In the beginning, there were only truth and lies. Such bucolic simplicity lasted for thousands of years, until the Industrial Revolution gave birth to statistics. Soon afterwards, Karl Marx, in his Das Kapital, brilliantly demonstrated how heavy volumes of meticulously collected figures can lead oppressed masses to perfectly absurd conclusions. Thanks to the unstoppable progress, we now have yet another category of untruth, the opinion poll.
In order to better to understand why poll results must be interpreted with utmost caution, let us consider a purely imaginary poll that, in theory, could be conducted in the Soviet Union in 1937, one of the peak years of Stalinist oppression:
"Whom would you prefer as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party:
(a) I. V. Stalin?
(b) S. M. Kirov (a popular Soviet leader assassinated in 1934 on Stalin's orders. Stalin then used Kirov's murder as a pretext for repressions)?
(c) L. D. Trotsky?
(d) none of the above?"
Observe how clearly the question is worded. If a citizen attempted to avoid a direct answer citing a lack of understanding on his or her part, the officer conducting the poll would have no doubt that the suspect was feigning stupidity. Fortunately, Soviet sociologists of that era were well equipped to deal with this kind of dirty trick, effectively guaranteeing that the interrogation would never fail to produce results suitable to the investigators.
Approximately one year ago, soon after President Bush declared, somewhat prematurely, our victory in Iraq, Nicholas D. Kristof, one of the most far-left columnists for one of the most far-left newspapers, the New York Times, tried to conduct his own improvised opinion poll in Baghdad. He was seeking proof that Iraqis hated Bush and considered the Americans "invaders" rather than "liberators". When he asked a random passerby what he thought of the United States, the answer was, I would say, astonishing. The passerby suggested molding a larger-than-life likeness of Barbara Bush out of pure gold and erecting it at the crossroads in the center of the Iraqi capital.
"Why?" a stunned Mr. Kristof asked.
"Because she gave life to our precious, heroic liberator, may Allah forever bless her ancestors and descendants," explained the suspect.
Let's pay our due respect to Mr. Kristof, who had counted on a very different response, but nevertheless honestly reported the bizarre incident in his column. Furthermore, he publicly expressed doubts in his understanding of the situation. As we know today, his initial understanding was more or less correct. At that time, no one, at least on our side, knew that the war in Iraq hadn't really started yet. Iraqis hate us today even more than they did when Saddam Hussein was in power. Then, they were burning flags and effigies; today, they burn American soldiers and their armed vehicles.
Mr. Kristof's mishap reminded me of a Russian wedding I attended not long before that. A beautifully organized celebration was supervised by a distant relative of the bride, the tamada (tah-mah-DAH). I was told later that tamada was not a relation, but rather an honorary title, something like the emcee. Every now and then, he would tactfully but firmly intervene in the accelerating chaos of the gathering before it had a chance to spin out of control, delivering witty toasts that assured that every person present would, even if for a brief moment, become the center of everyone's flattering attention.
By the time it was my turn, my rudimentary Russian vocabulary had deteriorated, which was unimportant since people around me kept asking me the same simple question: "Do you respect us?" According to a Russian drinking custom, the affirmative response to it is both mandatory and non-verbal; I was expected to raise my glass and down its contents. So it was no surprise that when the tamada addressed me with his toast, it sounded to me as if he was speaking some unknown dialect. As I learned the next day, he was actually speaking with an exaggerated Georgian (as in Tbilisi, Georgia, not Atlanta, GA) accent. They repeated his talking points in English; everything he said was highly flattering, but ranged from shameless exaggeration to outright misrepresentation.
That's why, while reading about Mr. Kristof's experiment in Baghdad, I couldn't shake off an impression that his subject was speaking with a Georgian accent, like the tamada at the Russian wedding.
In recent years, numerous opinion polls were conducted among members of the Arab terrorist organization known as the "Palestinian people". Sometimes, these polls produce truly bizarre results. Thus, one recent poll favored Israeli-style democracy as the preferred form of government for the future "Palestinian state". Unfortunately, the Taliban was not listed among the available options, so we will never know if, given a choice, they would've opted for that form of government. Nevertheless, Arab terrorists explicitly preferred Israeli democracy to its French and even American varieties.
Optimists among us happily announced that the results of that poll debunked the myth of Israeli "apartheid". Ever a pessimist, I think we should ask whether the question was even understood; after all, democracy is as idiosyncratic to Arabs as female circumcision is to us. Results of another, practically simultaneous, poll conducted within the same group confirmed my suspicions. This time, respondents were asked who they would like to have for a leader; Yasser Arafat won by a landslide.
