Professor Yisrael Aumann, a Nobel economics laureate and renowned game theory mathematician, has been in the news recently reiterating his strong convictions that the only way for peace to come about in the Middle East is for Israel to prepare and anticipate war. He says, “this may be opposite to common sense, but it is true. The spiritual preparation to kill and be killed is what will ultimately prevent the need to kill and fight. First, you need to be spiritually ready.”

He cites the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany as two clear examples of his strong theories. The Roman Empire, which was always prepared for war (and—in many unfortunate situations—actually carried through on its threat of war with powerful and crushing victories), ultimately brought about a world peace that to this day lives in history as the famous Pax Romana.

Nazi Germany, on the other hand, seems clearly to have been invigorated with delusions of world domination only after Neville Chamberlain took great pains and gave up great concessions in his quest to “chase peace”.

To explain his theory, Aumann has written a piece on Arutz 7′s web site, in which he explains the game theory concepts behind this analysis in layman’s terms. I find it absolutely fascinating and, as such, will share it in its entirety here:

Two men—let us call them Reuben and Simon—are put in a small room containing a suitcase filled with  bills totaling $100,000.  The owner of the suitcase announces the following:

“ I will give you the money in the suitcase under one condition…you have to negotiate an agreement on how to divide it. That is the only way I will agree to give you the money.”

Reuben is a rational person and realizes the golden opportunity that has fallen his way. He turns to Simon with the obvious suggestion: “You take half and I’ll take half, that way each of us will have $50,000.”

To his surprise, Simon frowns at him and says, in a tone that leaves no room for doubt: “Look here, I don’t know what your plans are for the money, but I don’t intend to leave this room with less than $90,000. If you accept that, fine. If not, we can both go home without any of the money.”

Reuben can hardly believe his ears. “What has happened to Simon” he asks himself. “Why should he get 90% of the money and I just 10%?”  He decides to try to convince Simon to accept his view. “Let’s be logical,” he urges him, “We are in the same situation, we both want the money. Let’s divide the money equally and both of us will profit.”

Simon, however, doesn’t seem perturbed by his friend’s logic He listens attentively, but when Reuben is finished he says, even more emphatically than before: “90-10 or nothing. That is my last offer.”

Reuben’s face turns red with anger. He is about to punch Simon in the nose, but he steps back. He realizes that Simon is not going to relent, and that the only way he can leave the room with any money is to give in to him. He straightens his clothes, takes $10,000 from the suitcase, shakes Simon’s hand and leaves the room humiliated.

This case is called ‘The Blackmailer’s Paradox” in game theory. The paradox is that Reuben the rational is forced to behave irrationally by definition, in order to achieve maximum results in the face of the situation that has evolved. What brings about this bizarre outcome is the fact Simon is sure of himself and doesn’t flinch when making his exorbitant demand. This convinces Reuben that he must give in so as to make the best of the situation.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict:

The relationship between Israel and the Arab countries is conducted along the lines of this paradox. At each stage of negotiation, the Arabs present impossible, unacceptable starting positions. They act sure of themselves and as if they totally believe in what they are asking for, and make it clear to Israel that there is no chance of their backing down.

Invariably, Israel agrees to their blackmailing demands because otherwise she will leave the room empty handed. The most blatant example of this is the negotiations with Syria that have been taking place with different levels of negotiators for years.  The Syrians made sure that it was clear from the beginning that they would not compromise on one millimeter of the Golan Heights.

The Israeli side, eager to have a peace agreement with Syria, internalized the Syrian position so well, that the Israeli public is sure that the starting point for future negotiations with Syria has to include complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights, this despite its critical strategic importance in ensuring secure borders for Israel.

The Losing Solution:

According to game theory, Israel has to change certain basic perceptions in order to improve her chances in the negotiations game with the Arabs and win the long term political struggle:

a. Willingness to forego agreements:

Israel’s political stand is based on the principle that agreements must be reached with the Arabs at any price, that the lack of agreements is untenable. In the Blackmailer’s Paradox, Reuben’s behavior is the result of his feeling that he must leave the room with some money, no matter how little.  Because Reuben cannot imagine himself leaving the room with empty hands, he is easy prey for Simon, and ends up leaving with a certain amount of money, but in the role of the humiliated loser.  This is similar to the way Israel handles negotiations, her mental state making her unable to reject suggestions that do not advance her interests.

b. Taking repetition into account

Game theory relates to onetime situations differently than to situations that repeat themselves. A situation that repeats itself over any length of time, creates, paradoxically, strategic parity that leads to cooperation between the opposing sides. This cooperation occurs when both sides realize that the game is going to repeat itself, and that since they must weigh the influence present moves will have on future games, there is a balancing factor at play. Reuben saw his problem as a onetime event, and behaved accordingly. Had he told Simon instead that he would not forego the amount he deserves even if he sustains a total loss, he would have changed the game results for an indefinite period.  It is probably true that he would still have left the game empty handed, but at the next meeting with Simon, the latter would remember Reuben’s original suggestion and would try to reach a compromise.

