January 31, 2011, 5:09 PM
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The Egyptian multitudes on the streets of Cairo are a stunning sight. With their banners calling for freedom and an end to the reign of President Hosni Mubarak the story these images tell is a simple one as old as time.
On the one hand we have the young, dispossessed and weak protesters. And on the other we have the old, corrupt and tyrannical Mubarak. Hans Christian Andersen taught us who to support when we were wee tots.
But does his wisdom apply in this case?
Certainly it is true that the regime is populated by old men. Mubarak is 82 years old. It is also true that his regime is corrupt and tyrannical. Since the Muslim Brotherhood spinoff Islamic Jihad terror group murdered Mubarak's predecessor president Anwar Sadat in 1981, Egypt has been governed by emergency laws that ban democratic freedoms. Mubarak has consistently rejected US pressure to ease regime repression and enact liberal reforms in governance.
This reality has led many American commentators across the political spectrum to side enthusiastically with the rioters. A prestigious working group on Egypt formed in recent months by Middle East experts from Left and Right issued a statement over the weekend calling for the Obama administration to dump Mubarak and withdraw its support for the Egyptian regime. It recommended further that the administration force Mubarak to abdicate and his regime to fall by suspending all economic and military assistance to Egypt for the duration.
The blue ribbon panel's recommendations were applauded by its members' many friends across the political spectrum. For instance, the conservative Weekly Standard's editor William Kristol praised the panel on Sunday and wrote, "It's time for the US government to take an active role... to bring about a South Korea/Philippines/Chile-like transition in Egypt, from an American-supported dictatorship to an American-supported and popularly legitimate liberal democracy."
The problem with this recommendation is that it is based entirely on the nature of Mubarak's regime. If the regime was the biggest problem, then certainly removing US support for it would make sense. However, the character of the protesters is not liberal.
Indeed, their character is a bigger problem than the character of the regime they seek to overthrow.
According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.
Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.
When given the opportunity, the crowds on the street are not shy about showing what motivates them. They attack Mubarak and his new Vice President Omar Suleiman as American puppets and Zionist agents. The US, protesters told CNN's Nick Robertson, is controlled by Israel. They hate and want to destroy Israel. That is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman.
WHAT ALL of this makes clear is that if the regime falls, the successor regime will not be a liberal democracy. Mubarak's military authoritarianism will be replaced by Islamic totalitarianism. The US's greatest Arab ally will become its greatest enemy. Israel's peace partner will again become its gravest foe.
Understanding this, Israeli officials and commentators have been nearly unanimous in their negative responses to what is happening in Egypt. The IDF, the national security council, all intelligence agencies and the government as well as the media have all agreed that Israel's entire regional approach will have to change dramatically in the event that Egypt's regime is overthrown.
None of the scenarios under discussion are positive.
What has most confounded Israeli officials and commentators alike has not been the strength of the anti-regime protests, but the American response to them. Outside the far Left, commentators from all major newspapers, radio and television stations have variously characterized the US response to events in Egypt as irrational, irresponsible, catastrophic, stupid, blind, treacherous, and terrifying.
They have pointed out that the Obama administration's behavior - as well as that of many of its prominent conservative critics - is liable to have disastrous consequences for the US's other authoritarian Arab allies, for Israel and for the US itself.
The question most Israelis are asking is why are the Americans behaving so destructively? Why are President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton charting a course that will necessarily lead to the transformation of Egypt into the first Salafist Islamic theocracy? And why are conservative commentators and Republican politicians urging them to be even more outspoken in their support for the rioters in the streets?
Does the US not understand what will happen in the region as a result of its actions? Does the US really fail to understand what will happen to its strategic interests in the Middle East if the Muslim Brotherhood either forms the next regime or is the power behind the throne of the next regime in Cairo?
Distressingly, the answer is that indeed, the US has no idea what it is doing. The reason the world's only (quickly declining) superpower is riding blind is because its leaders are trapped between two irrational, narcissistic policy paradigms and they can't see their way past them.
The first paradigm is former president George W. Bush's democracy agenda and its concomitant support for open elections.
Bush supporters and former administration officials have spent the last month since the riots began in Tunisia crowing that events prove Bush's push for democratization in the Arab world is the correct approach.
The problem is that while Bush's diagnosis of the dangers of the democracy deficit in the Arab world was correct, his antidote for solving this problem was completely wrong.
Bush was right that tyranny breeds radicalism and instability and is therefore dangerous for the US.
