Five Wars, 63 Years of Terrorism, and Israel Survives

By Alan Caruba

The people who have given us bagels and lox, potato latkes, and chicken soup, in addition to the Old Testament, Albert Einstein, and a list of Nobel Prize winners as long as your arm, are in for yet another interesting week.

Last week, Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced that the Palestinian Authority would not make a bid for statehood at the United Nations. That may have had something to do with massive pressure from the United States, Europe, and Saudi Arabia.

You can always trust a Palestinian’s word, right? Wrong. The next day, September 15, Abbas said the PA had changed its mind and would go to the UN Security Council to ask that it grant statehood to Palestine, admitting it as a full-fledged member.

He must have gotten a call from Turkey’s Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogen, who has been spoiling for a war with Israel and has been urging the Arab League to join in. It might have something to do with Erdogen’s beef with Greece that announced that it will begin drilling for natural gas on Monday, September 19, in Cyprus’s offshore Aphrodite field. The Turkish air force has been watching the rig, owned by Houston-based Noble Energy, move from Israel to Cyprus.

This is probably as good a way to start World War Three as any. It has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the decades of bad blood between Greece and Turkey that includes a divided Cyprus.

Israel, founded in 1948, has been through five wars with its “neighbors”, endless terrorism and rocketing, and has been openly threatened with nuclear destruction by Iran.

The only thing I can guarantee you is that Israel will be blamed for whatever happens.

This week is also the occasion for the United Nations celebration of “Durban III.” It is an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel hate fest in which every other nation in the world that practices racism is ignored and Israel is identified as the lone offender; largely because the Palestinians have refused every offer of peace and statehood made to them.

To demonstrate what an obscenity the event is, one of the keynote speakers will be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president and longtime Holocaust denier. A number of nations, including U.S., Canada and Great Britain, have already made it known they will not sit through another Ahmadinejad vituperation. Israel’s PM, Bibi Netanyahu, will be on hand to offer a response.

Anyone who still thinks the United Nations is about peace needs to pay closer attention. It is about being a global central power with authority over all the nations of the world.

Durban III is about “racism.” So how does that square with a statement by Maen Arewikat, the PA Ambassador to the United States, who last week said that an independent Palestinian state would take steps to force Jews living in the West Bank to leave. In an interview with USA Today, he said it would be in the best interest of Israelis and Palestinians to “be separated.” The Nazis had a word for this, “Judenrein.”

Elliot Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council officer, told USA Today that “No civilized country would act like this.”

The United States has already made it clear that it will veto a resolution for Palestinian statehood in the UN Security Council. So far the Palestinians have rejected the Oslo Accords and every other laborious diplomatic effort to get them to settle for peaceful coexistence. They could have had statehood after the UN partitioned the former British mandate that led to Israel’s establishment, but they rejected that option in favor of trying to drive the newly minted Israelis out of their ancestral homeland.

Jordan was among those nations that lost the 1967 war. The Israelis occupied the West Bank, a name Jordan gave to the ancient Israeli provinces of Judea and Samaria. The only reason Israel has not annexed the West Bank is that asserting such a claim would add a million Arabs to its population, none of whom have any love for Israel. Meanwhile, over the years, Israeli “settlements” have grown up on the West Bank.

President Obama has made it clear that he wants Israel to return to its 1967 borders. Netanyahu has made it clear that they are indefensible.

The turmoil of the “Arab spring” has altered the cold peace that had existed between Egypt and Israel. The Israeli embassy in Cairo was attacked last week and the Israelis withdrew its staff. How many times do the Egyptians have to be defeated in war before they conclude it’s a bad idea?

The Palestinian demands have Jordon on alert as well. Jordan doesn’t want to have to absorb more Palestinian refugees into its population, thus making them a majority of the Hashemite kingdom created by the British after World War One. They tried to overthrow the former king once and he drove them into Lebanon.

The Syrian despot is busy crushing a revolution. Lebanon which used to belong to the Lebanese is now controlled by Hezbollah, a Palestinian organization backed by Iran and sworn enemies of Israel.

And how do the Palestinians have a state when the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, an Iranian-backed group located in Gaza, are at each other’s throat? If it is possible, Hamas hates Israel more than the PA.

The Palestinian dilemma is that they cannot get along with each other and no other nation in the region wants to have anything to do with them.

What will happen at the United Nations this week?

What will happen if Turkey decides to attack the oil rig off the Grecian part of Cyprus?

What will happen when the Israelis who have a defense pact with the Greeks respond?

How does NATO deal with two of its member nations going to war? What affect will this have on its role in the liberation of Libya?

It’s tough enough for the Israelis and Jews around the world to deal with the growing anti-Semitism that has been spread and nurtured by Muslims, but this irrational hatred, the well spring of the Holocaust, could set off a series of events initiated by such hatred.

Having destroyed the World Trade Center towers ten years ago, World War Three would be Islam’s gift to the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama's Global Incompetence

By Alan Caruba

All Presidents have had to deal with events around the world that seemed to call for a military response, but it was President Eisenhower who laid down the doctrine to avoid what he called “brushfire wars”, outbreaks such as we have seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and, in particular, Libya.

Eisenhower had directed the defeat of Germany in World War Two as the Supreme Allied Commander before being urged to run for president. He would serve two terms and was doubtless the right man at the right time in the nascent years of the Cold War.

President Obama seems to lack any kind of a doctrine or plan to deal with a Middle East where many are fed up with its dictators, combined with the realization of how far behind the rest of the world the region is.

It is an irony of history that, after Eisenhower squelched the British, French and Israeli plans to retake the Suez Canal following Nasser’s nationalization in 1956, in rather rapid succession, Nasser died, was replaced by Sadat who was assassinated, and a 28-year-old Mubarack then ruled Egypt until the Maghreb and Middle East exploded with turmoil this year.

Why did Obama feel compelled to say anything? Earlier he was reluctant to support the Iranians protesting the ayatollahs in Tehran, but he rushed to the Tele-Prompter to tell, not ask, Egyptian President Mubarak to step aside.

Curently, the Egyptian decision to open its borders with Gaza and Hamas bodes ill for Israel, but just about everything in the Middle East right now fits that description. And, of course, Obama took the opportunity to launch a verbal attack on our only real ally in the region with an overt mention of “1967 borders”.

The payback was a joint session of Congress in which Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered a speech to which both Democrats and Republicans repeatedly gave standing ovations. It made Obama look lame, but just about everything does these days.

