approaching and he was arrested. in that system, if you stood up to the authorities and lost you were a non-person. so he wasn't allowed to put on his plays. he had to work in a brewery for a while. and then by the early '90s he was president of the czech republic. so we should not think just because these young people -- they are prominent people to helped make the egyptian revolution and the current egyptian government has put them in jail. so-to -- and i don't think we have heard the last of them. it is a remarkable journey.

i tell the story in this journey over the past decade and a half or so but coming almost right up to the present. i think i didn't want to do a quickie book in 2011. i went to being a historian and having perspective and thought well of in my profession. and so even to write something after three years is oaudacious. the first generation was elected into office in 2011-2012 and a raft of books said this is the islamic winter.

not the arab springs. let's talk about the people who made the changes. let's talk about this generation. what are they like and who are they and what have they done. let me read a little from the book about an internet activist of the early '00s. he set-up an internet discussion group and magazine which was very lively and was very much disliked by the dictatorship.

and he ran this for some years and then his internet police finally tracked him down at 5 p.m. on june 4th, 2002 six plane closed police man raided the cafe he worked and took him to his apartment and took his personal computer and files. he was subjected to brutal interrogation. three times in the course of the questions he was strung up by his wrist so his feet barely touched the ground. during the third round of suspension he gave up the password of this site and allowed authorities to take it down temporarily. he was tried to blinding speed and sentenced on july 10th to one year in prison for spreading false news and another year ask

a half for the fraudulent use of communication because he secretly used the equipment at the cafe he worked at. soon after his arrest, sophy, his girlfriend, gained access and reinstated to articles. the internet was often cut off. every time it was necessary to create a new account using the name of friends and neighbors. he suffered in prison. there were 120 inmates in a big hall with just one bath room and hardly any water. he launched a hunger strike for his release, ended it and started another. the conditions of the prison, the bad food, lack of water, and

crowded cells along with this hunger strikes deeply damaged his health. this caused a breach with his father. the poor man never understood and never accepted what he had done. he could not reconcile himself having his son defy the police and getting arrested and not excusing it. he died while he was in prison. on the morning of the funeral, her mother came to the room and cried out he had been given permission to come home and play respect to the father. the family hurried to the house of the deceased father. day had barely broken and when we arrived at my aunts street there was a dozen buses full of

police, a camera truck, etc. we went into the house and he was shackled at his wrist and feet like a convict on death row. because of the arrest, the majority of the family didn't come to express sympathy to my house. the house was empty but now full. one of the police man walked over the corpse of my uncle who was on the floor. i remember it well because my father wanted to kill him. he shouted don't you have any shame walking on a dead person. he was sitting on the floor near his father and weeping. the whole family was in tears. it was horrible and we were disgusted to see the cops everywhere like that. but at the time we were happy he would be able to a tend his father's funeral. it wasn't to be. they just gave him half an hour. he didn't have the right to go

to the burial. after getting out he had a massive heart attack, almost certainly because of the conditions of the imprisonment. this death date in march is now a national holiday. thank you. i will open it there for questions. do i see any changes in saudi arabia? well, like a lot of places i am discussing is very young. the median age of the arab world is 24 and that is 340 million.

i think the united states in my generation was done to 28. that is when we made the trouble. they are younger. and saudi arabia is maybe younger than some of the others. so certainly there are a lot of young people in saudi arabia with new ideas and they are not able to express them very well. it is a repressive society and there is a contraint on activism. it is also however a very wealthy society. it is among the world's largest petroleum exporter. people are boasting the united states is producing more petroleum than saudi arabia but that is not important because we use all of it and import more.

they only use a little and explore the rest so they are getting a lot of money in the bank and we are not. so that wealth allows the government to bribe people. so sense the revolutions of 2011, the saudi arabia state has increased the perks you get for bogue a citizen. they have free health care, free education, low interest on housing. it is good to be a saudi arabian in some ways. and kuwait as well which is an oil imerate in the gulf. they gave each person $2500 in 2011 to keep them quite. you could get a nice home theater system so he was saying

you could have a revolution or you could have a home theater. so far the the people went for the home theater and other perks and quited down. whether they are only quite on the service and bubbling underneath we don't know. and if you asked is egypt on the verge of the explosion they would have said no. i have been in egypt and knew it was but it wasn't common wisdom. things could thank a lot in sod saudi arabia. >> are the radical isis group young people? >> the question is are the

radical people from isis young people. ...

>> they felt that the islamic state was from their aspiration. hint these groups would grab desert lake areas with the relatively low population. so they loom large in the consciousness with a 370 million arabs and roughly over one-third of them that is not where most people's heads are at. and democrats or liberals or a very substantial person are.

but they are deeply polarized. it could be the radical fundamentalist react that there's such a small minority of this generation that goes to hell in a handbasket or liberal with the western sense. added may be rooted in the same discontent and so forth. also competing ideologies and visions. in the big countries and the more liberal leftist satan to predominate.

the outcomes seem to be on that side of things. >> i like your analogy. >> what this generation and sense to have a consciousness. >> is what interested me in this project to have that kind of consciousness as a use for a generation. thinking about things in english but then in arabic were called the use rabil.

and they think of themselves as a generation in to say they speak for our generation. and this was a fluke because those running against the muslim brotherhood as a man of global regime even if that were true from 2012 in egypt?

