Over the weekend, a video clip has been circulating around the Internet which shows just that. It originated in the television program “With Syria Until Victory,” of the well-known opposition Salafist preacher Sheikh Adnan al-Ar’ur, broadcast on Al-Shada TV last Thursday night. A reporter takes us on a tour through the “liberated” shrine, from minute 1:29:40. The clip is embedded below. (If you don’t see it, click here. Just the report, excerpted from the program, can be watched here.)

The narration is in Arabic, so I’ll quickly summarize. At the entrance, we see graffiti on both sides of the doors, announcing that this is now the Sunna Mosque. We then see the Arabic dedication plaque, where the names of Bashar Asad and Mohammad Khatami are totally effaced (but not that of Hafez Asad). Inside, we see one of the tombs, and are shown a broken bottle of wine, as well as a pile of CDs and tapes, which are described as “pornographic films.” There are books, described as evidence for Shiite proselytizing, and two Shiite banners, proclaiming “Ya Husayn” and “Ya Ali.” There is a classroom for teaching children the Shiite creed. The people of Syria, the narrator reassures us, are stronger than those who would divert them from the true path.

In Sheikh al-Ar’ur’s commentary, from minute 1:32:36, he explains that the wine and pornographic films are evidence that the shrine served as a trap for Sunni youths—an intelligence operation to film them in compromising situations.

The shrine is intact and protected (a uniformed man is glimpsed at the entrance), although there is no mention of which faction is in control. The Iranian media had earlier reported that the shrine was destroyed by Sunni extremists, but this was manifestly false. Fear of possible Sunni destruction of shrines stands ostensibly behind the deployment of foreign Shiite “volunteers” around the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Damascus, where they are effectively bolstering the Asad regime. (This is the so-called “Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigade.”)

To judge from the way this latest clip has raced around the Internet and proliferated on Youtube, the symbolism of the Raqqa shrine isn’t lost on Sunnis or Shiites. That suggests that the battle to defend the Damascus shrines is certain to raise the sectarian temperature still further.

(Again, for the full context, consult my video-photo essay.)

Update: Javier Espinosa of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo has now visited the shrine and tweets as below. He assures me he saw the destruction himself.

Protection for churches in #Raqqa has not extended to shia temple of Ammar Ibn Yasir,building preserved but his grave destroyed #Syria

— Javier Espinosa (@javierespinosa2) April 23, 2013

Four times in the 90-second segment, the camera pans up to focus on the ornate portal of an impressive building, inscribed with a verse of the Qur’an (13:24): “Peace unto you for that ye persevered in patience! Now how excellent is the final Home!” Someone off-camera mutters the name of Raqqa, a dusty provincial capital situated on the Euphrates about 200 kilometers east of Aleppo. It was seized by Sunni Islamist insurgents during the first week of March, and this clip clearly depicts an episode in the immediate aftermath of the city’s capture. But it doesn’t identify the specific place or explain the act of iconoclasm it depicts.

Had the camera panned up still further, it would have revealed the entire façade, completing part of the puzzle. The upper inscription identifies this site as the shrine of two figures from seventh-century Islamic history. The façade is striking, but just what is the connection of this shrine in Raqqa to Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khameneh’i, and why is their portrait being defaced at its entrance?

I answer that question in a new photo gallery, taking you on a visit to an impoverished far corner of Syria, and to the missing link in the so-called “Shiite crescent.” Go here to join me on the journey. I’ll get you back in time for lunch.

But a book-filled library is fundamental to a college. To be surrounded by books is to feel part of the scholarly chain of transmission that links us to generations past. And it’s not just a matter of nostalgic ambience. There are vast numbers of books that aren’t yet freely available electronically, and that aren’t yet out of copyright. Between the older books in the Internet Archive, and the more recent offerings available through Amazon and other digital publishers, there are decades worth of books that just can’t be had without going to a library. Google Books will change that too, but it hasn’t yet. And when it comes to books in non-European languages, print still reigns.

So from the outset, my colleagues and I resolved that the new Shalem College in Jerusalem would have a respectable library on opening day, October 6, 2013. The core of that library has been provided to us thanks to the generosity of the great historian of Islam, Bernard Lewis.

Bernard Lewis needs no introduction to my readers. In addition to his own prodigious output of authored books on Islamic and Middle Eastern history, Bernard was an avid collector. His personal library, at the time he moved out of his Princeton home two years ago, came to 18,000 volumes. It was then that he sent his library to Tel Aviv University, to which he had promised it many years ago.

But he did so with a proviso: any book in his collection already possessed by Tel Aviv University’s library was to be passed on to the library of the fledgling Shalem College. And so the new college library has come into possession of many thousands of volumes, most dealing with the history of Islam and the Middle East, but also with many other aspects of medieval and modern history. It’s a splendid start for the library, especially as one of the first accredited degree programs in the new college is in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.

For me, the arrival in Jerusalem of so large a part of Bernard’s library closes a circle. I was his student in Princeton in the late 1970s, when he held a dual appointment at the university and the Institute for Advanced Study. He had one of the largest offices at the Institute, and it was packed tight with his books. A few months after we met, Bernard invited me to the Institute, and proposed that I catalogue incoming offprints for a per-hour wage. (In the pre-internet age, scholars would send printed copies of their articles to one another, a method of dissemination that now seems as remote from us as the carrier pigeon.) He gave me the key to his office, and on evenings and weekends I would enter Aladdin’s cave, seat myself at his desk, and ponder what it must be like to be the most renowned historian of Islam in the world.

I also came to know his library quite well. I much preferred his office to the deepest basement floor of Firestone Library, where the university’s own Middle East collection resided, so I would bring my own work to his desk. And once every week or so, we would have lunch or tea, followed by a stroll in the Institute’s woods. We would then repair to his office, where he would select a shelf and begin a running commentary on the books it held—their relative place in the field, a bit of lore about the authors, and his take on the dedications. In those days, everyone sent everything to Bernard, and practically all of the books carried handwritten dedications. I recall some of his comments to this day. He once took in hand a book by his contemporary, the French Marxist (and rabidly anti-Israel) scholar Maxime Rodinson (who also happened to be Jewish). The dedication was quite admiring, which surprised me, given his politics. Bernard smiled with satisfaction: “He’s a scoundrel,” he said of Rodinson, “but I like him.”

