Helping the Arabs to kill themselves
Here's an interesting take from Lee Smith on the Arab culture in our region, where, as Smith puts it so delicately, the truth is just one of several possible narratives.Western cyber-optimists argue that information technology like satellite television and the Internet will so inundate the Arabic-speaking Middle East with images and information that it will entirely reconfigure Arab societies. But this has it exactly wrong: Culture is more powerful than technology, and how a society uses any given technology is determined by its culture. This is why no one wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to have a nuclear bomb, but no one has a problem with France’s weapons program. This is also why the Internet is not going to open the eyes of those Arabs who are instead more inclined to use it to spread disinformation. Pallywood is nothing more than the nexus where an Arab culture of lies meets Western technology.Read the whole thing.
That is to say, the Arabs are not winning an information war against Israel, nor anything else for that matter. Rather, the stories and lies they tell to delegitimize the Jewish state are part and parcel of the war that they have been waging against themselves, and with stunning success. The tragedy is that everyone knows where the Arabs are heading, because the signs of failure and self-destructiveness couldn’t be clearer—poverty, violence, despotism, illiteracy, mistreatment of women, and the persecution of confessional minorities, like Egypt’s Coptic Christian population. The Western journalists and NGOs who repeat and credential these lies are doing no honor to either the values of their own society or those of the Arabs; they’re merely helping a culture kill itself.
Labels: Arab culture, Lee Smith, taqiyya
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:23 AM
1 Comments:
Yup. The Arab World is not ready to join the 21st Century. Israel has outpaced it on every level imaginable and the gap grows wider with every passing decade. The few Arab leaders are aware of what needs to be done but they dare not make the needed changes or their lives are forfeit. In a way, the stifling conservatism of Arab societies has led to the Arabs rejecting a modus vivendi with the Western World and we're not likely to see that stand change in our lifetime.
Post a Comment
<< Home