Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Appeasement and Extremism
The following was my contribution to a Facebook discussion that started with the allegation that Obama is following a Chamberlainesque policy of appeasement with Iran. While I won't address that issue directly, I felt the need to comment on the confrontation of Extremism and its consequence in the middle east. The antagonist in that discussion suggested that his Israeli friend should put his efforts toward confronting Israeli extremism as the Islamic variety would never be quelled.
The alternative to working for an end to Islamist extremism is acceptance of the end of Israel, extermination of the Jews and an eventual world-wide caliphate. This is what the extremists of Islam want. Israel is just the small Satan, while America is the big.
I would like to share an anecdote that has stuck with me. I tutored the children of a well-off family in Kfar Kana in English. I like this family. I drop in for coffee, we chat. As a radical well-educated Jewish teacher, I really do love all my students. I am patient and forgiving, try to see the best in my students and treat my students as the thinking, feeling individuals they are. I was talking with one of the parents, was sharing my outlook, and was told "You must treat a child with a strong hand; it is the only thing a child understands." This unfortunately, is the understanding of the Arab world, and it holds at all levels.
There is an understanding and respect for power and the use of it. There is a concept of honor. We have no sense of the Arab sense of honor, and therefore they see us as having none. When we do not use the strong hand when attacked and threatened, we abet Islamist extremism. No hate spewing Muslim would accept his child speaking toward him with even half the venom he expresses toward other people. These are people who kill their own daughters for honor, and their own brothers over land, and who punish recalcitrant donkeys by amputating a leg.
When we understood what this means, we will react to every affront to our own "honor" much differently. Until we do, we will be seen as an unworthy people deserving of destruction.
I have no doubt that there are those in the Islamic world who would cheer the atomic annihilation of Israel - without a thought to the millions of Arabs that would be simultaneously destroyed - and the return of the "refugees" to this nuclear wasteland, and probably similar conditions to those which were here when the Ottomans neglected this area a hundred and fifty years ago. This is the logical outcome of pandering to Islamist extremism, which unfortunately is quite common.
If we take the most extreme of the Israeli positions to their logical endpoint, we end up with a transfer of certain non-Jewish populations to states of identical ethnicity, culture and religion. If we go beyond where any Israeli is talking and impute an added insidious level of extremism, we might imagine that the Israeli need for lebensraum will extend to what was supposed to be the original mandate.
It was suggested that it is Israeli extremism that we - I and my friend and fellow American and Israeli - should address instead of the stated existentialist threat that a nuclear Iran would bring. At what cost?
Yes, Rabin was wrong, as was Begin for that matter, and Sharon, and every American administration - which is all of them - that pandered to Arabs for oil, that listened to Arab ministrations for peace in the West, ignoring simultaneous calls to revolution by the same people in Arabic, that accepted extremists because they were ours or because we thought we could control them, or that thought that extremists might subscribe to our western values and see our pleas for peace and compromise as something other than weakness.
The alternative to working for an end to Islamist extremism is acceptance of the end of Israel, extermination of the Jews and an eventual world-wide caliphate. This is what the extremists of Islam want. Israel is just the small Satan, while America is the big.
I would like to share an anecdote that has stuck with me. I tutored the children of a well-off family in Kfar Kana in English. I like this family. I drop in for coffee, we chat. As a radical well-educated Jewish teacher, I really do love all my students. I am patient and forgiving, try to see the best in my students and treat my students as the thinking, feeling individuals they are. I was talking with one of the parents, was sharing my outlook, and was told "You must treat a child with a strong hand; it is the only thing a child understands." This unfortunately, is the understanding of the Arab world, and it holds at all levels.
There is an understanding and respect for power and the use of it. There is a concept of honor. We have no sense of the Arab sense of honor, and therefore they see us as having none. When we do not use the strong hand when attacked and threatened, we abet Islamist extremism. No hate spewing Muslim would accept his child speaking toward him with even half the venom he expresses toward other people. These are people who kill their own daughters for honor, and their own brothers over land, and who punish recalcitrant donkeys by amputating a leg.
When we understood what this means, we will react to every affront to our own "honor" much differently. Until we do, we will be seen as an unworthy people deserving of destruction.
I have no doubt that there are those in the Islamic world who would cheer the atomic annihilation of Israel - without a thought to the millions of Arabs that would be simultaneously destroyed - and the return of the "refugees" to this nuclear wasteland, and probably similar conditions to those which were here when the Ottomans neglected this area a hundred and fifty years ago. This is the logical outcome of pandering to Islamist extremism, which unfortunately is quite common.
If we take the most extreme of the Israeli positions to their logical endpoint, we end up with a transfer of certain non-Jewish populations to states of identical ethnicity, culture and religion. If we go beyond where any Israeli is talking and impute an added insidious level of extremism, we might imagine that the Israeli need for lebensraum will extend to what was supposed to be the original mandate.
