In a naive world

Hopefully, naivety will be a casualty of the Hamas War.  Children in a playground can be naive – but our world is no playground. 

By Howard Rotberg    Dec 22, 2023,

“It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.”– Anatole France

The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines “naive” as “lacking knowledge, experience of life, or good judgment, and willing to believe that people always tell you the truth”. To this, I, a son of a Holocaust survivor, would add “willing to believe that people are good”. Every morning, after reading the newspaper, I am reminded that this is a world of Good versus Evil, and people who don’t understand that are naive.

And so, after the Shoah, naivety should have died. Or maybe it just faded a bit and has revived itself,

Even some Israelis, surrounded by enemies who want them all dead and don’t hesitate to say so, in their charters or in their media or in their universities, have caught this virus of naivety.

What else can you say about a government and a security apparatus that, in the face of all this, was content with “quiet” or “mowing the grass”.

What else can one say about the folks who turned over Gaza to the genocidal Palestinian haters, or who thought the Oslo Process was a good faith policy of Yassr Arafat.

What else can one say about people who thought, after the Second Intifada, that Good will inevitably win out over Evil.

As the Washington Post noted: “For more than a decade, when analysts described the strategy utilized by Israel against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, they’ve used a metaphor: With their displays of overwhelming military strength, Israeli forces were ‘mowing the grass.’”

Efaim Inbar and Eitan Shamir wrote in a 2014 article for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies: “Against an implacable, well-entrenched, nonstate enemy like the Hamas, Israel simply needs to ‘mow the grass’ once in a while to degrade enemy capabilities. A war of attrition against Hamas is probably Israel’s fate for the long term,”

Hopefully, this virus of naivety will be another casualty of the Hamas War. It might be fine for children in a playground to be somewhat naive – but our world is no playground.

When one pays regard to the over-reliance of Israel on an America under Biden, our eyes should have been opened: America now tolerates and even supports the anti-Israel types glorified by its media – such as Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, AOC, Bernie Sanders and the Black Caucus.

“We (the Palestinians) will win because of two reasons. Because of your stupid democracy and because of our wombs.” – Arab Israeli politician and lawyer Taleb a-Sanaa.

We cannot solely rely, for our policies, on polls but we cannot ignore them either.

We shouldn’t ignore the following:

A new poll has shown that half of registered American voters aged between 18 and 24 support Hamas more than Israel in the Gaza war. However more than four in five voters overall in all age groups support Israel. The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found just 19 percent of US voters think the long-term solution is for Israel to “be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians”, but that figure rose to 51 percent among those aged 18 to 24, and 31 percent for those between 25 and 34 years old.

Does this mean that young people will grow out of their naive beliefs or is this a bad omen for the future as these younger Americans assume positions of influence and governance?

Another wartime opinion poll among Palestinian Arabs published by AP News shows a rise in support for Hamas, which appears to have ticked up even in the devastated Gaza Strip. This poll shows an overwhelming rejection of Western-backed Mahmoud Abbas, with nearly 90% saying he must resign.

The findings by a Palestinian Arab pollster signal more difficulties ahead for the naive Biden administration postwar vision for Gaza, which thinks that the Palestinian Authority (which is a main part of the problem) can somehow be part of a solution that sees it replacing Hamas in Gaza. Does anyone who understands reality and is not naive think that this would advance prospects for peace?

Another poll was conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development, a research organization based in the so-called ‘West Bank’, carried out after the Oct. 7 attacks and following Israel’s military invasion of Gaza.

To the question, “How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th?” 59.3 per cent supported it strongly, with another 15.7 per cent of people supporting it somewhat — a combined total of 75 per cent backing the slaughter of men, women and children.

The Oct. 7 attacks are widely attributed to Hamas, but more specifically, it is likely that it was Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, that carried out the raid.

And how do Palestinian Arabss view the Qassam Brigades? The poll found that 79.1 per cent of Gazans had a positive view of the organization and, in the /West Bank/, that grew to 95.4 per cent. As for Hamas, almost 60 per cent of Gazans had a positive view of it, with that number rocketing to 87.7 per cent in the /West Bank/.

Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization, is supported by 71.9 per cent of Gazans and over 90 per cent of people in the West Bank. And the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is viewed positively by almost 70 per cent of Gazans and over 80 per cent of West Bank respondents.

Regarding the naive two-state solution, we must note that having a population of one of those states that supports the destruction of the other and that educates its young to commit genocide might be an impediment.

Palestinian Arabs are themselves not optimistic about peace. When asked if “your conviction in the possibility” of achieving peace with Israel or coexistence between Palestinian Arabs and Israel had increased or decreased, almost 90 per cent said it had decreased in both cases.

When asked why the United States and the West support Israel, answers included: the Israeli lobby (91.5 per cent); hatred of Muslims and Islam (89.5 per cent); and political and economic interests in the region (96.3 per cent).

And the number of Palestinian Arabs who feel pride after Oct. 7 sits at 94.3 per cent.

Do we believe these polls, or does believing anything said by the Palestinian Arabs, constitute a form of naivety? If the Palestinian Arabs see some international resolve against them, especially from Arab states and their mentors in Europe, might we expect to see a new understanding that the Palestinian Arabs don’t tell the truth about very much and it is naive to think otherwise.

Right now the Palestinians have little support from other Arab states who don’t want to admit any into their countries. Most of their support comes from western nations, who, together with their international organizations, lie about their support for Israel.

