326 • 17 ISRAEL'S REBIRTH AND THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISMtelevision. Ideas of nationalism and progress seemed to make gains at the
expense of religion and respect for tradition, just as the car and the truck re¬
placed the camel and the donkey.
Was this good? Most people thought so at that time, but many nationalist
slogans and ideologies have since proven false, and many Arabs did not un¬
derstand these imported ideologies. As a blend of traditional and modern
values, Nasirism now sounds like a personality cult. Positive neutralism was
a natural reaction to the cold war, but why was Egypt's rejection of both the
Western and the communist blocs deemed "positive"? Neutralism worked
only so long as both sides were competing for Arab favor. Pan-Arabism
overlooked the deep-seated differences within the Arab world, not just
among leaders but also among their peoples, as well as between countries
having oil and those lacking that vital resource. Arab nationalism tended to
alienate religious and ethnic minorities, such as Lebanon's Maronites and
Iraq's Kurds. Parliamentary democracy broke down when the masses were
hungry and uneducated and when army officers and newly trained techni¬
cians were impatient to govern. Arab socialism failed to change Arab society
from its traditional individualism, clannishness, and patriarchy into a col-
lectivist economic system serving the common good.
Remember this book's early chapters, which told you how Islam, as a
doctrine and a way of life, inspired the Arabs and their converts to sub¬
merge their cares and desires into one collective enterprise encompassing
the conquests, the High Caliphate, and Islamic civilization. There have
been many articulate Muslim thinkers, from Muhammad Abduh through
Sayyid Qutb, but their voices were drowned out by those who spoke
louder or were tuned out by those who would not hear. Sayyid Qutb, a
leading writer and Muslim Brother, was jailed and eventually hanged in
1966 by Nasir's government, despite widespread Arab pleas for clemency.
How sad that no new Muslim leader came forth to recharge these batter¬
ies, to enlist the people's minds and muscles to rebuild the umma, to har¬
ness the tools and techniques of modern industry to create an egalitarian
society, and to make Islam a guide for right thoughts and actions in the
modern world! What might the Arabs have achieved with stronger guid¬
ance and a more coherent set of beliefs?
Israel had problems, too. Political Zionism had achieved its goal of creat¬
ing a Jewish state, but was it truly a light unto the Gentiles? One scholar re¬
marked in 1963 that the most successful product that had come out of
Israel since its creation was the Uzi submachine gun. Judaism as practiced
during centuries of dispersion meant little to Israel's founders. Ben-Gurion
and others wondered why so few Jews came to Israel from the West. With
half of Israel's people having immigrated from elsewhere in the Middle