But his belief that free elections would solve the problem of Arab radicalism and instability was completely wrong. At base, Bush's belief was based on a narcissistic view of Western values as universal.
When, due to US pressure, the Palestinians were given the opportunity to vote in open and free elections in 2006, they voted for Hamas and its totalitarian agenda. When due to US pressure, the Egyptians were given limited freedom to choose their legislators in 2005, where they could they elected the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood to lead them.
The failure of his elections policy convinced Bush to end his support for elections in his last two years in office.
Frustratingly, Bush's push for elections was rarely criticized on its merits. Under the spell of the other policy paradigm captivating American foreign policy elites - anti-colonialism - Bush's leftist opponents never argued that the problem with his policy is that it falsely assumes that Western values are universal values. Blinded by their anti-Western dogma, they claimed that his bid for freedom was nothing more than a modern-day version of Christian missionary imperialism.
It is this anti-colonialist paradigm, with its foundational assumption that that the US has no right to criticize non-Westerners that has informed the Obama administration's foreign policy. It was the anti-colonialist paradigm that caused Obama not to support the pro-Western protesters seeking the overthrow of the Iranian regime in the wake of the stolen 2009 presidential elections.
As Obama put it at the time, "It's not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the US president meddling in the Iranian elections."
And it is this anti-colonialist paradigm that has guided Obama's courtship of the Syrian, Turkish and Iranian regimes and his unwillingness to lift a hand to help the March 14 movement in Lebanon.
MOREOVER, SINCE the paradigm claims that the non-Western world's grievances towards the West are legitimate, Obama's Middle East policy is based on the view that the best way to impact the Arab world is by joining its campaign against Israel. This was the central theme of Obama's speech before an audience dominated by Muslim Brotherhood members in Cairo in June 2009.
Like the pro-democracy paradigm, the anti-colonialist paradigm is narcissistic. Whereas Western democracy champions believe that all people are born with the same Western liberal democratic values, post-colonialists believe that non-Westerners are nothing more than victims of the West. They are not responsible for any of their own pathologies because they are not actors. Only Westerners (and Israelis) are actors. Non-Westerners are objects. And like all objects, they cannot be held responsible for anything they do because they are wholly controlled by forces beyond their control.
Anti-colonialists by definition must always support the most anti-Western forces as "authentic." In light of Mubarak's 30-year alliance with the US, it makes sense that Obama's instincts would place the US president on the side of the protesters.
SO THERE we have it. The US policy towards Egypt is dictated by the irrational narcissism of two opposing sides to a policy debate that has nothing to do with reality.
Add to that Obama's electoral concern about looking like he is on the right side of justice and we have a US policy that is wholly antithetical to US interests.
This presents a daunting, perhaps insurmountable challenge for the US's remaining authoritarian Arab allies. In Jordan and Saudi Arabia, until now restive publics have been fearful of opposing their leaders because the US supports them. Now that the US is abandoning its most important ally and siding with its worst enemies, the Hashemites and the Sauds don't look so powerful to their Arab streets. The same can be said for the Kuwaiti leadership and the pro-American political forces in Iraq.
As for Israel, America's behavior towards Egypt should put to rest the notion that Israel can make further territorial sacrifices in places like the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley in exchange for US security guarantees. US behavior today - and the across-the-board nature of American rejection of Mubarak - is as clear a sign as one can find that US guarantees are not credible.
As Prof. Barry Rubin wrote this week, "There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama administration may be adopting something close to the worst option."
Unfortunately, given the cluelessness of the US foreign policy debate, this situation is only likely to grow worse.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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Outstanding analysis! This is the best analysis I've read in the last few days in English. Thank you.
When will Israel jump off the U.S. cattle car's headed for the death camp's with the new sign 'Pax Macht Frei' at the entrance ?
'The question most Israelis are asking is why are the Americans behaving so destructively?' C.G.
ANSWER
9Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
10 In whose hand is the life of every living thing,And the breath of all mankind?...
20 He deprives the trusted ones of speech,
And takes away the discernment of the elders
He deprives the trusted ones of speech,
And takes away the discernment of the elders.
21 He pours contempt on princes,
And disarms the mighty.
22He makes nations great, and destroys them;
He enlarges nations, and guides them.
23He takes away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth,
And makes them wander in a pathless wilderness.
24They grope in the dark without light,
And He makes them stagger like a drunken man.
