Nominate Orphaned Land to 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

Here is my petition to nominate the Israeli metal band Orphaned Land to the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. Orphaned Land has managed to create a reality of coexistence in the region that has escaped politicians and peacemakers alike. This petition is just step one in the process of nominating this band. It’s goal is to generate support and buzz. If you haven’t already signed it, please do and share with your online community. Let’s make history.     

Israel, Iran and the Cuban Missile Crises.

Over at Al Jazeera, Trita Parsi and I explore both the limitations and potential of using the Cuban Missile Crises as an analogy to the current situation between Israel and Iran.

“Watching the conflict between Iran and Israel escalate, it’s hard not to draw analogies and lessons from history. Indeed, Netanyahu’s thinking in this regard is very much anchored in the past: “The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany”, time and again he has warned. Such analogs provide leaders with a quick and handy “user manual”: a way to sell a desired policy path and provide a platform for action.

Yet as mental shortcuts, analogs could easily lead to unwanted outcomes. Crucial decisions, like going to war, could be based on paying attention to the wrong lessons, or making a false comparison between two different situations. Indeed, it is neither 1938 (Iran is far from having a bomb or a delivery system) nor is Iran Nazi Germany (Iran’s military budget is fraction of that of Israel and the US). Claiming so, however, leaves no room for any response save military force.

Recently, another historical episode, the Cuban Missile Crisis, has been gaining traction. Just as the US, the analogy goes, faced the intolerable choice of either attacking Cuba or allowing Soviet nuclear weapons in its own backyard, so too Israel/US must decide between attacking Iran or allowing it to become nuclear.”

To read the rest, click here.

An Illness Within.

My latest in Haaretz. A look at the importance of language and metaphors in the recent anti-immigrant rhetoric in Israel. Sometimes (if I may paraphrase Nietzsche), one needs to opine with a hammer.

On the day that the first, and highly publicized “repatriation” of South Sudanese migrants begins, we need to look again at the rhetoric employed by Israeli politicians and broadcasters towards those seeking refuge and a better life in Israel.

The incitements that lead to the anti-immigrant riot of March 23 by Israeli politicians Miri Regev, Danny Danon, and Michael Ben-Ari have rightly shocked people of good conscience. Many have asked how, after all, can politicians representing the state of Israel call people living in its midst a “cancer in our body” and a “national plague”? However, a poll taken shortly after the incident (by the Israel Democracy Institute) has shown that 53 percent of Israelis identify with those statements and 33 percent of Jews (along with 23 percent of Arabs) supported the acts of violence against African immigrants.

More recently, media personality and Army Radio talk-show host Avri Gilad said the migrants who enter Israel are a threat by virtue of being Muslims; which according to him is “the most terrible disease raging around the world.” He further explained that even though many of them are moderate, they carry a “virus” that can “explode” at any moment.

To understand the seriousness of Regev, Danon and Gilad’s statements we only have to mine history for the way in which Jews and others have been on the wrong end of similar pronouncements. Almost every genocide in recorded history has been preceded by the instrumental use of language to dehumanize and demonize a particular population – not least the Holocaust, but also Rwanda and Cambodia at the time of the Khmer Rouge. In other words, language – particularly the use of metaphors – matters.

Can Heavy Metal Save the World?

My latest on the way in which Orphaned Land, Israel’s biggest heavy metal band, is transforming relations between Muslims and Jews in the MENA.

Sometimes change happens in the most unlikely ways, fostered by the most unlikely of people. In the last few years, while Israel’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim world has drastically deteriorated, an Israeli heavy metal band has been uniting thousands of Jews and Muslims across the Middle East.

Originally published in Common Ground News, a longer version of this piece also appears in The Jerusalem Post.

When Doves Cry

It is said that wars begin in the minds of men. Considering the people charged with running Israel and Iran today, this is indeed a frightening prospect. But it’s also a chilling insight into the workings of the human mind in general. Why? Because our minds are filled with biases – unconscious and systematic errors of judgment – that make war with Iran an increasing possibility. We are, as psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman argues, hardwired to find hawkish arguments more convincing than dovish ones.