When Bernard retired in 1986, he transformed the master bedroom of his home into a magnificent, light-filled library. His desk faced a wall of glass overlooking the grounds, and massive wooden bookshelves stood perpendicular to the walls. Even this addition didn’t suffice to contain the entire library, and the basement of the house was outfitted with shelves to handle the overflow. In a few of the bedrooms, every flat surface was likewise occupied by still more books. (Some sense of the library at his Princeton home is preserved by BookTV, which interviewed him there ten years ago.)

I feel privileged to have known Bernard’s library in both of its Princeton settings, but its two Israeli settings also do it justice. In January, Bernard visited Shalem College at my invitation, so that he could see the campus and especially the library: a two-tiered structure, featuring a large atrium-like gallery that provides ample room for books and for study. He selected the design of an ex libris plate to be placed in each volume, and I said some grateful words about his remarkable gift.

Now that we are deep into the digital age, few scholars will ever build so large a personal library. Bernard amassed his collection during the explosion of scholarly publishing that followed the Second World War, and before the advent of the Internet and ebook. Scholars in future won’t leave great collections behind, and in the libraries we do have, shelves will gradually yield to screens.

But scholars and students will always find inspiration in the physical book, for as the word “volume” suggests, the full appreciation of a scholarly achievement is much enhanced by an encounter with its heft. Book design is also evidence for past conventions that provide context for text, and the elegance of a well-designed book will always evoke pleasure. Bernard Lewis has given Shalem College a voluminous gift. When it is combined with the immense contribution represented by his scholarship, it secures his place in the pantheon of those who have nurtured the life of the mind in Jerusalem.

Martin Kramer accepts books from Bernard Lewis,
Shalem College, January 14, 2013.

The affable Pignedoli (pronounced Peen-yeh-doly) had been very much in the race in August 1978. He was said to be Paul VI’s preferred successor, and the Italian news magazines sang his praises. The London bookmaking firm Ladbroke’s pegged him as a 5-2 favorite. As the media predictions piled up, Pignedoli reportedly prepared for victory by going on a crash diet so that he could fit into the white cassock of a new pope. (In another version, he had a cassock specially tailored.) Weigel described what happened next: “When the cardinals assembled in the Sistine Chapel to choose a successor to Pope Paul in August 1978, Cardinal Pignedoli—according to reliable accounts—was left so far behind that you’d have needed a telescope to find him at the end of the second ballot. He died a few years later, forgotten by those who had once confidently declared him papabile.”

So Pignedoli, if he’s remembered at all, is remembered as an also-ran. But the story is more interesting than that. When he died in June 1980, he was still important enough to warrant an obituary in the New York Times (June 16). The item mentioned his failed run for the papacy in August 1978, and added that he was again regarded as papabile when John Paul I, Paul VI’s successor, died in September 1978 after only 34 days in office. (In the resulting conclave, the cardinals passed him over again and surprised the world by electing a Polish pope.) The obituary then added this: “The Cardinal was also remembered, to his regret, for having signed a statement at an Islamic-Christian conference in Tripoli in 1976 condemning Zionism. He said afterward that he was a victim of an incomplete if not mistaken translation.”

Therein lies a story, and it puts Pignedoli in an additional category: not just of papal also-rans, but also of Westerners used by Libya’s late dictator Mu’ammar Qadhafi to enhance his rule. According to some experts, the episode may even have cost Pignedoli his shot at the papacy. I discussed the Tripoli conference years ago in a published paper on Israel in the Muslim-Christian dialogue (not on the web). Regime change in Tripoli and personnel change in Rome seem (to me) like a reasonable pretext for revisiting the subject. In fact, it may be the last time that the story is worth telling to anyone without an expert interest these matters. But since it’s one more cautionary tale about the risks of appeasement, especially in the Middle East, the lesson may well be timeless.

“The Pope’s Kissinger”

The Italian-born Pignedoli started off as a naval chaplain in World War Two (a direct hit on his cruiser once set sent him flying into the sea), and he later built a reputation over many years as a roving Vatican emissary. He served in various capacities in South America, Africa, and Canada, reputedly spoke a dozen languages, visited well over a hundred countries, and had a rolodex of 10,000 contacts around the globe. (A New York Times report called him “one of the world’s great letter writers,” and it was once written of him that “he has a preposterous number of friends.”) In 1967, as apostolic delegate to Canada, he drove 7,300 miles across the country and back in 33 days, visiting mission outposts. Paul VI created him cardinal in 1973, and immediately named him president of what was then called the Secretariat for Non-Christians. (“Non-Christians” for that purpose excluded the Jews, a sensitive issue handled by a separate commission.) For someone reputed to be “the Pope’s Kissinger,” treating with the wider world seemed like the perfect assignment.

The energetic Pignedoli quickly concluded that he should launch a campaign to improve Vatican relations with the world of Islam. The Catholic Church had its ear to the ground in Muslim lands, and had picked up the rumbling of the coming Islamic resurgence. The new cardinal thought that the Vatican could diminish Muslim-Christian tensions (and protect its interests in Muslim lands) by engaging a reputable Muslim partner in a conciliatory religious dialogue.

Ah, but who? Where was the equivalent of the Catholic Church? Who was the Muslim pope? The impossibility of answering these questions immediately highlights one of the key distinctions between Christianity and Islam. Bernard Lewis has put it succinctly:

There is no church in Islam. There is no priesthood in the sense of an ordination and a sacred office. There is no Vatican, no pope, no cardinals, no bishops, no church councils; there is no hierarchy such as exists in Christendom.

For non-Muslims, it is often tempting to see Saudi Arabia, seat of Islam’s holiest places, as some sort of “center” of the Islamic faith. So did Pignedoli, setting out in April 1974 to visit the kingdom, armed with a letter from the Pope. King Faisal gave him an audience—and an earful. The Saudi king had only one thing on his mind: the Jews. They had no holy places in Jerusalem, he insisted; only Muslims and Christians had incontestable rights to holy places in the city. At one point, King Faisal raised his voice to declare (erroneously) that under Islam, “Jews had never been allowed in Palestine and particularly in Jerusalem.” The Saudi king’s purpose was plain: to line up the Catholic Church behind the demand for Muslim sovereignty over the holy city.