Will there be a surge of democracy in Egypt? No. The military will find a way to retain power, most likely coalescing behind a new president/dictator. After that, large numbers of the Muslim Brotherhood will be jailed and killed until they crawl back into their holes.

In Libya, Obama could have simply let the resistance succeed or fail. There was no compelling reason to demand Gadhafi step aside and the embrace of “humanitarian concerns” rings hollow given events in Syria. So far the only thing that Libya has demonstrated is that NATO is ill prepared to wage a war.

Reports have it that Obama and the Russians have decided Gadhafi must go, but Assad of Syria can stay despite the fact that he is currently killing that nation’s people by the score.

Obama has returned from a European tour in which he exhorted them to give the emerging Arab states billions in aid to facilitate democracy, but Obama does not seem to grasp the fact that the only state in the Middle East that is a real democracy is Israel. The rest are controlled by dominant tribal groups in one fashion or another. They always have been and they always will be.

It has apparently escaped Obama’s notice that neither the U.S., nor any of the European nations have any money to throw at a bunch of unhappy Arabs. The Saudis have lots of money, but they are too concerned about the threat that Iran poses and too smart to get involved in the shifting sands of Middle Eastern power struggles.

The U.S. has a little problem called “a debt ceiling” to resolve so it can continue to borrow money just to pay interest on the money it already has borrowed.

Unlike Eisenhower, Obama is the wrong man at the wrong time. He is poorly advised by a pack of anti-Semites and lacks any experience, military or otherwise, to make decisions about the Middle East. His knowledge of that region’s history appears to come from brief quotes off the back of a cereal box.

In over two years in office, Obama has become a massive embarrassment to America whenever he goes abroad, whether it is to prattle about global warming in Copenhagen or to insult the Queen of England.

The result is a serious deterioration of confidence that America can be relied upon to support allies. In Eastern Europe, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary are creating a regional framework for their mutual defense, fearing that neither NATO, nor the European Union, will be of much use to them if Russia gets frisky.

And you might recall that Obama denied Poland (and Europe) a missile shield, thus sending a signal to Russia that he actually trusted them. Nobody, but nobody, trusts the Russians. And it should be noted that Iran has missles that can hit Europe.

All of this invites trouble in a dangerous world because, more and more, nobody trusts America so long as Obama is in the Oval Office.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Protests, Riots, and Insurrections

By Alan Caruba

I’ve been thinking a lot about protests, riots and insurrections lately because they seem to be happening all over the Middle East and even in London.

In London, an estimated half million Brits turned out in the streets to protest government cuts in services, paying little heed to (a) how heavily they are taxed for them and (b) how they have all but bankrupted the nation. Though the protest was at times raucous thanks to local anarchists, it should be noted that the local constabulary did not shoot anyone.

Contrast that with the streets of Yemen, Syria and even little Bahrain where protests have generated a number of deaths as the main means of “crowd control.” This is also the way protests in Iran have been dealt with, along with imprisonment, torture, and all the other arts of despotism.

In Libya, an insurrection against four decades of despotic rule by Col, Gadhafi has dragged in the U.S., the U.N., NATO, and, briefly, the Arab League into the dispute. Given that Gadhafi had made it clear he intended to kill as many Libyans as necessary to retain his grip on the nation, there was no way this could be ignored.

By contrast, when a huge crowd gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo the military did not roll out the tanks. After a few futile efforts to disperse the protesters, President Mubarak was eased out of the office he had held since 1981 and sent packing. All things considered it was a bloodless coup. The Egyptians just held an election to decide some changes to their constitution.

Other contrasts come to mind, most notably, the 1989 massacre that took place at night in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square when protesters, mostly young Chinese, gathered to seek more freedom, more justice, and more democracy. It did not happen. While outwardly prosperous, China remains the classic Communist state.

One of the biggest gatherings in the U.S. capitol involved an estimated million people who came out in March 2010 to protest against the passage of Obamacare. It was an extraordinary turnout and one that the mainstream media tried to depict as unruly and impolite, but it was nothing less than astonishing that so many people could gather in one place without any disruptive behavior. David Axelrod, an advisor to Obama at the time, gave the White House response. “They’re wrong.”

When Obamacare was passed, the Tea Party that had organized the protest just grew like Jack’s beanstalk and, by November 2010, lots of Democrats who had voted for it found themselves cast out of the House, along with some in the Senate. Americans know how to protest, how to organize, and how to vote out liberals.

The differences between American, British, and Middle Eastern protests are quite evident. In the former two, you show up, speeches are given, and everyone goes home. In the latter, you show up and the regime in charge is likely to shoot you.

In America it was the Boston massacre that literally kicked off the Revolution against England in general and the king in particular. British troops, feeling threatened, fired on a relatively small group of protesters and, as they say, the rest is history.

The history of what is occurring in the Middle East is playing out in its cities and, while the region is not famous for democratic reform, the U.S. intervention in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein may well be seen in retrospect as the trigger for all the insurrections occurring throughout the region. Before the Marines and infantry showed up, you could only vote for Saddam.

The trigger incident in Tunisia occurred when a street merchant, harassed by the local police, set himself on fire, but it really doesn’t matter what the trigger is because it is the far larger resentment of the populations in the nations of the Middle East that has finally been ignited.

The other largely unreported factor is the deep schism between Shias and Sunnis. It expresses itself in different ways in different nations. Sunnis are the majority or control the affairs of most nations except Iran.

The old regimes are being challenged. If you are a monarch the last thing you want to see are other monarchs being dethroned. If you are a despot, you can be replaced.

What will come of it? Is it good or bad for the United States and the West? Will the Muslim Brotherhood and/or al Qaeda take advantage and somehow secure power?

Questions, questions, questions!

And no one knows the answer.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Mysterious Middle East

By Alan Caruba

I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen in the Middle East and that includes the people who live there as well as those who have ruled them despotically for decades, if not centuries.

The bad news about the Middle East is that all this rioting, insurrection, et cetera, has very little to do with “freedom” and everything to do with its peoples wanting Sharia law and mullah control. In that area of the world that is what Islam preaches and what Muslims want. When you have to pray five times a day, there's not a lot of time left over for an objective understanding of the world.

Muammar al-Gadhafi is doing what one would expect him to do. He’s trying to stay alive and to keep his hold on the oil riches of Libya. To accomplish this, he will kill as many Libyans as necessary. We tend to forget that despots in Syria and Iraq, the late masseurs Hafez al Assad and Saddam Hussein, slaughtered thousands of their own people to gain and retain power. One can only guess at the death toll in Iran.

