Category Archives: Religion

Is the Two-State Solution in Palestine Still Alive?

Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1970’s

Benajamin Netanyahu Today

What does Netanyahu’s big election win mean for the future of Arab-Israeli coexistence? It is a right-wing success, a challenge to liberals and a victory of fear over hope. There is fear of Hamas militants in Gaza, fear of Iran’s nuclear potential, and fear of Obama’s utopian objectives and his lack of understanding of Middle East realities.

Netanyahu is convinced that Mahmoud Abbas is not capable of heading a viable Palestinian state. So is the two-state solution dead and buried? It certainly seems to be, even as Netanyahu is now soft-pedaling his earlier pessimistic statements. This has been a masterful performance on his part, a skillful tap dance while juggling many balls in the air. This fancy footwork means that he has had to convince the Israeli people that he alone could provide security while at the same time trying not to alienate the rest of the world by adopting a hard line stance.

How can there be a Palestinian state when Jewish settlers are occupying much of the land that was to be part of that state? How can there be a Palestinian state as long as Israel will not consent to the division of Jerusalem? How can there be a Palestinian state when the Palestinian Authority is threatened by Hamas militants? How can there be a Palestinian state when Iran-supported Hezbollah continues to fire missiles at Israel or when ISIS (which calls itself DAESH) is only waiting for an opportunity to march into Jerusalem?

The disintegration of the Middle East as a whole is posing a threat to Jordan, Egypt and Israel and certainly to any future emerging state. A Palestinian state would end up being governed by groups who have sworn enmity to Israel. This common threat has brought Israel closer to Jordan and to Egypt.

At the same time, the risk of Israel finding itself isolated from the European Community and at the mercy of sanctions adopted by the U.N. Security Council is very real.

That is why Netanyahu has had to tread carefully to appease the United States. It alone can veto any anti-Israel resolutions. It is also the United States that contributes to Israel’s safety by helping finance the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Now Netanyahu needs to make things easier for both the Arabs in the occupied territories and Israel’s own Arab minority population (about 20%) which is suffering from discrimination, marginalization and restrictions. They need more work opportunities, easier check-point crossings, help in rebuilding Gaza after the recent war and in general a softening of the harshness of their daily existence. Will he do that?

Where Have All The Daughters Gone?

Where have all the daughters gone
Long time missing
Where have all the daughters gone
Long time ago
Where have all the daughters gone
People killed them one by one
Oh when will they ever learn
Oh when will they ever learn

In Hunan Province an elderly woman placed the following ad:

Wanted: Kind-hearted daughter under 40 to take care of me in my old age, if satisfactory will inherit my fortune.
What exquisite poetic justice! China introduced the one-child policy about 30 years ago. It was a population control measure and it worked so well that China now has a nightmarish gender imbalance. That is because girl infanticide was a long established custom in China for centuries. Killing baby girls or allowing them to starve to death was commonplace. Drowning was another favorite method. Girls were expendable. Girls were more expensive to raise than boys and eventually left the family. It is hard to imagine such callousness but it was universally accepted.

In 2003 the one child policy was relaxed and families were allowed to apply for the right to have 2 children if one of the parents was an only child. It is too early to tell how effective this will prove to be.
In many early civilizations the same male bias existed. In Greece of 2000 BC the murder of female infants was so common that no more than 1% of families had two daughters. In India the custom of getting rid of girls is also embedded in the culture, especially in poor families who cannot afford dowries and lavish weddings. Sons on the other hand, are insurance. I read that in Karachi, Pakistan, nine out of ten newborns thrown on the dump are girls. Aborting female fetuses occurs regularly in India.

A few years ago I saw a film by Deepa Mehta called Water. It tells the story of young Indian widows rejected by both the husband’s families and their own who live in an ashram in Benares are made to shave their hair and are forced into prostitution to provide money for the temple. One of the widows was seven years old.

