Posted on 05/22/2002 8:24:29 PM PDT by blam
Lying is cultural trait of Arabs, says Barak
Brian Whitaker in Jerusalem
Thursday May 23, 2002
The Guardian
Palestinians have no compunction about telling lies and see truth as irrelevant, the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak has claimed in an interview. "They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie... creates no dissonance," Mr Barak says. "They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judaeo-Christian culture."
"Truth is seen as an irrelevant category," he says."There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as 'the truth'."
Interviewed by the Jewish historian Benny Morris for an article in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, Mr Barak not only relates his comments about lying to Yasser Arafat in particular, but to Arab society in general.
He says: "The deputy director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation once told me that there are societies in which lie detectors don't work, societies in which lies do not create cognitive dissonance [on which the tests are based]."
As an example of Mr Arafat's alleged mendacity, Mr Barak cites an incident in October 2000, shortly after the start of the intifada. The Israeli and Palestinian leaders, together with Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state at the time, were meeting in Paris to discuss a ceasefire.
Mr Arafat had agreed to call a number of his police commanders to implement a truce.
Mr Barak recalls protesting: "'But these are not the people organising the violence. If you are serious, then call Marwan Bargouti and Hussein al-Sheikh [two West Bank Fatah leaders].'
"Arafat looked at me, with an expression of blank innocence, as if I had mentioned the names of two polar bears, and said, 'Who? Who?'
"So I repeated the names, this time with a pronounced, clear Arabic inflection... and Arafat again said, 'Who? Who?'
"At this, some of his aides couldn't stop themselves and burst out laughing. And Arafat, forced to drop the pretence, agreed to call them later."
Answer: The Germans.
'Business before Pleasure'
That description is a little extreme for some and right on for others such as Moslems and Hindus (people indigineous toIndia, whatever their religion) but to some extent it applies to Asians and North Africans in general.
Won't slow them up a bit.It is not wrong to lie to an infidel. That needs no modifications or what ifs. It is not wrong to lie to an infidel. Ever.It is wrong to tell a truth to an infidel if that truth benefits the infidel.
Same-o same-o. To that particular tribe truth is entirely relative and is whatever benefits the cause. There is simply no functioning concept of truth as observable fact regardless of how it affects one's "position"- the party line.
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