In the Middle East there is the “narrative” and then there is the “truth”. As we noted, those who lack knowledge, experience of life, or good judgment, and are willing to believe that people always tell you the truth and are mostly good, is the essence of naivety; Such ideological confusion must be overcome, sooner rather than later.

Right now the Palestinians have little support from other Arab states who don’t want to admit any into their countries. Most of their support comes from western nations, who, together with their international organizations, lie about their support for Israel.

In the Middle East there is the “narrative” and then there is the “truth”. As we noted, those who lack knowledge, experience of life, or good judgment, and are willing to believe that people always tell you the truth and are mostly good, is the essence of naivety; Such ideological confusion must be overcome, sooner rather than later.

Howard Rotberg writes on ideologies, values and culture and is the author of The Second Catastrophe: A Novel About a Book and its Author, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed, and The Ideological Path to Submission … and what we can do about it. His new book, Second Generation Radical: The World Through One Man’s Second Generation Lens is set to be released in late January.

December 23, 2023 | 7 Comments »

Leave a Reply

7 Comments / 7 Comments

  1. Bob

    It has nothing to do with secular. The secular rather has to shoulder the responsibility to step up and create the new situation – total Jewish power in all of Israel from the river plus some to the sea. Jews must say they will not live with Arabs. Then Jews will be free. This will be created by scientific and political consciousness resulting in political clarity. Not one human can afford to waste time because a new form of terror is around the corner.

  2. Israel’s problem is even worse, as Hamas is really just another front group for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is the group waging the Propaganda war against Isrsel and the Jews. It views this as a multi-generational struggle while most Western politicians views it at most as one that last a political cycle.
    It doesn’t look like the Israeli secular elite have internalized this threat either. As Sung Tzu, said, “If you don’t understand the enemy, you can have victory and defeat in the same war.”

  3. Dreuveni

    But what new information has Rotberg given us?

    He has told us about things that have happened but without any explanation of why?

    It teaches nothing of relevance.

  4. Peloni…About Greta

    You are making a grave mistake and in truth the mistake is not about Greta alone but about what she stands for

    This is more complex because she has changed her position

    She started the movement Fridays For Future

    As years went on this grew into a mass movement. Why did it grow? Reason there a worry in the youth about the reports on the planet warming. And not just “reports” – living experience also

    At this point activists like Greta were reading about the research of Climate Scientists.

    At around this point you are introducing something I am seeing reference to as Globalism

    I still have no idea what this is.

    But we do live on a planet, incidentally a globe in shape, and we are understanding very well what is happening to this planet.

    It is heating up with massive repercussions.

    This is the science. Address it please or else deny it…and explain your denial

    If you are a proud Zionist then you need to examine this science.

    That was my central point. The science exists quite independently of Thunberg.

    Do not be utilising this wretched youth to try to do down the science. Because that will be exposed as a cheap stunt.

    If anyone needs help with the science in all good spirit you just have to ask.

  5. @Felix
    Greta is a creepy and disturbed child who has been manipulated towards serving as a vehicle of power for the Globalists and everything and anything which they choose to support. With this in mind, it should be understood that her support for climate change was no more based on science than her support for the Pals is based on history. Like a wind up toy which wanders on a vector which is chosen by others, she is an automaton acting as a leader whom only the greatest fools might find persuasive enough to follow. Glad to hear you have shed any interest which you might have had in her, but really, with all due respect, if you or anyone ever seriously found her dopey demeanor or her limp rhetoric to be persuasive alternatives to reality, I would be challenged to understand why.

  6. Rotberg gives more of the same.

    Lee Smith is the author of The Permanent Coup: How Enemies Foreign and Domestic Targeted the American President (2020).

    The book title above contains.s bitter lie: that Trump is an alternative to brutal American Imperialism. In truth it is the same old Imperialism only wearing slightly different clothes. The clothes of a raggle taggle salesman. A type of con artist wearing a very long red tie. Politics the same. In his rushed four years plenty of examples of that unchanging reality until eventually Trump descended onto the chaos of two forms of denial of reality 1. Denial of virus affliction. 2. Denial of Global Warming of the planet earth caused by greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

    Considering that Global Warming, not the spectacle of Palestinian Arab Antisemitism paraded under the banner of Left Fascism is the earthly main danger facing all mankind, then the conclusion is…no difference between the politics of these aging out of touch, reactionary two electioneering figures. Climate Change is going to engulf all else and (in this) nations such as Israel must ensure it can survive. For the Jews the main battles are still to be fought.

    A word in this about Greta Thunberg. First of all the science of Global Warming goes back as far as Joseph Fourier, advanced seriously by the Irishman John Tyndall (c. 1822–1893) and by many others including Carl Sagan. Not grasping that the warming of the planet is (not a religion) but a matter of simple to grasp physics, Thunberg nevertheless turned her back on science to land in the middle of a Hating Jews phenomenon. And that means very simply and clearly she is an enemy of science. Amazing juxtaposition Greta ended in the lap of vile female hating Hamas, Islam being the very antidote to science! However she dresses herself up in future…Indeed having no future whatsoever… She Thunberg is toast. No more than an oddity in the history of science.

    The defence of Climate Science will go forward despite Thunberg.

  7. Howard has said all you need to know. The details are simply icing on top, like Hezbollah in Lebanon or UNRWA in Gaza.