The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East - Martin Sieff
Language: EnglishKeywords:
History
Radical Islam
Saudi Arabia
World. Middle East
Shared by:budwar65
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Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Why most of what you think you know about the Middle East is wrong
The Middle East: a region that’s almost never off the front pages, yet one most Americans know little about. The mainstream media and Ivy League academics only make matters worse by casting everything in the usual politically correct mold: Arab terrorists are just desperate freedom fighters, and the region’s one free democracy–Israel–is the oppressor, not least because of its alliance with America. And if Islamic extremism is a problem, the establishment tells us, it’s only because it’s rooted in that source of all evils: religion. A different strain of political correctness has seeped into some minds on the right–most notably the Bush administration, which, so ready to buy into the egalitarian myths we are all taught, believed that Western-style democracy could flourish anywhere. Now, in The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East, veteran Middle East correspondent Martin Sieff puts the lie to all these myths and clichés, giving you everything you need to know about the region to understand its past, its present, and its possible future. In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East, you’ll learn:
* How, for three decades, the British supported parliamentary democracy throughout the Middle East, but it didn’t work
* Why Britain’s post-World War I Middle East policy was a comedy of errors and incompetence that soon escalated into tragedy
* Where America went wrong in Iraq: how U.S. policymakers vastly underestimated the intransigent, unsophisticated, and anti-Western nature of its competing communities
* How Saudi Arabia’s security forces defeated al Qaeda–and why you never heard about it
* Why we’ll miss the Arab dictators when they’re gone
* How the Muslim nations of the Middle East took an irrevocable turn toward radical Islam not in the tenth century or after the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in the thirteenth century–but in 1979
* How the Arab states openly declared their determination to prevent a Jewish state from being born in 1947–twenty years before the West Bank and Gaza were first occupied
The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Middle East is a bold first step toward facing the hard truths necessary for peace.
++++++++++THANKS TO THE ORIGINAL UPLOADER++++++++++
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This post has 35 comments with rating of 4.2/5
April 30th, 2020
Has anyone checked if the author is still alive?
April 30th, 2020
Superb! Another fantastic P.I.G. book! Thank you!
April 30th, 2020
Published in 2008
Is probably due for an update, considering the frangible Arab Spring that took place through 2011 and was subsequently vitiated.
April 30th, 2020
My English bulldog could write a better book than this.
April 30th, 2020
My guess is the author will not be following this up with a “PC guide to Israel” with chapters on how Jewish terrorists (can’t be called freedom fighters since they invaded Arab lands) helped found (or steal) the state and how the Arabs were kicked off their own land. No surprise that the Arab-bashing author is Jewish.
Other chapters would be how America’s conservative, religious right finance Israel (because the Bible favours their entitlements to the “promised land” apparently), while U.S. taxpayers get nothing in return except oil embargoes and terrorist attacks from irate Arabs. Another chapter would be on how the Jewish lobby helped steer America in to the Iraq wars on behalf of Israel (no conspiracy theory, it is well documented).
April 30th, 2020
Just puked in my mouth
April 30th, 2020
@abm2121, spit don’t swallow
April 30th, 2020
@litote: Israel the nation / country was founded some 4500 years ago and was named after the ancient Patriarch Jacob, son of Abraham with his legal wife Sarah who was given the new name Israel by God. It always has been the land / country of Israel and always will be. The Bible is also a history textbook from Genesis to Revelation in which Israel is mentioned very frequently. It is to this country that Christ, when He returns, will set Israel as the center of the Kingdom of God.
Personally it’s immaterial if you choose to disbelieve me, it’s immutable history. BTW: the Arab nations are also mentioned in the Bible as Ishmael) the illegitimate son of Abraham and his Egyptian maidservant. They are called ‘a wild ass of a man’ in terms of personality’ and so they are and have been historically. The land / country / nation of Israel never belonged to any ‘arab country’ and never will.
Flame away, I personally don’t care.
April 30th, 2020
@budwar - Truly, advice to live by.
Lest we lapse into lambasting history’s favourite scapegoat, we need only compare relative indigeneity. It’s not even necessary to rely upon the Tanakh - in spite of the fact that the text has been of decisive historical importance. As an interesting aside, this pivotal document mentions Jerusalem a remarkable 699 times; whereas the Qur’an fails to mention the city once.
There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for the best part of 5000 years. However, the territory was colonised by Muslim forces during the 7th Century AD in the course of an extremely successful imperialist growth spurt. However, this invasion did not result in “Year Zero” or expediently expunge history.