and so the muslim brotherhood data and. and then to come into conflict. so one of the supporters of the muslim brotherhood had to run away from the regime. in the two exchanged correspondence.

already mobilizing against the president of egypt? in his father wrote back to say his suffered years and then wrote back for the 30 years. but this is something in my experience here you have a

family whose one father is the cleric and the other son is a liberal they're going at it. >> i have to tell you this and so forth only 9% of egyptians thought 2011 was the purpose of making the islamic state.

i guess the parents are a socialist of some sort. and then to support the workers. and then with that industrial sector. and then decided to strike. and then they do not allow it to occur.

but everything was recorded on the internet by the young people. so they're not very excited looking forward to the islamic purposes. it was attempted april 6th 2008 and that was one of the major ones. but muslim brotherhood members from 2006 and seven but many of them ran in that way and older people did not like the outbreak. so they ended up with the

movement gravitating to the left. so in that youth movement there were the organization's the predominance was so enabling not that they would go to the mosque and pray but organized in a way of the brotherhood. this is what attracted me to study the movement because that is interesting as a development. unlikely it is happening with iraq but to go add of the way in unusual places with iraq and afghanistan but from cairo or tunis that does not look like the middle east.

with very religious societies look like they are organized around islam but not so much. >> is that fairly consistent? there fairly well educated by not doing much with it where with the arabs during and it is as much in the forefront with that a static. what is happening in that respect? >> with the activist old dictatorship it sucked all the air out of the feminism. the lives of the dictators

and light of everybody else in society they would sponsor bills in parliament and they were important to help the upper middle-class women. with some of those legislative measures. so my colleague has written about this. that 84 year-old are the ones who deliver on women's rights. this works with the number of ways because you hope though women will be one of your constituents. then you can declare you are

what stands between the fundamentalist in civilization. says the young women activist they did not buy that nothing for those ladies with the fashions in the lack of interest of ordinary people. and then they have that younger son was a notorious playboy but the woman that

he married the pitchers that caveman out made her look like us socialite and they always had defense in the use bog mounted a campaign is the slogan was yes, egypt no. [laughter] they even announced they would have wedding parties you can have that but not us. so they were protesting police torture and sexual harassment in their epilogues in the arab world is so much gender segregated

you know, the cairo university campus so for a woman to come out in public to get a hearing is difficult but this is very educated and very eloquent but it went viral so it called for young people to that is a good day to have demonstrations because the police are off. [laughter] but as a member of the youth group they are women and one-fifth of the

demonstrators and that was courageous in their part so there was instances of harassment. bin into asia the cousin of the diet she went on to found a monitoring organization which monitor the drafting of the new constitution and every time the religious right would introduce an article that the left disagree with she would get out the word and put pressure it was partially shaved by her in her generation of young women.

i talked to some of them and said the muslim brotherhood guided and are you afraid of their rights being taken away? they actually said now we are free to organize and there has never been as much energy or organization as well. >> were in the foreign influencesnr at all or not truly? >> him in june due to ban social networking but it could be from within or without. obviously the use degeneration is very cosmopolitan from the united

states or the u.k. but one thing a have to say the are some authors that speculated

. >> it was largely indigenous there were other of its will and they did not intend things to go this far but it was welling up themselves despite the cosmopolitan character in the goals were

not those of western europe for the united states at the time. >> pushing the envelope just a little bit with the muslim brotherhood would use your reading on a loss what they can or cannot do? , etc.? >> the book does not deal with the palestinian or israeli conflict in part because they did not have the same kind of movement as the other places but to see if they would exist but they were not able to make a political statement of that sort. and gaza is the open-air

prison. that they're not allowed to export and what is brought in in gaza could go to the israel checkpoints so it could be to have buildings destroyed it does have the deleterious effect on the order of 40% with the us remembers but the u.s. some of them support of the religious right as far as the movement but then last

summer with this use movement of a branch of rebellion was established but hamas has the guns meeting itself to a civil society so it is not clear that movement will go anywhere but with the palestinian use shows how many of them are not happy with the policies and in the long term it is a bad sign. >>. >>, you think the motivation is economic but the

prospects are pretty grim in general. you hear people not being able to use get married or have jobs so how much of that is economic or the millenials themselves? >> i think a lot for the youth activism is economic not the only thing on their mind but it is a big thing and they believe the government's had a logjam if only you could get it going again you could have some progress. so in some ways they argue in the book there is a magical thinking as if all the problems in yemen but

you just get rid of him then things would be rosy. but i interviewed the youngest recipient of the nobel peace prize in did help to move out in his power has waned substantially but yet to whenever i astor she said if we get rid of him but of course, that was not true and if you were really worried about the economy the last thing they will do is disrupt the government i think 10 percent of the

economy was tourism and that was laid off then foreign investment if you had a lot would you give it to egypt right now? it is not clear. many have been very disappointed they did not get that spurt of economic growth they may yet but those statistics after 2011 have been better every year to protect that 4 percent vote if they do that it is not so bad but they thought this was the way to improve the economy but as i said

the corruption was so bad so the new governments are weak and inexperienced but that is why they need outside investment so a the u.s. will try to get out of the logjam. think you think we have to leave it there i appreciate your good questions and we will go sign copies now. thank you. [applause]

background checks for potential gunfire. james brady was 73.

