|By Rashidul Bari | Meet Soborno Isaac Bari, known as “4-Year-Old Einstein,” who has a very strange dream: He wants to get into Harvard at the age of 10, via the SAT.

Of course, the SAT can’t determine whether he’s truly ready for college-level courses, but not many 4-year-olds can solve chemistry problems. His knowledge of the periodic table has impressed several academic institutions, including City University of New York’s (CUNY) Medgar Evers College.

Furthermore, not many 4-year-olds can solve math problems, but his algebra skills have been featured in news media, including Voice of America (VOA). Not many 4-year olds have reached an intellectual level at which they can use fruits and vegetables to create an electric circuit to light up bulbs. His abilities did not go unnoticed, thanks to Daniel Kabat, physics chairman at Lehman College.

Not many 4-year-olds have the ability to use math to solve doctorate-level physics problems and simulations. However, his biggest accomplishment was yet to come. He made headlines in Bangladesh, where I was born, when he received an invitation from Lisa Coico, president of City College of New York (CCNY), one of the finest engineering and medical schools in the U.S. The interview, which was broadcast on Time Television, went viral on social media.

A Unique Beginning 

 It was 2013. Isaac was sick and lying on a hospital bad. As the doctor was checking his fever, I said, while holding his hand, “I love you more than anything in the universe.”  His response even stunned his doctor: “Universe or multiverse?”

A few months later, as his mom was teaching him math, he asked her a very surprising question: “If 1 + 1 = 2, then n + n must be 2n; if 2 x 2 = 4, then n x n must be .” When his mother informed me about it, as a father, I was scared and ambitious simultaneously because of such an insight from a mere 1 ½-year-old. I took the responsibility of teaching him and started giving him more and more lessons — in the areas in which he showed the most interest: math, chemistry, physics, and computer science. It was perhaps the same reason why Professor Jerald Posman, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Medgar Evers College, called him the “Mozart of Chemistry” after testing 18 month-old Isaac’s chemistry skills. Around the same time, he had the privilege of visiting Washington, D.C., for an interview with VOA. Soon after his 3rd birthday, he had a rare opportunity to demonstrate his lemon-battery experiment to Kabat at Lehman College. However, we never imagined that this would pave the way to an interview with the President.

Meeting With the President

 Miracles don’t happen every day, but it happened on April 21, thanks to Coico. Even in our wildest dreams, we didn’t imagine the president of one of the finest engineering and medical schools to spend over two hours interviewing Isaac, who just turned 4 years old. Isaac then solved some math and physics problems for Coico. He recited the entire periodic table and impressed the president further when he solved a quantum-chemistry problem by successfully deriving the electron configuration of oxygen. He used his lemon battery to light up a red LED bulb for Coico. Time TV already broadcast the interview with the title “4-Year-Old Einstein & President.”

Academic Goals

 Isaac loves science due to his affection for many scientists, including Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Albert, my eldest son, always helped Isaac with math, physics, and chemistry problems. One day in February, Albert offered help as Isaac was stuck with a physics problem. However, Isaac declined the offer. “No thanks,” Isaac said. Albert replied, “You are so arrogant, like Donald Trump.” Isaac’s response was very surprising: “I’m not Donald Trump; I’m Sir Isaac Newton.” In fact, his dream is to earn his first doctorate in math from Cambridge University due to his love for the father of physics, who was a math professor there. His affection for Einstein is even deeper, so much so that it led him to visit his home in Princeton, New Jersey, numerous times. This is why he decided to pursue his second doctorate in physics from Princeton University, where Einstein taught for over 30 years. He also wants to earn two more doctorates, one in chemistry (due to his affection for the periodic table) from Harvard and the other in computer science (from New York University) because he wants to learn how to better create physics simulations that demonstrate physical phenomena.

He wants to earn four doctorates because by age 40, he wants to solve four problems: String Theory, dark matter, quantum computing and making cold fusion a reality. From age 40 to his final days, he wants to work toward achieving one goal: creating a world where poverty and terrorism no longer exist. Recently, this ambitious 4-year-old made a swift transition from baby-SAT (a mock version of the SAT that helped Isaac prepare and which Albert used between ages 4 and 7) to the real SAT. “I’m engraved into studying for the SAT, which is my passport to Harvard,” he told VOA correspondents. It seems like Coico was able to read the mind of 4-Year-Old Einstein: “I think he will be the next Sir Isaac Newton and discover something big.”

