Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian strong man and pan-Arab nationalist was sweating. In the darkened studios of Cairo Radio, with a barely a candle to illuminate his hastily written script, the Egyptian president - his voice weak from exhaustion, delivered his political testament: "We expected the enemy to come from the east and the north, but instead he came from the west. I must accept full responsibility for this disaster that has befallen us and must now resign as your President." No sooner spoken than the hum of Israeli MiGs could be heard in the skies above the city and the crack of anti-aircraft batteries filled the air.
The date was June 9, 1967, and Nasser had just led his country into one of the most humiliating military debacles suffered by any nation in history. In the course of three days, the Israeli army, responding to months of Egyptian provocation, had destroyed the Egyptian air force and crushed an army five times its size. It now stood at the gates of Cairo.
In any modern Western country, such a catastrophe would precipitate a leadership crisis ending in political ruin. But that was not to be Nasser's fate. No sooner did he deliver his valedictory address than the streets of downtown Cairo were filled with hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.
"All of a sudden," recounted Mahmoud Raid , an Egyptian journalist, "I found myself wading through multitudes of people clamoring for Nasser to stay." Within hours, messages of support arrived from the rest of Egypt and from the leaders of many other Middle Eastern countries - all of whom had ample reason to mock the presumed leader of the Arab world, yet all of whom urged him to remain.
Many suspected that Nasser, in his usual theatrical style, had orchestrated the mass demonstration. But Eric Rouleau, the Middle East correspondent for Le Monde at the time, would have none of it: "People may have despised Nasser for leading them to disaster, but they also loved him as a father. And the Egyptians did not want to be left fatherless."
In focusing on the paternal relationship between Nasser and his people, Rouleau identified something significant about Arab political systems. Dictatorships thrive in the Arab world because strong men are admired and fill the authoritarian role in the popular imagination usually allocated to the father in traditional Arab society. The Arab nuclear family is dominated by the father, whose authority is total. Mothers and daughters play submissive roles within this structure and have little influence on the family's destiny. Sons are much desired, their role being largely to satisfy their father's sense of honor and secure his position in society. Absolute obedience is expected of them and severe punishment meted out for waywardness. From childhood then, Arabs become accustomed to a high level of absolute authority, where challenge and questioning - the root of free and democratic society - is not encouraged. Instead, undivided respect and obedience is reserved for a single man.
Given this paternalistic structure, it should come as little surprise that the political culture mirrors the social hierarchy . Reposing faith in the beneficence of the strong man is a natural consequence of the Arab world's societal atrophy. It produces an emotional dependence on leaders and political systems with no elasticity.
Dictatorships therefore thrive in the Arabic world in much the same way autocracy has always flourished in Russia: the leader is a cult figure, whose unquestioned authority and arbitrary power will, it is assumed, always be exercised for the good of his children. The adulation that consistently greets the failures of such leaders as Nasser, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Moammar Ghaddafi is directly attributable to the need of the Arab street not to be left either fatherless or orphaned.
This may well be one of the reasons political reform appeared so low on the list of priorities presented in the State Department's U.S-Middle East Partnership, unveiled by Colin Powell on December 13. While the initiative nobly offered financial assistance to groups that support the foundation of democracy, there was precious little enthusiasm or emphasis provided for this by its presenter. It may be a sign that Colin Powell, among many other American leaders, now understands that political reform is a forlorn hope without massive cultural change.
Whatever Powell's view of the internal workings of the Arab world, those who expect democracy to spring fully formed in a defeated Iraq or anticipate the rest of the Arab world to suddenly embrace Western concepts of political freedom are in for bitter disappointment. The Arab nations will not alter their political systems until the social and cultural systems that underpin them have been reformed.
And that, sadly, will take a level of self-mobilization for which the nations of the Middle East may not yet be prepared.
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Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies in Los Angeles and senior editorial columnist for the online magazine Jewsweek.com.
The date was June 9, 1967, and Nasser had just led his country into one of the most humiliating military debacles suffered by any nation in history. In the course of three days, the Israeli army, responding to months of Egyptian provocation, had destroyed the Egyptian air force and crushed an army five times its size. It now stood at the gates of Cairo.
In any modern Western country, such a catastrophe would precipitate a leadership crisis ending in political ruin. But that was not to be Nasser's fate. No sooner did he deliver his valedictory address than the streets of downtown Cairo were filled with hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.
"All of a sudden," recounted Mahmoud Raid , an Egyptian journalist, "I found myself wading through multitudes of people clamoring for Nasser to stay." Within hours, messages of support arrived from the rest of Egypt and from the leaders of many other Middle Eastern countries - all of whom had ample reason to mock the presumed leader of the Arab world, yet all of whom urged him to remain.
Many suspected that Nasser, in his usual theatrical style, had orchestrated the mass demonstration. But Eric Rouleau, the Middle East correspondent for Le Monde at the time, would have none of it: "People may have despised Nasser for leading them to disaster, but they also loved him as a father. And the Egyptians did not want to be left fatherless."
In focusing on the paternal relationship between Nasser and his people, Rouleau identified something significant about Arab political systems. Dictatorships thrive in the Arab world because strong men are admired and fill the authoritarian role in the popular imagination usually allocated to the father in traditional Arab society. The Arab nuclear family is dominated by the father, whose authority is total. Mothers and daughters play submissive roles within this structure and have little influence on the family's destiny. Sons are much desired, their role being largely to satisfy their father's sense of honor and secure his position in society. Absolute obedience is expected of them and severe punishment meted out for waywardness. From childhood then, Arabs become accustomed to a high level of absolute authority, where challenge and questioning - the root of free and democratic society - is not encouraged. Instead, undivided respect and obedience is reserved for a single man.
Given this paternalistic structure, it should come as little surprise that the political culture mirrors the social hierarchy . Reposing faith in the beneficence of the strong man is a natural consequence of the Arab world's societal atrophy. It produces an emotional dependence on leaders and political systems with no elasticity.
Dictatorships therefore thrive in the Arabic world in much the same way autocracy has always flourished in Russia: the leader is a cult figure, whose unquestioned authority and arbitrary power will, it is assumed, always be exercised for the good of his children. The adulation that consistently greets the failures of such leaders as Nasser, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Moammar Ghaddafi is directly attributable to the need of the Arab street not to be left either fatherless or orphaned.
This may well be one of the reasons political reform appeared so low on the list of priorities presented in the State Department's U.S-Middle East Partnership, unveiled by Colin Powell on December 13. While the initiative nobly offered financial assistance to groups that support the foundation of democracy, there was precious little enthusiasm or emphasis provided for this by its presenter. It may be a sign that Colin Powell, among many other American leaders, now understands that political reform is a forlorn hope without massive cultural change.
Whatever Powell's view of the internal workings of the Arab world, those who expect democracy to spring fully formed in a defeated Iraq or anticipate the rest of the Arab world to suddenly embrace Western concepts of political freedom are in for bitter disappointment. The Arab nations will not alter their political systems until the social and cultural systems that underpin them have been reformed.
And that, sadly, will take a level of self-mobilization for which the nations of the Middle East may not yet be prepared.
--------------------------------------------------------
Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies in Los Angeles and senior editorial columnist for the online magazine Jewsweek.com.