AMMAN - A lack of objective Arab research on Israel has had a profound impact on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the history of the entire region over the past half-century, according to a recently released book.
In his new book, "Israelism", Jordanian political analyst, researcher and columnist Hassan Barari borrows his title from Edward Said's seminal work "Orientalism".
Barari, who read Said's work in a translation class in high school, sees parallels between the two phenomena.
"We have been so critical of Orientalism, how Western scholars don't live here and don't know the language. If I apply the same logic to the way Arabs have written on Israel, we have a similar trend in Israelism," he said, noting that as Said's "Orientalism" concludes that as the Orient was studied by the West in order to be "dominated", Israel is studied in the region with the main aim of singling it out as an enemy.
Barari said there was very little Arab academic writing on Israel in the first three decades of its existence, compared to the wealth of studies on Arab countries, although "biased", written at the same time in Israel.
The resulting lack of objective research resulted in a knowledge deficit that undermined Arab efforts to regain territories and secure Palestinians their land and basic rights, he said.
"We failed miserably at a time when knowledge was power".
Arabs believed at first that Israel was an "artificial entity" and a "passing phenomenon" which would not require any further study, while all efforts to make Israel seem "weak" often led to underestimation of its military and political capabilities.
"We thought that Israeli society would collapse at the first bullet. And it did not, time and time again," he said.
A language barrier has also hindered research. As most researchers and journalists tended to be against normalisation with Israel at all levels, they refused to learn Hebrew or converse with Israelis, dramatically impairing Arabs' understanding of Israeli decision making.
Another factor inhibiting Arab research was what he terms as an "inevitability mindset" which led scholars to believe that as the country was "not likely to last", there was no need to understand domestic happenings in Israel.
Between 1948 and the 1970s, Arab nationalists, who dominated the discourse on Israel, viewed Israel as a tool of imperialists looking to take Arab resources and occupy lands, and believed that the study of the West and Russia, but not Israeli domestic politics, was sufficient to understand Israeli actions.
Following the 1967 war, the Islamist movement, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, began to take up the Israeli issue as their own, shaping Israeli studies in the region, according to Barari.
"By the 1980s, Israel proved to have a strong and dynamic society with a GDP which was larger than Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon combined. Views of it collapsing began to wane," he noted.
In the 1980s, the Islamists used the Palestinian-Israeli issue for their own end, believing that only after "Islamising" and "purifying" Arab society could Israel be defeated, an approach that has also discouraged objective study, according to Barari's book, which he researched in Hebrew, Arabic and English with the aid of the United States Institute of Peace.
Only in the mid-1990s, with the Oslo Accords and other peace efforts, did Jordanian scholars begin producing analytical research on Israeli society and politics, he said, noting that further study is still needed in the field.
"We do have good scholars who work on Israel in an objective way, but up until now, the dominant style of writing on the subject has been Israelism," he said, noting that Arab media failed to play "an encouraging role" in accurately depicting developments in Israel, hurting the Arab cause.
Al Ghad columnist Jamil Nimri agreed, noting that it was easier for Jordanian journalists to report on Israel during the "good times" between 1994 and 1997, following the 1994 Wadi Araba Peace Treaty and before the second Intifada.
"At the time we saw a breakthrough in reporting. There was more interest to see Israelis in a more objective way, because in the end they are also human beings - we could see them in a different kind of light," he said.
Barari, who held a book signing last month, expressed hope for greater understanding, which he stressed does not contradict the Arab or Palestinian cause.
"Knowledge is power," he said.
By Taylor Luck
© Jordan Times 2009
