoly on legitimate violence within a territory. I also personally like the description of states as essentially a form organized crime, a giant racketeering organization. This is not far from the truth. The difference between the state and organized crime, we in the West like to think, is that the state is legitimated by its subjects and it uses force discretely and according to the rule of law. In the West, our states tend to be organized in such a way so as to try to ensure those things as well as to internalize the “struggle” that is inherent to politics, hopefully ensuring that struggle remains peaceful.


However, that very conceptualization of the state as being responsible for not using indiscriminate violence is actually not very old in the grand scheme of things. Its actual practice is even more recent. Finally, its practice and acceptance on a broad scale is still not assured. In a place where the very foundations and established order of the state are doubted by its people, maintaining that order is not easy and elites, as I’ve been calling them, are more ready and willing to use force to achieve their objectives.

Boiled down, I’m attempting to argue three points:

1) In a comparative politics sense, it needs to be understood that states are states and the difference between Authoritarianism and Democratic governments is not one of diametric opposition; rather it is one of degree. They are different political regimes but the crux is that they are on the same scale, that is: “political organization.”

2) The use of violence indicates that the conception of states as being beholden to all of their subjects is, ultimately, still not universally accepted or practiced. What’s new about these cases is that the international community is actually taking action to enforce that very conception, suggesting the possibility that a former aspect of the nature of the state may actually be changing as a result of the international community. This argument is heavily loaded and I welcome any debate regarding this specific issue because I’m suggesting that this is something new.



3) Finally, I’m arguing that Assad and Qaddafi are not necessarily illogical, crazy , and soulless, despite the attractiveness of dismissing them as such. They and their respective establishments have an agenda: maintaining the order from which they perceive they benefit most. They are making a “rational” choice in order to succeed in that agenda. Unfortunately for them, the fact that their choice to use violence is rational given their perceived interests and constraints doesn’t make that choice any less unjust, reprehensible, and, ultimately, evil as an assault on human dignity.

Thank you for your interest!

Respectfully,

Brennan

Orientals, Orientalism, and Reason

It’s to my absolute dismay and utter embarrassment to say that, though a graduated Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic Language major, I am just finally turning to Edward Said’s seminal work: Orientalism. Whew- I said it. Yes, I am just now reading the work that is the preeminent critical analysis on my own body of academic enquiry. The fact that I am now about three years late in this task was painfully highlighted by Said’s preface to the 2003 edition of the book. While reading that whole preface, I felt like I was some sort of intense boxing fan cheering Said as he boxed his imaginary opponents, mimicking his punches in the air, and yelling “Yeah, get’em, get’em.”

But the purpose of this post is not to laud Said’s work, necessarily, though I would happily do that. No, something specific in the book, along with a couple of recent conversations struck me pretty deeply as having to do with the common U.S. (and I realize I generalize almost unforgivably here… almost) perception of the Middle East. In Said’s case, this is the Orient; an Orient which is conceptualized and discussed and debated, as if it is some “thing” or concept to be grappled with and ultimately subdued. Said’s point is that originally “Orientalism” was just that: an academic endeavor to “conquer,” so to speak, the idea of the Orient. This academic endeavor eventually-or as he says, inevitably- turned into the physical manifestation of that academic subjugation of the Orient as an idea: meaning the academic turned into a political endeavor and thereby the people of the Orient were essentially subjugated for the whims of the Occident.

