Israeli scapegoat fails Arab autocrats

The Arab world may be in turmoil, but none of the Arab uprisings has included Israel as a central issue. Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Libya — the one factor common to all is that protests centre on local conditions and domestic grievances. What does this tell us about the real problems of the Middle East, and all the attention placed on the “peace process” for all these years?

Barbara Kay in Montreal: The scapegoating of Israel as the alleged cause for Arab discontent is one of the most successful, although one of the more scurrilous, Big Lies of our time. The Arab countries presently undergoing uprisings couldn’t care less about the plight of the Palestinian people. Demonizing Israel is simply a useful way for Middle Eastern autocrats to distract their own people from the real grievances we are now seeing aired. That’s not to say Israel isn’t hated. But Israel isn’t hated for its treatment of the Palestinians. It is hated because it is a Jewish presence amongst Arabs — not just Jewish, but largely European, highly successful and living proof that the desert can be greened, that democracy makes people happy and prosperous, and that a small nation with technological savvy and determination can win wars against more populous forces. Israel humiliates Arabs in any number of ways, but that of course is their problem, or should be, not Israel’s. Recall that when Osama bin Laden issued his first denunciations of the West post-9/11 he had a whole list of complaints, and not one of them had anything to do with Israel and the Palestinians. But he quickly figured out that the best way of arousing left-wing support in the West was to push the Palestinian thing. If the Arabs really cared about the Palestinians, they would have absorbed them, just as Israel absorbed the 800,000 Jews who were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands. But they preferred to see them rotting in refugee camps in order to whip up condemnation of Israel in the West. Those Palestinians who have tried to integrate in their “brethren” countries soon find out they are second class citizens at best and often the targets of hatred and abuse and even massacres, as in Jordan in 1970.

Kevin Libin in Calgary: It’s not accurate to say that Israel wasn’t an issue in the Egyptian uprising. Mubarak’s reign was always darkened by his party’s pro-Western stance, symbolized most irritatingly by his predecessor’s peace deal with Israel and Mubarak’s perpetuation of it. There was an anti-Israel, or more often, anti-Semitic message intrinsic to Tahrir Square: chants of “Mubarak, Tel Aviv is waiting for you!” and of course the sexual assault of CBS reporter Lara Logan by a mob shouting “Jew! Jew!” Both sides, meanwhile, have hurled accusations of Zionist conspiracy at one another, with Egyptian state television asserting that Western journalists were really Israeli spies, while Yemen’s president this month told an audience that “the control centre for destabilizing the Arab world is in Tel Aviv.” Take a look at the anti-Gaddafi posters that have been springing up: noticeably, they regularly portray him with a Star of David branded on his forehead (along with the horns and fangs).

I agree with Barbara that Arab dictators have held up Jews as the common enemy they could exploit in order to redirect internal tensions outward, because they know that it is a historic, deeply cultural hot button: not because of Israel’s success, but because popular versions of Islam are shot through with anti-Semitism and because Islam insists it can never relinquish land to the infidel (historic Palestine therefore is considered to be permanently Muslim land). The hatred of the Jew is an inseparable part of the perennial grievance that colours Arab discontent. It’s true that it’s not about the treatment of Palestinians, per se, and so the Western conceit that a peace deal would pacify the Arab world is not only wrong, it’s exactly backwards (it would only lead to rebellion against the Palestinian leader who dared to sign it, as Arafat well knew). But it’s also true that Arab pique has much to do with Israel, and that this is very much a “real problem” of the Middle East and part of the danger its countries can pose to the rest of the world.

Matt Gurney in Toronto: I don’t envy the Israelis these days … or, I should say, I envy them even less than usual. Not saying much, I’m afraid. They’re watching their security situation deteriorate rapidly, as uncertainty is dangerous, especially given the number of rogue, non-state actors that they have to contend with already. I find it very ominous that there are musings coming out of Egypt already that, once a new government is in place, the peace treaty with Israel will be put to a vote. I have respect for many in Egypt who truly want democracy and freedom and economic development and rainbows and puppies, but I’m not sure that they speak for the majority — and the incident Kevin raised, the crowd chanting “Jew! Jew!” while Logan was stripped and beaten, is part of the reason why.

But I do think that if there is any cause for optimism, it might be that the new Arab regimes will have so much to do getting their new governments up on their feet that they might not have time to take on the Israelis. The Israelis had better hope so, too — Egypt alone received enormous funding for its military from the United States with a goal of maintaining parity with Israel. If the regimes around Israel fall and become hostile, Israel’s military — which is geared towards protecting its borders and defeating insurgents — might find itself facing fairly powerful, relatively modern military forces — something they haven’t had to worry about in a while. At least not seriously. Egypt falling into uncertainty was bad. But now that Syria might follow, it’s worth recalling three words: United Arab Republic. I don’t expect to see the UAR resurrected … but it’s worth recalling who the two members were and what bound them together. It wasn’t friendship for its own sake.