Job 12
God is going to get Israel's attention one way or another
Really, I love your stuff.
But you assume that you know which side our President is on.
It is hard to believe that US are clueless of the consequences.
In contrary, it looks like Obama is rationally transferring power to the M. Brotherhood. I have a funny feeling that soon we'll see US providing military aid to the B-hood controlled Egypt.
So, through what paradigm should the US be viewing the events in Egypt, and what US policy would be best despite the lack of good options?
It would have been an accurate analysis of the situation in Egypt, but the whole article fails as the author chooses to use a photo of protesters of Pakistan or Afghanistan, as there are no photos for Egyptian protesters.
Your credibility is weakened here by your use of the familiar "rage boy" photo, implying this is a current street scene in Cairo under siege. In fact the image is from Kashmir and dates from 2007 or so.
I agree totally with your analysis, however if it is the will of the majority of the Egypts to live under Islamic Totalitarism, let it be, we should not deny them their right of self determination, however we should focus all our thinking on how to cope with the consequences.
what choice do we really have? To, once again, support an oppressive dictator? Would things have been different in the long run if we had not? I think it would have been that people world wide would believe about America what Americans believe. You know, standing for liberty and justice for all? History has only taught oppressed populations not to trust us. We have supported too many bad guys for too few perks. We are tarnished by it.
BRAVO. ASTOUNDING. THANK YOU.
'Your credibility is weakened here by your use of the familiar "rage boy" photo'
Hanoi and Kalija.
There is a common thread that is not acceptable to the takiya spin meisters.
Her credibility is fine, yours is not.
It's perfectly credible and acceptable to connect the Islamic dots now weaving their way across the globe from Kashmir to the dark Islamic Republic of Iran to Russia,the Caucasus',Turkey, Eurabia,Thailand and back to unstable Islamic Pakistan and all points east west,north and south.
If it bothers you so much it must be because the true nature of Islam,intolerance,brutal violence and mad insane rage are evident in the picture and some of us can see what they plan for Egypt.
Well, Caroline, great column as always. You wouldn't mind terribly taking a sabbatical and consulting the Palin campaign, would you? Sarah could do a lot worse than listen to you, given what passes for policymaking in DC these days.
One correction: your photo is the famous Pakistani "Rage Boy" from 2007, and has nothing to do with Egypt.
Good analysis, but dgh has it right. Each nation should care for its own national boundaries, not for interfering with what happens inside other national boundaries.
That is what is happening here: "We" could have won over these rioting masses if their lives in the past 30 years had been the suffering that we all know Islamism promises. But instead, they have had a milder suffering under Mubarak, and attribute all their suffering via him to - "Us".
We're not winning the propaganda war here, folks. So let it run its course, and in time -perhaps a long time- you will start seeing uprisings for the good cause, like in Iran. As with Iran, don't try to interfere, but let things take the needed time to ferment all the while caring for just this one thing: protect your borders against attack, should it come. Change inside those other borders have to come from within.
More examples? World War 2. It was a follow-up of the all-too glorious victory of the Allies in WW1, won not just by fair means but also by foul, and leaving the Germans famished and hungry for revenge. We are on or over the verge of getting such a population all over again, in the Arab countries.
How far do we want to push the irrationals? They will only become more irrational when they have "us" to vent their anger against, and will only come to their senses if they have to suffer living under the regimes of their own devising.
'How far do we want to push the irrationals?'
Alhazen,
Israel has been restrained and has not pushed anything but themselves back against the wall.
There is no place left to go for Israel!
Israel's existence,Jews breathing pushes the irrational's.
In fact all the appeasement,surrender,goodwill gestures,painful concessions and retreat from Gaza has not made a dent with them.
All this show of weakness has made Israel a greater target,U.S policy is a total and abject failure.
The time comes soon for Israel to push back hard if Never Again really means something
This is quite a shocking article, but perhaps expected. It is right that there is no universal western democratic ideology throughout the world. Different cultures and peoples will gradually move towards democracy over time, of that I am sure, but it will probably not look like a western democracy.
There are many different types of democratic systems with cultural considerations. You either believe in democracy or you don't. You can't just applaud democracies that happen to agree with you! That's kind of the point of democracy.
With Egypt, it is up to the people of that country to decide what they want. We may not like it, but that's what pluralism produces - differing opinions. The UK and US have overthrown or aided in the overthrow of many democratic governments around the world over the last 50 years, usually with devastating results decades down the line.
