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Enjoyed your review, Richard. You have made me want to go and see it. With right-wing bloggers hating it and you liking it the film could not get a better recommendation. One minor additional point. Pearl was a dual Israeli/US citizen. Not only the Israeli media but a few in the US were aware of it and wisely kept quiet till after he was murdered. His killers never found out.
Sol Salbe
Melbourne Australia
I have not as yet seen this film but hope to do so at some later date.
Your observation, Richard, on the hazards that part of the world holds for someone of Mr. Pearl’s religious persuasion and nationality is well taken. Locating his own reasons for being there in the first place may present something of a puzzle but, nevertheless, he was there and what happened to him was a crime against all the laws of Man and God.
These laws, although held in common by all faiths and peoples throughout the world, were not enough to save Mr. Pearl. One wonders then what kind of law would?
Imagine if Mr. Pearl had been, say, a frenchman and I, an englishman, had taken it into my head to treat him in like manner for some perceived insult or wrong his countrymen had done me or mine. If I knew that, as a result, I personally would never be brought to book for my actions, I might go ahead. But if I also knew that, in consequence, a significant parcel of Sussex could be annexed and then legally become an extension of France, I should not be too surprised to find a long line of angry southerners outside my door the next morning. That being the case, I might very well think twice about the whole affair.
When Daniel enters the lion’s den, what will it take to stop the lion from eating him? Perhaps only the prospect of a very painful bout of indigestion for dessert.
http://yorketowers.blogspot.com
John Yorke
Please note: Nothing personal here against France or the French. Indeed, territorial exchange is now becoming quite the norm here on both sides of the channel. Maybe Sussex might well prefer to be part of France anyway. Particularly with all this terrible weather we’re having just at the moment.
Thanks Richard,
I’ll watch out for it!. One point I have though, I would have loved to see a different actress in the part of Marianne Pearl. I am not really an expert on the US market in this regard. But from a German point of view, I would have chosen somebody like Barbara Becker, Boris Beckers ex-wife. Doesn’t the choice of his partner tell us a lot about Daniel Pearl the man?
But this might well be an overly female point of view, and a very German one too.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but how do you figure that Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder was a “morally ambiguous event”?
Barb: YOur point is well-taken & that’s NOT what I meant to say. I’ll edit that for clarity & thanks for pointing that out. What I meant to say is that the ferment going on in the Arab world is a complex phenomena. While it is easy to sort out the bad guys in the Islamic terrorists, there is so much poverty & misery for the militants to thrive on. And economic conditions are a prime motivator or such extremism. We must give people in the Third World things to live, rather than die for.
uh, why do *we* have to give them something to live for?
The solution is for them to make the same educational and ethical investments in the next generation as we do.
But that won’t happen.
So, as I see it, the only *peaceful* solution (to achieve both peace and approximate equality, for reduced tension) would be for the West to take it upon itself to educate a generation of their kids. But that won’t happen either.
So most likely there won’t be a peaceful resolution. I’m still hoping though.
… and I hope no one says that they can’t because they’re poor. Caring doesn’t take money. Israel was built up in a single generation by poor people, with few ties to the West.
I’m sure parents in the Third World care about their kids’ futures too; but overall, they don’t take sustained action for them the way we do.
This is a personal impression across a lot of varying data; but that’s my view: this is what leads to the disparity of opportunity, which generates the envy and animosity, which culminates in violence.
It’s hard to imagine a realistic near- or medium-term solution to something based on such broadly ingrained cultural traits.
Well, from the sound of it you believe it’s simply a matter of a lack of will or virtue on their part. Do you think the issue of third world poverty is something solved by the snap of a finger?
The situation regarding Israel is entirely diff. than what besets third world countries. Israel had the commitment of worldwide Jewry to help financially, not to mention the largess of the U.S. government backing it. It IS true that Israel’s government was more competent, proactive and interventionist (in a good way) than yr avg. third world nation. And that helped a lot. But comparing Israel to other 3rd world countries in order to find them lacking just doesn’t ring true to me.