This wasn’t the sort of exchange Pignedoli had in mind, so he looked elsewhere. He next visited Egypt, in September 1974, hoping to open a channel to Al-Azhar, the famed university and another “center” of Islam. But the Sheikh al-Azhar didn’t express any interest in a religious dialogue. Instead, he loaded his guest with books on Palestine and the historic role of Al-Azhar in resisting foreign aggression. Pignedoli began to see a pattern. Muslims didn’t make a distinction between the spiritual and the temporal. As he (later) concluded, “one of the greatest hindrances to dialogue is political intervention in religion. Some people do not make the Gospel’s distinction between what is Caesar’s and what is God’s, and people’s minds are, moreover, troubled by local tensions or fear of losing their freedom.”

At this moment of impasse, the Vatican received an unexpected overture. In May 1975, a confidant of Mu’ammar Qadhafi, ruler of Libya, arrived in Rome bearing a message. Libya was eager to host an official religious dialogue with the Vatican, for which it would assemble a delegation of influential Muslims from around the world. The dialogue, the Libyan promised, would be limited to theology and religion. A breakthrough! Negotiations commenced, a date was set in February 1976, and the Libyans accommodated every request from the Vatican side.

What explained the Libyan initiative? Libya isn’t a “center” of Islam on par with Saudi Arabia or Egypt—far from it. As important as it is to the world oil market, it’s been marginal to the evolution of the faith. Yet Qadhafi thought otherwise—if not about Libya, then certainly about himself. Early in his rule (he seized power in 1969), Qadhafi styled himself as a final authority on Islam, which he depicted as the embodiment of true socialism. True, few Muslims outside Libya took him seriously. But what better way to boost his claim than to demonstrate that Christians took him seriously—and not just any Christians, but the Catholic Church?

“Caught napping”

The appointed day finally arrived. Pignedoli’s fourteen-man contingent landed in Tripoli, expecting a discreet gathering with an equal number of Muslim delegates, and an audience of no more than twenty experts and journalists. But the Libyan organizers had a completely different plan. They had invited over five hundred activists, journalists, and hangers-on (including an American, Kwame Ture, formerly the Black Panther Stokely Carmichael). “Every conceivable revolutionary and conspiratorial movement sent representatives to Tripoli,” wrote the journalist Peter Scholl-Latour (who devoted a searing chapter to the episode in his book Adventures in the East).

The crowd filled the seaside congress hall where the seminar met, and the proceedings quickly took on a circus atmosphere. The Libyans had failed to honor a promise to name their delegates and provide the texts of their speeches in advance. The reason soon became clear: the Muslim delegates were political operatives, not men of religion. Their speeches would later be described (by the secretary of the Vatican delegation) as “aggressive and recriminatory.” They attacked the Church for falsifying scripture, launching the Crusades, and proselytizing among Muslims. This was punctuated by repeated and vehement attacks against Israel, Zionism and the Jews. In the face of this assault, “the delegates from the Vatican cut a poor figure,” wrote Scholl-Latour. “Cardinal Pignedoli, naturally short of stature, seemed to shrink even more; he had adopted a strategy of permanent apology.”

The highlight came with the arrival of Qadhafi himself. Scholl-Latour:

He did not bother to go as far as the stage; with exaggerated modesty he sat down among the spectators. And immediately the Cardinal, his stance expressing servility, sped toward the Libyan head of state, took his hand—he came close to kissing it—and led the Libyan, who was going through the motions of protesting, to the dais. Tumultuous applause broke out; the Moslems in the audience had caught sight of God’s elect. In fact Qadhafi appeared like a beaming movie star. He radiated an attractive youthfulness.… His clothes were chosen with the utmost simplicity: black trousers and a black turtleneck sweater. He moved with the grace of a cat. Alongside this desert warrior the overzealous Roman prelate with his red skullcap, the red sash across his cassock, the red socks in pumps, seemed a comedian.

Another journalist thought he detected an awkward moment in the encounter between the colonel and the cardinal:

A path was made for Cardinal Pignedoli who came down from his place on the rostrum to greet the Libyan leader. It was an interesting moment, with one revealing result which probably no one in the entire building was aware of except those, like myself, who happened to be a few feet away. The Cardinal made a gesture to indicate that he would like to sit down next to “Brother Colonel.” Gaddafi was taken aback and clearly did not want to share the inverted limelight. Visibly thinking quickly, he made a flourishing gesture indicating that the Cardinal’s rightful place was one of honor on the platform. It was nevertheless a snub, as I could clearly see from the Cardinal’s disappointed expression, though it cast a shadow over his face for only a split second.

Qadhafi mounted the stage, producing what appeared to one journalist “like a mediaeval tableau of the Sultan and the wise men.” In fact, it was more like a mediaeval disputation. In a later address to the conference, Qadhafi said that there was no great gap between Christianity and Islam. All that was needed to close it was for Christians to correct the falsifications in their Gospels and recognize the Prophet Muhammad as the bearer of the divine revelation. Pignedoli’s delegation (according to Scholl-Latour) was “overcome by obvious confusion and consternation.”

So how was that gap to be bridged? Away from the congress hall, Libyan and Vatican secretaries worked behind the scenes to formulate a joint communiqué—for how could such a meeting end without one?

What happened next astonished everyone. At the close of the conference, as Pignedoli and Qadhafi left the congress hall together, the Libyans announced the text (in Arabic) of a joint communiqué. It included two paragraphs devoted to Palestine. Paragraph 20 denounced Zionism as “an aggressive racialist movement, extraneous to Palestine and the whole region of the East.” Paragraph 21 affirmed “the Arab character of Jerusalem” and rejected “plans to Judaize, partition or internationalize” the city. Both “parties” affirmed “the national rights of the Palestinian people and their right to return to their lands” and demanded “the liberation of all the occupied territories.” A bombshell! The assembled media rushed out the doors to report a dramatic shift in Vatican policy toward Israel and the Palestinians.

Except that there was no shift. According to Pignedoli, the final communiqué was shown to him only “at the very last minute,” and he signed off on it unaware that it included the offending paragraphs. It may have been a literal case of tradurre è tradire: according to one source, “the Vatican’s representatives in the drafting committee were Arab Christians who did not fully explain the text” to Pignedoli. The cardinal made a desperate attempt to convene a press conference and issue a “clarification,” but his Libyan hosts blocked the move, citing “technical reasons.” By then, it was too late anyway: he had been “caught napping” (the words of a journalist), the Libyans had taken advantage, and the media had a story. A wire service report set the tone: “Whoever suggested the Vatican send delegates to Libya for a great religious meeting with Moslem leaders may be in deep trouble. The widely publicized Islamic-Christian symposium in Tripoli this week is one of the biggest fiascoes of recent Vatican diplomacy.”

