Shame/Honor Dynamics
An embittered former IDF lieutenant examines Arabic shame/honor culture based on his experience in a Bedouin Scout company, draws conclusions for larger Western-Arab relations, and counsels greater understanding. Small Wars Journal:
The North was burning. It was the summer of 2006, and I was a young lieutenant in the newest company of recruits in the Bedouin Scout Battalion 585. Our soldiers had been inducted four months earlier, and the company staff was involved in a two-day workshop on the coast of Netanya after successfully guiding the soldiers through basic training. The workshop was run by two women, organizational consultants brought in from the civilian sector. I sat astounded. The other commanders were deliberately misrepresenting the situation in the company. I struggled to understand why they were unwilling to face our problems and improve themselves and their soldiers. The answer became clear to me as the workshop progressed, and has served me as a paradigm for understanding Arab culture.
The 585 is the only unit of its kind in Western militaries. Its soldiers come almost exclusively from Israel’s Arab communities. The majority of soldiers and almost all of the officers’ corps come from Israel’s sizeable Bedouin minority. There is a large number of Muslim Arabs who are not Bedouin, called Felahim, as well several Christian Arabs. The only non-Arabs are the occasional Circassian, and Jewish officers transferred in to fill command positions when the battalion lacks the manpower to do so.
I was the only Jew in my company. Upon completing the eight month Officers School in February 2006, I requested a position in the 585. I had done my basic training on the same base as their recruits, and had several Bedouin friends from various courses we had completed together. I admired the battalion’s singular mission and its soldiers’ bravery, and I saw an opportunity to discover a new facet of Israeli society while instructing young Arab Israelis who had volunteered for service. Naïve, maybe, but to me this was real Zionism.
I consider myself a believing Westerner- that is, I believe in most Western ideals and modes of thought. I was educated with these values, and I brought them with me to the army and to the workshop. For me, this was a rare chance to air my platoon’s shortcomings and receive the views of my peers in the company staff. In my mind, an honest and sometimes emotional confrontation of our miscalculations as commanders was about to unfold, resulting in a refreshing gust in our sails as we readied ourselves to take our soldiers through three grueling summer months of advanced training- unless our efforts were needed on one of the Second Lebanon War’s two fronts. This is what the workshop intended. As we came across issues where we as commanders had erred, I eagerly offered a harsh criticism of my own conduct, and diplomatically but firmly commented on that of others. I was the only one doing so. The other commanders, almost all Bedouin save a Muslim and Christian Arab, painted a rosier picture. They took every pain to convince the consultants that there was not a single problem in the company. Their typical response was a smile, and an assertion that things were going smoothly.
They could not have been farther from the truth. We were presiding over a company that had begun a dangerous spiral downward after a strong start to basic training. Our soldiers fought each other, stole from the battalion canteen, and went AWOL at a much higher rate than soldiers in regular IDF infantry companies. Some of those problems undoubtedly were the inevitable result of the battalion’s noble efforts to attract at-risk Bedouin and Arabs to the army in order to integrate them into Israeli society. But the majority of these norms stemmed from laziness and lack of personal example on the part of the commanders, from the squad commanders all the way to the Company CO. The staff made no effort to confront honestly any of these problems. Their goal was to make a good impression on these two civilians for the two days, without even giving a minute’s thought to the potential benefits of confronting ourselves as fallible commanders. In my mind, these two consultants were never going to see us again, so there was no reason why I should care what they thought of me as a commander. And I was willing to put aside their lack of qualification to critique combat officers. I saw a time for valuable reflection and emotional baring, crucial to our success and to that of our infantrymen. For me, the desired result was an improved staff; for the others, the aim was to present a picture as positive as possible.
The consultants were ignorant of the dynamic in the group. As a result, their conclusion was that my platoon was the weaker of the two, and that I was overly critical of a company that was progressing smoothly. By the end, it became clear to me what larger cultural difference was driving commanders in the IDF to promote themselves at the direct expense of their subordinates.
What had the consultants failed to comprehend? Nothing less than the dominant feature of Arab society and politics- the honor/shame culture. It is not an issue that the consultants were willing to explore and unlikely they even considered, but dealing with it honestly provides a clear and tangible case study for the larger cultural context that is responsible for the state of the Middle East today.
In this culture, at its most basic, a man must strive to maintain his honor at all costs. He must fight, even lie or kill, to protect his honor and that of his family. Conversely, when a man fails to protect his honor, he is shamed. He may regain his honor by vengeance against those who shamed him, often through bloodshed.
