The particular reality that is ordinary life

The entire matter of Middle East politics is subject to abuse of language and power. 

The first task of the pro-Western leadership is to break the hold illusion and delusion have on the region and on the minds of those concerned with the region. This task does not redound first to the media. It is the civilized states’ political leadership that must frame the reality of that region and must represent in their public utterances the truth about what defines the fundamental values and institutions of the region. 

That truth is being hijacked by a virulent form of Islamo-paganism The West and the friends of the West must proffer an alternative reality which disqualifies that paganism. 

Israel has a special responsibility to comprehend the particular reality that is ordinary life in the Middle East. Israel must shake off its Euro-centrism and describe the fundamentalist mind-set that dominates the Middle East region. 

The Israeli left must discard the European cultural norms it is trying to superimpose on both Israeli society as well as on Muslim and Arab society, and, instead, come to understand what the region's true drivers of cultural life really are. A good place to start would be for the Israeli left to try to comprehend what is going on in Israel's fundamentalist, Orthodox community. 

Israel will not be able to resolve the global schism between Western secularism and Eastern fundamentalism until it resolves the schism between the Israeli secularists and the Israeli fundamentalists.