I have read that we should not force our own moral values on other cultures. I think this is called cultural relativism. I believe this is wrong. Some concepts are universal and if some societies have cruel traditions that cause suffering and death this should not be excused on the grounds that we should show tolerance toward cultures that are different from ours.

The Persistence of Pseudoscience

For a long time, from the days of the ancient Greeks to the advent of modern medicine in the early 19th century, physicians believed in the four humors that governed the human body: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Medical cures, so mocked by Moliere in his comedies, consisted mostly in purging and bloodletting. This was not based on any evidence and we know now that it did more harm than good. With advances in chemistry, alchemy disappeared completely. In other areas we have not moved ahead at the same rate. Astronomy has made great strides with the perfection of the telescope and remarkably sensitive electronic image sensors and yet astrology is flourishing also. People read their horoscopes which rely on the position of the sun and stars in the Zodiac and many believe in them. (Ronald Reagan was a devotee during his Presidency)

Psychology has emerged as a distinct experiment-based discipline divorced from philosophy. Yet parapsychology persists. It concerns itself with clairvoyance, precognition, telepathy and near-death experiences. To return to medicine, homeopathy is the belief that the substance that causes the symptoms can be used to cure the symptoms. But then it argues that diluting that substance reinforces its potency.

Often pseudoscience hides behind scientific sounding names. Deepak Chopra’s “quantum healing” relies on the body’s self-correcting and self-healing capacities. It sounds impressive but also a little arcane. The explanation is vague like that of the Delphic Oracles that can apply to many situations, depending on personal interpretation.

The most recent manifestation of the anti-scientific attitude is the mobilization against the vaccination of children. Some parents suddenly decided that vaccination was harmful and are putting their children at risk of illnesses that were thought to have been conquered. At the same time they are endangering the health of other children. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey affirms that parents’ rights allow them to do this. And now Rand Paul has jumped into the fray announcing that he “has heard of children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” Are they vying for the know-nothings’ vote or could it be that they sincerely adhere to these notions?

Some people believe in numerology or creatures like the Yeti or Loch Ness monster. It all depends on your suggestibility. Rational reasons are mixed with superstition and they are often hard to disentangle. I know many persons who believe in Qi, the Chinese concept that says that vital energy circulates around the body. Jeopardy contestants often bring lucky charms to the contest. It probably boosts their confidence and allows them to perform better. Auto-suggestion and self-hypnosis may be at work here and may account for any benefits derived from belief.

Science however, relies on experiments that can be replicated and verified and on peer evaluation. It starts with a hypothesis and if that hypothesis cannot be independently confirmed, then no matter how alluring and beguiling it appears it needs to be modified or discarded.

To Me, This Is Total Evil

On our television screens we have recently seen ordinary looking individuals matter-of- factly informing us that they will behead persons they do not even know. Their faces are covered in black. Their eyes are vacant. But these are not deformed monsters or extraterrestrials. Such persons live among us. Most recently, these messengers of Allah plunged us several centuries down into the Middle Ages when heretics were burned at the stake.

This is not killing out of fear or necessity or for profit. To me this is total evil. Fanatics are ruthlessly enforcing religious doctrines like blasphemy and apostasy. This is behavior that intelligent human beings abandoned and left behind long ago. This heinous ideology is spreading and metastasizing like an epidemic, infecting more and more people and we do not seem to know how to counter it.

I believe we were wrong in not more widely publishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons for which journalists have died. We should have published these cartoons en masse to present a united front against this creeping ideology but we seem to have lost our moorings when it comes to what should be tolerated and what should not. In the name of tolerance we accept behavior that should be condemned.

We are retreating from asserting our beliefs and convictions just as Galileo was forced to retreat from his scientific observations because the Church ordered him to do so.

Some people like Sam Harris go even further in defending freedom of speech. He believes that Germany should not have enacted laws against holocaust denial because such statements should be answered by discourse not by legislation.

