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An e-newsletter delivering updates and analysis on current issues about Israel and the Middle East conflict

September 4, 2013

As the Middle East Roils in Chaos Following the Arab Spring, Only Israel Seems to Have Come Out Ahead

Dear Friend of FLAME:

Usually when we invoke the principal of unintended consequences, we're describing how the best-intentioned and thought-out actions provoke unforeseen disastrous results. But sometimes it actually works the other way---sometimes the unforeseen consequences have salutary effects on the good guys, in this case, Israel.

The consequences of the misnomered Arab Spring certainly are an example of how historical events can, as they're unfolding, make fools of pundits and politicians. Those, like the New York Times editorial staff and Tom Friedman specifically, naively believed that the Arab upheaval of two years ago would turn the Arab world into a democratic paradise.  Unfortunately---and as we at FLAME predicted---barbaric violence and political chaos ensued instead.

But even as much of Arab world roils, Israel seems to have been the greatest beneficiary of these revolutions. Even as Israel cooperates with the Palestinians in mock peace talks that promise no winners and no results, the Jewish state's hand in the region seems to have improved dramatically.

Even as the Middle East has become more unstable and unpredictable---occasional missiles continue to target Israel, no Israeli border is truly secure---Israel's enemies are engaged in a vicious internecine tearing of flesh.

The primary Arab antagonists, of course, are the Sunnis and Shiites, whose most bloody battles are unfolding in Syria, but which also exist in Lebanon and Iraq. In the greater Middle East, Sunni interests are represented by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and the Shiites' by Iran.

In Egypt, conflict now rages between the military and the (Sunni) Islamists.  Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood's demise in Egypt has cascaded to the detriment of Hamas, which was favored by former President Morsi.  Speaking of Hamas, we must remember that the Gaza-based terrorist group is still at fundamental odds with Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party in the West Bank.

In short, Israel's enemies are scattered, distracted and hard at work destroying themselves.  Even those at relative peace, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have little energy for scraps with Israel.  In fact, those players actually sense a bit of solidarity with Israel (though they'd never admit it openly), because they all consider Iran an enemy.

This week's FLAME Hotline article offers a brief, brilliant analysis of these shifting power equations in the Middle East---one that every Israel supporter should read.  This piece, by Hoover Institution historian and biting commentator Victor Davis Hanson, offers us a bright hope for the coming years, despite the fact that Israel's next-door neighbors remain unconscionable hoodlums.

Please review this article, then pass it along to your friends, colleagues and fellow congregants---help us spread the word.

Thanks for your support of FLAME and of Israel!

Best regards,

Jim Sinkinson
Vice President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME)

P.S.

We at FLAME often focus, of course, on the challenges Israel faces in the world---the unfair treatment the Jewish state receives at the hands of the U.N., continuing rocket attacks by Arab terrorists from Gaza and Lebanon, and the existential threat that confronts Israel from Iran.  But what we must not forget is the amazing success story that Israel represents for Jews and for civilization itself.  To clarify, celebrate and publicize the good news about Israel, FLAME is now publishing a hasbarah message---"Israel: A 65-Year Miracle: One of the proudest accomplishments in world history"---in media reaching 10 million readers. I hope you'll review this powerful position paper and pass it on to all your contacts who will benefit from this message. If you agree that FLAME's bold---but costly---brand of public relations on Israel's behalf is critical, I urge you to support our publication of such outspoken messages. Please consider giving donation now, as you're able---with $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to http://www.factsandlogic.org/make_a_donation.html. Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that Israel gets the support it needs---from the U.S. Congress, from President Obama, and from the American people.

The Israeli Spring
Israel's enemies are doing more damage to each other than Israel ever could.

By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Online, August 29, 2013

Israel could be forgiven for having a siege mentality — given that at any moment, old frontline enemies Syria and Egypt might spill their violence over common borders.

The Arab Spring has thrown Israel's once-predictable adversaries into the chaotic state of a Sudan or Somalia. The old understandings between Jerusalem and the Assad and Mubarak kleptocracies seem in limbo.