The Israeli State has been attacked on several occasions, by concerted military efforts; has had to fight for its very existence, as it is the chilling, stated aim of other States & entities in the region to annihilate & extirpate the Jewish State. Many would argue that the attacks have actually been continuous, consistent, and deployed on multiple fronts. It is not fashionable to be an ally of the Jews. America has supported Israel, inter alia, because it is the only democracy extant in the region. Democracy is a delicate, vulnerable plant, particularly in such hostile geographical circumstances & conditions.
The Palestinians are a very fine, beautiful people. Unfortunately, they have been afflicted with appalling leadership; and suffer under the influence of the most atrocious, despotic, local regimes, who play politics with their plight.
Bob Dylan, himself “guilty” of being a member of the despised category, has a few telling lines in his song Neighborhood Bully. “He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully.”
It looks like the Jewish people are not going to conveniently lay down & die, despite the wishes of their many enemies.
April 30th, 2020
@budwar65 - Thanks for the upload! Can’t wait to dig in.
@caesar963 - Whenever “certain” kinds of books are uploaded, I always go to the comments first, in search of the gems you are sure to drop. Not only do I learn something valuable, I get the pleasure of your razor sharp wit!
April 30th, 2020
@pandapuppy - You’re too gracious! Especially in the bear-pit of an internet comments section during this, the misinformation age. Thank you.
May 1st, 2020
Come for the books.
Stay for the comments.
caesar is the shiz.
May 1st, 2020
All Salami and Bacon! Oh, Litote, uh,… Mohammad wasn’t even born until 500 years after Jesus. The Jews had the land WAAAAY before the Muslims took it from them.
May 1st, 2020
@spaniel1:
The Bible is a historical document? Really? So you believe Noah could have transported the entire terrestrial species of the planet (including those now extinct) in a 500-foot wooden boat fully provisioned for 40 days and nights (some scholars say it was actually 378 days)?
According to a scientific study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Jews are the genetic brothers of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, sharing a common genetic lineage that stretches back thousands of years. Therefore, it makes little sense to make a claim that the “Jews were here first”. The Jewish religion and cultural identity developed much later than their common genetic lineage. Furthermore, the majority of the population of Israel emigrated after the state of Israel was established. i.e. they were not indigenous. Genetically speaking, by the specious arguments given here, it could also be argued that Europeans have a claim to Africa if the “Out of Africa” theory of migration is accepted, which it generally is.
What is a fact is that Palestinians were forcibly driven off their lands to make room for these new arrivals.
By the logic of the commenters here, presumably Jews should could also be justifiably driven out of nations where their diaspora took them and their lands confiscated and returned to the indigenous inhabitants. Sounds a bit like the philosophy of that man with the funny moustache.
May 1st, 2020
Come to think of it, I would not oppose Hollyweird being transformed in to a native Indian reservation.
May 1st, 2020
“Sounds a bit like the philosophy of that man with the funny moustache.”
Which is what to a large degree led to Israel being founded (or seized depending on your perspective).
No doubt the irony is lost.
May 1st, 2020
The Tanakh is a compendium of generic forms, rather than a single genre; inclusive of: allegory; jurisprudential code; poetry; proverbs - and yes, narrative history. For example, the Books of Samuel are regarded as the first works of recorded history, predating Herodotus & Thucydides.
Quite noticeably, in the instance of Israel, the pertinent divisions are precisely along religious & cultural lines. Judaism is the most ancient, continuing, monotheistic, religious & cultural identity. It pre-exists all others, not merely those in the vicinity of its homeland, by a substantial margin.
Significantly, it has also outlasted all of its ancient, next-door neighbouring cultures; in addition to the proud, tyrannical empires of old. On a related point, it has even survived your fast friend with the funny moustache, who only made it 12 years into his ambitious, 1000 year, imperial timescale. Still, you’ll always have…Paris? Er, no, lost that as well.
(Come to think of it, would you oppose being jettisoned bodily from the North American continental landmass, in favour of its autochthonous peoples? Like the Jewish people, they do enjoy precedent, of course)
The Jews had their cultural genesis in the land of Israel. Of the 613 mitzvot, the vast majority can only be completed in the land of Israel. The Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish people are all buried in the land of Israel. The holiest sites in Judaism are located (yup) in the land of Israel.
May 1st, 2020
Archaeology, genealogy, and history all vindicate the Jewish claim to indigeneity. Palestinians do indeed have the legitimate “rights of longstanding presence” in Israel, but this does not trump the indigenous status of Jewish people, 90% of whom can directly trace their genetics to the Levant. The cultural genesis, spirituality, language, and ancestral ties of Palestinian Arabs, however, trace back to the Hejaz (a region in present-day Saudi Arabia). In the Qur’an, the Hejaz is where Muhammad was born and where he established a community of followers.
Forced into the dispersal, always hated & attacked by the most ignorant; yet maintaining their precious spiritual, cultural, and traditional customs, and always dreaming of their homeland, now the Jewish people finally have the right of return. And this, following the greatest attempt at systematic genocide in human history.
