History in the Re-making
Israelis had to flee their embassy in Cairo this weekend:
With its Cairo embassy ransacked, its ambassador to Turkey expelled and the Palestinians seeking statehood recognition at the United Nations, Israel found itself on Saturday increasingly isolated and grappling with a radically transformed Middle East where it believes its options are limited and poor.
The diplomatic crisis, in which winds unleashed by the Arab Spring are now casting a chill over the region, was crystallized by the scene of Israeli military jets sweeping into Cairo at dawn on Saturday to evacuate diplomats after the Israeli Embassy had been besieged by thousands of protesters.
It was an image that reminded some Israelis of Iran in 1979, when Israel evacuated its embassy in Tehran after the revolution there replaced an ally with an implacable foe.
It’s one thing to pine for freedom for the Middle East, but quite another to witness what some do with it. In the past, such uprisings could be blamed on the local dictator, as Middle Eastern strongmen tend to stir up hatred for Israel to distract the people from their own brutalities and failures. But in Egypt, the dictator is gone. The hate may be self-sustaining.
And although some Israelis pointed fingers at Islamicization as the cause of the violence, Egyptians noted Saturday that Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, distanced themselves from Friday’s protests and did not attend, while legions of secular-minded soccer fans were at the forefront of the embassy attacks.
Step out of the soccer stadium, try to kill some Jews. Why should the Muslim Brotherhood get openly involved when they obviously don’t need to?
The Iranian regime hasn’t missed the parallel between the Arab Spring and the events of 1979.
Commander of Iran’s Basij (volunteer) force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi lauded the Egyptian people for their attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo, and said the move resembles a similar raid by a number of Iranian students on the US embassy in Tehran in the early days after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“This exceptional movement of the people in Cairo was inspired by Aban 13 (November 4) epic (the takeover of the former US embassy in Tehran in 1979) and is a reminder of the revolutionary zeal of the Islamic Iran’s students who courageously squashed the empty awe of the world arrogance,” Naqdi said on Saturday.
Parallels to 1979….
Who was President in 1979?
Oh yes, the Foreign Policy Weakling, Economically Challanged Jimmy Carter.
Who is president now?
The Foreign Policy Weakling, Economically Challanged Barack Obama.
Coincidence?
I think not.
I hope the Israelis learn a lesson from this. Peace with Muslims is not the worth the piece of paper it’s written on. I thought in 1979 that it was mistake to give Sinai back to Egypt, and I still think it was a mistake. I wonder whether if a war does break, and Israel does get the Sinai, whether it’ll give it back a third time?
I’m a former State Dept. Arabist who was a Political/Military Officer in Saudi Arabia’s embassy for three years. I was also Political Officer for internal political affairs for a year and the Ambassador sent me and another non-Arabist to all 13 provinces in the countries [we actually only made it to twelve] to see how the average Saudi felt.
You wouldn’t know it, but well-educated Saudis who specialized in a real discipline, like agriculture and other practical applications such as engineering, were full of admiration for the Israelis’ efforts to adapt their life to living in an arid, non-fertile environment.
This was before the so-called “Arab Spring,” & the unfree media were constantly ranting about Israel, which my Pentagon contacts told me had the Hydrogen Bomb, so at least the Israelis will be able to reduce the region to smithereens, which is where the undereducated masses who are now attacking Israeli embassies should probably be blown to…!
The UNDP has made three exhaustive studies, starting in the ’80s, on why the Arab world remained economically and politically underdeveloped despite ample “rents” from selling their oil & gas and having tremendous amounts of money.
Duh… The UN will never understand that the problem is big governments, not lack of money, and the Saudis simply are like most other Arabs in being oppressed by their unelected “leaders.” That’s why I’m so eager to see Qaddafi leave and Bashar Al-Assad also be forced off the stage…
daveinboca: The problem is not big governments; the problem is Islam (with one minor exception: Malaysia; Turkey was an exception because it was [emphasis on was] secular – it no longer is and it will just be a matter of time before it becomes a Muslim basket case). As for Qaddafi’s, and even Assad’s, leaving, be careful what you wish for. You will probably get something worse, as Iran did in 1979.