I object to yr claim that third world destitution is based on “cultural traits.” This is racist or at least borderline racist. There are deep institutional factors at work that sentence people to lives of such desperation. Blaming their culture for it is pretty lame.
Why would I go see a white woman portray a black woman? It has been a long time since I saw an Al Jolson movie, and I don’t intend on seeing one anytime soon.
I didn’t know Marianne Pearl was black. And I don’t defend Hollywood casting decisions. But it is a conventional Hollywood casting notion that you’ve got to get a big star to make a splash & get audience interest in a film. That’s undoubtedly why Jolie was chosen.
There are many films which portray Jewish characters who are not played by Jewish actors. I often feel this detracts from the realism of the portrayal. But I’d never refuse to see such a film based on this criteria alone.
But hey, I get yr pt. & it is legitimate to a point.
UPDATE: My friend Sol Salbe points out that you’re not quite right. Here is Wikipedia describing Pearl’s ethnic background:
Based on this, I don’t have too much of a problem with Jolie portraying her. And presumably Pearl herself had at least some say in casting or could at least have screamed bloody murder if the notion of Jolie playing her bothered her.
Thanks, Richard, so I was possibly influenced by a net piece leaning heavily towards simplification? Admittedly I hadn’t noticed it before and simply wondered why? But does it really matter?
The Daniel Pearl case is admittedly one of the most touching stories in the larger War on Terror, I would like to know much more about. Who was Daniel Pearl, what kind of articles did he write, and what did he investigate before he was murdered.
But maybe I should read Mariane’s book, not just see the film. I hesitate to read Levy’s admittedly since for many reasons I am not sure, if I want to read a fictionalized rendering in this context. Maybe since I am not sure what to think of all the rumors surrounding: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. Rumor and fiction are pretty close, fiction may in fact aggrandize rumors.
But what do I know.
Leander: The film’s official website linked in my post actually has Pearl’s writings. There’s also the Daniel Pearl Foundation website which you can visit which may provide more info. Reading Pearl’s book is a good idea too though I haven’t done so.
“I’m sure parents in the Third World care about their kids’ futures too; but overall, they don’t take sustained action for them the way we do.”
Definitely not true of the parents of my students. Actually, people need not only education, but opportunities to use their education.
Zhu Bajie, American teaching in China
Anecdotes aside, I defer to your experiences in China, Zhu.
I should have said the stagnant and/or “we hate the West” Third World, the Third World that is home to the violent tendencies that we were discussing … in particular the Arab/Muslim Third World.
I’m speaking in generalities here, so of course there are exceptions everywhere.
Ah yes, ever the Muslim hater. So predictable…Muslims don’t care about their children or their future. They’re all too busy fighting for jihad to care about things that all civilized & decent human beings here in the West care about. Right??
Richard, here is a quote you make:
——————–
I object to yr claim that third world destitution is based on “cultural traits.” This is racist or at least borderline racist. There are deep institutional factors at work that sentence people to lives of such desperation. Blaming their culture for it is pretty lame.
——————-
I fail to see what the difference between “cultural traits” and “institutional factors”. Why is it that “progressives” view the idea that different groups around the world think differently than each other as “racist”? For example, do you have a problem with pointing out that Arabs view clan relationships as far more important than Westerns do? This explains a lot of what we see going on in the Arab world. If you don’t accept that, than how do you explain the problems , most especially the fratricidal slaughter, we see in so many Arab countries?
I am reading a biography of Argentina’s Juan Peron. There he is considered a great hero to a large part of the population (another part hates him to this day), whereas in the US, a politician who acted like him would have been laughted out of town before ever coming to power. Isn’t that due to the very different mentalities of the populations of those countries?
