Here Come The Arab Elections (Oh Goody)

By Barry Rubin

Tunisia has scheduled elections for October 23. The National Constituent Assembly will have 218 members and will draw up a new constitution. Remember, by the way, that Tunisia has the most secular-oriented constitution in the Arab world. One wonders what will happen in that regard.

This assembly will also set the rules for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held at some time next year.

Tunisia’s Islamists are weaker than in any other Muslim-majority country in the Middle East. A different problem, however, has developed: the incredible division of other parties. Thus while the Islamist party, Ennahda, is at only about 20 percent, the rest of the vote is divided about 80 parties, no one of which has huge support at this point. To give a sense of this mess, note that there are about 11,000 candidates for these seats, which means about 50 per seat!

That fact could turn a 20 percent Islamist vote into an Islamist landslide. Remember that the Islamists seized control of Turkey with only about 30 percent of the votes. And it gets worse. Imagine when parties are negotiating over the Constitution and the election rules. The Islamists will have extra weight in forming alliances and making deals.

Thus, as Westerners celebrate the joys of democracy in Tunisia — 11,000 candidates! See how the people love freedom! — the Islamists might be using it to seize state power.

What could Western countries be doing? Well, it’s not very nice but in the real world they could be persuading and pressuring moderate anti-Islamists to form alliances and set up joint tickets using funding and other resources.

In the late 1940s, the U.S. government worked covertly to ensure that the Communists didn’t win the elections and take power in France and Italy. That doesn’t sound good if being taught about in an early twenty-first century classroom but the world is a lot better off as a result. Presumably, that isn’t going to happen in this case.

Egypt will be holding parliamentary elections on November 28. There are some parallels with Tunisia—united Islamists; divided leftists, radical nationalists, and moderates — but in Egypt the Islamist vote level looks to be around 30 to 40 percent. There is little doubt that Islamists would emerge as the single largest party there.

But the military has just pushed through an agreement that many political parties have signed though it angered a lot of their members. According to the plan, after elections for the People’s Assembly, the lower house of parliament, and the Shura Council, the upper house, the two would choose a committee to draft a new constitution between April 2012 and April 2013. Only afterward would a presidential election be held, which means the military junta would continue to hold executive authority.

Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition has formed a Turkey-based (note the connection) Syrian National Council headed by Burhan Ghalioun, who is an academic who lives in Paris. Members include Mohammed Riyad al-Shaqfa of the Muslim Brotherhood The 29-member leadership is described as including the following: six from Local Coordination Committees, five Brotherhood and tribal representatives, four from the Damascus Declaration and four for Ghalioun‘s liberal group, five independents, four Kurds, and a Christian, he said.

This is a measure of the Brotherhood’s far weaker status in Syria as compared to Egypt. The proportionally low representation of Christians is presumably related to that group’s tendency to support the regime due to fear of the Islamists. The Kurds have not been enthusiastic about this new council because they believe the Muslim Brotherhood has become too powerful — perhaps they know about hidden Islamists disguised among the other members? — and worry about Arab nationalists overwhelming them.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

Israel’s Strategic Situation: Plenty to Worry About But Little to Fear

By Barry Rubin



Since much of what I write about regional politics seems pessimistic, I periodically remind people why I’m an optimist, at least when it comes to Israel.

Even today, Israel’s security situation is as good as or better than it has been since any time since the establishment of the state. The two main threats have always been either a potential attack by most or all Arab armies or a high level of successful cross-border terrorism.

At present, though, by Israeli standards, these two threats are relatively low. The immediate problem is rocket, missile, and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip. The longer-term threat—that seems to be continually postponed--is an Iranian nuclear capability

On the level of threats from states, the problem is relatively minimal. The Saudis and Gulf Arabs, whose economic support would be vital in any confrontation, don’t want war with Israel. The same point applies to Jordan. Syria is militarily weaker than ever and entangled in a revolution whose effects will convulse the country for years whatever the outcome.

Muammar Qadhafi’s likely overthrow in Libya won’t bring a friendlier regime but will reduce the sponsorship of international terrorism arising from his personal ambitions. Similarly, Iraq has dropped out of the conflict and turned inward, while the Kurdish-ruled sector in the north is friendly toward Israel. A new addition to that short friendly list is the Republic of South Sudan.

What of Iran? The “Arab Spring” may be a victory for Sunni Muslim Islamism but for that reason is an Iranian defeat. Tehran’s ambition of being hegemonic in the Middle East is blocked since it can no longer hope to become leader over the majority Sunni Muslims. Its rival, the Muslim Brotherhood, is the single most powerful force in Egypt, has “stolen” Hamas from Iran, and may do the same with Syria.

Moreover, Iran is taking far longer to get nuclear weapons than expected due to technical and other problems. The regime also faces potential internal revolt. Of course, Iran is a legitimate Israeli concern but the threat today is far less than it was expected to be several years ago. The likelihood of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear installation has also dropped sharply.

This leaves Egypt. For the moment, the military regime wants to maintain the peace treaty. That could change when an elected government comes to power, especially with a strong Muslim Brotherhood contingent in parliament. The most likely president, Amr Moussa, doesn’t like Israel but he is also experienced and pragmatic enough to avoid a confrontation, even though he is also demagogic enough to talk tough. Egypt is going to be a problem for Israeli security but it might be manageable.

As for non-state actors, to the north, Hizballah is having trouble controlling Lebanon. The loss of its Syrian patron and growing Sunni-Shia tensions make its task tougher. Hizballah doesn’t want a war with Israel now and during the next few years. The threat must be closely watched and no assumptions made, but that front should remain relatively quiet.

The big problem is Hamas, especially as it tries to leverage Egypt into a conflict. Nobody is going to throw Hamas out of power and periodically it will periodically send barrages of missiles and rockets into Israel. Yet if this is Israel’s main security problem it is hardly existential..

A third intifadah on the West Bank is also possible but would be far costlier to the Palestinians than to Israel. Whatever the UN General Assembly decides will change nothing on the ground. The Fatah-Hamas conflict won’t go away and the demographic issue is totally phony. Israel’s intelligence and counterterrorism is in good shape.

Time is not against Israel but it is against the Arabs. They are splintering rather than uniting. Each country faces some level of civil war between Islamists and nationalists, monarchies and oppositions, and religious-communal groups.
We are going to be seeing more assertive Kurdish (in Syria and Iraq) and Berber movements (in North Africa). The Sunni-Shia rift is heating up. Two Islamist blocs will contend, sometimes violently as we have seen in Iraq. True, both sides hate Israel but they are hardly likely to cooperate against it, and neither has a superpower ally.

The vision of a united Arab or Muslim world wiping Israel off the map—or making a serious effort to do so—is as distant as always, more distant than from the 1950s into the 1970s. The Arab Spring is in fact the start of an internal Arab political winter, 20 to 40 years fighting over who will run each country. While they fritter away money, resources, and energy, Israel will continue to advance economically and militarily.

Disastrous populist, radical nationalist, and Islamist domestic policies will also slow Arab development and widen Israel’s advantage. I do not rejoice at the Arab world’s self-made misfortune. A prosperous, happy, moderate, and democratic Arab world at peace with Israel would be a wonderful thing. But that won’t happen. Neither will there be a prosperous, united, radical Islamist world at war with Israel.

