Maurice found this and sends it on for us to share.
Upheaval in the Middle East. The West is panic stricken. Its own
political systems (the result of hundreds of years of slow evolution)
lead it to believe that the will of the people is paramount. So the mob
takes over. The West supports what it thinks is democratic change but
in fact after a false dawn of moderation, gets a crueler, nastier
regime, more autocratic regime which poses a far bigger threat to world
peace. For its pains, or incompetence, the West is vilified and
rejected.
Beware of what you wish for. This happened thirty years ago in Shia
Iran. It happened with Hamas in Gaza. It happened with Hezbollah in
Lebanon. It is happening again now in Egypt. I have no doubt that out
of the turmoil it will be the Muslim Brotherhood that will eventually
emerge as the government and the first thing it will do will break off
diplomatic relations and repudiate the peace treaty with Israel. The
same may happen in Jordan next. At best Egypt will go the way of
Turkey; at worst, Iran.
Autocrats who lose the goodwill of the major part of their citizens are
doomed eventually. But what do you get instead? It is often said that
the Arab world is not amenable to democracy. The “Arab Street” is a
primitive, prejudiced mob, lusting for revenge, not peace. Perhaps, but
I wonder if what fuels this is just desperation. It seems to me there
is a very powerful and disturbing religious undercurrent. In many
situations religion often loses its domination when things go well;
materialism wins. But when economic life gets tough, the fanatics offer
the only hope–if not here and now then later on. Mubarak and the rest
of them have failed in their corruption and their inability to improve
the lot of the majority of their people. Religion is the obvious answer.
When nasty, corrupt strongmen are deposed on a wave of popular
opposition, they are always replaced, perhaps not immediately but soon,
by fanatical fundamentalist, clerically dominated absolutists like
Hezbollah, Hamas–the sort of people who would rather shoot up and then
demolish a Western-funded leisure center in Gaza than allow young men
and women to have fun together. Yet many in the West would rather pat
themselves on the back and feel good about supporting fanaticism, so
long as it is in someone else’s back yard.
But Islamic fundamentalism is not only a result of poverty,
disillusionment, and political oppression. The Wahhabis spread their
fanaticism from wealth and opulence in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps it is Arab
inferiority, because it once stood proud powerful but now has been
overtaken by others and all it has left is the wealth that nature
placed underneath its backsides rather than its once vaunted
intellectual creativity.
Islam was not always repressive. Under the Umayyads who originated in
Damascus a thousand years ago, it spread enlightenment, tolerance, and
civilization into the barbaric remains of much of the old Roman Empire.
The Abbasids in Baghdad and the Safavids presided over one of the
greatest eras of intellectual and poetic culture in human history. The
Crusaders were a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs in comparison to the
tolerance, dignity, and sensitivity of Saladin. The Ottomans under
Suleiman the Magnificent looked down on the primitive intolerance of
the Christian West and welcomed the Jews it expelled.
It is the mix of religion and social and political circumstances that
is the powder keg. All religions have good humanitarian sides to them,
but they also all have jingoistic, exclusionary, dark depths too.
Religion itself is not necessarily opposed to democracy. There are
plenty of examples throughout Jewish history and texts where the will
of the populace has to be and was taken into consideration, and even
monarchs being subject to constitutions.
Look at non- religious examples. Initially the West was deluded into
believing that after the Soviet Union collapsed Russia could become a
truly democratic state. In fact it has turned into a corrupt
kleptocracy, the largest and most powerful mafia state in the world,
where opponents of the regime are murdered or jailed, and justice is
bought by the ruling powers and the corrupt new “upper classes”.
Is China such a wonderful alternative? It might be dynamic materially
and get the trains to run on time. But it supports violent and
repressive petty dictators from North Korea, Myanmar, to Zimbabwe. It
suppresses its citizens’ freedom of thought and speech. It still
venerates Mao, responsible for more deaths than any other figure in
human history, a sexually corrupt, evil man. Are these examples we want
to see spread?
All political systems go through upheavals and have their bloody
consequences. The West is wrong to interfere. As Edward Lutwak has
often reiterated, whenever Western powers intervene in conflicts and
political situations not their own, they inevitably prolong the agony.
Besides, supporting dictatorships elsewhere in the Arab world as the
West does, its moral authority is nil. It might take a hundred years
before the Arab world learns from its own mistakes, but eventually they
will realize that neither violence , oppression nor fanaticism are the
way to succeed.
In the meantime, the frightening fact is that Israel is now faced with
the possibility of ideological enemies on all sides, ones that will
call for blood. And I fear the appeasing West is blind. I am not sure
that if Israel were invaded Obama’s USA would come to its aid the way
Nixon did. I fear the crazy world might cut the ground from underneath
it.
You know by now I detest most of Israeli politics. I cannot stand
fundamentalism of any brand and I want to see state and religion as far
apart as possible. But if Israel is a mess, it is still a far more
civilized place to live and thrive in than Hamasland or Ayatollah Hell.
That’s why Israel’s Muslims, for all their disadvantages, would still
rather stay put. For all its faults, Israel is a much better place for
the ordinary citizen to live in than its Islamic neighbors.
But for some reason the world prefers the narrative of violent
fundamentalism to imperfect democracy. If logic won’t help perhaps a
little more fundamentalism might help them see the light of day! The
agony of the Egyptians is, I am afraid, going to be prolonged and it
won’t be the Children of Israel’s fault.