Rashidul Bari teaches mathematics at CUNY-Baruch College and physics at New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math & Science. His website is: www.bari-science-lab.com

The article Four-year old Einstein appeared first on Arabian Post.

|By Rashidul Bari|One may expect the title “Grameen and Muhammad Yunus” to reflect Yunus’ founding of the Grameen Bank (which won the Nobel Prize in 2006) in 1983 to provide miniature loans to the poor—especially women who were trapped in an endless cycle of poverty. Why then does the title involve John Nash, a math genius who won the Nobel Prize in 1994, instead of Yunus? Does the tragic death of one of the greatest mathematicians of our time influence me to associate him with Grameen? Let’s see.

When I was writing Grameen Social Business Model, a book detailing the story of Grameen, John Nash played a minor role. When I was writing Trial of Yunus, a Times of India Op-ed depicting a series of trials launched by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina against Yunus, I recognized that the force of John Nash kept trying to grab the spotlight. So, I realized that there is another story I would like to tell: the history of Grameen’s sustainability via John Nash’s mathematics (primarily Game Theory). After learning about the news of the tragic deaths of John Nash and his wife from Dr. Daniel Kabat, I really felt that there would be no better time to examine Grameen’s sustainability through Game Theory.

Rashidul Bari discusses his new book “Grameen Social Business Model” with Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank.

In Grameen’s context, sustainability refers to being able to continue banking operations. Since Grameen brings financial services to the poor, it can only sustain its operations as long as its borrowers remain loyal. Despite the bank’s success, opponents of Grameen Bank (GB), such as Hasina, stated that the marriage between Grameen and its borrowers has been orchestrated without any legal bond, making the bank susceptible to rebellious borrowers, who will eventually stop making payments. However, its proponents, such as Hillary Clinton, suggest that a non-cooperative game or a marriage of inconvenience does not necessarily have to be “doomed.” They claim that this ‘non-cooperative’ business would endure because all rational players (e.g., Grameen and the borrowers) will choose the Nash Equilibrium (NE) strategy to protect their material interests. The proponents of Grameen would give examples to support their claim: The relationship between King Henry and Queen Eleanor was based on material interests. This article applies John Nash’s Game Theory to determine whether such a claim is credible. A marriage of inconvenience similar to that of King Henry and Queen Eleanor would be a more appropriate description of a union in which partners are incompatible in many respects and yet are welded indissolubly together.

It is true that, over the course of three decades, many Grameen borrowers have become rebellious, yet they made weekly repayments. In fact, Grameen and its 8 million borrowers are similar to King Henry and Queen Eleanor who cannot live happily together yet cannot live apart, almost in the same way as a thief loves his jewelry not because of romantic attachment, but merely because of its worth. These arguments should lead us to conclude that the relationship between Grameen and its borrowers is non-cooperatively based. Yet, both players still try their best to maintain this odd relationship. By doing so, they help ensure economic development.

Most of the time, borrowers reluctantly agree to go through Grameen Bank’s rigorous process: making groups, attending weekly meetings, chanting 16 Decisions, learning to write signatures, doing physical drills, making repayments, helping fellow members to overcome radical Islam, denouncing dowries, and keeping families small.

Like borrowers, Grameen also reluctantly makes compromises when it must. It should be noted that Grameen used to have a strict strategy to recover the loans, but it did not work. During the 1980s, for example, the bank doubled its pressure on lazy group members who failed to save money for their own pension funds and other types of funds for emergency. However, they became rebellious and protested against this pressure. “They were protesting Grameen’s handling of a fund it created for each group, using 5% of each loan and additional mandatory deposits,” wrote Daniel Pearl, “The group fund was meant for emergencies, but many borrowers wanted to withdraw money from the group fund.” Grameen gave borrowers easier access to the funds at the peak of a big protest movement. Why did both players make such compromises? The reason is that no player can benefit by changing its Nash Strategy when the other player does not. This could be further understood through John Nash’s Nobel Prize winning concept of equilibrium. Nash pioneered Game Theory, which led him to discover the non-zero-sum situation. In this situation, people cooperate to reach a position of mutual benefit.