As for Israel itself, when one gets beyond all of the usual self-flagellating self-criticism, it is a strong country in both economic and military terms. Israel has weathered the international economic crisis better than any other developed country. When Israelis have time to bicker over housing and cottage cheese prices, it’s a sure sign of an improved security situation and relative consensus on “foreign conflict” issues.

There are, of course, no lack of problems and threats. Yet Israel is in good shape when compared in strategic terms to every other country between Morocco and Pakistan—and even in social and economic terms compared with virtually every European country.

Appendix:


A reader, trying to explore every possible pessimistic scenario, asked me some questions in addition to the above text. Obviously, Israeli policymakers and military officers are thinking about such things--and they should be--but these aren't realistic threats. Below are brief answers:

What are the risks of a military confrontation between Turkey and Israel should Turkey send warships to accompany “civilian” ships trying to reach Gaza ? A defense pact between Turkey and Hamas, Egypt or Hizballah/Lebanon?

--Won't happen in any meaningful way. Erdogan does not want to embroil Turkey in a costly and unnecessary international confrontation that would sacrifice U.S. support, frighten international investors, and divide Turkey. Erdogan's motive is domestic political gain for his plan to Islamize Turkey through demagoguery. He knows precisely what he's doing. And the Arabs neither want nor need Turkish boots on the ground. That would be a public relations' disaster from their standpoint.

Might Syria fire some chemical weapons at Israel as a last ditch to save itself?

--There is no indication of that happening and the Iraqis--who had much more motive to do it--didn't follow that path in 2003. Israel would have plenty of warning time and could take countermeasures. Not a realistic scenario.

--Will Iran let Syria fall and lose her investment ?

--I think clearly Iran cannot determine Syria's future. It is trying to save the Assad dictatorship but already there are signs that Tehran is thinking of jumping ship. Too much effort to help the Syrian regime will create an intense anti-Shia and anti-Persian feeling among Sunni Muslims and be more negative for Iran than even the fall of the Syrian regime.

What about Israel’s porous border with Sinai....and the rush to now build a security fence ? Why was this not done before ?

--Because Israel doesn't have unlimited money and resources. Notice those mass demonstrations wanting the government to spend more money on housing and other things to benefit Israel's people? It cannot spend millions to build new security fences and ask people to devote more reserve days to military service without a clear need to do so.

What is the prospect of an Islamic (Sunni) curtain stretching from Morocco to Turkey....even with temporary gaps in the curtain ?

--If you mean Islamist regimes that's doubtful. It isn't happening in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan or in Saudi Arabia--in the sense we mean it--and the Gulf Arab monarchies. It also isn't going to happen in Lebanon or Iraq which are dominated politically by Shia Muslims.

Will Jordan survive a MB take over of Egypt and the subsequent support by Egypt to Islamists in Jordan ?

Yes, indeed the better the Brotherhood does in Egypt, Libya, or Syria, the more the remaining non-Islamist states will work harder and act tougher to prevent their meeting that fate. Increasingly, the Saudis and other Gulf Arab monarchies are taking Jordan under their protection and the monarchy in Amman has basically brought the unrest there to a standstill, though they could use a lot more foreign economic help.


With Europe increasingly scared of its own muslim populations...what will this mean for Israel’s trade, security cooperation ?

--Trade? Nothing. Security cooperation? Precisely because of nervousness about Islamists at home and in the Middle East, a number of European countries--notably France, Italy, and Germany are increasing security cooperation with Israel. European states can play their usual game of pro-Palestinian rhetoric combined with little or no action in order to cover themselves.

What will Israel do should Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria all start firing missiles into Israel at same time ?

Syria won't. If Damascus attacked Israel it would be the end of the regime. Rather than mobilize mass support, as in the past, Syria's regime would have its armed forces heavily damaged and fall within a week or two, with very poor prospects for the life spans of its elite. As for Hizballah-Hamas cooperation, that's less likely than ever. Those two groups are now on different sides of the Sunni-Shia divide and didn't even work together in 2008-2009 when they were much closer to each other. Reportedly, Hamas asked for help and Hizballah refused, unwilling to risk its own interests to help its "brothers" in the Gaza Strip.

How strong relatively is Israel ?

--Much more so than its neighbors.

The above analysis isn't based on wishful thinking. But there are good reasons why the worst-case scenarios we can think up don't happen. As I said in the original article, my biggest concern is that Hamas will try to drag a post-election Egypt into a war with Israel. Other than that, remaining scenarios of war or high-level terrorism are unlikely.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com>

The Road to Serfdom and the "Arab Awakening"

By Barry Rubin

You want to know what's wrong with the study and analysis of the Middle East in the West in a single sentence? Ok, here it is:

Edward Said is treated like a guru and hero; Fouad Ajami isn't.

Said never took the slightest risk and lived a life of greatest privilege. He was lionized by the intellectual elite. His work was taught in universities and shaped the worldview of a generation of professors and students.

Yet what Said said was disastrous for the Arabs themselves and for Western intellectual life. He told the Arabs that they were innocent victims who didn't need to do anything differently, thus guaranteeing they stayed on the wrong road. He backed the Palestinian cause as perfect (despite some criticisms of Arafat's dictatorial tendencies and corruption) and thus didn't use his influence to turn it toward moderation--away from radicalism, terrorism, and hatred--and a genuine two-state solution.

Equally bad, he undermined Western pragmatism, Enlightenment values, and scholarship by a Stalinist-type campaign to discredit all preceding work on the region and substitute for it propaganda.

I will never forget standing at the door of a Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual meeting session listening to Said recite with hatred in his voice a list of scholars who he said were "enemies of the Arabs" to what can only be called a howling mob of professors. I had the honor of being on that list.

At that moment, I thought to myself: "I am witnessing the death of scholarship in American universities." If we had been living in a Middle East society, the audience would probably have erupted from the hall to beat up or kill those "enemies of the people."

Many years after his influence gained virtual hegemony, I am not aware of a single book authored by any of his followers that is of lasting value in the study of the modern Middle East. Not one. On the other hand, environmentalists should protest the forest murders to manufacture paper wasted on the ideological junk that is turned out on the region by academics today.

While Said came from an incredibly rich family and was raised from childhood as a Westerner (I personally witnessed him wearing earphones to hear the Arabic translation into English at a Palestine National Council meeting), Fouad Ajami came from a poor Shia Muslim family and grew up in a Lebanese village.

Ajami's brilliance, balance, and genuine adherence to democracy along with his people's welfare has been rewarded in the West with a response ranging from intellectual persecution to mere neglect.

He's also a great guy in person. Only a few days ago, a Lebanese student told me about meeting Ajami, who he didn't know, on a train ride and how friendly and kind Ajami behaved toward him. I also had an extensive conversation with a childhood friend about how Said used to make fun of the Arabs in private in terms that would shock the socks off the Politically Correct gang.

I'm leaving out a lot of detailed anecdotes about both men that demonstrate my thesis.

Pick up book and almost any article by Ajami and you will meet with a truly creative and incisive mind. Arguably, he is the greatest living thinker on the contemporary Middle East. (Lest anyone misread this as a slight toward Bernard Lewis, I would say he is the greatest living Middle East historian.)

If the West and the Arab world listened to Ajami rather than Said they would be both far better off.