Egypt gave the impression of being a not too horrible place to live, so long as you lived in America or somewhere else. The military essentially owned Egypt and everyone else there resents it. What do we want in Egypt? Stability. Therefore we want the military to stay in power since most of its officers were trained by U.S. military and we give them over a billion a year not to attack Israel. Again. And get whipped. Again.

Only at this point there is no stability in Egypt and typically everyone at the bargaining table wants a piece of whatever wealth there is to be had. The Muslim Brotherhood wants a return to the seventh century as soon as possible.

The real action will be in Saudi Arabia where the wealth really exists and has been carefully tended by the “royal” family of Saud. They have worked closely with America because, oddly enough, we are the only major power they trust. We need their oil. If it takes every carrier, destroyer and cruiser we have in that part of the world, plus a lot of Marines, Army, and Air Force, you can bet we will ensure they stay in power and in the oil business.

The other Gulf States are strategic U.S. assets. We park our Navy in Bahrain. We do a lot of business in Abu Dubai. We want the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to keep pumping oil and sending it to us. They want to avoid being taken over by Iran.

Nobody, but nobody knows how Iran will end up. A lot depends on whether a whole generation of young Iranians can stage a successful revolution, drag the ayatollahs into the streets, and hang them from telephone poles. So long as the nut jobs remain in power they will get nuclear weapons and force everyone to bomb the crap out of them.

Not mentioned at this point is Pakistan, a failed state beset by the Taliban with whom it has tried to maintain good relations despite the threat they present. Pakistan remains insanely afraid India will sneak in one night and reclaim their territory. It has nuclear weapons that the U.S. and all other nations want to ensure do not become the property of either al Qaeda or Iran. Islam is killing Pakistan.

There are three wild cards at this point, Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen. The first two have large Palestinian populations. Lebanon is now controlled by Iran and Syria via Hezbollah. Jordan’s fallback position is the Bedouin tribes that support its king, but there is increased clamoring in the streets because that’s what Palestinians do.Yemen like other Arab states is in turmoil and only military analysts pay it much attention. Then there is Somalia, pretty much "Apache country" because no one who goes there comes back alive.

Lastly, there’s Afghanistan, a nation that has been unsuccessfully invaded by great powers who never learn one of the first lessons of history, never invade Afghanistan.

If you harbor the illusion that the White House, Department of State or the Pentagon has the slightest idea what is happening in the Middle East or what will happen in the Middle East, you are mistaken. And they are currently led by the most pro-Islam President in the history of the nation.

No one knows. Everyone wishes they did.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

A Prediction for Egypt

In ten years--or less--Egyptians will look back at the Mubarak regime as "the good old days."

Only the military can save Egypt from becoming the next Iran.

Short Attention Spans

By Alan Caruba

The American Revolution, from the day in 1773 when tea got dumped in Boston Bay to the day in 1781 when the British were defeated at Yorktown took eight years. If it had been on television, the ratings would have fallen off in about two weeks.

My point is that, by the end of the second week of the turmoil in Egypt, it mattered less and less to those in the West that a million Egyptians were showing up in Cairo and Alexandria to demand Mubarak’s resignation or that demands for real freedom, real liberty in the Middle East are a very big deal!

Mubarak says he intends to stay in office until the election in September. He appointed a vice president, gave a pay raise to government workers, and has patiently waited for the crowds to grow tired of singing, chanting, listening to speeches, and to get on with their lives.

These events are cultural in nature.

Despite common ties with England, the colonists had been quite distinctly “American” for a very long time and didn’t like being treated poorly by the British crown and parliament. “No taxation without representation” became their rallying call.

Egyptians have been around a lot longer than Americans; several millennia in fact.

They have been Muslims since the religion was “introduced” by its early zealots in the seventh century A.D. Designed to appeal to Arabs in particular, but proclaimed as a universal faith to which everyone would have to submit, Islam put its stamp on Egyptians, just as it would on Persians and others throughout the Middle East, northern Africa, and into India..

It wasn’t that long ago that Egyptians were ruled by a monarch, King Farouk, crowned at age 16 and ruling until 1952 when a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser forced him into exile in Monaco. The defeat Egypt had suffered in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war would lead to the end of the king’s reign. Until then, from around the 1800s, the British had been deeply involved in Egypt, eventually wresting control of the Suez Canal from the French while the monarchy increasingly became a figurehead.

The British literally modernized Egypt, but by the end of World War Two, depleted in wealth to maintain their empire, they watched it drift away into new, independent nations. Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and continued to engage in wars with Israel. When Nasser died his successor, Anwar Sadat, made a cold peace with Israel and, shortly after, was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Seated beside him that day was Hosni Mubarak, an air force general and, when he came to power shortly thereafter, he clamped down on the Muslim Brotherhood who wanted to turn Egypt into the same kind of hellish regime that was later imposed on Iran in 1979. As in Turkey earlier, Egypt installed a secular government whose military ensured that it stayed that way.

Most of this is unknown history to Americans who have already tired of seeing Egyptians in Cairo’s main square and, if they have paid any attention to the White House, know that President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton have managed to say conflicting things about the uprising, looking and sounding clueless and foolish in the process.

Freedom, however, is not a joke and, thanks to the Internet, a lot of Egyptians, a lot of Iranians, a lot of Tunisians, a lot of Yemenis, and, in general, people through northern Africa, the Maghreb, and elsewhere in the Middle East would like to vote in legitimate elections where there are real choices among candidates and parties. They would like to live without secret police and other forms of oppression.

We tend to forget that George W. Bush’s aim when invading Iraq was to depose a dictator, to bring about democracy there, and to spread the message throughout the Middle East.

Mostly, the Egyptians would like to be rid of the endemic corruption that authoritarian regimes establish among a small, ruling elite that, in turn, discourages everything from owning a deed to one’s own home to being able to start a business without paying off several levels of bureaucracy and waiting a very long time.

The Egyptians want real opportunity, an energetic economy, and some form of actual democracy. Concessions are being made, but progress is likely to take a while.

The Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all the other Islamists are in a race to gain control over the nations of the Middle East before freedom breaks out everywhere.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama's Egypt Policy

Islam and the Prospect of World War Three

By Alan Caruba

“I against my brother, I and my brother against our cousin. I, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors. All of us against the foreigner.”
– Bedouin proverb

Almost from its beginning, Islam has been a religion divided by warring camps. The tragedy of Islam is that Muslims are far more likely to die at the hands of their co-religionists than by those outside their faith. All religions have their sects and divisions, but Islam’s history is particularly defined by the violence that began shortly after the death of its founder, Mohammed.