The specific idea that struck me so personally is the Western perception of “Oriental” powers of reason. In the early part of the 1900’s Lord Evelyn Baring Cromer was England’s “Representative” (essentially Governor) in Egypt. In his work Modern Egypt, Lord Cromer explained the “Oriental mind”:

Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental mind…..Want of accuracy, which easily degenerates into untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the Oriental mind….. Although the ancient Arabs acquired in a somewhat higher degree the science of dialectics, their descendants are singularly deficient in the logical faculty.
(*note: this quote is directly taken from Edward Said’s work, pg. 38)

Pretty stark? Slightly racist? Of course, we wouldn’t make such a similar mistake today. Would we? In the 1970’s Henry Kissinger wrote an essay in which he expressed his view of the “developing world” (meaning Africa and the Middle East, among some other regions):

Cultures which escaped the early impact of Newtonian thinking have retained the essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost completely internal to the observer…. Empirical reality has a much different significance…
(*note: again, this quote is extracted directly from Said’s work, pg. 47)

I’ve heard the argument expressed in many different ways, from many different people, each with varying degrees of experience in the Middle East (the “Orient”). The argument is wrong, unequivocally.

Most important in my view is the unsaid implication of the argument. The argument, when boiled down, says only this:

“We” are logical and “They” are not.

It took me all of about five seconds to blow all sorts of holes in that assertion.

Logic is a much more complex system than is commonly conceived; anyone who has taken any form of philosophy course has probably experienced and grappled with the trials and travails of an “argument” and its requisite logic train.

As someone who has spent about two out of the last five years in the Middle East, I can say from personal experience that people here engage in logical fallacies no more or less frequently than people do so in the United States. While the education system here may not be the same as in the United States or other Western countries, that fact does not lend itself to a racial determination of Western superiority in the faculties of logic.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the common U.S. citizen’s perception of the Middle East and its people belies just as poor a faculty for logic as that which the West tends to attribute to the people of the Middle East. Ironic, huh. Controversial? Probably, and I may get some criticism for that observation. Nevertheless, it’s something I’ve observed.

As my case-in-point, I would love to use the Glenn Beck Farcical Logic Train, but I’m afraid that would be just too easy. Because Glenn Beck’s arguments, along with those arguments of some pundits who fall along the same ideological vein, are not logical; they are a demonstrable farce.

Rather, the example that popped up in my mind was a small debate that was the result of a survey in which U.S. citizens were asked their religious affiliation and then asked basic questions about beliefs and traditions of world religions. The survey found that those people asserting to be Atheist or Agnostic demonstrated the most accurate knowledge about religion in general as well as overall specifics of world religions. The research seemed well done and comprehensive, with breakdowns by not only religious affiliation, but also by race, income, geographical location… etc.

Yet the immediate debate was more interesting to me than the poll itself. The first general conclusion by a number of people claiming to be Atheist was this research validated Atheism. Or in other words, their argument seemed to go: because “we” know more about religion in general, our perspective is the truth or the closest to it. Q.E.D.
Yet anyone can see that argument does not logically make sense; it’s a totally invalid argument. The debate degenerated further as other people, in defense of religiosity, simply dismissed the whole poll, its implications, and its subsequent debate by simply asserting “we just know based on faith and nothing else matters.”

Again, my point in this post is to say only this: the belief that any “other” group of people has a weaker capacity for logic is false. It amounts to a massive case of Actor-Observer Bias.* If, as one would hope, people want to interact for their mutual benefit and without creating animosity, then those people have to be able to conceive of each other as equals. I would argue that the tendency in the West and in Western media to view the Middle East as full of generally illogical people does exactly the opposite of that and it has a tangible detrimental effect on Western dealings in the Middle East in general.

I need to add, a day after I originally posted this update, something that has been festering, for lack of a better word, in my mind. I'm going to take a side here, a political side in American politics. I know that might make some people uncomfortable; but I need to take this side. This is in regard to the question posed by President George W. Bush immediately following the September 11, 2001, attacks: "Why do they hate us?" The question is ultimately a poor one, being highly misleading and founded on vague assumptions. But most insidious of all was the answer he proferred to that very poor question: "They hate our freedoms." I have to ask, is that logical? I'm not asking if the answer is poorly supported. I'm asking if, on an emotional level, that answer makes sense? To say "yes" would be to commit the same error that I describe in the post above: one would be saying that "They" are illogical. In addition, not only does that answer assume "they" are of a lower capacity for logic, for establishing the truth, that answer is totally and completely wrong.