[applause] in recent days israel has been attacked in compelled to take action to defend itself from attacks from gaza this is the third time in six years once again voices have been raised you criticize the military operations to demonize israel? of self-defense that would be a no-brainer for any other country in the world this is a sad and tragic time the special for the more than 1.7 million palestinians who have been taken hostage by her boss with the efforts to abeyance the radical agenda of. we are fortunate to have with us today joshua muravchik whose book "making david into goliath" how the world turned against israel" seems relevant to current events. he has written hundreds of articles in intellectual

journals with foreign policy and political and ideological topics the author of nine previous books including heaven on earth the rise and fall of socialism and trailblazers the voices of democracy of the middle east caribbean fellow at the foreign policy institute at johns hopkins school and of indians to studies infirmity years at the american enterprise institute from 2011 to 2013 also a fellow at the george did you bush instituted and a fellow in residence in before that in the seven days a congressional aide to representative james o'hara and patrick moynihan. joshua?

[applause] >> thank you for coming here for what i have to say. i am grateful for that. it is a striking coincidence of process to repeated self and times over the past decade and a half is now taking place once again that it strikes back in self-defense and then receives widespread criticism around the world in this was the subject than i tackled in this book why

does it work this way? the idea came to me about four or five years ago one morning when i read in the paper on the internet about a story in sweden that ran in the widest circulation daily in sweden and they reported israelis were now slaughtering palestinians randomly in order to harvest their body organs for sale. this story had no basis whatsoever in was built around the case of a deceased palestinian who had a scar on his body because he had an autopsy. but when the reporters for other publications followed

up and went to the family they denied it ever making an accusation. so essentially they've made it up. the swedish ambassador to israel apologized for the story at which point she was reprimanded enforced by the swedish foreign ministry to withdraw her apology on the grounds it was the infringement of press freedom. when i read about this i thought how can this be? it is so crazy. how to become to this? i can understand people fill critical at one moment in disagree with the israeli policies. i do sometimes. but to have an image to

imagine and put into print in the major western daily newspaper that israelis were randomly slaughtering palestinians? had become to a point where people have an image of israel to allow them to publish such things? was also startling to me is i am old enough to remember sympathy for israel and around the world was very substantial public opinion polls showed in the united states how people did not have an opinion or did not care but put those who did

the support was quite overwhelming. maybe eight / one but similar were taken in france and the ratio of support for israel was even more one-sided than for the united states there is still a great deal of support for israel but around the world

as sematech. >> so it could be a part of the omnibus arabs state that nasser espoused would get the palestinian national charter that was adopted in 1964 makes no mention to have the palestinian state or sovereignty and it is all

about palestinians as part of the arab nation. the defeat of the arabs of 1967 was so devastating in humiliating destroyed nasser prestige and with that also destroy it the idea of the arab best that cleared the emergence of the palestinian nationals that was advocated by a few among the and yasir arafat in friends mostly those working in kuwait. and over the years they've moved into the plo to take it over to see the emergence

of palestinian nationalism as an issue in the conflict for the first time. so as having an image with massive arabs against israel to become little but strong because israel now was an occupation of territories of several million. instead of people who were trying to deny the jews a state of their own but to deny and other people was

state of their own. said without whole conflict was given a different look but this was not a sufficient explanation of the hostility against israel today. because maybe the world came to care about with the aspirations because no one cares about other occupations. but to exercise the occupation of tibet? a far more outstanding and preoccupations and the palestinians and in terms of the national aspirations

what about the kurds whose aspirations in it justifiable in every dimension. for thorough culture or knowledge headnote country of their own. sadly no one cares before they denied those aspirations. and really it cannot begin with the attitudes we see today. has manifested and inconsistency was right in

the demonization of israel that we see so much. for example, the teacher unions have voted for academic boycotts of israeli universities. the same teachers unions have never voted for or propose store discussed or debated of universities and countries with no academic freedom or no unions of teachers or anywhere else that passes unnoticed. we have seen recently the presbyterian church has voted to divest from companies with israel but to persecute questions?

and then what goes hand in hand there is no serious interest in the fact that this case has been decided before the fax from the cold stone report about the last significant war in gaza and the foreign minister of sweden and the held the chairmanship of the chairman's seat -- chairmanship of the e.u. the very next morning he endorsed the goldstone report. it is 500 pages long of very small type. he had not read the goldstone report between the day before when it was

issued and the morning he endorsed it in the day above all of europe. he was not going to read it he did not care what was in the report. it condemned israel so therefore automatically it had to be embraced and endorsed. because israel is and how inherently wrong. nevermind so hata may get to that situation? so those forces at work so those material pressures brought to bear and intellectual changes that alter the equation. so first of the use of terrorism which was carried

out widely on european soil with airplane hijackings throughout the 1970's and would terrorize the europeans until they came into a mode of appeasement for the terrorists. there was an account made 204 perpetrators hijackings and bombings who were captured and detained in european prisons isn't they were instantaneously released here was not just the europeans so you can look into the memoir of

arafat's main deputy the french author wrote memoirs and he would post the summit meeting that declared the sole legitimate representative of the palestinian people. we should keep -- secure the vote because we created a climate of terror so those arab leaders were afraid to go against them. with the use of intimidation the oil embargo and implemented at the time he 1973 it brought europe and japan to their knees in the

