The Language of Leaders: Lincoln as a model
by Michael Lame, posted on March 5, 2010
Angry rhetoric now characterizes the relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, two West Bank burial sites revered by Jews and Muslims alike, were added by Netanyahu to Israel’s new national heritage list. Abbas responded by charging that “Israel’s attempt to steal the Palestinian heritage is part of a larger scheme to take over religious Muslim sites”. Netanyahu countered by issuing a statement accusing Abbas of engaging in a “campaign of lies and hypocrisy”.
What’s wrong with this picture? Such militant language from each leader may be received with approval by his respective domestic audience, but it temporarily poisons the well of reconciliation from which both peoples must eventually drink.
One consequence is heightened tensions and increased distrust between Palestinians and Israelis. Another is a decreased likelihood that the two sides will do a deal in the foreseeable future.
Being a statesman, and not merely a successful politician, requires viewing the future strategically. In the long run, Israelis and Palestinians must find a way to live together, without violence, terror, oppression or provocative language. This is true regardless of what shape the final settlement takes.
Must a leader who wishes to protect his base of support by exhibiting strength use demeaning rhetoric against his or her adversary? One could examine the language of Sadat, Hussein or Rabin for examples of strong Middle Eastern leaders who at crucial moments were willing to speak in a conciliatory fashion.
For an inspiring perspective on the language of leaders, let’s look back to America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln—a war leader and a man of peace.
Lincoln was uncompromisingly aggressive in wartime, refusing to consider any negotiated settlement that would not restore the Union. Yet his language was always amicable and temperate towards the people of the South. Even though he thought slavery was “an unqualified evil”, he did not speak abusively of slave owners. .
Lincoln’s exemplary magnanimity is most evident in the closing passage of the Second Inaugural Address, delivered while the war still raged: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God give us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Can you imagine any Israeli prime minister or PA president speaking thus?
Of course, no analogy is exact. Southerners were citizens of the United States before they seceded and Lincoln always considered them to be Americans who would one day be welcomed back into the Union. In contrast, Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza speak a different language than do the Jews of Israel, both literally and figuratively. Neither people has ever wanted the other, let alone wanted them back.
Despite profound differences between the two situations, Israelis and Palestinians can learn from Lincoln. The president’s determination to defeat a wartime enemy did not lead him to vilify that enemy. On more than one occasion, Lincoln visited and comforted wounded confederate soldiers who had fought against his own troops. His mollifying words and deeds looked past the immediate conflict to a time when the warring parties would live alongside each other in peace.
As this example suggests, one way to change the dynamics of a conflict is to change the language employed. Provocative words can be replaced by words of moderation, respect and compassion. Of course, words alone will not transform the Middle East. But the habits of thinking that shape and are shaped by moderate language can also produce moderate action. Use of a new vocabulary can begin to create a context more conducive to resolving the conflict.
Returning immediately to the negotiating table won’t produce this effect. Negotiations must be preceded by a profound change, perhaps beginning with a shift in the language used by the leadership to address the other side.
Obviously this is a difficult process. Despite cooperation at many levels, Israelis and Palestinians remain in an adversarial, occupier-occupied relationship. Yet it’s possible for them to pursue a policy which serves their interests without impugning their opponents’ motives or character and without disparaging their national aspirations.
The words of leaders matter and the specific words that leaders speak can be of critical importance to their constituents and to their opponents. Now is the time for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to choose words that can help create a new reality in the Middle East.
5 responses so far
I give this piece an “A” for effort, but it really misses the context.
I wonder what Lincoln’s views towards the American Indians were? This is closer to the indigenous vs. colonial struggle that Palestinians and Israelis are engaged.
Ahh, if only “a shift in language” could end this misery. Maybe it could.
Rgds
Sam
You have described a key, and missing, element of progress toward peace. Neither side wants the other “back,” but they will either be neighbors in a larger community or they will be increasingly dangerous adversaries for each other. The posturing, sabre-rattling and name-calling that scores political points and scares people has come at enormous cost. It takes patient, courageous and persistent leadership to turn the respective populations away from recitations of their fears and grievances and toward thinking of each other as neighbors.
What you have described is a normal part of Middle Eastern political rhetoric. Think of all the things that Arafat said about his political opponents during his long career. Yet he could be counted on to kiss and make up at the next Arab summit or the next meeting of the Palestinian Council. The same was true of Saddam Hussein, King Hussein, Hafiz al-Assad, Hosni Mubarak and others. The only major Arab leader who didn’t play this game was Sadat. And Sadat probably would have if he had lived for another decade.
Neither Netanyahu nor Abbas really want to negotiate with each other at the moment as each is too weak to make the concessions that would be required for a settlement. The real lesson that Israelis could learn from Lincoln’s life is the lesson of the creation of the Republican Party out of a merger of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and the anti-slavery wing of the Northern Whigs. The two parties combined their platforms and within slightly over two years of the merger under a new name the Republican Party was the established opposition party to the Democrats and four years later had its nominee in the White House. Unfortunately, the parties of the Israeli center-left seem unable to learn this simple lesson.
