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Inside the Arab Mind! 25

Arabic that contains the truth. Former United States Ambassador, Malcom Toon, understood this
when he said: “If you want to know what leaders of non-democratic regimes really believe, don’t
listen to their declarations to Western statesmen and journalists, but to what they say among them-
selves” (quoted in Dispatch From Jerusalem, Jan/Feb. 1994).

One aspect of “whitening” another’s face is to tell a person, usually with all sincerity in-
tended, what he really wants to hear. Thus, when the conversation is terminated, that person comes
away with a positive but completely inaccurate view of the events discussed. As John Laffin, the
English Arabist and author of a book entitled The Arab Mind, succinctly put it: “The Arab means
what he says at the moment he is saying it. He is neither a vicious nor, usually, a calculating liar but
a natural one” (p. 70).

The most incredible thing about the Arab mind’s ability to lie and its unlimited creativity in
conjuring up the preposterous, is that it sincerely believes the lies it creates. In Madrid in October
1991, Hanan Ashrawi, the spokeswoman for the PLO negotiating team and the darling of the news
media, sidestepped a legitimate question from a Christian journalist and said: “I am a Palestinian
Christian and I know what Christianity is. I am a descendant of the first Christians in the world, and
Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town” (from “A Pales-
tinian Version of the New Testament,” Jerusalem Post, International Edition, Jan. 18, 1992). Like
most of her other statements, political or otherwise, this one was a series of colossal lies also.
Ashrawi is an Arab, and Arabs did not come into the land until Islam conquered the Christians in
637 A.D. All the first Christians were Jews, as was Jesus himself. Bethlehem was in Judea, “in the
land of Israel” (Matthew 2:21, 22). Most of those who heard or read her outrageous statement be-
lieved it as much as she did, and this only helps to delegitimatize Israel’s presence in the land.

Jordan entered the Arab’s coalition against Israel in the humiliating and devastating 1967
war, because the commander of Egypt’s forces sent a coded communique to King Hussein claiming
that Egypt had destroyed 75 percent of Israel’s attacking warplanes, destroyed Israel’s bases in a
counterattack, and that its ground forces had penetrated Israel itself (Patai, The Arab Mind, p. 102).
The world now knows that Israel almost entirely destroyed Egypt’s air force along with those of
three other nations in less than three hours from the commencement of hostilities. But on the
strength of repeated Egyptian claims of massive victories, Jordan entered the war and not only
added the loss of its air force to that of the other four, but also lost more territory than all of the other
aggressors combined. King Hussein of Jordan said: “These [Egyptian] reports -- fantastic to say the
least -- had much to do with our confusion and false interpretation of the situation” (ibid., p. 103).
John Laffin comments: “To claim to have inflicted heavy military losses on an enemy makes this a
fact, even if no military action whatever took place” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p.50). And an Egyp-
tian Arab says, “When we Arabs praise some imaginary deed, we are carried away by the same feel-
ing of satisfaction that we would feel if we had really carried it out” (the editor of Al-Ahram.
Quoted in John Laffin, Fedayeen: The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, p. 105).

“This is a difficult concept for a Westerner to grasp, but until he does so, many Arab actions
and statements make little sense” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 50). The Arab mind struggles with re-
ality and, therefore, usually operates more in the realm of fantasy. It lives in the glories of its peo-
ple’s past and not in actualities -- it fabricates events to explain current or past failures.

The Berean Voice November-December 2002