JINSA: Arab Spring disorder makes Israel stronger
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
The Passionate Attachment
July 16, 2012
In a July 11 article on the JINSA website, visiting fellow Gabriel M. Scheinmann confirms what readers of The Passionate Attachment have known for some time:
Although the initial flickers of liberalism have been subsumed by the Islamist bonfire, the so-called “Arab Spring” has, paradoxically, made Israel stronger as Israel’s enemies have turned on each other. While Arab capitals burn, Jerusalem has calmly and carefully steeled itself against the possible immediate deleterious effects, building fences along its Egyptian and Jordanian borders and accelerating the deployment of its Iron Dome anti-missile system. Whereas Arab states remain mired in internal political, economic, and military turmoil, Israel hums along, its economy intact – tourism is at an all-time high – its military untested, and its government united.
For three decades, Mubarak’s Egypt was the anchor of Israel’s regional security. Since his ouster, the lawless Sinai has been the source of rocket attacks, Egypt has canceled its gas contract with Israel, Israel’s Cairo embassy staff barely survived an attempted mob lynching and the Muslim Brotherhood has issued disquieting verbal volleys against the peace treaty.
As these troubling developments suggest, the capacity of the Egyptian state has also fundamentally declined. The Egyptian economy is in dire straits: foreign reserves have dropped 60 percent, foreign direct investment has fallen by 90 percent, and this year’s budget deficit is 10.4 percent of GDP – America’s is 7.6 percent – and trending upwards. Furthermore, Egypt’s military regime and the Muslim Brotherhood are focused inward on reestablishing order and consolidating political control. Any warlike move by an Islamist-led Egypt would trigger the elimination of the American military aid that currently funds nearly 40 percent of Egypt’s defense budget. The Egyptian body politic may indeed be more hostile to the Jewish State, but its capabilities for acting on that hostility have markedly declined.
Israel’s concerns about a volatile Syria also belie the advantages reaped by a damaged Syria. Concerned about the potential transfer of Syrian Scuds or chemical weapons to Hezbollah, Israel is apprehensive of both a last ditch attempt by Assad to embroil it in war or by the possible ascent of another Islamist regime.
However, irrespective of Assad’s ability to cling to power, post-uprising Syria will also be a shell of its former self. Like Egypt, its economy is in tatters, having been hit hard by Western sanctions on its oil industry, which accounts for 30 percent of its budget. Its’ army has suffered large defections and losses at the hands of the rebels and its’ patron, Iran, has invested massively in propping up its sole regional ally. Even Hezbollah, aware of its current tenuous position in the Lebanese powder keg, finds itself increasingly isolated, having sided with Assad. Israel’s northern border has never been quieter.
Even in Gaza, where Hamas is ensconced, Israel’s successful deployment of the game-changing Iron Dome missile defense system has revolutionized the security situation, resulting in no Israeli casualties due to rocket fire thus far this year. Hamas abandoned its cozy headquarters in Damascus, fearful of aligning itself with the heretical Alawite sect against its Sunni Muslim brothers, and continues the political tug-of-war with Fatah in the West Bank. Even beyond Israel’s immediate borders, the “Arab Spring” has uncorked ethno-religious conflicts. PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) attacks on Turkish military targets have spiked, fighting continues between Arab, African, and Berber tribesmen in Libya, and two new independent states have been declared, the Tuareg state of Azawad in northwestern Mali and South Sudan, marking the first loss of “Arab” sovereignty in 45 years.
Even as it rightly plans for the changes wrought by the “Arab Spring,” Israel should also recognize that as the Middle East convulses, it is more likely to be left alone. As Alawites battle Arab Sunnis and Kurds in Syria, as Kurds target Turks in Turkey, as the Imazighen fight Arabs in Libya, as the Army contends with Islamists in Egypt, and as Sunnis and Christians confront Shiites in Lebanon, people don’t have the time, energy, or resources to fight the Jews in Israel. The more the region tears itself apart, the more Israel floats to the top, unscathed economically, militarily, or diplomatically. While an Islamist ascent is undesirable, the intervening disorder only makes Israel stronger.