If the turmoil in Egypt is about freedom than recent history gives little evidence that Arabs have any talent for it. Iran is a prison-nation. Syria is ruled by the son of its former dictator. Hamas rules Gaza. Monarchies. Et cetera.

I am beginning to think that the world is actually witnessing a repeat of the dispute between the two main branches of Islam, the Shias (also called Shiites) and the majority Sunnis. Meanwhile, in Egypt the killing of Christian Copts continues unabated while Iraqi Christians are being driven from that nation.

When the prophet Mohammed died in 632 AD, what followed was a struggle for control of Islam. Sunni Muslims, the largest of the two branches, believe that Ali, a cousin of Mohammed, was the fourth and last of the “rightly guided caliphs”, successors to Mohammed. Shias believe that Ali should have been the first caliph.

Preceding Ali were Abu Kakr (632-634), Umar (634-644), and Uthman (644-656). Uthman was murdered while at prayer and Ali then became the caliph. He was, however, opposed by Aisha, Mohammed’s widow and the daughter of Abu Bakr. A number of battles ensued. Ultimately, Mu’awiya declared himself caliph.

Here’s where it gets very odd. The line of Mohammed’s direct descedents through Ali ended in 873 CE when the last Shia Imam, Muhammed al-Mahdi disappeared within days of inheriting the title of caliph. He was four years old at the time!

Shias refused to believe he had died, concocting a story that he was merely “hidden” and would return.

This latter version of Shia is the heart of Iranian Islamic theology which includes the belief that, in order to facilitate his return, the world must first sink into complete chaos with massive loss of life, a kind of Islamic Armageddon.

Thus, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran is looked upon by Sunnis and everyone else as truly a matter of life or death on a global scale. It would be the prelude to World War Three.

Sunnis take their lead from Saudi Arabia where the royal family is seen as the protectors of the faith and the two most holy sites of Islam, Mecca and Medina.

Muslims can be found in more than 200 nations these days and represent 23% of the world’s population. One out of every four people on planet Earth is a Muslim. Only 20% live in the Middle East and North Africa, the site of present conflicts.

It has been the fate of Middle Eastern and other Muslims to live with a conflict that began in the seventh century. Islam’s Sharia laws reflect seventh century values. They are at odds with hard won modern values of civilization.

The culture of the Middle East and northern Africa, dominated by Islam, has kept the people of that region in poverty and under the fist of oppression for the last 1,400 years. Mideast Muslims in the modern era have been striking out at the world blaming it, not Islam, for their problems. Al Qaeda is an example of this, along with the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The reappearance of a modern state of Israel in 1948 brought everything to a boil. If Islam is the one true faith, the presence in its midst of a Western, democratic, militarily powerful and economically successful Israel severely challenges that belief.

After successive wars on Israel, Arab nations were repeatedly defeated. Further aggravating Muslims is that Israel is holy to both Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem is not even mentioned by name in the Qur'an.

Sunni-Shia battles commemorate its schism and include Suffin, Karbala, and Zab, the last having been fought in Egypt.

In the last century the Middle East has been treated as the West’s fiefdom, divided among colonial powers, manipulated for control of its oil.

In recent times Middle Eastern nations were invaded, first by the former Soviet Union invading Afghanistan and, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and 9/11, the U.S. invaded Iraq twice. From 1980 to 1988, Iraq waged a long war against Iran that ended in a stalemate. Syria occupied Lebanon for decades. There have been clashes as well between Muslim Pakistan and largely Hindu India.

President Obama’s insistence that the Muslim Brotherhood play a role in any future government of Egypt ignores the fact that it is sworn to kill Christians and Jews or make them dhimmi, subject to taxes and humiliation.

In its own words the Brotherhood’s guiding principles are, “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

The Mubarak regime ruthlessly suppressed the Brotherhood that, among other deeds, assassinated his predecessor, former prime minister, Anwar al-Sadat and just tried to assassinate his vice president, Omar Suleiman. Not exactly democracy in action.

Those who rule Egypt are sorting out their difficulties and will resume power, but while all eyes are on the land of the pharaohs, it is Iran that threatens World War III.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Waiting and Watching Egypt

By Alan Caruba

Today we watch events unfold in far off places often in real time. What we lack, however, is context. Most Americans and, I suspect, others in Western nations are frequently at a loss when it comes to knowing anything about the culture and history, past and recent, of nations in the Middle East, Africa, or Asia.

What we do know about the Middle East is that, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran along with the rise of al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations, things have not gone well for American and Western interests.

How different everything might have been if U.S. troops had occupied Tehran in 1979 and demanded the return of our diplomats after they had been taken hostage.

After World War One, what was once the Ottoman Empire that ruled the Middle East and areas of the Maghreb in northern Africa, the French and the British got out their maps at the Versailles conference to literally draw new lines on it and create new nations that were, in fact, colonies. They included Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and a strip of territory called the Palestinian mandate. The chief prize at stake was oil.

After World War Two was concluded many of the former British and French colonies, including India, and much of Africa declared their independence. The Saudi Royal family had already thrown in its lot with America. In Egypt, the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, was jointly owned by the British and French. The British called the shots there through its royal family.

The Egyptian defeat in the 1948 war in response to the establishment of Israel stirred discontent among its military leadership. Gamal Abed Al Nasser ultimately emerged as Egypt’s leader after a July 1952 bloodless coup against King Farouk and the royal family. In 1956 Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.

Here’s what it gets very instructive. In 1956 the British and French, with Israeli involvement, sent troops to seize the Suez Canal. That operation was quashed by President Dwight Eisenhower who made it known that the United States would not support it. The era of colonization was over.

What had been occurring, however, was an era of pent-up anger throughout the Middle East focused on the establishment of Israel and resentment of the former colonial powers. The British had earlier installed a royal family in Iraq. A new component was opposition to the dictators like Hussein who emerged to run Iraq. Another example is the fact that first the British and then the Americans had controlled Iran’s oil through its royal family. Other royal families continue to control mideast oil.

Ironically, it took George W. Bush to rid Iraq of three decades of despotic rule by Saddam Hussein. However, this has to be balanced against the fact that the U.S. has also supported the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. It was, however, Egypt, as well as Jordan, who made peace with Israel.