That is how Israel has to behave, looking at the long term in order to improve her position in future negotiations, even if it means continuing a state of war and fore going an agreement.

c. Faith in your opinions

Another element that crates the “Blackmailer’s Paradox” is the unwavering belief of one side in its opinion. Simon exemplifies that. This faith gives a contender inner confidence in his cause at the start and eventually convinces his rival as well.   The result is that the opposing side wants to reach an agreement, even at the expense of irrational surrender that is considerably distanced from his opening position.  Several years ago, I spoke to a senior officer who claimed that Israel must withdraw from the Golan Heights in the framework of a peace treaty, because the Golan is holy land to the Syrians and they will never give it up. I explained to him that first the Syrians convinced themselves that the Golan is holy land to them, and then proceeded to convince you as well. The Syrians’ unflinching belief that they are in the right convinces us to give in to their dictates. The only solution to that is for us to believe unwaveringly in the righteousness of our cause. Only complete faith in our demands can succeed in convincing our Syrian opponent to take our opinion into account.

As in all of science, game theory does not take sides in moral and value judgments. It analyzes strategically the behavior of opposing sides in a game they play against one another. The State of Israel is in the midst of one such game opposite its enemies. As in every game, the Arab-Israeli game involves interests that create the framework of the game and its rules.

Sadly, Israel ignores the basic principles of game theory.  If Israel would be wise enough to behave according to those principles, her political status and de facto, her security status, would improve substantially.

Immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Israel flew an incredible amount of doctors and equipment there (more so than any other country, proportionately speaking)—some of the best and most advanced technology—and made an incredible difference in the aftermath.

While most critics of Israel at least acknowledged the humanitarianism and generosity of the country, there are still some despicably evil, black-hearted people so full of hatred that they cannot even recognize an altruistic action for what it is, and instead look for ways to slander and malign what every sane person agrees is an outright kindness.

For one of the most disgusting examples of this, here is a transcript of a couple of verminous bottom-feeders on Syrian TV actually spinning Israel’s benevolence into some sort of conspiracy to harvest organs for trafficking. All I can say is: may these sick, twisted maniacs wake up one day in an alley somewhere missing a kidney (or worse) and know what real organ harvesting is.

The transcript is from MEMRITV.org, and the actual video can be viewed at this link.

The following are excerpts from a televised debate on the so-called Israeli trafficking in human organs, which aired on Syrian TV on January 27, 2010.

Reporter: Israel is aiding the people stricken by the Haiti earthquake. This is a wonder unto itself. But the real reason is to steal organs from the corpses of the Haitian dead, in the greatest catastrophe this poor country has ever witnessed. Once the reason is known, there is no need to wonder – the Israeli delegation, which came to Haiti under the pretext of helping these fate-stricken people, exploited the tragedy and the suffering of the Haitians, by stealing their human organs for trafficking.

This was confirmed by American activist T. West, who documented this heinous crime and posted the film on Youtube. The film shows Israelis engaged in stealing organs from the earthquake victims. It seems that the [Israeli] entity of killing, destruction, and terrorism, which has become skilled in killing women and children in ice-cold blood, is now expert in stealing human organs and trafficking in them.

For years, human organ trafficking has been on the rise in Israel. The work of the traffickers has become an international trade, with offices in Europe and Africa. This has brought Israel to the third place in the world in organ trafficking.

Swedish journalist Donald Boström, who visited the occupied territories, confirmed, in a report published by the Swedish paper Aftonbladet, that the occupation soldiers were kidnapping Palestinian youth in the West Bank and Gaza, and were returning them to their families as stiff corpses, after having ripped out their organs. In addition, the Israeli authorities force Palestinians sentenced to death to sign documents consenting to organ donation after they are hanged.

The Swedish report linked these acts to the Jewish network that was caught last July in the American city of New Jersey, and to the rabbis who were accused of trafficking in human organs, in Israel and other countries.

[...]

Moderator: Dr. Jassem, the question poses itself.

