A LEOPARD’S SPOTS

Long ago, the Prophet Jeremiah asked the rhetorical question: “Can a leopard change its spots?” Sadly, apparently the answer to that question is “not really.” Which brings us to the true and underlying moral purpose of that question which was raised by the prophet - can human beings and their governments undergo truly meaningful and constructive change? Judaism, being a religion that combines a sense of unbridled optimism with cold realism about man’s nature, answers the prophet’s question with a qualified “yes.” Human beings can change and improve, repent and rise to newer heights of behavior and spirit. So can kings and governments. But in order to accomplish this feat of change and self-improvement, there must first exist a firm resolve of will to make that necessary change and then there must be a resulting actual change in thought, behavior, direction and purpose. The beginning of such a pattern of change – of erasing leopard’s spots – is sometimes jumpstarted by a dramatic event of history and society. The question now facing Western society generally and the State of Israel particularly is whether the events of September 11 will initiate the necessary changes in Arab societies and countries in the Middle East that will begin to erase the bloody leopard’s spots that have marked the last century of Middle Eastern history.         

                     The root of the instability, religious fanaticism, constant wars and violence and hatred of the “infidel” that marks much of the current Muslim world, lies not so much in the Muslim faith per se as it does in Muslim society. Though Islam is a religion that demands exclusivity and the “infidel” is always seen as a subversive outsider, that outsider – particularly the Jews – has continually lived and sometimes even prospered within Muslim society for many centuries. It should be clear to all by now that even if somehow there would be no Arab-Israeli conflict, nevertheless the Middle East would remain a very unstable area. And the underlying reason for this is the dictatorial nature of the Arab governments, the structural weakness and imbalance of their economies, and the terrible burden of an enormous poverty-laden, frustrated and angry lower class. This leopard must somehow be brought to change its spots for any sort of true stability to descend upon the Middle East. And now, after September 11, there is a slow awakening to this fact in the Western world and hopefully perhaps even within the Muslim world as well.

                     In an op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times last month, Salman Rushdie, the noted author and fugitive from Iranian Islamic justice, pointed out that the problem of violence and terrorism against the infidel is imbedded very deeply within Islamic societies and sources. The Koran is a most flexible and sometimes ambiguous and self-contradictory document and it can be used equally to support compassion and peace on one hand, or violence, hatred and terrorism on the other hand. The fact that it is being used currently in its most negative and aggressive sense of possible interpretation reflects the enormous dissatisfaction of the masses of the existing Muslim societies with their rulers and with their place in the world generally. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, this dissatisfaction was channeled into Nasser’s disastrous policies of pan-Arabic nationalism and into support of the then Soviet Union’s heavy-handed and eventually impotent attempt at creating communist Arab states. And the existence of the State of Israel – the ultimate infidel and outsider – was always falsely cited as the main cause of all difficulties in the Middle East. But, as Rushdie so ably pointed out, the problem lies much more within the Arab societies and not really with the Jewish outsider. Israel, and now the United States, only supply a convenient scapegoat and deflect the anger of the street mob from its true and correct target – the governments of the Arab countries themselves.

                     I am not a fan of Edward Said. His misrepresentations and lies about his own personal life and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict are disgraceful. Yet, I was pleasantly surprised by the contents of an article of his that was originally published in Arabic in al-Ahram, the official Egyptian government newspaper, and later excerpted in English in the Jerusalem Post. Said was quoted as having written: “We [the Arabs] must start thinking about ourselves as responsible for the poverty, illiteracy and repression that have come to dominate our countries and societies, evils that we have allowed to grow despite our complaints about Zionism and imperialism.” Said is to be complimented for saying this publicly and not mouthing the standard Arab rhetoric about the “Zionist entity” and the “great Satan” of America. The fact that al-Ahram published such views is also something that should be noted. The Arab world desperately needs a change of direction and that change of direction in its society must come from within, albeit with continuing outside prodding and encouragement.

