One of the U.S. organizations that’s been targeted, the International Republican Institute, released a statement on Sunday arguing that these arrests represent a “politically motivated effort to squash Egypt’s growing civil society, orchestrated through the courts, in part by Mubarak-era holdovers.” Perhaps the organization, headed by Sam LaHood, son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and one of the Americans set to be prosecuted, put out this statement to give the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces a chance to blame the incident on Egypt’s bogeyman.

But the truth is that this crisis has nothing to do with civil society or the work that American pro-democracy groups do in the new Egypt. Had American hikers been available for kidnapping, they’d have served just as well as LaHood and the 18 others. No, this is simple extortion—and the Egyptian government expects to be paid.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has already dubbed this the “Obama Hostage Crisis.” He’s not too far off. What Ayatollah Khomeini said about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis applies equally well here: America cannot do a damn thing.

By blaming the situation on “Mubarak-era holdovers,” the International Republican Institute seems to be suggesting that this incident does not really reflect the new Egypt. Instead, it must be the old regime that is responsible for threatening Americans. Only Mubarak’s cronies could want to hold back Egyptian democracy.

The reality is rather different. A December Gallup poll showed that 71 percent of Egyptians oppose U.S. economic aid of any sort, and that 74 percent oppose “direct U.S. aid to Egyptian civil society organizations.” While this doesn’t mean the majority of Egyptians support threatening American democracy activists with prison time, such behavior on the part of the country’s ruling authorities certainly reflects popular opinion—and that’s to say nothing of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, who combined won more than two-thirds of parliament in recent elections. Given their history of resistance to the West and their perception of the United States as an imperial power, it’s safe to assume that these groups aren’t much interested in U.S. involvement in Egypt’s new political arena.

It’s worth noting how these December poll numbers track in parallel to last March’s constitutional referendum. That vote gave the Egyptian electorate a choice: Either vote on a few amendments to the 1971 constitution and push ahead to elections, or write a new constitution, a process that would delay elections. The army and the Islamists favored the first, while the revolutionaries who brought down Mubarak opted for the second, since it would give them a chance to organize coherent political entities capable of winning seats in parliament. Ultimately, three-quarters of the voters sided with the army and the Islamists. Only one quarter voted with the revolutionaries—presumably the same quarter of Egypt’s population that polled in favor of continued U.S. aid to civil society, support that gave rise to the revolution itself.

The most curious question is this: If so many Egyptians are against U.S. aid money to Egyptian civil society, how did organizations like the International Republican Institute and its counterpart, the National Democratic Institute, manage to do their work for so long? If they are charged with operating without a license, but had been working in Egypt regardless for many years before the arrests, how did they get away with it? Because Hosni Mubarak let them.

The man who now lies in a hospital bed in Sharm el-Sheikh under house arrest and is typically blamed for everything that has gone wrong in Egypt over the last 30 years is the same man who was at the helm as Egyptian civil society grew. The revolutionaries who toppled the Egyptian president arose under him. The middle-class, ostensibly liberal-minded, and Western-oriented demonstrators who protested in favor of democracy were drawn from the nonprofit organizations, independent media outlets, and private-sector enterprises that had all come about under Mubarak.

These weren’t real reforms, runs the argument against Mubarak. He didn’t go nearly far enough. It’s true. Forty percent of Egypt’s population still lives on less than $2 a day, and Mubarak’s security services were still torturing and murdering innocent Egyptians, like Khaled Said, whose June 2010 death helped inspire the January revolution.

The tragedy is that the choice the revolution revealed was never between dictatorship and democracy. Rather it was between a pro-American ruler who kept his country out of war and allowed moderate, halting reforms, and whatever order would follow Mubarak. Because the transition into the post-Mubarak era was not managed, neither by Mubarak nor the White House, the post-Mubarak order is effectively a repudiation of everything that Mubarak stood for.

Continue reading: U.S. aid in jeopardy?

As Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliament—the first whose composition was actually determined by something resembling free and fair elections—sat this week and Egypt’s military council softened the emergency law, there seem to be two fault lines at risk of causing an earthquake or, alternatively, of peacefully settling in and remaining stable. And, unsurprisingly, the Muslim Brotherhood—the oldest Islamist movement, Egypt’s oldest political party, and the group that received nearly a majority in the new parliament—lies at the center of both of them.

The first tension is between the Brotherhood, which though explicitly Islamist is comparatively moderate and ran primarily on an economic platform, and the more conservative religious parties, such as the Salafist Nour Party, which won a full quarter of the seats (in addition to the 47 percent garnered by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party). A great Washington Post write-up quotes a Cairo businessman: “A lot of people don’t appreciate how conservative the Brotherhood is, and by that I mean cautious as well as pious.” Essentially, and as always: It’s the economy, stupid! (Especially since the economy is in seriously bad shape.) Egypt’s is reeling, and the Brotherhod, whose semi-official social services were providing a semblance of a welfare state for some even under Mubarak, has a mandate less to impose Sharia than to fix the economy. And as the party in charge of parliament, complete with the speakership, it will be held responsible. But a good economy means, say, maintaining robust trade with Israel, to say nothing of keeping the peace with its northern, prosperous, and Jewish neighbor. How will the Salafists respond? And what of some ultra-religious lawmakers who added to the oath of office the line “As long as God’s law is not violated”? Power means needing to respond to such provocations. What will the Brotherhood do?

The other divide is between the parliament and the ruling military council, which is still the ultimate authority. Which is to say, it’s a battle between two old adversaries: the Brotherhood, now in control of parliament, and Mubarak’s generals, who had long banned the party and who now, with precious few exceptions (chiefly Omar Suleiman and Mubarak himself), are the people still in charge. Before parliament was sat, the Brotherhood was sounding hawkish notes, signaling it would not enable the army to continue dictating how the country is run. But the ruler, Field Marshal Tantawi, may have listened: He just pledged to restrict extrajudicial crackdowns to cases of genuine “thuggery”—which could include anything he defines, of course, but this was seen as a sign of increased leniency. (Besides the Brotherhood, he may have been responding to President Obama, who last week warned him about his crackdowns on pro-democracy non-governmental organizations.) And yesterday, reports emerged that the Brotherhood and the military are actually bargaining amicably and slowly coming to compromises on a presidential-parliamentary system, freedom of speech, and a state no less secular than the current one.

The two tensions are not unrelated, of course. If the Brotherhood gives too much to the military, it will lose legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, who will turn their gaze toward the more radical parties. If it refuses to compromise with the military on Islamic law, say, or Israel, then the military may never give up its power, and unstable pseudo-democracy will continue, at risk of blowing up at any moment. Robert F. Worth summed it up: “It may make Cairo’s liberals wince, but the fact remains that only the Islamists have the power to face down Egypt’s military and deliver a more democratic government. And if they fail to do so, they may face a rebellion within their own ranks.”

Which is why most prognostication has accepted that Egypt’s democracy will be an Islamist democracy, and we should accept this. Olivier Roy, the esteemed French scholar of political Islam, wrote over the weekend that the Brotherhood and 2012 Egypt are a perfect match: “Their conservative agenda fits a conservative society, which may welcome democracy but did not turn liberal.” He added, “They have neither military forces nor oil wealth to bypass the people: They have to negotiate and deliver. Their electorate wants stability and peace, not revolution.” Robert Satloff and Eric Trager have the model of a more pessimistic take, and if they are not nearly as hopeful as Roy (they believe, for example, that the peace with Israel is in jeopardy), their prescription for U.S. policy is identical: Insist on regional stability, political pluralism, and minority rights; in Roy’s words, “the issue is institutionalizing democracy, not promoting liberal policies. Democracy could take hold only if it is based in well-established values. Liberalism does not precede democracy.”

It seems like Turkey, governed by a democratically elected, moderate yet undeniably Islamist political party (the dangerously charismatic Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP), is the model we should be hoping for, short- to medium-term. Actually, this is what people generally said a year ago, when Mubarak regime was being overthrown, and this week columnist Jackson Diehl made the case: “The reality is that, like it or not, ‘Islamist-oriented’ governments are about to become the new normal in a region dominated for decades by secular autocrats and pro-American generals,” he argued. Hamas, Hezbollah, and their ilk cannot be recognized as legitimate, he continued;

others, like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, are likely to weave through an ambiguous middle ground, trying to balance the need for Western investment and the secular aspirations of their populations with their religious ideology. The right way to respond to them is to be nimble: tolerate some turbulence, roll with some punches, push back against others and keep pressing leaders to stick to democratic principles.

And, I’d add, insist on certain regional red lines: And it’s worth noting that while Erdogan shamelessly demagogues against Israel, he hasn’t really provoked it since the 2010 flotilla (despite plenty of opportunities) and meanwhile has fully joined Western pressure against Syria’s regime and even agreed to participate in an embargo of Iranian oil. Really, it could be a whole lot worse.

Chaotic Start to Egypt’s First Democratically Elected Parliament [NYT]
Egypt Military Council Partly Curbs State of Emergency Law [NYT]
Final Results Confirm Islamists Winners in Egypt’s Elections [WP]
Egypt’s Human Bellwether [NYT Magazine]
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Adopting Caution on Economic Matters [WP]
Egypt’s Brotherhood Warns Military [WSJ]
In Egypt, Signs of Accord Between Military Council and Islamists [NYT]
A New Generation of Political Islamists Steps Forward [WP]
How the U.S. Should Handle the Islamist Rise in Egypt [WSJ]
Turkey’s Government Is the New Normal in the Middle East [WP]

• In their closing arguments, Egyptian prosecutors argued that former president Hosni Mubarak should face the death penalty. [NYT]

• The law firm of Milbank Tweed incorrectly stated in a press release that new partner Atara Miller was the only Orthodox Jewish woman partner at a Wall Street law firm. That’s not even a little true, it turns out. Regardless, you go, girl. [Above the Law]

• Natalie Portman became a vegan after reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Eating Animals. Now, she might be making a documentary based on the book. [Huffington Post]

• In other Black Swan news, Mila Kunis is the new face of Miss Dior Handbags. Take that, John Galliano. [LA Times]

• Five minutes with Maurice Sendak. [Tate Modern]

For this, as the New York Times’ Ethan Bronner explains, is really all about Jordan. King Abdullah II is on his fourth prime minister since the Arab Spring began, because he faces the dual threats of a native Islamist movement (kin to Hamas and Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood) and the majority of his subjects who are Palestinian (he is Hashemite). (Nicolas Pelham published an excellent primer on Abdullah II’s situation last month.) The king wants to be seen as central and important now that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who usually hosted such talks, is out of the picture; wants to empower the more moderate P.A. as compared to Hamas, whose success threatens him both insofar as it emboldens his homegrown Islamist movement and as it increases the chance of a Hamas-run West Bank sharing 60 miles of Jordan’s border; and wishes to advance a Palestinian state in the territories lest the notion that majority-Palestinian Jordan absorb all the Palestinians become more enticing.

So that’s Jordan. You could argue that Israel faces incentives to make this meeting lead to talks, on the theory that a re-elected President Obama will push it as never before, but more likely Prime Minister Netanyahu will wait to see if Obama is re-elected before considering new initiatives. For the same reason, the U.S. is likely to make small statements and take few new risks. The P.A. typically looks for big concessions—the thinking is that these would persuade the Palestinian people that its moderate path is more effective than Hamas’. But right now, the P.A. is also pursuing a more confrontational path, both by trying to establish a unity government with Hamas and, reportedly, going to the U.N. Security Council with complaints about Israeli settlements (it did this last year, too, and a resolution was vetoed by the U.S., as one certainly would be again) and referring Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza to the International Criminal Court. In fact, the P.A. had better not come away with anything big, as its rival and potential partner, Hamas, has called for a boycott of the talks. And Hamas has its own patrons: not only a prospective future democratically elected Egyptian government, which would have a heavy Muslim Brotherhood element, but also Prime Minister Erdogan’s Turkey, which over the weekend hosted the head of Hamas’ government in Gaza, who was able to tour the Mavi Marmara.

So, to sum up: all of the relevant players are hemmed in by their own domestic constituencies in ways that all but guarantee no real results and a continuation of the status quo. It must be the new year!

Palestinians and Israelis Will Talk This Week [NYT]
Erekat: Peace Talks Require Settlement Halt [Haaretz/Forward]
Palestinians Plan Diplomatic Steps to Put Israel Under ‘International Siege’ [Haaretz]
Erdogan to Haniyeh: Talks Must Include Hamas [Ynet]
Related: Jordan Starts to Shake [NY Books]
Earlier: Reconciliation 2.0

We are young, liberal Egyptian activists who have dedicated our lives to bettering our country. But from the moment in January the crowds took over Tahrir Square calling for President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, we urged observers, particularly Western idealists already hailing the triumph of the new Egypt, to be cautious. We reminded them of Edmund Burke’s truism: Bringing down a tyrant is far, far easier than forming a free government.

It would be difficult to form such a government, we reasoned, in a society where the elite, with near unanimity, had just explained a series shark attacks in the Sinai as part of a Mossad-coordinated ploy to damage tourism. A free government must be based on universal rights, not least the right to freedom of conscience for all its citizens, and yet a Pew poll from December 2010 showed that 84 percent of the sampled Egyptian Muslims endorsed the death penalty as the appropriate punishment for Muslim apostates. For an entire country to change in one month, we argued throughout February, you need nothing short of magic.

Pessimists, naysayers, wet blankets, Mubarak cronies, apologists for the regime—we were called all these names, despite the fact that we’ve spent our adult lives within the opposition. Here was a new generation armed with iPhones and Twitter accounts that would ensure the success of liberal democracy in the region’s largest state, the enthusiasts promised. When Mubarak finally bowed to the pressure of the protesters in the streets, commentators wrote fairy-tale endings to the Egypt story, rushing off to cover the next blossoming flower of the Arab Spring. In the months that followed, no matter how far the Egyptian economy plummeted, how badly the security situation on the border with Israel deteriorated, or how many were killed in criminal, sectarian, or political violence, the narrative was maintained: Though painful, these were the necessary labor pangs of democracy.

Last week, the moment of truth finally came—or so we hope—with the results of the first phase of parliamentary elections. The Islamist parties won big: 40 percent of the electorate voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, and another 25 percent went for the Salafists, hard-line Islamists. Though forced by law to nominate at least one woman on their party lists, the Salafists had the photos of their female candidates replaced by a pictures of flowers in campaign ads, because they believe a woman’s face should not be shown publicly. The closest runner-up was the self-styled “liberal” Egyptian Bloc, which got 15 percent of the vote only because it secured the support of the Coptic minority. (The bloc’s founder is a famous Christian businessman.) The Islamist parties will likely win even bigger in the next two phases of the election, scheduled to take place in the coming few weeks, because these votes will be held almost entirely in the countryside, where political Islam dominates. (The first phase also included urban districts, where non-Islamists perform better.)

***

For us, nothing is more painful than being correct. Our vindication comes at the price of our country’s potential collapse into Islamist totalitarianism, or, even worse, total chaos. We desperately need a combination of sobriety, urgency, and prudence to prevent that from happening.

We must begin by deconstructing the Tahrir mythology. Namely: The Mubarak regime was pure evil; that it was brought down by “liberal” nonviolent activists; and that the Islamists had nothing to do with the revolution and emerged—suddenly—only to hijack it.

The Mubarak regime was no liberal democracy, but it also wasn’t the Gulag. It was an aging authoritarian regime that had opted for a path of economic reform when Ahmed Nazif took over as prime minister in 2004, but miserably failed to cope with the changes economic reform had on the political level. Moderately freer markets meant more media, which meant that while the political repression and corruption of the regime were less heinous than in the past, they were getting more exposure than ever. This, along with Mubarak’s senility and nepotism, created an ever-increasing sense of outrage among Egypt’s growing middle class.

While living standards were improving substantially, Egyptians not only had higher expectations of the government, but they also were falling prey to an obsessed belief that corruption is the root of all evil. Corruption has always been present in the modern Egyptian state, as anyone who has read Tawfik El Hakim’s 1932 novel The Diary of a Prosecutor Among Peasants knows. But with the help of many of the country’s journalists, this obsession was translated into outright hostility to free-market policies. Terms like “businessman” or “privatization” became almost libelous. This marked the rise of a Jacobin discourse on “social justice” (adala Igtima’iya), creating a lot of buzz around labor movements and Occupy Wall Street-type leftist groups. It escaped Western observers that in a country with the lowest price of bread in the world—the result of enormous government subsidies—the loudest chant in Tahrir Square was “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice.”

The early Tahrir Square crowd was comprised of leftists and various other groups that were in it for different reasons. Consider, for example, the fanatic soccer fans known as the Ultras. Known for engaging in fights with security forces after every Egyptian soccer game, the Ultras would not waste a chance to get back at the police in a much less controlled environment than the Stadium. At Tahrir, they had a major role in attacking the police and destroying the police stations. In the revolution’s aftermath, the Ultras led the mob in the rampage of the Israeli Embassy.

Other than the fact that a few dozen human-rights activists were present in Tahrir, there was nothing remotely liberal about the uprising. But that didn’t stop Western journalists from applying the term: Every Egyptian male without a beard was a John Stuart Mill, every female without a veil a Mary Wollstonecraft. Suddenly, Trotskyites were liberals, and hooligans nonviolent protesters.

The idea that there were no Islamists involved in the revolution is pure nonsense. The Muslim Brotherhood officially declared its decision to join the protests on Jan. 23, and its members were instrumental in the success of the revolution in the subsequent days and weeks. What’s more, over the past decade Islamist groups, particularly the Salafists, have been taking advantage of Egypt’s increasing media and Internet freedom to further influence the political discussion. Wondering where the all these Salafists came from? Go to YouTube, type in any possible Arabic term, from financial investment to marriage counseling, and see the sheer number of results that show a Salafist leader preaching, most often in a clip from the religious satellite channel. The message is always the same: A return to a purer form of Islam guarantees salvation in this life and the next.

These two tendencies—the Jacobin and the Islamist—are not mutually exclusive in Egypt. The average Egyptian easily bought into both arguments, believing that the reason for all their ills was the Mubarak regime’s economic program, and that the only solution was a return to the golden age of Islam. Though institutionally immunized against Islamism through a strict system of surveillance, the military completely internalized the popular anti-capitalist discourse, hence its ultimate decision to offer its services to the revolutionaries, abandoning Mubarak in his time of need.

Into that mix comes anti-Semitism. Egyptian anti-Semitism is not simply a form of bigotry: It is the glue binding the otherwise incoherent ideological blend, the common denominator among disparate parties. The Zionist conspiracy theory was not merely a diversion applied by the Mubarak regime, as some suggest. It is a well-established social belief in Egypt, even among self-proclaimed liberals. Consider, for example, Yehya El-Gamal, a leading expert on constitutional law and chairman of the Democratic Front Party who was appointed deputy prime minister after the revolution. Though a staunch opponent of the Islamists, El-Gamal told Al-Ahram, the leading state-owned newspaper, that “Israel and the U.S. are behind flaming the sectarian conflict in Egypt” in the wake of the deadly clashes between Coptic demonstrators and military forces last October.

***

These facts, though hard to swallow, were clear well before the revolution. This is why, when we joined the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth in 2009, we decided to focus our energy on a long-term program to build a genuine liberal movement from scratch. We realized early on that activism without serious, concrete ideas capable of winning the hearts and minds of our fellow Egyptians would be meaningless. Thus, we designed a platform of legal, economic, and social programs tackling all aspects of life in Egypt, from taxes to anti-Semitism. Our plan comprises research, lobbying, campaigning, and an effort to translate the great books of Western classical liberalism into Arabic. If Egypt was going to have any hope of becoming a liberal democracy, we had to face—and battle—the destructive totalitarian ideals that have taken hold of Egyptian society.

To begin a serious discussion on what can be done in our country, Egyptians must acknowledge that the Tahrir uprising was no liberal revolution. Western observers must realize that this is not a stark morality play, but political decision-making between alternatives that are all bad. As the government borders on bankruptcy and the security situation deteriorates (the natural-gas pipe line to Israel and Jordan was bombed nine times since February), the first priority should be defending the very existence of the Egyptian state, now solely represented by the military. This is certainly an awkward position for advocates of limited government, as we are. But if the military falls, nothing will stand between the Egyptians and absolute anarchy.

Western policy-makers and Egyptians who care about the country’s future should not push too hard for a total face-off between the military and the Islamists, which may develop into a civil war, nor should they seek to weaken the military to the extent that it is totally subdued by the Islamists. Finally, as the Islamists try to transform the legal and economic infrastructure of the country to their benefit, true liberals must be prepared to tackle them on every move, with detailed and convincing programs, not merely rhetorical speeches and empty polemics on talk shows. Islamism offers a coherent worldview; if liberalism cannot rise up to the same level, it will always be doomed to fail.

The gravest danger is for us to fall prey to complacency and believe that an Islamist government will either moderate or fail to deliver, and that the Egyptians will vote for someone else in the next elections. The very possibility of next elections is dependent on our capacity to avoid the total anarchy scenario. And the Islamists are not going to moderate. No matter how pragmatic the Muslim Brotherhood is, they will face a constant challenge by Salafists from the right to adhere a strict standard of religious purity. If the Islamists, now hugely popular, do fail to deliver, genuine liberals must be at the ready to offer voters a clear alternative. The Mubarak regime was remarkably successful in steering the economy in its latter years, but its inability to justify its existence politically led to its demise. There is no reason why the exact opposite—a failing economy but successful politics—cannot come to the service of the Islamists.

Nobody wants to hear the bad news, which only ensures it will get worse. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s fall in February was heralded with sunny optimism in Washington as the birth of an Egyptian liberal democracy, even though the facts were rather obviously otherwise. It was clear that free elections in Egypt would mean the rise of the Islamists, and last week we saw just that: In the country’s first round of parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood won the support of 40 percent of the electorate. The Salafists—hard-line Islamists whose 7th-century dress reflects their model for the ideal Islamic state—got 25 percent of the votes. All facts to the contrary, we’re now being told by policy-makers that these Islamists, even those who openly align themselves with Osama Bin Laden, aren’t so scary after all. In other words, the U.S. reaction to the Egyptian mess is that there’s nothing we can, or will, do about it, so best to get used to the new reality.