Dr. Jassem Zakariya, Professor of International Relations, Damascus University: Of course, when we watch the scenes in this fine report, Shakespeare immediately comes to mind…

Moderator: Shylock…

Dr. Jassem Zakariya: Shylock, yes. As we see, the Jew has not changed – especially the Zionist Jews, who are now gathered in the so-called “Israel,” which is the largest concentration in history of war criminals, who committed crimes against humanity. This is how they will be remembered if they continue with this.

Of course, the fact that the tragedy of the Haitian people benefits them is undoubtedly evidence of the imminent end of this entity, because this is the ultimate crime.

They began with our folks in Palestine – with the prisoners, the wounded, and the martyrs. They began with terrible crimes, through which they established their entity. To this day, they persist with their crimes, while the loathsome image of the Jew, the Zionist, the alien who came as an invader, an occupier, makes another appearance – this time in Haiti, not Palestine – so the whole world – anyone with a heart, ears, eyes, and insight – can realize that these people are the enemies of all mankind, not just of the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the Muslims.

This is a very important matter. At the very time that we are witnessing the dignity, courage, and humanity of the besieged people of Gaza, who make donations to Haiti… This is civilization, this is Arab identity, this is history, while these [Israelis] are just a bunch of murderers and criminals. They have never been anything else, and therefore, they will pay the price, sooner or later.

Moderator: Dr. Mustafa, is Israel really in need of these organs, or does it reflect their total disdain for the human soul? Before the show, you mentioned something about Abu Ghreib, and I told you to keep it for the show.

Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Habash, Department of Transplantation, Al-Mouassat University Hospital: Israel is a country devoid of moral values and principles. When it takes human organs from various places worldwide… I have read many reports, over many years, about how they took organs from Croatia. I recently read on the Internet that an American activist claimed that Israel had taken organs from prisoners in Abu Ghreib in Iraq.

In the face of such a thing, I say: “How can Israeli doctors act this way?” After all, they are part of this system. Medicine is like music. It is a universal language of ethics…

Moderator: It does not officially prohibit the stealing of human organs…

Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Habash: That’s true. Israel is not deterred by this abomination.

When it comes to Palestinians there is a monumental double standard in the world, such that Israel gets condemned right and left for their supposed “treatment” of the Palestinians, while Arab countries get a complete free pass for doing the exact same things (and often worse).

Squalid Palestinian refugee camps are not only found in Israel’s disputed territories. They are also found in the neighboring Arab countries, but you’d never know that from most of the mainstream media. And you’d also never know that they are often in even worse conditions there than in Israel, that they contain even more Palestinian refugees than those in Israel, and that they are often treated to persecution even worse than the supposed “persecution” in Israel.

Every once in a long while, a newspaper decides to do the rare report on this, and this time the honor goes to Britain’s The Independent. In a special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels, the Palestinians’ treatment by their brethren is laid bare for all to see. It’s a great article to read in full, but here are some excerpts (emphasis mine):

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state.

In other words, these people are used as pawns by their own brethren just to make Israel look bad. The more these Arab countries persecute their Palestinians brethren and keep them in the dirt, the more they could spotlight it and bizarrely blame Israel for their conditions!

Yet in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, after two Gulf wars, and the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process, not a single Palestinian refugee has returned to Israel – and only a handful of ageing political functionaries have returned from neighbouring Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political priorities have resulted in a second Palestinian “Nakba”, or catastrophe – this one at hands of the Arab governments. “Marginalised, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines,” a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Lebanon recently observed, “the refugee population constitutes a time bomb.”

The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible – or less dangerous.

Just as bizarre, you have the Palestinian leadership themselves, based in Israel, not defending their own across the border and not calling attention to their plight, only because it would detract from the world’s hate that they are too busy directing at Israel. So, you have hundreds of thousands of Palestinians getting kicked around Iraq, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, etc… and the Palestinian leaders apparently care only about the fewer numbers living in Israel. Again, because it’s not the plight of their own people that they primarily are concerned with, but rather the inverse: the vilification of Israel is all they really care about, their brethren be damned.

The report then provides some examples:

Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.

In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe.

The only difference is that Jews were bounced around Europe by the Christians. Here, it’s Palestinians getting bounced around the Middle East by their own Arab brethren.

The report then highlights the ridiculous new definition of a “refugee”, the redefinition coming about especially for the Palestinians:

The only governing authority that Palestinians living in the camps have ever known is UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Established by the UN on 8 December 1949 to assist 650,000 impoverished Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, UNRWA has been battling budget cuts and strikes among its employees as it struggles to provide subsidies and services to Palestinian refugees, who are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948″.

