Opinion: Cohen: Romney wasn't wrong to address deficiencies of Arab culture

Opinion: Cohen: Romney wasn't wrong to address deficiencies of Arab culture


By Richard Cohen



Special to the Mercury Newsmercurynews.com



Posted: 08/08/2012 12:19:07 PM PDT



August 9, 2012 5:10 AM GMTUpdated: 08/08/2012 10:10:53 PM PDT


Before the Jews of Hungary were emancipated in the 19th century, they were not permitted to own land. By the end of the century, they were on their way to owning fully one-fifth of Hungary's large estates and were hugely successful in business and the arts. The Jews of Germany had a similar history. They comprised many if not most of the country's lawyers, doctors, composers, playwrights and scientists and were so astonishingly successful in business that while they were just 1 percent of the population, they were 31 percent of the richest families. What did it? Was it nature (Jews were smarter) or nurture (Jews had a certain culture)? Here's my answer: I don't know.



I do know, though, that if you eliminate what would certainly be condemned as a racist explanation -- Jews as inherently smarter than non-Jews -- then you are left with culture: There was something in the Jewish experience -- 1,000 or so years of persecution and being shunted into dishonorable occupations such as money lending -- that prepared Europe's Jews for the onset of capitalism. Countless books have been written to explain this phenomenon, which continues to this day with Israel's intellectual domination of its region. In his new book, "The Future of the Jews," Stuart E. Eizenstat provides an example: "Between 1980 and 2000, 7,652 patents were registered by Israelis in the United States." The figure for the entire Arab world? 367.



The cultural difference between Israel





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and its Arab neighbors is so striking that you would think it beyond question. But when Mitt Romney attributed the gap between Israel's economic performance and the Palestinians' -- "Culture makes all the difference," he said in Israel -- the roof came down on him. PC police the world over raised a red card, giving him demerits for having the temerity to notice the obvious.



This is a complicated matter. It's true that the West Bank is under Israeli occupation and parts of Gaza have been pounded into rubble. It is also true that for years the Palestinians benefited from jobs in Israel. It is true that a good many educated Palestinians live in the diaspora, but it is also true that the early diaspora consisted of Palestinian Christians fleeing Ottoman repression.



Still, for all the caveats, the Arabs themselves recognize that they have a cultural problem. The Arab Human Development Report of 2002 singled out three "deficits" of Arab society that are "obstacles" to progress. One was the lack of political freedom; another was the narrow knowledge base; and the last, the status of women. All of these vary across the region -- Saudi Arabia's women are forbidden to drive -- but nowhere in the region are women as free as they are in the West or, for that matter, Israel. In all of vast Arabia, about half of the potential workforce is poorly or indifferently educated.



This hubbub about culture may seem esoteric, but it is really very important. The tendency to hold the Arabs blameless for their own culture is part of the predilection to hold them harmless for the lack of peace agreement with Israel. The Israelis have much to account for, but they are not alone in this matter and they are not the ones who have over and over again rejected peace plans. The adamant refusal to hold the Arabs accountable infantilizes them -- a neocolonialist mentality that is, in the end, simply insulting.



The book that Romney cited for his views on Arab culture, David S. Landes' "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," goes further than I would in blaming the Arabs for their own difficulties, and it was written long before the Arab Spring.



Romney could have been more diplomatic and eschewed shorthand explanation of what ails Palestinian society -- he might also have acknowledged Palestinian achievements -- but he identified what are, indisputably, two problems. The first is that of culture. The second is the reluctance to discuss it.



Richard Cohen is a Washington Post columnist.