The Roman Curia—the Vatican’s government—went into damage control mode, formally disavowing the two offending paragraphs, as “their content does not correspond, in its essential points, to the well-known position of the Holy See.” Vatican sources informed a Jewish press agency that the Vatican delegation “was not empowered to reach political decisions,” and should not have done so. A “highly informed” Vatican source reported that the Holy See was “mortified” by the episode, but “understandably wants to avoid charging bad faith on the part of the Muslim participants or admitting incompetence or naivete on its own part.” Of course, those were precisely the ingredients that produced the debacle.

The “Pignedoli Principle”

Had Pignedoli’s ambitions been limited, the Tripoli fiasco would not have mattered much. But he aspired to be pope, and this was no secret when the vacancy opened in 1978. One journalist noted that while the Holy See hadn’t reprimanded the cardinal, “memories in the Curia are long, and Vatican watchers believe that Pignedoli’s prospects of becoming pope have declined seriously.” Another assessment, after describing Pignedoli as “the current papal frontrunner,” regretted that the Tripoli conference “has once again become an item for controversy, resuscitated by factional opposition to Pignedoli’s candidacy to succeed Paul as Pope. It has been claimed by such diverse publications as the London Times, Corriere della Sera, Le Monde, and others that Pignedoli’s management of the Vatican-Islamic conference will weigh heavily against his election as Paul VI’s successor.”

When Pignedoli lost out, another Vatican expert estimated that his chances had been “badly damaged” by the episode, which “was widely regarded as a gaffe and as an indication of his unsuitability for the Papacy.” According to Vaticanologist Peter Hebblethwaite, the Tripoli debacle gave Pignedoli’s opponents a lever to use against him: “I was present on that occasion [in Tripoli], and thought the mistake forgivable. But this incident was exploited by Pignedoli’s enemies who resented his approachableness and popularity.”

Of course, it’s easy to come up with other reasons for Pignedoli’s falling short in the Sistine Chapel. (A breezy account of the proceedings appears in Gordon Thomas’s Pontiff.) Perhaps it really was the “Pignedoli Principle”— an excess of media attention. But David Leonhardt, in his posting last week, claims it’s not a principle at all, since there are plenty of examples of frontrunners taking the papal title. If he’s right, then the “Pignedoli Principle” may be up for redefinition, lest the man be forgotten completely. A good alternative might be this: the closer you dance with a dictator, the more likely your toes are to be crushed.

Tablet asked “six prominent thinkers and activists” to answer the question: “Do we need a pro-Israel lobby?” Below is my answer. Read the five other responses here.

Back in 2006, in response to the “Israel Lobby” thesis of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, I wrote this: “Israel does not need the whole array of organizations that claim to work on its behalf. The rationale for keeping Israel strong is hardwired in the realities of the Middle East. The United States does not have an alternative ally of comparable power. And if the institutions of the lobby were to disappear tomorrow, it is quite likely that American and other Western support would continue unabated.”

Mearsheimer and Walt doubted that I believed this to be true: “If he is correct, then the people who bankroll AIPAC and The Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy and other like-minded organizations are wasting their money, and Kramer himself is wasting his time. Kramer claims that all this effort is unnecessary, but his own behavior suggests otherwise.”

I never responded: I didn’t want friends to think they were “wasting their money” by supporting organizations that do fulfill a role, but that role is vastly different from the one assigned to them by Mearsheimer and Walt. They believe the “lobby” is all that prevents Israel from being exposed as a liability. The opposite is true: The “lobby” is fueled by Israel’s value as a strategic asset in an unstable region. The professors confuse cause and effect.

But if Israel doesn’t depend on pro-Israel advocacy (from which I exclude the coolly analytical Washington Institute), what purpose do such organizations serve? They energize some substantial number of American Jews to stay affiliated with the Jewish people at a time when traditional forms of affiliation are waning. Israel’s batteries charge them. Businessmen and dentists come to Washington to advocate for Israel, and they feel like players on the world stage. Those who do are far more likely to visit Israel and embrace an Israeli cause. Younger ones might even make the decision made by myself (and many of my colleagues at Shalem College) to settle in Israel. Yes, I’m a classic Zionist, who believes that the ingathering of the Jews is their preferred destiny.

So, the measure of the “lobby” isn’t its ability to change U.S. policy on Iran or stop the nomination of Chuck Hagel. The State of Israel and its resilient people will decide how and when Iran will be stopped, and Hagel’s appointment won’t stand in their way. I measure pro-Israel advocacy by the degree to which it sustains Jewish peoplehood outside Israel and draws Jews into a deeper commitment to Israel than an annual visit to Capitol Hill.

And here is a revelation for Walt and Mearsheimer. I’m not so delusional as to believe that my writing and speaking on Israel’s behalf make a difference. If Israel is strong, the United States will value it. If it is weak, nothing anyone says will redeem it. So, why do we bother? It’s something the two “experts” can’t possibly fathom: Ahavat Yisrael, love for the people of Israel. And expressions of love are their own reward.

Martin Kramer is president of Shalem College in Jerusalem.

And while I’m at it, I’ll solve a mystery-in-the-making. In honor of the day, the Israel State Archives has published a batch of Israeli documents, from the mid-1960s, about a possible visit by King to Israel. It’s fascinating material, and I commend my friend Yaacov Lozowick, the State Archivist, for taking this initiative (and others) to bring official documents to a wider public. But this cache, as Yaacov notes, leaves a question hanging.

In a nutshell, the Israelis thought it would be a fine idea to host MLK in Israel, and the more important he grew, the more convinced they were that it was something they should make happen. King, from his side, kept on saying all the right words, but kept on not coming. Those are the facts. What do they mean? Hard to say. Read the publication and see if you find an answer.

Of course, if the answer had been there, Yaacov would have found it already. The answer lies elsewhere, and it’s perfectly clear.

First, in 1966, King did enter an agreement to lead a Holy Land pilgrimage. King’s assistant, Andrew Young, visited Israel and Jordan in late 1966 to do advance planning with Jordanian and Israeli authorities. The pilgrimage was rumored to be in the works from that time, and on May 15, 1967, King announced the plan at a news conference, reported by The New York Times the following day.

