OPINION_ Another Devil We Know

August 20, 2013, 11:16 am
Comment

Another Devil We Know

By SHMUEL ROSNER


JERUSALEM — Here we go again. Israel is rooting for another butcher.

Officially, of course, Israel is no more than a “bystander,” wearily looking on at the upheaval in Egypt. “We have nothing to do with any of what is going on in Egypt,” said Avigdor Lieberman, a former foreign minister and chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

But make no mistake: Lieberman isn’t telling the whole truth. While Western states are reviewing their relations with Egypt because of the government forces’ recent massacres of Egyptian citizens, Israel wants “the whole world to support” Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s military commander, former Defense Minister (and Prime Minister) Ehud Barak said last week.

He wasn’t just stating his personal view. As The New York Times, the Jerusalem Post and other newspapers have reported, the Israeli government has been working the United States and Europe to rally support for the government in Egypt.

It wouldn’t be the first time Israel has lent its support to a despotic regime. In 2005, when President George W. Bush was frustrated that the Syrian government was assisting the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. troops and suggested to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon it might be the time to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad, Sharon replied that Israel preferred “the devil we know.”

Now Israel is conflicted about the civil war in Syria. Assad’s staying would be a victory for Iran and Hezbollah, but his going would mean losing a strongman who can keep the border between Israel and Syria quiet. A rational regime can be convinced, by diplomacy or force if necessary, to refrain from harassing Israel. Who knows, though, if Assad’s replacements would be rational.

Israel didn’t want Hosni Mubarak to be forced out of the Egyptian presidency: Here was the man who had “kept the peace in the Middle East,” President Shimon Peres said in January 2011. In 2012 Israelis watched nervously Egyptians go to the polls: They remembered 2006 only too well, when the Palestinians elected Hamas, which then quickly took over the Gaza Strip. Sure enough, the Muslim Brotherhood won.

Israel has been grumbling about the Americans’ and the Europeans’ continued infatuation with the prospect of democracy in the Arab world. Have they not learned the lesson? Do they not know by now that when Arabs vote they elect radicals? Democracy didn’t work in Palestine in 2006, and it didn’t work in Egypt in 2012. It can’t work in Lebanon while Hezbollah is politically active and armed. And it will not work in Syria, where sectarian loyalties trump any sense of national identity.

And so the Israeli government is hoping that the Egyptian military won’t surrender now. (It might even be thinking: Good thing the Islamists were pushed aside before they could weaken the secular and nationalistic military, Turkey style.) The same goes for the Israeli public, the pollster Menachem Lazar, of Panels Politics, told me; he said it wants “anything but the Muslim Brotherhood.”

This view may seem cold-hearted and cynical. It may seem hypocritical: Aren’t Israelis for democracy? It may even seem racist: Is it because they are Arabs that we disregard the bloodshed and think they are incapable of having a democracy?

Israelis are not immune to being cold-hearted, cynical, hypocritical and racist. But this position is something else. If Israelis are rooting for Egypt’s military, it’s because they want a government next door that will respect the two countries’ peace treaty. And it’s because the military is the only institution in Egypt today that can prevent the Sinai Peninsula from becoming a safe haven for radicalism. Israelis are being pragmatic, and that might look ugly, but that’s what experience has taught them.

Shmuel Rosner, an editor and columnist based in Tel Aviv, is senior political editor for The Jewish Journal.

Read more: http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/another-devil-we-know/?ref=syria&_r=0



Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc . 
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị . 




conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
21082013 
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC