Levitt Letter Extra News

by Susan Goodman
www.aish.com

When he receives his Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences this week, Prof. Robert Aumann will talk about bringing world peace.

Bringing peace to the world is usually the preserve of political or religious ideologues – certainly well outside the domain of mathematicians. But this is the theme of the lecture that Prof. Robert J. Aumann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will deliver next week when he receives his Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in Stockholm.

In October, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences jointly awarded Aumann and Prof. Thomas C. Schelling of the University of Maryland the prize “for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.”

Previous Israeli Nobel Prize laureates were Shai Agnon (Literature, 1966); Menachem Begin (Peace – with Anwar Sadat, 1978); Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (Peace, with Yasser Arafat, 1994); Daniel Kahanman (who is also an American, Economics, 2002), and Technion professors Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko (chemistry, 2004).

Speaking at a Jerusalem press conference at the university’s Center for Rationality on the eve of his departure to the Stockholm ceremony on December 10th, Aumann explained that resolving specific conflicts — whether in the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, Asia — does not bring peace to the world. To accomplish this, he maintained, what is required is an interdisciplinary analysis — historical, psychological, sociological — into the very nature of war.

War must be studied “like you study illnesses, like you study cancer. Once you understand the causes of it you can begin to try to cure it,” he said.

According to Aumann, it’s a mistake to say that war is irrational. There are “rational motives” he explained, that have driven us to war since the dawn of civilization. And it is through investigating the rational nature of war, that we can then be able to address the problems by applying game theory — Aumann’s speciality.

Game theory provides a complex mathematical analysis of elements and strategies, which are involved in decision-making situations, including those concerning conflict and cooperation. Despite the difficult nature of the mathematics of game theory, Aumann explained to ISRAEL21c that the theory is actually something which we all, at a basic level, experience in our daily lives.

“I do it all the time,” he said with a shining broad grin emerging above a long carefully displayed white beard. “When I want information from someone official, I always ask their name. I usually forget it immediately — but I want the person to feel responsible for what he’s doing.”

The German-born Aumann has been a central figure in the development of game theory for about 50 years. He has been able to apply his outstanding ability as a pure mathematician in a field which concerns itself with real-life problems of conflict and co-operation.

In 1955 he completed his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the mathematically esoteric subject of knots — a subject that, much to Aumann’s surprise, has now become of interest to scientists studying the way DNA gets tangled in a cell, sometimes leading to cancer.

It was at MIT he met John Nash (the subject of the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind) and the two discussed the newly emerging field of game theory.

Aumann then joined a small group at the Forrestal Research Center, attached to Princeton University. Here he was to meet a problem that, because of his earlier discussions with Nash, he realized could be solved with game theory. The problem was of strategic importance, concerning a squadron of aircraft, a few of which were armed with nuclear weapons. Aumann began work on game theory.

In 1956 Aumann moved to Israel; his second emigration — having moved from Germany to the US with his family in 1938. Throughout his life in Israel he has continued to maintain close collaboration with mathematicians and economists in the US. Most recently he was a Visiting Scholar at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University (1989); Oskar Morgenstern Visiting Professor of Economics, New York University (1997); Nemmers Professor of Economics, Northwestern University (1999-2000). He has been a member of the US National Academy of Sciences since 1985.

In 1991 Aumann helped found the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University — a unique academic venture in which he is still a leading light. Here outstanding scholars from 13 different university departments meet every other Friday.

Despite the accolades for his outstanding achievements, the 75 year-old Aumann, a devoutly observant Jew, remains a quiet, unassuming figure — most excited to tell the press gathered around him of his plans to bring his entire immediate family of 35 people — his children, their spouses, plus grandchildren and great-grandchildren to Stockholm, in addition to other relatives and members of his ’scientific family.’

As he is asked questions ranging from, the logistics of taking his family entourage, to more thought-provoking issues, his face flashes between reflective moments of deep still thought and radiant smiles and laughter. Despite the constraints on his time since winning the Nobel, Aumann has attempted to retain equilibrium in his life, and proudly announces that he hasn’t had to cancel any of the classes he teaches or any meetings with students.

If there is hope for ever understanding the causes of man’s seemingly unending ruthless struggle against his fellow man, the chances are great that it would emerge here — in the Center for Rationality, under the guiding influence of the deep humanity, piercing intellect, beguiling wit and mathematical genius of its founder: Professor Robert J. Aumann.