Thank you for your interest, I appreciate any thoughts or comments on my argument.

-Brennan

*note: Actor-Observer Bias apparently falls into something of a larger and developing psychological theory, thus it may not be an entirely accurate designation; but as I'm not completely up to date on theory in psychology I'm using the term as I learned it about five years ago.

Alternative Historical Discourses

Please bear in mind as I begin this post that my goal with this blog, in general, is to share a little bit of this place with home. I know the Middle East is pretty far from Tennessee in more ways than just distance, but hopefully with what I write they might be brought just a little closer together.

With that in mind, I’m continuing my little discussion series on Palestine and Israel, and what better way to continue on “Nakba Day” than to write about the Nakba. This post is entitled “alternative historical discourses” because I’m mostly talking to an audience based primarily in the West, where the mainstream historical discourse is very much different. However, here in Jordan the story I’m about to tell is the mainstream account.

Today is May 15 and commemorated by many, in many parts of the world, as Nakba Day. Nakba in Arabic means “catastrophe”- Arabic, being the poetic language that it is, has a number of synonyms for catastrophe- so the word nakba has gained the ingrained, specific meaning of the historical event to which it refers. That event is the exodus of approximately 725,000 Palestinians from their homes upon the establishment of the state of Israel and the subsequent violence that followed. Of course the meaning, origins, and use of the term are debated, sometimes for academic reasons, more often for political reasons, but my description is that of its popular use as it has come to be today.

The events leading up to and following the Nakba are highly disputed. The way the story is told generally lays the foundation for the storyteller’s political and ideological arguments. Oftentimes, the story involves numerous atrocities and racial violence, with the storyteller’s side being the clear victim and the other side being inhuman monsters.

Despite the politicization of the story from any way you look at it, the fact remains, as Nakba Day commemorates, that 725,000 people, most of them completely uninvolved in any violence or politics, were more or less forced away from their homes and their homeland. Some of them left semi-willingly, at the strong behest of Arab armies who promised them they would be able to return after a few days (now 63 years). Many of them, if not most, left in panic at the approach of Israeli military and paramilitary units, particularly after widespread news of the Deir Yassin Massacre, among other massacres. Many others were forced out of their homes by those same units, facing either death or dislocation.

Those people became refugees that no one wanted. The ones who fled to Arab countries faced refugee camps that still exist today, disadvantage in all social matters, and institutional discrimination. Those who fled elsewhere, such as the United States and other Western countries often face discrimination as well, finding travel one of the most difficult things to accomplish. A great account of the Palestinian experience (and really the history of the development of the Palestinian identity) is a book called Palestinian Identity by Rashid Khalidi. That is the same Khalidi that a few misguided people labeled “a terrorist” and a radical during the 2008 Presidential Campaign. While Khalidi is very critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, I seriously hope that doesn’t make him a radical and a terrorist considering I agree with his outlook in some significant ways.

(Rashid Khalidi, Wikipedia)

Another good, quick look at the identity issue from a firsthand perspective is on my friend’s blog. I’m sure she would love it if anyone would also comment, if they feel inclined to do so http://roseanon.blogspot.com/2011/05/al-nakba-and-thereafter-struggle-within.html

The whole concept of alternative discourse is a key debate in perceptions of history. One of the best expressions of this particular debate is through a group of Israeli historians known as the “New Historians.” This group focuses on revisiting the Israeli national discourse and reassessing it from both a factual and analytical standpoint. The best expression of their views on the Nakba and the establishment of Israel is:

• The original Israeli version said that Britain tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state; the New Historians demonstrate that it tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state
• The original Israeli version said that the Palestinians fled their homes of their own free will; the New Historians demonstrate that the refugees were chased out or expelled‎
• The original Israeli version said that the balance of power was in favour of the Arabs; the New Historians demonstrate that Israel had the advantage both in manpower and in arms
• The original Israeli version said that the Arabs had a coordinated plan to destroy Israel; the New Historians demonstrate that the Arabs were divided
• The original Israeli version said that Arab intransigence prevented peace; the New Historians demonstrate that Israel is primarily to blame for the dead end.
(This is adapted from Avi Shlaim's description of the New Historians from an article in Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper)

Again, this post is intended to present a very very brief introduction to an alternative historical account than the one that is generally promulgated in the United States, for various reasons.
I hope this post was beneficial in some way. History is a funny thing: we boil it down to some key lessons for our history books, but oftentimes the devil is in the details and we often forget those details.