For example, Taslima & Grameen are in Nash Equilibrium if she is making the best decision she can without violating Grameen’s rules, while Grameen’s decision remains unchanged and Grameen is making the best decision it can by taking into account Taslima’s decision. If this continues, then both players (Grameen and the borrower) approach the Nash Equilibrium. When Grameen was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2006, for example, the Bank chose Taslima to represent Grameen at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo. If we multiply Taslima by 8 million borrowers, we get a sense of how Grameen successfully empowers women and how borrowers strengthen Grameen financially.

Thus, a perfect rational player’s strategy abides by the Nash Equilibrium because it leads to the best cumulative payoff for Taslima and Grameen. Grameen Bank and its borrowers are at NE. No player wants to change their strategy because NE is a happy outcome for both. It is a non-zero-sum game, where NE is a “win-win” outcome for Grameen as well as for borrowers, such as Taslima. This is why Grameen does not increase its interest rate and why borrowers do not stop making payments. As a result, the drop-out rate is almost zero, while the loan repayment rate is 98.6%. In fact, Grameen Bank borrowers have accumulated enough savings to finance almost 80% of its loans outstanding.

Grameen and the borrower are in NE because Grameen made the best decision (which is helping Taslima) it possibly could, taking into account Taslima’s decision, and Taslima made the best decision (following Grameen’s terms) she could. It should also be noted that no strictly dominant play could ever be made in the Grameen system because a strictly dominant strategy is not the best response to anything; in particular, it cannot respond to things being played in NE. . In fact, Nash and his mathematics helped us understand why all Hasina’s efforts failed to unleash Grameen borrowers against Yunus. John Nash’s mathematics also helped us realize why Hasina failed to utilize even the bad players of Grameen (e.g., rebellious borrowers) to go against the Bank and its founder. Such discussions lead us to conclude that Grameen has and will continue to sustain itself due to the Nash Equilibrium, forcing both players to make mutually beneficial decisions.

And for this reason, for over three decades, Yunus and his borrowers have been able to work together, pray together, struggle together, attack poverty together, fight terrorism together, and even win the Nobel Peace Prize together.

Rashidul Bari, a biographer of Muhammad Yunus, is a CRISP scholar at New York University. His website is—www.bari-science-lab.com

The article Grameen Bank and John Nash appeared first on Arabian Post.

Is she a resident of Sawt Valley, Pakistan, who, in 2009, at only 12, started writing for BBC blogs taking a stand against the Taliban’s rules against female education? Is she a girl, who, in 2012, boarded her school bus ignoring the 99% probability of being shot by the Taliban? Is she a girl, who, in 2013, became the youngest speaker at the United Nations in history? Is she a girl, who, in 2014, became the youngest Nobel Laureate of all time? There is only one answer to the above four questions: yes. Now the follow-up question is this: how can one achieve so much at so young an age unless chosen by God to be a Servant of Education?

While writing an article, “Accelerating the Momentum Created by Malala,” in response to a terrorist attack on Malala in 2012, I developed a hypothesis and shared it with Dr. Daniel Kabat, with whom I collaborated on a physics book. “Malala is more than a 14 year old girl. God has chosen her to be a Servant of Education.” Dr. Kabat gave me a strange look, which I interpreted to mean, “Stop making political comments in the middle of solving physics problems.” Exactly two years later, however, on October 10, I woke up to a phone call from Kabat. “Rashidul, you were right. Perhaps the President of the United States has to be men all the time, but the messenger of God does not have to be.” He hung up without providing more details. I couldn’t solve this puzzle until I got to the Bobst Library at New York University. There, my eyes stuck at the headline of a New York Times story mentioning Malala, which read “Today, Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize along with Kailash Satyarthi, who, in 1980, founded the “Save Childhood Movement in India,” and has acted to protect the rights of more than 83,000 children from over 100 countries. I instantly disappeared from the Bobst to pop-up on the 4^th floor of the East Building to share my reaction with Professors Robert Wallace and Jason Bolston. This is the first time the Nobel Committee chose the right person for the peace prize since 2006, when the award went to Muhammad Yunus who, through Grameen Bank, helped to educate thousands of children by helping their respective mothers break the cycle of poverty. In fact, the Nobel Prize for Malala and Satyarthi came at a time when Grameen was steadily losing its momentum because the Prime Minster of Bangladesh fired Yunus from the bank he created in 1983. Now the question is obvious: would the political trio from these three nations, Prime Minsters Narendra Modi, Nawaz Sharif and Sheikh Hasina, join with the Peace Trio to defeat poverty and terrorism as a team the way their predecessors defeated colonial rule and contained religious violence in the past under the leadership of Gandhi? Let’s consider the past for a moment.