spoke openly of the need to change the orientation of the conflict because of their dependence on arab oil. the next year with a boycott over secretary of state kissinger that the western countries have to find some mechanism is from the threat of future oil embargoes. so to go on the boards for the europeans to join us to raise the cloud. and he wrote in his memoirs the terrible frustration every minister i consulted with was terrified of confrontation with the oil

producers. this was a complete failure because the minister's decided to a peace rather than resist and the third part of what is brought to bear is the sheer weight of numbers reverie to there 100 missiles when israel 22 member states of the arab league 57 member states it is a fact of life for human nature that most people seeing a conflict between the many and the few take sides with the mini only the very brave will join with

the few also a consequence which translates into a diplomatic pressure and also enables the arabs to take over the wind. so you have these security council if it has a veto and is not a problem but every other un body is majority rule and those are all dominated by the movement whose 120 members make up two-thirds of the u.n.. and about half of that is the islamic countries end of the 22 member states is by which the arabs had their way to turn the u.n. into a

platform for the campaign against israel. it is astonishing but but it has unlimited rift any problem in the world of members choose spends an immense proportion passing a resolution after resolution to denounces real it does occasionally but of all resolutions three-quarters that mention a particular country three-quarters have been devoted to the denigration of israel and one quarter to m&a misdeeds by the other 184 countries in the world.

so with endless turning out of resolutions the wind has three special bodies to conditions in one vero with a large staff to propagating the palestinian cause to denigrate israel so it is the material pressures brought to bear to change world opinion but then equally important part of the change was a transformation on the intellectual level. this was not engineered but those who could take advantage of its to turn around this takes the form

of a paradigm of progressivism for one century the core idea of capitalist not just a matter of justice but portrayed as a redemptive it struggled to make the whole world a better and happier place. this image began to lose its force it was another reality play with the national and

ethnic struggle against colonialism it died the the entire post colonialism and in this view instead of the class struggle is set of workers against capitalist also to be overlaid with the heroic civil rights struggle within the most watched country in the world so this all came to wine and ball of wax with the rest against the west called people of color against the white man. this was not just a matter of right thing the wrong pick came to be seen as a redemptive struggle to make the whole world a better

place. it was not invented by advocates they could take advantage of it the leading symbol was in fact, the most prominent palestinian american from:viet university whose work became immensely influential the newspaper the guardian wrote he was the most influential

intellectual of our time. there was a web search done for the most syllabi these days are online see you can search party that there 900 courses in american universities that are assigned like georgetown and ucla entirely devoted to the thought of edward even in cambridge introduction to the thought of edward. it amounts to a complete intellectual thought not just something i disagree

with that has no legitimate intellectual standing whatsoever. if the world were to look at it with clear eyes. why would i say something that drastic? it boils down to the idea that all white people are inherently racist not exactly those words but the same thing. every european also apply to americans what he could say about the orient was a racist and imperialists and ethnocentric. to prove the broad basis to examine the work those who

studied the muslim world to what he really did to allow in the universe the european intellectuals from 19th century to look for those racist connotations then strung them together to say these people were all oriental less. but some of the people he quoted were not oriental list at all. then he gave them a new label you could call them the oriole until last some of them had the one'' but the contrary quotes that they left out the left out entirely who were giants in

the field who is writing clearly the opposite direction when he would prove with the attitudes of the westerners the steadied the orient one of the most important of the figures was a hong carry into who wrote in the late 1800's and regarded as the granddaddy of muslim and arab studies. in those left out lived for years and the arab countries and of course, like all people whose steady another region of the world, loved it. that is normally what happens if you are an

academia especially chinese studies or whenever the normal mindset with a great affection and that was true also and it was exemplified to capitalize that attitude remember he was such you to discover that islam was the only religion to elevate judea's of to a rational level. as opposed to the six figures which you or your children have been assigned to read. . .

the new people whose liberation redeemed mankind. he made the oriental into the ultimate example of people of color. the muslims into the representative orientals and the

arabs into the central or core muslims and finally the palestinians into the ultimate quintessential arabs. by this chain of reasoning, abracadabra, israel was transformed in it because it was in conflict with the palestinians. it was transformed from being seen as redemptive refuge of the people from thousands of years of persecution to the very embodiment of white supremacy and oppression and i think in matt transformation lies the explanation for the question i ask myself that morning when i read about the story of how the people possibly believe such a thing. thank you very much for listening and i'll be happy to

take questions or comments. [applause] >> thank you joshua. i would like to ask the first question and after i do i will hand it to the audience and i ask you to ask real questions concise so everybody gets a chance and also to identify yourself. we will get to some microphones. wait until the microphone comes to you. as for my question joshua we conservatives like to say that ideas have consequences. as richard richard weaver road and it strikes me that one of the ideas that has had increasing consequences throughout the middle east is this paradigm shift you mentioned between pan arab nationalism often secular-socialist nationalism and a new revolutionary islam must extremist revolutionary

doctrine and represented i think by hamas which is an arm of the muslim brotherhood which is putting into effect the ideas of a former muslim brotherhood theorists who borrowed many ideas of a vanguard party and ceaseless struggle from communist thought and applied these in islamic, islam must context. that along with the breakdown of the oslo peace process has made it even harder to imagine the compromise on a national basis between israel and palestine. if the conflict is increasingly defined in rule it -- defined in religious terms and hamas or whatever collection of leaders on the other side see themselves as acting to advance their

