“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah 55: 6-7

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Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Arab Culture

See “‘Enough is enough’: Dems rage at Saudis over oil cut, vow to block weapons sales”:

A top Democratic senator is vowing to block all future weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and urging the Biden administration to “immediately freeze all aspects” of U.S. cooperation with the kingdom in response to its decision to cut oil production amid a global energy crisis set off by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The message from Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who has veto power over foreign arms sales, comes amid the West’s outrage at OPEC+ for slashing its oil output — a move that the U.S. and other allied governments saw as a gift to Moscow as it suffers significant losses on the battlefield in Ukraine.

People who have never been to the Middle East and have never met and gotten to know Arabs in their own world are prone to have misconceptions about Arabs that can be costly. Things that are part of Arab culture are deeply ingrained in the Arab population, and they remain part of their culture no matter where they live. Call them “instincts” or whatever you want, but they are there and they are real. Changing those things is very difficult, if not impossible. Western logic where rules of governance are accepted does not apply in the Arab world, so we must learn to use their logic. You don’t have to like their logic, but you must understand it.

This is fundamental to Arab culture and logic: The strong man wins, and he will be in charge until a stronger man takes him down.

Some will say, “Civilization has progressed beyond that point.” That statement is so naïve that it is borderline stupid. The world is what it is. Eventually, pretending that the world isn’t what it is will cost us dearly.

In today’s woke world, that sounds like a racist statement, but it’s not. It’s a fact that is understood and accepted in the Middle East, especially among Arabs. They know it’s true better than anyone. They must take it into account every day when they deal with each other in their daily lives.

Before I get to my main point, I want to share with you an example of another cultural issue that came up with a consulting client of mine many years ago. In that instance, the company blew it, and the leaders in the company could not understand that they made a serious mistake. In their world, culture didn’t even enter the picture.

Southern Culture

In the rural South, the opening day of deer season is sacred to serious deer hunters. It’s like working at their 9 to 5 jobs on Sunday. They don’t do it. The company in question manufactured railroad box cars in Winder, Georgia. It’s difficult work, because it involves welding together large and very heavy pieces of sheet metal. The people who do those jobs are construction workers, except they work in a factory. They are the types of people who have hunted on the opening day of deer season since they were little children. It’s as much a part of who they are as going to church on Sunday. It’s a tradition that’s part of their heritage.

The company was headquartered in an industrial community hundreds of miles away, and the people running the Winder plant came from there. They simply assumed that the workers in Georgia would be like their workers back home. That was a serious mistake.

The company announced that the plant would operate on a particular Saturday which was the opening day of deer season and that every worker was expected to work overtime that day. The workers didn’t mind working on Saturday, and they liked the overtime; but they refused to work on the opening day of deer season. They sent that message back to the plant manager. Instead of trying to understand his workers and bend a little to accommodate their culture, he sent them another message. It was an ultimatum. He said, “Anyone not showing up for work on Saturday will be fired.”

That’s what the plant manager would have done back home, but back home, opening day of deer season was not sacred. His workers back home never would have challenged his authority over something as ridiculous as the opening day of deer season, but in Winder, Georgia, he was dealing with a different breed of cat.

On the Saturday in question, nobody showed up for work, and the plant manager was in a quandary. He had threatened to fire what he thought would be a few malcontents, but it ended up being everybody in the plant who had anything to do with building railroad box cars. He couldn’t fire all of them without shutting down the plant for a long period of time while he hired new workers and trained them. Besides, the new workers he would need to hire would come from the same labor pool as the workers he had already. The opening day of deer season was sacred to them, too.

Accepting the fact that he had to back off and not enforce his ultimatum was very difficult for the plant manager. He thought his workers had challenged his masculinity and his authority, but the workers didn’t see it that way at all. The workers knew that the plant manager was a tough, no-nonsense guy, but they wanted him to know that they hunted deer on the opening day of deer season. There was no room to negotiate with them.

The manager should have allowed his workers to have off that Saturday. If he had done that, he could have scheduled 2 or 3 Saturday workdays in a row, and the workers would not have minded. The whole management team needed an attitude adjustment, and the workers gave them one.

In the end, things worked out well, because the plant manager came to his senses. If he had stuck to his guns, his company’s investment in his plant would have been lost. There was not another cadre of workers nearby who could have and would have done the jobs that needed to be done. The plant manager had to accept the fact that he could not force his workers to do something that they simply refused to do.

Arab Culture

There is a saying in the Middle East that people in the United States and other parts of the world need to understand. It goes like this: “You can rent an Arab, but you can’t buy one.” When Saudi officials saw an opportunity to cut oil production and raise oil prices, they did it. In their minds, it had nothing to do with the bond that has developed between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It was simply a matter of putting more money in their pockets while they could. In Arab culture, that logic is well understood, and people plan accordingly. It wasn’t personal at all.

