Why Do Iranians and Turks Want Arabs To Fight Jews?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
08 December '10

If you want to understand how the debate goes in the Arabic-speaking world and the ways liberals there try to get across their message, there’s nothing better to read than Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed’s article, “Erdogan...Fulfill Your Promises.” It’s also very easy to misunderstand this kind of talk so let’s go through it together.

Rashed is one of the Arab world’s best journalists and is a liberal-minded reformer, as much as one can be while working for media owned by Gulf Arab shaykhs. He is now general manager of al-Arabiya television network, set up by the United Arab Emirates partly to counter the more radical (and Qatar-owned) al-Jazira network. He is also former editor-in-chief of the Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat which may be the best Arab-language newspaper nowadays.

Yet so powerful is the dominant radical ideology that here’s what Rashed has to do in order to express his views:

He must pretend to champion the radical argument: Yes, Israel is a terrible aggressive state. We must be ready to fight! But, wait a minute. Who are the real cowards here, the ones who won’t stand up against the enemy? They are the ones who promise to be brave warriors and don’t do anything! Let us not listen to these people and be lured into battle only to be betrayed and defeated by their hypocrisy and treason.

I’ve put the argument into my own words but it’s an accurate reflection of his writing. How do I know Rashed is pretending to believe this? Because I’ve followed his work carefully and the note of sarcasm is also clear to me.

OK, let’s go through the article. He begins:

“We have gotten used to hearing Iran and the eager Arab countries threatening Israel whenever there is a glimmer of a threat to Lebanon or the Palestinians....We have been driven to despair from this; these slogans have been exhausted and we have never seen – not even once – any application of this on the ground to the point that some people believe that the objective of these slogans is to revive the conflict, rather than deter Israeli aggression.”

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.