Summary
One of Israel’s most important journalists of his time and editor of Maariv, “the most popular newspaper in Israel”; in Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, his article “You cannot negotiate with Allah” (Maariv, 7/10/55) is quoted at length in Chapter 9 as the exhibit of the psychological-nationalist outlook — Islam itself as the enemy — that underwrites refusal to withdraw from the status quo (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.453-457).
Details
- Carlebach’s article, as quoted: in the world of Islam “you are faced with the obscure unexplained will of Allah. You are faced with a capricious, hidden, pathological tyrant”; “The Islamic person does not create and does not change the face of the world, not even to his advantage”; sickness, the absence of a socialist movement, of social justice and of democracy are each Islam’s work — “These countries do not suffer from poverty or from sickness or from ignorance and exploitation; they suffer only from that most terrible of afflictions – Islam” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.454).
- “You can talk “business” with everyone, even Satan. But not – with Allah”; of the country’s past civilizations and invaders, “all of them, even the Crusaders, left signs of culture and efflorescence. But where Islam trod – even the trees died” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.455).
- Carlebach drew the political conclusion himself: reducing the argument to a conflict over borders is “adding a sin to a crime”, because “The question of borders is not the source of the conflict, but the Muslim psychology”; a political representation arms the Arabs with claims — “we are seen as having come to a country that was all Arab, and we conquered and inserted ourselves as a wedge between them, we burdened them with refugees” — that “make sense to Western opinion”; “Conquest by the sword is no injustice in their eyes, in the eyes of Islam; on the contrary, it is confers rights [as printed] and proof of eternal ownership. Concern for the refugees, for dispossessed brothers, is not part of their conceptual world. Allah expelled them – Allah will take care of them” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.455-456).
- His conclusion: “the truth that the enemy is the spirit of Islam. It is not our enemy just because we just happen to be living here. It would be an enemy to us even if we were living on the North Pole … It has never contributed and never will contribute anything positive. It has not produced a single personage who has moved the world forward in any place. It is darkness. It is reaction. It is a prison for five hundred million suffering human beings. It is a hidden mine against the peace of the world” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.456).
- The book’s comment: “This article, which would be accepted in any Nazi newspaper if the word “Islam” were replaced with “Judaism”, elicited no protests or indignant responses in Israel, no one pressed charges against the editor of “the most popular newspaper in Israel”, no one rebuked the honourable doctor. The truth is that many agreed with this opinion, and more than a few agree with it even today, even if they would formulate their opinions in a more moderate way”; the article “clarifies and demonstrates the close reciprocal relations between the psychological-nationalist outlook and the refusal to withdraw from the status quo” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.457).
- Chapter 9 later notes that viewing Arab hatred as the conflict’s decisive cause “is not only the preserve of people like Dr. Ezriel Carlebach, but also that of a veteran Middle East academic like Michael Assaf” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.464).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Shmuel Shnitzer, Michael Assaf