Thank you for your interest.

-Brennan

I’d originally thought to add a new post earlier, but as always class responsibilities took up my writing impetus and more travel took up my energy. This will be my second post on my travels in Palestine and Israel. I actually made another trip this past weekend, going and staying in Palestine and then taking a trip to Tel Aviv, in Israel.

This post I’m going to dedicate to the border crossing. To begin the topic I’m going to first talk about racism. I’ve seen racism in different ways, with different faces. One of its worst faces, in my view, is on the face of a government employee or official of the law doing their job as their job demands. In a roundabout way I’m describing official, institutional racism. I know there is racism all over the world, with different roots and causes, and of varying “reasoning.” But I would say racism never truly has a justification: that would be to say there are circumstances where it is “just” and I don’t believe there is ever a “just racism.” There is a difference between explaining racism and justifying racism. The worst racism I think I have ever seen has been on the Israeli border, by Israeli border guards, carrying out Israeli border policy.

I’ve crossed the border three times now, twice at the King Hussein Bridge, and once more at the Sheikh Hussein crossing. The racism I have seen has been entirely directed towards Arabs; anything Arab is seen as suspect, particularly Palestinian Arab. Anyone with any level of Arab heritage is put under heightened scrutiny, and anyone with any Palestinian family is even more in question. Anyone who has citizenship in another country but has Palestinian heritage is going to have a difficult time even entering the country and can consider themself lucky if they succeed in doing so; that is true under any circumstances at any entry point. Furthermore, and this will sound bad: it’s contagious. If you have stamps from Arab countries in your passport, you’re suspect. If you have Arab friends or contacts, you’re even more suspect. I have seen the guards go through an American friend’s phone and, very accusingly, asked about every Arab name in her contact list. They then proceeded to ask her, again accusingly, if anyone had tried to convert her to Islam; the response was “absolutely not.”

As a white American with no Arab heritage, I’m lucky. I can get through the border in about two hours at King Hussein and in 15 minutes at Sheikh Hussein. Now that’s not the case for all Americans; one unlucky American friend who had gotten a concurrent passport was seen as suspect because her concurrent passport only had Jordanian stamps. She was then interrogated about her entire life by a few different people, also had her phone inspected, as well as her computer, and then was let out 6 hours later. I had already left because I thought she may have passed through during my vehicle inspection (after which I ended up having a lot of engine overheating problems). Anyone with any level of Palestinian heritage can expect to be stuck at the King Hussein crossing for an average of 4 hours if not more. A Jordanian, despite clear terms in the peace treaty, will probably find him or herself rejected at the border automatically.

I definitely have to address the issue of security. Every time I level any amount of criticism on Israeli policies, and believe me I’m not afraid to do so, even in front of uninformed but adamant colleagues, someone jumps on the security “justification.” Every country does have a right to maintain its own security, true. My first statement, I would say that pursuing security does not require degrading individuals, nor the vilification of individuals for having connections to Arabs, as I have often personally witnessed occurs at the border. Furthermore, from my own degree of experience, the policies pursued at the border are beyond the requirements of security. To put it bluntly, the policies on the border are intended to obstruct Palestinians from retaining any level of connection to Palestine. Please keep in mind that the West Bank and Gaza are not part of Israel. Even in Israeli law and most of its media, the West Bank and Gaza are referred to as occupied territories (though they often refer to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”).