All of this is by way of introduction to Ajami's latest article, "The Road to Serfdom and the Arab Revolt," published in the Wall Street Journal. He raises the hitherto neglected economic angle on the Arab world's recent history and opens the door to a fascinating comparison with Western history. Ajami also adds an important point in understanding what went wrong in the Arab world.

Though I already knew the basic points he made, Ajami's article inspired me to see these issues in a different way. I reprint here in its entirety:

"The Road to Serfdom and the Arab Revolt"

By Fouad Ajami
 
Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2011

The late great Austrian economist F.A. Hayek would have seen the Arab Spring for the economic revolt it was right from the start. For generations the Arab populations had bartered away their political freedom for economic protection. They rose in rebellion when it dawned on them that the bargain had not worked, that the system of subsidies, and the promise of equality held out by the autocrats, had proven a colossal failure.

What Hayek would call the Arab world's "road to serfdom" began when the old order of merchants and landholders was upended in the 1950s and '60s by a political and military class that assumed supreme power. The officers and ideologues who came to rule Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Yemen were men contemptuous of the marketplace and of economic freedom.

As a rule, they hailed from the underclass and had no regard for the sanctity of wealth and property. They had come to level the economic order, and they put the merchant classes, and those who were the mainstay of the free market, to flight.

It was in the 1950s that the foreign minorities who had figured prominently in the economic life of Egypt after the cotton boom of the 1860s, and who had drawn that country into the web of the world economy, would be sent packing. The Jews and the Greeks and the Italians would take with them their skills and habits. The military class, and the Fabian socialists around them, distrusted free trade and the marketplace and were determined to rule over them or without them.

The Egyptian way would help tilt the balance against the private sector in other Arab lands as well. In Iraq, the Jews of the country, on its soil for well over two millennia, were dispossessed and banished in 1950-51. They had mastered the retail trade and were the most active community in the commerce of Baghdad. Some Shiite merchants stepped into their role, but this was short-lived. Military officers and ideologues of the Baath Party from the "Sunni triangle"—men with little going for them save their lust for wealth and power—came into possession of the country and its oil wealth. They, like their counterparts in Egypt, were believers in central planning and "social equality." By the 1980s, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni thug born from crushing poverty, would come to think of the wealth of the country as his own.

In Libya, a deranged Moammar Gadhafi did Saddam one better. After his 1969 military coup, he demolished the private sector in 1973 and established what he called "Islamic Socialism." Gadhafi's so-called popular democracy basically nationalized the entire economy, rendering the Libyan people superfluous by denying them the skills and the social capital necessary for a viable life.

In his 1944 masterpiece, "The Road to Serfdom," Hayek wrote that in freedom-crushing totalitarian societies "the worst get on top." In words that described the Europe of his time but also capture the contemporary Arab condition, he wrote: "To be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state, it is not enough that a man should be prepared to accept specious justification of vile deeds; he must himself be prepared actively to break every moral rule he

has ever known if this seems necessary to achieve the end set for him. Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments must have no moral convictions of their own."

This well describes the decades-long brutal dictatorship of Syria's Hafez al-Assad, and now his son Bashar's rule. It is said that Hafez began his dynasty with little more than a modest officer's salary. His dominion would beget a family of enormous wealth: The Makhloufs, the in-laws of the House of Assad, came to control crucial sectors of the Syrian economy.

The Alawites, the religious sect to which the Assad clan belongs, had been poor peasants and sharecroppers, but political and military power raised them to new heights. The merchants of Damascus and Aleppo, and the landholders in Homs and Hama, were forced to submit to the new order. They could make their peace with the economy of extortion, cut Alawite officers into long-established businesses, or be swept aside.

But a decade or so ago this ruling bargain—subsidies and economic redistribution in return for popular quiescence—began to unravel. The populations in Arab lands had swelled and it had become virtually impossible to guarantee jobs for the young and poorly educated. Economic nationalism, and the war on the marketplace, had betrayed the Arabs. They had the highest unemployment levels among developing nations, the highest jobless rate among the young, and the lowest rates of economic participation among women. The Arab political order was living on borrowed time, and on fear of official terror.

Attempts at "reform" were made. But in the arc of the Arab economies, the public sector of one regime became the private sector of the next. Sons, sons-in-law and nephews of the rulers made a seamless transition into the rigged marketplace when "privatization" was forced onto stagnant enterprises. Of course, this bore no resemblance to market-driven economics in a transparent system. This was crony capitalism of the worst kind, and it was recognized as such by Arab populations.

Indeed, this economic plunder was what finally severed the bond between Hosni Mubarak and an Egyptian population known for its timeless patience and stoicism.

The sad truth of Arab social and economic development is that the free-market reforms and economic liberalization that remade East Asia and Latin America bypassed the Arab world. This is the great challenge of the Arab Spring and of the forces that brought it about. The marketplace has had few, if any, Arab defenders. If the tremendous upheaval at play in Arab lands is driven by a desire to capture state power—and the economic prerogatives that come with political power—the revolution will reproduce the failures of the past.

In Yemen, a schoolteacher named Amani Ali, worn out by the poverty and anarchy of that poorest of Arab states, recently gave voice to a sentiment that has been the autocrats' prop: "We don't want change," he said. "We don't want freedom. We want food and safety." True wisdom, and an end to their road to serfdom, will only come when the Arab people make the connection between economic and political liberty.

Mr. Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is co-chairman of Hoover's Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

The Race in The Mid East To Fill the Vacuum Created By Lack Of U.S. Leadership

By Barry Rubin 

In the absence of U.S. leadership, others want to direct the Middle East. The battle is becoming a competition of radicals for run the region. That’s what happened in the 1950s and 1960s and it isn’t good. Then, the competition was between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Today, the contestants are Turkey, Iran, and a radical Egypt, with Iraq and Syria sidelined due to internal issues. Meanwhile, the Saudis have been forced to take over leadership of the remaining moderate Arab states (the Gulf sheikdoms, plus Morocco and Jordan) since they can no longer depend on America for protection.

The Egyptian foreign minister has warned Iran not to try to intervene too much in the Gulf, posing as protector of Saudi Arabia and the smaller states. This is a hint that Egypt wants to resume its pre-Sadat role as leader of the Arab world. Cairo will see itself as protector of the Muslim, Sunni, and Arab world against Persian, Shia Muslim Iran; Turkish Turkey; and Jewish Israel. With Iraq turned inward and Syria turned upside down, Egypt is the only remaining Arab state that can make a play for region-wide power.

That Egypt wants to stop Iranian expansion is a good thing, but that the next government—a radical, possibly Islamist one, will have its own ambitions isn’t. I predict that Egypt and Iran will tussle over who will be the patron of Hamas and that Egypt will win. It also seems likely that a radical, Islamist-influenced Egypt would be supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Jordan, too.

The Saudis are also reaching out. Their leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in sending troops to Bahrain and tightening the security links among the members is another sign that they aren’t depending on the United States any more. Equally impressive is the GCC’s invitation to Jordan to join, a total break with past policy. This is a good thing since the Jordanians need help (particularly money) to stay stable and fend off Iranian influence and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover.