In the nineteenth century, the primary challenge in the Indian Subcontinent was battling colonialism. In the twentieth century, it was religious violence between Hindus and Muslims. Today, it is discrimination and violence against women and children. The gloomy tone of this human catastrophe was captured by a global poll conducted by Thomson Reuters. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are some of the most dangerous regions in the world for women and children, as they are continuously the victims of violence, rape, and murder in these societies. In fact, de jure equality between men and women has never been translated into de facto equality in these three nations, where women are considered inferior to men. Consequently, many crimes against women and children have gone unnoticed. This is why many people thought the crimes against Malala would also go unnoticed. I am glad they were wrong. In fact, the Taliban assault on a 14 year old school girl have triggered a mass outpouring of grief and anger across the world which turned into a wave and eventually produced a force of peace. The name of this force is not gravity, or electromagnetism or nuclear force—the name of this force is Malala.  She is not only a daughter of Pakistan, she is a daughter of 7 billion peace loving people in this world, she is the daughter of those who came before her, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Muhammad Yunus—she is our little angel: the Servant of Education. Now the question is simple: how can we use such a force to defeat the Taliban? This article, which will be divided into three parts, has the answer. In part one, I will present three case studies, Malala, Nirbaya and Maharani Das, to provide more evidence in support of the claim of Thomson Reuters that the Indian subcontinent is one of the most dangerous places in the world for women and children. In part two, I will identify the root cause of this problem: why someone becomes a terrorist, rapist or segregationist. In part three, I will present a personal account of Yunus, which consists of the solution to this problem, to tie the part one and two together.

Part one:

Let’s study the three cases, Malala, Nirbaya, Maharani Das, starting with Malala. On October 9, 2012, several Taliban gunmen stopped the bus that was carrying Malala to her home, boarded the bus, and pointed guns at everyone, asking for Malala. A heavily armed masked man searched for the girl, shouting, “We want to kill her because she is propagating against the jihadists. So, let me know, which one of you is Malala?” The gunman finally spotted Malala in the corner of the bus and immediately shot her in the head and said, “You’re a symbol of the infidels and obscenity, so you must die.” Malala barely survived, but Nirbhaya was not so fortunate. Like Malala, Nirbhaya also boarded a bus in Deli, India, with the intention of returning home. She became suspicious when the bus deviated from its normal route and its doors were shut. When Nirbhaya objected, a group of six men already on board began beating her with a metal rod until she lost consciousness and then pounced on her and dragged her to the rear of the moving bus, where they gang raped her. Once the men were finished raping and beating Nirbhaya, they threw her unconscious body out of the moving bus. She died almost two weeks later while undergoing treatment for severe damage to her internal organs caused by this horrendous sexual assault. The conditions for women in Bangladesh are not as bad as other two nations, mainly due to the work of Grameen, but 9 million members of Grameen and members of other NGO’s face different kinds of challenges. Many fundamentalists were outraged and they reacted with harshness. Grameen staff often faced cynicism from religious clerics because they offered microcredit to poor women and education to their children. In Tangail, for example, Grameen first encountered the extent of resistance. In many instances, religious leaders tried to shock uneducated villagers by telling them that a woman who borrows from Grameen and other NGO’s is moving into an evil area prohibited to women. They warned that these women would not be given a proper Islamic burial if they joined Grameen. Maharani Das, one of the millions of victims, was not even Muslim but faced discrimination anyway when she took a loan from Grameen. Her family tortured her repeatedly, claiming that Grameen had converted her to Christianity. Millions of women like Maharani are still denied their freedom and often are beaten to death when they break their silence. However, Malala, Nirbhaya and Maharani Das are only three of the millions of victims of violence against women. Furthermore, every year more than 50 million women are similarly assaulted in South Asia. These numbers reveal a terrible but neglected inequality that leads to tremendous social problems. This problem can be better understood through Amartya Sen’s classic essay, “More than 100 Million Women Are Missing,” where he used the term “missing women” to describe the large number of women in the world who are literally not alive due to discrimination. His article revealed that about 40,000 girls die annually in South Asia because their parents do not give them the same medical care that they give boys. In his book, Globalization, Development and Children’s Rights, Kailash Satyarthi has drawn similar outlines. Bride burning takes place approximately once every two hours in India, women are stoned to death approximately once a day in Pakistan, and physical torture for dowry occurs once every two minutes in Bangladesh. Furthermore, such marginal women are sometimes trapped and trafficked to the Middle East. In fact, the Middle East is a major destination for women trapped in involuntary servitude and, to a lesser extent, commercial sexual exploitation. Women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh who travel to the Middle East as laborers and domestic servants often become victims of involuntary servitude. Although the assaults on Nirbaya and Maharani Das, like millions of other victims, went unnoticed, it nevertheless encouraging that the outrage over the assaults on Malala gained momentum. I believe that Malala, who is only 17 now, will be able to complete the work Muhammad Yunus and Kailish Satyar started some 40 years ago.