Kahneman’s lecture was given in 2006 (the english begins 1:48), but the implication for the current and escalating conflict between Israel and Iran are clear. Below I have selected a number of cognitive biases (not all mentioned by Kahneman) that I believe are influencing the recent bellicose rhetoric emanating from Jerusalem and Tehran. For the sake of familiarity I will concentrate on the Israeli hawkish narrative (you can read a recent example here).

Revolution Calling!

Protests are in the air and on the ground, and since protests are a social act, here are two pieces that I co-wrote/prepared dealing with recent social movements in Israel.

The first is a collection of personal reactions from Israelis living abroad to the revolution that is happening in their home country. The piece features Natasha Mozgovaya, Dan Arieli, Joel Schalit, Alon Ben Meir, Kobi Skolnick, myself and others. The piece was published in 972 and co-prepared with my good friend Ami Kaufman.

The second article is co-written with another good friend, Aziz Abu Sarah, and recalls our experience marching together for a Palestinian state in Jerusalem. With everything that’s been happening in Israel, the piece feels a little like yesterdays news (the protest took place July 15 and we wrote this a few weeks back) but it was an important demonstration that should not be forgotten.

Also published in Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic, French, Urdo, and Hebrew.

More on Johanna Fakhri’s Performance With Orphaned Land

From France 24′s The Observers (with my full interview below).

“That a heavy metal band and a belly dancer perform together is unusual enough. When the band is Israeli and the dancer Lebanese, the performance raises quite a few eyebrows. But when the performers choose to brandish their respective countries’ flags side by side on stage, you have all the ingredients for a potentially volatile mix.

Johanna Fakhry: A Dance of Moral Courage.

Johanna Fakhry, the talented and courageous Lebanese dancer who joined Orphaned Land on stage, has penned a response to her inspiring and controversial artistic collaboration with the Israeli band.

* I have slightly edited the letter for grammar and flow (where meaning was unclear, I left untouched).

Facing the amount of mails concerning the deed we’ve done on stage at the Hellfest Festival with Orphaned Land – that is to say raising and uniting on stage both Lebanese and Israeli flag – your worldwide reactions as bad or positive, as hateful or supportive as they can be, led us (Kobi and I) to write a statement explaining and not justifying our behaviour.

Conflict Resolution Commandos: A Response to the Flotilla.

* The following article was co-written with Andrea Bartoli and published in issue 4 of Unrest Magazine. It’s also published at the Huffington Post.

This month a new flotilla is scheduled to set sail to Gaza. As will be recalled, in May 2010 a violent confrontation at sea between Israeli naval forces and pro-Palestinian activists led to the death of nine people and many more injured; before a Turkish vessel aiming at breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza was escorted to a port. As a consequence, relations between Israel and Turkey dramatically soured and Israel’s standing in the international community further eroded. Judging by the rhetoric of the parties involved today another collision seems imminent, with more flotillas forthcoming in the future.

As scholars of conflict resolution, we believe that such situations call for constructive adaptation on the part of those involved. To that end we propose the IDF take initiative and create the first ever Conflict Resolution Commando unit.

The Moral Failure of Benjamin Netanyahu

It was all leading to this – the youth spent in the US, the education at MIT, the years honed as Israel’s top diplomat – speaking before the United States Congress, Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu finally experienced his moment in the Beltway sun. Regaling his august audience with history lessons, military escapades and self-congratulatory rhetoric, Mr. Netanyahu held his listeners in rapt attention. Indeed, with 29 standing ovations, incessant clapping and over-the-top adulations, the Prime Minister turned the US Congress into a hysterical audience resembling an Oprah Winfrey’s give-away special. By the time his speech was over, Mr. Netanyahu had both democrats and republicans singing, “Bibi bibi bibi can’t you see, sometimes your words just hypnotize me.”

But the hypnosis will eventually wear off, and when it does congress will have to face an unpleasant reality: Mr. Netanyahu had sold them a bill of goods rotten to the core. And everybody can smell its pungent stench.