Window on Israel: 'Don't make things worse'

For over 40 years, the principal field in which I have taught and written, and which most of my conversations have focused on, has been public policy.
 
I spent about a quarter of my career among American students and officials. Most of the rest was spent among Israelis, and in meetings with individuals high, low and middle in other places. Sooner or later we usually got around to discussing what governments were doing, and how they were doing it.
 
My classes and queries usually focused on the elements that influence policymakers and the benefits or costs to citizens: what is, what explains it, and what is likely to be. Sometimes, I wandered into the realm of what should be.
 
On the few occasions when I preached in the Temples of academia or government, the principal message I tried to convey was: Don't make things worse.
 
The roads to hell are paved with good intentions. It is essential to know what is and why if you want to shape what should be.
 
The Innocents Abroad is an epigram that we ought to couple with "Don't make it worse". The title of a book that Mark Twain published in the 1860s sums up much of what Americans and others are doing far from their homes. And they're making things worse.
 
There is also criticism close to home, but those in power continue with their slogans, not to be confused with facts.
 
US President Barack Obama's Cairo speech included a line about  "...astonishing progress within Muslim-majority countries, from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai. In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education."

The Washington Post counters with a long description of torture and other ill-treatments inflicted on foreign business people entertained one day by the royalty and economic elite of Dubai and the next fleeing for their lives lest they be seized, held without trial and abused, seemingly for being in the wrong place when the hyped-up economy, nouveau riche buildings and artificial islands began to falter.

Afghanistan is a fascinating and frightening place with unclear boundaries between civilization and something else. My own visit during the 1970s left me with a story a young man who could not understand why he could not take a bus to America. He did not know about the ocean. And an encounter with bandits on my way through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan.

A few years later the Russians made things worse for the Afghans and themselves. Americans made things even worse by investing heavily in what morphed into the Taliban and al Qaida.
 
The most recent New York Times expose of Afghan catastrophe carries the headline, "U.S. to Hunt Down Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban". The implication is that drug lords not tied to Taliban are now acceptable. However, previous items in the New York Times warn that drug lords not tied to Taliban this morning might be there by lunch time.
 
The major headline on the front page of Ha'aretz quotes the ultra-Orthodox Minister of Interior and Shas chairman Eli Yishai as saying that Israel will expand settlements without the agreement of the United States.

The spiritual leader of Shas, rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has said that Israel should trade land for peace.

That was before the al-Aqsa intifada, the takeover of half of Palestine by Hamas and the construction of two large settlements for ultra-Orthodox Jews on the other side of the 1967 border. If there is a stand-up fight between the President of the United States and Israel's Minister of Interior (who has his hands on planning bodies with a say on construction), I would not advise a large bet on either.
 
Yet another story on the front page of Ha'aretz is that of a 92 year old homeless woman in New York, a Holocaust survivor, who had never been in Israel but admired the news of Israeli research. She died without relatives, and left $150,000 to the Hebrew University.
 
My glass is half full.