The pilgrimage would take place in November, and King insisted that it would have no political significance whatsoever. The organizers hoped to attract 5,000 participants, with the aim of generating revenue for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council. King was slated to preach on the Mount of Olives in Jordanian East Jerusalem (November 14), and at a specially constructed amphitheater near Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee in Israel (November 16). The pilgrims would pass from Jordan to Israel through the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem. King had visited the Jordanian side of Jerusalem in 1959, so he knew the situation on the ground, and thought he could strike just the right balance between Israel and Jordan. (The photo above depicts King and the Rev. Sandy Ray, pastor of a Baptist church in Brooklyn, who initiated and promoted the pilgrimage. King is pointing to the Holy Land on the map.)

The June 1967 war threw a wrench into the plan. King was now being asked his opinion of the war and Israel’s territorial gains. His position on both was complex, and perhaps I’ll go into it in a future post. But for now, let’s focus on the pilgrimage. After the war ended, Ray was still keen on going forward, and he immediately sent his own tour agent to Jerusalem to get a read on the situation. She came back enthusiastic: “I firmly believe that Dr. King’s visit will prove to be a much more historic event then we ever dreamed possible. Everyone, from the Governments down to the people on the streets were asking me about Dr. King… We desperately need a new Press Release from Dr. King reaffirming the Pilgrimage plans.”

So what happened? King got cold feet, and this isn’t a guess. We have it right from King himself, in the FBI wiretaps of one of his advisers, Stanley Levison. In a conference call of King and his advisers, on July 24, 1967, King noted that the responses to the pilgrimage promotion had been “fairly good.” (Andy Young said about 600 people had sent in deposits.) But if King went to the Middle East, “I’d run into the situation where I’m damned if I say this and I’m damned if I say that no matter what I’d say, and I’ve already faced enough criticism including pro-Arab.” He had met a Lebanese journalist who told him that the Arabs now had the impression he was pro-Israel, and that “you don’t understand our problem or something like that. And I expect I would run into a continuation of this.” King asked for advice, but set this tone:

I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt.

King added that “most of it [the pilgrimage] would be Jerusalem and they [the Israelis] have annexed Jerusalem, and any way you say it they don’t plan to give it up.” After some back-and-forth among his advisers, in which it was suggested that he balance an Israel trip with a visit to King Hussein in Amman or Nasser in Cairo, King announced that “I frankly have to admit that my instincts, and when I follow my instincts so to speak I’m usually right… I just think that this would be a great mistake. I don’t think I could come out unscathed.”

King procrastinated out of deference to Ray, who had laid out money on promotion of the pilgrimage. But on September 22, 1967, he wrote the following to Mordechai Ben-Ami, the president of El Al, which was to have handled part of the flight package:

It is with the deepest regret that I cancel my proposed pilgrimage to the Holy Land for this year, but the constant turmoil in the Middle East makes it extremely difficult to conduct a religious pilgrimage free of both political over tones and the fear of danger to the participants.

Actually, I am aware that the danger is almost non-existent, but to the ordinary citizen who seldom goes abroad, the daily headlines of border clashes and propaganda statements produces a fear of danger which is insurmountable on the American scene.

He ended by promising to revisit the plan the following year.

The cancellation took place a month before King attended that dinner in Cambridge. It adds another layer of context for his balancing act on the Middle East, of which his remark about Zionists, Jews, and antisemitism was but a piece.

(Below: Cover of the promotional brochure for the 1967 pilgrimage. Thanks to Düden Yeğenoğlu, who photographed it for me in the Andrew Young Papers at the Auburn Avenue Research Library in Atlanta.)

Former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel is President Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense. Much has already been said about the pros and cons of the nomination, and much more will be said during confirmation hearings in the Senate. Here is one possible line of questioning: given the centrality of the Middle East in U.S. military planning, how does Hagel think the region works? If the United States has limited resources, and must apportion them judiciously, where is it best advised to invest them?

Hagel has a view of this, expressed on numerous occasions. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the core problem of the Middle East. Until it is resolved, it will be impossible to make progress in treating any of the region’s other pathologies. Hagel claims to have reached this conclusion by talking with leaders of the Middle East. He’s just repeating what they tell him, he has said. So it’s interesting to go back and see just what they did tell him—an exercise made feasible via WikiLeaks. (If you belong to that class of persons who have to avert their eyes from WikiLeaks, don’t follow the links and take my word.)

The Core Conflict

But first, let’s look at how Hagel thinks the Middle East works. In 2002, he put it this way:

The Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be separated from America’s foreign policy. Actions in the Middle East have immense consequences for our other policies and interests in the world. We are limited in dealing with other conflicts until this conflict is on a path to resolution. America’s policy and role in the Middle East, and the perception of our policies and role across the globe, affects our policies and interests in Afghanistan, South Asia, Indonesia, and all parts of the world.

This is a broad exposition of the idea of “linkage,” which might best be described as a Middle Eastern domino theory. The assumption is that in places as far afield as Afghanistan and Indonesia, people are so preoccupied with the fate of the Palestinians that they cannot see the United States (which supports Israel) as a friend. These millions of people have their own conflicts that impact U.S. interests, but they won’t respond to American efforts to resolve them, unless the United States conjures up something for the Palestinians first. Often this claim is made regarding the Arabs. Hagel effectively extended it to the entire Muslim world.

In 2006, Hagel put it this way:

The core of all challenges in the Middle East remains the underlying Arab-Israeli conflict. The failure to address this root cause will allow Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorists to continue to sustain popular Muslim and Arab support—a dynamic that continues to undermine America’s standing in the region and the Governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others, whose support is critical for any Middle East resolution.

The vocabulary here—”core,” “root cause,” “underlying”—is taken from the standard linkage lexicon, which elevates the Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a preeminent status, above all others. It is this conflict, practically alone, that prompts the rise of terrorists, weakens friendly governments, and makes it impossible for the United States to win Arabs and Muslims over to the good cause. That same year, he again described the “underlying” Arab-Israeli conflict as the “core” of the region’s maladies:

In the Middle East, the core of instability and conflict is the underlying Arab-Israeli problem. Progress on Middle East peace does not ensure stability in Iraq. But, for the Arab world, the issue of Middle East peace is inextricably, emotionally and psychologically linked with all other issues. Until the United States helps lead a renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace process, there will be no prospect for broader Middle East peace and stability.

In 2008, Hagel developed this into a full-blown “ripple” theory, in a passage in his book, America: Our Next Chapter (p. 82). There he wrote that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

cannot be looked at in isolation. Like a stone dropped into a placid lake, its ripples extend out farther and farther. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon feel the effects most noticeably. Farther still, Afghanistan and Pakistan; anything that impacts their political stability also affects the two emerging economic superpowers, India and China.