The same resigned attitude goes for Iranian nuclear weapons. Sure, there’s been plenty of high-toned rhetoric. President George W. Bush said Iran was part of the axis of evil, and President Barack Obama called an Iranian bomb “unacceptable.” But as U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta scolded the Israelis to get back to the “damn table” with the Palestinians last week, he also explained why Washington is ultimately not going to stop the Iranians from getting the bomb. First of all, Panetta explained, a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran would simply delay the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, not finish it for good. Even then, he said, the United States “could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, striking our ships, striking our military bases.” Furthermore, according to Panetta, a strike could mean “severe economic consequences” that could negatively affect “a fragile economy here in the United States.” It’s not just Panetta who makes this argument: His predecessor, Robert Gates, who worked for Bush before Obama, has made the same claims.

Of course, U.S. officials don’t want Islamists running the largest Arab state, or Iran getting a bomb. But neither Democratic nor Republican policy-makers are willing to pay the electoral and geopolitical price for making sure these bad things don’t happen. Instead, these policy-makers and these analysts protest that once a country is determined to get a nuke, there’s no stopping it. Besides, they claim, even if Iran does get a bomb, we can deter and contain it.

The truth is that the United States can stop the Iranian nuclear program any time it wants. It has the military capacity to turn the lights off across the country, cripple the economy, and bring the regime to its knees—by bombing its oil and natural-gas fields, its ports, power plants, reservoirs, and dams as well as its nuclear facilities. The fact that the United States has the power of life and death over 80 million Iranians may not make the rest of the world comfortable. But there’s no use lying about it. Similarly, American policy-makers continue to pretend that the fall of Mubarak was a triumph for U.S. values when the truth is that it was a catastrophe for U.S. interests. Why are we so confused about our priorities? And why are we insisting on our weakness?

The problem is that at the end of the Cold War the United States government turned away from pursuing our national interests and toward an abstract idea of American transcendence. Talk of interests, allies, balance of power, and so on began to seem a little vulgar. Part of this has to do with the rise of a generation of policy-makers who didn’t know from first-hand experience what it took to win the Cold War. To younger policy-makers, the triumph of the United States was inevitable. It represented, as Francis Fukuyama saw it, the final synthesis of a Hegelian dialectic—the end of history. The reality is that it was messy, and the outcome was never certain.

In the past, U.S. foreign policy-makers saw the world in stark terms. For instance: In the old view, it would be a good thing for the rulers of Iran to fall because they are enemies; and it is bad for Mubarak to fall since he is an ally. The new dispensation is instead premised on catchwords like “consistency.” If we want the mullahs toppled, the new thinking goes, then for the sake of consistency we should also demand Mubarak leave. The United States, you see, is no longer a normal country like all the rest pursuing its national interests. It’s a set of values.

Just one generation ago, this country was led by policy-makers who helped both sides in the decade-long Iran-Iraq war kill each other because they believed that the bloodbath kept American citizens safe. Now we’re governed by men and women who want to make sure the Syrian opposition is sufficiently devoted to pluralism before the White House decides if bringing down the anti-American dictator Bashar al-Assad is a good thing. It’s a noble goal to want Syrians to treat each other as Americans treat each other. But just because it’s a hopeful ideal doesn’t make it sound foreign policy. No one says we have to be as cynical as France, but we do need to conduct our dealings with other countries as though we, too, were a normal country with national interests.

The fact is that there are lots of countries with fine values, like most of Northern Europe. What makes the United States a superpower, the foundation of our prosperity and security, is not our values, but our policies. I am referring specifically to those policies that took us to war against the Germans in Europe and the Japanese in Asia in World War II and the Soviets on four continents during the Cold War.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Let us both commemorate and celebrate the American men and women who handed us as part of our birthright the free trade in Europe and the Pacific that made this country wealthy beyond comparison. A major part of our inheritance includes the Persian Gulf, through which the free flow of oil at affordable prices has made possible much of what we now take for granted, like the Interstate highway system, fresh vegetables on our plate, the social and geographic mobility that is a signature of our way of life.

There is always a price for being American. Everyone knows the cost of bringing the Iranian nuclear program to an end. The Iranians are going to shoot at U.S. troops based in the Middle East and attack soft targets in the United States—the Mall of America, the Port of Los Angeles, Disney World, who knows? And the price of oil is going to rise. The question is, are we are willing to pay for all that? If not, we shouldn’t be surprised when the bubble bursts.

Yesterday Israel approved a deal, seemingly hastened by the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap, which will free Grapel in exchange for 25 Egyptian prisoners. And if all goes according to plan, Grapel will be released Thursday. Some former U.S. intelligence officials believe Grapel may really have been an Israeli spy, but Israeli soldiers, never mind the Jewish state’s clandestine agents, are seldom returned alive. The Egyptians know he’s not a spy, but he’s a valuable card anyway, which is why they captured him. It is logic and behavior befitting a terrorist organization.

If Hamas and Hezbollah can get the Zionist entity to release their associates, the thinking goes, why can’t Egypt’s interim ruling body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, do the same for Egyptian prisoners? The problem in the Middle East, then, isn’t that the Islamists are on the verge of taking over and thereby transforming Arab societies. The problem is that these societies are already governed by the passions that make the Islamists so popular.

Longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, would not have dreamed of taking an American citizen hostage. It’s true that things have changed in Egypt, but let’s not overstate the case: Grapel’s arrest is not a sign that the Supreme Council of Armed Forces is joining hands with Iranian-backed terror organizations. The purpose of the exchange, from Cairo’s perspective, is to placate the mobs that have already laid siege to the Israeli embassy, burned Coptic churches, and may in time cause even worse problems for the ruling military council. The way to calm the situation, they believe, is to show that Egypt’s problems are manufactured by the West, and that Cairo’s ever-competent rulers managed to unearth a plot before the foreigners could once again unleash their mayhem.

Why Cairo chose Grapel as its test case seems to be merely a matter of convenience. Yes, the Queens native served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the 2006 war, where he was injured fighting Hezbollah. Yet the fact that Grapel, a law student at Emory University in Atlanta, had taken a job in Cairo in May with St. Andrew’s Refugee Services, a Christian organization that mostly provides legal aid for Sudanese refugees, is perhaps what first attracted the attention of Egyptian authorities. African refugees—Christians and Muslims—are a sensitive issue for the Egyptians, not least because their mistreatment in Egypt has caused many of them to flee to friendlier vistas across the border in Israel.

While some believe the Shalit deal set the precedent for the Grapel exchange, it’s a mistake to see the two cases in the same light. For Israel, the point of freeing a thousand prisoners in exchange for one is not merely a moral calculation, but also a form of strategic communication intended to dishearten Israel’s foes. The message it sends is not only that Israel values life above all, but that the Jewish state can afford to put its enemies back on the street because in the end, no matter how numerous, those enemies have no chance of winning.

The Grapel deal is something else—straight-up extortion with domestic political benefits. For Egypt, getting prisoners released for Grapel is more like Libya winning intelligence agent Abdelbasset al-Megrahi’s freedom from the Scottish government as part of an oil deal in 2009, or Iran’s kidnapping three American hikers and accusing them of espionage two years ago. Here the point is to face down the West publicly, and generate popular support at home. The message is: Western actors are trying to sabotage the people of the Middle East, but the ruling authorities are proud heroes of resistance who have exposed the designs of the imperialist or Zionist oppressors and have made them publicly pay for their crimes.

The Egyptian army probably didn’t want to get into this game of political extortion, but with Mubarak’s downfall it became necessary to win the affections of a very demanding audience: Egypt’s middle-class urban youth, a constituency to whom Mubarak never paid much attention, which is precisely what led to his demise. The Obama Administration believed that Mubarak’s exit would have little effect on an Egyptian political system still dominated by an army dependent on $1.3 billion in American military aid each year, but the problem should now be as obvious to the White House as it was to the Egyptian military from the outset. As angry as the army was at Mubarak for trying to install his son in the presidential palace, it also understood it was dangerous to give the mob a de facto veto that would allow it to shape the Egyptian political system however it saw fit.

That vision, unfortunately, is very popular in the Muslim-majority Middle East. It’s generally anti-Israeli and anti-American, to be sure, but Israel and the United States are details in a larger architecture of resentment of the West.

Hatred of the West, and of its local proxies, has been a central part of political Islam’s program from the outset. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in 1928 in the midst of Great Britain’s 72-year-old occupation of Egypt. But long before London took an active role in Egyptian politics, 18th- and 19th-century Muslim intellectuals and activists counseled the masses to be suspicious of the West. Take their science and technology, they advised, but forgo the West’s secular values, which undermine you and your faith.

Today, those who advocate for engagement with Islamists argue that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Nahda Party have matured and are now willing to play by the rules and act like democrats. The Islamists may not like the West, but they have no choice but to uphold agreements and partake in the international system. On the other side of the debate, skeptics fear that the Islamists are talking out of both sides of their mouth, and once in office they’ll never willingly forsake power. But both of these arguments miss the point.

Yes, Islamism is already turning out to be the most powerful political current across the region. But the attraction of Islamism is not simply that it appeals to conservative and traditional Muslim societies, but that it draws freely on the sources of resentment that have been part of the political language of the region for more than two centuries. It was not Egypt’s Islamists who led the charge against the Israeli embassy in September, but young and nominally secular Egyptians. And it is that mob, potentially in the many millions, with whom Egypt’s ruling body was currying favor when it arrested Grapel.

Meanwhile, up north, Israel is ever more anxious about the Sinai, due to both the half-dozen sabotage attempts on the natural gas pipeline and the August attack in southern Israel that was launched from the Egyptian peninsula. So, for the not first time this year, on Monday it granted Egypt the right to station yet more troops there, even though, under the Israeli-Egyptian peace, the area, which Israel captured during 1967’s Six Day War and returned as part of the peace deal, is supposed to be demilitarized.

Finally, the violence against the Copts has raised talk in the United States of slowing or cutting military aid to Egypt. Remember that that aid, as things stand now anyway, comes in tandem with Israeli aid; Egypt is the second-largest recipient of annual U.S. military aid, Israel the first.

Turns out toppling a dictator can get messy!

Copts Denounce Egyptian Government Over Killings [NYT]
Israel Permits More Egyptian Soldiers to Enter Sinai, Issues New Travel Warning [AP/WP]
Leahy: No ‘Blank Check’ for Egyptian Army [Ben Smith]

The incident didn’t come out of nowhere. On Aug. 18, eight Israelis were killed on a highway near Eilat by Gazan and Egyptian terrorists who had infiltrated southern Israel by way of the Sinai—Egyptian territory. Israeli forces pursued the terrorists back into Egypt and mistakenly killed five Egyptian soldiers and police officers. The next day, the Egyptian Cabinet called an emergency meeting, where it considered recalling Egypt’s ambassador from Tel Aviv if the Israelis wouldn’t apologize or agree to a joint probe of the officers’ killings. Activists and political parties demanded the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador in Cairo. Several major activist groups, including the left-leaning April 6 Movement, organized a large protest in front of the Israeli Embassy. It culminated with a 23-year-old carpenter scaling the 13-story building to replace the Israeli flag with an Egyptian one.

Israeli and pro-Israel skeptics of the Egyptian revolution have predicted since the Mubarak government fell that Egypt’s pathologically anti-Israel population could push the country toward a violent confrontation with its northern neighbor. These past weeks have made it painfully clear that at least some of the Egyptian people—at best—refuse to tolerate any Israeli presence in their country.

But the real question is how much popular sentiment against the Jewish state actually matters. On a recent reporting trip I took to Cairo, I found that despite the view from the street, the country’s military and its key political factions have no interest in upending the status quo. The cold peace is colder than ever. But even in the wake of Friday’s violence, it’s proving durable.

***

Ever since Anwar El Sadat signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, the Egyptian government has combated any sense of national inferiority by propagating an amazingly resilient myth: Egypt won the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the Camp David Treaty represented Israel’s capitulation to a morally and militarily superior enemy. It’s a myth that helped Egypt recuperate some of its national self-esteem in light of its recognition of the Jewish State and subsequent expulsion from the Arab League. Murals of the Egyptian Army crossing the Suez Canal dot the road between the airport and downtown Cairo, and a downtown bridge and a major suburb of Cairo are named after Oct. 6, 1973, the date of Egypt’s assault on Israeli positions in the Sinai. Whenever I asked Egyptians about their country’s attitude toward the 1973 war, the answer came immediately: It was a major victory.

All of this made Egyptians feel better, but the myth also helped bolster the power of Hosni Mubarak, who took over as president after Sadat’s 1981 assassination. The North Korean-built October War Panorama, a multimedia depiction of Egypt’s attack on the Suez Canal located in the Heliopolis district of Cairo, includes a mosaic that places Mubarak in the center of a group of military commanders planning the war’s opening offensive. Similar imagery is on display at the Cairo Citadel’s National Military Museum.

While Mubarak incited hostility toward the Jewish State at home, he successfully convinced Israel and the United States that he could uphold Western interests in the region. Ezzedine Fishere, a former Foreign Ministry official at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv and the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Culture, likened Mubarak’s political strategy to riding two horses simultaneously. “You can ride the two horses so long as you’re going straight,” Fishere explained to me. “This is why stability was so important to Mubarak. When there’s instability, the two horses go in opposite directions. Because the public wants you to live up to your commitments, you’ve been feeding this inflammatory discourse about Israel being the source of all evil. … On the other hand, the Israelis are basically your security partners in the region.”

Future Egyptian leaders can’t afford to play this kind of double game, Fishere argues. “The challenge is for the state to face the public and say, ‘We’ve been having very good relations with Israel for 30 years,’ ” he said. “And at the same time, we’ll have to be frank with the Israelis and the Americans and say ‘We can’t be your accomplice.’ ” The Mubarak regime’s system for dealing with Israel won’t work anymore. The question, then, is whether a more aggressive, and possibly outright hostile, dynamic will take its place.

“The majority of people would agree that we shouldn’t get into to a military conflict with Israel,” Gamal Soltan, director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told me in his Cairo office in July. “But this doesn’t mean that they will refrain from doing things that would make this more likely.” He believes that a future, representative Egyptian government—parliamentary elections are currently scheduled for October—will have no choice but to respond to the public’s overwhelmingly anti-Israel attitude, which could result in less security cooperation between the two countries.

Soltan added that the new Egyptian government will also have to contend with the long-standing popular sense that the country should reorient its foreign policy. He says that much of the Egyptian street looks to Iran’s open defiance of the West with a certain degree of envy. “We felt inferior vis-a-vis Iran because they did the things we weren’t able to, like supporting the Palestinians, criticizing both Egypt and the United States, and allying with some of the champions of Arab rights, like Hezbollah,” said Soltan. “After the revolution, things might change.”

Like Soltan, Fishere believes that most Egyptians do not want to fight another war with Israel. But he’s more hopeful that democracy will ultimately lead to a less-radicalized discourse on the Jewish State. “We have to make [Egyptian policy toward Israel] more truthful and ultimately more responsible,” Fishere said. “It will be more in the direction of Turkey than in the direction of Iran.” So, Egypt’s strategic posture toward Israel will likely change. That doesn’t mean the peace treaty is going anywhere.

***

Luckily, the most powerful player in Egypt—the military—already understands this.

And the army, which Egyptian intellectual Tarek Heggy called the “the only power in the country,” enjoys deep popular support. According to last month’s Pew poll  of Egyptian political attitudes, 53 percent of Egyptians have a “very good” view of the military, compared to the 29 percent religious leaders enjoy. Field Marshal Mohammad Tantawi, the head of the Military Council, has a 45 percent favorability rating—higher than that of the April 6 Movement (38 percent) and the Muslim Brotherhood (37 percent).

At a major protest in Tahrir Square on July 8, I heard protesters reprising the revolutionary chant that “the army and the people are one hand.” Across Cairo, both Egyptian flags and displays of support for the military (such as fatigue-pattern street art) were ubiquitous. Egyptians still believe that the army is on their side: On Aug. 1, when the military dispersed a three-week tent protest that had shut down Tahrir Square, passersby cheered them on. A Sept. 9 protest against military rule in Tahrir Square was underwhelming. (Shadi Hamid, the director of research at the Brookings Institute’s Doha branch, called it “the most incoherent, ineffective, anti-strategic protest in recent memory.”)

The military has every reason to preserve Egypt’s treaty with Israel. According to an official familiar with the U.S. government’s operations in Egypt, there are currently “tens of thousands” of American military contractors in Egypt, which still receives over $1.3 billion in annual military aid from the United States. Experts I spoke to in Egypt estimated that the military controls between 20 and 40 percent of the country’s economy. War with Israel serves no obvious strategic purpose for Egypt, and it would probably end American financial assistance, threaten the army’s business holdings, and lead to massive casualties. (Nearly 20,000 Egyptian soldiers were killed in the 1967 and 1973 wars.) Plus, the sectarianism that makes Lebanon and Syria so threatening to Israel is absent in Egypt. There are no religious or ethnic militias that could plausibly challenge the military’s monopoly on force.

Tellingly, even the more extreme elements in Egyptian politics have sought accommodation with the military, rather than pressuring it into a more confrontational stance. Abdul-Jalil al-Sharnouby, the former editor of the Muslim Brotherhood’s website, told me that he quit the organization partly over its willingness to cooperate with “the Brotherhood’s enemies,” including the ruling military junta.

**

In the hours after Friday’s embassy incident, Egypt’s ruling military council reiterated its commitment to the 1978 Camp David Accords. Egyptian Information Minister Osama Heikal quickly spoke out against the riot, calling it “a gross violation of the law,” adding that “one cannot call the perpetrators … either brave or patriotic.” And Egypt yesterday reinstated some of the emergency measures lifted after Mubarak’s ouster in February, including laws that limit protesters’ ability to gather in public. A spokesperson for the Egyptian Cabinet told Reuters that “returning to normalcy is the objective for both sides” after the Israeli Embassy conflagration.

No doubt this measure will enrage some elements of the protest movement. But this only shows how badly Egypt’s current military rulers want to stabilize the country’s affairs, including its now-strained relationship with Israel. As soon as the military realized that there was a real possibility of foreign diplomats being seriously hurt or even killed on Egyptian soil, they “realized that the external price they would pay [for inaction] is higher than the internal one for stopping the protest,” Sam Tadros, an Egypt expert at the Hudson Institute told me yesterday. David Schenker of the Washington Instutite for Near East Policy agrees that in the aftermath of Friday’s incident, the military’s top priority is bringing some stability back to the country’s internal and foreign affairs. “What happened with the embassy demonstrates not only that the [ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] is the leading supporter of the peace treaty, but I’d say it’s indicative of the ongoing situation in the country,” he says. “They feel that there has to be a red line. There has to be some semblance of order.”

Egyptian attitudes toward Israel aren’t going to improve. And Egyptian voters, through popular protest and, eventually, through the ballot box, are capable of reversing the kind of close official cooperation that Mubarak pursued. But for the time being, at least, it’s the military that matters. And in the months since the revolution, its calculations toward the Jewish state haven’t changed.

The embassy storming reflected a real undercurrent of Egyptian rage at Israel and, more directly, of official Egyptian complicity with Israel’s government (and existence); it is telling that Egypt’s Interior Ministry’s building was not spared riots, either. And, as both Shavit and his editor, Aluf Benn, argue, if these crises are not directly Prime Minister Netanyahu’s fault, we are setting the bar low if we simply excuse him there. Bibi has not done nearly enough to put Israel in a position such that more of the international community would be more sympathetic to Israel’s perspective on the Egyptian rage, the irresponsible Turkish brinksmanship, the Palestinian Authority’s flailing attempt to upgrade its U.N. status. Instead, he is pursuing what one senior official called a “porcupine policy”—pricking its sharp hairs out whenever trouble nears—meanwhile obstinately continuing to antagonize the U.S. and build more settlements.

Might I suggest that now is the time for Netanyahu and his government to strike back—diplomatically, that is—with firmness and creativity? Or, if not, that Obama—as a friend to Israel as well as someone keenly interested in maintaining Israel’s integrity and influence—should do it for him? That these undeniable crises might in fact be opportunities to advance Israeli interests? Already the embassy storming brought Israel and the actual Egyptian government closer: there will be a crackdown on violent (and, likely, nonviolent as well) dissent in Egypt, and some of the rioters will be tried; and it was Egyptian commandos who rescued six guards trapped at the embassy. These steps will cause initial blowback among protesters, and one wonders whether a future, more democratic Egyptian government would also take them. But they also bring home the fundamental shared interests between the two countries, which more democracy is not simply going to make evaporate. And indeed, the crisis is prompting prominent Egyptian voices—including Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who became the face, such as it was, of the Tahrir Square movement that ousted Hosni Mubarak—to question whether a country with actual pressing problems (widespread impoverishment, a lack of democracy, corruption) should be focused on its peaceful neighbor to the north.

The crisis also brought Israel and its paramount ally, the U.S., closer: it was to President Obama whom Bibi turned at the embassy’s darkest moment, and Obama who came through, applying hard pressure (threatening “consequences,” reportedly) to the Egyptian government to resolve the situation (apparently Field Marshal Tantawi, essentially the Egyptian leader, at first didn’t return his calls, but soon got the message that he had better do so). Netanyahu thanked both Egypt and the U.S. afterward. Top leaders from Britain and Germany condemned the embassy assault. (Iran’s government praised it, so there’s that.)

There are even signs that Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey—who, as a more equal U.S. ally and a hugely popular (and popularly elected) leader, has a much wider range of action than Egypt’s government—is pulling back from last week’s tantrum. That pledge to offer Turkish ships to accompany humanitarian aid to Gaza? Oh, Erdogan was just misquoted about that, you see. Erdogan’s threat that he would try to visit Gaza during an upcoming trip to Cairo? Nah, he won’t really, according to Turkey’s foreign minister.

We still need to see how things play out with the P.A., but reports that it won’t go to the Security Council are evidence that it respects the continued resilience of the Israeli-American alliance, despite everything.

Things are not hunky-dory. But transcendently talented politicians know that the literal definition of a “crisis” is a moment where things could radically break in either direction. They translate Warren Buffett’s famous axiom, “Be greedy when others are scared,” into politics. At this point, it honestly seems too much to expect this of Netanyahu. But we do know he has a penchant for doing whatever his personal survival ensures. It falls, rather, to Obama—who some have believed to have been transcendently talented, and who has shown flashes of a certain genius before—to come up with a way to turn this crisis to Israel’s, and therefore his own country’s, advantage. An Arab Fall after the Arab Spring that doesn’t turn on Israel and America: that would be something.