Some disenchanted Western recruits to Jihadism have started to preach a message of integration and are trying to dissuade young people who feel rejected and marginalized from falling prey to brainwashing and alluring promises of a noble martyrdom It is a good beginning. We should find more ways to persuade these young people that there are better goals to achieve. For an interesting example of this, take a look at Average Mohamed.

Your comments are encouraged and greatly appreciated.

How Civilized Are We?

We sometimes think we are now civilized and no longer prone to cataclysmic upheavals. We no longer subject people to tortures like being drawn and quartered or being burned alive. We don’t bring our children to picnics to watch beheadings; we no longer use crucifixion as a punishment. We vehemently condemn Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. After World War I, World War II and the Holocaust we swore “Never again.” So are we finally progressing?

Progress happens but it is not in a straight line and not continuous. It is more like a spiral, going up and then down. It reverts back. It regresses. Summer Solstice is followed by Winter Solstice. Civilization is fragile and easily shattered.

In Lord of The Flies, young people left to themselves without a moral structure gradually revert to savagery. In the 1930’s, after centuries of civilization, Germany dramatically reached bottom. And now, night is descending rapidly over some parts of Islam. In Somalia, Al Shahab (The Youth Movement) is terrorizing the “enemies of Islam.” It attacks Western aid workers and humanitarian groups. It follows the “right path,” cutting off hands for theft and stoning for apostasy.

Boko Haram (Western education is a Sin) based in Northeastern Nigeria is also a Western hating organism, grounded in ignorance. And finally Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, founder of the Islamic State, is reverting back to the Sharia and its cruel and unusual punishments. He is embracing a great wave of regression. In his belief system, a woman is considered to be half of a man and violence against women is legitimized.

What reduces people to this state of brutality and viciousness and allows them to proudly publicize the beheading of “the other?” Is it fear, loss of power, rejection, alienation, a belief in their own righteousness?
Whatever the cause, this is very frightening to watch.
We have to remember, however, that this virulent rage is by no means new and is not the privilege of the religious only. Extreme ideologies of any kind rationalize their beliefs while resorting to extreme savagery.

During the 1787 French Revolution, the goal of the rebels was the destruction of Catholicism and of religion itself. During the Reign of Terror under Robespierre, priests were imprisoned and deported. And during the French Commune of 1871 all religions were banned. In one of the ugliest episodes of this movement, The Archbishop of Paris was seized and then killed in cold blood.
This is not very different from the killing in cold blood of French cartoonists whose irreverent pens “blaspheme” sacred cows.

Is Israel A Jewish State?

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is promoting a law which would declare Israel to be a Jewish State. At the same time he affirms that it will also be a democratic state. This is a step in the wrong direction and a contradiction because a democratic state cannot grant favored status to one part of its citizens.

Twenty percent of the Israeli population consists of Palestinian Arabs. They are already marginalized and such a law would codify their status as pariahs. Israel is de facto a Jewish State. The “Law of Return” guarantees that every Jewish person will be accepted and welcomed wherever he or she comes from. Israel’s Declaration of Independence also defines it as a Jewish State, but also pledges to ensure complete equality of political rights to all its citizens.

The proposed law would enshrine the rights of the majority over those of the minority. Currently the status of the Arabs is murky and ambiguous, but as long as it is uncodified there remains room for maneuvering and a possibility of gradual reform. The passage of this law would slam the door on reform and encourage those who view Israel as an Apartheid State.

Imagine this happening in the U.S. with Barack Obama asking Congress to declare the U.S. as a Christian State. His rationale could be that the majority of this country is inhabited by Christians and that it was founded by Christians fleeing persecution in Europe. Unthinkable, right?

In practice Israel already is a Jewish State. In Israeli homes there is a mezuzah on the doorpost which designates the home as Jewish. Woe to the family who does not observe Yom Kippur or Passover. No buses or elevators run on the Sabbath and Kashrut (religious food laws) is observed in public institutions. A bar mitzvah is the norm for every Jewish boy. Religious tribunals control marriages, divorces, circumcision, funerals and burials. How much more Jewish can you get?

