The recent self-immolations by Arabs in Tunisia and Egypt seems to have caught the politicos and pundits in the Western world off guard as it did the antisemitic political left.  Even while forces were developing and were growing to bring down the Mubarak government in Egypt, the public was listening to Hillary – the voice for the Arab/Muslims in the Obama administration – and other elected and appointed officials tell us – nay, assure us –  that the Egyptian Government is stable.

While the various politicians and the leftist pundits and intellectuals were busy blaming Israel for all the ills and ferment in the Middle East – if not the entire world – and trying to get everyone to focus on solving the Israeli-”Palestinian” issue they, predictably, missed the big story – one that many of us were saying, i.e. that the Arab world was using the Israelis (Jews), once again as the time-honored external scapegoats to hide their own internal problems.

Now we see the veracity of that insight playing out before us.

Notice how quiet are the pundits and the antisemitic political left and even our administration  along with other Western administrations and other pundits.  They have not yet figured out how to blame Israel or the Jews for these events.

Israel, now, is not in the center of these events.  Israel, like the rest of the world is now a bystander wondering what all of these events will mean regionally and globally and how these events will affect its relationship with the various Arab nations, especially Egypt, a nation with which Israel has had, to date, a 30 year peace treaty.

It never occurred to them that the in the Muslim Arab world, the people are concerned with such mundane aspects of life as their economic situation, health care, sanitation, clean water, education and personal freedom.  The truth is emerging: these people really do not give a damn about the so-called “Palestinians” and perhaps are even getting tired of being used as canon fodder by their political and clerical leaders  and tired of being used by people throughout the world for their own selfish, political agendas.

Perhaps access to modern technology and the varied means of rapid communication as well as actually witnessing the discrepancy in life style between themselves and the country they have been assured is the cause of their misery and therefore their enemy is finally penetrating the masses and making them realize how they have been used and abused and lied to.

They see the remnants of a devastated people decimated by the Holocaust, who are survivors of concentration and death camps and  who were driven from virtually every corner of the Earth settle in a nearby state who then, within the  span of 60 -70 years,  progressed from impoverishment in an undeveloped land to become a democratic nation and a world leader in science and technology and an exporter of agricultural produce, even while being forced to spend more than 50% of its GNP on defense and being forced to engage in a continuous struggle for survival against the combined forces of its boarder states supported by not only the larger Muslim world but other nations as well .  Logic dictates that the people have been and are seeing a disconnect between what they were being told and reality.  It is natural that they would desire the same for themselves.

Instead of their leaders creating conditions that would emulate  success as achieved by Israel, they see their leaders as continually oppressing them, denying them basic human rights while retaining the yoke of poverty around their necks.   Rather than using their innate talents and energies to learn from Israel and develop and advance their own societies, they see their leaders squander their resources in attempts at destroying the successful nation of Israel.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we are seeing the beginnings of a reform movement in the Arab/Muslim world, led by a new generation of young men and women that could spread to the rest of the Muslim world?

But freedom and enlightenment come with a very high price tag.  There will be the unfortunate loss of life.  The inevitable repressive responses already have set in and other governments are clamping down on dissent.

It is going to be interesting to see what unfolds in the ensuing weeks and months and  how the West and political left is going to respond to the events pertaining to the personal, economic and political aspirations of the Arab/Muslim citizenry.

I cannot help but wonder how the NY (T)(SL)IMES,  (T)(S)LIME MAGAZINE, the Guardian, the BBC, NPR, AP et al. will report these events and put them into context if they cannot put their predictable anti-Israel antisemitic twists to the stories?  I wonder if they will start to tell the real truth instead of their fiction?

No way!

They could never publicly acknowledge their errors.

I could see it now:  all of these media outlets have their fiction writers holed up in some large room behind closed doors, not letting them leave – except, perhaps for a bathroom break, having food, water and toiletries and a change of clothes brought in and having them sleeping on the premises while they are brainstorming and using their creative energies and talents to develop the new fairy tales of Jewish involvement with which to dazzle the public and, once again, mislead them as to what is truly occurring in the world.

A Jewish external scapegoat is still required to explain their dishonest and negatively biased reporting about Israel.  The deadly ideology is all important and must be retained at the expense of truth and justice.

I never cease to be amazed by the general ignorance of people in our society, especially those who like to think of themselves as being intellectuals – irrespective of their occupations, and those who consider themselves social commentators.

When I was actively teaching as well as  giving public talks on science and religion, inevitably I asked the  students or the audiences: “What constitutes culture?”  Collectively, they would develop a consensus definition which closely resembled that of Jeff Chang and Brian Komar in their article “Vision: How We Can Beat Conservatives With Progressive Culture” that appeared in The American Prospect (January 26, 2011):  ”Culture is the space in our national consciousness filled by music, books, sports, movies, theater, visual arts, and media. It is the realm of ideas, images, and stories — ”  My groups tended to  include religion and express some of the above activities in more general terms such as literature  - so as to include fiction and non fiction books, essays and poetry –  and accepted my inclusive term of fine and performing arts for dance, music, art and acting.  During the process, I kept asking them what was missing.  In response to my prodding, they kept adding subjects until they reached what they thought was the final product.

It is at this point that I continued to goad them by asking what was missing from the list.  At this time, there was the inevitable, prolonged silence accompanied by quizzical looks on their faces.  They thought that they had covered everything that is usually considered to constitute culture.   The reactions I elicited transcended political ideology, religious orientation, sex etc.  Irrespective of the audience, I persisted in asserting that something was missing.  Have you figured it out?  I had already  provided the answer.

That which is missing is science(including math)/technology.  Somewhat ironically, the students were sitting in biology classes during these intellectual exercises.  Despite the fact that we live in a scientific and technological age and that there isn’t an aspect of our lives  that has not been affected by science and technology – including the so-called traditional componenets of culture – no one ever seemed to think of or consider science/technology as part of culture until I forced them to confront reality and do some critical thinking.

I never completely understood why this cultural blind spot existed.  I considered the attitude from the general public as having been derived from their lifelong exposure to and brainwashing by religion and the anti-science influence of movies and TV.   I had a slightly greater difficulty of understanding such a deficiency from the literati and self-labeled intellectuals, especially those in the humanities and, to a barely lesser extent, those in the social sciences: all these individuals tended to express a loathing – perhaps a fear – of science/technology.  It was as if it was beneath their dignity to consider science/technology as high culture.  It was as if  science and technology existed in some parallel universe.  People were willing to utilize all of the advantages brought by science and technology without recognizing these disciplines for what they really had become, the center of our culture.

On occasion, I would suggest to colleagues in the humanities that scientists and technologists knew more about literature and the fine and performing arts than they did about science.  I would point out that scientists and technologists did more general reading, attend art shows, attend theater, dance and concerts, visited museums etc. while subscribing to a variety of cultural magazines such as The New Yorker while there was not a single one of them who read or even subscribed to Scientific American,  the Smithsonian or the National Geographic - except perhaps for the men to pick up an occasional issue when sitting in a physician or dental office to see whether that issue had pictures of  naked or half naked native women from some exotic land.

The responses to my observation almost always included a sneering statement to the effect that I was making an erroneous comparison.  Yet, when challenged as to why it was erroneous, neither a valid justification nor a valid explanation for their accusation was ever forthcoming.

Based on the writings of Chang and Komar and despite all the great scientific and technological advances of the past 150 years including the advances in medicine and the increase in longevity,  it would seem that nothing has changed in the 40 – 50 years that I have been challenging people to explain to me what constitutes culture.