Timeline of Israel Embassy Attack in Cairo [JPost]
Arab Spring Showed Its Real Face in Attack on Israeli Embassy in Egypt [Haaretz]
Crises With Turkey and Egypt Represent a Political Tsunami for Israel [Haaretz]
After Attack on Embassy, Egypt Vows Tougher Stance on Protests [NYT]
In Egypt, Critics Question Focus on Israel [WP]
U.S. Told Egypt It Must Rescue Embassy Staffers or Suffer ‘Consequences,’ Sources Say [Haaretz]
Erdogan Says Misquoted on Warships [Ynet]
‘Turkish Foreign Minister: Erdogan Will Not Visit Gaza’ [JPost]
European Diplomats: Abbas Won’t Turn to U.N. Security Council for Palestinian Statehood [Haaretz]

-Yasmine El Rashidi on “Egypt’s Israel Problem,” which is really, it turns out, Israel’s Egypt problem.

Remilitarizing Sinai to some extent is probably good for Israel and for Egypt. “In the past, Israel opposed any alteration of the terms of the treaty,” the Times’s Ethan Bronner reported this weekend. “But the lawlessness—a mix of Bedouin tribalism, radical Muslim infiltration, and a breakdown of Egypt’s security control after its revolution—affects not only Israel, but Egypt, which depends on tourism revenue and gas exports from there.” He added, “As a result, officials here say, the Egyptians are cooperating with Israel. … Israeli officials also say the Egyptian military is making sure that the attack on Israel, which received very limited coverage in Egypt at first, is now getting more public attention.” The Washington Post’s Joel Greenberg sang a similar tune, reporting that the contacts between Egypt’s new military leaders and Israeli officials remain strong.

What happens when more radical groups, chiefly the Muslim Brotherhood, begin obtaining real power in Egypt, starting as early as the parliamentary elections scheduled for next month? (“Who rules Egypt,” one Israeli official asked Bronner, “the army or Tahrir Square?”) Certainly you can find plenty of elements in the Brotherhood who say, well, exactly what you would fear they would say about the Zionist “gang” (Eric Trager has the essential reporting here); certainly you can find the Brotherhood moving to ban tourists from wearing bikinis on the Alexandria beach. In a sense, though, it makes more sense to worry about its bathing-suit polices than its Israel rhetoric. The Brotherhood is going to say not-nice things about Israel and Jews—this is central to what it is and part of its appeal. But if and when it is elected to power, it is going to need to keep the gas flowing, the much-more-powerful Israeli military at bay, and the wealthy, skimpily-clad tourists coming to the beach.

Flagman or no, Egyptian popular interests militate for a basic, cold peace with Israel, and doubtfully one much colder than that which Israel welcomed for three decades with Mubarak. In the long run, an alliance between Israeli popular interests and Egyptian popular interests could be more stable than an alliance between Israeli popular interests and an Egyptian autocrat; it might even bring Israeli popular interests and Egyptian popular interests closer together. Anyway, there is certainly no going back to Mubarak, or a Mubarak-like figure, so mutual selfishness is the best Israel can hope for.

Report: Israel To Allow Egypt to Deploy Troops in Sinai [Haaretz]
Barak: Israel Won’t Let Egypt Deploy More Troops in Sinai at the Present [Haaretz]
With Mideast in Turmoil, Israel Debates Strategy [NYT]
The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood: Grim Prospects for a Liberal Egypt [Foreign Affairs/Washington Institute for Near East Policy]
Egypt’s Brotherhood Declares War on the Bikini [JPost]
Earlier: One Weekend, Two Crises
Why Egypt Can Handle Democracy

For six months, from North Africa and the Levant to the Persian Gulf, Arab masses toppled Arab regimes while Arab tribes and sects squared off against each other in internecine warfare. Now Israel, which has nothing to do with the intra-Arab conflict that instigated and shaped the events of the Arab Spring, has been dragged into a mess that shows no signs of ending soon.

If many Western analysts were a little too eager to overlook the anti-Israel—as well as anti-American—sentiment on display at Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising, their implicit interpretation was nonetheless accurate: Israel was not the central issue driving the protest movement that brought down Hosni Mubarak. The Arab Spring isn’t about Israel; it’s about the Arabs.

But the focus has returned to the Jewish state. The method employed is tawreet, an Arabic word that means embroiling. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, Brookings Institution scholar Michael Doran explained its strategic value: “You embroil someone by goading him to take actions against a third party that will result in political effects beneficial to you.” Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, for instance, was a master of embroilment, using various Palestinian factions to attack Israel in order to create conditions that were domestically and regionally advantageous for himself.

Right now, as Doran told me in a phone interview, “it is in the interest of many actors in the region to heighten tension with Israel.” Among these actors, there’s Hamas, the Iranian-sponsored outfit that rules Gaza and seems to have more control than Egyptian security does over the porous Gaza-Egyptian border. But the perpetrators of the recent terror attacks on Israel also enjoyed some level of assistance from elements of Egypt’s security and military establishment. Egyptian Islamist factions may also have an interest in stoking the flames with Israel in order to position themselves as champions of “resistance” in the post-Mubarak political era.

Some analysts have suggested that the carefully planned and coordinated operations may be the work of al-Qaida, whose newly anointed leader, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, is eager to leave his mark in the country of his origins.

But none of these very reasonable explanations excludes the actor most interested in changing the subject away from Arab regimes: the non-Arab Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran is the sponsor of Hamas and a sometime ally of al-Qaida that, as Tony Badran, research fellow at the Foundation of the Defense of Democracies said, “has been trying to secure the Sinai since Mubarak was in power.”

Iran’s strategic achievements during the Arab Spring have been mixed. After the fall of Mubarak, which fulfilled one of the Islamic Republic’s longtime goals, Tehran also suffered some notable setbacks. When Gulf Cooperation Council forces entered Bahrain, Iran was incapable of exercising any influence by offering at least token protection to the Shia community there, showing the limits of Iranian bluster even when it came to their co-religionists in a nearby country.

It’s still unclear how Iran will come out of the Arab Spring, or to what extent the Obama Administration is capable of making the Iranians pay for their strategic overreach in a region where Washington has exercised hegemony for more than half a century. As long as Tehran can keep the regional conversation focused on Israel and resistance to the Zionist entity, the Persian Shiites in power will be able to bridge the sectarian gap that divides them from the Middle East’s Sunni Arab majority. But when events like the Arab Spring push the Israelis to the margins of the picture and instead underline Iran’s role in regional upheaval and its sectarian identity, things look much less rosy for the Islamic Republic.

Right now, Iran is facing considerable sectarian pressure. Last week, four members of Iran’s ally Hezbollah were indicted in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, and Sunni leader, Rafiq Hariri. While it is unlikely that Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah will turn over the suspects, the organization finds itself increasingly isolated. Much of Lebanon, if not the majority, has turned its back on Hezbollah. Its own Shia community dreads the prospect of another war with Israel. Most significantly, Hezbollah may be on the verge of losing its strategic depth and supply lines that stretch across the border into Syria.

The Assad regime’s troubles constitute a threat to Iran’s vital strategic interests in the region. Syria is the one Arab state allied with Tehran, a relationship that has flourished over the last three decades, most recently in Iraq, where they made war against the United States and its allies. Losing Assad would also jeopardize Iran’s 30-year investment in Hezbollah, which has already moved much of its weapons from Syria to Lebanon.

Even if the Syrian regime survives, it is going to have problems putting the lid back on the sectarian cauldron that Assad brought to a boil through his policy of violent repression. It’s bad enough that the Syrian Alawite minority regime was slaughtering Sunnis during the middle of Ramadan, but last week the Syrian navy opened fire on a Palestinian refugee camp, not an operation destined to win popularity points from the Sunni mainstream.

Iran needs to defend Syria, but its options are limited. When the Syrian regime tried to change the subject by sending Palestinian protesters to the Israeli border on the Golan Heights in May and June, the opposition didn’t bite—they understood that the pressing issue was not the Jewish state but the Assads and their allies. Nor can the Iranians afford to throw good money after bad by getting Hezbollah to stir up trouble in Lebanon, since it’s not at all clear that the organization would fare well in—or even survive—another conflict with Israel.

Sinai was therefore Iran’s last, best hope for embroiling the Israelis. “Because of the Assad regime’s outrages against Palestinians and Syrian Sunnis, Hamas would probably not take orders from Syria at this point,” Tony Badran said. “But it would from Iran. The upside for the Iranians is that they have now found a front that doesn’t jeopardize their main asset in Lebanon, all while advancing Iranian strategic interests in Sinai/Egypt.”

Egypt was formerly the cornerstone of Washington’s regional security architecture, a role that last week’s attacks show it is no longer capable of playing. Whether the violence on its Israeli border was a carefully calculated project to extort more money from the United States or simply the result of an incapacitated Egyptian state, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s request that Egypt bulk up border security will fall on deaf ears.

Syria played a similar part in Tehran’s revolutionary project for the region, and is now on the verge of falling. The Arab Spring has shaken the two pillars—Egypt and Syria—of the Arab status quo, and a new regional order is now being born. Israel is likely to continue to pay a price, no matter how hard its leaders work to avoid getting drawn in to an inter-Arab conflict whose direction is still unclear.

Israel’s cross-border killing of three Egyptian security officials led to the first (if inevitable) major rift with the post-Mubarak military government, anger in the streets, and feints toward a diplomatic breakdown. Extraordinarily (especially given that he did it on a Saturday), Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, “We regret the deaths of members of the Egyptian security forces during the terror attack on the Israeli-Egyptian border.” That got Egypt to keep its ambassador in Tel Aviv but kept it demanding an apology and a joint probe. Yesterday, Israel pledged the probe (and quietly sent a military delegation to Cairo); as of last night, Israeli officials were insisting the crisis has passed, which is likely a combination of wishful thinking and educated guesswork.

It’s been a revealing moment. From Israel’s perspective and, given to extent to which the two countries’ interests remain aligned, from Egypt’s as well, the breakdown in security near the border, perhaps best evidenced by the multiple times saboteurs have successfully damaged a crucial Sinai natural gas pipeline, remains a real problem. Yet Israel does not want a real crisis with Egypt—contrast the swiftness with which Israel expressed regret and moved toward an apology with its continued (and correct) stubbornness toward Turkey over last year’s flotilla. Meanwhile, the temporary Egyptian government, its legitimacy already questionable and needing to mollify a restive population, has no choice but to create diplomatic to-dos where, under the previous regime, none would have existed. Put it this way: the guy who removed the flag from Cairo’s Israeli embassy is now basically a national hero.

Then there is Gaza and Hamas. After the attacks, Israel customarily retaliated, killing the leaders of The Popular Resistance Committees, which claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attacks. The group responded with rocket fire; Israel responded back (whether this constitutes “Both Sides … Trad[ing] Fire,” as the Times headline has it, I’ll leave to you). But unusually, Hamas stepped in, claiming responsibility for several rockets, one of which hit a house in Ofakim and injured an infant and a child. There were at least four civilian deaths in Gaza from Israeli fire (and several more terrorist ones) and at least one in Israel from a Palestinian rocket, of which at least 50 were fired since Thursday. As of Sunday evening, there was an informal resumption of the ceasefire, which the United Nations and Egypt were working to maintain, even as there were reports of rockets continuing to emanate from Gaza.

Palestinian Authority President Abbas called on the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to “halt Israeli aggression,” while his aides accused Israel of deliberately ramping things up so as to distract from next month’s statehood push. It’s possible that Israel decided to create a distraction from the impending U.N. situation (and that Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to create a distraction from the domestic social justice protests—which indeed appears to have happened) by responding to coordinated attacks that killed eight civilians. Much, much more likely, however, is that Hamas, which is barely a larger fan of the Palestinian Authority’s Turtle Bay plans than Israel is, decided to distract from them by tacitly allowing the coordinated attacks that killed eight civilians and then breaking their own ceasefire. I would go so far as to put my money on the latter proposition.

Unsurprising, then, that some Israeli politicians are calling on Netanyahu to seize the provocation and deal Hamas a substantial blow, and even invade Gaza. Yet influential Israeli columnist Ari Shavit is persuasive in advising restraint on Netanyahu’s part (he is also correct that, if the United States might be taking a wise break from the peace process itself, it absolutely needs to throw its weight around regarding security in Sinai). “A direct attack on Hamas will be perceived as disproportionate and unjustified,” he argues. “Egypt will not be able to stand aside; this time it will surely call back its ambassador from Tel Aviv and freeze the peace. The international community will not show restraint; it will present Israel as a war-monger. And when hundreds of rockets from Gaza hit Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Be’er Sheva, Rehovot, Rishon Letzion and Tel Aviv, the Iron Dome will be deemed ineffectual. Netanyahu will face dilemmas that tore Ehud Olmert apart.” Israel should hold off from further retaliation. And we should remember that both weekend’s crises find their origins in terrorists murdering innocents.

Egypt and Israel Move to Halt Growth of Crisis [NYT]
Egypt Says Israel’s ‘Regret’ Over Killings Doesn’t Go Far Enough [WP]
Officials: Crisis With Egypt Is Over [Ynet]
Casualties on Both Sides as Israel and Gaza Trade Fire [NYT]
Efforts Seek to Restore Calm Between Israel and Hamas [NYT]
Abbas Calls on UNSC to ‘Halt Israeli Aggression’ [JPost]
New Violence Threatens to Derail Social Protest Movement Against Israel’s High Cost of Living [AP/WP]
Netanyahu Must Not Escalate the Situation in the South [Haaretz]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu refused an entreaty from Secretary of State Clinton to apologize to Turkey. [Haaretz]

• Hosni Mubarak opined that Syrian President Assad should quit. Well, he would know! [Ynet]

• The young Israeli protesters think the cost of living should be lower. How expensive is it to live in Israel? [JTA]

• The semi-lost semi-Jews … of Kaifeng! (Ahem.) [WSJ]

• So Ralph Branca, the sorta-Jew. Is he Jewish? Alan Dershowitz, among others, weighs in, and further notes Sandy Koufax’s distinctively Jewish pitching style. [NYT]

Marv Levy, the only NFL coach to reach four straight Super Bowls (he lost all four), is now a novelist. Here’s some highlights from the second Super Bowl he lost:

All of the above? Yeah, that was January. Just January.

Since then, in the Territories, Hamas and the P.A. cracked down fiercely on popular protests in favor of unity. Then, suddenly, they agreed to unity, even though it was always doubtful it would actually work. But they stayed together long enough to mount the most threatening Nakba Day protests in years if not decades, and to threaten even worse come September—if they seek unilateral statehood.

Substantively, the most consequential thing President Obama did vis-à-vis Israel was veto a Security Council resolution condemning settlements. In a speech in May, Obama pledged similar opposition to the statehood gambit, condemned Hamas and the P.A.’s deal with it, sharply criticized Iran, and committed the U.S. to totally standing up for Israel’s security and right to exist. And he mentioned what the previous two presidents had assumed: That a two-state solution depended on land-swaps based on the ’67 borders. So, naturally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded angrily, creating a huge diplomatic mess that has yet to be fully untangled, and which could have implications on the 2012 U.S. presidential contest.

The Fogel massacre. The Hamas rocket attacks. The Jerusalem bus stop explosion. Israeli responses claimed lives, including of innocents.

On the Iranian front, first we were given ample reason to believe that its purported nuclear program was substantially delayed. But then we learned that Stuxnet, while helpful, was no panacea. And then we learned that Iran has made significant progress on weaponization technology.

Egypt continues to move tentatively toward democracy.

In Lebanon, the sealed U.N. indictment for the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister (and father of the also-former prime minister, who had to resign when Hezbollah pulled its support) was only last week partially unsealed; expect things to continue to get hotter there.

It was weird that the Syrian regime was brutally cracking down on internal dissent, and barely anyone was saying anything. And that was half-a-half-a-year ago.

Former White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, who once harbored dreams of being the first Jewish Speaker of the House, instead decided to run for mayor of Chicago; was briefly declared ineligible, then not; then won.

We were there as Rabbi Gershom Sizoumu ran for and lost a seat in Uganda’s parliament. We observed the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Ellen Weiss, an NPR honcho and wife of the enormously influential Rabbi David Saperstein, was forced to resign. Rep. Peter King held hearings on the American Muslim community, attracting the opposition of the American Jewish community. The Reform movement picked a new head.

Jimmy Carter was sued by people who bought and hated his book. Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder sued Washington City Paper, and even got the Simon Wiesenthal Center to endorse his ludicrous accusation of anti-Semitism—maybe his buddy Tom Cruise helped? Jon Demjanjuk was convicted of helping carry out the Holocaust, and then set free.

Quote of the Half-Year (paraphrased): “Oops!” — Richard Goldstone.

Western countries invaded Libya, possibly out of Holocaust guilt. A crazy guy tried to blow up a Santa Monica Chabad house. Benjamin Netanyahu and Justin Bieber were plausibly mentioned in the same sentence. A glass ceiling was shattered when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was picked to be the first woman to run either the Democratic or Republican National Committee. The Prince of Wales had the least Jewish wedding ever. Controversy swirled about playwright Tony Kushner. Jill Abramson was named the first woman editor of the New York Times. Dolph Schayes rooted for the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA championship, and lo, it came to pass.

Eva Braun in blackface. Eva Braun speaking to the Tenafly JCC.

On the home front, Nextbook Press author Hillel Halkin was honored, and Rush Limbaugh said we were a “radical left-wing” outfit. We rolled out a welcome mat for Goldblog. And the American Society of Magazine Editors confirmed that it enjoys The Scroll.

We said several goodbyes, most of them sad: Elizabeth Taylor; Chris Hondros (whose photograph adorns the top of this post); Juliano Mer-Khamis; and Debbie Friedman, whose death I managed to turn into a controversy, though I swear I mourn for her as well. I don’t, however, mourn for one of the most important U.S. neo-Nazis, who was killed by his own son. There were many other sad goodbyes. Meanwhile, Sen. Joseph Lieberman announced he would retire after four terms. John Galliano’s career ended, or at least lulled, on less favorable terms. So did Rep. Anthony Weiner’s. Oh, and a final goodbye: Enjoy your virgins, Osama. Hamas will enjoy them with you. (Fortunately or not, Noam Chomsky’s religion does not conceive of an afterlife.)

Where do we stand now? Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for rape, which is looking more questionable by the day; Israeli central banker Stanley Fischer was barred from replacing him as head of the International Monetary Fund. The most Jewish state got gay marriage thanks in part to a handful of Jewish Republicans. Israeli-American law student Ilan Grapel is still being detained by Egyptian authorities under dubious espionage accusations. Benjamin Netanyahu’s greatest domestic rival may well be retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan. The Gaza flotilla remains docked.

How should you deal with all this? We suggest going the f**k to shul.

And what they throw into sharp relief is a larger lesson: Among all the minorities of the Middle East, only the Jews have escaped this unhealthy condition, thanks to the fact that for over 60 years now they have had their own state and can defend themselves against their adversaries. Theodor Herzl asserted that Israel would allow the Jews to live like normal people, and as it turns out—contrary to what nearly all Arabs, most Europeans, and many Israelis believe—he has largely been proven right.

But to understand why he was right, we have to put aside Herzl and Europe and look at Israel in a Middle Eastern context, as a refuge for a religious minority: the Jews of the Middle East. Many people, including many Jews, still see Israel as the end product of a European ideological movement that found an awful but undeniable justification in the Holocaust. Yet, as many Arabs argue, that narrative is unconnected to the Middle East. No matter how many Arab ideologues collaborated with the Nazis or adopted Nazi ideas about Jews, there is no reason that the Palestinians should have to pay for a European crime. It makes more sense, then, to look at minorities in the Middle East generally, the Jews specifically, and to evaluate the success or failure of Zionism by the standards of the region.

***

Anyone who previously wrote off as a right-wing Zionist myth the idea that Middle Eastern minorities are oppressed by the regional Sunni majority needs only consider the situation of Coptic Christians in Egypt over the last few months. Even many observers who did acknowledge the reality in Egypt are surprised now in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution to note the uptick in violence against Christians—the kidnappings of Coptic girls and the burning of churches, among other incidents. After all, it was commonly believed before the revolution that sectarian violence was the fault of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who, in this view, had empowered the Islamist movement and thus animosity against non-Muslim communities. But Egypt’s Muslim-Christian divide was not about Mubarak, any more than the United States was responsible for the murder of Christians in Iraq or Israel is responsible for the flight of Christians from Bethlehem and other towns in the West Bank.

Nor did sectarianism begin, as many believe it did, with the age of European colonialism, or with the Ottomans. While the French, the British, and the Ottomans hardly played constructive roles in taming the region’s sectarian furies, the problem goes back much further, at least to the Arab conquest of what we have come to call the Arabic-speaking Middle East.

The pact of Omar, named for Omar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph after Muhammad, stipulated the various laws and restrictions under which non-Muslims would be allowed to conduct their affairs. Their relative freedom, or burden, depended on the disposition of the particular caliph or the local authorities, but their legal status was never equal to that of Muslims. They were protected people, known as dhimmis.

Some regional minorities, by dint of their temperament and accidents of geography, were able to defend themselves with some success. Lebanon’s Maronite and Druze communities, for instance, made their strongholds in the mountains where they could cut intruders to ribbons. It is well known that the Druze community tends to align itself with the local power regardless of whether they’re based in Lebanon, Syria, or Israel. Historically the Maronites are somewhat more stubborn, and perhaps one of the great tragedies of the Lebanese civil war is that in its aftermath large parts of this proud community under the leadership of Gen. Michel Aoun have aligned themselves with the country’s Shia militia, Hezbollah. Part of the reason for that is the Maronites’ historical fear and hatred of the Sunnis and the wish, as Aoun has explained, to be protected against them by the Shia. This is the same reason why those Syrian-Americans in Michigan rallied in support of Assad: They feared what the Sunnis might do to their relatives.

The price of being a dhimmi is not just physical fear but intellectual confusion and moral corruption. Arab nationalism is largely the work of ideologues drawn from Middle Eastern minorities like the Syrian theorist of Baathism Michel ’Aflaq, who was Greek Orthodox. Arab identity, at least in its earliest iterations, was largely a product of the minorities’ desire to hide their sectarian identities from the Sunni majority. The minorities believed they had a better chance of blending in as part of one massive super-tribe, the Arabs, when as Christians or members of heterodox Shia sects like Alawites they were vulnerable. Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father and Syria’s former president, embraced Arab nationalism in order to legitimize his rule over Syria’s Sunni majority and protect his Alawite community. The present uprising in Syria shows that the thread is starting to become undone—sectarianism is starting to rear its head, and the minorities are terrified of the mostly Sunni opposition in the streets of Syrian cities.