The notion that the greater Middle East would be a “placid lake” were it not for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be regarded as extreme, even for someone in the grip of linkage fever. But Hagel, doubling down, extended the conflict’s baleful influence even beyond the world of the Arabs and South Asian Islam, suggesting that it “affects” India and China in a detrimental way, although he didn’t explain how.

That same year, Hagel made the most far-reaching claim for linkage. By this time, Americans knew considerably more about the complexities of the Middle East than they had known in 2002. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had demonstrated the salience of deep conflicts that defined the politics of the region, and that went back in time before there was an Israel. The great Sunni-Shiite divide, the region-wide Kurdish question, the rivalries of tribes, the chasm between rulers and ruled—all were sources of conflict and instability with long and autonomous histories. That’s what makes Hagel’s 2008 statement so striking: he was clearly aware that the linkage thesis looked shakier than ever, but he dug in his heels anyway:

The strategic epicenter of the Middle East [is] the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Why do I say that more than any other reason? It is the one issue, the one issue alone, the Israeli-Palestinian issue alone. Fixing that alone is not going to fix every problem in the Middle East. We understand that. We have religious hatred. We have centuries of it. We have regional, tribal issues. Yes, all complicated. But that one issue, the Israeli-Palestinian issue shapes almost every other issue, not just the optics of it, but the reality of it. It is allowed to—as it plays itself out to dominate relationships, to dominate the people who would like a different kind of world. I know that there is a lot made on the issue of—well it’s important, but it certainly doesn’t affect everything. It does.

In this remark, Hagel was clearly struggling to force all of the new and “complicated” American knowledge about the Middle East into his old template. He knew that his linkage thesis looked less plausible than it once did. How exactly could the Israeli-Palestinian issue “affect everything” and “shape almost every other issue,” not just the “optics” but the “reality”? Hagel couldn’t say how, except to assert that “it does.”

But Hagel, knowing his bald assertion might seem dubious, did something new. He invoked the authority of Middle Eastern leaders:

I don’t know any other way to gauge this, than you go out and listen to the leaders. You listen to Jewish leaders, and you listen to Arab leaders. You sit down with all the leaders with all those countries, and I have many times, different leaders, and they will take you right back to the same issue. Right back to this issue. Now I am not an expert on anything, and I’m certainly not an expert on the Middle East. Most of the people in this room, especially those that were on the panels tonight know a lot more about this issue than I do. But I do listen. I do observe. I am somewhat informed. That informs me that when the people of the Middle East themselves tell me that this issue has to be dealt with or there will not be a resolution to any other issue in the Middle East.

No other issue in the entire Middle East can be resolved until Israel and the Palestinians deal with theirs: this was Hagel’s long-standing belief, now placed in the mouths of authoritative interlocutors, those Middle Eastern leaders he met on his travels, and who always took him “right back to this issue.”

Meeting Arabs and Jews

On the face of it, this is a plausible assertion. It is often said that Arab leaders never miss an opportunity to browbeat American officials over U.S. neglect of the Palestinians. A senior American diplomatic once made this complaint: “Every American ambassador in the region knows that official meetings with Arab leaders start with the obligatory half-hour lecture on the Palestinian question. If we could dispense with that half-hour and get down to our other business, we might actually be able to get something done.”

But are these the sorts of discussions that Hagel had with Arab leaders? We don’t have a record of all his meetings with them, but we have several accounts, via WikiLeaks. These seem to contradict Hagel’s own assertion that his Arab interlocutors always came “right back to this issue.” In fact, it was usually the third or fourth item on the agenda, sometimes raised not by Arab leaders but by visiting Americans. Arab leaders who met Hagel expressed a very wide range of concerns, usually focused on Iran and Iraq. (There is one important exception, to which I’ll come in a moment.) Here are the publicly documented instances, from his trips to the region between 2004 and 2008:

• On December 1, 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan had lunch in Amman with Hagel (as well as Senators Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and Linc Chafee). The account may not be complete, but the discussion as reported focused only on Iraq and the “negative role” of Iran. King Abdullah, looking ahead to Iraqi elections in January, “worried that elections held without credible Sunni participation could lead to cantonization or civil war,” and opined that Iraqi Shiites were loyal to Iran, not Iraq. “The King painted a picture of a monolithic Shia Arab/Iranian threat to Jordan and Israel if they ‘take over’ southern Iraq.” (A few days later, King Abdullah said much the same in an interview with The Washington Post, coining the phrase “Shiite crescent” to describe the menace.)
• On December 4, 2004, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, received Hagel, Feinstein, and Chafee. The conversation also focused on impending elections in Iraq, which the Bahrainis feared might be captured by “radical elements.” Later, Feinstein raised the Israeli-Palestinian issue, urging Bahrain and Gulf governments to “speak out on the need for a two-state solution in Palestine in order to ostracize extremists on both sides and bring the Arab media on board.” Sheikh Salman gently deflected this, suggesting that the United States, “even if politically difficult, must engage in a public discourse that demonstrates that the goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East includes Palestinians as well.” So it wasn’t the Arab ruler who “came back to the issue,” but a peace-process-fixated American senator—an effort artfully foiled by Sheikh Salman.
• A meeting in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah on November 29, 2005 was dominated again by Iran and Iraq. (Attending: Hagel, Senator Tom Carper and Representative Ellen Tauscher.) The monarch, still in his “Shiite crescent” mode, expressed his fear that Iran would establish its dominance over Iraq: “If this influence was not checked, he warned, it could lead to effective Iranian rule of southern Iraq, and to an even more active and dangerous Hizballah in Lebanon.” King Abdullah’s second concern: Syria, where he speculated that too much pressure on the Assad regime could lead to a “possible takeover of the country by the Muslim Brotherhood”—which, “the king warned, would be very negative for both Syria and the region.” Israel and the Palestinians? This figured as the third item on the agenda. In this case, Abdullah didn’t “warn” about anything, but simply highlighted Jordan’s commitment to train and reform Palestinian security forces, Jordan’s interest in more economic cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, and a vague hope that there might be an “increased dynamism” in Israel, as a result of changes in the Labor Party.
• Hagel (and Carper and Tauscher) met with Saudi King Abdullah, then-Crown Prince Sultan, and Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, in Riyadh on November 30, 2005. (Pictured above: Hagel and the king.) Again, the top agenda issues were Iraq followed by Iran. Hagel would later go on the record as opposing the 2007 “surge” in Iraq (“the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam”). But in 2005, when Hagel asked the Saudis about a U.S. troop withdrawal, King Abdullah “urged the U.S. not to withdraw forces or lose focus until Iraq was stabilized,” and the Saudi foreign minister added that “the U.S. should consider increasing troop levels in the short term to ensure the political process concludes successfully.” Only after a lengthy discussion of Iran did they get on to Israel and the Palestinians. Prince Sultan explained the various Saudi peace proposals, and praised Israel’s then-prime minister Ariel Sharon as “a clever and courageous man” who might “move in a direction which serves Israel and the Israeli people.” (This section of the dispatch carried the headline: “Sharon as Peacemaker: Saudis Surprisingly Pragmatic.”) Hagel later would claim that lack of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “undermines” the Saudi (and other pro-American) governments. But he didn’t hear that from the Saudis, who in their 2005 meeting with him treated the issue as a mid-level priority.
• On December 4, 2005, Hagel (accompanied by the U.S. ambassador to Egypt) met with Egyptian President Mubarak in Cairo. At the top of the agenda: the threat posed by the prospect of Shiite ascendency in Iraq. “In Mubarak’s view, the Shi’a were extremely difficult to deal with and given to deception,” and they represented a potential Iranian fifth column in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other Gulf states. Second: Syria, where he advised the United States to “avoid stating publicly that it sought ‘regime change.’” It was Hagel who raised the Palestinian-Israel issue, thanking Egypt for supporting the peace process. Mubarak responded by calling Ariel Sharon, “a strong leader, the strongest since Begin,” and he went on to blame Syria’s late leader, Hafez Assad, for failing to reach a peace deal with Yitzhak Rabin. Mubarak then circled back to “the untrustworthiness and duplicity of the regime in Tehran,” with illustrative examples. In this conversation, it was Hagel, not Mubarak, who had “come right back” to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
• On May 31, 2007, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora received Hagel (as well as Senators Patrick Leahy, Thad Cochran, Ken Salazar, Ben Cardin, and Representative Peter Welch). The prime minister dwelt at length on the UN resolution establishing the Hariri tribunal (it “meant the end of an era of impunity for assassins and Lebanon would now never turn back”). He then gave a detailed preview of the army’s plan to crush the terrorist group Fatah al-Islam, holed up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Barid near Tripoli. Siniora did urge the United States to persuade Israel to open talks based on the Saudi peace initiative. If the opportunity were missed, “it would give considerable momentum to extremists in the region and all that entailed.”
• On July 20, 2008, the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al Sabah, received Hagel (as well as Senator Barack Obama). The conversation focused Iraq, oil prices, and Aljazeera. Israel and the Palestinians weren’t discussed.

So in none of these meetings was there a preliminary half-hour lecture on Palestine. In most of them, the threat posed by Iran loomed larger than any angst over the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Looking back at these meetings in 2008, Hagel claimed that “the people of the Middle East themselves tell me that this issue has to be dealt with or there will not be a resolution to any other issue in the Middle East.” In none of these meetings did any Arab leader tell Hagel any such thing.

Hagel didn’t just claim to get the linkage message from Arab leaders. “You listen to Jewish leaders, and you listen to Arab leaders.” By “Jewish,” he must have meant Israeli (an elision he has made elsewhere, in his well-known reference to the “Jewish lobby”). Hagel has met many Israelis, and only he and they know what they told him. But on at least one occasion, he heard one of them brusquely dismiss the linkage argument. Hagel (and Senator Biden) met with then-prime minister Ariel Sharon in December 2004, and one of the Americans in the delegation (unnamed in the dispatch) had the temerity to suggest that “progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace would have a dramatic impact on ending regional and international terrorism. Sharon quickly stated that Israel should not be held responsible for terrorism, asserting that it was the target of terror even prior to June 1967. It was not correct to believe that terror would disappear if the Israeli-Palestinian dispute were solved. The only thing that Israel was ‘responsible’ for, he maintained, was defending its people.” If “Jewish leaders” told Hagel anything that reinforced his thesis, Ariel Sharon definitely was not among them.

Neither was his successor, Ehud Olmert, who told Hagel (and several other senators) in May 2007 that Arab fear of Iran had created a situation where, “for the first time, we are not enemy number one.” On that same visit, then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni told the senatorial delegation that “there was a new understanding in the region that the Iranian threat is an ‘existential’ one and has become more significant than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Abdullah of Jordan: Linkage Man

In Hagel’s meetings (as revealed in the WikiLeaks sample), there is one exception—one meeting in which an Arab leader said something approximating what Hagel claimed they all told him. In Hagel’s meetings with King Abdullah in 2004 and 2005, he heard little about the Palestinians, and a lot about the “Shiite crescent” and a possible Iranian takeover of southern Iraq. But in a meeting in Amman in May 2007 with Hagel (plus Leahy, Cochran, Salazar, Cardin, and Welch), the Jordanian monarch did a turnaround. King Abdullah “highlighted his view that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the key issue facing Jordan and the region.” He claimed that “within as little as one and a half years the opportunity for a two-state solution may be lost.” Jordanian then-foreign minister Abdelelah al-Khatib told the visiting senators that “lack of progress on peace was undermining efforts on other issues such as stabilizing Iraq, Lebanon, and isolating Syria and Iran.”

Why did King Abdullah change his tune? Thanks to the U.S. “surge” in Iraq, he’d come to believe that Iran had been checked. In June 2008, Lally Weymouth interviewed him for The Washington Post. “I remember a couple of years ago, you warned against the danger posed by Iran to moderate Arab regimes,” she told him. “Do you view Iran as the number one threat in this region?” King Abdullah: “I think the lack of peace [between Israel and the Palestinians] is the major threat. I don’t see the ability of creating a two-state solution beyond 2008, 2009. I think this is really the last chance. If this fails, I think this is going to be the major threat for the Middle East.” Weymouth: “But aren’t you concerned that Iran is a threat both to your country and to other countries in the region?” Abdullah: “Iran poses issues to certain countries, although I have noticed over the past month or so that the dynamics have changed quite dramatically, and for the first time I think maybe I can say that Iran is less of a threat. But if the peace process doesn’t move forward, then I think that extremism will continue to advance over the moderate stands that a lot of countries take.”