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
www.aish.com

Munich is a distortion of truth and morality.

Time magazine calls it a masterpiece. And that’s why Spielberg’s Munich, a work of undeniable cinematographic brilliance, is nothing less than a cultural and political tragedy.

The irony is incredible: The movie will leave its tens of millions of viewers with a message that is diametrically opposed to the true significance of 20th century Munich, and the events that led up to the tragedy Spielberg so powerfully captured in Schindler’s List.

History has forevermore linked the Bavarian capital with the political failure of appeasement. It was in Munich that Hitler founded the Nazi party and it was here that the infamous Munich Pact was signed in September of 1938. England and France, afraid to take on evil, meekly surrendered to Germany’s demands and deluded themselves into thinking that their “amiable discussions” had, in the unforgettable words of Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, “secured peace in our time.” Appeasement, the world soon learned, was the mistaken belief, as Heywood Broun perceptively put it, that “if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian.”

Hitler correctly recognized the lack of response to his terror tactics as national weakness, and little more than a year later attacked Poland to begin World War II. Historians trace the birth of the Holocaust to the passive mindset of Munich.

How amazing then to find the very same Munich as the focus of Spielberg’s film depicting the anguish of Israel’s harsh response to the vicious murder of 11 of its Olympic athletes by Palestinian terrorists.

Spielberg explains why he feels the need for an even-handed approach to the aftermath of the Munich massacre: “Because the biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis. The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence.” What chutzpah! Does Spielberg mean the intransigence of Israel which has continued to offer land, peace and compromise to its Arab neighbors after every war meant to annihilate it? Or the intransigence of a people which has decided its national policy will not be the cowardice of Chamberlain but rather the determination of “the greatest generation” — the Allies who fought iniquity head-on to the victory that saved mankind from universal barbarity?

And yet another irony: The Spielberg so conscience-stricken by “Golda’s list” of Palestinian murderers designated for execution is the same man who, in Schindler’s List, alerted the world to the horrible consequence of passivity in the face of evil.

Perhaps the greatest perversion of truth in Spielberg’s Munich is the line he claims is the key to the entire film. In a scene that never actually happened, Golda Meir justifies the mission of the agents she sends to carry out justice with the words, “Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.” Golda never said it because she understood that holding mass murderers responsible is not a compromise with civilized values, but the only way to insure that civilization survives. It is only a world that abdicates the need for a Golda’s list that ends up with a Schindler’s list.

PUBLICITY, NOT PUNISHMENT

What Spielberg didn’t bother to tell us in his manifesto for moral equivalence — the film’s clear and oft-repeated theme that, as Warren Bell succinctly summarized it, “When good guys kill bad guys, they’re as bad as bad guys” — is how the world responded to the Munich massacre which we now know marked the birth of media-covered terrorism. Avery Brundage, head of the International Olympic Committee, the same “courageous” leader who in 1936 had insisted on sending an American delegation to “Hitler’s Games” in Berlin, reacted to the Olympic carnage by stressing that the most important consideration was now that “the games must be saved.”

The Olympics, as a microcosm of the world, sent a clear message: Terrorists get publicity, not punishment. Jewish victims may be quietly mourned but their deaths don’t require measures that will prevent their reoccurrence.

Golda Meir sent a squad of Israelis to do what for the second time in a generation the world refused to do. And, unlike the lie of Spielberg’s Munich, the heroes of this action were not consumed by the kind of guilt that Hollywood liberals believe must accompany every act that lets criminals know evil cannot be countenanced. When Germany actually released some of the terrorists two months later, Golda said she was “literally physically sickened by Germany’s capitulation” and by the realization that “that there is not one single terrorist held in prison anywhere in the world. Everyone else gives in.”

Israel understood that “crime and punishment” is not only biblically mandated; it is the only alternative to the Munich of Chamberlain that inexorably led to mass murders perpetrated by the Master Reich.