It is hard not to sympathize with the regional minorities and their fear. However, it is also difficult not to be appalled by their support for a regime that is slaughtering children. One picture from the Dearborn event shows three Christian clergymen in the front row, all of them evidently supporters of Bashar al-Assad, which is unfortunately a common position among Syria’s Christian clergy, Catholics, and the Orthodox. “Definitely the Christians in Syria support Bashar al-Assad,” Yohana Ibrahim, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo told Reuters last month. “They hope that this storm will not spread.” The rather inconvenient fact for the archbishop is that Assad is trying to quell that storm by torturing and murdering people. The question is: What can be the point of preserving a Christian community if its values have been so thoroughly perverted? Or how many Sunni corpses is a church worth?

It’s not just Christians and Muslim minority sects who are afflicted with this moral sickness, but Jews as well. Jack Avital, head of the Sephardic National Alliance and a leader of the Syrian-Jewish community of North America, has been in touch with Syrian officials in Damascus and in the United States and seems to think Assad is an “honest guy” who is “protecting the minute Jewish community still in place in Damascus.” Avital thinks a regime that buries its opponents in mass graves is OK because in Syria “the Jewish community is doing well.” Compare this repugnant calculation to the position of all of Israel’s senior officials, from the prime minister and president to the defense and foreign ministers, who have condemned Assad’s massacre.

How did the Middle East’s Jewish minority escape this sickness? The state of Israel. Of all the Middle Eastern states carved up in the aftermath of World War I, Israel is the sole success story—politically, economically, socially, and technologically. Moreover, it has safeguarded the lives of a regional minority with minimal oppression of and maximum participation by other groups who are also citizens of the state. By establishing a Jewish majority in Palestine, Israel distinguished itself from other regional minority groups that succeeded in gaining control of a state while remaining minorities, like the Alawites in Syria, whose record has been one of stagnation, oppression, and plunder.

So, when it comes to the Holocaust, maybe the Arabs are right: The crimes of Europe need not justify the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. There is plenty of justification to be found in the Middle East. Without Israel, the region would lose its one success story—and the Jews of the Middle East would be yet another group of fearful, oppressed, and vulnerable dhimmis.

That is daily life in post-Mubarak Egypt, as reported by Arab-language online media and bloggers last week. It’s not much different from the economic breakdown I witnessed after civil wars in Central American banana republics, with one big difference there—namely the bananas, which meant that no one starved when economies disintegrated. But the Egyptians and Syrians are desperately short of food and can neither produce it nor earn the means to pay for it.

Israel’s security position surely benefits in the long-term from the weakening or even the collapse of its chief military opponents among its Arab neighbors. Tactically, some observers point to a risk that the beleaguered Syrian regime might strike Israel to distract attention from its internal problems. But a case can be made that after civil unrest in Syria and political upheaval in Egypt, those countries are less prepared to strike Israel than at any time in the past 50 years. While the Western media trumpets the anodyne Bush-era fantasy of a forward-looking Arab world overthrowing outmoded autocrats in favor of Western-style democracy via Facebook and Twitter, the Arab world seems headed toward an abyss.

Severe food shortages were spreading in Syria, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization reported in May, even before the phrase “civil war” became endemic in Western press reports about that country. Syrian protesters now appear able to inflict significant casualties on government forces, and some Syrian units reportedly have refused orders to fire on demonstrators. Even where the Arab Spring has not decayed into civil war, as it has in Yemen and Libya, and threatens to in Syria, the revolts that toppled or threaten autocracies from North Africa to Yemen threaten to dissolve the remains of civil society.

The Obama Administration and other Western governments have acknowledged the depth of the Arab disaster, proposing a massive rescue package. The International Monetary Fund declared late last month that the Middle East and North Africa would require $160 billion in financial support during the next three years—more than Egypt’s total import bill over the period and two-fifths of its GDP. The IMF itself proposes to kick in $35 billion, the first time that institution has proffered money without knowing to what government and under what conditions it will be lent. And the Group of Eight industrial nations, meeting in France, announced a $40 billion aid package for Egypt and Tunisia, without stating where the money will be found or whether thrift-minded legislatures will provide it.

Staggering as these numbers seem, they are not an exaggeration: Egypt is short about $25 billion a year, and it is doubtful that Western governments will pick up that tab for long. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper declined to commit funds to the G-8 support package, and Republicans in the United States Congress have already questioned the wisdom of throwing money into countries whose governments may come under the control of anti-American Islamist radicals.

Of all the foreign aid programs ever put forward by major governments, this latest aid package seems perhaps the least likely to succeed, even if Western governments do decide to pay for it. After the fall of Communism in 1989, Western governments announced $40 billion to $70 billion worth of transition aid to post-communist countries, but barely a tenth of the promised aid was actually disbursed in the peak year of 1992. The IMF and G-8 announcements reflect a belated, panicky acknowledgment on the part of Western governments that everything is about to go very wrong.

The Arab countries’ economic problems are incomparably worse than those of the post-communist world. Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, was largely self-sufficient in food and held its own in high-tech military competition with the United States until the 1980s. Prior to the fall of Communism, Eastern Europe was literate, urban, and industrial.

A 2009 World Bank report on Arab food security warned: “Arab countries are very vulnerable to fluctuations in international commodity markets because they are heavily dependent on imported food. Arab countries are the largest importers of cereal in the world. Most import at least 50 percent of the food calories they consume.”

Two-fifths of Egyptians can’t read. Egypt imports half its wheat, the staple food commodity. More than nine-tenths of married Egyptian women have suffered genital mutilation. Three out of 10 marriages in Egypt unite first or second cousins, reinforcing clan loyalties. The only institution of national cohesion is the army, but the army itself is at risk. “After the humiliation of [former President Hosni Mubarak],” a former U.S. Secretary of State remarked in a private think-tank briefing, “the generals know that they can be brought down by street demonstrations.” The military-business clique that ran the country for 60 years under Gamal Abdel Nasser and then Mubarak is fleeing, taking whatever they can with them.

The Facebook activists of Tahrir Square became the revolution’s poster boys, but very few of them have jobs, or will ever get them. Egypt’s new finance minister, Samir Radwan, told the Financial Times in February: “I’m generalizing, but a large number of the Egyptian labor force is unemployable. The products of the education system are unemployable.” Of Egypt’s 700,000 university graduates, a tiny percentage lands a job with outfits like Google, as activist and Mubarak opposition leader Wael Ghonim did after studying at the American University in Cairo. (He has spent the last few weeks in the United States signing book deals and receiving awards.)

Four months into its revolution, Egypt displays the symptoms of social disintegration last seen in Russia after the fall of Communism or in Nicaragua in the last days of the Sandinista regime. I observed both, as an adviser to Boris Yeltsin’s finance ministry and to President Violeta Chamorro after she won Nicaragua’s presidential election in 1990. But there’s a deadly difference between Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen and past episodes of economic chaos: The poor Arab states have been at the brink of a food crisis for years, and the doubling of world food prices during 2010 pushed them over the edge. The revolts, in part a response to the food crisis, have made matters irreparably worse.

The chain of food distribution has broken down for several reasons: a lack of money, theft and hoarding of available food stocks, and a battle for control of food supplies between a welter of government and private entities. Mobs, in the form of “revolutionary committees,” are attacking shops whose owners “charge more than the price prescribed by law,” the Federation of Egyptian Radio and Television reported. The Ministry of Solidarity and Social Justice warned of “thugs” in control of bread and fuel, raising bread prices far in excess of the 11.5 percent inflation reported for April by the country’s central bank. The price of some items, including sugar and cheese, has doubled in some urban markets in the past two months. Reuters reported last month that the country lost $6 billion of official and $7 billion of unofficial reserves, and had only $24.5 billion on hand at the end of April.

Egypt’s social structure—with two-fifths of the country mired in extreme rural poverty and another quarter starving on thin subsidies in Cairo and Alexandria—simply is not viable. Like many Third World autocracies, Egypt suppressed agricultural productivity in order to keep half its population barefoot, illiterate, and down on the farm. Once the breadbasket of the Mediterranean, Egypt’s wheat yield is now a fifth of that produced in the United States. It cannot feed itself.

Egypt is in an economic trap without an exit. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a few tentative steps toward reform and ended up with 100,000 dispossessed farmers living in tent cities around Damascus. Other developing economies have had better luck than the hapless Syrians. Mexico pursued the same policy of rural impoverishment for half a century and solved it by shipping a fifth of its people to the United States—and Mexico is an oil-exporting country that is roughly self-sufficient in food and has substantial industry.

Some Israeli commentators fear that an American embrace of post-authoritarian Arab regimes might leave Israel isolated. “The United States, it may be assumed, will make every effort to strengthen its hold on the region following the regime changes,” wrote Haaretz Middle Eastern affairs analyst Zvi Bar’el this week. “If Israel does not change its policy after the dust settles in the region and does not help the United States be the power in the region, it will be categorized as suspicious, if not an outright enemy.” The trouble is that U.S. dollars and defense capability may not be able to stabilize any of these countries. Fractious societies beset by sectarian and tribal divisions generally have murderous authoritarian regimes for a reason. Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen—the oil-poor Arab states—simply can’t get there from here. They have no resources, no qualified manpower, no infrastructure, and no civil institutions.

A more probable direction for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is the one suggested by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress last month, namely that Israel will be perceived as the “one anchor of stability” and “America’s unwavering ally” in “an unstable Middle East.” Israel’s security position may show a sudden and drastic improvement. Irregular forces have been shooting at Israel since 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon to prevent such attacks, and the irregulars always have relied on the implicit backing of the regular armies of Syria and other countries. With the Syrian army busy killing protesters, Hezbollah is less likely to provoke an Israel military response. Iran’s capacity to reach into Lebanon, for that matter, is constrained by the chaos in Syria.

While Egypt may back away from its peace treaty with Israel, the state of readiness of its military is deteriorating with the continued economic crisis and disruption of the chain of command, starting with the fall of Mubarak, its former commander-in-chief. Unlike 1973, when the Egyptian army depended on Soviet arms and tens of thousands of Soviet advisers, Egypt depends on American weapons and corresponding support, and it is highly unlikely that the Pentagon would assist Egyptian aggression against Israel by resupplying Egypt after an initial attack. And if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power in Egypt, the U.S. Congress will make it hard for Washington to provide any sort of aid to Egypt at all.

With the regular armies of present and former enemies paralyzed, Israel is in a far better position to neutralize irregular forces. It may therefore emerge from the Arab upheaval with a stronger position in the region than at any time in its history.

But one question still remains: What were they fighting for?

This weekend, Egypt reopened the Rafah crossing into the Gaza strip, which is perhaps a sign that it is time for a reassessment of Egypt’s recent revolution and the legacy of the man it brought down. Hosni Mubarak was considered a U.S. ally because he shared many of our country’s stated interests, including stopping Hamas, a group despised by Mubarak and his security chief, Omar Suleiman. The two men stood against the armed Palestinian resistance movement because they feared their own Muslim Brotherhood, a like-minded counterpart to Hamas, and Iranian expansion, which they saw as a by-product of Hamas’ power.

But Mubarak’s Egypt is no more—the military still rules as it did behind the veneer of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, but Cairo can no longer afford to be a stable U.S. ally. Mubarak has been charged with the capital crime of killing protesters during the revolution, along with assorted lesser crimes. The question then is whether the reportedly ailing Mubarak will die before the state can execute him—maybe it will be done quietly or perhaps, with a flourish, in the middle of Tahrir Square. Egypt’s rulers will spill the blood of Mubarak and his sons when they have nothing else with which to satisfy the hunger of the revolution—which is happening in the middle of an economic crisis that will make it difficult to feed a country of 83 million people.

Maybe someday there will be an accounting of all the fictions that determined our understanding of the Egyptian revolution as it unfolded. In retrospect, it is strange that an American intellectual and political class proved so credulous during the uprising. The Egyptian media and government officials are well-known for a casual relationship with the truth, as well as a tradition of anti-Semitism in the government-owned and independent presses. It was Egyptian officials who claimed that a shark attack on German tourists in the Sinai was engineered by the Mossad, a fable regarded by the U.S. intelligentsia as darkly humorous evidence of an abnormally thwarted culture incapable of distinguishing between reality and a bogeyman engendered by fearful, childish, systemic anti-Semitism.

And yet the international media took every word that came out of the Egyptian street during the revolution as the absolute truth. For instance, there was the notion that the violence of the revolution resulted from Mubarak’s order for the police to leave their posts and throw open the jails. That such an order would be followed throughout the chain of command would be a remarkable feat in a country not known for its bureaucratic efficiency. It seemed not to occur to reporters and policymakers that in the midst of general chaos—and Egypt is chaotic in its nature—many policemen may have simply left their posts for fear of being overrun by revolutionary mobs.

The people who fought with the police in the streets those first few nights seem to have been the same who later turned to violence against the demonstrators as well as the press. But this, too, was blamed on Mubarak, for these people were assumed to be thugs in his hire, as were the men who rode the horses and camels down from the Pyramids. Maybe, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, it really was pro-Mubarak thugs responsible for the violence against the international press, but there are plenty of other Egyptian outfits hostile to free media, like the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Kristof, however, the Muslim Brotherhood is no worse than the Republican party. Pro-Mubarak thugs were even blamed for the rising tide of violence in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Mubarak was faulted for the anti-Semitism in the Egyptian media and for empowering Islamists while crushing the liberal movement. The facts, sadly, are otherwise. It is true that Mubarak had thrown certain liberals in jail, like the former presidential candidate Ayman Nour, but the former president is hardly responsible the absence of a genuine liberal culture in Egypt. Mubarak did not empower Islamists; he fought them tooth and nail for two decades, and they tried to kill him in Sudan. The reason that the Muslim Brotherhood still exists in spite of Mubarak’s ruthlessness is that Islamism is a powerful political current that represents the flower of Arab modernity and will always have a constituency in Muslim-majority countries. Nor is Mubarak responsible for anti-Semitism in the Egyptian press: The unpleasant reality is that the country and the surrounding region would be anti-Semitic if Mubarak had never been born.

None of these facts seemed to matter—not to the revolutionaries, of course, but neither to the U.S. intelligentsia, even as the narrative fit a familiar pattern. During the revolution, Mubarak came to play the role that Israel and the United States typically play in Egypt: He was the source of all evil. It is only now, as dissatisfaction with the army mounts, that the Egyptian revolutionaries are coming to recognize that the army they welcomed in Tahrir as brothers have always held the real power in Cairo.

The strange fact is that Mubarak was a reformer. Or at least he was considered so by the World Bank and the IMF, which gave Egypt high rankings over the last half decade. The army shared a common goal with the revolutionaries in bringing down Mubarak because it, too, did not want the president’s son Gamal to succeed him, lest he take a cut out of their lucrative business enterprises.

Since the country’s 2004 economic reforms, spearheaded by Gamal Mubarak and his band of technocrats, the country’s economy grew at an average of 7 percent annually. While the common charge is that the country’s economic miracle didn’t trickle down to the lower classes, the inequality index held steady. Moreover, it is not the rural or urban poor who engineered the revolution, but rather a large segment of middle-class youth enjoying the economic upturn who took to the streets on behalf, as they claimed, of all Egypt.

It’s fine if we want to chuck out IMF and World Bank benchmarks for reform, but if we are going to judge a country’s political system according to how many people social media networkers can put on the streets then that is going to mean something different for U.S. Middle East policy. In the case of Egypt, it means American taxpayers are expected to pick up the tab for someone else’s street theater.

The $2 billion that Washington has been giving Cairo every year for 30 years is essentially a bribe to convince Egypt not to shoot itself in the head by going to war with Israel. But the problem isn’t just that 1981 money doesn’t cover 2011 bills. Since the revolution, tourism, one of the country’s major sources of revenue, is way down due to the instability and ongoing violence, including several attacks against Coptic Christians, and $13 billion in foreign exchange reserves has fled the country. Egypt is not going to woo back foreign investors at this point, not just because of instability but because the policy is associated with the once-ruling family now on trial for its life.

So, how does Egypt, the world’s largest importer of wheat, feed itself if prices continue to rise because of a severe drought in China, the world’s largest exporter of wheat? Egypt’s new rulers need to show—by opening up Rafah, letting Iranian ships pass through the Suez Canal, brokering a reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah—what a new Egypt could look like, one that would threaten to spin dangerously out of the U.S. orbit unless the Americans pay up.

This gambit is nothing new for Egypt, which performed the same ballet under Gamal Nasser during the early years of the Cold War. Nasser used the United States and the USSR against each other to get what he wanted—prestige, power, and American money. It worked even after he concluded the 1955 deal for Czech (i.e., Soviet) arms. Sure, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to fund Nasser’s Aswan Dam project, for which the Soviets eventually footed the bill. But in 1956, Washington still thought highly enough of Nasser to demand that their British, French, and Israeli allies withdraw their invasionary forces from Egypt after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Only in the aftermath of the 1973 war with Israel did Egypt, now under Anwar Sadat, ally itself with the United States, a deal that Mubarak kept faithfully for 30 years.

Of course there is no longer a superpower rivalry, which is good for U.S. strategy in the big picture. But Egypt’s brinksmanship will still present plenty of headaches. Iran is not going to give the Egyptians money; and even if the Saudis don’t renege on the $4 billion they’ve promised Cairo, that’s hardly enough. The only place to turn is Washington, but the $1 billion in debt relief and the other billion in investment we’ve promised is evidence we don’t have the cash either.

Without bread, Egypt will turn to spectacles, and so the Mubaraks will probably hang. And after Egypt has purged itself of that evil, it will turn again to the evil that has plagued the Egyptian imagination since 1948: the Zionists and their backer in Washington. Cairo, say Western rationalists in the press and policy circles, knows it would lose any war with Israel and does not want to forfeit that $2 billion a year from the United States. But there are many other factors that will shape the thinking in Cairo in the months and years to come, and there is nothing rational about a society whose authorities believe that the Mossad exerts secret mind-control over sharks.

But what are the rest of us to make of this bit of text, we whose eyes glazed over in math class and require a calculator to work out a 20 percent tip on a $100 check? The answer lies in the spirit rather than the letter of the text, and in spirit this week’s parasha delivers a simple but profound message: We all count. Even a small nation, or in particular a small nation, must keep track of each and every soul. Seen through this prism, numbers are not abstractions; each one corresponds with a living, breathing human being. Which, of course, is why we should be very careful to handle numbers with accuracy and care—fudge a number, and you’ve sinned against the very core of the tangible and the real.

Ours, alas, is the era of unreal numbers, from the falsified spreadsheets of Bernie Madoff to the felonious schemes of the equally criminal yet tragically unpunished swindlers behind the subprime mortgage bubble. Bluffing discreetly on balance sheets is bad enough; do it in the open, on the largest imaginable stage, and we’re headed down a dangerous road.

Unfortunately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of the Congress earlier this week was a master class of numeric (and other) inaccuracies. Because these things matter—they matter very much—let us, in the spirit of this week’s parasha, do the Jewish thing and set the record straight.

Netanyahu said: The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and Greater Tel Aviv.

Actually, there are 304,569 Israelis living in the West Bank, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Add to that East Jerusalem—which, according to most credible sources, is home to about 200,000 Israelis—and you hit the 500,000 mark. Even if one chooses to be generous and give the prime minister these East Jerusalemites in his count, one has to wonder, as Jonathan Lis recently did in Haaretz, why Netanyahu, who later on in his speech roared that “Jerusalem must never again be divided,” would possibly choose to include the residents of the undividable capital in the overall tally of the contested populace.

Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1 percent are truly free, and they’re all citizens of Israel.

This bit of bluster may come as somewhat of a slight to Israel’s northern neighbor, Lebanon, where the robust parliamentary elections of 2009 drew a record-high voter turnout. Also in line for surprise are the Iraqis, who, despite still struggling to find democracy’s balance, came out in droves to vote in the recent 2010 elections for the Council of Representatives: 62.4 percent of Iraqis cast a ballot that year, only a slightly less impressive showing than the 65.2 percent of Israelis who exercised their civic duty in the nation’s most recent elections in 2009. Oh, and Jordan? Its 120-member House of Representatives holds a substantial number of seats for women and religious and ethnic minorities. You know, as they’re wont to do in fiercely oppressive, thoroughly non-democratic countries.

As the cherry on top of Netanyahu’s rhetorical ruses comes the fact that two days before the prime minister thundered in Congress, the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee passed, in a preliminary vote, a new bill that would give preference to  applicants for government jobs who are veterans of the IDF, thereby openly discriminating against Israeli Arabs, who do not serve in the army. Add to that the so-called Nakba Law, which prohibits Israeli Arabs from teaching or commemorating their interpretation of the historical events that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, as well as other laws currently under consideration in the Knesset—like the one that would require all citizens of Israel to pledge allegiance to their nation as a uniquely Jewish state—and this whole “truly free” business begins to crumble.

In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath.

David, actually, swung his fateful sling in the valley of Elah, near modern-day Beit Shemesh, which is squarely within the boundaries of Israel proper. And if Netanyahu truly believes Israel is nothing like the Brits or the Belgians, he is welcome, of course, to do with the West Bank as had once been done with Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and annex them. Until then, however, the prime minister has to choose: If he wishes to follow the Bible as his unsurpassable guide to realpolitik, let him declare so openly and allow his constituents to support or reject his theological aspirations. But if he wishes to guide the ship of state according to the acceptable, rational norms of Western democracies, all that blessed biblical stuff is, alas, rather irrelevant. Seen from that perspective, asserting martial law on a territory and its citizens, setting up an intricate bureaucracy of governance, oppressing any aspirations for self-governance, and insisting time and again that the natives are too corrupt and incompetent to govern themselves sounds like it’s one punch bowl away from feeling right at home at the Bengal Club.

The fun never ends. One could, for example, juxtapose Netanyahu’s encomiums for the riotous youth of the Arab spring with his efforts to drum up support for the despotic Hosni Mubarak as the Egyptian president was losing his grip on power earlier this year, or contrast Netanyahu’s claim that “the Palestinian economy is booming” with the World Bank’s report, released this April, which finds that the very same economy would soon be rendered “unsustainable” unless Israel relaxes the considerable restrictions it still places on the Palestinian private sector.

But instead of hurling oneself against the firm wall of slurs and untruths Netanyahu erected in his Washington speech, let us read the parasha instead, and recall the spirit, sacred and fierce and urgent, that urges us to keep our accounting strict and strictly honest.