 Part Two:

Two root causes of gender discrimination and terrorism have been identified—poverty, and the ‘culture of poverty’—both are positively correlated. That is, there is a direct correlation between the poverty suffered by a family, and the probability that the children of that family may later become terrorists, such as the one who shot Malala, or rapists, such as those who attacked Nirbhaya, or extremists such as those who issued a fatwa against Maharani Das. I have examined it during my stay in the Dhaka Tajgoen slums in 2007. I asked a set of questions to 12 children whose median age was 13. “What are you going to be when you grow up?” They did not immediately respond. After a while, they began to mention suitable professions with which they were familiar: rickshaw driving, bus driving, shop keeping, blacksmithing, fishing, cooking, and begging. None said that they would like to become terrorists, rapists, or extremists, although statistics show it is likely that at least some of them will eventually end up becoming those things. I then asked them whether they had heard about Dhaka University. The answer was “no.” In contrast, I conducted a similar survey with the 12 children of the professors of Dhaka University, whose median age was 12. They all wanted to change the world much the same way Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did. They were also able accurately write the names of the 2006 Nobel Prize laureates. I have observed exactly the same consequences that Oscar Lewis observed with poor Mexican families, and realized that people who are raised in a ‘culture of poverty’ often lack motivation and ambition. Thus, the children of poor people are more vulnerable and leaders of the Taliban, for example, know that and often recruit these teenagers and unleash them to fight for Allah. Malala was right when she addressed this issue at the United Nations. They think that Allah is a tiny conservative being who would send girls to hell just for going to school. The terrorists are misusing the name of Islam for their own personal benefits. However, killing these extremists by dropping bombs will not solve the problem, because drone strikes only help to further fuel terrorism. So the question is simple, how can we overcome the biggest challenges of our time, poverty and terrorism? The answer is even simpler: education.

Part Three:

Soon after Grameen Bank was created, scholarships were made available for the children of Grameen members. Eventually, one of these children, a young woman, received her medical degree. She asked Yunus to accompany her back to her rural village in Bangladesh. The doctor introduced Yunus to her mother, a Grameen member, who was illiterate. Yunus recalls looking at the mother and thinking, “She could have been a doctor.” The mother then introduced Yunus to her mother, the doctor’s grandmother, and Yunus looked at the grandmother and thought as well, “She, too, could have been a doctor.” However, Grameen is no longer the most influential actor in terms of empowering women and children using education, since Hasina started an attack on the bank some three years ago. Unfortunately, I have seen firsthand how Grameen has slowly but steadily lost its momentum as a result of the Bangladesh government’s policies against it, while pondering solutions here in the Bobst Library at New York University. I recall the conversation I had with my Professors, Robert Wallace and Jason Blonstein, “A great event, Malala deserves recognition for her courage on her own behalf, on behalf of all women, and all her fellow human beings.” In the spirit of Gandhi, let’s ask the Political Trio to join with the Peace Trio, to unleash the greatest weapon of all time, education, to attack poverty and terrorism on all fronts. Like the Peace Trio, let’s help all the women and children of the Indian Sub-continent to use the momentum created by this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to accelerate women’s emancipation by each doing our part, simply by holding this chant in our respective hearts: I, too, am a Malala, and I, too, am a Servant of Education.