Iran’s ambitions are well-known but the statement of parliament speaker Ali Larijani (generally regarded as a “moderate” on the Islamic republic’s political spectrum) is still an escalation. He said that Tehran will “protect” Muslim states from U.S. and Israeli aggression. Clearly, this doesn’t include Libya where the Iranians hope that the United States and NATO will overthrow dictator Muammar Qadhafi and open the way for a radical Islamist dictatorship.

Of course, Iranian protection implies that regime’s hands around the neck of other countries. The regime now has Lebanon as a satellite, tremendous influence in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan, patronage over Hamas, and an alliance with Turkey and Syria. That’s a pretty good situation. And once it has nuclear weapons, the Iranian regime believes it can do whatever it wants and nobody will complain too much.

Then there’s Turkey. It is foolish and certainly outdated to see Turkey as somehow on the “West’s” side against Iran. First, Turkey is allied with Iran to a large extent. Second, if and when the two countries differ it is about how to carve up others. Kemal Ataturk’s wise injunction—the equivalent of George Washington’s avoiding “foreign entanglements”—of “peace at home, peace abroad” is being thrown on the garbage heap with all of his other hard-earned wisdom.

I don’t like the use of the word “Ottoman” to apply to post-Ataturk Turkey as there are simply too many differences and confusing nuances. After all, in modern history, despite the fact that its sultan was also the Muslim caliph, the Ottoman Empire functioned internationally as a normative power, not an Islamist state. It was also a status quo power seeking to preserve an existing empire and easily forming alliances with European states.

The new Turkey is ambitious, Islamist, anti-Western, and not likely to be a force for stability. In his victory speech, reelected Prime Minister Erdoğan did not mention Europe or the West even once. Though the Western media didn’t notice it in praising the victory of the Turkish Islamists he spoke as a Muslim leader. .

Breaking with the orientation of the Turkish republic since the 1920s, Erdoğan began his speech by praising, “All friendly and brotherly nations from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Sarajevo, Baku and Nicosia.”

He added: “The hopes of the victims and the oppressed have won,” and, “Beirut has won as much as İzmir. West Bank, Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem have won as much as Diyarbakır. The Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans have won, just as Turkey has won.”

In talking about the Middle East, he wasn’t including Israel; in the Caucasus, he didn’t mean Armenia or Georgia; and as for the Balkans he didn’t mean Greece or Croatia or Yugoslavia.

As a Turkish journalist explained:
“The fact that he mentioned Sarajevo, while avoiding mention of Europe, clearly shows that he sees himself as the leader of the Muslims and that of those Muslims who are oppressed, not by their regimes, in the view of Erdoğan, but by the Christian West. So, Erdoğan’s world view, based on juxtaposing the oppressed East vis-à-vis the imperialist West, is here to stay.”

Is it of some concern that the leader of Turkey speaks in the same terms as the leader of Iran? You wouldn’t know it from Western coverage.

One point that isn’t properly understood is that if Iran, post-secular Turkey, post-Mubarak Egypt, and Syria (though sidelined by its own internal problems for now) may be contending to some extent, it isn’t good for Western or U.S. interests. They’re squabbling about who gets to devour what.

In this context, the battle over Syria should be understood. It is widely claimed that Turkey has broken with the Syrian regime as if this were a humanitarian impulse. There are proposals to use Turkey as a mediator and even reports that President Barack Obama is consulting Turkey about what to do in Syria.

Big mistake. True, Turkey has been allied with the dictatorship of President Hafiz al-Asad. But the revolution has posed a dilemma for Ankara. Asad is good. After all, he hates the United States (though the Obama administration doesn’t seem to notice) and Israel, supports revolutionary Islamists (Hamas, Hizballah, Iraqi insurgents), and is an ally of Iran. Iran and Hizballah, both of them Shia Muslim, prefer their ally Asad, who claims to be Shia Muslim.

But for the (Sunni) Islamists in Ankara, the Islamists in Damascus are better. The Turkish regime doesn’t want a moderate, pro-Western democratic government in Syria; it wants an Islamist, even more anti-American government in Syria.

So the Middle East is returning to a higher level of conflict and eventually bloodshed, in part thanks to U.S. bumbling. It’s a typical story. Obama thinks American power is evil and bullying, but by withdrawing it (except for the bizarre adventure in Libya), he is contributing to anarchy and the destruction of legitimate U.S. interests.
By the way, notice that—at least for the moment—the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflict is of no importance in all this. Yet that’s the issue the West is obsessed with, usually in ways that would weaken Israel and thus strengthen all of its enemies.

It’s a very sad and even more dangerous story. The hope is that as all these problems and disasters become more visible, the Western democracies will wake up and change their policies. Every minute counts.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are teased and other articles are available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.   

Six-Day-War Revisionist History

"The Jewish people has had to fight unceasingly to keep itself alive," says Israel's Premier Levi Eshkol. "Hopeful ever of redemption, we labored to return to the land of our fathers and to set foundations for the resurgence of an exiled folk. We made our arduous way to the shores of that land. We fought to open its gates to our brethren. We acted from an instinct to save the soul of a people." 

Both the land and the soul of Israel are sorely tried. Last week, 19 years after the Diaspora dream of return to Zion became a reality in the first Jewish state in almost 2,000 years, Levi Eshkol and his people found themselves besieged and threatened as few nations have ever been in their history. Tiny, dagger-shaped Israel, whose 2,700,000 people cling to 7,993 sq. mi. on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, faced the implacable hostility and cocked guns of 14 Arab nations and their 110 million people. Its borders were ringed with Arab troops on all sides; its important sea access through the Gulf of Aqaba remained blocked by Egyptian mines and patrol boats.

Time Magazine June 9th 1967

Reading reports about the Six-Day-War from 44-years ago and comparing them to today reminds me of one of those Star Trek episodes where Kirk and the crew goes back in history and change the past---it seems like two different wars.

Forty-four years ago the reports spoke of the underdog Israel and her need to defend herself against the warlike acts of the big bullies lead by Egypt who was committing many acts that could be interpreted as acts of war including: conspiring with other belligerent countries  for a coordinated attack (in this case, Syria and Jordan), closing Israel’s access to international waterways (the straits of Tiran), violating the terms of the 1956 armistice by re-militarizing the Sinai. Expelling the UN and USA peace-keeping troops form the Sinai, perpetrating illegal spy-plane fly-overs to reconnoiter Israeli sensitive areas and massing troops and tanks on Israel’s borders.

(Dewy Beats Truman?)

The United States tried to prevent the war through negotiations, but the other side did not want peace, The US could not persuade Nasser or the other Arab states to cease their belligerent statements and actions (back then they tried). So just like today,  they warned Israel not to attack. Right before the war, President Johnson warned: “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone.” Then, when the war began, the State Department announced: “Our position is neutral in thought, word and deed.”

While the Arabs were falsely accusing the United States of airlifting supplies to Israel, Johnson imposed an arms embargo on the region (France, Israel’s other main arms supplier, also embargoed arms to Israel). By contrast, the Soviets were supplying massive amounts of arms to the Arabs. Simultaneously, the armies of Kuwait, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were contributing troops and arms to the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian fronts.