And yet, it was also one of the most depressing. Although many of the young Arab journalists with whom we had bonded were undoubtedly worldly, intelligent, curious, and open-minded, they were also operating on a completely different epistemological frequency. Whenever thorny topics came up—the Holocaust, terrorism, the Arab-Israeli peace process—we couldn’t really discuss any of these matters with any substance since we weren’t even able to agree on what we were discussing. How could one begin to challenge recurring comparisons between the Israeli occupation and the Holocaust when many of the young Arab journalists didn’t actually know what the Holocaust was? Or alternatively, how do you seriously discuss the threats of Islamic terrorism with people who deny that al-Qaida carried out the attacks of September 11? And finally, how could we debate why the peace process was failing with people who adamantly refused to acknowledge that such a process existed, maintaining instead that Israelis’ sole objective remains the conquest of Arab lands?

This last and most ubiquitous claim, I quixotically tried to refute. When I pointed to the fact that for well over a decade a majority of Israelis have consistently supported the recognition of an independent Palestinian state—and often voted that way—my words were met with a suspicion that eventually gave way to surprise. “So, why didn’t we ever hear about this?” one intrepid Jordanian journalist asked me with genuine concern. I shrugged my shoulders as if perplexed. But the answer was as obvious to me then as it is now: Despite their apparent cosmopolitan disposition, these young Arab journalists—many of whom represent the intellectual voice at the forefront of the Arab Spring today—didn’t know any of these things because there were, and still are, vested interests that purposely made sure they wouldn’t.

At a time when the Western media is busy extolling the virtues of this tech-savvy “new Arab generation” of 20- and 30-year-olds and branding them “the Arab world’s agents of change,” I can’t help but think back to that disenchanting week in Madrid, which taught me just how grossly ill-prepared, albeit well-intentioned, many of these agents of change are for the Herculean task that awaits them. Having recently broken free of the physical chains placed upon their bodies by repressive governments, millions of young Arabs have yet to liberate their minds from ideological bondage to the autocrats they have toppled. No matter how nobly dedicated this Arab revolutionary generation is to transforming the Middle East, it would be highly naïve, myopic, and even delusional to assume they have acquired the liberal values necessary to create democratic societies. For the fact remains that while corrupt and authoritarian political institutions can swiftly be destroyed, the tainted ideas they had implanted into the minds of their young subjects cannot easily be removed.

***

One example of the intellectual contamination of young Arabs by the political culture in which they have grown up is their inability to distinguish between fact and fiction, as indicated by the presence of conspiracy theories still prevalent throughout the Middle East. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying that “everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.” The problem even with many of the educated and liberal-minded Arab journalists I met in Madrid was that they couldn’t always tell the difference between the two. And who could blame them? Arab elites had been able to employ what the French philosopher Louis Althusser called an “ideological state apparatus” that reinforced and reproduced their ruling ideology—while denying access and legitimacy to all of the alternatives.

The distorted public image of the Holocaust in the Arab world is a salient example of just how this apparatus functions. In preventing literary works such as the The Diary of Anne Frank from entering their classrooms and libraries (and in some cases formally banning them), and by barring films like Sophie’s Choice and Schindler’s List from their theaters, Arab governments succeeded in preventing widespread awareness of the gas chambers at Auschwitz or the mass graves at Babi Yar from the minds of their youths. That Arab intellectuals were accordingly “uninterested,” in the words of historians Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, who have studied the Arab reaction to the Holocaust, in the actual experiences of the victims explains why the mounds of documented evidence, testimonies, and confessions—or everything that makes this immense body of knowledge so incontrovertible—has deliberately been withheld from the impressionable minds of young Arabs. The result of this state-engineered project of mass censorship is that in the absence of any empirical evidence corroborating the experiences of the Holocaust, a false space of contention has been created into which dangerous pseudo-intellectuals like David Irving and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could freely inject their own denialist theories, and present fiction as fact. Having been denied the data with which to challenge such claims, too many young Arabs have unknowingly been suspended in a state of blissful ignorance that has led them to believe that the only Holocaust that ever took place—as one bright though hopelessly misguided young Arab journalist once told me—was the one perpetrated by Israelis upon Palestinians.

Pervasive ignorance about the Holocaust is emblematic of what has become the normative pattern of intellectual falsification and factual distortion permeating all levels of Arab society. This institutionalized culture of fabrication and fantasy that rules Arab political culture has come to encompass anything from the still widely believed myth that the Mossad orchestrated the September 11 terror attacks to equally preposterous though lesser known claims that America deliberately dropped humanitarian aid in Afghanistan on mine fields to lure innocent civilians into killing traps. Although outrageous conspiracy theories of this sort are a global phenomenon—persistent in the United States, too—what is so different and therefore ultimately disturbing about their manifestation in the Arab world is their source: Rather than originating and remaining on the fringes of society, they are the products of respectable mainstream elites and institutions—all of which naturally transformed these meticulously crafted prevarications in the eyes of the highly impressionable youths into “credible” sources of information.

When the leading newspapers of record, revered academic intellectuals, and admired cultural figures all tell the same lie, why would anyone go looking in search of the truth? No matter how progressive these sons and daughters of the Arab Spring are, the long-held prejudices of their fathers and mothers have already been learned by a state-run ideological apparatus that worked to condition their minds in a certain way. Having grown up watching a beloved Mickey Mouse-like television character extolling the virtues of violence and hatred to them as kids; having then encountered these same toxic messages reproduced and embellished in their elementary-school textbooks; having noticed that the prized dates at their local market were branded as “Osamas” for their exceptional taste; having walked on their way to and from school every day through streets named after suicide bombers; having seen the Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the best-seller shelf at their local bookstores and watched ancient Jewish blood libels reincarnated as their favorite primetime dramas, what chance did this revolutionary Arab generation ever really have for even engaging, let alone embracing, the values of tolerance and pluralism that are the sine qua non for the liberal democratic society they now wish to establish?

One need not be an expert on adolescent cognitive development to realize that by contaminating both the private and public spheres of Arab society with hollow truths and sophisticated lies that infested all facets of daily life—the household, schoolroom, mosque, media, cafés, and workplace—Arab governments had not only stolen the intellectual innocence of their youths, but have severely impeded their capability to ever get it back. To expect this young Arab generation to undergo a miraculous metamorphosis that could erase decades of institutionalized indoctrination and transform entrenched bigotry into tolerance, envy into cooperation, malice into concord, is akin to asking of them to eschew their entire life’s experience. George Orwell aptly captured the challenge facing millions of young Arab reformers today: When living in a corrupt society, one cannot remain uncorrupted.

***

But rather than account for the source of the disease, the pervasiveness of conspiratorial thinking in the Arab world is symptomatic of a much deeper problem. A civilization that voraciously consumes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion while refusing to even glance at the pages from The Diary of Anne Frank, apparently petrified of the insights a 15-year-old Jewish girl hiding for her life in an Amsterdam attic might have, is one profoundly consumed not only by fear, self-loathing, and parochialism, but by the threat of any genuine exercise of individual free thought. Conspiracy theories are so rampant in the Arab world precisely because the minds of so many young Arabs have been made fertile for their cultivation. Depriving their citizens not only of access to any alternative sources of knowledge that could counter such fraudulent theories, but also of the chance to develop the curiosity and willingness to think critically and independently is exactly what enabled Arab authoritarians to rule unchallenged for so many years.

Without engaging in the details of the long and tragic civilizational decline in the face of Western modernity that saw the gradual closing of the Arab mind to outside ideas, it’s worth reflecting, as many scholars have already done, upon the sad—and practically nonexistent—state of the humanities in the Arab world, where that ancient Socratic dictum that an unexamined life is a life not worth living has long been buried and forgotten. If anything, what both secularist and Islamist authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East have always had in common is their shared animosity toward independent, original, and critical thought and their subsequent institutional attempts to stifle it through politicized knowledge that instilled in their youths offsetting values of obedience, submission, and conformity.

Even the United Nations Development Program reached a similar conclusion a few years ago in a report that recognized the absence of a well-balanced Western-style education and warned against an expanding “knowledge gap” gripping Arab societies. The report warned of “ideologies, societal structures and values that inhibit critical thinking, cut Arabs off from their knowledge-rich heritage and block the free flow of ideas and learning,” while calling for “a deep-seated reform in the organizational, social and political context of knowledge” that could potentially unleash “a human renaissance across the Arab world.”

Such proposals are neither Orientalist nor patronizing, as some might argue, but rather realistic. No matter how genuinely committed this Arab revolutionary generation remains to founding a just and democratic Middle East, without a vigorous cultivation of the humanistic proclivities for critical thought and independent reasoning, attempts to transplant “readymade” democratic institutions are destined to fail. The belief that periodic visits to the ballot box or the ratification of new constitutions will furnish Arab citizens with the values that bred these democratic instruments of government in the first place is akin to the madness Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver observed behind attempts to build a house from the roof down.

***

While the last few months have reminded us just how easily dictators can be deposed, bridges overtaken, and town squares overrun, the last few centuries teach us that it is often easier to liberate the body than the mind. In the West, as mass democracy began taking root over a century ago, progressive intellectuals like John Dewey and Matthew Arnold soberly understood that in order for the democratic system to sustain itself, people were going to have to acquire democratic skills and, quite literally, “learn” how to be free.

But who will teach this to the young Arab generations? The proliferation of the Internet and satellite television could be a good start if it was not as perilous as it is promising: The free flow of information can be counterproductive unless people know to discern fact from fiction and critically assess what they are consuming. Another encouraging sign is that Arab elites primarily in the Gulf have spotted this intellectual deficit and have begun inviting prominent American universities like NYU and George Mason to expand their pedagogical umbrellas over their youths in the hopes of importing the seeds of enlightenment for future Arab generations. But even that is insufficient.

The key to resolving this dilemma and ultimately liberating Arab minds lies in the hands of the revolutionary generation itself, and particularly in its capacity to bow humbly before the forces of history and recognize the extent—and especially the limitations—of its monumental accomplishments. Too many revolutions degenerated into tyranny precisely because they tried to create a brand new society purified of the ills inherited from the old one. If this Arab Spring generation, which has toppled the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia (and threatens those in Tripoli, Sana’a, and Damascus), is indeed committed to building a democratic Middle East, it must therefore start by forgoing the hubris of such utopian aspirations and accept that millions of young Arabs—many of whom have actively supported the revolutions—are nevertheless still beholden to many of the regressive ideas against which they were waged.

To expect that decades of indoctrination can be expunged with a couple of tweets and a few weeks of protests is brash, arrogant, and ultimately dangerous. Acquiring the democratic mindset is a process that requires incremental change, not sweeping transformation. A failure to comprehend this won’t simply lead the Arab Spring astray, but may very well cause the young members of the extraordinary generation behind it to rebuild even more malignant versions of the regimes they set out to replace.

You can trace his movements through his photographs, an unintended yet vivid diary (to learn more about him, his love of chess and classical music, and to see some exemplary photographs, go here). He documented much of the past decade’s American history, including John Kerry’s presidential campaign, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was in Israel and Lebanon in the summer of 2006, following the war.

An Israeli infantryman returning from Lebanon, August 2006.

As an auteur, however, his obession was clearly New York City, where he photographed, in 2004, the Republican National Convention; in 2005, the mass transit strike; in 2008, the Atlantic Yards construction project and the Chabad-Lubavitch community following the Mumbai attack; in 2009, the installation of Cardinal Dolan as archbishop; in 2010, Rep. Charlie Rangel’s birthday party; and much, much, much else besides.

A Chabad-Lubavitcher and NYPD after the Mumbai attack, November 2008.

He was in New York for last year’s lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. He spent February in Egypt. By last month, however, he was back to document the building of the World Trade Center memorial and the U.N. condemnation of Gadhafi. His first photographs from Libya were published fewer than two weeks ago.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting, November 2010.

If a single obsession can be discerned, it was the legacy of 9/11, whether commemorations of the event itself or the building of the Ground Zero memorial or, of course, the controversy concerning what was to be built two blocks away. Hondros (whose Website says he was born “to immigrant Greek and German parents, both survivors of World War II,” and who was reportedly engaged to be married) was not a traditional Tablet contributor: I doubt he knew who we are. But he was a contributor, providing visceral illustrations of some of the events that have provoked our magazine and our magazine’s readers the most. So it feels unusually sad that he is gone. May his memory be for a blessing.

From the top of the nascent site at the World Trade Center, March 2011.

‘Restrepo’ Director and a Photographer Killed in Libya [NYT]
In Memoriam, Chris Hondros [Foreign Policy]
Parting Glance: Chris Hondros [Lens]

Yet unlike in Egypt, where the Obama administration acceded (after some time) to the (pro-American) hated dictator being escorted out; and unlike in Yemen, where the administration has basically done the same to the basically cooperative, hated dictator; and unlike in Libya, where the administration is strafing the compounds of the basically cooperative, hated dictator; in Syria, the most we have heard, so far, is a “deeply concerned” White House statement calling on Syria to, you know, stop.

All of which makes this week a good time to reread Lee Smith’s column last week, in which he argued that the administration—and the administrations before this one, going as far back as the 1980s—have traditionally given Bashar al-Assad (and his father, Hafez, before him) an exceptional pass. Which would make a certain degree of realpolitik sense if Assad were exceptionally useful to the United States. But, Smith adds, if anything, the opposite is true. He concludes, “It’s just plain illogical that Washington won’t come out against Damascus.”

Syrian University Protests Violently Suppressed [NYT]
Syria Cracks Down in Two Cities on Coast [NYT]
The Revolution Strikes Home [Syria Comment]
Syrian Security Forces Attack Village [Al-Jazeera]
Student Killed After Syria Forces Attack Damascus University Protest [AP/Haaretz]
Syrian Soldiers Shot for Refusing to Fire on Protesters [Guardian]
U.S.: Syria Must Stop ‘Outrageous’ Repression of Anti-Government Protests [Haaretz]
Related: Fashionable [Tablet Magazine]

David Ignatius reports that while some important liberal voices have cropped up—he cites the Social Democratic Party, the Egyptian Liberal Party, and the leftist Popular Alliance—it is clear that, particularly among the poor of Cairo (which is to say, the folks who end up deciding elections), the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties are making the most headway, in part with appeals to keeping Egypt a Muslim nation in the face of a (fabricated) threat from Coptic Christians. Indeed, if the Brotherhood does not end up with much power following elections, it is much more likely that it will be because the Islamist vote was split among several parties, and even several factions of the Brotherhood itself, than because great masses of voters turned out for secular candidates. Many have said for months now that the best-case scenario for Egypt is something like Turkey’s AKP: Inherently Islamist, but moderately so; a thorn in Israel’s side (and to a lesser extent the West’s), but not a genuine enemy. Dissent’s Juliana DeVries reminds us, however, that the AKP is still way behind when it comes to the rights of minorities, including women.

That said, there is some cause for optimism. The leading presidential candidate is Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister and Arab League head, who is basically a secular guy, and his Wafd party, which is secular, was the most popular party according to one U.N.-commissioned poll. And that same poll found 63 percent of Egyptians in favor of maintaining peace with Israel. Developing …

Egypt: Protesters Call on Military To Try Hosni Mubarak and His Cronies [Babylon & Beyond]
Egyptian Democracy’s Growing Pains [WP]
Turkey’s AKP: A Model for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? [Dissent]
Egyptians Back Diplomat in Poll, Show Secular Bent [WSJ]

The Palestinian leader has just seven months to reach a working relationship with Hamas, which controls Gaza and which rejects the PA government, or the elections cannot be held in Gaza. Early indications are not promising. Hamas spokesmen flatly rejected the idea of rapprochement, despite an offer from Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha’ath to travel there and agree to “any conditions” the group might demand. “I don’t know if there will be an independent state around September and if we will see another president in the coming months or even after September,” Nabil Amr, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister and ambassador to Cairo and Moscow, told me. A confidant of both Yasser Arafat and Abbas, Amr has become a gadfly critic of the leaders he once advised.

While Abbas’ commitment to the September deadline could be dismissed as Palestinian rhetoric in the style of Yasser Arafat’s pledge to declare an independent state in September 2000, this time the Palestinian leadership may have no choice, given the wave of popular revolts rolling across the Arab world and the Palestinians’ own internal problems. A week after the fall of the Tunisian government in January, Al Jazeera began publishing the “Palestine Papers”—a WikiLeaks-style trove of documents detailing confidential peace talks between Palestinian negotiators and Israel that portrayed the Palestinian team as weak and desperate. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat initially denounced the documents as forgeries, but he was later forced to confirm their authenticity and resigned. Meanwhile, attention shifted to events in Egypt, where mass demonstrations led to Mubarak’s resignation on February 11.

The loss of Erekat, a key confidante, was a serious problem for Abbas. Even worse was the fall of Mubarak, a stout supporter of Fatah and opponent of Hamas. “The Palestinian leaders don’t have a good response to what is happening,” says analyst Hani al-Masri at the Palestine Media, Research and Studies Centre. “They are afraid because they lost their big friend and ally.” Al-Masri adds that the only way to achieve the unity with Hamas necessary to conduct elections and a breakthrough in the peace talks that will bring about independence by the September deadline is for the Palestinian leaders to change both their tactics and leadership. “Abu Mazen”—as Abbas is known—“must say seriously that he is not running in the next election,” says al-Masri. “We must prepare ourselves for the future.”

Hafez Barghouti, editor of the semi-official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and a veteran Fatah insider, says the party is failing to prepare for the inevitable generational handover of power. “Abu Mazen is old and he doesn’t want to be like the Arab leaders, to be fired by the people,” says Barghouti. “But I don’t know who will be the new leader. From Fatah I don’t see anybody. I cannot see a good leader or a popular leader now from Fatah. Fatah till now is sleeping.”

Hatem Abdel Kader, a former Palestinian minister for Jerusalem and a prominent leader of the young guard with close connections to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, echoes Amr’s call for Fatah to get its act together while still maintaining his support for Abbas.

“Fatah is the movement of our people, Fatah is the leader of our national project, and only Fatah can achieve our national project—but we need to clean up our home,” says Abdel Kader. “Right now we haven’t any choice, only Abu Mazen. After Abu Mazen, I don’t know.”

The absence of any natural successor to Abbas either now or in the future is likely to spell trouble for Fatah, for the Palestinian national movement, and for Israelis hoping for a peace partner. Observers agree that while Palestinian Prime Minster Salam Fayyad has built enormous political capital with his “Homestretch to Freedom” plan for Palestinian statehood, his closeness to the Americans makes him an object of suspicion, and there is no chance he can win an election as an independent.

“Salam Fayyad is a good man, but he is not from Fatah,” says pollster Nabil Kukali, director-general of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in Beit Sahour. “If Fatah will support Fayyad I’m sure he will win the elections. But if Fatah have their own candidate it will be very difficult for Fayyad.”

Several members of the Palestinian Central Committee who were elected in 2009 appear to have dropped out of contention for a leadership role. Saeb Erekat’s chances were probably destroyed by the Palestine Papers leaks. Tawfik Tirawi, a former head of Palestinian General Intelligence, prefers to play a backroom role as chief security adviser to Abbas. Jibril Rajoub, former head of Preventive Security in the West Bank, is reveling in his new job as head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and Football Association and refuses to discuss anything except soccer and athletics.

Polls suggest that the potential candidate likely to win the largest majority in a post-Abbas presidential election is Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five life terms in an Israeli jail for his part in launching terror attacks against Israelis during the intifada. While Fatah leaders respect Barghouti, they rule out his candidacy as impractical.

“Marwan Barghouti could be an excellent candidate, but he is in an Israeli prison,” says Hanna Siniora, a veteran Fatah leader in Jerusalem. Amr concurs: “I like him and he’s my friend, but who will nominate a president in prison? It will be a joke.”

Recent events also suggest that Abbas, far from encouraging a smooth leadership transition, is working hard to deter would-be successors from staking a claim to the presidency. Until November, one obvious front-runner was Mohammed Dahlan, 49, the feared former commander of Palestinian Preventive Security in Gaza. Dahlan’s U.S.-trained and -equipped forces were roundly defeated by the Hamas Executive Force and expelled from Gaza in 2007. Some 400 Fatah fighters and activists were killed in that battle. But Dahlan bounced back from that humiliation to secure a seat on the Central Committee in 2009. Dahlan had established close ties with U.S. and British intelligence during his tenure as Gaza security chief and amassed a sizable personal fortune, with which he began to build a power base in the West Bank.

But last fall, Dahlan was suddenly stripped of his official duties and accused of financial and other misdeeds after he criticized the business dealings of the president’s family. An unprecedented attack on Dahlan published by the PLO’s official WAFA news agency announced a full-scale investigation into Dahlan’s alleged corruption and linked him to a plot to overthrow Abbas also involving Nasser al-Kidwa, Yasser Arafat’s nephew and a former foreign minister and PLO representative to the United Nations—and another possible successor to Abbas.

Indeed, al-Kidwa’s name comes up frequently in conversations with senior Fatah officials about successors. Now 57, al-Kidwa was talent-spotted in his teens by his uncle and charged with turning the General Union of Palestinian Students into an international force to help Fatah consolidate its control of the PLO while also serving as a nursery for future Palestinian leaders.

In the modest basement office he now occupies as the head of the Yasser Arafat Foundation, al-Kidwa is clearly caught between a desire to continue his uncle’s legacy, his frustration at the current leadership’s lack of progress in the peace process, and his shock at the public accusation that he was plotting with Dahlan to overthrow Abbas.

Al-Kidwa bears an uncanny resemblance to his late uncle—he favors business suits over military fatigues—but Fatah kingmakers are divided as to whether he has what it takes to fill Arafat’s shoes. His supporters cite his rich diplomatic experience, impressive intellect, and his freedom from the taint of corruption that swirls around many other Fatah officials. Detractors say he is largely untried on the domestic scene and his profile since returning from diplomatic service has been too low to attract much following among the 400,000 registered members of Fatah.

One Israeli diplomat who frequently locked horns with al-Kidwa at the United Nations said he was a force to be reckoned with. “He is very intelligent, extremely slippery, and he can be unnecessarily aggressive,” said the Israeli. Many Palestinians may feel that is exactly the kind of person they could use right now at the helm of their drifting ship.

Al-Kidwa says the conspiracy allegations published by the official news agency are symptomatic of a leadership that has lost touch with its own people and frozen democratic institutions like the legislative council.

