 Today, we're talking about de-radicalizing in the Middle East and elsewhere. In a world of terror, de-radicalization is critical and possibly it's also impossible. So for this show, we have Tim Apachele, my co-host. We have Gene Rosenfeld, who is an esteemed guest as always. And we have Jason Olson, United States Navy Lieutenant Commander, Foreign Area Officer. You're gonna hear more about what he does. Anyway, welcome to the show. How are you guys? Thank you. So Gene, let me go to you first and ask you, what is radicalization and is it accidental? How does it happen? It is not accidental at all. It has been a principle in the Middle East since Israel was founded to propose or propagate a narrative, which we're hearing much more of today of colonialism and worse things having to do with the Palestinians in general over a long period of time. But prior to that, we know that the jihadist movement had a philosophy of radicalization and recruitment and violence that departed from traditional Islam and is active now throughout the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Asia, and even among certain communities in Europe. So this poses a problem because we have generations growing up under extreme conditions of polarization, especially in Israel and the Palestinian area. And these generations are being taught and brought into this narrative, which is basically to get rid of the West and Western influence in that part of the world. Well, I don't know why, but I do know why, but this reminds me of the Muppets. And we're gonna show you a clip comparing an Israeli Muppet show in Israel TV and I guess you'd say an Arab Muppet show. Again, broadcast on Israeli TV. Let's see this clip. The difference between Israeli Kitshow and Palestinian Kitshow. Omar, Omar, Shalom. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. I'm Omar. You shall summarize and explain it for us. Well, this happens when radicalization takes places. The clip showed they use the term merhaba which usually means welcome in Arabic that was portrayed. And then you saw the other clips showing that they wanted to be soldiers of the Mujahadib. These are children. six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds, and so radicalization, the earlier the better. We've seen that in history with the brown shirts in Nazi Germany. We see it, you know, you basically indoctrinate your children, and it's much easier to send a message later in their later years, because they've been indoctrinated very early in life, and so they're more susceptible to for a different direction of thought. Yeah, you know, Jason, this is programming. It's programming children at an early age, and I'm no psychologist, but I would guess that that program lasts a long time, if not forever. I remember seeing a video of a young girl in an Arab community who was barely old enough to speak, which he was saying was kill the Jews, kill Israel, kill America, and it was quite impressive that those were pretty much the only words that she could speak, but somebody had taught her to say them. So, you know, how long is that young girl going to keep thinking that way? How permanent is the damage? Can you talk about it? Jay, thank you. Yeah, Jason Olson here. Yeah, I'm not speaking on behalf of the United States, just only speaking for myself, but this kind of worldview is very deep, and it can last a lifetime, but it really comes through the education system. I think about the difference between schools and military bases, and if we have any hope of changing or de-radicalizing, it's got to start in the schools, and that's something where the international community has to get far more involved, as we've seen in the news lately, with ANRA. You know, ANRA has not been very successful in de-radicalizing. In some cases, they've encouraged and helped radicalization. So, these are issues where we have to look at the schools and be responsible, and as we've mentioned, cases of de-radicalization in Japan and Germany after World War II, that meant occupation forces from the Allies in the West going in and transforming these schools, so you get new generations of leaders that are de-radicalized. You know, you're speaking of schools, and I certainly agree, and you know, Tim's reference to the brown shirts and the Hitler youth and all that, you know, sort of proved that up on a large scale in relatively modern day terms. But what about the home? That two-year-old child just learning to speak, she didn't get that in school, there was no school. And for a lot of these Arab kids, there is no school. They get it at home. How do you change that, Jason? That's more difficult. We, you know, it's not the, it's not appropriate in our Western culture of liberal democracy for the state to intervene and penetrate the home that deeply. You know, we like to give autonomy to parents to teach their children what, you know, what they want. That's the right of parents all around the world. So I think that that's difficult. I think that the schools is one place, and then the media is another place. And it's when you have freedom of speech and freedom of the press, you know, the media can feed children, whatever is feeding them, as we just saw with these clips. So, so the, we're, this is a delicate balance and friction between the freedom of education, freedom of the press, and the autonomy of parents. But if we're trying to derate our cause, we, you know, these are things, there's things that we can do in the United States. And there's things that we can do abroad. There's different authorities. And that's something if you're, if you're interested in getting into, right, there's more options that we can do abroad than we can do in the United States because of the Constitution and our civil liberties. Yeah, a quick note to that is I saw a piece in the paper recently about these home school situations in the United States. And educators are looking into exactly how that works. Because if you have a cult trumper home with the parents who are cult