War, Values and Naivety

I'm your beauty

You're my beast

Welcome to the Middle East

This is the refrain from Omer Adam’s hit song ‘Tel Aviv’. On the face of it some cheesy lines that rhyme nicely, but they carry a much deeper truth than the words would suggest. It highlights the fallacy that is so prevalent in Europe and other western nations. The one that assumes the Middle East operates along the same principles and behaviour that have governed most functioning democracies so far. There are two pieces to it: (1) the idea that any conflict can be amicably resolved around the negotiation table; and (2) that people in countries like Egypt or Israel or Syria or Iran in the end are guided by the same set of ideas and values that govern life in, say, France or Spain. But no, things are different and let me give you a bit more context to this.

With the massive attack that Israel has launched on Iran with the latter responding by hitting civilian areas in Tel Aviv, Tamra, Ramat Gan and Bat Yam, the kneejerk reaction from most western leaders has been the usual boilerplate calls to “show restraint” and “find a diplomatic solution” and Canada’s foreign minister’s added the classic “a lasting and peaceful resolution to Iran's nuclear program”. Sweden’s former prime minister Carl Bildt even went as far as announcing the absence of an Iranian nuclear arms program:

Most of these statements often contradict themselves and weirdly assume a moral equivalence between Israel’s democracy and Iran’s regime.

Now, we have had some twenty years of these platitudes and it has not given the region or the world at large a viable route to co-exist with an evil regime hellbent on destabilizing a region while developing nuclear arms. On the contrary, it has been license for players like Iran to go full speed ahead. Israelis know this as no other - the Hamas and Hezbollah experiences were quite clear - and the steady threats combined with ever more precise intelligence left the Nethanyahu government with no other option than to move forward with the pre-emptive move on the terror masters in Tehran. A threat is a threat and you can opt to kill or be killed. Power begets respect and that is how the tribal Middle East tends to operate. Diplomacy is often a smokescreen used until the conflict has to be settled, sadly often in blood. It means you will have to take sides, instead most democracies however are waffling through it all hoping to not offend Tehran while giving piecemeal support to Israel.

In a similar vein is the concept that one can transpose lofty western ideals on the region and believe that its inhabitants will welcome these with open arms. Remember bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

After the completely failed Greta Thunberg flotilla move - which Israel cleverly defused - hundreds of European protestors gathered in Egypt over the past few days to go on a march to break the siege of Gaza. Whatever that meant or involved. As my regular readers will know, Egypt has zero interest in facilitating anything for Gaza and its inhabitants and made short shrift with the marchers. They were either stopped, arrested, deported or indeed in a number of cases, beaten up by Egyptian troops. East meets west:

Yes you can smile, but the levels of ignorance are off the charts and they are informing the protest marches we see all over world right now. There somehow is a belief that Muslims are one monolithic group with the same interests, which they are not. The acceleration of the conflict into Iran on top of what is being fought in Gaza and Yemen reveals how interests in the Middle East diverge and are not always aligned. And you have to read beyond the headlines and public statements to understand that many Arabs nations prefer some sort of relationship with Israel rather than adventure into what western protestors wish to believe and see.

In short: the predominant contribution from ‘the west’ has often been an endless dose of naivety. Watch carefully how it develops in the weeks ahead as the war evolves.

It is therefore much more interesting to do the reverse and see how people from the Middle East react when they enter Europe and engage with Western values. One of the voices who has gone through this experience is Rawan Osman, a Lebanese-Syrian publicist and activist who now lives in Germany. She was in Vancouver last week and her talk started at the very moment that news of the attack on Iran broke and it contributed to a lively discussion.

Rawan basically explained how she, growing up as a Muslim in Lebanon, was raised to hate Jews and that once confronted with them in real life, when she moved to Europe, she had a traumatic reaction. However, she recovered from that and began see Jews as human, studied their history and antisemitism and over time became a prominent voice as a counterweight to the unrelenting Jew hate that has spread across the globe, in particular since October 7th.

It was good to chat with Rawan ahead of her talk and she described to me in detail the threats she had faced when doing speaking engagements at Nijmegen and Maastricht universities in The Netherlands. She needed police protection, but what she most notably recalled was how ‘crazed’ and ‘obsessed’ the pro-Hamas supporters were, the hate was off the charts according to Rawan. This underlines how the protest movement has morphed into a radical cult that will stop at nothing to force its anti-Israel agenda while at the same time betraying its utter ignorance, witness the idiots marching through Egypt.

Rawan was also not afraid to lay out the realities of the situation on the ground in stark contrast to what is often propagated. She pointed out that mandate Palestine was split up between Jordan which covers 78% of the territory and Israel which now controls 22% of the area. In other words, and this is an uncomfortable truth for many, we already have a two state solution in place. And she is also not afraid to put her views into action; she is converting to Judaism and working on a move to Israel. Some of the attendees, who were mostly Jewish, argued that was not the most helpful move: a Muslim champion for Israel is far more impactful and than a Jewish one in the current environment.

Whatever the case, Rawan’s voice is a unique one which why she is getting a lot of attention (as well as a material security contingent wherever she goes). But in a way she has travelled a journey of values crossing the Middle East and Europe which has now landed her back in one of the oldest religions. Her journey proves that European and Middle Eastern values may not always align, yet at the same time they can open the door to finding new, better and more peaceful ways to live together.

Photos: government buildings in Tehran after an Israeli attack on June 15. Rawan Osman being interviewed by Daniel Koren in Vancouver on June 12, 2025.