Rashidul Bari, CRISP Scholar of New York University, himself also a Servant of Education—holding five bachelor degrees in Political Science, Economics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics, respectively from three CUNY institutions, York College, City College of New York and Lehman College. He also holds a master’s degree from Brooklyn College. He can be reached at— rb3408@nyu.edu.

The article Malala: A servant of education appeared first on Arabian Post.

He has earned five bachelor’s degrees, BA in political science, BA in economics, BA in mathematics, BA in computer science and BA in physics respectively, from three different CUNY institutions: York College, City College of New York and Lehman College, and a Master’s degree from Brooklyn College. Recently he chose New York University over Columbia University as my graduate school because former offered a full scholarship.

His first book, Grameen Social Business Model, gained international recognition. He is currently collaborating with Dr. Daniel Kabat on a book entitled Beautiful Mathematical Laws of Physics.

Rashidul has a dream: he hopes to convince young people, especially young Muslims who have been bred to be politically and religiously passionate, to understand that there is something more important than politics: developing algorithms, solving mathematical problems, and discovering new technologies. His dream, he admits, makes even fiction seem tame. But he is more hopeful than ever that his dream will come true, because the co-author of his dream is his five teachers—Professors Jerald Posman, Mark Ungar, Michio Kaku, Daniel Kabat and Robert Wallace.

Topics:

On microcredits & social-business, to promote the United Nations’ MDG #1: eradicate extreme poverty

On education, to promote the United Nations’ MDG # 2: achieve universal primary education

On math & science, to put a spotlight on scientists rather than on political or sports heroes

On politics, to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts—e.g., Israel and Palestine issue

On religion, to promote secular policies such as separation of church and state

See All Articles by Rashidul Bari

The article Rashidul Bari: Bio appeared first on Arabian Post.

|By Rashidul Bari| Palestine and Israel, once known as cradle of civilization, have become the hub of cemeteries in modern times. Their conflict has shed untold blood and produced graves as far as the eye can see. The countless tombstones are silent, but the sound of their outcry has carried from Middle-East to here at New York University’s Bobst Library—where I’m writing this article—and from which I’m hearing the outcry of three beautiful boys— Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah—one or all of whom could have grown up to become Einstein or Freud.

At an age when most youngsters, including my two sons, are busy reading math books to develop new algorithms and physics book to unlock the secret of God, at such a tender age, these three boys—all of whom were under 17—eventually got kidnapped by supporters of Hamas. The whole Middle-East, especially Israel and Palestine, has been at war since deaths of these three innocent boys.

This never-ending war between the Jews and Muslims began on July 2, 2014, when Israel unleashed a revenge attack on Palestine in response to the killing of these three boys. They have destroys almost all of Gaza—including killing 16 year old Mohammad Khdeir and arresting nearly every Hamas leader—and launched a war, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, which has killed over 2,000 human lives, most of whom are Arabs. This war has come at a time when the Arab Spring—the revolutionary wave that led to the ousting of many dictators, including Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi, and provided hope to millions of people—has lost its influence over Muslim and Jews. The next generation of Middle-Eastern youth—once hoped to create a modern and secular Middle-East region based on the ideologies espoused by the quintet of Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, all of whom were awarded the Nobel Prize for abandoning the path of violence in favor of the path of dialogue. These leaders’ desire for peace led to two successful peace deals: Camp David and the Oslo Accord, where Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively, invested unsparing effort, untiring energy, and great devotion in the peace making process. However, instead of embracing the sprint of this quintet and their two godfathers, the duo of Benjamin Netanyahu and Ismail Haniyeh are busy trying to destroy each other via a bloody war. Now, the question is simple: who is responsible for this war? The answer is even simpler: many people, including the leadership of trio: Netanyahu, Haniyeh and Barack Obama. This article will be divided into two parts. In part one; I will identify the failure of the trio. In part two, I will present three solutions—a one-state solution, destruction of one state and a two-state solution—and use the spirit of the quintet to pick the best solution.