Sam,
Lincoln had two “interactions” with Indians in his life. The first was when as a young man of 23 he joined the Illinois militia to serve in the Black Hawk War. He saw no combat. As president he was responsible for dealing with the aftermath of the Sioux Revolt in southern Minnesota in 1862. He attempted to lessen the impact by pardoning everyone sentenced to be hanged who could not be proved to have taken innocent life or to have been involved in instigating the revolt. He thus cut the list of Indian victims by about two-thirds. So. maybe it can be said that those Israeli leaders who refuse to release prisoners with “blood on their hands” but release others are acting as Lincoln did.
No, Tom, what I have described is far, far from “a normal part of Middle Eastern political rhetoric.” Perhaps empathy and compassion for one’s enemies can be faked, but I don’t recall that Arafat or Hafez al-Assad ever even made the attempt.
Most politicians know how to go through the formalities of kissing and making up, but authentically reaching out to the other side requires more than political skill. It demands a largeness of heart as well as a breadth of mind. Such statesmanlike qualities are in short supply the world over, but their absence is particularly felt in the Middle East.
I just read your article in an online newspaper and followed the link and – here I am. While I do absolutely agree with you that language is of utter importance the real value lies in the actions. Words come cheap especially these days (see e.g. Obama’s Cairo speech) but actions are the true parameter against which to measure the real intentions.
I don’t need to tell you how it is of utmost importance to the Jews to recognize first and foremost their centuries long suffering. From psychology we know that this is a very important first step towards real healing. Yet – although Israel always and incessantly requests this at nauseam it denies the very same right to the Palestinians. On the contrary: it denies them this right explicitly and cements the denial by law (see the recently – although tuned down – law with respect to the Naqba).
The very same applies to “the right to exist” although there is no such “right” for any state in International Law. But that’s not the point. The point is that what Israel requests for itself it denies in absolute terms and actions (!) to the Palestinians. To pick a few examples: Likkud “Flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” National Union “Absolutely rejects the idea of a Palestinian state between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” National Religious Party: “The State of Israel alone shall exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. No Palestinian state or any other foreign sovereign entity shall be established in this area.” This is from their Charta respectively election campaigns and these statements are on almost daily base followed by actions on the ground. Israel creates daily “des fait acomplit” on the ground.
Whether it is the continuation of building the Wall (which it has been ordered by International as well as by Israeli Court to stop and re-route respectively) or the expansion of existing illegal settlements or putting up a new one – the recently announced 50″000 new units – under the disguise of expansion.
The real disappointment comes from the International Community which gives Israel – if really pressed – at best a slap on the wrist and within the IC the outstanding deafening silence from the treacherous Arab dictatorial regimes. First and foremost the trusted ally Hosni Mubarak who has sold out his country decades ago and acts now as an assistant prison warden for Israel with respect to Gaza.
This slap on the wrist dates back to 1947 (after the partition declaration and continued well into autumn 1948 during which period Israel took some more land by force and cleansed well over 400 Palestinian villages from its inhabitants and rendered the water wells unusable in case someone would make it back) and continues up until today. Israel can do whatever comes to its mind with impunity – for a simple and sad reason: it’s not that because it has no partner for peace … it’s because it has no partner for war!
It’s not that hard to hold out your hand and it’s not that hard for another man to shake it. This was done in 1949 at the Lausanne conference by the Arab States – Israel refused to take the hand. It’s not necessary to repeat the ups and downs of the history and the mistakes committed on both sides – I assume we’re all too familiar with them.
But let’s take a quick look at the Road Map nonetheless. If we visit the “Road Map Status Report: Phase I, updated June 11, 2003″ we read that the PA had by then completed most of the requirements, two were in progress with respect to security and three had to be postponed simply because they were linked to the upcoming elections.
Israel on the other hand had not implemented one single request. The first one being to stop all settlement activities. The only one were there was some progress was … “Israel has resumed transfers of Palestinian tax money to the PA, but approximately $315 million still remains outstanding”.
So … one does what with nice words if the actions on the ground are since over 60 years speaking a very clear and unmistakable language?
Unless we look honestly in the mirror we’ll never get to a real and partially just solution and settlement for this last colonial enterprise. Uri Avnery – whom I hold in very high esteem and personal respect – put down the solution almost two decades ago. He showed the possible way forward in his booklet (which has been updated recently) called “Truth against Truth”. This insanity has to stop in order not to waste more lives on both sides. But the dream of Eretz Israel seems to make it impossible.
Gamal Abdel Nasser wrote in 1948 in his diary during the war “I felt that humanity does not deserve the honour of life if it does not strive with all its heart in the cause of peace.”
Maybe we should remember these words?!