trumpers, and you have home schooling, you know, exactly what message is being passed down to those kids who spend, you know, their, their time learning with their parents. That's the way it works in home school. So I think we have an issue here in this country as well. You know, Jean, we've talked about what happened in Germany and Japan after the war. And I have to say, those were successful pretty much. And we de-radicalized the youth that hadn't participated or would participate in another war. But, you know, are those good examples now today? Because if I, if I scan my own experience, my own understanding, I don't find a de-radicalization example that's actually happening, such as the one that happened through MacArthur in Japan or through the American forces in Germany. I don't see that happening right now anywhere. Do you see that happening? Could that happen? Would it work? Would it work like in Japan and Germany? I think Jason can answer to this. He has done more study of this than I have. Just one example, Germany has been the most successful nation, according to Manfred Henningson, who is German himself, but American now, in terms of de-radicalizing its past. They have established memorials and stepping stones and all kinds of ways in which their law has been changed to, they're better at dealing with domestic fascism than we are today. But I think Jason has something to say about Japan. Jason, you know, let's talk about UNRWA, which is really a great tragedy, and a lot of people are denying that UNRWA did anything wrong to encourage radicalization, although I think we know better. And, you know, what, what could UNRWA do? What could UNRWA have done to improve that? What could a replacement for UNRWA do now to replace that? You know, this is a very difficult mission. It's going to involve a whole new paradigm. What would that paradigm be, and how could we achieve it? Oh, no, thank you. It's a great question, Jay, and Jean, as well. So, yeah, I think UNRWA, in my opinion, has failed. It's become synthesized and embedded with Hamas itself. So UNRWA had, in many aspects, has become integrated with Hamas. So Hamas is on its way to being completely destroyed. My recommendation is the unconditional surrender of Hamas, really, you know, burst the bubble of radicalization. That kind of end state would really strike a blow. But I'm also studying the United Arab Emirates and the Abraham Accords in particular. And in 2014, the United Arab Emirates, their highest leadership, decided to ban the Muslim Brotherhood from their country. They named the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and they purged their sovereign territory of the Muslim Brotherhood. And since then, to put the antibodies of radicalization into their system, they're also working on transforming and reforming their education system in an extremely positive way for religious freedom, religious pluralism, more human rights, more rights for women. So just in the last couple years, we've seen the fruits of that. The Abrahamic family house that they opened up in Dubai with a church, a synagogue, and a mosque, standing in a structure equally together, the Emirati states building a Jewish synagogue in Abu Dhabi with state funds for the first time ever. So they're opening up these spaces, I think, for, like I said, both religious freedom and religious pluralism, and combating radicalization both in their curriculum development, but also by actions, symbolic actions. And the Saudis are also doing the same thing as well. There's Impact SE as an NGO that's worked closely to reform K-12 or higher textbooks so that they're removing intolerance, pre- anti-Semitism, radicalism from the textbooks. I think that that, I'm a big believer that that's a great place to start. Well, you know, you'll have to admit this is recent. Very recent. Yeah, and so you have kids and families and people in the pipeline already that have been exposed to radicalism for a long, long, long, long, did I say long time? And so how do you take that out of the mix? How do you change their minds? I mean, take a four or five or six-year-old kid in school, one who watches the Muppets, for example, and sees all the stuff about violence and who hears it at home and from friends and community. What do you say to that kid to extract, to remove your term, to remove the radical training that kid has had? What do you say? I think it's top-down. It's got to start with the highest levels of the state, that the state sees it in their interest to ensure they have a moderate population that is committed to peace, committed to prosperity, committed to civil rights, human rights. The state has got to buy in, right? Otherwise, what we've seen for generations is chaos and instability. So there's a balance there. I think sometimes we get an attempt at projecting our own concepts onto the Middle East region or other regions where we want to just only support democratization and elections and that's all that matters, but there's other spaces that matter as well, religious freedom, human rights, civil rights, women's rights. I would say rather than putting democratization as the top goal, build these other infrastructure in civil society so that as democratization comes slowly, the people are, you know, they have the liberal values that will enable them to have a liberal democracy instead of like a radicalized democracy or those are kind of the lessons that I've learned from studying the Middle East for many years. I did my PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic studies from Brandeis University, so that's what I've noticed the trends, but there are great trends and I think they're the best trends or state led at this point. You know, I love asking you this question, Tim, because you're our media man, okay, because we know media plays an extraordinary role in this country increasingly, and for that matter it plays an extraordinary role in every country these days through social media, television and otherwise. Where