Yet these tragic Arab revolutions swirling around Israel are paradoxically aiding it, both strategically and politically — well beyond just the erosion of conventional Arab military strength.

In terms of realpolitik, anti-Israeli authoritarians are fighting to the death against anti-Israeli insurgents and terrorists. Each is doing more damage to the other than Israel ever could — and in an unprecedented, grotesque fashion. Who now is gassing Arab innocents? Shooting Arab civilians in the streets? Rounding up and executing Arab civilians? Blowing up Arab houses? Answer: either Arab dictators or radical Islamists.

The old nexus of radical Islamic terror of the last three decades is unraveling. With a wink and a nod, Arab dictatorships routinely subsidized Islamic terrorists to divert popular anger away from their own failures to the West or Israel. In the deal, terrorists got money and sanctuary. The Arab Street blamed others for their own government-inflicted miseries. And thieving authoritarians posed as Islam's popular champions.

But now, terrorists have turned on their dictator sponsors. And even the most ardent Middle East conspiracy theorists are having troubling blaming the United States and Israel.

Secretary of State John Kerry is still beating last century's dead horse of a "comprehensive Middle East peace." But does Kerry's calcified diplomacy really assume that a peace agreement involving Israel would stop the ethnic cleansing of Egypt's Coptic Christians? Does Israel have anything to do with Assad's alleged gassing of his own people?

There are other losers as well. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to turn a once-secular Turkish democracy into a neo-Ottoman Islamist sultanate, with grand dreams of eastern-Mediterranean hegemony. His selling point to former Ottoman Arab subjects was often a virulent anti-Semitism. Suddenly, Turkey became one of Israel's worst enemies and the Obama administration's best friends.

Yet if Erdogan has charmed President Obama, he has alienated almost everyone in the Middle East. Islamists such as former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi felt that Erdogan was a fickle and opportunistic conniver. The Gulf monarchies believed that he was a troublemaker who wanted to supplant their influence. Neither the Europeans nor the Russians trust him. The result is that Erdogan's loud anti-Israeli foreign policy is increasingly irrelevant.

The oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf once funded terrorists on the West Bank, but they are now fueling the secular military in Egypt. In Syria they are searching to find some third alternative to Assad's Alawite regime and its al-Qaeda enemies. For the moment, oddly, the Middle East foreign policy of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other oil monarchies dovetails with Israel's: Predictable Sunni-Arab nationalism is preferable to one-vote, one-time Islamist radicals.

Israel no doubt prefers that the Arab world liberalize and embrace constitutional government. Yet the current bloodletting lends credence to Israel's ancient complaints that it never had a constitutional or lawful partner in peace negotiations.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak's corrupt dictatorship is gone. His radical Muslim Brotherhood successors were worse and are also gone. The military dictatorship that followed both is no more legitimate than either. In these cycles of revolution, the one common denominator is an absence of constitutional government.

In Syria, there never was a moderate middle. Take your pick between the murderous Shiite-backed Assad dictatorship or radical Sunni Islamists. In Libya, the choice degenerated to Moammar Qaddafi's unhinged dictatorship or the tribal militias that overthrew it. Let us hope that one day westernized moderate democracy might prevail. But that moment seems a long way off.

What do the Egyptian military, the French in Mali, Americans at home, the Russians, the Gulf monarchies, persecuted Middle Eastern Christians, and the reformers of the Arab Spring all have in common? Like Israel, they are all fighting Islamic-inspired fanaticism. And most of them, like Israel, are opposed to the idea of a nuclear Iran.

In comparison with the ruined economies of the Arab Spring — tourism shattered, exports nonexistent, and billions of dollars in infrastructure lost through unending violence — Israel is an atoll of prosperity and stability. Factor in its recent huge gas and oil finds in the eastern Mediterranean, and it may soon become another Kuwait or Qatar, but with a real economy beyond its booming petroleum exports.

Israel had nothing to do with either the Arab Spring or its failure. The irony is that surviving embarrassed Arab regimes now share the same concerns with the Israelis. In short, the more violent and chaotic the Middle East becomes, the more secure and exceptional Israel appears.

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