The inclusion of the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees in UNRWA’s mandate has no parallel in international humanitarian law and is responsible for the growth of the official numbers of Palestinian refugees in foreign countries from 711,000 to 4.6 million during decades when the number of ageing refugees from the 1948 Israeli war of independence in was in fact declining. UNRWA’s grant of refugee status to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees according to the principle of patrilineal descent, with no limit on the generations that can obtain refugee status, has made it easy for host countries to flout their obligations under international law. According to Article 34 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, “The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees,” and must “make every effort to expedite naturalisation proceedings” – the opposite of what happened to the Palestinians in every Arab country in which they settled, save Jordan.

So, what to do with all of these so-called “refugees” (most of whom actually never personally left any place to seek actual refuge someplace else)?

Daniel Kurtzer agrees no one is likely to make a deal that includes a substantial return of the Palestinian diaspora. “Most Palestinian refugees know it, as do the settlers,” he says. So rather than wait for American mediators or Arab states to impose solutions on them, the Palestinians themselves should begin to tackle the diabolically difficult issues inherent in the resolution of their political and economic future. “What we need is a refugee summit,” he says. “I’m looking for a real conversation that must start internally and soon.”

After 60 years of failed wars, and failed peace, it is time to put politics aside and to insist that the basic rights of the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries be respected – whether or not their children’s children return to Haifa anytime soon. While Saudi Arabia may not wish to host Israeli tourists, it can easily afford to integrate the estimated 240,000 Palestinian refugees who already live in the kingdom – just as Egypt, which has received close to $60bn in US aid, and has a population of 81 million, can grant legal rights to an estimated 70,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants. One can only imagine the outrage that the world community would rightly visit upon Israel if Israeli Arabs were subject to the vile discriminatory laws applied to Palestinians living in Arab countries. Surely, Palestinian Arabs can keep their own national dream alive in the countries where they were born, while also enjoying the freedom to work, vote and own property?

A practical solution to the crisis of the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries will focus on Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, which together play host to approximately 3 million of the estimated 4.6 million Palestinian refugees living outside the West Bank and Gaza. While each of these countries has chosen different legal and political approaches to the 1948 refugees and their descendants, they share a political desire to sublimate the rights of Palestinian residents, treating them as unwanted guests or as tools to be used in pursuing wider political interests – but rarely as fully-fledged members of society. Lebanon, where Palestinians led by Yasser Arafat are widely blamed for having sparked the 1975 civil war, is the worst offender against international norms. Yet even in Jordan, which is in many ways a model for the humane treatment of a large refugee population, Palestinians today feel markedly less secure than they did two decades ago, or even five years ago.

The report then provides some more examples of their treatment by their Arab brethren:

Outside of Iraq, whose Palestinian population fled en masse after the fall of Saddam, nowhere has the situation of the Palestinian refugees worsened so dramatically as in Lebanon. Since the early Sixties, Palestinians there have been barred from working in medicine, dentistry and the law. In 2001, the Lebanese parliament adopted an amendment to the country’s property laws that prohibited the acquisition of real estate by “any person not a citizen of a recognised state” – meaning the estimated 250,000 to 400,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon. Palestinians who had acquired real estate prior to 2001 were barred from bequeathing property to their children.

Right-wing Christians and Shi’ite radicals alike support discriminatory legislation that further impoverishes Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, with the stated goal of preventing them from beginning the process of naturalisation, known as tawtin. In his inaugural speech in May, 2008, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, a Christian and former head of the country’s armed forces, reaffirmed “Lebanon’s categorical refusal of naturalisation”, a statement echoed by the former Lebanese ambassador to the US, Nassib Lahoud, who told us recently in Beirut: “The confessional balance does not allow these things to happen … at the moment the Palestinians are citizens of a state that does not exist.” His sentiments were echoed by Hizbollah’s spokesman on the Palestinian question, Hassan Hodroj. “The threat of tawtin is genuine,” Hodroj explained. “It is one of the ways in which Israel, backed by the US, is endangering the region.”

The fact that the living standard of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has been deemed “catastrophic” by both UNRWA and by the Lebanese government can therefore be understood as a deliberate result of official state policy that is supported by all parties across Lebanon’s divided confessional spectrum. As a member of the Lebanese parliament, Ghassan Moukheiber, explained in an interview with the ICG, “our official policy is to maintain Palestinians in a vulnerable, precarious situation to diminish prospects for their naturalisation or permanent settlement“.

