Opinion Editorials, April 2011

Israel Wants Zionist-Friendly Democracy in the Arab World

By Khalid Amayreh

PIC, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, April 11, 2011

There are growing signs that Israel is quite apprehensive about the revolutionary reforms taking place in the Arab world.  Israeli officials and commentators are anxious about the prospects of these revolutions "turning Islamic." Political Islam has long become Israel's number-1 enemy, especially after the appearance of the Palestinian Islamic liberation group, Hamas, which refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Zionism. Hamas argues rather convincingly that Israel is a racist entity based on military might, ethnic cleansing and land theft and therefore has no moral legitimacy.
 
Israel has done very little to influence revolutions in both Tunis and Egypt. Israeli leaders and intelligence services, however, are reportedly to have alerted their counterparts in the West, particularly in the United States, that a prominent Islamist element was "at work" in these revolutions. For example, the Israeli media highlighted the "Victory Friday" on 18 February when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, led by prominent scholar Yosef al Qaradawi, gathered for congregational prayers at Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square to mark the overthrow of long-time tyrant Hosni Mubarak a week earlier. One Israeli commentator remarked that "it is such huge rallies that Israel should fear most. This is the new Middle East, it is Islamist, and certainly anti-Israel."
 
We all know, of course, that the introduction of true democracy in the Arab world is the last thing in the world Israel really cares about.  Israel knows quite well that its various interests in the Arab region can best be guaranteed by repressive tyrants such as Hosni Mubarak and Zeinulabideen bin Ali and that these interests would suffer immensely if not irreparably if  democratically-elected leaders were to rule in Arab capitals.
 
Well, this is true to a very large extent. In the final analysis, it is hard to imagine that Arab and Muslim masses would harbor any consideration for a hopelessly criminal entity that has been slaughtering and is slaughtering fellow Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon for decades and is now trying rather vigorously to demolish the Aqsa Mosque, the Third holiest shrine in Islam.
 
I remember that when Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister in 1996, several months after the assassination of Isaac Rabin, he began prattling and babbling about the lack of democracy in the Arab region. His ranting in this regard was meant first and foremost as a pretext, or a red herring, to justify Israel's refusal to give up occupied Arab land. Soon, however, he was instructed by the Mossad intelligence service to "shut up" because "you don't know what you are talking about."
 
The Mossad told him that "the survival and prosperity of tyrannical regimes in the Arab region was a supreme strategic Israeli interest and that true democracy in the Arab world constituted a nearly mortal threat to the state of Israel."
 
But what Israel had always been dreading is already at its doorsteps. This is why Israeli leaders and propagandists no longer say openly they don't want to see democracy take place in the Arab world. Instead, they say openly they don't want to see Islam being incorporated into Arab democracy since Islam doesn't recognize Zionism and won't accommodate Zionist whims in the region.
 
Never mind that the current Israeli government itself includes Talmudic political parties with clear-cut fascist and even Nazi-like trends, as is  evident  in the adoption by the government  of  a new set of racist laws, asserting the "Jewish" nature of Israel, which means more racism and more discrimination against  non-Jews.  However, when Muslims insist on giving due respect to the tenets of their faith, then Zionism turns on their alarm sirens, warning the world against Islamic democracy.
 
Still, Zionism would like to see a deformed, soulless, and hedonistic "democracy" takes place in the Arab world, a democracy best characterized by the rampancy of western lifestyles such as promiscuity, sexual permissiveness, pornography, teen-age pregnancy and lack of spirituality.  In a nutshell, Israel would like to see week Arab societies falling in the throes of lust, eviscerated of Islam, and indifferent to Israeli Nazism and whatever it does to Palestine and its people.
 
The manifestly fascist wing of Zionism, which is represented by the current Likud-led government, is worried that a stronger Arab world would complicate the Zionist goal of achieving the final liquidation of the Palestinian cause. 
 
Hence, they are trying to de-legitimize as much as possible the ongoing revolutionary reforms in countries such as Egypt.  Israel is unlikely to succeed to replicate the isolation of the elected Hamas government in the Gaza Strip with elected governments in Egypt. Egypt, after all, is not Gaza .
 
However, it is highly expected that Israel and Zionist circles in the US, especially those under whose tight control the American Congress reels, will start inciting against any new Egyptian regime with strong Islamic component. This incitement might culminate in the Congress deciding to sever all economic and military aid to Egypt.
 
This is why the new elected rulers in Egypt, whoever they may be,  must seek effective ways and means to neutralize Zionist blackmail and interference in Egyptian internal affairs which we all know are aimed at keeping 80 million Egyptians in a state of enslavement  and subservience to Israel.
 
In any case, the American aid to Egypt is too modest to warrant sacrificing Egyptian sovereignty and national dignity.
 
Israel simply wants to swallow all of Palestine, hook, line, and sinker, and not be disturbed by any outside force, Arab or otherwise.  This is the real reason Zionist leaders are prattling about the recent changes in the Arab world.

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editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org