The idea of an Israeli-style democracy led by Arafat reminded me of the fundamental law of organic chemistry: if you mix one pound of strawberry jam with one pound of feces, the result will be two pounds of feces. Although the outcome does not depend on the quality of the strawberry jam used in the experiment, in this particular case, it may have played a role.
I suspect that, along with virginal Arab ignorance of anything related to democracy, recent actions of the Israeli government and, especially, Prime Minister Sharon played a role in their choice. Even considering the ever tightening pressure on Israel from every government, including the US, from every international organization, and from assorted, but well organized anti-Semites around the globe, also including the US, future historians will be unable to explain certain actions by Israeli leaders without using the term "treason". Both the dead, but still unburied, Oslo Accords, and the Israeli decision not to use the historic precedent of Czechoslovakia, which transferred the Sudeten Germans back to Germany, but to emulate Stalin's eviction of the Crimean Tartars from Crimea, belong to that category. After Sharon facilitated the free discussion of surrender by shamelessly firing two of the cabinet members who were opposed to the withdrawal, the expression "Israeli democracy" sounds to me as if it is being pronounced with a heavy accent, not even Georgian, but Arab. I am afraid that this time, rather than blaming poor Arabs for the obvious confusion regarding the form of government they are never going to have, we should blame rich Jews instead.
It's often difficult for a dilettante like me to avoid getting lost in the political intricacies not only of Israel, but even of my own country. The New York Times helps a lot. For instance, whenever they praise George W. Bush, which, thank goodness, doesn't happen too often, it invariably means that our president has committed some monstrous turpitude. The UN reaction can be similarly used as a litmus test vis-a-vis actions of the Israeli government. Several days ago, for example, Kofi Annan announced the UN support for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. As an advance payment, Israel was rewarded with the vice-chairmanship of some UN subcommittee.
I won't be surprised to learn that governments of various countries, following the example of newspapers preparing obituaries for still-living celebrities, are already secretly contracting the services of leading architects to build tasteful, elegant memorials of the next Holocaust in their respective capitals. Life goes on.
In anticipation of the apparently inevitable surrender of Gaza, it's interesting to know that its definitely non-terrorist population constitutes just 8,000 people. This handful of Jews, however, produces 70% of all Israeli organic vegetables and generates $60 million in annual exports. They have 20 various schools, not including childcare centers. If Jews do not themselves destroy everything they have built there, Arabs will do it as soon as the rightful owners of the land are forced to leave. After that, nothing will grow in Gaza but terrorism. Interestingly, no one has so far managed to explain how those 8,000 Jews threaten peace more than the six decades of pan-Arab war against Israel.
If you are hoping that, in the eyes of the world, this may serve as an argument in defense of the Jews, take a careful look at South Africa. Under apartheid, it was one of the most prosperous countries in the world, where "colored" people enjoyed much higher standards of living than anywhere else on that continent. Apartheid was bad, no question about it, but what replaced it is simply ruining a formerly thriving country. Crime and AIDS are rampant, but the main concern of the government is the remnants of control the whites still exercise over the rapidly deteriorating economy. It remains to be seen if white South Africans are going to be hunted down like white Zimbabwean farmers. It is perfectly clear, however, that, under the pressure of the world, one evil was replaced with another, but since victims of the latter do not belong to a protected subcategory of the human race, the world rests happily.
Jews most certainly do not constitute a protected subspecies, so the destruction of Israel and the demise of its population will be inevitably, and mistakenly, perceived by the world as the triumph of good over evil.
But what will replace the unprecedented cruelty of Israeli occupation of Israel's own land? What the United States is trying to achieve there is as simple as a nursery rhyme and as impractical as perpetual motion. Having come to the conclusion that Arafat will not cooperate, George Bush and Colin Powell are looking for a replacement who will. So far, their labors have produced no fruit, which is good, because history teaches us that such an approach inevitably ends in one of the two possible ways: in the Iranian version, the well-behaved puppet gets thrown out by the locals; in the Iraqi version, the puppet goes out of control and has to be removed by means of military intervention. Either way, it is a disaster of our own making.