Today, retrospectives tell a different story, the tale of the cynical Zionist nation whe saw an opportunity to deal a blow to the Arab nation, expand her territory, and rule over the Palestinian people. Some even say that maybe the Six Day War was not the best thing for Israel, "since it lead her to become the evil rogue nation she is today"

But there is one indisputable fact that today's revisionist historians keeps forgetting, if Israel didn't fight and win the Six Day War---there would be no Israel today. Just as if Israel doesn't protect herself from the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah today--there will be no Israel in 44  years.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Israel offered to give everything except Jerusalem back in exchange for peace. Rather than respond to Israel’s invitation, the Arab states met in Khartoum, Sudan, for a conference in August, 1967. They unanimously decided in favor of the now famous three "NOs," better that Israel hold on to the territories taken in the war. Better that the refugees continue languishing in their squalor and misery. Better that the Arab states re-arm for another war…than to recognize Israel’s right to exist or negotiate toward a peaceful settlement of the conflict. For most of the Middle East, the rule is still the three "NOs": No recognition, No negotiation, No peace.

On 6/5/1967, in a pre-dawn raid, Israeli jets destroyed almost all the fighter planes of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq before their pilots could get them off the ground. With most of their air forces a smoldering wreck, the Arabs had lost the war almost as soon as it had begun. Arab armor without air cover was destroyed by Israeli planes; and Arab infantry without armor was no match for the Israeli land forces.  In six days, Israel re-gained the Sinai, drove the Jordan Legion from the West Bank, and took control of the Golan Heights within artillery range of Damascus.  Suddenly there was a new order in the Middle East.

Israel had done much more than is generally acknowledged to avoid this war.  It struck only after working for weeks under threat of annihilation to exhaust all reasonable diplomatic channels, and after begging the Arab states to honor their cease-fire agreements. But even more compelling, unnoticed by many but thoroughly documented in diplomatic archives is the communication between the Israeli government and King Hussein of Jordan. On Tuesday, June 5, several hours AFTER the Jordan Legion had begun its bombardment of Jerusalem and Petakh Tikvah, Israel sent a message via the Rumanian Embassy to King Hussein. The message was short and clear: stop the bombardment now and we will not invade the West Bank.

But King Hussein had already received a phone call from Nasser. This call was monitored by the Israeli Secret Service. Even though he knew that his air force was in ruins, Nasser told Hussein that Egyptian planes were over Tel Aviv and his armor was advancing on Israeli positions. Hussein believed him, and disregarded Israel’s plea. Had Hussein listened to Israel, the West Bank would still be in Jordanian hands.  Instead, he sent his troops into the Israeli section of Jerusalem.  Only AFTER its territorial integrity in Jerusalem was violated did Israel mount an assault on the Jordanian West Bank.

A few days after the UN cease fire of 6/11/67, Abba Eban, Israel’s representative at the UN, made his famous speech.  He held out the olive branch to the Arab world, inviting Arab states to join Israel at the peace table, and informing them in unequivocal language that everything but Jerusalem was negotiable. Territories taken in the war could be returned in exchange for formal recognition, bi-lateral negotiations, and peace.

Some wonder if peace could ever happen in the holy land.  The Arabs have seen Israel prosper on soil from which they barely scratched a living when they had it. If you have ever stood within Israel looking out into the Palestinian territories the border between the two is very obvious.  On the Israeli "side of the line" the ground is lined with lush green trees, however the other side is parched land.

To the Arab  States, Israel's success is not only a blow to their pride but a constant rebuke to the dismal poverty in which most of the Arab world lives, that's why Israel is so hated.

The Key to Obama’s Foreign Policy: The World Turned Upside Down

By Barry Rubin


“If buttercups buzz'd after the bee,
If boats were on land, churches on sea,
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse....
If summer were spring and the other way round,
Then all the world would be upside down.”

--“The World Turned Upside Down,” English ballad, 1643

I think I’ve made a breakthrough in understanding President Barack Obama’s foreign policy of punishing friends, rewarding enemies, and taking risks toward empowering enemies by bashing friends. It isn’t that Obama is a Muslim or a Marxist; it’s that...

He is America's first (and hopefully last) 1960s' New Left president.

Think of how the American left looked at the Cold War. For them, the phrase “Free World” was a joke. America’s allies were often repressive dictators. In Europe, even democratic states like Britain and France were, or until recently were, colonial powers.

Vietnam: America supported South Vietnam (boo) and fought North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front (LBJ, how many kids have you killed today; Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win).

Latin America: In Chile, America supported the army (boo!) and fought President Salvador Allende and the Communists (yeah!). Not to mention those military dictatorships who murdered peasants in South America and killed Che Guevara. And how about those Sandinistas. They wanted land reform and to help the poor and the United States plundered them for United Fruit and other greedy capitalists.

Great Britain: America supported Britain and thought Winston Churchill was a hero but what about colonialism (Get his bust out of the White House!)? Say, in a country like Kenya? Mau-maus (possibly Obama's grandfather) who were called "terrorists," good guys; British, bad guys.

Middle East: America supported the bad guys (Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) against the good guys (PLO, Egypt, Syria, Iraq).

The Communists: had their shortcomings but at least they wanted to help people, right? And if the USSR was old-fashioned and degenerated at least there were a lot of cool new revolutionaries.

Africa: Obama's own father opposed a generally U.S.-backed Kenyan regime. In theory, he was a leftist and a man of the people. In reality, he was a womanizing, alcoholic and corrupt politician, just the kind of "progressive" Third World politician who pretends to represent the voice of the masses.
And so on.

So the leftist view has been that American allies were bad guys. And since America was also the bad guy, American allies were doubly bad guys.

In contrast, those opposing U.S. policy or allies—notably, Latin American guerrillas; Fidel Castro, the Viet Cong (or National Liberation Front if you wish); Mao Zedong; Che Guevara (remember that Che Guevara poster in the Obama election headquarters in Arizona, was it?); Patrice Lumumba; and so on and so forth were heroes.

Pakistan has it both ways. On one hand, it is an American “ally” but since it just takes money, hides al-Qaida leaders, and sponsors cross-border terrorism against India, it is enough of an enemy to receive favored treatment.

So, the bad guys to America were the good guys and the good guys to America were the bad guys.

I’m putting this in slangy language but I’m very serious.

And for someone raised personally and politically the way Obama was (hat-tip, Stanley Kurtz and Dinesh D’Souza) this was taken for granted.

Thus, be it England or Egypt or Israel or Colombia, if you are partnered with the United States it proves you are bad. And for Venezuela, Syria, or the Palestinian Authority, the more hostile you are to America the better you are.

Hence, the business of American policy should be to win over the heroic guerrillas who fight on behalf of the wretched of the earth (reference: Che Guevara, Franz Fanon, The Communist “Internationale”), these are the people who—as they say in Hollywood—we’d like to be in business with.

Consider Obama’s profound disrespect for realpolitik as evidenced in his State Department speech:

“For decades, the United States has pursued a set of core interests in the region: countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.”

He says that the United States will continue to do these things. But listen to the subtle differences in that list:

“We will continue to do these things, with the firm belief that America’s interests are not hostile to people’s hopes; they’re essential to them. We believe that no one benefits from a nuclear arms race in the region, or al Qaeda’s brutal attacks. We believe people everywhere would see their economies crippled by a cut-off in energy supplies. As we did in the Gulf War, we will not tolerate aggression across borders, and we will keep our commitments to friends and partners.”