Barbara Kay: The only thing predictable about the Arab Middle East is that true unity amongst the different countries will never prevail. The only thing they can agree on is Jew hatred. But every one of their attempted collaborations in furthering the one goal they agree on – annihilating the Jewish state – turned into a fiasco. Michael Oren’s book, The Six Day War, with its excruciatingly detailed minute-by-minute review of the war’s progress, shows the default preference for saving face overcoming the need for intelligent cooperation. They lied to each other, exaggerated their “victories” and minimized their setbacks so they wouldn’t look bad in each other’s eyes. With their militaries needed to ensure order at home, I doubt any concerted attack against Israel will be launched any time soon, although Iran is still a wild card, I suppose. However, America now has a real opportunity, or should have, once the dust dies down on these uprisings, to link American military aid to peace treaties with Israel. Assuming whoever ends up holding the reins of Egypt is going to boast that Egypt is now a democratic country, America can say, that’s great: Democracies don’t go to war with each other. So get your act together and start working towards a peaceful settlement of your issues. And if it wasn’t clear to the Palestinians that they were way down the list on their brothers’ concerns, it should be now. Maybe it will galvanize them into taking some responsibility for their own future.

Kevin Libin: Unfortunately, the Arabs don’t need unity to seriously hurt Israel. Despite whatever farcical coordination its enemies mismanaged, Israel still lost troops in the Six Day War — relative to its population of 2.6 million — equivalent to more than 100,000 U.S. troops being killed in a war today, or 12,000 Canadian troops being wiped out, over the course of just a few days. The psychic and economic toll that Iran’s nuclear quest extracts from Israelis every single day is illustrative of the impact an enemy acting strictly independently can have, never mind its potential to one day actually exterminate Jews in large numbers. Nuclear powers hardly need to coordinate with each other, and we all remember that it was just three years ago that Syria was caught with a nuclear program, right? Only after Israeli jets destroyed its reactor. Largely unreported was the revelation just last month of new satellite photos of another suspected Syrian nuclear installation.

The U.S. has proved useless in stopping the Iranian march towards becoming a nuclear threat, after failing to stop North Korea. And I don’t find much solace in the possibility new Arab governments will be too preoccupied, or too mistrustful of one another, to pose an increased danger to the Jewish State. I doubt any of them envision challenging Israel via conventional warfare, anymore. They’ve learned their lesson with that. Developing nuclear capabilities will be enough to threaten a tiny country featuring a highly concentrated population with total destruction, and at a reasonable price (if destitute North Korea can afford to build a bomb, anyone can). These rebellions look to promise governments more hostile to the West than the ones they’ll replace. The most pressing Middle Eastern issue by miles is not hammering out a peace deal between 6 million Jews and 4 million Palestinians: even if that elusive goal is achieved, as long as it’s a project directed by the elites, it will be dismissed by the Muslim world as every bit as contrived, illegitimate and temporary as Camp David. The most urgent, most pivotal question is how to keep more than a quarter-billion Middle Eastern Muslims, broadly inculcated in a Nazi-like cult of Jew-hatred, from becoming a permanent nuclear menace.

Matt Gurney: Barbara’s point about the lack of co-ordination among the UAR armies during the Six-Days War is well taken, but it’s worth recalling that Israel did face defeat in the Yom Kippur War. It was a by a scarily narrow margin that they won that conflict, and the Israeli Army hasn’t had to take seriously the risk of conventional war in over a generation. If that changes, they’ll have to move quickly to prepare.

I do believe that Kevin is correct, and the real threat to Israel is nuclear annihilation. But even so, conventional military threats all around can play a part in bringing that about by ratcheting up tension to a permanent condition (even more so than it is now) and forcing Israel to devote assets and energy countering an unlikely threat, when it ought to be worrying about a near-certainty. It might also simply disrupt normal life in Israel to the point where the country falls apart. They’re a tough people, but when I was there a few years ago, even the optimists seemed down. No one worries about being blown up on a bus by a Palestinian suicide bomber. No one fails to worry about Iran.

Unfortunately, while Kevin is correct that preventing Israel’s enemies in that region from becoming nuclear armed, particularly now that some of its less-than-pleasant but still relatively stable dictators have been toppled, there’s no good way to do it. I very much hope the status quo holds out as long as possible. When I try and think through ways that this can possibly end, not a whole lot of happy endings come to mind. Unless you like mushroom clouds, that is. Then you’ll probably be thrilled.