Eventually, however, Arabs will follow Ancient Egyptians, Europe will follow Ancient Greece, and the United States will follow Ancient Rome. New superpowers will rise and fall, and only two things will remain unchanged: Jews, as always, will remain a light unto nations, and the nations, as always, will hate them for that. Therefore, no major changes can be anticipated for the foreseeable future, and we can continue to happily play "questions and answers".
In order to better to understand why poll results must be interpreted with utmost caution, let us consider a purely imaginary poll that, in theory, could be conducted in the Soviet Union in 1937, one of the peak years of Stalinist oppression:
"Whom would you prefer as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party:
(a) I. V. Stalin?
(b) S. M. Kirov (a popular Soviet leader assassinated in 1934 on Stalin's orders. Stalin then used Kirov's murder as a pretext for repressions)?
(c) L. D. Trotsky?
(d) none of the above?"
Observe how clearly the question is worded. If a citizen attempted to avoid a direct answer citing a lack of understanding on his or her part, the officer conducting the poll would have no doubt that the suspect was feigning stupidity. Fortunately, Soviet sociologists of that era were well equipped to deal with this kind of dirty trick, effectively guaranteeing that the interrogation would never fail to produce results suitable to the investigators.
Approximately one year ago, soon after President Bush declared, somewhat prematurely, our victory in Iraq, Nicholas D. Kristof, one of the most far-left columnists for one of the most far-left newspapers, the New York Times, tried to conduct his own improvised opinion poll in Baghdad. He was seeking proof that Iraqis hated Bush and considered the Americans "invaders" rather than "liberators". When he asked a random passerby what he thought of the United States, the answer was, I would say, astonishing. The passerby suggested molding a larger-than-life likeness of Barbara Bush out of pure gold and erecting it at the crossroads in the center of the Iraqi capital.
"Why?" a stunned Mr. Kristof asked.
"Because she gave life to our precious, heroic liberator, may Allah forever bless her ancestors and descendants," explained the suspect.
Let's pay our due respect to Mr. Kristof, who had counted on a very different response, but nevertheless honestly reported the bizarre incident in his column. Furthermore, he publicly expressed doubts in his understanding of the situation. As we know today, his initial understanding was more or less correct. At that time, no one, at least on our side, knew that the war in Iraq hadn't really started yet. Iraqis hate us today even more than they did when Saddam Hussein was in power. Then, they were burning flags and effigies; today, they burn American soldiers and their armed vehicles.
Mr. Kristof's mishap reminded me of a Russian wedding I attended not long before that. A beautifully organized celebration was supervised by a distant relative of the bride, the tamada (tah-mah-DAH). I was told later that tamada was not a relation, but rather an honorary title, something like the emcee. Every now and then, he would tactfully but firmly intervene in the accelerating chaos of the gathering before it had a chance to spin out of control, delivering witty toasts that assured that every person present would, even if for a brief moment, become the center of everyone's flattering attention.
By the time it was my turn, my rudimentary Russian vocabulary had deteriorated, which was unimportant since people around me kept asking me the same simple question: "Do you respect us?" According to a Russian drinking custom, the affirmative response to it is both mandatory and non-verbal; I was expected to raise my glass and down its contents. So it was no surprise that when the tamada addressed me with his toast, it sounded to me as if he was speaking some unknown dialect. As I learned the next day, he was actually speaking with an exaggerated Georgian (as in Tbilisi, Georgia, not Atlanta, GA) accent. They repeated his talking points in English; everything he said was highly flattering, but ranged from shameless exaggeration to outright misrepresentation.
That's why, while reading about Mr. Kristof's experiment in Baghdad, I couldn't shake off an impression that his subject was speaking with a Georgian accent, like the tamada at the Russian wedding.
In recent years, numerous opinion polls were conducted among members of the Arab terrorist organization known as the "Palestinian people". Sometimes, these polls produce truly bizarre results. Thus, one recent poll favored Israeli-style democracy as the preferred form of government for the future "Palestinian state". Unfortunately, the Taliban was not listed among the available options, so we will never know if, given a choice, they would've opted for that form of government. Nevertheless, Arab terrorists explicitly preferred Israeli democracy to its French and even American varieties.
Optimists among us happily announced that the results of that poll debunked the myth of Israeli "apartheid". Ever a pessimist, I think we should ask whether the question was even understood; after all, democracy is as idiosyncratic to Arabs as female circumcision is to us. Results of another, practically simultaneous, poll conducted within the same group confirmed my suspicions. This time, respondents were asked who they would like to have for a leader; Yasser Arafat won by a landslide.