We should learn from our mistakes and play the long game.
As for abandoning the Israeli cause, I see no evidence of it. It seems clear that Israel is determined to expand it's territories into palestinian lands and the US will carry on providing monetary support while this continues, therefore no agreements and no peace.
You make some stunning leaps here
20 or 30% support to everyone wants an radical Islamic gov't
I dont thinking they will have a Madison like constitution when this is over but I dont think the only route is Bin Laden.
Hm...While I agree there are vast cultural differences, I disagree that most Egyptians have a desire to be under Islamic fanaticism.
As the internet becomes more of a high tech tool for gathering intelligence the more the young Egyptian populace will have the desire to be free from the horrible subjugating controlled strangle hold that Islam has on those that haven't self actualized.
"And like all objects, they cannot be held responsible for anything they do because they are wholly controlled by forces beyond their control."
And then there are westerners/Israelis like you who hold them to trumped-up charges of rioting and fanaticism.
"Anti-colonialists by definition must always support the most anti-Western forces as "authentic."
You're not very coherent here. The Egyptian protesters are taking responsibility for themselves by massing outside against their government. It seems the only one who doesn't consider them to have any agency is you.
I am in accord with the assessment of this article. What I make of this is that sometimes it takes to the point of the boot on ones neck before one is free of delusion. Perhaps this is what will wake up America; tragically when this happens a happy ending is quite uncertain.
A poster above me mentioned that...
"Different cultures and peoples will gradually move towards democracy over time, of that I am sure, but it will probably not look like a western democracy."
...I quite strongly disagree with this assessment. If anything the evidence in recorded human history is despotic with the few glimmers of 'democracy, or republic rule' turning usually under 200 years or less back to the normative nature of man to enslave the mind and freedoms of one another.
I, too was fooled by events unfolding in Egypt although not by the US administration's response. It takes someone as astute as Caroline Glick to read all the facts and put them in their proper perspective. Kudos.
We have friends in Boca Raton who are old friends of your parent's.Thank you Caroline for your wonderful analysis. I am a huge fan of your sharp thinking.
How about? "mind our own business", always works best in any situation, Egypt is an ocean away. I look out my window and see weeds in my own yard, I will clean up my own yard before I try and conquer my neighbors weeds. Believe, anything less would make me a trouble maker. Egypt built the pyramids, they probably can handle life with out the U.S.A. adding their brick.
I read your piece here and it is the first time I have come across you. (got it from facebook). While I find you intelligent and insightful, you remind me of what is wrong with conservatives in America. I read your bio on Wikipedia and it turns out you have so much intelligence background, I am confused by your dilemma? What part of this world's decay are you missing. Just reading the idiots who have commented on your piece here you should summize the true problem. First you must realize that no true conservative wants Mubarik out. No sane person wants Egypt to fall to a theocracy. But you saw the takeover of the United States by a Muslim and his socialist cohorts; at that point you did not realize the support you would get? The Jews in our country are sitting pretty and allow themselves to be fooled once again. Their vote helped put us in this position. We need to take back the media in our country and then get to protecting our neihbor and ally and sister nation Israel. That's the dilemma; short and sweet. The media needs to put on it's front page the history of Islam!
I will take another view here.
If Mubarak and his regime falls, it is generally taken as understood, that this will be a disaster for Israel.
But I ask, is the present state of affairs good for Israel? Israel was, and is being squeezed by America and Europe to concede to the Arabs, just so to prevent the fall of the so-called "moderate" regimes in the Arab world. Eventually such a process would lead to the extinction of Israel.
The fall of Mubarak, and the installation of an Islamist regime, stops thos process dead, and is also a wakeup call to Israel, its Left, as well as America and Europe. It opens the political possibility of Israel refusing any concessions, with Israel's supporters in the West able to put forward genuine reasons why pressure on Israel must cease.
I agree: It's a shocking piece of writing! Like a breath of cold fresh air into a stifling room. Thanks! We didn't exactly like it, but we needed it.
Yes, the U.S. foreign policy establishment is confused; they've dealt with this increasingly messy situation for years ... without coming up with a rational solution to its inevitable failures. The American desire is for peace and quiet so our corporations (who own our government) can go on doing business (extracting petroleum and all the rest of it). Few of those in a position to influence U.S. policy think beyond that. Iran should have warned us; it didn't. We took out Saddam and the Taliban, the only enemies Iran feared. That was clever of us.