Religion is already playing a disruptive role in Israeli life. The ultra-religious settlers provoke the Palestinians and cause most of the current bloody confrontations. Because Netanyahu needs the support of the Orthodox parties to hold his government together, he is beholden to their wishes and the State suffers.

Israel has already lost much of the international political and moral support it has historically enjoyed. It is time to stop alienating the remaining people who still love Israel.

Spinoza Knows

During George W. Bush’s first Presidential campaign, an interviewer asked him which great men he most admired. The reply was “Jesus Christ.”

I thought at the time… Here is a man who obviously does not read if he can only come up with such a limited answer. My diagnosis was intellectual penury.

Then I wondered… What if someone were to ask me the same question? I would choose Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). Spinoza believed in “a universe ruled by the cause and effect of natural laws without purpose or design.” In his ethical system, reason is the supreme value. This is a truly down-to-earth philosophy without esoteric principles. Because he did not believe in the conventional God but equated God with Nature itself, he was expelled from the Jewish Community of Amsterdam by a “cherem” which translates into excommunication. It’s something like a Muslim fatwa.

Was Spinoza a deist, a pantheist or an atheist? I don’t think it matters what label you attach to him. He was just an early secular thinker, totally unencumbered by preconceived ideas. But unlike another 17th century thinker, Rene Descartes, he did not believe in the duality of body and soul or that “the soul” survived after death.

When Einstein was asked whether he believed in God he replied, “I believe in Spinoza’s God.” There are, of course other great thinkers who strike a responsive chord in me. They think what I think, only they express it so much better.

It Ain’t Necessarily So

It ain ‘t necessarily so
It ain’t necessarily so
The things that you’re liable
To read in the Bible
It ain’t necessarily so

From Porgy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin

According to a recent Gallup Poll three in four Americans say they believe the Bible is the word of God. Belief in God in European countries is much smaller. In France it is slightly over 23%. Religion is almost non-existent in Denmark and Sweden. I know that statistics can be misleading but these findings echo my own observations. Since my family and I arrived in the United States in the late forties religiosity has gotten much more pervasive. It seems to have spread like volcanic lava. Presidents Roosevelt and Truman did not end every speech with “God bless America”. According to the Huffington Post Richard Nixon was the first president to use that phrase. Ronald Reagan extended it to every phase of American life. Now Presidents also offer prayers to victims of catastrophes like floods and hurricanes and wherever and whenever misfortune strikes. Barack Obama has embraced this habit with a particular fervor.

It was not until 1954 that the phrase “One nation under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. “In God We Trust” only appeared on our currency in 1956.
Our early Presidents had a very different attitude to religion. They were deists. They believed in the existence of a Supreme Being, a creator who does not interfere in the universe. Deism rejects the belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind. The words Christianity, God, or Bible do not show up at all in our Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson said: It does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods or no god.
Benjamin Franklin was thought to be an atheist although some people dispute this. In Poor Richard’s Almanack he wrote: The way to see by faith is to shut the eyes of reason. And here is what Abraham Lincoln had to say: “The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.”
Woodrow Wilson wrote that like every intelligent man he believed in evolution.
So it seems that America has regressed to a more primitive attitude and I think that this should disturb every thinking person.

Some Thoughts About Hair

Why are religions so concerned with hair?

Devout Muslims grow beards even though it is not specifically mentioned in the Koran and Arab women cover their hair at the onset of puberty. Religion commands Jewish men not to cut the hair on the side of the head, hence the dreadlocks called payot sported by the ultra-Orthodox. Pious Jewish women cover their heads or wear wigs over their own hair. They are not supposed to be attractive to men other than their husbands. In the Catholic Church, men and women have their hair cut when they enter a monastery or convent. For men it is a tonsure and women also cover their hair with a wimple. Apparently hair is associated with eroticism and sexuality and so has to be left behind when you devote your life to God .