There is a useful body of knowledge amongst expats and Middle East travelers if you’re ever traveling to an Israeli entry point. First, the questions: What is your name? What is your father’s name? What is his father’s name? What is your mother’s name? And her mother’s name? Where was your father from? Where is your mother from? And your grandparents? All of these questions are aimed at identifying any Arab roots; if one is discovered, the traveler is moved into a different track and will face additional questioning and inspections. Second: No matter wha,t you are not travelling into the West Bank. If they offer to issue you a visa to travel into the West Bank, you are still not traveling there, even if you want to go to Bethlehem, which is in the West Bank. There is no visa for the West Bank, it is just a trick to catch you, in which case you’ll be lucky even to be allowed into Israel. Third: You have limited ties to Arabs, and you do not speak Arabic. Yes, I have had to deny the fact that I speak Arabic, and was almost caught when they said something in Arabic and I nearly forgot to pretend I didn’t understand. This is the process for anyone, including Americans.

I just want to try to add a quick clarification of my sudden interest in writing about what I’m writing about in this little series. It’s kind of rooted in a thought after having given a presentation at an Amman hotel, to one of the Rotary clubs here. During and immediately following my presentation (and my co-scholar’s as well) I encountered a lot of criticism that we had not addressed what we have learned about the Palestinian issues in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. To be fair, our presentation was to give some idea about our home to the people here, and was not to serve as a sort of “check on learning.” I wasted no time in making sure our hosts understood that fact, diplomatically of course, being a student of diplomacy. But I would be remiss if I didn’t give their point of view any value. So, since my goal is to share what I learn here with everyone at home, this series of posts is my attempt to share my perspective on some of the issues surrounding Palestine.

New post so soon? Yes, I’m motivated to tell some tales of furthering the Rotary mission by spreading goodwill and understanding.
The next sentence, all five words of it, may get me into some trouble somewhere along the line but I think it’s worth it all things considered. I went to Palestine yesterday. I do mean Palestine, as in the area nominally governed by the Palestinian Authority, specifically Ramallah; I’m not ready to tackle all of the political issues surrounding The Conflict here in a humble blog which is intended to record my exploits as an ambassador of goodwill.
About a year ago, someone I consider something of a mentor advised me that, when talking to a large audience, I should “focus on the positive things I can say truthfully and, of course don’t be dishonest, but try not to denigrate other things.” I really liked the thought, and, thinking about it, it kind of reminds me of one of my favorite Disney quotes:
“If you can’t say somethin’ nice, then don’t say anything at all.” (Thumper, Bambi)

So, in the spirit of that advice, I won't speak about my experience at the Israeli border crossing, but I'm happy I can talk about my entire experience in Palestine, which was nothing short of amazing. I’ll explain in a later post, but I magically managed to be driving my car (my beautiful 1996 Jeep Cherokee which I need to take better care of). Trying to reach the city, which is just north of Jerusalem (known as Al-Quds in Arabic), I was completely lost driving along the separation wall. I decided to admit defeat, hang up my pride, and do the unthinkable: ask for directions. My first surprise when I stopped at a gas station was that the gentleman I asked responded immediately in Arabic, which is often not the case in Amman. Second surprise and long story short, I ended up with an elderly Palestinian man in my car showing me where to go.He got out of the car eventually, so he could head to Jerusalem, but he gave me exact directions to the Ramallah Movenpick, where I was scheduled to give a presentation to the Ramallah Rotary Club (is that the first time I mentioned my presentation?).

Driving through Ramallah 10 minutes later, completely lost, despite the precise directions my new friend had given me, I managed to get caught up in the after-school rush between the old Quaker schools, one for boys, the other for girls. I made it through, however, to my dismay, I ended up in the middle of town caught in a flood of people and stalled my car. No problem, just restart it right?...Turn the key…and no go. Immediately I am swarmed by about ten guys, who help me out of the street and started helping me to try to start my car.