FALLEN HERO

I came away from watching Munich with profound sadness because Steven Spielberg has always been one of my heroes. Spielberg so often made us proud of his identification with his people. Some years ago I met him and shared with him an insight that he admitted he never realized: While filming Schindler’s List in Poland, Spielberg did the last editing cut on Jurassic Park. I hoped the remarkable connection between the two films wasn’t lost on him. By all logic, the Jews should have disappeared during the centuries of persecution culminating with the Holocaust, just as the dinosaurs did eons earlier. But a remnant survived. That remnant filed by the grave of Oskar Schindler to give thanks. And it is survival that defines the miracle of the Jewish people.

Jewish survival is the priority of our historic mission. But for Spielberg in his Munich incarnation, as scripted by Tony Kushner, political correctness is the new god to be worshipped, even at the cost of national suicide. Kushner has already made clear what he thinks about Israel: “I wish modern Israel hadn’t been born.” Kushner is the paradigm of one who ardently believes that violence is never justified; only dialogue with our enemies will ever achieve peace.

Yes, Spielberg admits that Munich is “historical fiction,” that he has taken license with some of the facts to make a more memorable movie. But what is unforgivable is the “moral message” he leaves with the viewer that distorts reality and affects how millions will judge the current Mideast impasse. Both sides, the film tells us, have an equal claim on our moral sensitivity. Yet it is only one side that seeks not a national homeland, as the script suggests, but the total destruction of the other. As a leading Palestinian cleric declared: “We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again… We will rule America… [and] Britain and the entire world — except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule… Listen to the Prophet Mohammed, who tells you about the end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.”

Both sides, the film tells us, are responsible for the collateral death of innocent bystanders. But what it does not make clear is that for Palestinians it is policy; for Israel it is only an unintended and much regretted consequence.

Too bad the movie does not include perhaps the single most relevant dialogue in Jonas’ book, Vengeance, that served as the primary source for Munich. In assigning the mission, the agents are given clear instructions: If you get all of the names on the list, your mission is an incredible success. Get six or five, we will feel the message has been sent that Jewish blood is not cheap, that we will not sit idly by as the world did during the Holocaust. Even if you get only one or two, it will not have been in vain. But if you will be faced with a choice between killing any one on the list together with an innocent bystander or aborting your mission, your instructions are to do nothing.

That piece of information is probably the most crucial difference between the Munich terrorists and the Israeli hit-squad, yet it wasn’t included in the film.

Munich concludes with a final insult: The disillusioned leader of the mission, who cannot abide the ideology of a country that dares to declare that it will no longer idolize the glorification of the Jew as victim, renounces his country and settles in Brooklyn. And so ends the hope of the Jewish people.

It never happened. And it makes whatever message Spielberg sought to bring to the screen indefensible. I beg Spielberg, one of the most brilliant filmmakers of our generation, to heed the advice to ET: “Phone home” to your people — the people who will immortalize the courage of Schindler’s survivors rather than condemn the heroic executioners of Munich’s terrorists.

Iraq isn’t the Arab world’s first democracy.

BY MICHAEL J. TOTTEN
www.opinionjournal.com

BEIRUT, Lebanon—Of all the rationales for demolishing Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the most compelling was the Middle East’s desperate need for at least one free Arab democracy to act as a model and an inspiration for oppressed and demoralized citizens in the others. So far it is not working out, despite the recent successful elections. Most talk of Iraq on the Middle Eastern street revolves around occupation, terrorism and war. Iraq is not yet a model for anything. It looms, instead, as a warning. Hardly any Arab wants his country to become another Iraq. In time that may change, but right now that’s just how it is.

Lebanon, though, is an inspiration already—despite the assassinations and the car bombs that have shaken the country since February. I have an apartment in Beirut, and I recently traveled to Cairo. Arriving back here was like returning to the U.S. from Mexico. Almost everyone I met in Egypt—from taxi drivers all the way up to the elite—was profoundly envious when I said I live in Beirut. “It is a free and open city,” I told them, but they knew that already. Many Americans and Europeans still think of Beirut as a hollowed-out, mortar-shattered necropolis where visitors are well-advised to bring a flak jacket. Egyptians, though—at least the ones I talked to during my stay—know the truth.

Beirut is where the taboos in the region—against alcohol, dating, sex, scandalous clothing, homosexuality, body modification, free speech and dissident politics—break down. Its culture is liberal and tolerant, even anarchic and libertarian. The state barely exists. The city’s pleasures are physical and decadent. Beirut is where American and European tourists used to go to loosen up, gamble, drink booze and pick up women—and that was in the 1950s. Today it is where Saudis and other Gulf Arabs like to vacation because they can do, think, wear, and say whatever they want.