Physicist Richard Feynman ( a bona-fide progressive) noted in his last book that when he visited Trinidad, the Indian population was wroking hard and saving money to send their children to the US to receive a higher education and he saw poor, simple tailors and craftsmen whose children were Professors and Doctors, whereas a large part of the the black population didn’t save money like that and didn’t push their children to study in the same way as the Indians, and they were condemning the next generation to remaining like their parents. Why is it racist to point out that cultural differences (and NOT some sor to “external racist coercion”) and different ways of thinking and different values were causing these major differences?
“Poverty” doesn’t explain everything. South Korea was extremely poverty stricken after the Korean War. They have built themselves up, and they are NOT Westerners. So did Israel. India is now building itself up, and it was very poverty strickent (and still is in some places).
It is time that we outgrow these Marxist ideas that “everything is determined by economics” which proved themselves long ago to be way overly simplistic.
Right, imjudy. To give you just one data point, there are more books translated into Greek every year than into Arabic, although the number of Greek speakers is minuscule by comparison. That’s how culturally and educationally isolated the Arab world is. And pointing that out as a root cause is not racist.
It’s also not racist to point out that, although most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims.
I clearly said in my last posting that there are many exceptions. But the self-willed isolation of the Arab/Muslim world is proven by a very fair, accurate, and consistent set of statistics.
Lint,
Curiosity killed the cat. I tried to check the information on the UNESCO site but was unable to find the relevant table. You say: “there are more books translated into Greek every year than into Arabic”. Can we have a source please (and the relevant figures (if that’s not too much to ask)?
Sol
Some of these may be derivative, but at least the first is reputable, I believe
1.
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/663.cfm
“Interestingly, the report found that the total number of books translated into Arabic yearly is no more than 330, or one-fifth of those translated in a small country like Greece.”
2.
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk030207/sf25.shtml
“The number of books translated yearly into all the languages of the Arabic world is less than the number of books translated into Greek.”
3.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_2_26/ai_n8706604/pg_3
“Five times as many books are translated into Greek (spoken by
just 11 million people) as Arabic.”
… or just do your own web search …
If you still question this statistic (I’ve been under the impression that it was well established), I can look for a rock-solid source.
This is an entirely bogus statement. There are terrorists & violent extremists in Europe, Sri Lanka, Africa, China, Russia and many other countries. Even Israel has its share (Jewish terrorists that is). Pls. provide ANY sort of solid evidence to prove this ridiculous claim is true.
Your claim about books translated into Arabic is based on a single UN report and none of the sources you provide actually quote what the report really says nor link to it. How can anyone make a sweeping claim regarding the number of books translated into Arabic over a 1,000 yr. period (“the total number of books translated into Arabic during the 1,000 years since the age of Caliph Al-Ma’moun to this day is less than those translated in Spain in one year”)? Where would you even begin to find the information you’d need to make such a statement? It strikes me as a patently bogus statistic.
You have once again misunderstood my views & those of progressives. Of course diff. groups think & behave differently. What I object to is the notion that the thoughts or actions or cultural norms of Muslims betray any inferiority to those of westerners.
Say what? Clan relationships explain fratricidal slaughter? You’ve lost me on that one. Do you mean the Sunni-Shiite split in the Arab world? If so, you’ve reduced an extremely complex issue to absurd oversimplicity.
Again, what is wrong is to presume to say that those blacks are somehow inferior because they make diff. choices than the Indians.
Richard-yes, clan relationships do explain fratricidal slaughter in the Arab world. What I meant, and didn’t explain clearly is that in the Arab world, one’s primary loyalty is to the clan (or tribe) and not to the nation-state or any other larger entity, and that in general, different clans are in a state of friction to a greater or lesser degree with each other. All societies began this way and clan warfare was a problem in the West as well (the feuds between the Hatfields and the McCoy’s or the Montagu-Capulet war, for example) but over the centuries, the development of the nation-state in the west brought about a revolution in how the individual views himself in relation to the rest of society. This has NOT happened in the Arab world. Almost all the nation-state entities in the Middle East are artificial (Egypt being a notable exception) and they have not succeeded in changing and breaking down the clan/tribe identity of their citizens and getting them to identify with the larger national entity.