The idea of an Israeli-style democracy led by Arafat reminded me of the fundamental law of organic chemistry: if you mix one pound of strawberry jam with one pound of feces, the result will be two pounds of feces. Although the outcome does not depend on the quality of the strawberry jam used in the experiment, in this particular case, it may have played a role.
I suspect that, along with virginal Arab ignorance of anything related to democracy, recent actions of the Israeli government and, especially, Prime Minister Sharon played a role in their choice. Even considering the ever tightening pressure on Israel from every government, including the US, from every international organization, and from assorted, but well organized anti-Semites around the globe, also including the US, future historians will be unable to explain certain actions by Israeli leaders without using the term "treason". Both the dead, but still unburied, Oslo Accords, and the Israeli decision not to use the historic precedent of Czechoslovakia, which transferred the Sudeten Germans back to Germany, but to emulate Stalin's eviction of the Crimean Tartars from Crimea, belong to that category. After Sharon facilitated the free discussion of surrender by shamelessly firing two of the cabinet members who were opposed to the withdrawal, the expression "Israeli democracy" sounds to me as if it is being pronounced with a heavy accent, not even Georgian, but Arab. I am afraid that this time, rather than blaming poor Arabs for the obvious confusion regarding the form of government they are never going to have, we should blame rich Jews instead.
It's often difficult for a dilettante like me to avoid getting lost in the political intricacies not only of Israel, but even of my own country. The New York Times helps a lot. For instance, whenever they praise George W. Bush, which, thank goodness, doesn't happen too often, it invariably means that our president has committed some monstrous turpitude. The UN reaction can be similarly used as a litmus test vis-a-vis actions of the Israeli government. Several days ago, for example, Kofi Annan announced the UN support for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. As an advance payment, Israel was rewarded with the vice-chairmanship of some UN subcommittee.
I won't be surprised to learn that governments of various countries, following the example of newspapers preparing obituaries for still-living celebrities, are already secretly contracting the services of leading architects to build tasteful, elegant memorials of the next Holocaust in their respective capitals. Life goes on.
In anticipation of the apparently inevitable surrender of Gaza, it's interesting to know that its definitely non-terrorist population constitutes just 8,000 people. This handful of Jews, however, produces 70% of all Israeli organic vegetables and generates $60 million in annual exports. They have 20 various schools, not including childcare centers. If Jews do not themselves destroy everything they have built there, Arabs will do it as soon as the rightful owners of the land are forced to leave. After that, nothing will grow in Gaza but terrorism. Interestingly, no one has so far managed to explain how those 8,000 Jews threaten peace more than the six decades of pan-Arab war against Israel.
If you are hoping that, in the eyes of the world, this may serve as an argument in defense of the Jews, take a careful look at South Africa. Under apartheid, it was one of the most prosperous countries in the world, where "colored" people enjoyed much higher standards of living than anywhere else on that continent. Apartheid was bad, no question about it, but what replaced it is simply ruining a formerly thriving country. Crime and AIDS are rampant, but the main concern of the government is the remnants of control the whites still exercise over the rapidly deteriorating economy. It remains to be seen if white South Africans are going to be hunted down like white Zimbabwean farmers. It is perfectly clear, however, that, under the pressure of the world, one evil was replaced with another, but since victims of the latter do not belong to a protected subcategory of the human race, the world rests happily.
Jews most certainly do not constitute a protected subspecies, so the destruction of Israel and the demise of its population will be inevitably, and mistakenly, perceived by the world as the triumph of good over evil.
But what will replace the unprecedented cruelty of Israeli occupation of Israel's own land? What the United States is trying to achieve there is as simple as a nursery rhyme and as impractical as perpetual motion. Having come to the conclusion that Arafat will not cooperate, George Bush and Colin Powell are looking for a replacement who will. So far, their labors have produced no fruit, which is good, because history teaches us that such an approach inevitably ends in one of the two possible ways: in the Iranian version, the well-behaved puppet gets thrown out by the locals; in the Iraqi version, the puppet goes out of control and has to be removed by means of military intervention. Either way, it is a disaster of our own making.
Eventually, however, Arabs will follow Ancient Egyptians, Europe will follow Ancient Greece, and the United States will follow Ancient Rome. New superpowers will rise and fall, and only two things will remain unchanged: Jews, as always, will remain a light unto nations, and the nations, as always, will hate them for that. Therefore, no major changes can be anticipated for the foreseeable future, and we can continue to happily play "questions and answers".