Arab military defeats gave way to support for the so-called Palestinians as pawns in the war against Israel. The main support of the Palestinian "refugees" is the United Nations, sixty-three years after 1948 and subsequent wars to destroy Israel. Iran has funded two Palestinian terrorist organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas.

At the heart of the turmoil in the Middle East is a movement to restore Islam to its former glory when it literally knocked on the doors of Europe. The jihadists such as Osama bin Laden dream of a worldwide Islamic caliphate. As in the early spread of Islam, it would be achieved through war, but the tactic employed would be terrorism and the fact of Islam’s expanding population worldwide.

An irony of the Islamist movement is its opposition to the monarchies ruling Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, all of whom have proven to be good allies to the United States at the same time they have funded the spread of Islam. In Egypt, under Mubarak, the jihadists known as the Muslim Brotherhood were ruthlessly suppressed. The Saudis actually exiled bin Laden.

What the world has witnessed has proven to be very bad news for the West. The 1979 Iranian revolution has given us Mamoud Ahmadinejad and a regime plotting through proxies to control Lebanon via Hezbollah and Gaza via Hamas, while it plots to control Iraq and eyes the Gulf States as well. Its closest ally these days is Syria. It has long sought to become a nuclear power. Its proclaimed goal is to destroy Israel.

Democracy has not turned out to be much help in the Middle East. Rigged elections in Egypt kept Mubarak in power for three decades. Saddam Hussein used terror and the Baath Party to achieve and hold on to power. Elections were rigged in Afghanistan. Pakistan has been mainly ruled by its military.

Lebanon was a democracy and now its prime minister comes from the ranks of Hezbollah. Turkey has had a long run of real democracy, but only because its military ensured that Islamists did not take over.

Americans have a lot at stake and, of growing concern to many, a President, Barack Hussein Obama, whose first television interview was with Al Arabia, who bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, and whose first global lengthy outing was a tour of the Middle East to demonstrate how friendly he was to their cause.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Israel Holds Its Breath

By Alan Caruba

After more than three thousand years of varying calamities, Jews have perfected survival against the odds. There is a joke they tell about “Jewish Zen”:

“Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.”

Right now, Israel and those who support the Jewish State are holding their breath, watching events in Egypt. What is happening is not inconsequential, given that Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979 after a series of wars in which it had been soundly defeated.

When the flamboyant Gamal Abed Al Nasser died, Anwar al-Sadat became Egypt’s president and, together with Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, they turned a corner toward peace. The treaty was greeted with angry demonstrations throughout the Arab world. Sadat, the peacemaker, was assassinated by Muslim zealots.

At that point Hosni Mubarak became Egypt’s president and he has held the position for three decades as the head of what is essentially a one party system. There have been a half dozen assassination attempts on his life. He is 83 years old. Like most Arab nations and other third world nations, he ran an authoritarian regime.

The peace deal included the return of the Sinai desert to Egypt by Israel. Under former Prime Minister Arial Sharon, Israelis who had lived in the Gaza strip were forced to leave and it was turned over to the Palestine Authority in a “land-for-peace” swap. The peaceloving Palestinians turned Gaza into a launch site for thousands of rockets into Israel.

Today, Egypt shares a border with Gaza which features an unknown number of tunnels used to smuggle in weapons and goods. Gaza is run by Hamas, a terrorist Palestinian organization that drove the PA out at gunpoint.

So the fate of Egypt is of importance to Israel. To Israel’s north, another terrorist group, Hezbollah, has taken over the government of Lebanon without firing a shot. Christians, Druze and Marists, along with others in Lebanon have once again lost control over their nation, formerly peacefully governed by a constitutional coalition of Christians and Muslims.

None of this bodes well for Israel as it looks around at Middle Eastern and northern African nations in which governments are being overthrown for being noxious oppressors.

Of great importance to Israel at this time is the question of what action the United States will or will not take regarding the current turmoil. Since the Egyptian uprising appears to be a genuine people’s rebellion, the question is who ends up with the reins of power there? My bet is on the military.

Meanwhile, however, yet another United Nations resolution aimed at Israel like a guided missile is making its way through the Security Council and, at this point, only the U.S. can shoot it down with a veto.

The UN resolution declares that any construction in the West Bank by Israel is illegal, even if it is in its capitol, Jerusalem.

No American administration has been able to broker peace between Israel and the so-called Palestinians, the oldest existing group of “refugees” in the world.

Following the end of a failed war against the then new state of Israel, the Arab population that fled became the sole object and purpose of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). No other refugee group in the world enjoys this status.

There is a Palestinian problem because there is a United Nations problem.

The United Nations is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of its Middle Eastern and Islamic members.

What was to be a UN emergency response in May 1950, UNWRA has cost American taxpayers billions since then. Today, UNRWA continues to operate in both the Palestinian Authority-ruled West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza, taken from the PA in June 2007. As noted in a recent article by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, in 2007 UNRWA employed more than 29,000, all but 200 of whom were Palestinians. Its “facilities and personnel have been tied to numerous terrorist attacks on Israel.”

Sixty years of stalled and failed peace talks, as well as terror campaigns against Israel, have deligitimized Palestinian claims.

Following Israel’s operation Cast Lead in December 2008 to stop Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket attacks, the Obama administration promised $400 million for Gaza and $600 million for the West Bank.

Though not confirmed, the rumor-mill in Washington is saying that the Obama administration will not veto the latest in an endless succession of anti-Israel resolutions.

If true, President Obama would become the first U.S. President to not defend Israel’s sovereignty.

If true, it would signal to the entire Middle East and the world that America is abandoning the only true democracy in the region and its longtime ally.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 after World War Two. It has since become a cesspool of corruption and an international cancer determined to become a one-world government. The time is long overdue for the U.S. to stop funding it and, indeed, to withdraw from it.

If Obama does not veto the Security Council resolution, the U.S. will pay for that decision for decades to come. Israel will be in ever more certain peril.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Losing Egypt

By Alan Caruba

Those of us around at the time of the 1979 Iranian student revolution that deposed the shah are having strong feelings of déjà vu because that uprising was swiftly co-opted by Ayatollah Khomeini who hated the Great Satan, America, as much as he hated the Little Satan, Israel.

The U.S. lost a major ally in the Middle East. The Shah may have been a bastard, but he was our bastard. The CIA had put him on the Peacock Throne.