“We are seeing a decrease in the amount of tolerance of other opinions, of opposition, of dissent,” says al-Kidwa. “There is an absence of democratic check and balance and a muting of opposition generally, especially after the military coup d’etat in Gaza. This led to more accumulation, more centralization of power. Part of this is not our making. Part of this is a result of the Hamas military coup in Gaza, the situation here, the lack of progress in the peace process. But irrespective of whose fault this might be, the results are not nice.”

He denounces the Hamas regime in Gaza as “authoritarian and merciless” but says the priority must be a power-sharing agreement that will allow Hamas to fully participate in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority without needing to join a government whose peaceful program they would be unable to endorse. He is confident that Hamas can be persuaded to drop its demands for Israel’s destruction.

“They have a really very serious problem,” al-Kidwa says of Hamas. “They don’t have answers either for the Palestinian people or for themselves.”

While he praises Salam Fayyad as “a serious man” and lauds his achievements in recent years, he says the idea that building institutions can bring a Palestinian state into existence is “deeply flawed” in the absence of a coherent political program, both at home and internationally. He says there should be much more pressure on the Israelis from the United Nations and other international institutions to produce an agreement, since direct negotiations have clearly failed.

Evidently, he has thought long and hard about the new policies that could be pursued under a new leader. Will he run in the planned election, if it happens? “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth,” al-Kidwa replies. “There is total confusion when it comes to whatever might happen next.”

Matthew Kalman is a foreign correspondent and filmmaker based in Jerusalem.

So what is Moussa’s take on the Camp David treaty? He says that if president he would keep it in place. Dealing with Israel, he told one (angry) town hall, is a just a fact.

Meanwhile, Moussa may not hate Israel, but one of the biggest Egyptian pop songs is actually titled, “I Hate Israel and I Love Amr Moussa.” The song was popularized a decade ago by Shaaban Abdel Rehim, the gorgeous Egyptian pop idol 300-pound Egyptian pop idol. Of course, while the song proclaims its love for Amr Moussa, it also does so for Hosni Mubarak. Dated! Translated lyrics, and fairly troubling YouTube, after the jump.

I hate Israel
And I’ll say it if I’m asked
Even if I get murdered
Or thrown in jail
I love Hosni Mubarak
Because his mind is broad
If he takes a step
He weighs it with his conscience
I hate Israel
Because it adores destruction
And hates development
I love Yasser Arafat
He’s very dear to me
The Egyptian people are mourning
The tears are running
I hate Israel
And Shimon and Sharon
I love Amr Moussa
Because his words are balanced
What’s the guilt of the children
Who die every day?
People carrying weapons
And people carrying sticks
I hate Israel
And all of us do
We’re all angry
It’s Jerusalem we care about
When Aldura died
The president was in mourning
And they said it in the newspaper:
Who’s consenting to this oppression?
I hate Israel
And I hate Ehud Barak
Because he’s a dullard
And the people all hate him
Egypt has always been rational
And can bear a lot
But when we became enraged
We withdrew our ambassador
I hate Israel
And ask the blood of the martyrs
And ask the ones who crossed
In that glorious October
I hate Israel
Because of South Lebanon
And Jerusalem and Iraq
And Syria and Golan

In Egypt, Preparations for a Rarity: A Real Vote [NYT]
Egyptian Presidential Hopeful Moussa: Treaty with Israel Is Safe [JTA]
Voice of Egypt’s Anger [SF Chronicle]
Earlier: Why Egypt Can Handle Democracy

Sure enough, we have received tentative evidence that the sale of Egyptian natural gas to Israel was corrupt.

Earlier this week, a Kuwaiti paper reported that Mubarak’s two sons received hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions from the sale of natural gas to Israel—specifically, that each got a 2.5 percent cut of 2005’s 15-year, $2.5 billion deal with East Mediterranean Gas, of which one of the sons is the largest shareholder.

Haaretz noted that Egypt supplies 40 percent of Israel’s natural gas, which uses it to generate 20 percent of its electricity.

So what happens now that such revelations have appeared—reportedly, the Kuwaiti paper learned of these kickbacks from interior department documents that presumably became more available ever since Mubarak’s three-decade reign ended? And what happens if and when Egypt’s government grows more responsive to its people? Likely, Israel will need to pay more for Egyptian natural gas or get less of it. Already its supply is less secure, as evidenced by the blowing up of a pipeline in the Sinai in the midst of the unrest leading to Mubarak’s ouster.

Fortunately for Israel, it has recently made several massive offshore gas discoveries; less fortunately, some of those fields are disputed by Lebanon—a disagreement widely seen to be a likely future beginning to war. It is remarkable that not three months ago, Israel had no concern for its continued steady supply of Egyptian natural gas.

Report: Mubarak’s Sons Received Millions of Dollars for Backing Israeli Gas Sales [Haaretz]
Related: The Next Lebanon War [Tablet Magazine]
Israeli Natural Gas Field Is a Significant Find [JTA]
Earlier: Why Egypt Can Handle Democracy Now
How Egyptian Unrest Affects Israel’s Energy

This improvised civic initiative was quite symbolic of the latent—though still vital—role that nationalism continues to play in Egyptian life. When a 23-year-old protester named Sabrin admitted in an interview in the Jerusalem Post that the recent demonstrations made her “feel like an Egyptian for the first time in my life,” and exclaimed, “I’m so proud to be an Egyptian—I hope today will be a great day in our history,” she may very well have been speaking for millions of Egyptians who interpreted the recent demonstrations as an opportunity to not only secure a better future for their country but also to reconnect with its sacred past.

Although we tend to associate Arab nationalism with some of the worst dictatorial regimes of the 20th century (Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party being the most notorious), in an ironic twist of fate so characteristic of the unpredictable Middle East, it appears that what had once been thought of as part of the problem has now become part of the solution: With the forces of radical Islam lurking in the background and potentially threatening to hijack the revolution, Egyptian nationalism may very well be the primary bulwark that could prevent that from happening.

***

Long before nationalism in its modern 19th-century European guise was introduced into the Middle East, Egyptians already held a pretty good idea of what the term meant. As proud descendants of the ancient lineages of Tutankhamen and Cleopatra, they were able to coalesce around a shared set of myths, traditions, and symbols that have continually supplied them with a basic collective identity—one that miraculously persevered despite recurring foreign conquests by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Turks, and Europeans. United by their primordial attachments to the shared climate, geography, archeology, culture, and history of the Nile river valley, Egyptians were able to establish a palpable though inchoate sense of nationality that no neighboring peoples, with the possible exception of the Jews, were able to sustain over such a long period of time. As the historian Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot wrote in her seminal account of Egypt: “The native Egyptian, while coping with alien rulers, also clung to the fixed piece of territory that he identified and knew as Egypt. Even before the age of nationalism made people conscious of national affinities Egyptians were conscious of living in a land called Egypt.”

When modernity began to permeate the land of the pharaohs with the arrival of French and British armies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, modern ideas of nationalism quickly followed suit. They found in Egypt fertile ground in which to take root. While still under Ottoman and then de-facto British rule, Egyptians defiantly mobilized and revolted (in 1881 and 1919) in pursuit of national self-determination. Although these nationalist uprisings eventually succeeded in expelling the British and creating an independent state, it was only after the 1952 free officers’ coup put an end to the last Ottoman dynasty in Egypt, which had been founded by the ethnically Albanian general Muhammad Ali, that Egyptians finally had the opportunity to rule themselves.

It was no coincidence that once this happened, the collected identity that Egyptians had gradually constructed since ancient times blossomed into a radical nationalist ideology. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who led the coup and would eventually also ascend to the presidency, was an astute student of modern European nationalism—a fact accentuated by his ambitious efforts to apply a European-style model to Egypt in the hope that this would allow it to reclaim its long-lost place of honor. Nasser’s own magnum opus, The Philosophy of the Revolution, reads like a standard nationalist manifesto infused with romantic paeans to the beloved motherland. In it, he calls upon Egyptians to take up what Nasser referred to as the “role of the hero” and embrace their destiny to lead the Arab world. “This role, exhausted by its wanderings, has at last settled down, tired and weary, near the borders of our country and is beckoning us to move,” Nasser wrote.

His nearly 15-year presidency and the proceeding four decades of rule by his successors Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak were in many ways an attempt to live up to and accomplish Nasser’s grand aspirations for securing Egypt’s place in the world and regenerating its national spirit. With the help of monumental state-sponsored projects like the construction of the Aswan Dam, the creation of the short-lived Egyptian-led United Arab Republic, Egypt’s vocal leadership role in the non-aligned movement during the Cold War (and its outward defiance before both superpowers), and especially its frequent military conflicts with Israel, Nasser and his successors were able to revive and solidify a coherent sense of Egyptian nationalism that proudly took upon itself that exceptional, heroic role Nasser envisioned for it decades earlier. (Egyptians’ conviction in their chosen nation status was reinforced by the international success of Egyptian cultural icons like the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and the world-famous singer Umm Kulthum.)

***

One thing conspicuously missing from Egypt’s potent nationalism was a role for Islam. Despite being outwardly pious, Nasser and his successors did not hesitate to subject Islamic political movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood to the exclusive authority and institutions of the burgeoning Egyptian nation-state. In the Philosophy of the Revolution Nasser separated Egypt into three hierarchical circles of operation—Arab, African, and Islamic, in that order. The result was that the more nationalist Egypt became, the less tolerant it was toward political Islam (not to be confused with the religion itself). As the modern Egyptian nation-state consolidated in the 1950s and ’60s, its power struggles with the Muslim Brotherhood only intensified (leading to the arrests of thousands of members and to the execution of many, including the radical theologian Sayyid Qutb). “Nasser’s success was in motivating the masses through secular ideology, and it was exactly this very nationalism that was so effective in pushing the Muslim Brotherhood aside by subjugating religion to it and by also harnessing its power for nationalism’s own advantage,” says Shimon Shamir, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo and an Egyptian historian at Tel Aviv University. “You cannot foresee the rise of Islam in Egypt without a commensurate decline in nationalism.”

That the two competing ideologies—political Islam and nationalism—remain in opposition is no surprise. Despite the recent attempts by conspicuously moderate spokesmen for the Muslim Brotherhood to gloss over the organization’s deep internal divisions and present a unified front that suggests it has reoriented its goals solely toward improving the welfare of Egyptians, the Brotherhood’s ambitions have not always been so modest. On the contrary: Since its founding by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has persistently displayed aims that often transcended the territorial boundaries of Egypt and sought to engage and unite not only Egyptians or even Arabs but the entire Muslim ummah.

Although al-Banna may have been a loyal Egyptian patriot, he was also a devout believer in the universal brotherhood of all Muslims who considered secular nationalism as just another corrupting Western invention. In accordance, many of the Muslim Brotherhood’s early operations and institutions were oriented toward accomplishing both national and international goals. (The organization had a foreign-liaison section, meant to serve as headquarters for a global Islamic movement.) R.P. Mitchell’s classic account of the organization, The Society of the Muslim Brotherhood, aptly described the problematic nature of holding such dual loyalties:

The final and only enduring loyalty possible to a Muslim is to the Islamic nation—every bit of land on which there is a Muslim who says ‘There is only One God and Muhammad is his Prophet.’ … Islamic nationalism transcends geographic boundaries, political division, and the varieties of colors, races, and languages because it is founded on the notion of ‘the unity of humankind.’ Unlike ‘limited nationalism,’ Islamic nationalism is divinely inspired by the triple principles of godliness, humanitarianism, and internationalism. Thus Islamic nationalism is in the service of all humanity.

Although Mitchell’s monumental study was published in 1969, al-Banna’s more recent disciples clearly prove that the Muslim Brotherhood’s universal inclinations are still alive and well. In an interview with the London-based daily newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat in 2005, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood at the time, Muhammad Mahdi Akef, proclaimed that his movement was “the largest organization in the world,” explaining that “a [Muslim] person who is in the global arena and believes in the Muslim Brotherhood’s path is considered part of us and we are part of him.” In 2007, Mohammed Shaker Sanar, at the time one of the handful of Muslim Brotherhood members in the Egyptian parliament, publicly admitted that “the organization was founded in 1928 to reestablish the Caliphate destroyed by Ataturk.” More recently, the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief spiritual adviser, the Qatar-based Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi (who was offered the organization’s helm in 2002) advocated the constitution of a “United Muslim Nations” as a modern reincarnation of the original caliphate.

Such persistent transnational aspirations continuously voiced by leading figures within the movement appear to be not only at odds with but completely inimical to Egypt’s national interests. How would a politically integrated Muslim Brotherhood react in the not unlikely scenario that another conflict between Israel and Hamas erupts in Gaza? In the past, Egypt had maintained ostensible neutrality while secretly continuing to cooperate with Israel against Hamas. If, however, the Muslim Brotherhood achieves some measure of political power, it is not too much of a stretch to envision the group as advocating indirect intervention to aid their brothers in Gaza—Hamas is after all the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood—or, even worse, actively assisting them militarily. In both cases, the results would indubitably cost Egypt dearly: Not only would it imperil Cairo’s critical strategic relationship with the United States, but it would also risk a devastating all-out war with Israel.

The point of such hypothetical reasoning is not simply to illustrate how incompatible Egypt’s national interests may become with the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational agenda but more broadly to suggest that the two institutions most devoted to preserving Egyptian national interests—the military and state bureaucracy—not to mention most Egyptians themselves, are far too devoted to Egypt to compromise its national security and welfare for the sake of anyone else.

***

The recent collapse of the Mubarak regime has already led some commentators to determine that Egyptian (and Arab) nationalism has entered its last throes. Barry Rubin, an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood who has written myriad books about the Middle East, suggests that the recent demise of what he calls the “Nasser-Sadat-Mubarak regime” could be the coup de grace for Arab nationalism. Nevertheless, he still foresees a situation in which Egyptian nationalism perseveres and prevents the radicals from ascending. “The question that needs to be asked is if free elections are eventually held in Egypt, which parties will run against an elBaradei-led presidential campaign backed by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Rubin tells me. “One could be a nationalist party, possibly led by Amr Moussa. If this does happen, then the prospects are for a president who would counter Islamist elements.” But even then, he warns, the Brotherhood could still remain a force to be reckoned with in Parliament.

While many of the projections regarding the future of Egyptian nationalism are dire, it may very well be that they are too preoccupied with a certain type of nationalism to see the larger—and more promising—picture. Long before culture, ethnicity, and especially language helped construct the “imagined communities” of modern nationalism about which Benedict Anderson has so famously written, there was a short-lived liberal nationalism (also known as civic nationalism) that captivated Europe. More in tune with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s inclusive Social Contract than with the cultural, and eventually racial, exclusivity of German Romantics, it afforded free entry into the national body politic for anyone willing to embrace its democratic values and adhere to the laws that they themselves were required to help legislate.

Since demonstrations in Tahrir Square first erupted, Egyptians have not been able to stop talking about their regenerated national pride. If they can indeed bridge the gap between the traditional nationalism of Nasser and the liberal one of Rousseau and create a pluralist and democratic Egypt, then not only will they be able to restrain the radical Islamists, but they will truly have something to be proud of.

• Hussein Agha and Robert Malley argue that the Egyptian Revolution heralds the rebirth of Arab consciousness. [WP]

• Gentiles signing ketubahs at their weddings? Must be a Times trend-piece! [NYT]

• A surreal scene-piece from 1989 (authored by presidential beat reporter Maureen Dowd) in which President George H. W. Bush takes President Hosni Mubarak to a Baltimore Orioles game at the old Memorial Stadium. [NYT]

• The guide to Birthright sex. Registration’s tomorrow, guys! [Jewlicious]

• A Google executive essentially leads the Egyptian Revolution, and also Google teams up with Yad Vashem to make searching archives for videos, documents, and other artifacts easier. What can’t it do!? [NYT]

• Crown Heights: Where the hipsters and the Hasidim get along. [Jewcy]

You know who kinda sucks? The Arcade Fire. You know who doesn’t? Bruce.

Yesterday, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and effectively imposed martial law; it announced that Defense Minister Tantawi Mohamed Hussein Tantawi—a field marshal and a known Mubarak loyalist—would be the government’s figurehead; and it promised happy but also skeptical protesters that a democratic transition is underway. Right now, the number one question worth answering about Egypt—and it’s relevant not only to Egypt, but to the rest of the region, Israel, and the United States—is: Is the military really going to usher in democracy?

First, the pessimists. Top think-tanker Jon B. Alterman notes that Mubarak may be gone but his system, which relied above all on the respect and ultimate superiority of (what else?) the military, has remained. “The army’s return suggests a huge step backward,” he argues. “Military rule does not allow for bargaining between interest groups, nor does it presage a constitutional convention between an array of actors in Egyptian political life. Rather, it suggests even heavier management of the political process, on the one hand, and the removal of any timeline for change on the other.” He concludes, of Mubarak, “Long accused of being an unimaginative bureaucrat, he is turning over the country to like-minded septuagenarians who mirror his caution.” Pankaj Mishra has a fabulous think-piece that looks to Egypt’s past and finds, mostly, grounds to believe that a military-type authoritarian government that has been in place for almost six full decades is probably not going to go away even in six months: “Egypt’s own history,” he observes, “warns us that the foundations of despotism are deep and wide.” For now, the Washington Post reports, many Mubarak loyalists—literally, the same people—are in the same important positions.

So why should we take the army at its word when it says democracy is on the way? Fred Kaplan, of Slate, offers a persuasive case that democracy was never going to be established in Egypt via any means other than a period of military takeover: “Only the military can get such a broader revolution going, because it is the only Egyptian institution that has the power, the organization, and the popular respect to do so,” he points out. “This is the case because, for all these decades, Mubarak had solidified his rule precisely by preventing any other institutions from taking form.” Which is not to say that military rule will definitely lead to democracy, but it is to say that it doesn’t preclude it, and in fact, of all the possible outcomes that we could have envisioned a week ago—Mubarak still in-charge (he’s not), Vice President Omar Suleiman having taken over (for the time being, he seems to have been pushed aside)—it is the one most likely to pave the way to democracy.

Can’t think of a single country that saw military rule lead the way to genuine democracy? Kaplan cites Turkey. Can’t think of a second? Kaplan cites the United States (remember that when George Washington was elected president, he was in many ways an army strongman whose voluntary cession of power still makes him our greatest president). Of course, Egypt is more likely to end up like Turkey, which is governed by a moderate Islamist party, than like the U.S. And our best friend Turkey is not (and even less so Israel’s); nor is Turkey Muslim Brotherhoodstan, as some fear Egypt will become.

I’ll align myself with the optimists, because I think over the past three weeks the Egyptian people demonstrated not only their will but their ability to get what they want (they were aided by the fact that the military could not use force on them for fear of international outrage, a truism that presumably still obtains). And what the Egyptian people want is democracy. And, as Professor Samer Shehata told me last week, they are ready for it: “People in Egypt have for years, for decades, wanted certain things,” he said. “Everyone who has been paying attention knows them. Egypt is a heavy state, a centralized state that has been existing for a long time. So no, there is no, ‘Too much change, too quickly.’”

Egypt’s Military Dissolves Parliament and Calls for Vote [NYT]
Where Is Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak? [WP]
Mubarak Is Out, But Egypt’s Status Quo Stays [WP]
The Tyrant Is Gone. Now the Real Struggle Begins for Egypt [Guardian]
Mubarak Loyalists Change Stripes To Fit Into the New Egypt [WP]
Now What? [Slate]
Earlier: Why Egypt Can Handle Democracy

• Big news in the West Bank: Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat resigned; Prime Minister Salam Fayyad disbanded the cabinet and planned to form a new one; and new presidential and parliamentary elections will be held in September, in a response to calls in the wider Arab world for more democracy. [NYT]

• A new report, conducted and released by Symantec, found that the computer virus Stuxnet, widely believed to be Israel’s handiwork, infected Iranian nuclear facilities at just five initial points. [NYT]

• President Obama reiterated his support for the U.N.’s probe into former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination as the sixth anniversary of the event approaches. [Ynet]

• The top U.S. general and a top U.S. diplomat were in Jordan this weekend to reassure (and be reassured by) King Abdullah II, whose reign has been unprecedentedly challenged in recent weeks. [WP]

• One of the most significant consequences of the events in Egypt for the U.S. and Israel could be the subsequent decline in counterterrorism cooperation. [WP]

• Very good analysis: Why Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979. [NYT]

• “Today belongs to the people of Egypt,” President Obama said. [WSJ]

• The Arab world has been shocked by the successful Egyptian Revolution, which toppled a regime that, in many respects, had existed since 1952. What’s next? [WP]

• Joy in Tahrir Square. [News Desk]

• Why a military-run Egypt isn’t necessarily a bad thing from the perspective of democracy (assuming it’s temporary), and why a “bumpy road” still lies ahead. [Slate]

• As Judith Miller has reported, Israeli officials are worried now—they prefer certainty. [NYT]

• “There is a big chance now and a window has opened after this white revolution, and after the president’s concession,” said Arab League head Amr Moussa. “As an Egyptian citizen, I am proud to serve my country with all the others at this stage, to build a consensus of opinion.” [BBC]

Did I say Arab League head? I meant former Arab League head: He resigned today. Hrmm. [Babylon & Beyond]

• American Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, congratulated the Egyptian people and cautioned against the rise of extremists. Fair. [JTA/Forward]

• Before resigning from office, President Hosni Mubarak reportedly told an Israeli lawmaker that the United States was making a mistake in backing Egyptian democracy—that radical Islamists will come to power as a result. [Haaretz]

• There are reports the military was displeased by Mubarak’s defiant speech last evening; this may have played a role in today’s events. [Laura Rozen]

• The Swiss government froze Mubarak’s assets. [WSJ]

• Of all the regional governments for whom this represents a setback, Saudi Arabia’s may be at the top of the list. [WSJ]

• Some American thinkers totally saw this coming. [PostPartisan]

• Iran’s government praises Egyptian people power, clamps down on internal protests. It’s like they’re trying to be as unlikable as possible. [Babylon & Beyond]

• Politics! Vice President Biden thanked Republicans for halting it at the water’s edge. A Democratic spokesperson lauded the president’s leadership. Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty accused the president of—can you guess the word?—“appeasing” the Muslim Brotherhood. Oh, the next 20 months are going to be such a delight. [Ben Smith]

Pretty much:

• Egypt’s army is backing President Hosni Mubarak’s decision to say on as president until the September elections while delegating some power to Vice President Omar Suleiman. This is key. [WSJ]

• The administration did not see Mubarak’s defiance coming; in fact, this defiance was something of a middle finger directed at it. President Obama insisted last night the transition to democracy must be more clear, “unequivocal.” [WP]

• In Israel’s leadership, relief; in the rest of the region’s leadership, relief, which they have to disguise a bit more. [WP]

• Some reports have it that Mubarak and his family have temporarily left Cairo. [CBS News]

• An Israeli official who spoke to Mubarak explained that the Egyptian president knows his time is up, but wants to leave in an “honorable” fashion.” (Um, ooops.) [LAT]

• Mohammed ElBaradei finally emerges in his rightful place, as the opposition person who writes a Times op-ed. [NYT]

• Obituaries of the 37 Jewish men and women of the U.S. armed forces who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Forward]

• Syria and Qatar offered Hamas $50 million to keep kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit and not do an exchange deal with Israel: This according to none other than Mubarak, who informed a U.S. diplomat, who then reported it in a cable since released by WikiLeaks. [JPost]

• Jewish settlers’ third annual Hebron 10K road race will, for the first time, pass through the Palestinian areas of Hebron itself. Stay classy, guys. [972]

• “The Dead Rabbis Society of Brooklyn” may not be great search-engine optimization bait, but it’s a damn fine headline. [The Brooklyn Ink]

• Alan Slifka, founder of the Big Apple Circus as well as of the Abraham Fund Initiatives—which aimed to bring about increased Jewish-Arab cooperation in Israel—died at 81. [NYT]

The Sway Machinery, the cantorial funk outfit (not a typo), has a new album coming out. And a new video:

Who is taking over in his stead? Good question! And if somebody tells you right now that they know, you go ahead and tell them right back but they’re lying! But here are (some of) the possibilities:

• Omar Suleiman. I mean, that’s got to be the easy money: He is currently the vice president, he is widely trusted and respected by international actors, he is wily and connected. The trouble is that because he is (rightfully) associated with Mubarak, his ascension is not likely to satisfy the protesters, and satisfying the protesters appears to be the whole point of the “Mubarak out, military reasserting control” exercise.