For decades, the United States wanted mainly to keep hostile countries from getting nuclear weapons, while Obama’s policy is to put the priority on eliminating nuclear weapons (including those of the United States) entirely. “Countering terrorism” becomes stopping al-Qaeda! How about stopping Hamas and Hizballah or the Muslim Brotherhood? Nope. Not part of the policy. “Standing up for Israel’s security” becomes the generic “we will keep our commitments to friends and partners.”

Tolerate aggression across borders? But the Obama Administration does tolerate Syrian aggression against Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq; and Iranian aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and against Israel. Soon it will be tolerating Egyptian aggression against Israel.

Perhaps he is referring here to Israel’s holding on to part of the West Bank captured in 1967 as aggression across borders? He certainly has—in contrast to the other cases—tried to do something about that!

Talking about “standing up for Israel’s security” is reserved for speeches.to AIPAC.

In addition, however:

“We must acknowledge that a strategy based solely upon the narrow pursuit of these interests will not fill an empty stomach or allow someone to speak their mind. Moreover, failure to speak to the broader aspirations of ordinary people will only feed the suspicion that has festered for years that the United States pursues our interests at their expense. Given that this mistrust runs both ways –- as Americans have been seared by hostage-taking and violent rhetoric and terrorist attacks that have killed thousands of our citizens -– a failure to change our approach threatens a deepening spiral of division between the United States and the Arab world.”

Yes, the old U.S. policy conducted under lots of presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, were focused on U.S. interests. Now, however, Obama defines this as "narrow." The United States must show itself in favor of “the broader aspirations of ordinary people.”

And in the twenty-first century who could be cooler than Facebook Kids, those liberty-loving rascals rebelling against an American-backed dictatorship. Don’t we want to be on their side? We cares about national interests? What could possibly go wrong? The clerical-reactionaries (not that there’s anything wrong with that) couldn’t possibly win against the progressive (Progressive?) forces of history. Power to the people!

This, however, raises two questions:

First, which aspirations?

Second, as expressed by whom?

Suppose the aspirations of the people are against U.S. interests? Example, in the early Cold War the United States covertly intervened in French and Italian politics to make sure Communist parties didn’t win. Did that thwart the aspirations of the people? Quite possibly. Should it have been done: You bet!

The United States has believed that it has no interest in promoting the anti-American aspirations of people. What if the aspirations are to have radical Islamism? What if the majority wants to persecute Christians? What if the majority wants to expel U.S. influence from the region? What if the majority wants to wipe Israel off the map and commit genocide on the Jews?

So no, U.S. policy often needs to oppose the aspirations of the people or certain people. When possible, it does so because it believes that by doing so they will be better able to fill their stomachs (example: Communism as a system failed to do so) and speak their minds (ditto).

But ultimately its goal is not to promote the aspirations of other people. Its main priority should be to promote the aspirations of the American people. Yet if America is not an exceptional, better country, but often a worse one; national identity is out of date, and promoting your own country's interests is a form of racism; if America is rich and greedy, taking more than its share of resources and causing global warming because its living standards are too high, then the aspirations of Egyptians or Venezuelans are equally or more important than those of the American people.

What other wordview could imagine something like "Cap and Trade" in which the U.S. taxpayers paid other countries for the right to use their own air? This is a transfer of wealth from America to others, in no way in the American interest or the interests of Americans.

Remember, Obama is desperate to be popular abroad. And he views popularity as giving the people abroad what they want, whether or not that’s in U.S. interests. If, for example, the “people” of the Middle East don’t want the United States to support Israel, then according to his worldview it shouldn’t.

Let’s face it: If not for the State Department's desperate intervention, Obama would be campaigning for the overthrow of the Jordanian and Egyptian governments. And at the same time, fighting against seeking the overthrow of the Iranian and Syrian governments.

It's not just Israel, though that country is first on the list. If you are a U.S. ally there must be something wrong with you. And if you are a U.S. enemy there must be something right with you. Or, perhaps I should say, "left" with you.

Obama says:

“I believed then -– and I believe now -– that we have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals. The status quo is not sustainable. Societies held together by fear and repression may offer the illusion of stability for a time, but they are built upon fault lines that will eventually tear asunder.”

So Obama is on the side of the “masses,” whatever the masses ”want.” But conservatives and liberals in power during past presidencies generally understood that authoritarian regimes and totalitarian movements pretended to represent the masses and through good organizing and rigid discipline pushed themselves to the head of the line.

Those who remember Nazism and Fascism and Communism, not to mention the dozens of Third World dictators who pretended to be the voice of the masses, know this. Such experiences and education did not shape Obama. Perhaps Bill Ayers could explain to him how front groups and revolutionary vanguards and the dictatorship of the proletariat work.

Didn't the Communists, Nazis, Fascists, Japanese militarists, Ba'thists, Nasserists, Fidelistas, the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, Tupamaros, Sandinistas, and all those other groups represent their people's aspirations? We could deny it but certainly at the time that seemed to be true.

So why isn't it true for Hamas, Fatah, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood, the dictator in Venezuela and the one in Syria?

Well, we know that this money and self-sacrifice to help the masses of people abroad usually just puts money into the Swiss bank accounts of the dictators and their supporters, the already fat elite. What percentage of U.S. aid money to the Palestinians actually benefited "ordinary" Palestinians? How much will the destruction of American oil-drilling and sending money to Brazil so they can produce oil going to benefit the "ordinary" Brazilian? It certainly won't benefit the ordinary American.

But to return to my main theme, for Obama the world is upside-down from the historic American political mainstream. Again, I stress, both liberal and conservative. For him, the friends of America are bad; the enemies of America are good. He must win over the enemies of America—and “the people” in other countries—by showing him that he appreciates that idea.

From this ideology, rather than some conspiracy or secret identity, he does much harm. And no matter how much experience he accumulates Obama isn’t going to learn any better.

In this world, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is a "reformer" while elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a reactionary who doesn't want peace.

To him, America has been on the wrong side. Now it will be on the “right” side. And, unfortunately, that side is the enemy side. The enemy of America and, ultimately, of the people it claims to represent.

This is not some minor mistake. It is his worldview.



Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

Arab World: Onward to Revolutionary Violence ? Or Let's Be Cautious?

By Barry Rubin

MEMRI has translated several Arab reactions to the “Nakba Day” marches on Israel’s border. In general, they said that this is the end of Israel—a line that they’ve been pursuing now for 63 years without much to show for it. Yet the appeal of this view has not notably diminished.

All the quotes in this article are taken from here.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) reaction is important because it shows once again—contrary to the claims of virtually all of the Western mass media and leaders—that this institution is totally uninterested in making peace with Israel. The article was written by Adli Sadeq who is an official of the PA Foreign Ministry.

He writes: "The revolutions in the Arab world – those that have [already] triumphed and those that are still underway – have put an end to bartering and haggling over the right of return."

In other words, because a few hundred demonstrators can approach Israel’s border and get shot, that means the PA should eternally demand that all Palestinians who so wish can go live in Israel (where they can assault that country from within). But given this position, there can never be any negotiated peace and won’t in reality be a Palestinian state.

So who’s intransigent? Israel is not going to agree to its own destruction and is strong enough so that it doesn’t have to do so. Forget about the peace process. Nothing is going to happen and that's because the Palestinian leadership isn't ready for peace. And that's because they think they will win a total victory without compromise. If you don't understand that, you understand nothing about the Middle East.