In Israel, where democracy was imposed on the local level to the Arab population, voting patterns have not changed over the last 60 years, almost everyone in the Arab community votes for the party his clan supports, regardless of ideology, religious identification, etc. And once in power, those of the dominant clans use their position to favor those of their own clan or those whom they are in alliance with. This is a primary reason why so many Arab local authorities are in a permanent state of disfunction and bankruptcy. (Ha’aretz ran an article some years ago about this but I don’t have a link to it).
The New York Times has reported extensively on the war in Iraq and they are always pointing out how this mentality has made it virtually impossible to set up a national government that has broad-based support…..the Shi’ite clans today are dominant (although there is considerable friction amongst themselves that has particularly caused serious problems in Basra as the British are attempting to hand over control of the city) and this is very difficult for the formerly dominat Sunni clans to accept.
Much of the conflict among the Palestinians between FATAH and HAMAS is explained the same way. It is not necessarily primarily a “religious split”..those clans favored by Arafat and FATAH shifted their support to HAMAS in order to get what they consider to be a fairer share of available resources.
I utterly reject the notion that the west has developed the sine qua non of human governance and that Arabs are somehow backwards human beings because they take a diff. view on the subject.
And I utterly reject the notion that blames all Arab municipalities governance failures on the Arabs themselves. I have heard almost precisely the same propaganda here fr. anti-Arab commenters before. You neglect to mention the virtual penury which Israeli budgetary policy imposes on Israeli Arab towns. Ah yes, the propagandists claim they receive no money because they are corrupt. How convenient a means to sweep economic racism under the carpet. In countries where governments are corrupt there are means to remove them. You mean to tell me that Israel has no ability to clean up Arab corruption if it does indeed exist?
Again, you blame the Iraqis for the civil war when it was the U.S. which set the entire maelstrom in motion with our invasion. Even if we HAD invaded, we had countless lost opportunities to prevent this bloodshed. Bush availed himself of none of them. Iraqis are responsible for the current bloodshed, but we are more responsible because we did nothing to avert it when we could have.
Again this is preposterous. It reduces two political movements to a primitive set of family interrelationships. You may rest comfortable in the notion that you can reduce Palestinian politics to such primitiveness. But you paint a picture that is your projection, rather than reality.
Richard-you stated the following:
————————————
I utterly reject the notion that the west has developed the sine qua non of human governance and that Arabs are somehow backwards human beings because they take a diff. view on the subject.
————————————
I ask you to compare the state of human rights in Western countries as compared to the Arab countries (I specifically mean “Arab” countries as opposed to Islamic countries in general).
Which of the two lives up to the UN Charter of Human Rights more clesely, in general? Or do you view the UN Charter of Human RIghts as a “Western” document which it is not fair to compare to Arab standards?
Where is corruption more prevalent? Where are governments peaceably changed by elections? Who has more economic development? Where are rights of minorities respected more? WOULD YOU RATHER LIVE IN A WESTERN COUNTRY OR AN ARAB COUNTRY?
Regarding your claim that the Israeli gov’t “discriminates” against the Arab municipalities, there is no question that it did occur in the past, but since 1992 many Israeli gov’ts in power have been dependent on the Arab Knesset members (this includes Sharon’s last Likud gov’t which was dependent on the votes of the Arab MK’s) , so this discrimination has been eliminated.
The Arab municipalities have a lower rate of “arnona” (municipal tax) collection for the reasons I stated. This is the reason for their constricted budgets, NOT “discrimination”. Regarding your comment about “cleaning up corruption”, just recently one of the Arab municipal councils was dissolved by the Interior Ministry for the very reason you gave. The Supreme Court would intervene if there really was ethnic discrimination in handing out budgets.
