The Sages Converse

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The New York Sun

New Yorkers are set to gather tonight at the Hotel Pierre to honor Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Secretary of State George Shultz. The dinner will be hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is going to give Messrs. Lewis and Shultz its scholar-statesman award. It aims to celebrate leaders who recognize the importance of injecting scholarship into the making of our foreign policy, who value ideas, who are, each in his own way, a resource for or a recipient of scholarship in the making of foreign policy. It’s a wonderful concept, and the Institute couldn’t have chosen better honorees to launch its award.

Bernard Lewis is, among his many other achievements, the author of an article, issued in Commentary Magazine in 1976, called “The Return of Islam.” It concluded with a warning that “in the Muslim worldview it is right and proper that power should be wielded by Muslims and Muslims alone. Others may receive the tolerance, even the benevolence, of the Muslim state, provided that they clearly recognize Muslim supremacy. That the Muslims should rule over non-Muslims is right and normal.” The rest is not only history — but a reminder of how important a dialog between government and the best scholars can be.

Secretary Shultz is his own complement of this. A Ph.D. and ex-dean of a business school, he epitomizes the scholar turned businessman turned statesman. He learned from hard lessons taught in the Middle East, most notably by the Syrians in Lebanon. He has emerged with a profound wisdom, on display most recently in his introduction to Abraham Foxman’s new book, “The Deadliest Lies,” which is about the Israel lobby and what Mr. Foxman exposes as the myth of Jewish control. Mr. Shultz, in his introduction, takes direct aim at those who propagate the myth.

“We are a great nation, and our government officials invariably include brilliant, experienced, tough-minded people,” Mr. Shultz wrote. ” … We are not babes in the woods, easily convinced to support Israel’s or any other state’s agenda. We act in our own interest.” The format at the Pierre this evening, we understand, will include a conversation between Messrs. Lewis and Shultz. At a time when there is so much easy talk about the war and the Middle East and the Jewish state, it will be a conversation not to be missed for its insights in how America should conduct itself in a war that is both a military campaign and a battle of ideas.


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