Hamas, which is now the PA’s partner, in the form of Deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmad Baher, said that the demonstrations indicate there will soon be a third intifada that will destroy Israel. More violence, more death, the destruction of all the PA infrastructure and higher living standards achieved over the last year. All of this will be sacrificed for the mirage of total victory.

Were there more sophisticated responses? Yes.

The Jordanian government newspapers did not praise the protests. The rulers remember how Jordan was dragged into the 1967 war, and then used as a base for Fatah to attack Israel with terrorism. That regime has few illusions about risking its stability and sovereignty by hosting new cross-border attacks or marches. But it also allowed op-eds calling for and predicting Israel’s destruction.

While the monarchy virtually views Israel as an ally on some levels, it also must voice enough radical demagoguery to survive and buy off public opinion. Jordan doesn’t so much use Israel as a scapegoat for profit as it does for survival. In other words, it lets people scream that Israel is about to be destroyed but knows that isn’t true and doesn’t want to be carried away on that destructive bandwagon.

Then there’s al-Sharq al-Awsat, the Arab world’s best newspaper, which is Saudi owned but also relatively liberal. Its editor, Tariq Alhomayed, blamed Syria for the demonstrations: “Damascus is ready to sacrifice every last Palestinian in order to…distract the world from its barbaric suppression of the peaceful protests on its own soil....”

Finally, there’s an intriguing editorial in al-Ahram, Egypt’s leading newspaper that shows at least some people there are getting scared that they will soon have a radical regime that will drag them into another disastrous war. Although perhaps they are just holdovers from the old regime who will soon be replaced by those with the proper revolutionary ideology.



The editorial says the demonstrations will hurt the Palestinian cause and Egyptian interests.

This is going to be the pragmatic argument in Egypt in the years to come. The question is whether it can overcome radical fervor. The radical nationalists might heed these arguments; army officers are more likely to do so, Islamists deaf to them.

The editorial asks:

"Is it in the national interest to provoke Israel at present, and to open up new fronts [of conflict]? Is this really the right time? Second, everyone knows that security within Egypt has not been fully restored, and that the government is making an effort to provide safety in the streets, cities, and squares by reorganizing the police force. Is it wise to diffuse the efforts of the security forces by [sending them] to additional areas? Isn't our current situation enough [for them to handle]? Third, what can these marches toward the border achieve? Does anyone imagine, for example, that we are capable of fighting Israel? Have we considered what the Israeli response [might be] to such mass [demonstrations]?....Fervor, outbursts of emotion…are necessary at times, but it is always necessary for wisdom to prevail. Perhaps we should think a little [before acting]."

This is the kind of approach Westerners would expect: Our country is a wreck, the economy is drowning. Do we really want to engage in a foreign conflict now? Makes sense. But extremist masses and leaders in the Arabic-speaking world have frequently ignored such appeals to reason because of their ideology and their desire to gain or hold onto power.

And you know what? The Arab Spring hasn't changed that. If anything, it is intensifying the syndrome. Why? Because the old state-sponsorship is being replaced by a truly popular, grassroots revival.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/. 

If The Obama Administration Actually Studied The Middle East Maybe It Wouldn't Be So Ignorant About It

By Barry Rubin 

A lot of people may think that I’m too tough on President Barack Obama and the New York Times. Yet every day they do something that—despite my high suspicions and low expectations—amazes me.

Consider a New York Times article, “Obama Seeks Reset in Arab World. First, the concept of “reset” was invented by the Obama Administration and has been used by it to describe the new policy about to be announced on the Middle East. One could not possibly think of an idea more unsuited to the region.

Reset implies starting over, forgetting everything that has happened before. Yet there is arguably no part of human society that is more obsessed with history than the Middle East. You have people ready to die and kill to realize a vision of society from more than twelve centuries ago, a reborn country that had been destroyed more than nineteen centuries ago, and the world’s longest-lasting continuing conflict that has been going full steam now for more than six decades. And those are only three examples.

Who thinks like this, that you can press a button and have history disappear? Americans, or at least a certain kind of American. The concept of reset is so remarkably ignorant and doomed to fail that it is shocking that the great geniuses who guide America haven’t thought of this problem. To my best knowledge not a single person has pointed out this fatal flaw though everyone in the Middle East innately understands it!

The Arab world isn’t erasing history so much as reliving it, heading back to the 1950s and 1960s, but with revolutionary Islamism replacing Arab nationalism. And that’s even worse.

Then there is this shocking quote from the same article: 

"Obama has ordered staff members to study transitions in 50 to 60 countries to find precedents for those under way in Tunisia and Egypt. They have found that Egypt is analogous to South Korea, the Philippines and Chile, while a revolution in Syria might end up looking like Romania's." 

I’m not a big fan of this type of political science, which never produces useful results. But leaving that aside, doesn’t anyone notice a few details? Revolutionary Islamism doesn’t really exist as a national factor in those countries. Neither does radical Arab nationalism. The three countries mentioned as being like Egypt are in fact dominated by a basic pragmatic approach, an absence of dominating ideology, a strong social flexibility.

No matter how many degrees he might have anyone who would use such a method as a guide to policymaking on a life-and-death issue is a fool. (Oops! There goes my hope of a job in the Obama Administration!) 

Now, in about 400 words and taking about three minutes of your time I have explained why the current policy plans of this U.S. government are doomed. Why not instead study Egyptian history and society, the Muslim Brotherhood, and things like that? 

Yet I suspect there is one more hidden factor here. The American government has this thing called the State Department and sections of the Defense Department that do this kind of thing. There are people who have been following Arab politics and ideology and the military for decades. Why not call on them for their analysis?

I think that Obama is instead turning to his clueless National Security Council staffers (the ones who wanted Husni Mubarak overthrown in 24 hours) and left-wing academics or think-tanks, and a couple of pundits (the names Zakaria and Friedman have in fact been mentioned) instead. The result is going to be something of a combination of hilariously stupid and the kind of policy that ends up setting off wars and getting tens of thousands of people killed.

But then if your advisors deny that the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical Islamist anti-American group favoring genocide against Jews—indeed argue it is sort of secular—what can one expect? If the courtiers keep calling you the smartest president in all of history how are you going to correct your errors? 

Now if one could only reset Obama’s worldview….

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/us/politics/12prexy.html?_r=1

The West’s Foreign Policy Theme—Like Me Before You Kill Me—Applied to Israel

By Barry Rubin

Recently, it was revealed that President Barack Obama had consulted Tom Friedman in formulating his Middle East policy. Here’s an example of where disastrous policy comes from. 

Friedman writes:

“Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel is always wondering why his nation is losing support and what the world expects of a tiny country surrounded by implacable foes. I can’t speak for the world, but I can speak for myself. I have no idea whether Israel has a Palestinian or Syrian partner for a secure peace that Israel can live with. But I know this: With a more democratic and populist Arab world in Israel’s future, and with Israel facing the prospect of having a minority of Jews permanently ruling over a majority of Arabs — between Israel and the West Bank, which could lead to Israel being equated with apartheid South Africa all over the world — Israel needs to use every ounce of its creativity to explore ways to securely cede the West Bank to a Palestinian state.”