First go, try second-gear rolling start. No go. Then another guy jumped in to try it just in case. Still no good. Okay, so I pop the hood and now I have about 6 guys around giving advice. One guy is visiting after some 40 years away; his current home is Florida, where he teaches English and has a family. After a while we determine the motor is overheated, which is baffling to me since I’d never had a problem before, my coolant was full, and my engine oil level was a solid “safe.” So one guy, Mohammed Muathin, a middle-age, tall lanky guy, decided to chill out with me and drink some tea. So we chat for about 30 minutes and decide to try the car again. Still no.

At that point we decide to try the Kahribajii (electrician) or find a mechanic. We roll around Ramallah in a taxi talking to different kahribajiis and nobody can help us because they didn’t have an ampere gauge. Finally we find one guy, ‘Ali, in the middle of one of the refugee camps who can help. We go back to my car with his gear, he tells me to turn the key because he wants to see if there’s a spark, and lo and behold the car starts. Go figure, bring the mechanic and the car behaves. Both the mechanic and Mohammed jump into my car and we roll back into the refugee camp to ‘Ali’s garage so he could double check everything.

The car problem has persisted, but so far I’ve been able to avoid catastrophic failure, despite some close calls. Anyway, Mohammed then drove off with me to take me to the Movenpick. At this point, Mohammed had been with me for three hours… just took three hours out of his day to help me out. Amazing.

So I go to the meeting to give my presentation. I end up only talking for about 5 minutes or so because they had a packed schedule, but I feel really good about what I got to say. Somehow the shorter time I had to speak forced me to be more focused on the message and I think consequently more poignant, thereby better achieving my goal of sharing a little about my home and hopefully bringing it closer to Ramallah.

Afterwards I took my friend, Laura, who was giving her own presentation, around (I haven’t mentioned her to this point because her journey to Ramallah had suddenly and somewhat disturbingly diverged from my own. In keeping with the positivity message, I decided to exclude that part for this blog, I'll just say she was held up at the border for almost 6 hours). I was taking her to meet her friend, a Ramallahan, with whom she was staying. We wander through the very confusing streets of Ramallah, which is spread over a few winding hills, necessitating winding streets. Finally coming into where we needed to go, at about 9:30pm, in the pitch black, my car dies again.

At this point, after all of the difficulties of the day, many of which I’ve not discussed, I’m getting pretty frustrate, as you might imagine. But along came Laura’s friend, Ahmed, and his company, who help me move the car out of the road to cool down. He then announced “Well, nothing to do now but wait then, so come have a drink with us and watch the soccer game.” So I went to hang out with them in downtown Ramallah. After about an hour, I decided I needed to get going because I was heading back over the border to get to class the next day. Ahmed then came along with me, helped me start the car, and took me all the way into the hotel where I was staying.

I woke up early to get an early start to the border. Scratch that- I got completely lost again. I drove across pretty much every corner of Ramallah and its outskirts thinking I was heading in the right direction. Finally, when I realized how hopelessly lost I was, I asked for help and ended up with another nice gentleman in my car who was heading my way again. When I dropped him off, he gave me directions to where I needed to go, I headed about 100 meters down the road, turned the corner, and my car promptly died again. Great.

So I get out, get some water and try to wait for my engine to cool down. I ended up being in the way of a small supply truck and when I told them what was up, they immediately began going through ways to help. After about 15 minutes, we decided to try the rolling start method and- surprise, surprise- it works. As I’m thanking the two guys who helped me by pushing, out walks one of the guys from the day before who smiles, we great each other, and he happily points me in the right direction to get back to the bridge.

That’s pretty much the end of the story of my time in Palestine, as far as the interesting part, anyway. I learned a lot; even things I knew beforehand and had seen beforehand, seeing it all again simply drove the lessons deeper. But since I plan on at least one or two more posts about this trip, I’ll spare more reading for this post and include those lessons later.
As always, thank you for your interest!