concept of god's interest then compromise itself becomes blasphemy and becomes increasingly hard to see any kind of negotiated settlement to this thing and that, taken with some of the war crimes that have been perpetuated as hamas has taken palestinians hostage and hides amongst civilians to launch rockets at civilians in the long term could discredit that caused in the eyes of many in non-muslims read so do you see any impact on israel's image coming out of succession of what looks to outsiders as self-defeating armed attempts to kill civilians with very little gain to the average palestinian in the street? do you think over time that will

make westerners particularly europeans look differently at israel? >> thank you. it's a deep question jim but i always hate questions where i have to speculate about the future. i'd much rather speculate about the past. i think that, that islamists have gained a lot of steam since i think it was the iranian revolution that rarely even though it was shed -- shiite and most muslims are shiite it was the first islamic republic that really gave a tremendous shot in the arm to islam is a man over the decades the last 35 years we have seen that has been on the rise. but it is also evoking some

backlash as you are suggesting and some horror at the things they are doing. one hopes that will spread to the west. the interesting thing is that reaction against islamism i think is to this point most evident or at this moment in this current gaza crisis, it's most evident in the arab world where i think a lot of people are quite unhappy with the islamists. by far the largest majority of their victims, people who have guided their hands have not been jewish or christians but have been muslims. and think what you will about the takeover by general out of

cece -- owl a sissy but there were millions who took the muslim brotherhood and i think in this current war in gaza where we aren't getting used to talk this is something old in internet and social media war and we are getting all these terrible images of innocent civilians in gaza who are getting killed and bombed out of their homes and children among the victims. and yet there really hasn't been the kind of rage in the arab world against israel that we have seen at other moments where

there have been these conflicts. of course most people in the arab world will feel in identity with the arabs out of the fight but there hasn't been that fury that we have seen on other occasions. i attribute that to the fact that a lot of people in the arab world are getting sick of the islamists and i think they do understand that hamas started this round of fighting. whether westerners will catch up with the arabs on this score i think remains an unknown. >> okay let me open it up to questions at this point. this man right here and the two men behind him. >> greetings. my name is james and i'm a u.s. army veteran at ground zero national security consultant president and founder of -- and

republican and unapologetic neoconservative. i want to thank the speaker for extending us the courtesy of their time to this issue. i want to visit a core tenet that seems in part defines the elements of the lecture and of course talking about the intertemporal scope of your research which seems to look at the impact of strategic information and influence operations implemented by u.s. israeli adversaries the goal to attempt unfairly so to delegitimize israel and delink israel from its allies. i wanted. i wanted to know if in your research you came across any evidence that illustrates them. quite the organization operational ties between assets influenced by soviet supporters during the cold war and assets of contemporary u.s. and israeli adversaries?

>> i don't know that i have found the goods you are looking for, the kind of hard evidence of institutions or individuals who did x, y or z but the broader picture, you don't need to have special information on intelligence you know which is the soviet union is gone now but for at least its last 20 years of life, it worked very much in this field of trying to transform world sentiment against israel and that was because there is one effect of the 1967 war that i left out of my presentation in order to keep it short although it was

probably too long anyway but to keep it from getting longer and one interesting effect was israel's lightning victory in 1967 was a tremendous humiliation to the soviet union as well as to nassar because the soviets really push that war. they have agitated the egyptians and assyrians. the arab armies were armed with soviet weapons and it was seen to some degree a cold war proxy war where one side a light with the west and the other side of life with the soviets. therefore it was a tremendous humiliation to the soviets. their side was losing. their weapons were discovered as western weapons and it had a very powerful effect inside the soviet empire. for one thing it ignited the

consciences of jewish within the soviet union itself for numbered several million who had not had any kind of freedom of religious or other cultural activities. many of them just had an awareness of the heritage that they were but hadn't lived in a kind of jewish life either religiously or culturally. but they felt this identity and they felt 100 times more strongly when israel defeated, little israel defeated these big soviet client states. so we got a movement within the ussr of soviet jewish for the right to immigrate in the first time in the history of communism. there was some kind of semi-mass movement for rights and against the regime. until then there had only been an individual dissident here or

there so that was momentous and it also had an effect on empire in the so-called satellite countries where people are not jews but were under the soviet boot felt hopeless about it. if israel could defeat the soviet in the middle east this model if we are up against is not invulnerable and not invincible. so it didn't have, it sent a shudder to the soviet soviet leaders in the result of that was they have mobilized and didn't stop until they were go gone. a campaign of denigration of israel and zionism, they played a big role in the u.n. imp are pounding the zionism is racism resolution. so there was certainly a very powerful connection and there

was also a connection and you may think of it as more and bolts and that is in these early years after fata moved into the plo and took over and the palestinian cause was consecrated than they quite consciously apprenticed themselves to the north north vietnamese and to get kong and two other communist revolutionary forces around the world who said we can show you how to defeat them militarily superior enemy and you don't do it on the battlefield. you do it through politics and information or disinformation. that was an enormous transformation because until that point in the arab world the arabs had been allied with the axis in world war ii.