May 1st, 2020
Hark, the enraged tweaking of comical moustaches…
May 1st, 2020
@caesar963: I think someone else in these comments sections characterized you best as a “deep 14 year-old”.
Absurd of you to insist that the man with the toothbrush ’stache is a “fast friend” of mine. In your mind at least, it appears one is automatically an anti-semite for making an obvious (factual) point about the dispossession of Palestinians from their own lands.
Also very illogically, you make a straw man argument: “Palestinians do indeed have the legitimate “rights of longstanding presence” in Israel, but this does not trump the indigenous status of Jewish people…”
This is entirely irrelevant to the point I made, and in any case the vast majority of the citizens of Israel can only trace their emigre presence there to 1948 at best.
You insist that anyone remotely linked by genetics to a group that for some indefinite time period inhabited a region gives them an automatic right to those lands. According to the consensus of scientific study, modern humans originated in Southern Africa, so by your standard I should be able to claim a stake in the De Beers diamond mines, right? In any case, your contention would support the claims of Palestinians who are related to the same common ancestors of the region, predating Judaism by thousands of years. To reiterate, the “ancestral ties of Palestinian Arabs” trace back as far as the common ancestors of Jews, Syrians and Lebanese in the region, based on studies of genetics.
BTW, the Levant is too broad a historical geographical region to be used as a sensible term of reference for this discussion about the region recently named “Israel”.
Your emotive Hollywoodesque proclamation (queue string section) that the historical persecution of Jews gives them a right to “return”, of course ignores their injustice of forcibly evicting occupants from their own lands to be replaced by waves of colonizing immigrants post-1948.
If, as you seem to suggest, “autochthonous peoples” (please burn the thesaurus) have an inalienable claim to possess geographical regions then presumably you would also support the expulsion (and confiscation of land and property) of anyone foreign to the European continent and elsewhere (including Jews of course). I imagine you would be much more at home in a beer hall in 1930s Munich than me.
May 1st, 2020
Editorial correction: That should be “cue” not “queue”.
May 1st, 2020
@pandapuppy: Some gems. Would it be fair to assume you are put in to hysterical fits of laughter by the Three Stooges?
May 1st, 2020
Litote, “please burn the thesaurus” … bad choice of words perhaps?
Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.
“Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn people.
– Heinrich Heine
May 1st, 2020
@ssafe05: You’re brilliant. I’m ousted. Well in that case I might as well give in to the irrepressible urge… Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
May 1st, 2020
Salami like’m. I like’m salami.
May 1st, 2020
Oh, gosh. I think I broke litote.
May 1st, 2020
@anova - I see what you did there … peace out.
May 1st, 2020
Ah now, don’t knock 14 until you’ve reached that mighty mental milestone yourself. Although doubtless unattainable, as I fear we have yet to reach the foothills of your mountainous ignorance. I really don’t imagine your sieg heiling can be nearly as repressed (or as unusual) as you try to claim. A rather natural transition it appears; and as is discernible from the sequence of your peculiar assertions, obviously one of your few “pleasures” - especially as performed in front of a thoroughly nauseated audience. I’ll try to tailor the apparently excessively challenging syllables to your alarming, ah, abilities…? In line with ssafe’s observation, it took you remarkably few posts to get into your book-burning, marching stride. Although, no doubt your real-life timeline is even narrower. P’haps you should try reading them instead. Y’know, to give everyone a respite from your lamentable bitterness.
As to your fast friend with the funny moustache, the point is that you mentioned him first (no doubt frustrated that no one else had invoked him). You actually mentioned him twice, bizarrely quoting yourself mentioning him. That’s moustache-love, right there. Of course, you had already located yourself on the political spectrum, with your foaming rage against the hated Jew.
Attempting a sleazy, expedient causal link between the intentional, unprecedented crime of the Holocaust & the establishment of the State of Israel was a trite feature of neo-Nazi rhetoric & “thought” for many years. So much so, that the very words you used were placed by the great George Steiner in the mouth of (you guessed it) Adolf Hitler. This was in the book “The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.” - it will of course be orders of magnitude beyond your grasp. However, if you could approach such a work, let’s just say, you’d find yourself within its pages.
Of course, the straw men were all yours. In de facto terms, conventional straw man can’t really apply in your case; on the above clownish examples of your effort, ’straw-manning’ would be merely to accurately characterise your ideological discharges & ranting effusions. Right of Return is a litigated, established, universally recognised principle in international law. The panzers & stukas should not make you deaf to that.