Part one:

The violence began on July 3, after  Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh—who read Adolph Hitler for inspiration—deliberately fire rockets into civilian area of Israel to kill as many Jews as possible, ignoring the fact that most of the victim would be women and children. Instead of embracing Anwar Sadat and Yasser Arafat’s nonviolent approach to persuade the Jews to leave Palestine, Hamas—a political party that celebrated 9/11 and mourned the death of Osama bin Laden—has chosen Hitler’s philosophy in hopes of killing every Jew in Israel. Hamas motivation should have come from Anwar Sadat’s pluralist philosophy, which he delivered in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

“The decision of the Nobel Prize Committee to bestow upon me the Peace Award has been received by the people of Middle East not only as an honor, but also as a confirmation of the universal recognition of our relentless efforts to achieve peace in an area in which God has chosen to bring to mankind, through Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Through me it was the eternal Middle East that was expressing itself: Let us put an end to wars…”

Hamas’ motivation should also have come from Arafat, who claimed that there are more than four forces in the universe—the last one is the force of peace—which were born in Oslo in 1993. By referring to the Oslo Accord as the infant of peace, Arafat famously said in his Nobel Prize Lecture, “Let us protect this newborn infant from the winter winds, let us nurture it with milk and honey, from the land of milk and honey, and on the land of Muhammad, Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, the Holy Land, the Land of Peace.” Instead, Hamas’ charter is deeply rooted in the philosophies of Hitler and bin Laden: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out, ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’” This is totally contrary to the lesson of the Koran—that teaches us that if one kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. “Then, if they should be inclined to make peace, do thou incline towards it also, and put thy trust in Allah (The Holy Koran, 8:62).” Clearly, Islam is not part of the problem of securing peace in the Middle East; Hamas is. That being said, those on the other side of the border are no angels, either.

Netanyahu is also not a fan of Begin, Peres or Rabin. And he pretends like he has never heard the name Sadat and Arafat, either. The Likud Party’s motivation should have come from Simon Peres pluralist philosophy, which he delivered in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “The sword, as the Bible teaches us, consumes flesh, but it cannot provide sustenance. It is not rifles but people who triumph, and the conclusion from all the wars is that we need better people, not better rifles, to win wars, and mainly to avoid them.” The Likud Party’s motivation should also come from Yitxhak Rabin’s philosophy, which he shared in his Nobel acceptance speech, “With me here are five million citizens of Israel, Jews and Arabs, five million hearts beating for peace, and five million pairs of eyes which look to us with such great expectations for peace.” However, it seems as if Netanyahu’s motivation does not come from Begin, Peres or Rabin. If it had, he would not drop bomb on Gaza—which has caused the death of over 1800 civilians, most of whom are women and children. He has failed to realize that a dead child is a dead human child, not a Jews or Muslim child. I am the father of two beautiful children, and if I lived in Gaza and his bombs killed my children, I would probably hate him, too regardless my political and religious affiliations. In fact, every bomb that Netanyahu sends to Palestine makes Hamas stronger by creating more Osama bin Laden. Netanyahu aggressive behavior is contrary to the Jewish-Christian tradition: One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated. However, who is the winner in Israel’s violence against Gaza? The answer is simple: evil men like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and terrorist organizations like Hamas. In fact, this has given Assad a reprieve, because on the aggression taking place in Syria is now getting little press due to Israel’s aggression against Gaza. Netanyahu’s Zionist approach has also given Hamas the opportunity to exploit the Arab youth. Once again, they find it thrilling to dream of rocket falling on Israel. Some of my Muslim brothers in the Middle East—who initially supported the Arab Spring—have recently changed their secular tone, regarding rocket launching as a great lesson for the Jews. In fact, they are now busy singing a divisive song: “Strike a blow on Tel Aviv. Don’t let the Zionists sleep! We don’t want a truce or a solution! Oh, Palestinians—you can be proud!”

Now, let’s briefly talk about the very last member of the trio, Mr. Obama. Unlike Netanyahu and Haniyeh, Obama is a Nobel laureate. He should be able to understand the peace message of the quintet better than the duo. In fact, he should not only use this recent violence to put his Cairo speech into action but also to prove that the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not choose the wrong person in 2009 to spread the philosophies of the quintet, that we need to leave behind us the era of belligerence and stride together toward peace.

