Why Middle East Studies Is a Mess, and Why It Matters

The legacy of Edward Said and his acolytes, writes Michael Rubin, has rendered the discipline of Middle East studies incapable of addressing the actual problems facing the Middle East, with severe consequences for U.S. policymaking:

The reason why Said remains so popular on campuses . . . is that he justified prioritizing politics above scholarly rigor. No longer would radical professors need to prove truth; they could just assert it and make it so. Up was down, wrong was right, and power was original sin. Middle East studies scholars have become so insulated within their Saidian universe that they never challenge each other’s basic assumptions. . . .

Within the United States, the best example of this is Rashid Khalidi. A former PLO press attaché turned academic, Khalidi is now the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University in New York. . . . He preached the idea that the region’s root problems lie not in radical ideologies but rather in grievances born from Western intervention and the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . .

Khalidi, Said, [and likeminded professors] all saw occupation and military intervention as the region’s core problems. President Obama followed their policy prescriptions to a “T.” He withdrew precipitously from Iraq and Afghanistan, “led from behind” in Libya, and allowed the Syrian conflict to metastasize. It might not fit in academe’s worldview, but Western power projection is the proverbial finger in the dike that prevents a deluge of chaos.

Read more at Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

More about: Academia, Barack Obama, Edward Said, Idiocy, Middle East, Rashid Khalidi

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF