Posted on 09/08/2002 12:38:13 PM PDT by Lockbox
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."
What a truly silly comment
LYING IS A WAY OF LIFE THERE -- ESPECIALLY TO THE INFIDEL (that's US folks, that's US).
It is stunning how the oil-rich Arab countries have squandered their wealth. It kinda reminds me of a story my late mother told me. When oil was struck in West Texas in the 1920's, one ecstatic newly rich family bought a big house in town. And they would let their pigs live and run through their wealthy house in San Angelo.
But the Arabic don't have the excuse of the "Beverly Hillbilly" types, they've had their money for several decades, and all they've done is blow it on extremely non-production goals. For instance, Saudi Arabia spends 40% of their annual oil income on supporting the thousands of "royals", not to mention supporting terrorists. There isn't one thing good they've done with their vast wealth. Look at Saddam in Iraq, and Quadaffi in Libya. Idiots....
You have no way of knowing what any Arab believes. You only know what they say, and assume that what they say has some correspondence to what they believe
The Arab culture will have them say whatever they think will advance their agenda. Or just whatever is most amusing to say in order to mess with infidels' heads
What I've found is that if an Arab approaches you, and swears something to you of his own volition, without prompting, and you look him in the eye, he'll almost always be good for it. If on the other hand, you back an Arab into a corner, and then get him to assent to a proposition, to their way of thinking, it's a meaningless commitment. In dictatorships, such ways of thinking are quite rational.
This is one of the reasons I think all peace treaties signed in the middle east must be ratified through referenda. This will be a lot harder than Clinton style photo op "peace treaties," but is, I feel the only way to bring peace and closure to the middle east.
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