If the early 20th century was
about the East trying to join what it couldn’t lick, the early 21st may
be about the East trying to lick what it hasn’t been able to join.
By George Jonas
And how is the Arab Spring? Well,
there’s bad news, and good news. The bad news is that since the
beginning of the phenomenon that has been discussed more and understood
less than any in recent years, hostility to Israel in the region has
only increased. The good news is that while the appetite to harm the
Jewish state and its inhabitants has grown in the Arab/Muslim world
since the fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia launched what was
supposed to be the region’s democratic renewal, the capacity to do so
has diminished.
An increase in hostility was predictable. Hatred against Israel, kept
on a low boil, is the organizing principle of the Middle East. It’s the
region’s main fuel of governance; often its only fuel. Some ruling
regimes — kings, dictators, whatever — may have oil wells and sandy
beaches, but other than hating Israel (and looking after their families
and tribes) they have few if any ideas. If they do, chances are it’s to
hate some other group in addition to Israel.
In the Middle East a country’s national purpose often amounts to
little more than a list of its enemies. A feeling of being ill-done by
dominates the consciousness of groups and individuals. Since it’s a
self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s not necessarily baseless: The easiest way
to have an enemy is to be one.
The centrality of hatred to the culture is remarkable. The Cartesian
idea is “I hate, therefore I am.” Self-righteousness is overwhelming:
each desire thwarted becomes an example of justice denied. It’s not a
pretty place, but millions call it home.
In many ways, Israel is a godsend to the one-trick ponies who rule
the region. Their culture defines “ruling” as inoculating your own sect
or tribe against all others, including the ones that form your own
country. Many Middle East nations — Iraq, Syria, Libya, to name three —
are just temporarily halted civil wars. They’re truces rather than
countries. Canada may be “two solitudes,” but it isn’t an uneasy truce
between French and English Canadians. Iraq is, between Shia and Sunni
Muslims.
In such an ambiance, nothing is handier than an all-purpose enemy, just out of reach, close enough to seem a realistic threat but too far to be one. Tyrants can govern by whipping up enough popular sentiment against the Jewish state to give their regimes an apparent national purpose and distract people’s attention from domestic woes, then relax and spend some money in the capitals of Europe.
The key is a low boil, though. If the anti-Israeli sentiment boils
over, causing riots against the government for being too soft on the
Zionists, or foolish attempts to attack Haifa with rockets, which in
turn invites retaliation, the people’s hatred of Israel becomes a
headache for the very rulers who instigated it.
“Yeah, well, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch,” somebody might
say, “I’ll lose no sleep over it.” He should, though, because it’s like
pulling a thread from a piece of fabric. Things can unravel in an
instant.
Tyranny, Egyptian-style, under Hosni Mubarak or Libyan-style, under
Muammar Gaddafi, often manifested itself in dictatorial governments
balancing on a tightrope, trying to maintain a fragile peace with Israel
against their own bellicose people, trying to counteract the effects of
the sentiments they themselves instigated. When they couldn’t, the
forces they helped conjure up turned against them. If lucky, they died
in a hail of bullets on the reviewing stand like Anwar Sadat; if not,
bludgeoned like a cornered rat in a culvert, in the manner of Gaddafi.
It’s a fate Bashar al-Assad has been trying to avoid, which is hardly
surprising.
Assad “has threatened to rain missiles down on Tel Aviv should NATO try to dislodge him,” as Michael Koplow put it in the National Interest,
but in fact Syria’s tyrant has been raining missiles (and if not
missiles, then shells and bullets) on his own towns and villages. No
wonder, for that’s where his enemies live — his actual enemies, as
opposed to his mythical ones. It’s his fellow Syrians who want to trap
him in a culvert and drown him, preferably along with his entire tribe.
Israel has no interest in touching him with a 10-foot pole, especially
as long as he’s keeping Syria’s armed forces and rebels thinning each
other’s ranks.
We won’t understand much about the Arab Spring as long as we persist
in looking at it through Western eyes. We see popular uprisings against
dictatorships as moves in the direction of Western-style democracy. If
they happened here, they probably would be. Where they’re actually
happening they’re taking their societies in the opposite direction.
The Arab Spring is an attempt to return the region to its roots. It’s
not to Westernize the Middle East and make it more democratic; it’s to
Easternize it and make it more Islamic. If the early 20th century was
about the East trying to join what it couldn’t lick, the early 21st may
be about the East trying to lick what it hasn’t been able to join.
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