• Sami Anan. The army chief of general staff, he was at the meeting with Mubarak’s defense minister in which negotiations over the military’s role were being conducted; neither Mubarak nor, tellingly, Suleiman was present. If we’re about to see a true military takeover, then bet on him.

• Military-led transition to democracy. “Mission accomplished,” tweeted Wael Ghonim, the Google employee who has become the protesters’ popular figurehead and spokesperson, earlier today. “Thanks to all the brave young Egyptians.” Hard to believe he would feel that way if Mubarak were leaving only to be replaced by another strongman, whether it’s Suleiman or a general.

• Someone we haven’t heard of. Probably from within the army. Somebody with a strong base of support within the army, perhaps. Maybe somebody secular? Maybe somebody, y’know, not secular? You are going to want to stay tuned.

• One thing the protesters have coalesced around is opposition to the so-called “emergency law” that has kept President Hosni Mubarak in power for three decades. [WP]

• Want to know just what the Muslim Brotherhood wants? Essam El-Errian, a top official with the group, does what any politician with a platform does: Writes a Times op-ed. Add however much salt you’d like. [NYT]

• Israeli consensus has it that a transition will lead to a new government with a heavy Islamist presence that will limit diplomatic and economic ties between Egypt and Israel. [WSJ]

• What’s the Obama administration’s position? If you can’t answer that question, it’s because there is large disagreement—particularly between the White House and players like Secretary of State Clinton, who wants Vice President Omar Suleiman to take over for a time—and no coherent message has truly emerged. [LAT]

• The Times treats the 11 Muslim students at University of California, Irvine, who are being prosecuted for disturbing a public meeting after repeatedly interrupting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last year. [NYT]

We’re more than two weeks in, and they are reporting that yesterday was the biggest day for protests yet. Do you think they are going to continue to grow, or have we reached a peak?
Well of course I don’t know. What I can tell you is it’s certainly a good sign. There was some speculation that people were getting weary and there was some exhaustion setting in. It’s certainly refreshing. I think there are reasons to think there are going to be more days like today. As long as people are allowed to peacefully protest, and there’s no violence or coercion or intimidation against them, there’s no reason to expect there will be less. Of course, the reason they go out again, in larger numbers, is that the regime hasn’t listened to them.

What is the regime at this point? Do you think Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is still totally in-charge?
Probably not, right? One, we’ve never had a vice president under Mubarak [he named Omar Suleiman his first vice president about a week ago]. Second, the vice president is getting a lot of attention and there’s a lot of action in his office: Meeting with the opposition, meeting with press. Suleiman has lived an extremely busy life, but it hasn’t been very public.

Where do you think Amr Moussa fits into all of this? I’ve been reading his name as a potential major opposition figure.
Well, look. He has no defined constituency, right? He has a big constituency in that he’s popular.

What’s the source of his popularity?
He was seen as an eloquent, articulate, forceful, independent foreign minister who held his own against international diplomats, including U.S. officials, and as a champion of Arab causes, including the Palestinian cause and Arab rights generally.

How much reform will be enough reform?
Like everyone, I’m really skeptical that the regime can implement its own demise—that’s really what we’re talking about. Usually, autocrats don’t put themselves out of business. So the question will be: Will the pressure be sustained both from domestic sources, primarily, and also internationally, and will people accept the small concessions as enough.

Is there such a thing as too much reform, or too much reform too fast?
In the very abstract sense, if you’re talking about a new nation, for example, that didn’t have existing political institutions, established political parties, experience with elections, a judiciary, then maybe yes. Not in Egypt’s case, no.

People in Egypt have for years, for decades, wanted certain things, and everybody in the White House, the National Security Council, Congress, everyone who has been paying attention knows them. Egypt is a heavy state, a centralized state that has been existing for a long time. So no, there is no too much change, too quickly.

Supporters of Israel may be watching the events with concern that free elections will lead to the Muslim Brotherhood’s coming to power and that would be bad for Israel. What’s your response to that?
My response would be: Those are mistaken concerns, or needless ones. There are a couple of problems. The first is that 83 million Egyptians know very well that the primary concern of 83 million Egyptians isn’t the border or Israel or Camp David or Hezbollah or Iran or Hamas, it’s primarily the domestic political issues. Second, Egypt, economically and militarily, is not interested in nor capable of threatening Israel in any way. This is a military that hasn’t seen combat since 1973, has shrunk in size; a society that has been demilitarized significantly; and an economy that is struggling and is going to be struggling even more after this. So the last thing they need is arms purchases.

And—this is an important thing—although most Egyptians are very concerned about regional issues, including the plight of the Palestinians, not an inch of Egyptian land is occupied. There is no Golan Heights. It’s not the Palestinians. Egyptians are willing to pay a heavy, heavy price for the liberation of Egyptian land, but it won’t be popular or a winning electoral platform to say, “Let’s cause trouble with Israel.”

Finally, the Muslim Brotherhood is not a radical organization. It doesn’t have a military wing, it doesn’t really espouse violence (there’s a whole debate about acts of resistance under occupation, but that’s not relevant here). The Brotherhood’s position before this, years ago, was that Camp David would be put to a referendum of the Egyptian people—that was the official position of an opposition movement with no power to implement it. More recently, the Brotherhood has said it would uphold all international treaties.

So those concerns are completely off the mark. However, there are some things that would have to be thought about or renegotiated. The sale of natural gas to Israel is complicated, for example, and for several analytically different reasons. The primary reason is the price of gas: Many Egyptians would be willing to sell gas to Israel if they believed they were selling gas at international prices, as opposed to in an opaque, murky economic transaction that people seem to be left in the dark about—where no one really knows what the arrangements really are and the assumption, for good reason, is that the sale of gas is at below-market prices.

Then there are issues having to do with Gaza. I think if you asked my grandmother, she’d say, “Look, we shouldn’t be sending missiles into Gaza, but diapers and hospital equipment? Yeah, that’s fine.” That’s very different than the situation now, in which the border seems to be at the whim of the Egyptian government, and does not reflect the widespread opinion of the Egyptian people.

But that’s also not to arm Hamas—and that’s for all kinds of reasons! There are more Egyptians who have been killed as a result of terrorism than Israelis. Tourism is one of the four major sources of revenue for Egypt, and Sinai is crucial for that: If Gaza and Sinai became a warzone, that would be disastrous. It’s also a national security issue!

If the Muslim Brotherhood is not going to implement a radical agenda, why is it so popular—why isn’t the most popular opposition group something more secular?
Over the last 30 years, the most popular opposition movements throughout the Arab world, from Morocco and Algeria right up to Saudi Arabia, have been Islamist. So the reasons have something to do with Egyptian domestic politics, but also with regional politics; as well as, some people would argue, an increasing religious dimension of politics globally, whether it’s the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, religious extremism in Israel, or right-wing evangelical types in the United States.

Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood do better under authoritarian systems. And actually, that should really give someone some hope, right? That under a democracy, the secular and liberal parties would be able to get their ideas out?

According to the president, the way to empower America’s friends is to “get all the groups together in Egypt for an orderly transition and the one that is a meaningful transition.” As if Egypt’s liberal current isn’t weak enough already, Obama believes that the best way to ensure the sharks don’t come out on top is to throw a whole bunch of liberal guppies into the tank as well.

While the parallels between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011 can be overdrawn, it is foolish to pretend that they are not there. Cairo doesn’t have to literally become a Sunni version of Tehran to do terrible damage to U.S. interests and prestige in the Middle East—and to the hopes and dreams of its own people. And the Egyptians already have their own prospective Khomeini: Yussuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood preacher who exiled himself from Egypt in 1961.

***

Assertions that the Muslim Brotherhood and its leadership are too disorganized and uncharismatic to gain a hold on power in Egypt unaccountably ignore the world’s most popular and authoritative Sunni cleric—an Egyptian by birth and member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood whose son currently lives in Egypt. Where the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Iranian revolution, made radio broadcasts in exile from Paris, Qaradawi hosts one of the region’s most famous talk-shows on Al Jazeera, Sharia and Life. Qaradawi has cultivated among some American analysts a reputation for moderation with his fatwas, permitting masturbation and condemning Sept. 11 (while supporting suicide bombers in Israel). But in the Middle East his popularity resides in his stringent criticism of Arab regimes. His public support for violence, combined with the fact that he is a principal shareholder in and adviser to the al-Qaida-associated Bank al-Taqwa in Switzerland, led to him being banned from entering the United States in 1999 and from Great Britain in 2008.

What makes Qaradawi most worth watching is the fact that the Egyptian party system is badly decayed, and no credible opposition figures have stepped up to fill the gap. Mohammed ElBaradei is entirely a creation of Western opinion leaders and has no constituency in Egypt. Amr Moussa has some popular appeal, but his job as general secretary of the Arab League is not a position that showcases an ability to get things done. Moreover, as Mubarak’s former foreign minister he has deep ties to the old regime. The local Muslim Brotherhood was slow out of the gate, and its 68-year-old leader, Muhammad Badie, is not exactly charismatic.

As a media personality with a presence on TV and the Internet—and who is far out of reach of Egyptian internal security and free from Egyptian censors—Qaradawi is perfectly positioned to play the role of Muslim Brotherhood publicist or even kingmaker over the coming months. Nor is there any particular reason to think that Qaradawi’s willingness to embrace facets of modernity while promoting violence and hatred makes him less than dangerous to the dream of a future liberal society in Egypt and to Western interests in the region. The idea that Qaradawi is a moderate because he favors a relatively liberal interpretation of the status of women within Islam, for example, disregards his belief that homosexuality is a crime that should be punished by death and his embrace of the Holocaust as a divine punishment of the Jews that will hopefully be repeated soon.

Here, for example, is Qaradawi speaking about the Holocaust to the audience of his popular Al Jazeera television show on January 30, 2009:

Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.

***

Of course, many foreign and Egyptian observers contend that Egyptians, a moderate people by nature, don’t want anything like the Iranian regime running their country. That may be true, but the only real evidence we have, aside from questionable polling, suggests something different. After all, supposedly secular and moderate Palestinian voters were not impressed with the regional failure of Islamist politics—they voted for Hamas, the Gaza branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Or consider Lebanon, where at least 30 percent of the Christian community has aligned itself with the Khomeinist project in their country via Christian leader Michel Aoun’s alliance with Hezbollah. Presumably Middle Eastern Christians are among the last people who want to live under an Islamist regime, but what they fear and despise most now is the country’s Sunni community. That is to say, there are many reasons that people might choose to go with an Islamist party, many—but not all of which—are irrational. Mubarak’s departure will almost inevitably leave the ruling National Democratic Party’s organizational structure in shambles, which means that the best-organized political party in Egypt will be the Brotherhood.

And it would be strange if, given free elections, the Brotherhood did not eventually rule Egypt, for it has not only been a pillar of Cairo’s political, cultural, and intellectual life since its founding in 1928; it is also the flower of Arab political modernity, which began with Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt.

Napoleon’s conquest left Muslim intellectuals and activists in a bind: If the ummah was, as the prophet of Islam said, the best of all people, then why had it been overrun so easily by the infidels? The answer, said the 19th-century Egyptian intellectual Muhammad Abduh—the one-time mufti of Egypt and rector of Al Azhar, a traditional seat of authority in Sunni Islam—is that Muslims had veered away from the true faith. By the end of the 19th century, Abduh believed, Islam had become riddled with fatalism and superstition; therefore, since Islam was the lifeblood of the Muslims, it was hardly surprising that the ummah was weak. The answer, Abduh argued, was to purge Islam of its non-Islamic excesses—particularly Sufi practices like the veneration of saints and other beliefs associated with traditional Egyptian folklore—and return Islam to the way it had been practiced by the prophet Muhammad, his companions and his earliest followers, collectively known as al-salaf, or the righteous forebears. Thus Abduh and his followers were known as the salafis, and their movement was the precursor of Islamism, or political Islam. Abduh’s biographer was Rashid Rida, the godfather of the Islamist movement, whose most famous disciple was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who in turn inspired Yusef al-Qaradawi.

The fact is that the movement Abduh pioneered is now in the mainstream of Muslim belief, if not always practice. It was Abduh who said Muslims needed to adopt the science and technology of the West, while not abandoning their faith, as Christendom had forsaken their own beliefs for secularism. And this is precisely how the Muslim Middle East has engaged with modernity for more than a century—to take the West’s technology, arms, and consumer goods, but eschew the values, such as freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech, that made those products possible.

No one embodies this cultural schizophrenia better than Qaradawi, a media mogul who has risen to fame on the back of information technology and yet whose information is essentially medieval. Qaradawi approves of wife-beating, he defends female genital mutilation and signs off on female suicide bombers, and he attacks Shia for trying to subvert Sunni nations. To the Iranians, Qaradawi is perhaps not the ideal voice of Sunni Islamism, but insofar as he rises and the Americans suffer, Tehran will make its accommodations.

Yes, it is possible that even though Egypt gave birth to the Islamist movement that is synonymous with Muslim political modernity, maybe the Muslim Brotherhood would find itself thwarted at the polls. It’s a big decision for U.S. policymakers and the president. After all, what right do Americans have to tell the Egyptians who they can and cannot vote for? It is the height of hypocrisy for a liberal democracy to stand in the way of the freely won aspirations of another country. Egyptians have the right to choose their own government and their own future, just as we have the right to call them our friends or not on the basis of the policies that their government adopts.

However, the other argument is that it is not the job of the American president to promote the natural rights of others. Rather, it is his task to protect and preserve U.S. interests around the world, and peace in the Eastern Mediterranean is an important U.S. interest, as is preventing a larger regional war that might ensue from conflict between Egypt and its neighbor Israel. We might as well face the fact that the more political power that the Muslim Brotherhood wields will make that war much more likely—a war that would be not only bad for U.S. interests but also potentially catastrophic for our ally Israel, as well as to our ally Egypt.

• A secret 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable, released by WikiLeaks, reported that President Hosni Mubarak was resistant to U.S. calls for him to reform in order “to avoid conflict.” Oops. [WP]

• Another WikiLeaks-leaked U.S. cable reported that Vice President Omar Suleiman is Israel’s preferred successor to Mubarak. Well, duh. [Haaretz]

• Suleiman announced two new reform committees, even as Tahrir Square continued to be packed by tens of thousands. [WP]

• Jordanian tribesmen—usually stalwarts of the monarchy—signed a statement calling for new political rights lest their country go the way of Tunisia and Egypt. [NYT]

• The Palestinian Authority announced local council elections in Gaza and the West Bank will be on July 9. Hamas has already said it would boycott them. [Haaretz]

Continue reading or view as a single page.

• Aaron David Miller predicted in Tablet Magazine that Israel would fear the Egyptian uprisings; here, he explains why. [WP]

• Leon Wieseltier concedes Israeli fear of the new Egyptian government, but also indicts Israel’s government for not having made progress on the peace process during calmer times. [TNR]

• A Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson on CNN refused to confirm that his group, if in power in Egypt, would continue to respect the Israeli peace treaty. [JPost]

• How President Obama’s reaction to the Egyptian events has helped articulate the emerging “liberal realism.” [TNR]

• An additional primer on Egyptian Vice President (and likely next strongman) Omar Suleiman. [The Arabist]

• Israel depends on an Egyptian natural gas pipeline for one-fourth of its electricity. Uh oh. (For more, see my interview with James Hamilton.) [WSJ]

• Coptic Christians probably have the most indisputable case for wanting Mubarak to stay. [WSJ]

• Israeli-Arab leader and alleged Hezbollah spy Ameer Makhoul was sentenced to nine years in prison. [JPost]

• The University of Maryland’s endangered Yiddish studies department scraped together enough funds to last, for now, through 2013. Still can’t beat Duke, though. [JTA]

• Establishment-y people are standing up for foreign aid. [Laura Rozen]

• ‘Course, Sen. Patrick Leahy wants to cut Egyptian aid till this all gets sorted out. [Laura Rozen]

• “The main stumbling block is Israel,” says George Soros. Have fun in the comments, guys! [WP]

• We’re supposed to be scared of a Muslim Brotherhood-run Egypt? We’re allied with Saudi Arabia, for Chrissake. [Slate]

• Solomon and Cohen out at the Times Magazine (Times critic Ariel Kaminer will be the new Ethicist). For some of our readers, this is the biggest news of the day. Here is Rachel Shteir taking Cohen down. [Daily Intel]

• Oh, by the way, none of this matters compares to Jordan. I’m exaggerating, of course, but Jordan actually is more important at this point. Will the Hashemite monarchy survive? [Goldblog]

Enjoy the Game.

Monday, January 31: “Burning Bush,” by Lee Smith. The mass uprising in Egypt that seems set to overthrow the Mubarak regime is the latest test of George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda. The U.S. and Israel are hoping it works out better than the previous three.

Tuesday, February 1: “Borderline,” by Yoav Fromer. There are several good reasons why Israelis are pulling for the Mubarak regime to hold onto power in Egypt. But maybe they should be embracing change there, instead.

Wednesday, February 2: “Desert Storm,” by Yossi Melman. Israeli leaders have long had only one concern when it comes to Egypt: stability, which Hosni Mubarak provided. That’s changing, no matter who ends up in charge.

Thursday, February 3: “Mubarak, Alone,” by Daniella Cheslow. While Israeli officials stay silent on Egypt, Eli Shaked, a former ambassador to Cairo, tells Tablet Magazine about the embattled president he once knew and respected.

Friday, February 4: “Crisis in Cairo,” by Marc Tracy. Mubarak is an autocrat, but he’s also a pro-Israel U.S. ally. As his regime teeters, Tablet turns to experts for perspectives on a rapidly shifting landscape:

• Judith Miller, the New York Times’ former Cairo bureau chief, on the prospects for a transition of power in Egypt.

• Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, on the Obama administration’s response.

• Aaron David Miller, an experienced U.S. adviser on Mideast peace negotiations, on the immediate effect on the peace process of the events in Egypt.

• Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, on security issues.

• James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, on oil.

• Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, on Egypt’s next leader.

And more, including extensive coverage on The Scroll.

***

Previously, in Tablet:

Extreme Makeover by Lee Smith. Obama’s Middle East policy may soon shift away from moderates in favor of extremists.

Respectfully Yours by Lee Smith. Dalia Mogahed may be the most influential figure guiding the Obama Administration’s Middle East outreach.

Obama in the Mideast, Part 1 by Lee Smith. Elliott Abrams, Robert Malley, Dore Gold, and Andrew Exum consider the president’s policies in the region.

Obama in the Mideast, Part 2 by Lee Smith. Ramin Ahmadi, Lokman Slim, Martin Kramer, and Jacob Weisberg consider the president’s policies in the region.

Undersold by Sarah Mishkin. Courtroom troubles and money woes plague Cairo’s last Jews.

Family Feud by Sarah Mishkin. What an Egyptian thriller says about the country’s perception of Israel.

Cairene Dream by Jessie Graham. In telling her father’s story of exile, Lucette Lagnado conjures the beloved Egypt and ugly Brooklyn of her youth.

Purple Rose of Cairo by Michael Weiss. The trouble with conservative critiques of Obama’s Cairo speech.

What is Mubarak like?

I don’t know him as a father, grandfather, or husband. But Mubarak the president—this is the man I knew. Mubarak the president, at end of day, for all the time, was a man who radiated a heavy atmosphere, let’s say a tiredness. He creates a certain kind of atmosphere of slowly, slowly, shwayeh shwayeh [Arabic for slow]. He doesn’t speak fast. In all the years I had the chance to sit and hear him, I never once heard him have an original idea, an initiative to offer to advance any issue, be it in the Israeli-Egyptian relationship, or relations with the Palestinians or with the Arab world. He used to repeat slogans.

You told me he has a good sense of humor.

He liked more to hear jokes. He has a rolling laugh. He likes political jokes. All in all, in this aspect, he is a typical Egyptian. He is wide, a bit round. He’s a general, in short. He has the steps and posture and confidence of a general. But I didn’t get the impression that he is the man who can bring to Egypt something like a vision of a rosy future or solutions to the problems of the economy and society. I called him the major general of the status quo. He got some sort of inheritance from President Sadat, and after 30 years he didn’t change a thing.

What are his virtues?

He was loyal to his people, the people around him. Except for one instance: I remember that someone close to him said some unnecessary word and it got out in the press, something that was harmful to the president, and he was sacked. But the people around him, he was responsive to them. He was loyal to them. He wouldn’t kick people, you know, day in day out. He retained people, he knew how to keep them together as a staff.