The uprising in Egypt, if taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, will severely endanger American interests that have largely been coasting along in the belief that Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak would engineer a smooth transition of power to his son. This was the scenario in Syria when its dictator, Hafiz al-Assad, passed away.

That scenario just went out the window. Given the depth of opposition to Mubarak, it is unlikely power would pass to his son, Jamal who, with his wife and daughter have fled to Great Britain. Moreover, since Mubarak has no vice president, there is a major power vacuum.

The fate of the Suez Canal is the biggest geopolitical concern at this point. A lot of oil transits through it in much the same way it does through the Strait of Harmuz. Years of growing dependency on Middle East oil while our own vast reserves were locked up and neglected will demonstrate why the policies of several administrations have been not just short-sighted, but incredibly stupid.

As big a pain as Saddam Hussein was, I always believed that he was overthrown as much because of his control of Iraqi oil as for any other reason. The U.S. backed his war on Iran until it fizzled after eight years. When he invaded Kuwait, we pushed him back into Iraq. After 9/11 it is likely that the calculation was made that Iraq and the Middle East would be better off without him. His overthrow might also been seen as an object lesson to others in the region of what happens when Uncle Sam is unhappy.

Mubarak has been “our man” in Egypt since he took over after the assassination in 1981 of Anwar Sadat who had been killed because he made peace overtures to Israel. Up to then, Egypt had been repeatedly defeated, especially in the Six Day War. After thirty years of dictatorship Mubarak is hated by most Egyptians for all the usual reasons.

To understand the current unrest in Egypt and elsewhere, it is necessary to understand that most of the population of the Middle East and northern Africa’s Maghreb are young people. They are fed up with the oppression of their governments, with unemployment, with inflation, with the region’s endemic and historic corruption, and its lack of political freedom.

They rioted in Lebanon against Syrian oppression after the assassination of their prime minister. They rioted recently against Hezbollah control of Lebanon. Within the past weeks, there have been riots in Tunisia, in Yemen, and now Egypt. It is a contagion.

We are running out of friends in the Middle East. For all of the talk of supporting freedom in the Middle East, the U.S. has usually backed its despots. Given our dependency on Middle East oil, we have had very little choice. That’s what happens when you don’t allow drilling in Alaska’s ANWR, anywhere off our coastlines or domestically where billions of barrels are estimated to exist.

Now, however, we have a President who is VERY different from any that came before him going all the way back to Truman and Eisenhower.

A neophyte when it comes to foreign affairs, no matter what nation is involved, Obama has demonstrated extraordinarily bad instincts and judgment. He has regarded the United States as just one nation among others. He has apologized for the sixty years of relative peace the U.S. has provided as global sheriff. He has been eager to “reach out” to Middle Eastern nations. The result is that Obama has appeared weak to everyone.

He failed to speak out strongly in June 2009 when ordinary Iranians filled Tehran’s streets to protest the despicable and detested ayatollahs that rigged its election in favor of Mamoud Ahmadinejad. He lost a major opportunity while saying at the time that he did not want to “meddle” in Iran’s affairs.

Although he increased combat strength and supported Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, the results there have been a predictable failure for a regime that lacks popular support.

Ironically, the only actual and natural ally the U.S. has in the Middle East, Israel, has been beaten about with Obama’s absurd demands that it not construct new housing in its own capitol, Jerusalem.

In the first two years of Obama’s presidency, it has become obvious to everyone, friend and foe alike, that he is anti-Israel. Perhaps he was trying to signal some kind of accommodation with Iran? Or maybe he just doesn’t like a Jewish presence in the Islamic Middle East?

That is why the rumor that the U.S. will not veto yet another anti-Israel resolution in the UN Security Council worries a lot of people. Failure to do so would make Obama the first U.S. President ever to abandon Israel in the UN.

Throughout the Middle East, people risking their lives for freedom know that if the U.S. abandons Israel, it will abandon them.

That is why, also, there can be no accommodation with Iran. Every other nation in the Middle East knows this. Hezbollah and Hamas are both terrorist organizations and both are funded and directed by Iran. It is the single greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. Syria is Iran’s closest ally and agent.

By contrast, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, all monarchies, all protected by the U.S., fear Iran.

No Middle Eastern nation is safe so long as radical Shia Islam is directed from Tehran and operates with impunity in Yemen and in Pakistan.

No nation in the world is safe if Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

If Egypt is lost to the Muslim Brotherhood as the result of the current insurrection and rebellion, the implications for the U.S. and the world would be a major game change.

A lot of nations who found it fashionable to oppose and criticize the U.S. as a big military bully are going to be looking to it to avoid an ugly, expensive, and dangerous future.

On Friday, the White House released a statement that was made in Platitude Heaven:

Politico.com reported that “President Obama called for Egypt's government to respect the rights of its people. ‘The people of Egypt have rights that are universal,’ he said.”

“Calling for Egyptian authorities to respect citizen’s right to speech and protest, he said, ‘suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.’ The president also urged the people of Egypt to refrain from violent protest. Obama spoke with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for 30 minutes earlier Friday.”

The problem, of course, is that we have a President who is intellectually, emotionally, philosophically, and in all other ways not up to this crisis.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Ayatollahs Are Asking for It

By Alan Caruba

The announcement by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that Iran was now “a nuclear state” was an invitation to have its nuclear facilities attacked by Israel.

Israel, after all, is a nation that Ahmadinejad said should be “wiped off the map” and hardly a day has gone by for the past 31 years that some Iranian leader has not called for death to Israel and, yes, death to America.

Let us, for a moment, cast a look back at the Israeli response to earlier nuclear threats. When the French built the Osirak nuclear reactor in Baghdad, the Israelis destroyed it on June 7, 1981 in a daring air raid. When the Syrians built a facility described as a “nuclear cache”, the Israelis destroyed it on September 6, 2007 in another air raid.

For months now the Israeli air force has been practicing long-range bombing runs, putting their planes on a run to the straits of Gibraltar and back; about the same distance from Jerusalem to Tehran. The U.S. has been supplying “bunker-buster” bombs and there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Israel has its own nuclear weapons.

This Israeli response to the wars perpetrated against it since the day it declared its sovereignty in 1948 has been to turn out the entire nation to defeat their enemies.

The U.S. will be among the last to know when the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will take place. The current administration is no friend to the Israelis, but they have dispatched their top intelligence and military people to Israel and to Saudi Arabia to sound out the when and wherefore of an attack. Meanwhile, the Israelis and their Saudi counterparts have been meeting to discuss the logistics of such an attack.

