Read your enemies!

Read your enemies! David Keyes Whatever your views on the Middle East, go out today and buy a dozen books by the authors whom you hate most. Zionists should read Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Ilan Pape and Norman Finkelstein. Anti-Zionists should read Yehuda Avner, Yaakov Lozowick, Peretz Smolenskin and Yehuda Alkalai. Right-wingers should read Abba Eban, Gershom Gorenberg and Jeremy Ben Ami. Left-wingers should read Menachem Begin, Vladimir Jabotinsky and Shmuel Katz. Anti-nationalists should read Heinrich Graetz. Neocons should read Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Realists should read Natan Sharansky, Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol. Settlers should read Mourid Barghouti. Pacifists should read Moshe (Bogey) Ya'alon. One-staters should read Amnon Rubenstein and Alexander Yakobson. Not just one book, but piles and piles of their books. I have lost count of the number of haters of Israel that admit they have never read a book by a single Zionist leader. Most fervent supporters of Israel have not read a single book of Arab history either. If your bookshelves are not lined with the writings of your worst ideological enemies, then you cannot be a serious thinker about the Middle East. Chances are that if you spend your entire life reading all sides, traveling, learning languages and immersing yourself in culture, you can probably never figure this place out. More humility is called for. Why is everyone is so sure of everything? Why is there so little deference and recognition of our utter collective lack of understanding? Once you imagine you have gotten a grasp on the Middle East, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you probably have no idea what you’re talking about. This goes for all of us. Take weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You think you know what happened? You probably do not have a clue. Before parroting a glib jab from a second rate pundit on a third rate talk show, read the books of Charles Duelfer, Khadir Hamza, Mahdi Obeidi, Georges Sada, Hans Blix, Douglas Feith, the Iraqi Perspectives Project and the Iraq Study Group. Only then will you begin to have a sense of the awesome complexity of the issue. If you are sitting in a posh apartment in New York’s Upper West Side pontificating at a cocktail party about what Iran will or will not do, take a deep breath and ask yourself how hard you have tried to get inside the mind of an Iranian theocrat. Have you read the writings of Ayatollah Khomeini? Can you name a single Iranian grand ayatollah, let alone cite their sermons or books? If you are in conversation with someone who has an emphatic position on Hamas, ask them to name five Hamas leaders. If they can’t, take their opinion with a heavy grain of salt. How much would you respect someone’s opinion on American policy if he could not name five American politicians, had never been to America, could not speak a word of English and had never read a book by an American leader? Given limited time, it is only natural to caricature one’s ideological adversary. But few things are more frustrating than attempting to engage in discourse when the other side is armed--at best--with a crude snapshot of your worldview based off tweets and a handful of op-eds. There are shallow and sophisticated critiques on nearly every side of the Middle East. Study not the politics behind your adversaries views, but the psychology that got them there. What are the values that drive their faith? Under what conditions might you adopt their views? Most importantly, re-examine your most firmly held premises. Look anew at every aspect of your beliefs. Recognize the near infinite depths of our ignorance and grant nuance the respect it deserves. If you are not willing to immerse yourself in the books of those with whom you vehemently disagree, at least have the courtesy of refraining from polluting today’s shrill discourse any further. http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1710