It appears that Carl Gershman, Peter Ackerman, Jared Cohen, et al. knew what they were doing after all when they helped unleash the supposedly Israel-threatening Arab democratic wave. As no doubt did Israeli President Shimon Peres when during an April 2011 visit to Washington he urged aid to the “the awakening of the Arab world.”
I agree with Gabriel M. Scheinmann. All the Arab countries over-powered by the so-called “Arab Spring” (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Bahrain, etc.) – still maintain closer relations with Israel. Jeff Blankfort told Silvia Cattori in 2006: “US invaded and occupied Iraq, not for Iraqi oil but to protect Israeli interests in the region….. And right at this moment, the only segment of the American society that is pushing the US administration to confront Iran, happens to be the Jewish establishment or the lobby, whose main focus for months – groups like AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but also other Jewish organizations– has been to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons”.
The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was cooked-up during a meeting in New York city by the CIA, Mossad and several Zionist Jewish heads of social networking sites to implement the ‘New Middle East’ project.
Lebanon’s interior minister, retired Maj. Gen. Marwan Charbel (a choice of country’s Christian president Gen. Michel Suleiman) in a recent interview with RT has claimed that the Zionist entity is the only country which has benefitted from the Arab Spring.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/06/08/lebanon-arab-spring-benefits-israel-only/
rehmat1
July 16, 2012 at 6:54 pm
please go to thenakedfacts blog asap explosive info on syria/saudi
ALI
July 17, 2012 at 1:16 am
Writing in The American Conservative, Philip Giraldi observes:
Maidhc Ó Cathail
July 17, 2012 at 7:53 am
“The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was cooked-up during a meeting in New York city by the CIA, Mossad and several Zionist Jewish heads of social networking sites to implement the ‘New Middle East’ project.”
Are you referring to the inaugural Alliance for Youth Movements summit in 2008?
Maidhc Ó Cathail
July 17, 2012 at 8:04 am
The Alliance of Youth Movement (AYM) was given birth by the US State Department in 2008 an inaugural summit meeting in New York city in 2008. The meeting was attended by members of variety of Jewish thinks, like Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Israel-firsters officials from National Security staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers – and the Jewish-controlled mainstream-media, such as, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and MTV. The meeting was attended by actress Whoopi Goldberg, Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz and Ben-Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James K. Glassman.
One of the participants at 2008 NY meeting was no other than Asmaaa Mahfouz’s “April 6 Youth Movement” from Egypt.
Even the Islamophobe, Glenn Beck, on his radio show has talked about the AYM-White House connection.
http://rehmat1.com/2011/02/16/anti-government-protests-and-israeli-connection/
rehmat1
July 17, 2012 at 12:44 pm
The Guardian’s Ian Black appears to have missed the JINSA memo. But perhaps his piece, “Israel’s old certainties crumble in Arab spring fallout,” is solely intended for public consumption.
Maidhc Ó Cathail
July 18, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Reading this AP report by Amy Teibel, one gets the impression that Israeli intelligence wants everyone to think they’re secretly worried about the jihadist threat from a post-Assad Syria:
Maidhc Ó Cathail
July 18, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Those poor Israeli landgrabbers.
Osiris
July 18, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Like “Muslim Al-Qaeda”, there no “jihadis” protecting Muslims. Both are USrael Saudi-funded Wahabi militants fighting for the western dominance of the Muslim world. In Syria both Wahabis and Muslim Brotherhood are sharing the bed with USrael.
On July 4, 2011, a conference of Syrian anti-regime groups was held in Saint-Germain in France. The meeting was attended by 200 people representing none of the Syrian groups calling for reforms in Syria – the ‘Democratic change in Syria’. The meeting was organized by La Regle du Jeu (The Rule of the Game) magazine and website which is headed by Zionist Jew Bernard-Henri Levy. The other Zionist Jews who attended the meeting included Bernard Kouchner, former French foreign minister, Frederik Ansel, a member of Israel’s ruling Likud Party, Alex Goldfarb, former Knesset member and adviser to Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak and Andre Glucksmann, an Islamophobe French writer.
http://rehmat1.com/2011/07/08/israeli-conference-on-syria/
rehmat1
July 18, 2012 at 11:21 pm
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