there were german nazi escaped criminals in egypt churning out propaganda. that is why so many of the killed the jews, drive the jews into the sea came from. some i was homegrown but some of it was encouraged by the nazis and after 1967 the herbst figured out this really isn't working so the arab cause was we position from right to left all at once. that's not exactly the detail you are looking for but that's as much as i can add to this. >> excellent presentation. given the really false and pernicious falsehoods and images that have been targeting israel that you describe in your book,

what is it that israel and its supporters in the west do? >> well, i wrote a book. i think israel itself has not been great at pr or information in telling their story and i don't know why. they have brand report this and i also have the sense that they don't try very hard. i think there's a certain cynicism and israel that the world is against us anyway so why bother. i know sometimes in my role as a researcher trying to get information from israeli sources

that will counteract some anti-israel story that's out there that i suspect is false and i can never get it. so i think there is a problem on the israeli side and on this the side on the american and western side, people who support israel want to see it survive and flourish. i think for one thing we have to not be intimidated and increasingly there is actually physical intimidation going on on university campuses which has been common for a few years. we have seen a little bit of it in the streets in boston and los angeles in the last weeks. of course even more apparent in

your and p. in places and it's important not to be intimidated but it's also not -- important not to be intimidated intellectually. that is, if i'm right in my analysis that is part of what israel is up against his it's up against the dominant progressive interpretation of the current stage of world history which is the stage of the struggle of the rest against the west than it is intellectually intimidating to go against things because you don't want to be a neanderthal. you don't want to be a racist. you don't want to be someone who is unsympathetic to the claims of people who have been

oppressed or discriminated against in the past. you should be sympathetic to those claims but you should be sympathetic and that they are just and they don't entail some new injustice. people just have to have the intellectual courage to stand up and argue for what they feel is right even if it goes against the zeitgeist and even if it goes against what seems to be the proper way of thinking about upright and moral people. >> this woman in the back here. >> hi i am deborah rice from frontpage magazine. i appreciate you coming today and enjoyed your presentation but i couldn't help notice that you omitted any mention of the

anti-semitism is that has plagued the jews throughout the centuries and they have been scapegoated throughout all of history. certainly hamas's charter which says expressly that it wants to eliminate the jews now by diplomatic means but by violence and the unholy alliance between leftists and islamists. also might as well add also the inherent anti-semitism as well as anti-christian phobia and all of that in some interpretations of islam and certainly in hamas. >> i didn't talk about anti-semitism and i don't need to talk about it except perhaps in the book because while i am sure it's a factor in hostility to israel the question that i was trying to answer is what has changed so dramatically over 40

years? it can't be that there was no anti-semitism or very little anti-semitism in the world 40 years ago. anti-semitism is there today but it was there then and it's been there for centuries and a millennia. so it's kind of a given but however much anti-semitism bears in the world we had an era from the late 40s to the late 60s and the six-day war is the epitome of that but you would think when there wasn't a war but just a popular culture the novel exodus which was published in the 1950s was the best-selling novel and in the united states since "gone with the wind." then it went on to be translated

into scores of other languages and became a bestseller and many other countries rated so it just didn't seem to me that anti-semitism was aired very good explanatory variable for how we got in those days to today. one other problem with anti-semitism that i thought about and one other problem with many problems in what we are talking about in his overall argument which is i thought about this one walked in mearsheimer published first their paper and then their book. i thought it was all quite nasty and when i read it i thought this just really reeks of anti-semitism. in the paper that preceded the book right at the beginning they

said we may be called anti-semites but far from it. not only are we not anti-semites, we are philosemites. then people read what they wrote and any number of critics said you were anti-semites and they said now we are not in the critics said yes you are, no were not and at that point it seemed to me that the argument goes nowhere. i feel that it's very hard for me to prove that so-and-so is an anti-semite but it's not at all hard for me to prove that someone is saying about israel is false, unfair, unbalanced unjust and i would rather keep the argument on that plane than to get myself embroiled in trying to prove what's in someone's heart or mind. >> we have time for one more question and will you be signing

books afterward so people can talk to you afterwards? >> there are books i will find them. >> that sounds good. this lady up here. >> hi my name is barbara and my question is when you look at the conflict and you assign blame or look at the blame because you have to identify the problems in order to work towards solutions would you say the islamic side as 100% of the blame and israel has a rope or would you make it 90/10 or how would you do that? in other words things israel can do to work also towards a solution? >> let me say two things in response. one is, in terms of i think it's

less important to assign blame than to think about how the conflict could be ended and to have the only formula that is convincing to me for any conflicts are formulas that involve very substantial concessions on both sides. and i think there is no -- and i don't have much sympathy for some in israel who seemed to take the position well we will just have everything we want and somehow this problem will go away. i don't think that's at all reasonable. in assigning blame it becomes

trickier. i'm not an israeli and i don't share the risks that israelis are experiencing at this moment and that they live with every day. i try to impose on myself a rule of great modesty and taking positions on what israel ought to do that if i were an israeli i would be on the more soft line rather than the hard-line side of the spectrum. that is among those who do accept is there should be a two-state solution and i think a lot of the settlement building

is foolish and is a nuisance and bad in that and, if there is ever and there seems to be none at all but if there is a will have to involve dismantling of some settlements, consolidation and so in that sense i am not imply good accord with everything that's done by israelis for that son by israel. it also doesn't seem to me a very meaningful exercise to say this one did that thing wrong and that one did that thing wrong.