does media come into this? Where does media come into affecting the public opinion, the individual sensibilities that lead to radicalization and that lead away from radicalization? Well, I think the most recent example of media influence is the the stroke that Hamas took the second they committed the atrocities in Israel. They got out in front of the cameras, in front of all the the social media sites, and became the victims, not the perpetrators of violence and atrocities, but they were now the victims, and so they they caught the narrative early. And how does media play? Well, it plays well. I mean come on, look at advertisers. They hone in on certain psychological needs, whether we call them Maslow's hierarchy of needs or not. The number one that I think that helps radicalization or programming, I like to call it programming, is the need to belong to a group, not to feel ostracized, not to feel outside that group, and you know when you are it sounds like a cult, doesn't it? Well, you could argue that many many things in this world that are cultish. You know, the first thing you do to deprogram someone is to extract them from that environment, get them away from the ideas and the peer pressure of ideas to the individual. You know, that's that's step one, but that's hard to do when you know you live in the same community in the same environment day in and day out. You just don't extract children or you don't extract adults from the environment in which they live, so deprogramming is very very difficult if you can't get them introduced to a new set of ideas or the old set of ideas that they used to adhere to. Remember, well in the case of children they've always been exposed to it, but there are times where adults have been, if you want to say brainwashed, we could use that term and there's a radical shift of who they were versus the identity of who they are now to be. Yeah, and Jean, you know, before the show began I asked you a question I'd like to ask you again. Suppose I'm an official in Iran and it occurs to me that I could do my proxy wars. We have discussed that phenomenon before and the proxy wars helped me. The proxy wars helped destroy Israel, but more than that the proxy wars helped me with a mission. They helped me to consolidate my power. They helped me connect people up to where I want to go. So my question is, is this official in Iran who has the ability to run proxy wars and run proxy terror groups? Why does he do that? As a matter of policy, why does Iran want to do that? What's the purpose of establishing the proxy and establishing Jihad and of establishing radicalization? Well, Iran has a proud past as an empire, the Persian empire, even though it wasn't, it wasn't Islamic then. So they are a regional hegemon historically. They're also Shia and a great divide, we've talked about this before, in the Middle East preceding the problems with Israel is a Shia Sunni divide. And I have heard that the Shia are much more hierarchical than the Sunni. The Sunni are kind of decentralized. Their authorities are more local, whereas with the Ayatollahs who run Iran, there is an apex authority. I've been studying obedience to authority lately in the Milgram experiments in Zimbardo and what's interesting when people themselves need to be disabused of violent theories like these things that take hold. Conformity to a peer group is very important. That's the way you get recruited. On the one hand, Mark Sageman has studied that, but on the other hand for deradicalization, if the parent's peer group generally subscribe to a set of principles and values and act out of those that do not jibe with the radical views that they have, they become isolated. So if you can free up the people, the majority of the people in these countries who want peace, stability, they want their values in Islam, which is actually a very tolerant religion, then they can exercise their peer pressure on those that do not. We've seen this happen domestically in the United States where white supremacists, families establish themselves in places like Aryan nations in Idaho, and we've seen deradicalization take place when they realize that they're very isolated and what they're aiming for. That's why people clumped together a like-minded way if they want to cause problems. Now remember Hamas. Hamas finds a Palestinian in Gaza who disagrees with Hamas's jihad. They're going to kill him, and that puts that down. So if you want to be enlightened, if you're a Palestinian, if you're Muslim in the history of the last 20 years in Gaza, you do it at great risk. So maybe you should keep your mouth shut if you have to be, if you happen to be enlightened. Now since we covered the Muppets, I think it's only fair to cover Ferdinand and Isabella. Ferdinand and Isabella, you know, running the equestrian in the 15th century, were not perforce anti-Semitic. They knew, however, there was an anti-Semitic strain that had existed in Spain for 100 years, and they wanted to consolidate their power. And one of the things they did is say they accommodated the anti-Semitic threat in Spain by becoming anti-Semitic and encouraging the Inquisition. So it's question of power, isn't it? If you use it like a tool, you use the jihad, the radicalization as a tool to get people together under your control. Can you talk about that? Am I right? Am I wrong? Do you do you rather believe the Muppets or do you rather believe Isabella and Ferdinand? I haven't really studied that very much. I do know that they were busy conquering the Islamic caliphate in Spain at the same time, and they also, the Islamic caliphate was actually quite tolerant towards Jews. And maybe they had to define themselves in contra-distinction to that, but we also know there there's his history of really bad anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church. Gary Wills has talked about this, and he's a Catholic for 2,000 years. So they use those tools in society cynically as we accuse politicians of using such tools today, but perhaps