By the way, the picture of “a minority of Jews permanently ruling over a majority of Arabs” has not been accurate since 1994, that’s 17 years ago. The Palestinian Authority rules over the West Bank Arabs. Hamas, which has now merged with the Palestinian Authority, rules in the Gaza Strip. The only non-citizen Arabs that “Jews” are ruling over are those in east Jerusalem, according to an agreement that Israel made with the PLO.

So a big part of Israel's difficulty is that people like Friedman are perpetuating anti-Israel lies instead of attacking them.

In other words, if your enemies lie about you does that mean that you must take huge risks? There’s a clever bumper sticker that says: Never apologize. Your enemies don’t care and your friends don’t need it.

But leaving all of that aside, let’s start with Friedman’s opening sentence. I certainly don’t speak for Netanyahu and didn’t vote for him, but I really doubt he’s wondering why these things are happening. He knows the reasons, as do most Israelis, even those critical of his policy:

The greater international weight of the Arab world; oil money; well-intentioned but ill-placed sympathy for an apparent underdog; aspects of Islam rejecting ever accepting a Jewish state; Arab nationalist rejection of a Jewish state; a clever anti-Israel propaganda campaign; Western leftist sympathy for its enemies; the rejection of Zionism by some Jews; the honest belief that if you resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict by Israeli concessions the whole world will be stable and terrorism will disappear; antisemitism; and more.

There’s no mystery here. 

But there is a problem. If you equate that hostility to one cause and one cause only: Israel is “permanently ruling” over a majority of Arabs. That’s it. Solve that problem and everything else will fall into place.

Yet what if you know that giving up the West Bank will not solve every problem—a viewpoint almost never aired in the Western mass media and universities nowadays? Then Friedman’s concept and that of most Western policies immediately collapses. 

Israel has conducted extensive experiments with this concept, experiments that have cost about the same number of Israeli lives as September 11 took American lives. Since the population of the United States is approximately 40 times that of Israel you can calculate the impact of those costs.

After all, Israel already acted “to securely cede” (the split infinitive is Friedman’s) the Sinai to Egypt, with the result that this peace treaty is about to be abrogated. It tried to “securely cede” the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, getting rockets and mortars and cross-border attacks in return. It also sought “to securely cede” southern Lebanon and got rockets and cross-border attacks. To see what would happen it acted “to securely cede” much of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority and then received in return incitement to violence, terrorist attacks, and intransigence. 

Might there be a pattern here? 

Yes, it would be better to have a stable, two-state solution that ended the conflict and made Israel’s neighbors friendly. But here’s where the gap is between Israel and much of the Western political elites today:

We tried it and it didn’t work.

That is not a “right-wing” statement. It is an Israeli consensus statement. And even if Israel tries and tries again, this doesn’t mean that people don’t know that.

Now, there are people in the Middle East—millions of people—who openly make my point every day. These include the governments of Iran, Syria, Turkey, and the Gaza Strip, as well as probably Egypt’s next government and those running Lebanon. Islamists openly proclaim that no matter how much territory Israel cedes they won’t be satisfied until it has ceded everything and gone out of existence altogether.

What Friedman calls “a more democratic and populist Arab world” means a more radical and Islamist Arab world. In fact, the radicals will remain radicals (Syria, Iran) while the formerly moderate become more extremist (Egypt). Why, then, should Israel make dangerous concessions when these will be taken advantage of to attack it more effectively? Why give things to people who want to kill you no matter what you do?

But there’s one point that is so overwhelming in Friedman’s piece, so symptomatic of everything wrong with the Western vision of Israel, the Middle East, and even the entire world (and especially with the Obama Administration’s policy), that it should resound with everyone who reads that article:

Friedman is telling us that a good public relations’ image is more important than material security. Israel will survive an infinite number of nasty articles or sneering professors without great difficulty. It would not survive concessions that make Israel weak and vulnerable, more than ever at a time when—let’s face it—American and European guarantees are worthless. 

Golda Meir already dealt with Friedman’s idea decades ago: Better a bad press than a good epitaph.

That’s a principle which North America and European countries should think about adopting as their motto. 

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center ishttp://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

A Brief Guide to the Real Reasons Why 1948 Was a Palestinian Arab and Arab Disaster

By Barry Rubin

In 1947 the UN voted to partition the British mandate of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The Jews accepted partition into two states; the Arabs rejected it.

The international community offered to make Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian Arabs' leader, head of a state despite the fact that he and his closest colleagues were the subject of a 1938 British arrest warrant for terrorist activities (not mythical but for killing lots of people), and had spent World War Two in Berlin doing pro-Nazi propaganda, recruiting for SS units, and planning a Holocaust of Jews in the Middle East.

But al-Husseini rejected partition and so did all of the Arab states. While Jordan wanted to make a deal and Egypt’s government wasn’t enthusiastic, they all had to go along with al-Husseini’s intransigence, their hysterical public opinion, and the other Arab states' pressure. The Arab League's leader, a Nazi agent during World War Two, bragged that the Jews would be massacred. The Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with the Nazis during the war and were subsidized by them before the war, sent volunteers to fight the Jews.

And so a Palestinian Arab army, whose three chief commanders had all fought for the Nazis during World War Two, went to war against the Jews using Nazi-supplied weapons (provided for the Palestinian Arab revolt in 1939 and for an Egyptian revolt that never happened in 1942). They lost.

Then the armies of the Arab states invaded Israel. They largely lost, though the Egyptian held onto the Gaza area while the Jordanians took east Jerusalem and what became known as the West Bank. Egypt ran Gaza; Jordan annexed the West Bank.

Everything that happened afterward was due to Arab decisions to reject both a two-state solution and Israel’s creation.

That’s the bottom line. So the disaster was due first and foremost to the Palestinian Arab leadership and secondly to the Arab states and publics.

Dealing with the “nakba” would then require that the Palestinian Arabs and the Arabic-speaking world generally would recognize that the disaster resulted from their refusal to accept Israel’s existence and to seek a genuine, compromise two-state solution.

But, instead, in the name of the 1948 disaster they are repeating the same policies that brought it about! Indeed, they are the same policies that led to the self-inflicted disasters of 1967, 2000, and others since then.

For example, as part of the preparations for the commemoration of the 1948 disaster, Palestinian Authority television played repeatedly a music video entitled "On the Way to Jerusalem" The main lines are:

"Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, and Nazareth are ours.

[ I ], Muhammad, sing about the Galilee and the Golan (Heights).
Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Nazareth are ours."

This is precisely the one-state, wipe-Israel-off-the-map that brought on them the disaster of 1948, disaster every year since then, and more disaster into the forseeable future. Sixty-four years (counting from 1947) of failed policy has not brought wisdom.

Almost every event--Egypt's revolution, demonstrators trying to cross Israel's border, a terrorist attack, Western sympathy, and so on--is interpreted as proving that Israel's destruction is possible and so additional decades should be spent in diplomatic intransigence and the incitement of violence rather than some constructive effort. That's one reason, by the way, why the Palestinians always ultimately lose.

This has also been going on so long that much of the West has forgotten the roots and ongoing causes of this conflict, Palestinian suffering, Israeli suffering, and the terrorist violence and defamation of Israel.

Note: The use of the words “Nazi collaborator” and other mentions of pro-Nazi activities in this article are not name-calling but based on German and U.S. intelligence materials. These points will be fully and in detail documented in the forthcoming book by myself and Wolfgang Schwanitz, to be published by Yale University Press next year.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.