It is counterintuitive that the feared and despised ‘humiliator’ of the Arab world, the Israel Defense Force, would contain a useful case-study for that society’s dominant cultural factor. I bring this to light not to belittle a fine combat battalion whose soldiers have performed bravely in one of the most dangerous theaters in the world. After the outbreak of the second intifada, the Bedouin Scouts lived in their APCs for weeks at a time on the sandy, hundred-yard-wide road between the Egyptian and Palestinian Rafiah as they defended the Philadelphi Route. They have suffered heavy losses during the fighting since 2000, including the destruction of their outpost JVT by explosives packed into a tunnel. They managed to kill two of the attackers involved in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, in the event that initiated that summer’s hostilities. The battalion commander and most of the company commanders are rising stars in the army, and their drive to find and obliterate the enemy has led them to celebrated battlefield successes. The unit serves a crucial social role as well, absorbing into its ranks troubled young Bedouin who would turn to a life of smuggling and petty crime without the structure, Israeli identity, and education they receive from the army. The fact that the honor/shame model applies to the battalion underscores its pervasiveness in Arab societies, even those who ally with Zionism.
Further, the honor/shame model is not exclusively a negative social factor. The Arabs in the Battalion are largely driven by a desire to reap the personal and familial honor that successful military service brings. Military culture, including that of the West, is largely based on its own honor/shame dynamic. The Marine Corps’ motto, “Death before Dishonor”, is a resounding statement of military honor/shame mentality. Pursuit of honor drives individuals to work for ideas larger than themselves, often at the expense of personal material gain. It can bind families and nations together around zealously guarded identities. The danger arises when the honor/shame model is misunderstood or ignored- as much a problem in the West today as it was on that summer afternoon in Netanya.
Full pdf here. Read the whole thing. It is a fascinating tale, with a lot of useful ground-level tactical lessons. But as well-intentioned as Lazar Berman’s argument is, and as much truth as there is to it, on his larger strategic clash-of-cultures point he undercuts his own premise that Arabs can’t criticize themselves by noting self-criticism by no less than Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. MEMRI readers will know there are others, and Arab self-awareness and openness about same is a complex picture. I’d dispute his point that the Western media doesn’t pay heed to Arab shame and sensitivities. The Western media and politicians, with a handful of high-profile exceptions that have prompted widespread Muslim violence, have been bending over backward for the past decade to avoid offense. He notes that what the Muslim world did respect was the United States as strongman. But he also falls prey to his own premise, veering toward “Why Do They Hate Us?” territory in his closing lines:
The West, especially its media, must give up its cultural arrogance and preconceptions and view the Arab world as it is. Misunderstanding Arab honor/shame society has negative, potentially disastrous consequences. He who fails to comprehend this paradigm will insult an Arab friend and will be deceived by an Arab enemy. Insisting on universal cultural similarity will not lead to cultural understanding. We respect societal differences by acknowledging them, not by imagining them away. Only by honoring what makes us different can we approach each other as equals.
Maybe. That doesn’t work when only one party does the honoring, and the other sees it as weakness. It’s a little like the western tendency to be worried about Chinese loss-of-face concerns, forgetting that loss-of-face is a two-way street and kowtowing doesn’t help. Maybe what the West needs to do with the Arab world is explain in terms the Arab world can understand that our honor is offended by terrorism and by the insults, restrictions and attacks on our culture, religion and sacred values such as freedom of speech. I’d suggest anything short of demanding respect is the path of shame and dishonor.
Topics: Arabs, western civilization
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:32 am Comments (1) on Monday, April 14, 2008
One Response to “Shame/Honor Dynamics”
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April 14th, 2008 at 11:04 am
When it comes to respect, I agree entirely. It’s a two way street, and we always need to remember that.
This particular situation reminds me of what I have read again and again from Michael Yon, Michael Totten, and other first hand accounts from Iraq. Our soldiers ask Iraqis, “what do you need?” and the inevitable answer will be “nothing, we are fine.” This must be accepted at face value. Only then, and usually after an appropriate (but fairly short) time, can they then actually say what they need. When they do, it usually turns out to be a pretty long list.
The consultants obviously misunderstood this. The first step would have been to let the commanders make a show of accommodating the consultants and helping them get what they needed. Then, the consultants could begin the interviews, realizing that they will only hear positive news. This should be accepted and even praised. ONLY THEN would any negative information or requests for help be forthcoming, and it would take some time to get all or most of it. Two days? Seems far too short even for more direct western methods, let alone the roundabout Arabic way.