I remember the movie “A Nun’s Story” where Audrey Hepburn’s long hair is savaged and falls slowly to the floor. I was thinking: Why must one abandon beauty in order to tend to the lepers in the Congo? Hair makes a huge difference to one’s appearance. In another film Cate Blanchette shaves her head and wears men clothes as a disguise because she is on the run for a crime. She is immediately unrecognizable.

For two centuries, royals and nobles wore elaborate powdered wigs which became a status symbol. But actually it was to hide the ravages to their own hair caused by poor hygiene and various illnesses. This custom was thrown out, as so many other traditions during the French Revolution.

The word “hair” is usually a plural in other languages, presumably because one has more than one hair on one’s head:

Les cheveux in French
Volossy in Russian
Saarot in Hebrew.
Capelli in Italian

The word for “hairdresser” also has a funny journey emigrating from one language to another:
In Russian it is “parikmacher” which comes from the German and means wig maker. The Germans however no longer use it. They have imported the word “Friseur” from the French where it meant “one who curls your hair”. The English word “barber” comes from the French word barbe which means beard. But the French now say “coiffeur”.

You may have heard that Man is the only animal who empathizes, mourns, reasons, experiences consciousness, makes tools etc. It turns out that other animals do these things too, but there is one area at least where man is still distinct from beast:

Man is the only animal who wears clothes because his body is no longer covered with hair.

Arab Winter & Islamic Terrorists

Much has been written on the current Islamic/Jihadist menace but that does not mean that I cannot also reflect on it. How quickly the Arab Spring has been succeeded by an Arab Winter without ever going through Summer and Autumn!

In Egypt a 360 degree revolution has occurred which came to rest on Abdul Fatah al Sisi. So what was the point of overthrowing Hosni Mubarak? Even he only outlawed the Muslim Brothers and did not condemn them to death. Al Jazeera journalists who were reporting on events objectively have been jailed. Democracy never emerged. Destroying is easy but without rebuilding different edifices it is pointless.

The aftermath of the Libyan uprising created chaos and is destabilizing many parts of Africa which is now awash with arms and military equipment. Syria is being destroyed by civil war. Only in Tunisia where the turmoil started with a self-immolation is there a slight glimmer of hope. Tunisia’s Islamic Government has built alliances, forged consensus with other groups and drafted a constitution.

And now a new threat has appeared on the horizon and is marching steadily across Iraq. It calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL although also known as ISIS). It is partially an offshoot of Al Qaeda and its objective is to create a new Caliphate on the model of the original Islamic state of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century. It consists
of disenfranchised and rebellious Sunnis who were marginalized by the Shia government of Nuri al Maliki. After Sadam Hussein’s fall, his Bath Party was banned from political participation and is now taking its revenge. According to Thomas Friedman, in the 21st Century, the Shia and Sunnis are still fighting over who is the rightful heir to Muhammad. This new movement was battle-tested in Syria and is now spilling over the entire Middle East. The Levant is the ancient name for the whole eastern Mediterranean world and includes Syria, Lebanon, Israel and part of Turkey.

ISIL/ISIS is a Western hating group and is dedicated to our destruction. We are facing a direct threat of epidemic proportions. This new virulent outbreak of Islam is like a virus which has become immune to simple antibiotics and needs to be countered by new methods.
What President Obama is doing with drones is killing a few mosquitoes at a time but leaving whole swarms intact.

In the short run we perhaps need to reexamine our opposition to Iran and Syria and forge temporary new alliances. Sometimes one is forced to sup with the devil. There are no good guys in this fight so which bad guys do we choose?

In the long run, what is needed is to uproot the teachings of the Madrassas to which ignorant and alienated youths are flocking. It is not for nothing that Boko Haram is calling itself “Western teaching is a Sin” . They know that it threatens them directly.

We must become missionaries again and provide people with other solutions to their misery.