they really believed it too. I don't know. With respect to the jihadi virus that has grown up in Egypt initially and spread all the way to Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, and which fires these people up, it's like we're actually in another cold war with hot spots in it. Yeah. You know, Jason, the idea about retraining, the idea about building a synagogue, what have you, it's complex because this is a very difficult task to de-radicalize the subject of our show. And it's not only that, but it's dangerous. I mean, would I go as a Jewish person and settle in the land my forefathers might have lived in, you know, in the Middle East, a land which is now anti-Semitic? Would I go there and try to be, you know, the cutting edge of the reemergence of Judaism in that country, participate in the development of a synagogue there? That sounds hard and it sounds dangerous. I mean, you know, life-threateningly dangerous. So where's the cutting edge here? And who will do it? It's nice to hear about some of these countries that have been made more liberal, more tolerant, but who should get the point on this? Who should be the leader on this? Well, we're at a paradox. There are trends in the Middle Eastern region. As Gene said, there have been periods of time, the golden age of Spain, and we look at Maimonides, the Rambam. There have been times in Jewish Islamic history where there was great tolerance. And so some of these states, the United Arab Emirates, for example, in Bahrain, they're looking at the last, you know, century as kind of an aberration, and they're trying to go back to a time when Jews and Muslims had warm relations and tolerant relations, which there are pockets throughout history. Unfortunately, what's happened, that's why it's so critical, like I said, that United Arab Emirates banned the Muslim Brotherhood, made it a terrorist organization. What's happening is Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, other jihadist organizations have metastasized and spread it out throughout the world, including in the United States, and also purged themselves in different college campuses in the West, throughout the West. And so they've, in some cases, they've been expelled from different Middle Eastern countries, and they found homes in other places in the world where they're continuing a war against the Jewish people, a war against the United States, a war against the West. And so it's, there's a globalization, and we saw that with al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was the first to really decide we're going to expand our war from just Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Saudi monarchy, and we're going to make a global jihad. And that's what we're finding. They're willing to find new spaces where they can thrive and attack their enemies. Yeah, you know, Tim, that opens the question of whether the United States as a target of radicalism, one of the targets, the main target, the West, you know, the United States can be the city on the hill and can be the leader in trying to de-radicalize other places in the world. Is it qualified? Is it qualified these days with a fair amount of anti-Semitism going on in the country, an increasing amount of anti-Semitism? Could it ever be? What would have to happen before the United States could resume its liberal role as the leader of tolerance in the world? Or is that in our history only? No, I don't think it was in our history only. I'm thinking of the 60s when John Kennedy made the famous quote, Ask not what you can do with your country. Ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do to your country. How many people volunteered to do outreach in foreign countries and in third-world countries? And so there was this informal diplomatic corps, if you will, that showed people what America was about by their deeds and actions, not versus the stereotypes that were formatted to these populations, for stereotypes of Americans and how America was. So through action, a lot of myths were dispelled. I'm thinking also, even in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was an effort to go into villages and show the kindness of the military that we weren't just there at boots on the ground and camouflage that people wore, that they were interested in building schools. Hopefully not through nation building, but through humanity building. And the military became a part of that, I think. To what degree that was successful, I don't know. Maybe Jason has a better sense of that than I do, but there was an effort, at least, to dispel the myth and the stereotypes of Americans and how we were bent on destruction and war. I have a hard question for you, Tim. Given all of that, given all that we've talked about today, suppose I find a murderous radical who has killed a lot of people. And okay, a war criminal, that kind of thing. Do I try to show him a better path or her? Do I try to explain to him how wrong he was? What do I throw him in the slammer forever to keep him off the streets? What do I do to protect myself against this murderer? Well, I think you're referring to justice and there is international justice. There is local justice and justice needs to be implemented, particularly if there's a radical murderer at your front doorstep. But I also caution against what I would call the sum to more argument. That is, there's some group of people that act like this. Therefore, as a form of argument, we project that onto a wider population that therefore they must be like this. You talk to anyone who travels in the Middle East, any American, they go, my God, why would you go to Jordan or my God, why would you go to all these countries when there's radicals everywhere? Well, maybe that's the stereotype and number two is maybe that's the sum to more argument, that yes, there are a group of these radicals, but you can't broad-based paint an entire population to be that same radical theology or philosophy. Yeah, familiarity helps. You know, I mean, that's why I went