So Jordan’s King Abdullah became the linkage lead man, and it’s not difficult to see why. Jordan is the Arab state that sits astride the West Bank, that has a Palestinian majority, and that shares the longest border with Israel. Were things to go very wrong between Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank, Jordan would be the first to feel it. So it is Jordan’s national interest to elevate Israeli-Palestinian peace to preeminence. In particular circumstances, such as the Iraq war, it will strike other chords. But its default position is to declare, always with urgency, that the sky is about to fall on Israelis and Palestinians, that the world must act now to prevent that, and that a Palestinian state will help solve every problem, everywhere. In that respect, Jordan is unique in the Arab world.

And King Abdullah of Jordan seems to have been the only Arab leader whose message strictly conformed to Hagel’s idée fixe about linkage. This would become significant in July 2008, when candidate Barack Obama set off for the Middle East, accompanied by Hagel (and Senator Jack Reed). This visit has been described as “an intense bonding experience” between Hagel and Obama, in which they “delved deeply into policy discussions—’wonkfests,’ as one former aide called them.” The swing included a stop in Amman. (King Abdullah returned from Aspen to be there, and at the end of the visit, he personally drove Obama to the airport like the regular guy he is.) We don’t have a leaked record of the king’s meeting with the delegation. But the press statement issued by the royal palace reported that the king stressed to Obama “that ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and achieving a just settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict tops the priorities of the people of the Middle East.” The king’s view of how linkage actually operated came through in Obama’s own account, in a press interview:

I think King, King Abdullah is as savvy an analyst of the region and player in the region as, as there is, one of the points that he made and I think a lot of people made, is that we’ve got to have an overarching strategy recognizing that all these issues are connected. If we can solve the Israeli-Palestinian process, then that will make it easier for Arab states and the Gulf states to support us when it comes to issues like Iraq and Afghanistan.

It will also weaken Iran, which has been using Hamas and Hezbollah as a way to stir up mischief in the region. If we’ve gotten an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, maybe at the same time peeling Syria out of the Iranian orbit, that makes it easier to isolate Iran so that they have a tougher time developing a nuclear weapon.

So Obama, under the combined influence of Hagel and Abdullah, became a convert to linkage. It was this notion that propelled the Obama administration, from its very first day, into a flurry of efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The very urgency with which this campaign was launched may have been its undoing, producing the “self-inflicted wound” of the U.S. demand for an Israeli settlement freeze. Hagel wasn’t implicated in that decision. The linkage mindset was.

A Dangerous Notion

It could do still more damage. Linkage-think can lead to panicked overreaction whenever Israelis and Arabs do exchange blows, as they occasionally do. In the summer of 2006, when Israel and Hezbollah fought another round (not their first and probably not their last), Hagel had just such a seizure:

I think it is so serious now, I think we are at the most dangerous time maybe we have seen ever in the Middle East with all the combustible elements… The president needs to get seriously engaged now. If we do not do that now at this moment, and I mean this moment, then the possibility of this escalating into a Middle East catastrophe, which would drag in all nations of the world, if for no other reason than just the energy dynamic here. The ramifications, the significance of all of this is astounding once you start to chart it out.

“The most dangerous time ever,” “catastrophe,” “drag in all nations of the world,” “astounding”—there is not a sentence here (even an incomplete one) that isn’t a model of apocalyptic hyperbole, more evocative of an end-time preacher than a U.S. senator. Linkage, like any domino theory, inflates events way out of their true proportion. Israel’s mini-wars aren’t preludes to Armageddon, and one would hate for a U.S. secretary of defense to think they were.

And linkage mania is a standing temptation to an open-ended intervention of the kind Hagel is supposed to abhor. Hagel signed his name (with other “realists”) to a 2009 paper warning the new President Obama that the “last chance” for a two-state solution could be lost in “six to twelve months.” The paper proposed deployment of a UN-mandated, U.S.-led NATO force (plus Egyptians and Jordanians) to the West Bank for five to fifteen years, to assume security responsibilities. The United States has always been steadfast in resisting proposals to put U.S. troops between Israelis and Palestinians, for fear of not ever being able to extricate them. A 2010 NATO-published planning paper concluded that “NATO’s mission in Palestine would have slim chances of success, and a high probability of failure…. It seems irresponsible to hasten NATO into a mission that has all the ingredients to turn into a quagmire that equals the Alliance’s involvement in Afghanistan.” Hagel would consider taking that plunge.

Of course, if you believe that the future of America and all humankind hinges on urgent creation of a Palestinian state, you might favor such a risky intervention. But does it? That would be a great question to pose to Chuck Hagel when he comes up for confirmation.

I will have more to say about this in the coming weeks and months. For now, I would like to direct you, my Hebrew readers, to the new website of Shalem College, which has just gone live. There you’ll find plenty of information about Shalem College, which will bring the classic curriculum of the liberal arts to Israel for the first time. From philosophy to art, from Bible to physics, students at Shalem College will acquire a deep understanding of the human endeavor and the Jewish tradition in all their aspects. Students initially will have a choice of two degrees (majors), both combined with the same extensive Core Curriculum: the Interdisciplinary Program of Philosophy and Jewish Thought, and Middle East and Islamic Studies. These programs represent the end product of a deep and thoughtful interaction between our scholars and the academic committees and staff of the Council for Higher Education. We are beholden to the Council for its constructive and professional input, which improved virtually every aspect of our plan.

All the credit for this remarkable achievement goes to my colleagues—I myself have remained “on deck” for these past four years (this year, as a visiting professor in America), while they have done the painstaking work of gaining accreditation, raising funds, finding a campus (a beautiful building in Kiryat Moriah, pictured), recruiting faculty, and much more. The leader of this monumental effort has been Dr. Daniel Polisar, the most indefatigable man I have ever known. With wisdom and grit, and a steady sense of purpose, he has forged ahead through crises and tribulations to this day—his day.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with him has been an outstanding team of board members, scholars and administrators, each one an accomplished expert in a field of crucial importance to the future operation of Shalem College. We have also enjoyed the trust of generous donors, who maintained us unstintingly during the long gestation and who have provided the wherewithal for the first years of the College. I will have much more to say about the vital contribution made by all of these colleagues and friends, who deserve to be named, and who count as pioneers and founders. Until then, I applaud their brilliant performance, and I congratulate them on their triumph.

The work is finished, and the work has just begun.