there's a basic cause of this conflict and that is not in 100 details. it's in one big idea and a basic cause of the conflict is that the arabs initially would not accept the existence of any sovereign jewish state of any size and with any borders. over the decades even generations some of them now due including some of the palestinians. but i think whereas there is a very clear that geordie and israel for a settlement for a two-state solution for the creation of a palestinian state as part of a peace agreement among the palestinians there is not and never has been a consensus that says okay, we will go for two states as a

private solution. we will accept that israel is there forever and we are there forever and we will live side-by-side in a productive relationship. there certainly are substantial numbers of palestinians who do want that and who do believe that there is another substantial number who don't. this most recent poll was taken in may sponsored by the washington policy and conducted by respective palestinian poll organizations and it found that twice as many palestinians agreed with the proposition that we want the conflict to go on until we have all of palestine as choosing the option that said we would like a two-state solution so we can go on building our own oil or

neighbors build their own. it's actually worse numbers that have appeared in similar polls in other years. sometimes it's been more 50/50 that even 50/50 isn't enough. there has to be a consensus on the palestinian side. it doesn't have to be 100%. there has to be a consensus that they will go for permanent peace. permanent peace also means policing. if there is a palestinian state than you can allow it to be a base for attacks on neighboring states. rather than look for blame in some day today in every action on the diplomatic front or on the settlement building front or on the military front that the

essential question is who wants peace and he wants fighting? on that question, it's pretty clear that the blame is today as it has been since the conflict began on one side. >> thank you and with that can i ask members of the audience to join me in thanking joshua muravchik. [applause] he will be outside if yo

if i'm not mistaken this is the 30th democracy but at johns hopkins published since the series began in 1993. these volumes mostly but not exclusively draw upon article that previously appeared in the journal have addressed a very wide range of regional issues related to democratization around the world. for any of you who may not be familiar with the journal of democracy is a publication

sponsored by the national endowment of democracy that has become the leading global forum or serious analysis of the problems and prospects of democracy around the world. larry diamond who is also my coeditor of the journal will serve as the moderator of today's discussion and i will limit myself to a few brief remarks by sleep out the book itself. today given the intense worldwide focus on the shattering events in ukraine the arab world for the first time in several years is no longer the center of attention for those who follow global politics over democracy and some might even say the so-called arab spring that began early in 2011 has proven to be merely a brief corruption and is left behind a great deal of violence and little democracy. yet it would be premature to discount the impact of the arab

uprisings of recent years. not only have they made possible the still promising democratic transition in tunisia and frail but still not yet aborted transitions and yemen and libya, they also have changed the face of arab politics and given many arab citizens a taste of freedom that will not soon be forgotten. regardless of how one evaluates the events of 2011 through 2013, they must be considered a critical juncture in the struggle to bring democracy to arab land. in their regional sweep they arrive only by the way the transformation of eastern europe and eurasia in 1989 to 91. the journal of democracy monitored the arab uprisings in the aftermath intensively and our book reflects the range of

variety of our coverage. it's not easy of course to stay on top of rapidly unfolding events and you could not expect authors unfailingly to get -- hit a moving target. along with some impressively press and an active assessments the book no doubt contain some judgments that now seem outdated or her perhaps to her perhaps the light by events. in fact one thing we have asked the panel is to do today is to reflect on how they might have altered the analyses that they contributed to the book if they were rewriting their article today. we also believe there's real value in bringing together essays that show how key developments in the evolution of the arab spring were perceived at the time. democratization or authoritarianism in the arab world is quite large containing

29 chapters along with an introductory essay. 16 of these chapters consist of broad essays with regionwide application that address such questions as the relation between islamic democracy, the role of islamist party arab culture and public opinion and the reasons why different countries pursue very different path during the arab spring. the remaining 13 chapters are devoted to case studies of individual countries. multiple chapters on tunisia and individual chapters on yemen, libya syria bahrain algeria morocco jordan and saudi arabia. at the conclusion of today's panel we will have copies of the book available for sale at the back of the room for those who might wish to purchase one.

i will leave to bury the privilege of introducing our panelists all of whom have contributed at least one chapter to the book trade let me say a word about larry himself. he's one of of the world worlds most evident scholars of democracy. he's a senior fellow at the hoover institution and stanford universities fully institute for international studies where he directs stanford's center on democracy development and the rule of law. he also served with me as co-chairman of the research council of the national endowment for democracy's international forum were democratic studies. before we begin i want to call attention to the superb job that was done by the journal of democracy staff in the articles when initially appeared in the journal and then in preparing the book for publication. all the essays were edited either by our executive order --

editor or our senior editor tracy brown who i am sure is here somewhere, also in the back. our managing editor brin calhoun who is not here today handled the production and design of both the original article and the subsequent book with the customary assurance and efficiency and our assistant editor nate played an extremely important role in drafting the introduction so much so that larry and i agreed he should be listed along with us as the co-author. he's also in the back of the room. i also want to thank melissa and dean jackson of international forum for democratic studies for their help in organizing today's presentation and i also want to note the presidents suzanne our book editor at johns hopkins university press.