to Israel and they put me on a tour around the border. They wanted me to be there at the border, a tourist at the border. And, you know, so I could see and people could see me. And so maybe if you force the familiarization that helps, it's time for our closing statements that I could see that Jason is wound up about many, many issues here. So I want to ask him first to summarize what he would like to leave with our audience today. Oh, I just, I think that the United States of America is a quintessential country. And that to solving these problems requires American leadership and American intervention. That's been my experience. Things don't just happen on their own. We can't just extract ourselves as Americans and just expect everything to run well. We need to have well-crafted strategies. We need both our academics and our policy communities and our elected leaders to work together to solve the problems of the world and to exert leadership. The countries of the world look to the United States for our leadership. They want to see what we have to say and what we want to do. And many times, if it's a good solution, they support. No, I'm interested in that. I feel strongly about that. I also feel it affects my personal security to make sure there is no jihadi attack here in this country. So I'm perfectly willing to take steps, Jason, as an ordinary schmo. What do I do as an ordinary schmo? Well, I think you partner with your leaders, support leaders, become a leader, and just instead of hiding inside of a shell, a turtle shell, you get out, you go to other countries, you persuade, you engage, and you can engage in citizen diplomacy, you can engage in education efforts. We all can play a part to make the world a better place. It's just I worry about the different forms of isolationism, especially at a time now when the world is breaking apart at the seams and we have, we have wars in Europe and we have wars in the Middle East and we're trying to prevent more wars from breaking out. So I think it's engage, talk, you know, we have social media now. So can you can communicate with anyone in the whole world at any time? Yeah, but before I leave you though, I just want to touch on the social media thing. There's so much disinformation, that means lying on social media. It's so easy to be misinformed. What you've read a lot, you've written a lot, you've spoken a lot. Where do I look for a clear message on this? What should I be reading? Just take, take a couple of the top some sources that I need to check on regularly. Well, I can only my own personal opinion of voices that I think are helpful. I am a big fan of, of Neil Ferguson and Victor Davis Hansen. I am trained in history. So I think it's important to look for the lessons of the past because those are real facts and real evidence that we have. And try to find patterns from the past of what succeeded and what failed and then see how they can be applied to current problems. Well, that means we should be, we should be talking to you on a regular basis. Get a handle on that. Gee, thank you for bringing it. One among some, but those are some sources. The really good historians that rely on facts are the best sources in my opinion. Gene, thank you for bringing Jason Olson to us. Appreciate you arranging this. I hope we can do it again. Now, as far as you're concerned, you know, what do you take from this? What lessons have we touched on here that you would emphasize? I think we need to be very careful about understanding the anthropology of each country, even the way people think logically is different. So that's one thing. We need knowledgeable people involved in this. This is all a soft power program. We're engaged in military imposing security on zones which are very insecure. That's number one. But once you've done that, after the Gaza war is over, everybody's been saying, well, what do you do next? Well, then you use the soft power, and Jason has spoken somewhat to that. The other thing I want to verify is that it's not always just top down as a former member of the Peace Corps, and I'm going to date myself now, way back in the 90s. Oh, we never knew that, Gene. I have a whole different view of you now. I was a few years out of college when I went into the Peace Corps. Great experience, and I learned a lot from it. I learned a lot from it, and what I learned most about is that they taught me about the world. Americans are too isolated or too clumped together. Jason's admonition to get out, if you want to do something, get out to another country. We took our kids, my husband was a doctor in the Peace Corps, too, before I met him. We took our kids to a third-world country when they were small, on purpose, because they were so privileged. We wanted them to see that they could connect, and they did. They did connect with teenagers in that country. Well, Tim, your thoughts here to close? Are you going to be watching more of the Muppets? No, I will not be watching more of the Muppets. I didn't watch them when I was a child, nor do I tend to as an adult. So, you know, my final thoughts are, and maybe I'm taking a left turn to talk, but I think we bring ecologists and psychiatrists into the discussion. What is it about the frailty of the human condition, the human mind, that it takes relatively little work to craft tools of what we would call propaganda, and work its magic relatively easy to completely shift one's attitude, values, and beliefs in a 180-degree different direction? And what does that say about human beings as a species that they're so malleable, and influence them so easily? And until we understand the, I think, the physiology of the human mind, and how weak it is, radicalization will continue from here to eternity, or at least to the date of the human species becomes extinct, whichever comes first. So, the question, Gene and Jason, is whether the species is perfectable or imperfectable, and we are at that inflection point. Thank you very much for joining us today, Gene and Jason and Tim Aloha.