It was suggested that it is Israeli extremism that we - I and my friend and fellow American and Israeli - should address instead of the stated existentialist threat that a nuclear Iran would bring. At what cost?
Yes, Rabin was wrong, as was Begin for that matter, and Sharon, and every American administration - which is all of them - that pandered to Arabs for oil, that listened to Arab ministrations for peace in the West, ignoring simultaneous calls to revolution by the same people in Arabic, that accepted extremists because they were ours or because we thought we could control them, or that thought that extremists might subscribe to our western values and see our pleas for peace and compromise as something other than weakness.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Does the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd have a point?
The Premise
Allowing business to flourish has salutary effects for all of us. Allowing people to pursue their own passions, and turn them into businesses by which they may profit from their own ideas, has given us our modern world. It has also generated vast amounts of wealth for many people.
Our equity markets have made this possible, as has the ability to access capital and take on debt. To the extent that investment and commercial banks enable this, they are indispensable to our system.
Wall Street I
Access to cheap money has also allowed a system in which private equity, investment banks, brokerages and other parties have been able to leverage their capital and indebt companies in ways that have enriched the investor, destroyed companies, and left many Americans without work, much of this with minimal risk to the investor. Much of this risk was financed by banks “too big to fail” and therefore underwritten by the taxpayer.
Many of the people who have orchestrated this (let’s call them “Wall Street”) have been paid (paid themselves?) very handsomely based on short term measures which are usually not linked to the long-term growth of a company or the economy. Moreover, the relatively short-term outlook may cause risks to be taken that can have significant long-term effects on the economy. While these risks may be rational from the short-term perspective of Wall Street and the individuals who stand to be richly compensated based on the risks they take, they may also be seen as gambling with other people’s livelihoods. When a company disappears, so do the jobs it created.
Wall Street II
The management and directorships (let’s also call them “Wall Street”) of publicly traded companies constitutes a fairly small subset of the population. Many executives of one company also sit on the boards of others. They recommend the slates for the boards of each other’s companies. They also sit on each other’s compensation committees and determine each other’s stock-incentive plans.
Executive suite pay as a multiple of employee pay has grown significantly since the introduction of stock-incentive plans. It can be argued that stock-incentive plans have influenced the executive to maximize share value over the short term, discount risks to the long-term health of a company, and disregard the possible effect on the employee, his job and his future.
The Consequence
Certain people are getting richer, while many others are without jobs, and many many others are seeing their own economic growth stagnate. Some perceive that the cards are stacked in favor of “Wall Street” in such a manner as to be detrimental to the long-term employment and economic prospects of the rest of us. Some of them have chosen to Occupy Wall Street.
The Question
What can or should we as a society do to align “Wall Street” with the goals of long-term economic growth, the foundation of new business, and the creation of stable jobs and growing American employment?
Allowing business to flourish has salutary effects for all of us. Allowing people to pursue their own passions, and turn them into businesses by which they may profit from their own ideas, has given us our modern world. It has also generated vast amounts of wealth for many people.
Our equity markets have made this possible, as has the ability to access capital and take on debt. To the extent that investment and commercial banks enable this, they are indispensable to our system.
Wall Street I
Access to cheap money has also allowed a system in which private equity, investment banks, brokerages and other parties have been able to leverage their capital and indebt companies in ways that have enriched the investor, destroyed companies, and left many Americans without work, much of this with minimal risk to the investor. Much of this risk was financed by banks “too big to fail” and therefore underwritten by the taxpayer.
Many of the people who have orchestrated this (let’s call them “Wall Street”) have been paid (paid themselves?) very handsomely based on short term measures which are usually not linked to the long-term growth of a company or the economy. Moreover, the relatively short-term outlook may cause risks to be taken that can have significant long-term effects on the economy. While these risks may be rational from the short-term perspective of Wall Street and the individuals who stand to be richly compensated based on the risks they take, they may also be seen as gambling with other people’s livelihoods. When a company disappears, so do the jobs it created.
Wall Street II
The management and directorships (let’s also call them “Wall Street”) of publicly traded companies constitutes a fairly small subset of the population. Many executives of one company also sit on the boards of others. They recommend the slates for the boards of each other’s companies. They also sit on each other’s compensation committees and determine each other’s stock-incentive plans.
Executive suite pay as a multiple of employee pay has grown significantly since the introduction of stock-incentive plans. It can be argued that stock-incentive plans have influenced the executive to maximize share value over the short term, discount risks to the long-term health of a company, and disregard the possible effect on the employee, his job and his future.
The Consequence
Certain people are getting richer, while many others are without jobs, and many many others are seeing their own economic growth stagnate. Some perceive that the cards are stacked in favor of “Wall Street” in such a manner as to be detrimental to the long-term employment and economic prospects of the rest of us. Some of them have chosen to Occupy Wall Street.
The Question
What can or should we as a society do to align “Wall Street” with the goals of long-term economic growth, the foundation of new business, and the creation of stable jobs and growing American employment?
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