Mubarak's regime could not last forever, or even much longer ... but he was doing our bidding, so we never pressed him to change. I don't know who Foggy Bottom thinks the enemy is, but there is no contingency plan for handling it. Anarchy is not an easy enemy to fight.
Mubarak will go, and if his replacement is another strong man, the entire Egyptian peace may go. If there is some movement towards democracy (and it won't be overtly friendly to Israel, because that won't win votes in Egypt, but it may not be prepared for violence against an American ally), then the educated technocrats will have a chance to take it over. The masses may talk of stoning adultery all they like; they will never come to power; they will be used by somebody, whoever can co-opt them. Perhaps the army will remain loyal to the state rather than the religion.
And they will be busy, as in Iraq, driving out their religious minorities: Let's remember Egypt's ten million Copts, an elite under threat with no Israel to escape to.
As long as the U.S. remains dependent on oil, it will force itself to interfere, and remain the Great Satan of the region. It's time we broke those chains. But the oil people own our Congress and they have no patriotism or love of anything but their own greed.
While I agree that Bush was naive and failed to appreciate cultural differences (and assumed that democratic elections would directly lead to secular, Western democracies in which human rights and civil liberties were upheld), I don't think the other half of your analysis Obama is supported by much of anything. From the fact that Obama isn't expressing unconditional support for Israel, it hardly follows that he is joining the "Arab world's campaign against Israel." The U.S. govt. continues to provide ENORMOUS support for Israel despite the fact that Israel abuses human rights, continues to build more settlements, and shows little interest in a two-state solution. This fact about the US support for Israel is true despite the completely unsupported rhetoric of those such as Robert, who allege that Obama is a socialist and a Muslim. (Both charges are manifestly false.)
As a Jew who believes Israel has a right to exist, I think that the U.S. should push Israel to reach a peace accord, to stop building so many settlements, and to, at all costs, prevent it from becoming dominated by the growing presence of ultra-orthodox Jews. And this is not only because of moral reasons (i.e. the cessation of mistreatment of Palestinians is a moral imperative on its own) but it also seems to be the best bet for Israel's very survival--i.e., Obama's approach might be the best vis-a-vis the US Israel's long-term. This approach might be mistaken--nothing has worked out too well in balancing Israel's survival with giving Palestinians a democracy; but I see NO EVIDENCE whatsoever that Obama/his administraiton espouses some larger anti-colonialist ideology that treats all people in the Middle East except for Israelis as victims.
In other words, Bush should be criticized for his naivete on the very grounds you cite. But you're way off base when it comes to Obama.
The one person who is really clueless is Ms. Glick. Apparently she didn't read well the Pew study she quotes. Ms. Glick mentions "According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas."
But that is NOT what the study says: http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/
59% of those who see a conflict between fundamentalists and modernizers are on the fundamentalist side NOT 59% of the Egyptian public supports fundamentalists.
The questions that query the attitudes are the following:
- 61% are either somewhat or very concerned about Islamic extremism.
- 59% of Egyptians support democracy regardless of circumstance.
Bear in mind that this survey excludes the 10% or so Christians. So that should clearly establish that the majority are pro-democratic and not pro-Islamism.
Israel is not the Israel when I read the novel
" Exodus ". Israel is not the Israel when I read about the Six Day War. Get tougher, Get
stronger! God bless Israel!!
Yes, and we should have never let the Poles and all the other countries in Eastern Europe have a democratic revolution in 1989. After all, except for Czechoslovakia, none of them had previously had a functioning democracy. Further, look at how they collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust. The Poles were terrible (see Lanzmann's Shoah) and what about the Romanian massacre of Jews in the Ukraine? It would have been better if they had remained under dictatorships. You might argue that these countries have been democracies for two decades, but watch out. History is not over yet. As Zhou Enlai said when asked about the impact of the French Revolution in 1971, it is too early to tell. Thank you Caroline Glick for clarifying to me why we need to suffocate democratic revolutions in the crib!
Ms. Glick says, without citing sources, that the "rioters" "hate and want to destroy Israel," concluding "that is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman." But what the demonstrators are actually saying is that they want an end to authoritarian one-party rule, official corruption, police brutality, the emergency law, and fraudulent elections. And at the moment, they hate the regime for sending goon squads armed with clubs and knives to attack them. The notion that everything is about Israel is as much a narcissistic fallacy as the others she denounces. And let's say her side gets its way: if Egypt crushes its democracy movement because the US and Israel want it to, wouldn't hatred for the US and Israel be entirely justified?
