"If we could just sit down and talk and get over our differences!" The very idea that one might do that is a Western concept, not shared with Arabic culture.
The thing that's hard to remember, and almost impossible to come to grips with, is that
they don’t think the same way we do.
Yes, follow that link... required reading, from an American anthropologist who spent years in Eastern Europe and then a year with the Saudis.
It's amazing, because the dominant lesson for us Westerners, for the last few generations, is
people are all the same. We can't possibly imagine that, when Israelis bomb innocent Palestinian children, that is exactly what the mothers and fathers of those children want to have happen. We imagine they value their children in the same ways we do. We can't accept the notion in our heads that the father teaches the children that the greatest glory is if they die with him when he is bombed from above. We really can't accept that this is what he actually believes.
The goal of our negotiations will be for them to become more Western. Not outright, not obviously; we will depend on things like cause and effect, ideas of Western honor, things they don't believe in and don't value. We can't see that because we are Western. And so, when we sit down with them and negotiate with them from our Western point of view, the negotiations will necessary fail because of things we just can't understand.
01-09-2009, 09:23 AM
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