Respectfully,

Brennan

To be straightforward, I have had a number of problems in beginning this post. Other than my own mental blocks, I’ve reached another fever pitch of potential topics on which I would like to write, all of them bouncing around in my head. It’s something of a catch 22 where I just put off doing the writing and then more potential topics build up and then I put it off even more… After sitting on it for a long time, I think I’ve decided I will talk about two things. First, I will make good on my promise to tell the story of Dr. Fear, for a lighthearted break in my one-person cacophony of political indignity. Then I will discuss some things that are bothering me about general conceptions from the West about the Middle East… in other words resuming that one-person cacophony.

So the story of Dr. Fear: Dr. Fear is my Methods of Research in Political Science professor. I debated for a while with myself whether to call him Dr. Fear or Dr. Dreams. Fear came from our first class, which he began by asking “Who has fear?” A number of people raised their hands timidly, in response. He then asked, “Who does not have fear?” A number of others of us raised our hands, of course me among them in order to establish my macho confidence which every young 23 year old guy is supposed to have (… right?). He looked us all over and said “I don’t believe you.” But then he looked at me, pointed, and said “Except maybe you.” I’m not sure why, maybe because I looked different from everyone else in class, but I wasn’t really sure how to respond.

I was set on calling him Dr. Fear from then on, somewhat wryly, until he gave a completely off-the-cuff speech on the importance of our work. Now I know a lot of people question the aim of the political, or “soft,” sciences and often outright scoff at them. Not surprisingly, I find myself somewhat defensive of my chosen track in those “soft” sciences, but I’ve never been extremely articulate in my own stance. Dr. Fear, interrupting himself in the middle of a lecture, suddenly asked “Why is political science important? Why is our work important and why is it important we actually seek the truth?” He looked at our blank faces for a second, and sensed our panic (you can imagine, a professor who begins his first class with “who has fear?” is not going to be the easiest professor). He answered himself by saying “Because politics directly impacts peoples’ lives. It impacts their livelihood. But more than that, it impacts peoples’ dreams! And bad policies not only hurt lives, they can destroy peoples’ dreams! That’s why we do what we do!”

That tangent brought me a whole heap of respect for this Professor, whose real name is Zaid ‘Eyadat, because he’s right. I think back to my friend Khalid, whose own dreams are so restricted by his identity as a Palestinian in Jordan; and Jordan is certainly not the only country in the world in which dreams and hopes are destroyed and lives are deeply impacted by politics and political decisions. As poignant and articulate as Dr. Fear’s speech on dreams was and despite the impact it had on me personally, given the dilemma between naming someone Dr. Fear and Dr. Dreams and being the young macho guy, I had to go with Dr. Fear. It just sounds so much cooler.

To conclude, quickly, I’d just like to comment on something that has bothered me in a lot of ways over the past few weeks as a result of numerous comments of a type that, at one point, I thought were simple banter. I’ve recently come to realize there is a large, if not dominant, aspect of an insidious yet subtle seriousness hidden within those comments. So:
Despite the tendencies of popular portrayal, such as on wayward covers of Newsweek or “scholarly articles” depicting the common Western conception of an Arab Muslim complete with horns, fangs, and wild unkempt hair, the Middle East is not full of demons. Women are not attacked in the streets for not veiling their faces. Men are not required to wear a crazy-long unkempt beard, except in the most crazy-unkempt places, such as the former Taliban held Afghanistan, which in all honesty should not even be considered part of the Middle East to begin with. Here in Jordan, you never see a weapon (meaning a rifle or “gun”) in the streets except for those carried by the police or the internal Gendarme. In fact, having inquired into the process, it is much more difficult to acquire and keep an assault weapon here in Jordan than it is to do so in the vast majority of the United States, where I would be able to attain one in days if I so wanted. I’m not saying that to knock on the United States, I am saying that to praise some aspects of the Middle East and try to confer the sense that for all of its negative reputation, the Middle East is not a terrorist filled wild-west scenario. In fact, by far the most dangerous part of my day is driving, but that might be said for any place in the world.

Thank you for your interest. I hope I said something worth reading.

Brennan