How did he do it?

I think it’s his military background. He is a team person. Don’t forget, he wasn’t just a military man. He was the commander of the Egyptian Air Force in the Yom Kippur War. I am emphasizing this not because of the Yom Kippur War but because of the Air Force. He’s not just a general like in the artillery or Golani or even tanks, who could have just a high school education. No. A commander in the air force is a person who is educated in university and afterward in a military academy. In his time it was in the Soviet Union. He knows Russian, he studied in the Soviet Union at a military academy in Moscow. Let’s put it this way, it’s a class, it’s aristocracy.

But until today I think if I have to count his achievements, in 30 years I would say he has this issue of keeping Egypt alive over 30 years—this is an achievement. Here in Israel if I would say the fact that the prime minister of Israel manages to maintain us so we can eat pita and onion and fava beans for breakfast and at night cucumber, tomato and garlic, and that this was an achievement, they would kill me. But in Egypt there are 85 million people and more than 40 percent of the population makes less than $2 a day. I point to this as an achievement of Mubarak because somehow he managed to maintain this for 30 years.

The problems that the Egyptians are complaining about—poverty, a lack of employment, corruption—were these also complaints when Mubarak first took power?

The economic problems in Egypt are antique. Very old. Egypt, we know it from the Bible with Joseph, who came to the Pharaoh and told him about seven bad years and seven good years. There are ups and downs, but mainly downs, and if you don’t prepare for the downs you are in deep trouble.

Egypt has been in grave trouble economically and socially for many years. Keeping the Egyptian nose a little bit above sea level and being able to go on breathing is an achievement. There are almost 1.3 to 1.5 million new babies born every year. This means the population growth eats all economic achievements and social achievements. There are not enough schools. The universities are in bad shape. Egypt is not self-sufficient in any kind of foodstuff. Almost everything is imported, and Egypt pays a huge amount of money, especially for flour and grain. More than 70 percent of Egyptian flour is imported, and prices are going up because of the floods in Australia.

In the bottom line, whoever will be the next president from the left or right, whether it is a Muslim or a general, there is no solution in sight for Egypt and nobody is offering any solution. Take a look at the demonstrators, the various factions, the so-called liberals, lefties, Muslims, generals, the old government, the new government—nobody is talking about any solution to bring Egypt into an economic takeoff. A takeoff is an expression that means a trend that could take years, but at least you start the takeoff with a lot of effort in order to one day be able to fly easy.

We are on the verge of replacing one dictatorship, the regime of Mubarak—which is undemocratic—with another dictatorship that will be a theocracy led by the Muslim Brotherhood. It will be much worse, as far as democracy and liberal values in Egypt are concerned, than the rule of Mubarak. No less important, it will be very hostile to the U.S., to the West, and to Israel. What’s the point of replacing one despot with another who is going to be even worse?

Has Mubarak been a good ally to Israel?

We cannot talk about being an ally. Israel and Egypt have complicated relations. They are not simple, and they are not normal. There are components of peace between the two countries. There are diplomatic relations, with embassies in Tel Aviv and Cairo. There are trade relations that have reached over $150 million a year, and there is the academic center in Cairo for Israeli studies and Hebrew studies. There are very good relations on the level of the armies. The two armies have very good channels of dialogue. Whenever there is a problem, they get on the phone, they solve the problems, and they are very efficient on the military level. And many Israelis travel to Egypt as tourists.

What about Mubarak the man? Do you feel like at official meetings he would treat you differently because you were Israeli?

No, with Mubarak there was no problem. Whenever an Israeli official guest, a minister, came on an official visit to Egypt, he was accepted immediately by President Mubarak. Mubarak would see him, even if he was the minister of trade, or a minister from the Shas party.

We used to sit, two people from our side, and the same from the Egyptian side, the president of Egypt leading his small delegation, and the Israeli guest, I as ambassador was on his right. We used to sit and talk and discuss even when there were some tough issues. It was always polite. There was not any anger expressed or anything confrontational or insulting. It was very elegant, very gentlemanly.

And was he warm in these meetings?

There was nothing special on a personal basis. He wanted to listen to his guests’ ideas about the Middle East, about the Israelis and Palestinians. He would inquire of each Israeli minister—from the Labor party, from the Likud, from Shas, and later of course from Kadima—he would inquire about the position of each party regarding the Palestinian issue, the Syrians. He was very curious. He wanted to know, to understand the Israeli political map.

Do you think he did understand it?

I believe so. He wanted to know. Not only did he know that his guest was from a certain party with a particular position, but he knew also that within one party there could be various opinions.

What did the meeting room look like in the presidential palace?

This is a palace from days of the kings in Egypt. Huge, all marble, very elegant and very impressive. There were so many rooms and halls and reception halls. So many. And offices, and chambers and each was done in an oriental decoration style. But very elegant.

What about his house?

His house is not far from the presidential palace, in Heliopolis. It is a private villa. It’s modern, but relatively modest, there was nothing to write about, to report about. It was nice but not something extraordinary. I have seen in Egypt nicer villas that belong to the rich people. From this point of view, he wasn’t part of the nouveau riche.

Is he in touch with the poor?

I cannot tell you. If I had to think about why all this came now, this explosion, one of the reasons for this uprising is that he was disconnected from the people. He didn’t listen to their wishes. For example the fact that the Egyptian in the street did not want, and was very much against, the idea of his son succeeding him. For five or six years, I was following this fiasco of Mubarak preparing his son for the presidency. The people spoke carefully, but I could get their rejection of the idea that Egypt is like Syria and that a son can succeed his father in a republic. And they said in so many words: “We are not Syria.”

How do you feel toward Mubarak now?

I really pity him. It’s pathetic what’s happening, and I’m sorry. The man is very sick, and I really would not want what happened to the president of Tunisia to happen to him. I would want him to get up and abdicate in an elegant way. I don’t want him to be chased out of Egypt, or that people should do something bad to hurt him. He is already badly, badly hurt. He feels betrayed. The man, for 50 years and more, served the Egyptian people and all of the sudden the Egyptian people are tearing him to pieces.

At any rate, it’s pathetic and I pity him. But he’s either stubborn or stupid, and it’s impossible to convince him what to do. And there is also the problem of to whom do you pass the government, what do you do? How do you assure that the leadership will be passed in an orderly fashion? Let’s say to another general? Even among all the millions who are going wild there, they don’t have a leader who will replace Mubarak tomorrow morning.

Who do you think he is turning to?

I don’t know. I think he is sitting there in the palace, and consulting of course. I am not sure he is sleeping at night. He is closed up. The two times he gave a speech it was from the palace. I remember that hall for press conferences he used to hold. He has twice addressed the people in the last few days, and in those two times he didn’t leave the palace. He was in the presidential palace. I know the room.

• More violent clashes in Cairo left at least five dead and hundreds wounded. [NYT]

• Jordan’s King Abdullah II meets today with opposition Islamists for the first time in nearly ten years to hear out their grievances. [WSJ]

• It is undeniable that President Hosni Mubarak retains a broad base of support, from among the rich and poor alike. [WP]

• It seems obvious, but in calling for a transition to begin “now” and condemning violence against protesters (“shocking,” Secretary of State Clinton called it), the United States is breaking with a major ally in an extremely unusual way. [NYT]

• Perhaps even more remarkably, the U.S. is recalculating its stance toward “non-secular actors” in Egypt—the Muslim Brotherhood—out of recognition that they are likely to play a role in the democratic government the U.S. seeks there. [WP]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu is pushing Western officials to ensure that whatever government emerges in Egypt honors the Israeli peace treaty. [WSJ]

• Some neoconservatives like democracy in Egypt because they like democracy. Others don’t like democracy in Egypt because Egyptian democrats may not like Israel. [Goldblog]

• As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei was a leading critic of Egypt’s nascent nuclear program. In other words, prepare for an atomic-size flip-flop. [NYRB]

• Jordan’s Islamist opposition slammed the king’s brand-new prime minister; they want him out. [JPost]

• “Half the population is made up of Jews,” Isaac Babel wrote of Odessa, “and Jews are a people who have learned a few simple truths long the way. Jews get married so as not to be alone, love so as to live through the centuries, hoard money so that they can buy houses and give their wives astrakhan coats, love children because, let’s face it, it is good and important to love one’s children.” [The Book]

Oh please, what else?

• President Obama sided with the protesters—to an extent. A transition “must begin now,” he said, after Mubarak’s speech, but he did not explicitly call for Mubarak to step down sooner than he had promised (in the fall). [NYT]

• Yemen’s president pulled a Mubarak, pledging not to run in the next elections—in 2013. [WSJ]

• How we didn’t know this was coming. [WSJ]

•Egypt’s lobby gets to work in D.C. [WP]

• Thomas Friedman sees increased urgency to the peace process and calls on President Obama to draw up his own plan and present it to the Israelis and the Palestinians. [NYT]

• Yossi Klein Halevi explains that many Israelis “fear that the [Muslim] Brotherhood’s nonviolence has been a tactical maneuver and know that its worldview is rooted in crude anti-Semitism.” [NYT]

One is now tempted to scoff at this statement. But it’s not that Mossad analysts, military intelligence, and most academic researchers were entirely blind about Egypt’s problems. They knew all of this very well. But they were focused on the larger picture of global and regional developments, on strategic connections, on the words and acts of the leaders and elites. They ignored the undercurrents and the details of the domestic mosaic and its effect on foreign policy. It’s a problem they’ve encountered before: Israeli intelligence is good at gathering precise information to locate and assassinate terrorists, as they did in the killing of Imad Mughniyeh, the so-called defense minister for Hezbollah, in Damascus in 2008; it is good at sabotaging Iranian nuclear facilities and executing daring operations. But, as the situation in Egypt shows, it often fails to recognize and draw conclusions from political processes.

From 1976 to 1979, Israeli intelligence as well as the CIA and Britain’s MI5 didn’t understand the power of the Iranian masses and the centrality of religion there. In 1987, these same agencies overlooked the daily frustration of the ordinary Palestinian who lived under the Israeli occupation. In 2005, they missed Hamas’ plans to take over Gaza. But this time it has far-reaching consequences for Israeli security.

***

For nearly 40 years, since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt has been Israel’s best strategic ally in the region and part of a larger axis consisting of the United States and the so-called “pro-Western moderate regimes”: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates. Though Mubarak, a former commander of the air force who fought in the wars against Israel, was committed to the peace with Israel signed by his predecessor Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1979, he didn’t allow the relationship between Egypt and Israel to prosper and be extended. Trade between the two countries was limited; cultural ties were restrained; movement and migration were circumscribed. Israel called it the “cold peace.” But Mubarak’s Egypt protected Israel’s southern flank, thus enabling Israel to cut security budgets, to enjoy economic prosperity, and to divert its attention—and occasionally its military might—to the north, where enemies such as Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran posed much graver threats. And on a personal level, Mubarak has maintained close and even sometimes intimate relations with all Israeli prime ministers since Menachem Begin—including with Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert. In the last two years, he had renewed these ties with Netanyahu. To the Israeli leaders, Mubarak was almost like a mature older brother: He advised them; he restrained them; he threatened them; and, above all, he tried to help broker a settlement between them and their longtime partners-in-conflict, the Palestinians.

More recently, diplomatic ties between the two countries were strengthened, and secret intelligence cooperation was flourishing under the guidance of General Omar Suleiman, the intelligence chief recently named vice president, who has frequently traveled to Israel for clandestine meetings with the Mossad, military intelligence, and Shabak (the domestic service). Though Israel and Egypt avoid exchanging military attachés and do not engage in joint military exercises, Suleiman made progress on two major developments that cemented common interests: a mutual fear of nuclear Iran, and a deep concern about the emergence of an Islamist entity led by Hamas in Gaza. The two regimes also saw eye-to-eye regarding efforts to uproot Sinai-based cells of al-Qaida, which posed a direct threat to Egypt’s main income from tourism and to Israel’s Red Sea resort in Eilat. The intelligence communities of the two nations also shared and exchanged information on Hamas terrorists and their subversive actions in the tri-border area of Israel-Gaza-Sinai. (It is no wonder that one of the first defiant actions of the Egyptian popular uprising was the escape of a dozen senior Hamas operatives from their prison cells in Sinai via tunnels into Gaza.)

But it seems perhaps that this closeness with Egypt may have come at a price for Israel: Israeli intelligence officials, having locked themselves in a position of over-reliance on Egypt, seem to have donned blinders of denial. They didn’t realize how fragile all that was, and how it revolved around one person: the aging Mubarak.

And now, as a result, Israel has been forced to make potentially dangerous concessions. Despite clear limitations outlined in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Israel—fearing that the unrest and demonstrations in Cairo will spread to its border—allowed an additional 800 Egyptian soldiers to be deployed this week in Sinai. This marks a significant Israeli compromise, given that the original agreement practically demilitarized the Sinai. Another concern is that Hamas will take advantage of the situation and renew its attacks from Gaza and Sinai against Israel. Monday already witnessed two rocket attacks against Israeli towns in the Negev desert.

The events in Egypt do not mean necessarily that its next government will walk away from the peace with Israel; a lot depends on the specific government that emerges in Cairo. But even if the next government is formed by a leader whose origins, rationality, and ideology are fashioned in Mubarak’s mold, the Israelis will be facing a much more difficult situation to manage.

Yossi Melman is a senior writer on strategic affairs, intelligence, and nuclear issues for Haaretz.

Referring to himself in the third person, challenging his political opponents, and declaring that he “will die on Egyptian soil,” Mubarak defied calls for his resignation and ouster, but made repeated attempts to indicate that a transition of power would soon be under way. Will this be enough to mollify the protesters?

Crisis in Cairo [Tablet Magazine]

• Meanwhile, the administration scrambles to answer the question of the moment: What, exactly, does opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei represent? [NYT]

• Israel is concerning itself with making sure its Egyptian border is sealed and preparing for a potential wave of Sinai Bedouin asylum-seekers. [Haaretz]

• But of course: Oil prices have been rising over the past week. [NYT]

• Meanwhile, King Abdullah II, of Jordan, fired his cabinet in response to protests and ordered a former army general to come in and form a new one. [AP]

• The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog warned Syria that it would be toughening its stance. [WSJ]

This would be the opening line to a Jackie Mason monologue if it wasn’t a pretty valid description of the way most Israelis spent their weekend. Judging by the extensive (if not borderline compulsive) manner in which the Israeli media has been covering the recent events in Egypt, one would be correct to assume that in a very strange, if not ironic, twist, Israel has come to see its own fate as tied to that of the waning regime of President Hosni Mubarak. Although Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his ministers to keep silent about the events in Egypt, a top government official present at the high-level security meeting called by the Israeli prime minister on Saturday night expressed what ordinary Israelis and policymakers alike seem to have been feeling this weekend: “We all want to believe that the steps taken by Mubarak will put a stop to the demonstrations.”

There are many reasons why Israelis are losing sleep over the fate of the ailing Egyptian autocrat and keeping their fingers crossed that the demonstrations simmer down. And although they are diverse, complex, and even contradictory, they all suggest that whether or not Mubarak actually makes it through this unprecedented challenge to his 30-year rule, Israelis are anxious about waking up in a new Middle East without him. Here are the four main reasons:

1. The Return of the Southern Front

With the signing of the Camp David peace accords with Egypt in 1979, Israel had a major weight—militarily and economically—lifted from its back. Having secured its vast southern border through diplomacy, it was able to commit the bulk of its military to securing its increasingly volatile northern borders with Lebanon and Syria, and, perhaps just as significantly, in the process it was also able to reallocate valuable resources and manpower from the military toward economic and social ends. More than anything else, the peace with Egypt—which had been Israel’s most formidable military foe in all its wars until that point—enabled Israeli strategic planners to focus on the ever-growing Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis while constructing an elaborate defense strategy that relied upon one fundamental premise: that Israel’s southern border would remain quiet in the event of a regional war.

But this premise—long the backbone of Israel’s post-1979 strategic thinking—is now jeopardized. Without the assurances of an Egyptian regime dedicated to maintaining the Camp David accords, Israel will have to reorient its defense strategy while also finding a way to neutralize the extremely powerful Egyptian military—one that, courtesy of $1.5 billion from the United States each year, has acquired U.S.-made M1 Abrams battle tanks, Apache helicopters, and F-16 fighter jets. Not only would a hostile Egyptian regime potentially threaten Israel’s southern flank in time of war, but it could also cut off Israel’s access to the Suez Canal—a pivotal sea lane for Israeli submarines, which, in the event of war with Iran, would have to make their way to the Persian Gulf. Finally, one cannot forget that Israel’s most dedicated partner in isolating Hamas and maintaining the blockade on Gaza is the Egyptian Army. Any deterioration in this cooperation, which has successfully limited arms smuggling into Gaza, could further empower Hamas.

Taking all this into account, it’s not surprising that the reopening up of a southern front may be the closest thing to an existential threat that Israeli policymakers can foresee, with the exception of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

2. The Islamist Challenge

The peril of radical Islam has always been the Gordian knot that has tied Israeli and Egyptian security interests together. Under the premise that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, Israeli and Egyptian intelligence services have long cooperated in combating Islamic terrorism and curtailing Hamas—which, because of its close ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, is feared by Egyptians as much as by the Israelis. The possible collapse of a secular pro-Western regime in Egypt has always been so disquieting to Israelis precisely because of the chance that it could unleash latent radical Islamic forces and, in the process, create a fundamentalist Sunni regime in Cairo that would align with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Look at a map: This would, quite literally, encircle Israel in a ring of Jihad.

Based on a startling 2008 Gallup poll that found a whopping 64 percent of Egyptians in favor of making Sharia law into the exclusive source of their legal code, one can certainly understand concerns about the potential radicalization of the most populous Arab country.

Although the Muslim Brotherhood has so far maintained a conspicuously low profile in the ongoing demonstrations, taking a back seat to the secular democratic forces, the well-organized, well-financed, and politically savvy organization founded by Hassan al-Banna over 80 years ago may simply be biding its time and waiting for the opportunity to take advantage of a post-Mubarak power vacuum in order to make its move in a Bolshevik-style power grab.

3. The Arab Street

The rise of the Arab street and particularly its mercurial and unpredictable populist elements—which may very well be animated by a genuine democratic impulse—remains a paramount source of anxiety for Israelis. The experience of the past five years certainly proves why: With the exception of in Iraq, all recent popular democratic elections in the region have only eroded Israel’s national security. In Lebanon, the once-promising “Cedar Revolution” allowed Hezbollah to consolidate power and tighten its grip on the dangerously bifurcated country through political means; in the Palestinian territories, democratic elections empowered militant Hamas at the expense of a more moderate Fatah; and in Turkey, the end of the decades-long military control of civilian government has resulted in the ascension of populist forces such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party that has severely strained the longstanding friendship between Ankara and Jerusalem and helped turn the former allies into foes. With such a hostile Arab street, it’s quite clear why some of Israel’s best friends have repeatedly also been among the region’s staunchest enemies of democratic reform: Mubarak, King Hussein of Jordan, the shah of Iran, and the Turkish military brass. Haaretz political analyst Aluf Benn lamented over the weekend that “Israel now remains without any more friends in the Middle East.” That may be so, but only because with friends like these there was never any real chance of connecting with the Arab street in the first place.

4. The Loss of Israel’s ‘Special Status’

Finally, maybe the powerful, if unspoken, fear spurring Israelis to cross their fingers for Mubarak is the eventual loss of its special status as the “chosen nation,” a status afforded to it as the only free and democratic society in a region dominated by authoritarian dictatorships. When, over a century ago, Theodor Herzl was shuttling around European capitals looking to acquire a charter that would enable the Jewish settlement of Ottoman Palestine, he would often invoke the promise that the future Jewish State would serve as a “rampart for Europe” and an “outpost of civilization” that could preserve liberal-democratic traditions in the face of “barbarism.” As Todd Gitlin and Tablet Magazine’s Liel Leibovitz sketch out nicely in their new book, The Chosen Peoples, this idea of being a “chosen nation”—largely due to a regionally unique democratic character—continues to frame much of the contemporary political thought in Israel. Having become a staple of presidential and congressional talking points, Israel’s unrivaled position as the only democracy in a region that has known nothing but endemic repression and political injustice remains a priceless diplomatic asset. (Just last week, the French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy chastised the boycott and divestment movement against Israel by saying that “one doesn’t boycott the only free society in the Mideast.”)

But if genuine democracy takes hold in Egypt—or anywhere else in the Middle East—it could also spell the end of Israel’s monopoly on righteousness and endanger this special status, along with the lucrative benefits that have come with it. Among them: gargantuan amounts of U.S. military aid (which Sen. Rand Paul has just proposed eliminating) and the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council, which has consistently parried any substantial attempts at condemning Israel in the world body. Finally, and possibly most disheartening for many Israelis, there is the chance that a genuine Arab democracy might raise the bar for Israel and prompt international calls for it to get its own democracy in order, end the occupation of Palestinian territories, and amend its discriminatory policies toward its Arab minority.

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Israelis are right to be terrified by all these scenarios. The peace accord with Egypt is without a doubt the most important strategic contribution to their national security since the founding of the state. But there is also another way of looking at the tectonic political shifts reshaping the bedrock of the modern Middle East. A truly democratic Egypt might offer Israelis the chance to achieve what the “cold peace” with Mubarak never did—by actually establishing real and warm relations with a real and stable democracy. Over the years, Israelis have come to expect so little from the normalization of affairs with Egypt that they have forgotten what “normal” actually means.

Israel has often been forced to ignore the Mubarak regime’s persistent turning of a blind eye to—if not outwardly sanctioning—rabid anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist conspiratorial propaganda. By all accounts, middle-class moderates—and not Muslim radicals—are primarily responsible for the demonstrations we are witnessing across Egypt, at least so far. And although some of these elements are hostile to Israel, many of them aren’t. One recalls that among Israel’s dearest friends in the Arab world are still people like the courageous Egyptian playwright Ali Salem, who was ostracized by his colleagues for his visits to Israel and persecuted by the Mubarak regime.

That Israel was able to make friends like Salem under a regime that did not tolerate such friendships only suggests that in a free and open Egyptian society, Salem and his counterparts who support normalization with the Jewish state may become the norm rather than the exception. If Israelis can overcome their own myopic anxieties, they could yet come to realize that instead of facing a moment of grave peril, they might be looking at one of unprecedented opportunity.