No one knows better than the Saudis that a nuclear Iran poses a threat of incalculable proportions to their oil fields and facilities. No one knows better the vital importance of the Persian Gulf in the transport of oil.

The Israelis will not wait for the first Iranian missile to be fired at them. In his book, “A World of Trouble”, Patrick Tyler wrote of the history of U.S. Middle East relations from the days of Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

“The first reports of an Israeli air attack on Egypt reached the duty officer at the White House Situation Room at 2:38 a.m. on June 5, 1967. They came from news agencies whose correspondents could hear the bombs going off at air bases on the outskirts of Cairo.”

In 1967, Egypt was ruled by Gamal Abdel Nasser, an advocate of Arab unity and the very definition of a loose cannon. “Lucius Battle, the insightful American ambassador who had just completed two years in Cairo, was deeply troubled by the ‘ungovernable problem’ of Nasser’s demagoguery.”

The problem that has faced every president since the 1979 uprising in Iran has been the demagoguery of the Supreme Guides of the Iranian government since the Ayatollah Khomeini had led the overthrow of the Iranian Shah and the subsequent hostage taking of American diplomats whose release was not achieved until 444 days later when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

The Six Day War, a preemptive attack on an Egypt that had massed troops in the Sinai, was an unmitigated disaster for Egypt and expanded the territory of Israel in the wake of its taking of Syria’s Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza and the Sinai (later returned).

The Arab response was a conference in Khartoum in which the Arabs asserted its now-famous three no’s. No negotiation, no recognition, and no peace with Israel. Under the leadership of Anwar Sadat, peace with Egypt was achieved and his reward was to be assassinated. A similar peace was achieved with Jordan.

Every U.S. president since then has demanded that Israel return territory in return for peace, but there has never been peace and there is not likely to be any. Islam is a warrior cult based on the Koran; essentially a battle plan to impose Islam on the world.

The Iranian people are a wonderful people, but they are prisoners in their own nation and are currently struggling to rid themselves of the ayatollahs. Israel, however, does not have the privilege of waiting to see whether they are successful or not.

The ayatollahs and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are literally begging the Israeli’s to attack. They have mocked and deceived the West for decades in their quest for nuclear status and power.

No amount of United Nations “sanctions” will have any more effect on the situation than they did against the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.

One of these mornings, the White House Situation Room will be informed of the Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and you can be very sure that the entire West and the Middle East will breath a sigh of relief when they do.

The hypocrisy of condemnation that will follow will be vast, but tiny Israel will have saved the world and freed the Iranian people.

The Middle East Rethinks its Options

By Alan Caruba

If it isn’t a shooting war, the media and presumably many Americans are just not interested in the Middle East. Have you noticed how little news is being generated there of late?

True, Americans are rightly focused on the monstrous healthcare “reform” bill being imposed on the vast majority that opposes it, but we are transferring several thousand more troops to Afghanistan and we still have several thousands more in Iraq. I keep thinking that the mere presence of all these active fighting units continues to give Iran pause with regard to its nuclear hegemonic ambitions.

And, yes, we were just treated to President Mamoud Ahmadinejad ranting about efforts to impose sanctions, but it appears that the present world leaders are pursuing the same disastrous policies that preceded earlier wars when dictatorships were given meaningless warnings to cease and desist from developing a war machine. The prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons and their delivery systems fits that description.

The more general lack of coverage may well have to do with the way American news organizations have slashed their foreign bureaus and, in my opinion, the notion that, if Americans are not dying in action in sufficient numbers, there’s no need to pay the Middle East much attention. During the height of the Iraq war, every single casualty rated page one coverage.

War in far off places is the price a great nation pays to maintain its position in the world and America is no exception. President Obama’s reluctance to acknowledge or act decisively on this bodes ill, though he has shown great enthusiasm for measures to reduce the Earth’s temperature a degree or two centigrade.

It was news, however, that the aged and ailing president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, received a visit from the Iranian speaker of its parliament, Ali Larijani, in Cairo on December 20 and, despite the fact he rarely travels these days, Mubarak flew immediately to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab emirates to discuss what must have been deemed a major turn of events.

Close observers have concluded that the Iranians are trying to ease the tensions their bellicosity has aroused throughout the Middle East. This is not surprising given the fact that it has few real friends throughout the region with the exception of Syria and the terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Hamas, wholly-owned Iranian subsidiaries.

Moreover, Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah are believed to have given up hope of any effective action by America or Israel, to deter Iran’s nuclear program. I have thought in the past that Saudi Arabia would grant air space permission for an Israeli attack, but this option appears to be off the table.

The apparent movement toward coexistence with a nuclear Iran marks a significant downgrade of Washington’s influence in the region and would further isolate Israel if that is possible. The weakness displayed throughout Obama’s first year in office has likely convinced Middle Eastern leaders that they are on their own so far as any protection the U.S. might provide.

The Middle East has been in flux ever since the end of World War One when France and England divided up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire, creating new nations as colonial outposts. World War Two did nothing to reduce the never ending turmoil and the emergence of Israel as a Jewish state in 1948 led to a series of wars that Arab nations lost and the Palestinian pretext to refuse recognition.

Overriding all other interests the West has in the Middle East is the fact that it sits on top of one third or more of the world’s the known reserves of oil.

About the only card the West holds at this point is the fact that the Iranians lie about everything. Since this is well known to the region’s leaders, they will proceed with caution regarding any promises or deals they offer. Lacking their own nukes, they don’t have much bargaining power. They will soon have far less.

All of which explains why we should be more vigilant about events there, even if they do not include firefights, bombings, and other mayhem.

Iran's Mullahs Threaten the World

By Alan Caruba

In the more than four decades of the Cold War following World War Two, a cadre of specialists called “Kremlinologists”, academics, diplomats, and military, developed for the purpose of figuring out what the Soviet Union was doing and how best to counteract it. As often as not, they were wrong. The fall of the Berlin War came as a surprise to them, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now we are watching the same thing occur as various “experts” struggle to tell us what is happening in Iran and why.

What I really want to know is why the President of the United States thought it best not to “meddle” with a nation that had taken American diplomats hostage for 444 days, was funding two Middle East terrorists organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, and striving mightily to become a nuclear power with which to threaten their region and the world.

President Obama’s muted and belated response to the protests in the streets of Tehran by thousands of Iranians was a national and international disgrace. If America will not speak out boldly for liberty and support a popular uprising for democracy, who will?