Besides, as quickly as Joe Biden took office, his administration cut oil and gas production in the U.S. ostensibly to reduce climate change. That put immediate upward pressure on the prices of oil and gas and every product and service that uses energy. That’s every product and service we buy, and inflation started to ramp up at that instant. Now, Democrats are angry with Saudi officials for cutting oil production, but Saudi officials are saying, “You did it. Why can’t we?”

Biden officials think that what they did is good for humankind and that Saudi officials are doing the same thing we did simply to enrich themselves. I hope you can appreciate how comical that logic is to Saudi officials.

The consequences of Biden’s oil and gas production cuts are reverberating around the globe:

1. Inflation in the U.S. and elsewhere started soaring as quickly as he did it.
2. The Fed raised interest rates to rein in inflation, and global interest rates started to rise.
3. The U.S. real estate market took a big hit as mortgage interest rates increased and the price of home ownership increased dramatically.
4. The U.S. economy is either inching toward a recession, or we are in one already.
5. Energy producers are getting rich while average Americans struggle to pay their bills.

That’s what Joe Biden did. Saudi officials simply took advantage of Biden’s stupidity. In business, that’s called “a good decision.” In effect, Biden dealt the Saudis a royal flush, and now he is threatening to punish them for playing the hand he dealt. In the Middle East and in the rest of the world, it’s hard to take people like Joe Biden and his Democrat comrades seriously.

The obvious solution to the energy problem is to remove restrictions on oil and gas production in the U.S. We can do that without any country’s help. Depending on Arabs to solve an energy problem what we created is ludicrous. Arabs know that better than anyone. To them, Biden’s misadventure in energy is seen as a golden opportunity, and an opportunity that can’t and won’t last. They are wasting no time to take advantage of it.

Killing Jews is a part of Arab culture, too. If you read the Quran and take it seriously, you know that the Muslim holy book doesn’t just condone killing Jews. It praises killing Jews. That message is supported in mosques, Arab schools, and in Arab homes, even Arab homes in Israel. Arab leaders, particularly Palestinian leaders in Hamas and Fatah, rant about the glory that goes along with killing Jews. Refusing to accept that reality and not planning accordingly is a serious mistake.

Democrats Don’t Get It

Leaders in the Democrat Party think they have been betrayed by Saudi officials, but Saudi officials think they are just doing the right thing. People like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — both Muslims, both Arabs, and both Democrat members of the House — are identical to Saudi leaders in this respect: They do what they think they must do to achieve an outcome. Morals and ethics and relationships don’t enter the equation, so they don’t give them a second thought. To them, it’s just normal, acceptable behavior.

Democrats are making the same mistake that the plant manager made in Winder, Georgia. They think they can change thousands of years of culture and heritage with a few signed documents. If signed documents could solve the Arab problem in the Middle East, there would be peace, but to Arabs, those documents are simply means to an end. Arabs never forget the end goal. Even among Israeli leaders, that fact is difficult to accept. Since the Oslo Peace Accords were signed in the early-1990s, there have been many other signed deals between Israel, Palestinians, and leaders in Arab countries, but things are getting worse, not better.

Today’s Democrat leaders remind me of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after he returned from a meeting in Berlin with Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain was almost giddy, and he was waving a piece of paper in the air while he said, “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time… Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”

We all know how that worked out. Hitler did what Hitler always did, and Chamberlain was playing the fool. To Hitler, Chamberlain was just another useful idiot he had to deal with on the road to his thousand-year Reich. War with Hitler was inevitable, but it took a while for most Europeans to figure that out. By the time they accepted reality, Hitler was well on his way to controlling most of continental Europe.

As they say, “The rest is history.”

The workers in Winder, Georgia did not want to destroy the company they worked for. They simply refused to work on the opening day of deer season, because it was part of their culture. Palestinians and most other Arabs, including many Israeli Arabs, want to destroy Israel completely, because they think it’s the right thing to do. It’s part of their culture that dates back to Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael. There has been animosity between the descendants of those two half-brothers for 4,000 years, and it won’t end until Yahweh returns.

Arabs in Saudi Arabia are seen by Arabs in other Arab countries as the Arab banker. Arabs were oblivious to the notion of Arab countries until European colonialists thrust it upon them. Saudi Arabia is expected to fund Arab projects of all sorts throughout the Arab world. Saudi officials know it, and they can’t afford to waste an opportunity to fill their coffers with much needed cash.

Peace in the Middle East and peace in the world  will not be granted as a part of a deal that is signed, sealed, and delivered. It will be won on the battlefield. I am not a warmonger. I’m just telling it like it is. I am not a pessimist, either. I am a realist.

As John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”

John 10: 14-18

See “His Name is Yahweh”.