There was no established, formal, Arab political entity prior to Israel’s War of Independence against invading Arab armies. Before 1948, few Arab Muslims recognised the designation “Palestinian” - it had, in the main, been applied to the Jewish people in the region. The Arabs of Palestine never exercised national sovereignty in the territory in which they lived.
An observed pattern of Arab emigration from Palestine, a land often described by Western travellers in the 18th & 19th centuries as “desolate” and “empty,” was reversed somewhat, especially after WWI, not by an upsurge of nationalist feeling but by the employment opportunities and improved quality of life that accompanied Zionist immigration and land development.
The geographic spread? Well, millennia of brutal persecution & forced dispersal will have that effect on a people. Consider also their massive trauma and being beleaguered by so many who want them dead. Archaeology, genealogy, and history all supporting the Jewish case (the, ahem, “recent” case of Israel)? Clearly unanswerable. Did you imagine that the Jewish people just closed their eyes, spun around, and dizzily pointed at a map? That their connection to their homeland was not as deep as the deepest foundation stones of the First and Second Temples? As deep as Hezekiah’s Tunnel? Did you “think” that they all originated in a Brooklyn deli? That Moses led his people out of bondage in Manhattan? If you’re ever lucky enough to travel to, and learn about, Israel, visit Yad Vashem to see the ineluctable corollary of your bigoted, galactic stupidity. Yad Vashem translates from the Hebrew as “a monument and a name” - what millions of victims had been denied, at least that was the hope of the murderers. All of which seems to make you uncomfortable, as it should. This in turn prompts the sleazy evasions & attempts at misdirection. Following the Holocaust memorial, you could travel to Masada, in order to fully appreciate how they won’t be surrendering to their vacuous despisers.
Of course, it would be necessary to have a pathologically absurd lack of self-consciousness (or consciousness?) to sit complacently on stolen land, while pompously, erroneously condemning others for engaging in land-theft. A grotesque parody of adopting the moral high ground. Again: the fault lines are religious & cultural, for this, the only democracy in the region. But then democracy isn’t really your thing. Shame, that.
You need to read & understand history before arguing it. You’ve got the process reversed & contrariwise. You have to try to grasp the tragedy of all involved. in 1948, Jews lived throughout the Levant alongside Muslims and Christians; since the Revolution, almost all have been expelled from their homes and sought refuge in Israel. That’s almost a million human beings. Sykes–Picot was a catastrophe. The British mandate was a disaster. The contributory factors are legion, and cannot merely be conveniently reduced to your narrow, mindless prejudice. History is complex & messy. Read some - find out.
Incidentally, you’re really not best placed to judge sense of humour (or anything else) given that you’re likely the only character (demented, broken ghoul?) who received Schindler’s List as a laugh-a-minute, knockabout comedy.
May 2nd, 2020
@caesar963:
I could not be bothered reading past the first par of your dreary, stiltedly styled, embarrassingly affected, hysterical, shallowly-Googled, semitic-supremicist, apologist screed.
I think, since you have stooped in the usual fashion of brain-washed, groupthink, virtue-signalling SJWs to calling anyone who does not align to your warped view of reality to attempt to publicly shame them as a “Nazi”, I will simply respond with my own ad hominem. Henceforth I will refer to you as, let’s see, I think paedophile will do.
May 2nd, 2020
…of course, “paedophile” being the dominant part of your fully reptilian brain. And deluded falsehood being your only form of quasi-expression.
A few too many two-syllable words for you, eh?
Yeah, I figured you’d try such a play. Diagnosis: chronic spinal lacuna, with concomitant cognitive cavity. Prognosis? More embittered unhappiness & sad joylessness for you, I fear. Still, hey-ho!
Risibly, when it comes to elementary logic & reason, your ears have an atomic number of 50. You’ve proven yourself not at home to rational argument & meaningful discourse. Like Israel, they are a foreign country, of which you clearly know less than nothing.
Past time indeed for you to cravenly quit, given that you achieved peak-troll some time ago. Since then, you’ve merely been coasting on people’s revulsion & queasiness.
I should let you get back to your lonely, tumescent, onanistic tribute to your beloved. Don’t keep Der Führer waiting, erbärmlicher Verlierer!
May 2nd, 2020
I beseech you again, please, please for the love of God burn your much abused thesaurus, Pedo-Boy.
May 2nd, 2020
You’re technically an ephebophile, right? Be honest, that’s merely a paedo with a thesaurus, isn’t it?! You guys sure do love mincing about with your titles. Just because the Ancient Greeks did it, does not make you Socrates with a sticky keyboard, y’know.
May 2nd, 2020
One parting piece of advice to you Pedo-Boy:
“It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt”
May 2nd, 2020
And yet still you spoke & removed all dubio? Priceless!
I accept your humiliating capitulation.
May 2nd, 2020
(Fear not, that just means you surrendered)
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