My friend, Amil Imani, an Iranian-American who has forcefully spoken out for regime change in his former homeland, has posted a petition calling for an end to the slaughter of Iranians who only want what we in America and the West have, freedom.

You can add your name at http://www.petitiononline.com/ai2d2009/petition.html

Addressed to the leaders of the free world, the citizens of the world, and even to the Secretary-General of the useless United Nations, Imani states what we all know. “The mullahs and their mercenaries are wasting precious human life to maintain themselves in power through terrorizing the population.”

Islam is not about democracy. It is a political system called a theocracy. The clerics rule and, in effect, they only answer to Allah. Turkey, an Islamic nation, has maintained secular rule by splitting off Islam from governance. Other Islamic nations hold “elections” but it is understood by their citizens that they frequently are rigged, that those who rule them, secular or not, are corrupt, and protest gets you put in jail or dead.

One Middle Eastern nation that fashioned a working democracy, Lebanon, has been struggling for decades to throw off the dictators that would rule them, whether it is Syria or Hezbollah, a terrorist group of Palestinian terrorists whose sole purpose is the destruction of Israel.

Imani’s petition calls on “the free governments of the world, as well as all other businesses, organizations, and individuals to enlist in a non-violent campaign of ending the reign of terror of the belligerent clerical regime.”

Towards that end he seeks to protect the lives of Iranians through “a comprehensive program of assistance to all democratic Iranian opposition groups, both inside and outside of Iran, in their struggle to accomplish the regime change themselves.”

“Proclaim wide and far, the cardinal reason for taking these measures against the mullah’s reign of terror is to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons, the threat they pose to the region as well as the world, and the stimulus they provide for other nations to develop their own nuclear arsenal..”

There are a number of other proposals in the petition which I urge you to read and sign, but the issue to my mind is the failure of the United States, that is to say our President, to demonstrate any understanding of the fact that one cannot “negotiate” with a “Supreme Leader” intent on having nuclear weapons with which to threaten the region and the world.

That “Supreme Leader” and his minions subscribe to a Shiite myth of a “Twelfth Imam” who can only return to rule the Earth after widespread death and destruction has paved the way.

Little known and underreported have been the discussions underway between Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as to “strategic” actions they can take to secure the safety of their nations and to bring down the Iranian regime before it achieves nuclear status. Let me repeat that roster. Israel. Egypt. And Saudi Arabia.

America has the misfortune to be led by a President who has been fixated before and since election on a diplomatic resolution to the enmity between Iran and America. He apparently thinks he can talk them out of securing nuclear weapons. That is never going to happen. Israel knows this. Egypt knows this. And Saudi Arabia knows this.

Obama’s willful ignorance and personal arrogance is going to keep the Iranian people enslaved and get a lot of people in the region and beyond killed.

The Iranian mullahs are a pestilence that must be eradicated and removed from power. History teaches this lesson. A nation’s sovereignty is not an excuse to permit its leaders to plunge the world into war.

Israel Attacks Gaza and Arabs Attack Each Other

By Alan Caruba

One would think that the retaliatory attack on Gaza by the Israelis would unite the Arab Middle East, but you would be wrong. Arabs are not big fans of one another.

Hamas, which drove out Fatah, another Palestinian faction, at gunpoint and with some bloodshed, finds itself quite alone in Gaza except for the usual blather about their "heroic resistance."

The level of paranoia among Arabs cannot even be measured.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, the General Guide to the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Mahdi Akef, said in his weekly sermon, that Israel’s operation in Gaza was planned and coordinated with Egypt, Palestine, the U.S., and Israel, and that all of them had agreed with “the Zionist-U.S. agenda to assassinate the heads of the Palestinian resistance.”

On December 31, when a number of Arab foreign ministers were meeting in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal hinted that had the Palestinians in Gaza continued the ceasefire agreement with Israel instead of lobbing rockets into it, this unpleasantness might not have happened. Responding to calls that Saudi Arabia and Egypt act against Israel, Prince Faisal replied that Arab leaders were not “adventurists” and would not engage in battle without a very good reason.

In Saudi Arabia demonstrations to show solidarity with the Palestinians were banned and they even arrested a Saudi cleric who issued a fatwa permitting the harming of Israeli targets worldwide. In Jordan, a nation with a large Palestinian population, public protests were prohibited. Monarchies tend to be nervous about large crowds in the streets.

Meanwhile, in a Kuwaiti newspaper a cartoon ran that showed Iran unrolling a red carpet for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Gaza, suggesting that the provocations that required an Israeli response were at the behest of Iran. The Iranians, being Persians, not Arabs, have never been trusted much by the latter and vice versa.

Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak gave a speech demanding that Israel halt its offensive in Gaza, but he had plenty of reason to do so given the grief the Palestinians represent to the Egyptians whose border they share. Indeed, addressing the Palestinians, he said, “We warned you…that your refusing a tahdiya (ceasefire) would push Israel to attack Gaza and we stressed that thwarting Egypt’s efforts to extend the tahdiya would invite an Israeli attack.”

Gee, I wonder which side he's on?

Meanwhile, in Syria, a nation whose only friend in the region seems to be Iran, a Syrian columnist suggested that Egypt needs another officer’s revolution and accused Egypt of “conspiring with Israel to eliminate a million and a half Palestinians” in Gaza. In 1952, a coup of military officers overthrew the regime in power.

At Al-Arabiya the Director-General, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, said that Hamas was trying to evade responsibility for the Gaza conflict by attacking the Egyptian government as part of the campaign waged against Egypt by the Syrian-Iranian axis.

A senior Iranian official said that Muslims worldwide should demonstrate against their governments if they don’t support the Palestinians in Gaza and, reportedly, 20,000 Iranians signed up to fight Israel as volunteers for the Palestinians.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Palestinian “resistance” was in itself a victory over Israel, but neglected to mention that sixty years of resistance have rendered them the oldest existing group of refugees on the face of the Earth. On Iranian TV, toddlers were being taught about the glories of martyrdom and hatred of Zionists.

On his blog, a former Brigadier General of the Pakistan army said that Palestine needed nukes. “Nukes, missiles, atomic warheads and a strong army with a tough stance are what are required in the face of enemy like Israel and India,” said Junaid Zaman. He wondered what was taking India so long to attack Pakistan after the Mumbai attack.

This is just a small taste of what is going on in the Middle East and in other Muslim nations where the notion that Israel has a right to self-defense is met with complete astonishment. When not berating Israel, they devote the rest of their time to berating one another.