…While Palestinian refugees and their descendants inside Syria are not allowed to vote or hold Syrian passports, they are free from the overt discrimination that has turned Lebanon into a recruiting ground for al-Qa’ida. The legal status of Palestinians inside Syria is defined by a 1956 law that states that grants them “the right to employment, commerce, and national service, while preserving their original nationality”. More than 100,000 of the estimated 450,000 Palestinians in Syria live in or around the Yarmouk refugee camp, which long ago became a neighbourhood of Damascus.

While Palestinians are reasonably well integrated into the Syrian socio-economic structure, according to the scholar Laurie Brand they do not have the right to vote, nor can they stand for parliament or other political offices. Palestinians are barred from buying farmland and prohibited from owning more than one house. The female descendant of a Palestinian refugee can become a Syrian citizen by marrying a Syrian man. The male descendants of Palestinian men and their children are barred from acquiring Syrian citizenship, even if they marry Syrian women.

These are all things you’d never know just from listening to most news reports. The double-standard applied to Israel and the hypocrisy and false piety of the world when it comes the the “plight” of the Palestinians is just sickening, and more people need to be aware of the truth.

Yesterday, MEMRI put out a special dispatch to highlight several articles published by the Daoud al-Shiryan, the Deputy Secretary-General of al-Arabiya TV, on the plight of the Palestinian “refugees”—those perpetual refugees still living in perpetual refugee camps due to the restrictive policies of their host countries. Al-Shiryan criticizes the way these countries have treated them and calls on them to integrate the refugees into their societies and to resettle them, essentially before the world catches on to what is being done under the guise of their supposed “zealous devotion to the Right of Return.”

Some excerpts from his articles:

Objecting to [refugee] resettlement is no different than objecting to peace. It is nothing but an unrealistic slogan. The Arabs have agreed to peace, although they realize that there cannot be peace without [refugee] resettlement. But they disregard this fact, viewing the refugee issue as a point of controversy, when it is [actually] a central and key issue in the peace process. The fear [of being accused of renouncing the nationalist] slogans [calling for] struggle, resistance, and casting Israel into the sea – slogans which emerged at the outset of the peace process with Israel – and the link that has been established between the issue [of resettlement] and ethnic and political problems in some [Arab] countries – have [all] become an obstacle to a realistic and honest approach to the issue.

Arabs who object to the [refugee] resettlement plan contend that they are motivated by their zealous devotion to the Right of Return. But they have not lifted a finger to keep this right alive in the consciousness of the Palestinian ‘detainees’ in the camps of abasement. As a result, this spurious devotion has evoked the opposite reaction: a Palestinian [refugee] now hopes to emigrate to America, Europe, Canada, or Australia in order to escape the hell of the Palestinian refugee camps, which have played a part in killing his will to live.

These countries must stop treating the Palestinians like a plague, using slogans which, as we all know, have become nothing but empty utterances in a loathsome struggle. We must break the isolation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. A Palestinian should be made to feel like a welcome and dear guest – before some external intervention comes along and grants him the right to live in dignity, to everyone’s consternation.

[My] passion for [refugee] resettlement is not a rejection of the Right of Return, but rather of the inhuman treatment of the Palestinians in the ‘countries of the refugee camps.’ Foremost among these countries is Lebanon, which bars the Palestinians from 72 professions, so as to prevent them from living in dignity – despite the fact that you wouldn’t find such a long list of professions even on Mars.

As news of the Obama administration’s hostility towards Israel continues to roll out of Washington, there’s now the additional news of cozying up to terrorist haven Syria and its dictator, Assad. In fact, Obama has now decided to lift various embargos against Syria and has plans to lift yet more in the future.

These embargoes were initiated by Congress in the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, “to sanction Syria for its support for terrorism, its occupation of Lebanon, its pursuit and development of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and its failure to support the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.”

When you stop to consider that Syria still supports terrorism (just last year awarded Syria’s highest medal to Samir Kuntar), still is pursuing weapons of mass destruction (a secret nuclear reactor was discovered and destroyed by Israel less than two years ago), and still harbors terrorists destabilizing Iraq… you can’t help but wonder what changes justify this new warm and cuddly relationship Obama is developing with them, other than possibly that Syria is an Arab state and a dictatorship, both of which Obama is trying to appease the world over against our better interests, for some unknown reason.

As usual, Obama continues to spurn our friends and allies, while kissing the asses of dictators, terrorists, murderers, human rights violators, and outright enemies all over the world.