those of you who are on twitter who follow the panel discussion and contribute to the conversation by using the hashtag ned events or by following the forum at great democracy and the endowment. now please join me in silencing your cell phones and i'm very pleased to turn the floor over to larry diamond. >> thank you so much market thank you to everyone who is acknowledged by mark. we are very grateful to three of our authors who are agreeing to participate in this reflection on the book and where the arab world is now in the wake of this publication and in the wake of all of the developments of the last three plus years. i'm going to briefly introduce

our speakers. they will speak each for about 10 minutes in the order that i want to reduce them. i may ask them a few more questions and try and get them to fight with one another intellectually. then we will have plenty of time for you to pose your questions or challenges to them and to all of us. dan brumberg is one of our oldest in terms of longest-serving partners in the journal of democracy. in fact he joined our editorial at an early stage of his career. and it's been very influential in shaping our coverage of the political developments related to the arab world and associate professor of government and codirector of the program of democracy and government at georgetown university.

he also serves as a special adviser with the institute of peace to the muslim world initiative where he focuses on democratization and political reform in the middle east and the wider islamic world. hillel fradkin has also been a long-time partner interlocutor with the journal of democracy and our study center and a senior fellow at the hudson institute where he directs the center on islam democracy and the future of the muslim world. he is a founder and coeditor of the center's current trends in islamist ideology and he has taught at chicago, colombia yale and georgetown. amperage is the world's intellectual life and policy and practice. tarek masoud we have gotten to know more recently but we are excited about the work he is

doing and that he has also contributed to the journal of democracy. he is an associate professor of public policy at the kennedy school of government at harvard where he teaches courses on comparative political institutions modernization and politics. his new book is just about out, right? counting islam religion class in elections in egypt and he is also the author of a very widely acclaimed book order, conflict and violence with cambridge university press. i will ask you each beginning with you dan to reflect on what you wrote and the challenges of democratization and authoritarianism at this moment in the arab world. >> i first want to say i very much appreciate the opportunity

to be with my old comrades and friends at this meeting and to have contributed to this volume and list of contributors is extraordinary. the test to the widening arena of scholars doing serious work on the arab world and the wider middle east. when we started this venture the notion that we would work on the arab world seems to be fantastic to a lot of people. i recall back in the day where we should've had meetings just to put this on the agenda and convince people this was an incredible thing that need to be studied. the journal was way ahead of the curve. i mean that. it really was prepared to start asking important questions long before some folks out there in the policy and academic worlds were ready to think about this seriously. i think it's a credit to the journal that has devoted so much time attention and space and larry has done such a good job

with mark in making that happen. i appreciated and i think many people in this audience contributed to that effort recognize how important it was that the journal was so much ahead of the curve are in this matter. i've been asked to reflect on the piece i wrote. what i rewrite it in a different way? when i wrote the piece and mark was mentioning how do you deal with events that are changing as you are writing them? i said i had two predictions. things were grim grim and each of them wouldn't work out and things were okay in tunisia and would work out and things that were not looking so good in tunisia, oh my god like ron said when he is going to get the constitutional vision written. my reputation is on the line. low and the hold even a week before the constitution was

agreed on colleagues didn't know what was going to go on. i felt and i am saying this for a serious reason and that is i think this may sound somewhat self-serving but the analytical framework i tried to set out in that article in egypt and tunisia is a framework that i think i am more convinced than ever i have to say is a useful way to think about the challenges of moving from what i call a authoritarian rackets, protection rackets to democratic protection rackets and government -- and the paradigm itself focuses on the dynamics of conflict and identity and arab political systems. that paradigm is by no means limited to the cases of arab world.

let's just look at ukraine right now is another example where the issue of identity politics and autocracy and dread -- intersect but the issues of conflict are specially press and in the arab world for a variety of reasons. it's not something that we really expected in the sense that when they were both started in tunisia part of the metropolitan to nist capital but in arra areas it was about the revolt and searching for social and economic equality and dignity. and so many of the initial slogans in the rebellion not only in tunisia and i much preferred the notion that arab political -- in arab spring as well as in egypt and elsewhere these rebellions were in large measure initially about pictures of economic and social measures dignity.

the whole intersection and syria against the water scarcity and how that played a critical role in the revolt and syria. so people were caught unaware by the extent to which the issue of identity politics has loomed so large. i use the term very deliberately because i don't think the issue as i have written in the past, i wrote a piece two or three years ago, maybe more you know how time flies called islam is not the issue of the problem and how different segments of these communities can learn to live together democratically as opposed to having a peaceful co-existence or not so peaceful coexistence in an authoritarian system. i think therefore the identity issue looms large but many people were surprised. i remember jill coppell wrote a

piece months ago where he said he was shocked that the issue that egypt had loomed so large and i was thinking oh my -- this is a man who knows each of 12. sometimes it's not easy to stand back and see the terrain. the terrain was very much organized and the reason why it was not so surprised about the fact that thing shifted so quickly from a focus on social economic justice and dignity to a struggle over identity is that the political systems had in large part been organized around what i call protection systems in which governments regimes backed by strong militaries in many cases provided socioeconomic protection to paul beyrle minorities are communities in return for their acquiescence to their power.

that sort of relationship which i call the long time ago a bargain that kind of relationship meant that in many respects the dynamics of identity constitutionally steeply before we saw the arab political worlds explode onto the political arena and deeply embedded among contested political leaks who did or not necessarily have they saw saw as corrupted and efficient saw as corrupt and inefficient or unfair so when the elite politics shifted shifted in the context of that protection racket system and didn't necessarily transcend. i think it is an out sounds, in retrospect nothing is surprising. that's for sure but i have been thinking about this stuff for a long time and while i was hoping it