Last month the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Political Freedom ranked Lebanon the freest Arab country, followed by Morocco. Iraq came in third. (Libya brought up the rear, below even Syria and Saudi Arabia.) Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution peacefully ousted the Syrian military, which had ruled the country as a raw imperial power since the end of the civil war in 1990. Free and orderly elections promptly followed. If Iraq becomes a success in the end, it won’t be the first Arab democracy. It will be the second.
That doesn’t mean Lebanon is a Middle East Switzerland. The Syrian regime still smuggles weapons into Palestinian camps, infiltrates civilian society with its security and intelligence agents, and assassinates its Lebanese political enemies. The radical Shiite Hezbollah militia still holds its own effectively sovereign territory along the border with Israel and in the suburbs south of Beirut. Though the electoral laws no longer produce a rigged pro-Syrian parliamentary majority, the voting districts are the same ones gerrymandered by the Damascus regime during its occupation.

From a distance Lebanon may look like a typical Middle East country racked with the usual chaos, but it isn’t. What makes this place unique is that the Lebanese political system is nearly incapable of producing dictatorship. The three main sects in this country—Christian, Sunni, and Shiite—do not share the same political ideals and values. They do, however, share power, since every group here is a minority. By tradition, the president is always a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni, and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite. Parliament decides who fills the top three government posts, and members of Parliament are elected by the people of Lebanon. Each sect’s parliamentary bloc keeps the others in check. The result is a weak state and a de facto near-libertarianism. Syria and Iraq, which also are composed of rival ethnic-religious sects, may do well under a similar system.

It works in a flawed-but-muddling-through sort of way. Lebanon’s model wouldn’t work everywhere else in the Middle East and North Africa. It would not work in Egypt, for example, where Sunni Muslims make up the overwhelming majority of the population. Something other than institutionalized sectarianism will be needed there to weaken the state and provide checks and balances.

Even so, Lebanon inspires Egyptians in ways that Iraq doesn’t and perhaps can’t. Iraqi freedom is being born in blood, fire and mayhem. Sometimes that’s what it takes. America’s freedom didn’t come peacefully, and neither did Western Europe’s. But because Iraqi freedom is seen as violently imposed from the outside, a huge number of Egyptians, along with plenty of other Arabs in the neighboring states in the region, dismiss it as an imperial sham.

No one thinks Lebanese freedom is a sham. This country would not be even a ramshackle sort-of democracy if the people who live here had not demanded that much for themselves. The March 14 revolt, in which almost one in three Lebanese demonstrated in Martyr’s Square for freedom and independence, reverberated powerfully throughout the Middle East. Iraq still makes most Arabs shudder. Lebanon, though, is genuinely inspiring.

Lebanon is not and should not become an American project the way Iraq and Afghanistan are. That doesn’t mean the U.S. should shrug off the importance of its security and stability. Nor should Washington see Lebanon’s troubles merely as a means to the end of pressuring or overthrowing Bashar Assad’s Baath regime in Syria. Syria matters because it exports violence to three of its neighbors, to Israel and Iraq as well as to Lebanon. But Lebanon matters for reasons beyond the continuing conflict with its former master.

It matters for one simple reason. Oppressed Arabs need an inspiring country of their own that they can look up to. And right now, they have one. Lebanon is not just a country with an elected government. It seduces the region with its culture as well.

Beirut has more in common with raucous freewheeling precommunist Hong Kong than with drab Amman, Damascus and Cairo. The nightclubs, the shopping, the restaurants, the bookstores, the intellectual cafés—these things are all world-class in Beirut. The sight of Lebanon’s famously beautiful unveiled Arab women makes a lasting impression on men who travel here from neighboring countries.

Freedom means more than just relieving the boot from your neck. Freedom also means fun and the pursuit of happiness. That’s why so many Arabs come here on holiday, and why so many would rather live here. Never forget: demand for Levi’s and rock ‘n’ roll did as much to bring down the Soviet Union as the yearning for Western-style democracy did.

Lebanon is a special place, and the U.S. should treat it accordingly. It is already what we hope Iraq someday will be.