John Podhoretz:
The anti-Mubarak revolution won't only topple an authoritarian regime. It will also topple 40-plus years of wrong-headed thinking about the causes of Middle East instability among the world's foreign-policy cognoscenti.
In that view, the horrible relationship between Israel and the Arabs is the dominant issue for the Near East's 20-plus nations and its 250-million-plus people -- and the root cause of the region's tempestuousness.
But now that Tunisia's street revolt against a corrupt dictatorial regime has led to Egypt's similar revolt only in a matter of weeks, with God knows what to follow elsewhere, the plain truth can no longer be denied: Israel is a sideshow.
The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state. But one of the little-told stories of the last four decades has been the steady easing of that state-on-state belligerency.
Jordan effectively quit the fight after Israel's triumph in the 1967 war cut Jordan in half. So too did the Arab states that did not share a border with Israel. The bloody toll of the '73 war then led Egypt and Syria to surrender their ambitious military efforts to drive Israel into the sea.
So, for the last 30 years, Israel's violent difficulties have not been with other Middle East states, but with terrorist groups and movements supposedly representing Palestinian interests based either in the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza or thriving parasitically in the southern part of the ruined state of Lebanon.
Yes, the support for the Palestinians and hatred for Israel is an undeniable feature of political life in the Middle East -- a pan-national, ideological cause. Rabble-rousing on the subject can bring hundreds of thousands into the streets of Arab countries in expressions of rage and hatred.
Yet if there were a Palestinian state today, and Israel had been crammed back into its pre-1967 borders, would this week's street revolt in Cairo look any different?
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Probably not. But it is possible people will come to power who are more interested in destroying Israel, like the sick regime in Tehran. The results in Egypt will give a major answer to the question of just how stable Arab governments can be. Iraq is showing some maturity in that regard. Whether Egypt can match its focus is another question.
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I have just seen numerous reports of a leading Iman there warning Israel to prepare for war.
ReplyDeleteAnd one would be shocked by this? I repeat! This appears to be the lion going after the wounded prey!
Could all the turmoil we are seeing in Muslim countries be an offshoot of perceived weakness on the part of the United States and her allies! I for one have always felt this President is firmly on the side of the Muslim world as a whole. Certainly he is the most antagonistic President as in his stance on Israel I have ever seen. This new Iranian poster boy feels the President WILL NOT do anything other than to warn Israel to stand back and let the events take their course.
As we now are at the point in which we have elected officials telling the Muslim world this country is full of racist hate and an administration that in almost every stance is extremely ” Anti-American ideals” why should one be surprised that these radical Muslim Fundamentalists are taking their shots now? After all, this is the administration that just the other day as an example declared the Egyptian government was stable. No surprise from the blind mice running the show in D.C. now is it?
It is my understanding Iran is ecstatic about the coming regime change in Egypt. If so, what does this do to the region? It in fact puts another knife at Israel’s throat along with another one aimed squarely at the U.S. which we know for sure will threaten oil supplies and therefore raise oil prices thus causing more economic problems.
And for one to be “surprised that the Anti-Israel rhetoric has started to emanate from the Egyptian protesters only shows how far up their rears this administration and the apologists for the Radical Muslims have their heads stuck! Combine that with El Baradei, another poster boy from Iran and one has to expect the worst case scenario.
One can agree that this has been something that has been festering in Egypt for quite sometime. However, as we have learned with the failed feel good Socialist policies being shoved down out throats here, there is always the law of unintended consequences. One feels in this case, the consequences can and will be disastrous.