                     The two main Arab countries that could effect such a change are Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Egypt is the most populous of all of the Arab states. It is also desperately poor, with almost half of its population living below its already artificially low poverty line. A majority of its population suffers from a variety of diseases, many of them mosquito-borne, a product of the Aswan Dam/Lake Nasser project of the 1950’s, which created an enormous mosquito-breeding, disease-spreading ecosystem. Egypt has been propped up for a number of decades by many billions of dollars of American aid, but the endemic corruption that wracks Mubarak’s authoritarian government has sapped, skimmed and misused a great deal of these funds, so that the average Egyptian has benefited little from the American generosity. Most of the officially accounted for American aid was spent and used to purchase enormous amounts of military equipment, a fact that is most disquieting to Israelis. The Egyptian press is filled daily with the crudest form of anti-Jewish articles and cartoons. Mubarak has proven to be an unwilling and ineffective moderating influence on Arafat throughout the ill-fated Oslo peace process. Egypt’s educational system is in shambles, though the strident anti-Jewish tone of its schools’ curriculum shows no sign of improvement or correction. Egypt is a disaster waiting to happen. Mubarak is in his seventies and what will happen next is open to discussion. Instead of being part of the solution, he has made himself part of the problem. Mubarak denounces American aid to Israel, makes dire predictions about the future of the Middle East if Israel does not agree to Arafat’s maximalist demands, and whistles past the graveyard of the pressing problems in his own government and country. Instead of his current obstructionism and militancy, he should initiate at the very least incremental changes for the better in Egyptian society and diplomacy and they should begin now while he still has the authority and prestige to carry them through.

                     But the linchpin for change in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia. It is enormously wealthy and dismally poor at one and the same time. It has invested much of its enormous oil wealth in commercial enterprises in the Western world, luxurious living and prolifigate spending by the very upper class of its society and exorbitant armament purchases. It has also used its wealth to bribe other Arab governments, terrorist organizations and Islamic dissidents so that they will leave the Saudi royal house alone. It has never really invested in the educational and social infrastructure necessary to combat the desperate problems that confront its society and other Arab countries. Instead, it sponsors the worst type of anti-Semitic literature and education as a palliative to the frustrations of its society. It also subscribes to the most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism and represses any debate or dissent within and without its own borders. The fact that it contains Islam’s two holiest shrines within its boundaries and that it calls itself the protector of the Islamic faith makes this extreme form of Islam acceptable and mainstream to tens of millions of the Moslem faithful. Yet it is kept in power and protected from its covetous and violent Arab neighbors such as Iraq by the presence of American military forces in its country. What a mess! The Saudis previously had and perhaps still have the ability and the opportunity to lead the Arab world out of its mainly self-imposed darkness into a more tolerant, peaceful and prosperous Middle East. All useful pressure from the Western countries should be exerted to help Saudi Arabia change its spots. 

                  Jewish and Israeli society is also not immune from the necessity of using some spot remover. The class strife of labor versus capital, compounded by the religious-secular divide, both still preserved from the turmoil of nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish life, make our everyday existence here in Israel more uncomfortable than necessary. Hard-kept ideologies of both the Left and the Right, of Peace Now and the Gush Emunim opposites, all have to be moderated. A large majority of Israelis have agreed to forego the dream of a Greater Israel, but do not agree to forego their right to live within secure and recognized borders. If the Palestinians and their supporters are truly interested in peace and a better life for the Arabs that they claim to represent, then Israel has to be addressed in more reassuring and moderate words than what we heard in Durban and the UN General Assembly meeting last month. The behavior of our politicians and political parties can also stand some spot removal but we are making slow progress even in that area. The religious Orthodox world should certainly take a harder and more objective look at itself. It could do with less shrillness, less triumphalism and less divisiveness. But since we Jews believe that leopards – at least, some leopards – can change their spots, we must continue to persevere in that spirit of hope and positive thinking and behavior.