Leaving aside the fact that the argument between Richard and Lint has somehow moved round to education in the Arab world, when the Pearl film is set in Pakistan, this comment:
… and I hope no one says that they can’t because they’re poor. Caring doesn’t take money. Israel was built up in a single generation by poor people, with few ties to the West.
I’m sure parents in the Third World care about their kids’ futures too; but overall, they don’t take sustained action for them the way we do.
Deserves comment because it assumes that there is a straight line between parents and the state coffers, ie. governance. That such a line does not exist in the Arab world is at least partially the result of American support for “stable” regimes such as that of Egypt, which since they rely on a security apparatus for power rather than popular consent, are always going to invest more in American-made armaments than they do in the very risky business of sending their youth to universities where they might well start to wonder about why they don’t have access to the levers of government.
As for the view expressed earlier that Arabs’ political choices within a nation-state are still primarily a function of clan loyalty, in order to test such a sweeping statement it would be necessary to provide an environment in which it was possible for the full spectrum of choices to be made. That is a long way from happening in most Arab countries. As genuine choices became available, Arabs would most likely start to opt for them. It is hardly surprising that nation-states which do not offer such choices do not command a transfer of allegiance.
I should say however that in my opinion the dichotomy between living for something and dying for it, while important, is not as straightforward as Richard’s initial remark might suggest. What is extreme about the extremists in this case is their murder of Daniel Pearl, not whether they choose to live or die for their beliefs.
Maher-you say that the nation-state frameworks the Arabs don’t allow them a full-range of choices to opt for a more “modern”, or, if you like, “Western”-type identity that would transcend their current clan-based loyalty system that is the cause of so-much of the fragmentation that is plaguing the Arab world. However, my question to you is “doesn’t the current system REFLECT the values they have”? Take Nasser, for example. He was wildly popular, yet his regime was a typical repressive, corrupt Arab-style government with an all-pervasive “Mukhabarat” (secret police)? He used Marxist-socialist-type propaganda to try to enforce national unity, but in the end, he didn’t change Egyptian society very much (and Egypt is one of the few nation-states that does generate a relatively strong sense of identity among the population.
The fact is that in the Arab world, unlike almost the entire rest of the world, there is NO meaningful liberal, pro-democracy movement. I am well aware that Westerners can not expect societies in the Middle East to be carbon copies. of the west. There will be less emphasis on individualism, there will not be a strict separation of religion and state, but they are far from anything remotely representing a sincere concern for basic human rights, free speech and the such. The fact is that if truly free multi-party elections were held in the Arab world, radical Islamic movements would take power in most states, setting up dictatorial regimes not unlike those that currently exist.
It should be remembered that Africa too has been plagued by tribalism, colonial exploitation (far worse than the Arabs have experienced), poverty and corruption, YET, in spite of this, there are liberal, pro-democracy movements that have made considerable progress, and the population there is not wrapped up into the rage and self-pity that the Arab masses feel and which is strongly reinforced by their media, both “free” (Al-Jazeera, for example) or state-controlled. Similarly, the Far East, although very different than Western societies, have managed to improve in the field of human rights and economic progress.
Thus, I would maintain that societies get the kind of goverment that if fitting for the mind-set of the ruled and since we see that there are 20+ Arab states, all of which are either dictatorships (some more iron-handed, some less) or failed states (e.g. Somalia, Lebanon, the Palestinians, Iraq) we can only include that a basic pathological societal inertia is holding the Arab world (and NOT necessarily the entire Islamic world-do not confuse the two) back.
“Almost the entire rest of the world” has “meaningful, liberal pro-democracy” movements? Really? Tell it to Russia (marginally democratic), China (with a weak pro-democracy movement), African states galore, etc. Why should the Arab world be judged inferior because they don’t possess the type of government you deem best for the world? I would agree w. you that it would be better if liberal democracy reigned in the Arab world. But unlike you, I’m not prepared to beat them with a stick for not having such governance. Secondly, you should remember that democracy doesn’t flourish overnight. it must be cultivated over decades & promoted incrementally (look at the states of the former Soviet Union and all the relatively new Latin American democracies). The fact that you condemn the Arab world for their backwardness indicates you don’t have the requisite patience for this process.