Part two:

Using the spirit of Camp David and the Oslo Accord to search for solutions, we have found three solutions to end this never-ending war: a one-state solution, complete destruction of one state and a two-state solution. First, inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King’s prophecy, I developed a one-state solution, which would erase the borders and put Israelis and Palestinians together in one equal, pluralistic state. This is much the same way that integration dissolved the conflict between blacks and whites in America. This is possible in principle but impossible in practice simply because every Jew knows that Palestinians would very soon outnumber them.The second solution is the bloody alternative: complete destruction of one state. This conflict could end if one side outright vanquished the other, a complete destruction as Gilad Sharon, the son of Ariel Sharon, restated his father’s agenda in the Jerusalem Times: “We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima. The Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. This needs to end quickly, with a bang, not a whimper.” However, not all Israelis would agree with this view because it will generate catastrophic abuse of human rights. This option is preferred by extremists like Hamas, but they are not strong enough to destroy Israel anyway. If they could, they would have destroyed Israel a long time ago. So, although Hamas prefers this option, it is impossible for Hamas to implement it.

The third option, a two-state solution, is a brain child of Camp David and Oslo Accord. It would allow for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own independent states. Many people advocate for this solution, including the quintet and their two godfathers. Now the big question is this: would Israeli and Palestinian leaders be willing to make sacrifices to implement the third solution? They will not change their habits unless there is external pressure from the United States—and, more specifically, from Nobel Laureate Obama!

In fact, this crisis gives Obama a second chance to implement the promise he made five years ago in his Cairo speech. Since then, he has achieved many successes—including the killing of Bin Laden and Moammar Gadhafi—but failed to end the violence in the Middle East. Why is that? In the book Deterring Democracy, Noam Chomsky blames the double standard of U.S. foreign policy for the violence in the Middle East. I like Obama. I do not want to lose my hope in him. I hope his foreign policy will not be guided by a double standard, like many of his predecessors, but by the godfathers of the quintet. Unlike Chomsky, I refuse to believe that Obama’s Cairo speech was nothing but humanitarian rhetoric. However, what would happen if Obama fails to abandon the American double standard policy? The answer is simple: If Obama is going to practice double standards, Muslims—especially Hamas’ followers—will repay him with a double standard. Nonetheless, it seems like he will try sincerely this time to bring about peace in the Middle East. In fact, it is encouraging to see him managing this situation in the background, dispatching John Kerry to implement a cease-fire deal. However, this won’t resolve the underlying causes of the conflict unless a two-state solution to the Palestine problem can be implemented. Now, the Arabs and Jews have to do their part as well.

Israel needs to stop its expansionist policy in the Palestinian territory. It must agree to give the Palestinians at least the non-Jewish parts of Jerusalem as their future capital. It must also
permanently lift the siege of the Gaza Strip, which has essentially imprisoned 1.7 million Palestinians in a narrow tract of land. Of course, in return, Palestinians need to recognize Israel’s right to exist. They should also realize the prophecy of Arafat, that the children of Arabs and Jews shall play together and compete to pick flowers, and they should compete to win math and science competitions rather than compete to kill each other. In the same fashion, the motivation for the Jewish people, as one of the generation of the Holocaust and Redemption, should come from Menachem Begin’s Nobel Prize speech: “Every child of Arab and Jewish descent is born free and equal, in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Without the values of the prophecies of the quintet, the two-state solutions that we dream of are jeopardized. Solving the never-ending Israeli-Palestine conflict by creating two nation-states and integrating Jews and Muslims through the sprit of the quintet and their two godfathers would not only remove much of the motivation for terrorisum around the world, but also cut the violence in half. The sooner the trio realizes this, the better it would be for the world.

Unfortunately, I still am alive to see the shed blood of my children, including Fraenkel, Shaer, Yifrah and Khdeir, while pondering solutions here in the New York University Library. I recall those sacred prophecies of the quintet and their two godfathers and ask myself not whether, but when, is this vision of a “two-state solution” going to become reality? In the spirit of monotheism, let’s give each other the most momentous pledge: no more war. No more bloodshed. We shall negotiate and reach peace because it is the triumph of truth and the smile of Fraenkel, Shaer, Yifrah and Khdeir. So, let me end my tears by stating a traditional monotheism blessing recited by the followers of Abrahamic religions—Jews, Christians and Muslims: God will give strength to his people; God will bless his people—all of us—with peace.

Rashidul Bari, CRISP Scholar of New York University, most recently authored the book, the Grameen Social Business Model. He is currently collaborating with Dr. Daniel Kabat to complete another book, Beautiful Mathematical Laws of Physics. He can be reached atrb3408@nyu.edu. Bio

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