What Happens When an Arab Defends Israel?
February 21, 2012 20:57 by Alex Margolin
Lee Habeeb
We’ve all seen outrageous reports about Israel from Arab sources. Reading the Arab press, you might be forgiven for assuming that when Israel isn’t sending Mossad sharks into Arab waters, it’s busy plotting ways to sow disease in Arab society.
But what happens when an Arab writer defends Israel, or suggests that the Arab world may have something to learn from the Jewish state? Well, Lee Habeeb, a writer of Lebanese origin, found out the hard way.
First came the letters to the editor, then the personal insults. It was as if I’d broken a secret code I didn’t know existed. Some secret blood oath, which goes something like this: Arabs don’t speak unkindly of Arabs in public, or kindly about Israel.
After pondering the backlash he experienced and looking at the effect this Arab groupthink has on the wider culture, Habeeb came to some very important conclusions.
It is all about Arab self-doubt. It is all tied to a profound lack of cultural self-confidence, and a deep-seated fear that maybe, just maybe, Arabs won’t be very good at the self-governance thing. That Arab nations won’t be capable of building democratic cultures that engender the flourishing of human freedom, and that these nations won’t have the ability to tap the God-given talents of their people the way Americans and Israelis do.
That maybe, just maybe, the Arab world will never measure up to America or Israel.
No wonder the Arab world is happy enough to vilify Israel at every turn. It’s much easier to scapegoat a regional minority than to deal, head on, with one’s own inadequacy.
What Happens When an Arab Defends Israel? | Vlad Tepes
5:34 am
Feb 22, 2012
[...] Honest Reporting: [...]
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Josh
12:07 pm
Feb 22, 2012
Touché!
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Was passiert, wenn ein Araber Israel verteidigt? « Medien BackSpin
2:45 am
Feb 23, 2012
[...] HonestReporting Media BackSpin, 22. Februar 2012 [...]
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Brent Pudsey
2:33 pm
Feb 25, 2012
Bravo for the heroic actions of the Arab journalist Lee Habeeb, who did the right thing by reporting news objectively. Perhaps this will allow other Arab journalists to do so and to make the biases in the Arab press disappear and tolerance towards other viewpoints about Israel to exist.
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Guy Macher
3:17 pm
Feb 26, 2012
With respect to Mr Habeeb, the problem is not racial, it is doctrinal. Arab Christians and Jews are peaceful, productive, and civilized. Eradicate Islam and most of the so-called “problems of Arabs” will disappear. As computer programmers know so well: Garbage in, garbage out.
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