How convenient: Arab states are not democracies & therefore bad. And even if they were democracies they would revert to dictatorships merely by holding a vote. I guess you’ve fixed their wagon pretty good. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Why even try?
What do you know about African “rage and self-pity???” And how do you know there isn’t any? Do you know about the heinous killings that went on in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, and now Sudan? Oh that’s right, you’ve conveniently omitted them fr. yr. travelogue of African successful democracy.
Ah, yes it must be all those democratic winds of change blowing in from China, Singapore, Myanmar and N. Korea.
Ah yes, the old “you get what you deserve” rule.
This is not only stupid and offensive, it is racist. I could easily say a “basic pathological inertia” is holding Israel back from making peace with the Arab world. This would be a lot more accurate than yr statement.
Maher-you say that the nation-state frameworks the Arabs don’t allow them a full-range of choices to opt for a more “modern”, or, if you like, “Western”-type identity that would transcend their current clan-based loyalty system that is the cause of so-much of the fragmentation that is plaguing the Arab world.
Dear imjudy
Let’s be quite clear about what I said.
1) I said that the claim that Arabs make political decisions based on clan loyalty was a sweeping statement and in many cases untested.
2) I did not say that I thought that, given more choices, they might opt for a more Western identity (or a more modern identity, and I do not equate the two). I said that allegiance with the nation-state depends on more than simply whether or not people have transcended clan identity.
3) I certainly did not say that clan loyalty is the cause of so much fragmentation in the Arab world. Apart from Somalia, which is peripheral to the Arab world as a whole, I would be interested to know of another place where clan loyalty (and I do mean clan loyalty, and not sectarian or ethnic ties, which are different again) is the major cause of fragmentation.
However, my question to you is “doesn’t the current system REFLECT the values they have”? Take Nasser, for example. He was wildly popular, yet his regime was a typical repressive, corrupt Arab-style government with an all-pervasive “Mukhabarat” (secret police)?
Once again, the use of the word “reflect” here implies a direct relationship without input by outside parties which simply does not conform to the known history of Egypt or any of the other Arab countries in the 20th (or indeed the 19th or 21st) century. Abdel Nasser was widely popular despite the secret police, not because the secret police “reflected” the
kind of society Egyptians wanted for themselves.
He used Marxist-socialist-type propaganda to try to enforce national unity, but in the end, he didn’t change Egyptian society very much
I think most people would agree that Abdel Nasser changed Egyptian society far more than the regimes that preceded and succeeded him. But Egyptian society was also changing in response to global and regional factors that had nothing to do with Abdel Nasser.
The fact is that in the Arab world, unlike almost the entire rest of the world, there is NO meaningful liberal, pro-democracy movement. I am well aware that Westerners can not expect societies in the Middle East to be carbon copies. of the west. There will be less emphasis on individualism, there will not be a strict separation of religion and state, but they
are far from anything remotely representing a sincere concern for basic human rights, free speech and the such.
I think this overstates the case. There are human rights groups in many Arab countries, operating under severe strictures and mostly ignored by Western media, but they are out there. Once again, broad political movements that are liberal-democratic would require a public space that could not be obtained from the present state structures without a fight. Rather than suggesting future courses for Arab society, this is also starting to sound like an attempt to affix blame to a single actor.
The fact is that if truly free multi-party elections were held in the Arab world, radical Islamic movements would take power in most states, setting up dictatorial regimes not unlike those that currently exist.
Another sweeping and untested statement. Truly free elections themselves presuppose a totally different environment than that in which the current vogue for Islamism has developed. In any case, is the Dawa Party a “radical Islamic movement”?