Maybe you're right, and this whole thing will end in disaster for both Israel and the United States. On the other hand, maybe you're wrong. Maybe the Egyptian people can change their minds. And maybe part of the reason that the crowds dislike Israel so much is that they've been fed a constant stream of anti-Israeli propaganda under the Mubarak regime -- in spite of the Camp David Accords. (Remember?)
I understand your anxiety in this situation, Ms. Glick. But I still must back the actions of the Obama Administration. The time has come to roll the die and see what happens.
There are serious parallels here that relate to both sides attitudes. Israel and Egypt have used the Islamic scare tactic for decades. The Israelis try to prove that democratic elections are no guarantee of democracy by the outcome of Hamas victory in the Gaza, but they won't look deeper into the reality of the outcome. It wasn't that democracy, ie, open elections, didn't work, it was the outcome that frightened the Israelis. But, taking a closer look into the process one should understand the results - Hamas reflected the anger of the people at Israel more than Abba Mazen did and secondly, the people of Gaza didn't realize they were electing what they got - a theocratic organization more interested in their own internal desires than truly taking care of the people of Gaza. The outcome surely wasn't the best for Israel, but the concept, free choice, is what Israel says it stands for and you can't have it both ways. And I must ask: who has treated whom the worst since the election? If you can't answer that question read this: http://www.goldstonereport.org/
The United States, as well as many other western countries, have been trying to influence the Arab world for almost a century and have done very little to bring harmony and enlightenment to the region. Their objectives are generally about access to resources and since the 1940's, supporting the state of Israel.
Helping the British undermine the oil and gas revenues in Iran led to the overthrow of a duly elected government and the insertion of the puppet Shah. Both the United States and the British tried to spin the act as a cold war issue, but in truth, Iran wanted to nationalize its resources and the British, totally broke from the war, wanted the revenue to rebuild their empire.
They were so arrogant that they didn’t see the reality of the times. British rule in the area was over. Uprisings in India, the Sudan and many other domains were no longer to be controlled or occupied the UK.
The United States had recently cut a deal with the house of Saud monarchy for a large chunk of oil revenue (Aramco) which guaranteed its support for a totalitarian regime of Wahhabi ideology that supports and educates the vilest form of Islamic beliefs in the Arab world.
In 1948 the Arab league made its biggest mistake. It rejected the presence of Israel and conned the Palestinian people into believing that if they rejected Israel’s right to exist, they would eventually be able to regain control of the state when it was defeated. And then the wars began and the truth became obvious: No Arab state had the determination or military skills to defeat Israel.
In the next 30+ years Israel tried everything it could to cut a deal for its right to exist. The Arab world, in particular Arafat, destroyed any chance of success. The Arab world’s leaders never cared for the Palestinian people, but used them as an example of Israel’s suppression to keep their own people from looking at the real issues of their own suppression.
After the war with Egypt, Sadat finally understood that Israel would not be defeated. He had lost control over his only true resource, the Suez Canal. Israel negotiated with Sadat and gave back the Sinai Peninsula in a land for peace treaty with Egypt that has lasted for over 30 years.
In 1979 the autocratic regime of the Shah was overthrown by the Islamic revolution and everything changed. Another western hypocrisy was overturned because the United States is not very good at taking care of business. The cold war mentality had for years distorted its perception of truth and values and as long as they felt what they did was in their own best interest, the pain it caused locally was just part of the cost of doing business.
And that attitude became much of the way the politics of Israel looked at its neighbors. But a country or a society cannot expect to survive if it says one thing and then does another.
Iran is a result of intervention from the outside. Hezbollah is a byproduct of the radical in a dysfunctional environment. Lebanon is a playground of the absurd and in truth its own worst enemy. Israel never understood that having military power and using it are two different tools. It is only when Israel over reacts, sends planes and tanks someplace, they eventually end up in a worse place than they started.
As long as Israel is controlled by the mindset of the right, overreacting to issues and continuing to expand in the West Bank, they will not have peace.
I personally don’t think they want peace as they see it as a sign of weakness, but they are wrong. Right now, with the changing of the guard in the Arab world, is a true opportunity to cut a deal.
The Arab world is now populated with youth who want a better life – not just an Islamic fundamentalist life. It’s time for Israel to look closely at what is happening and be open to it and not prejudge its meaning.