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We are afraid of what may come after Mubarak. Israel is also afraid--or at least must say so. Most nations are most often most comfortable dancing with the devils they know. We always supported the short-timer gerontocracy that ran the old Soviet Union out of business. No matter how bad, corrupt or brutal, we always feared that the next guy would be worse.

It is true that we have also backed the wrong person when we tried to create regime change. We knocked off a bunch of leaders of South Vietnam who did not please us. We never found the right guy to help us win the wrong war. We have thrown any number of bad guys under the bus of our perceived interests in Latin America. We threw out an elected leader in Iran and replaced him with the Shah. Then we threw the Shah under the bus--much too late for masses of people--and we got Khomeini.

We have backed Mubarak, who took over after Sadat was assassinated, and promised, but never delivered, free fair elections. In three decades he failed to deliver and ruled under a permanent emergency decree. Well, his own personal emergency is here. He will fall. Every day we act as if we support him, we make the very folks we fear more powerful and less likely to forgive us.

Yes, he has been an ally and we have paid dearly in both money and integrity for his friendship. Whoever follows Mubarak whether this week or in a month or a year (unlikely) will not be as friendly but may be more democratic and representative of the people of Egypt.

What does this mean to Israel? Probably not much. The cold peace between Israel and Egypt is unlikely to change dramatically. Egypt needs peace since over 30% of its economy comes from tourism. They need a sense of safety to keep the Suez Canal open. And ultimately, Egyptians know that the great hostage that Israel holds is the high dam at Aswan. Were that to be destroyed and Lake Nasser catastrophically emptied, Egypt would be finished.

The great bus of change is coming to the Arab World. We can be in front welcoming it. We can follow it and still come out okay. But at present, by signaling in both directions, we are likely to be under the bus. Not good for us or Israel or, indeed, Egypt.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I'm fascinated by the debate between Jonathan and Gail, as a relatively liberal and a relatively conservative supporter, respectively, of Israel. I appreciated Jonathan's rebuttal of the notion that a Jew who criticizes Israeli policy is anti-Semitic, and I'm curious if Gail understands his point of view.

I'm also curious to hear Gail's critique of this article in The Economist about "Israel's siege mentality," notably the passages below:

For anyone who cares about Israel, this tragedy should be the starting point for deeper questions--about the blockade, about the Jewish state's increasing loneliness and the route to peace. A policy of trying to imprison the Palestinians has left their jailer strangely besieged....

Israel is caught in a vicious circle. The more its hawks think the outside world will always hate it, the more it tends to shoot opponents first and ask questions later, and the more it finds that the world is indeed full of enemies....

None other than the head of Israel's Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, declared this week that America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset.

That has led to the charge by hawkish American Republicans, as well as many Israelis, that Mr Obama is bent on betraying Israel. In fact, he is motivated by a harder-nosed appreciation of the pros and cons of America's cosiness with Israel, and is thus all the keener to prod the Jewish state towards giving the Palestinians a fair deal. He has condemned the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory more bluntly than his predecessors did, because he rightly thinks they make it harder to negotiate a peace deal. Mr Obama's greater sternness towards Israel is for the general good--including Israel's.

If the real issue is Israel's long-term survival and welfare as a Jewish democracy, how many schools of thought can there be on how to accomplish this....?

Gail writes, "What we need is a good war that all the men fight in to kick the sensitivity out of us and toughen us up."

Unfortunately, the last time American men were expected to fight in a war (whether or not they wanted to), many of the guys who wiggled out of combat turned out to be the chicken hawks who would later win votes by acting tougher than many men who did fight. So I'm not sure war toughens anyone up. It sounds nice, though.

Faisal Shahzad's problem certainly isn't that he was or recently became a devout Muslim. His problem is that he has always been Pakistani. Even after being naturalized, his Pakistaniness came through.

As a fellow Pakistani-American who has researched the matter through my life, I can assert that the vast majority of Pakistanis are not violent. The vast majority of them are not even nuts. Only, say, about half of them are nuts.

The problem is, of course, knowing which half is nuts. Here, there are no easy signs, even among Pakistanis. Privately, we will all concede that half of Pakistanis are crazy. The other half, naturally.

It's like the studies that show that 60% of people think they're above average in intelligence, a statistical impossibility. Or the studies that show that most people think other people are selfish but only a small minority believe themselves to be selfish.
Still, every Pakistani, whether living in Peshawar or Paris or Peoria, insists that it's the other half that's botched that nation's great destiny. They are adamant that no progress can be made until the other half, the crazy half, is removed from the stage. Many insist that a new breed of young Pakistanis might be the salvation of the nation -- as though craziness skips a generation.

In truth, the craziness that sweeps Pakistan is not terribly different from the hot-blooded passions that characterize much of the greater Middle East and Mediterranean cultures. Cultures do have personalities, and these cultural personalities are more powerful than any religion or theology. The difficulty is when a nation with such a culture becomes dysfunctional, and religion is available as a means of rallying malcontents or gaining recognition or blazing a nihilistic train on the impersonal terrain of destiny.

Pakistan has receded from most Americans' minds, not that it was ever much on their minds anyway. This is because the cable networks aren't obsessing on events there. But more quietly, important "stuff" keeps happening, and this piece offers some excellent perspective.

The late social critic Neil Postman said there are two kinds of people: Athenians and Visigoths. Athenians appreciate poetry and knowledge, Visigoths believe in mauling all competitors. The halls of power are often filled with Visigoths, while some of the great Athenians are found in the working class.

I'll apply that to our dealings with Iran. Visigoths like to portray rivals as Visigoths, in order to find an excuse to bomb them. Athenians by contrast, even when they fight, seek to empathize with their enemies.

For three decades, we have spoken daily in the West of attacking Iran. Some of their leaders have bloviated on occasion of desires to stick it to Israel, which leads to us speaking even more frequently and loudly about attacking Iran, which adds to their own bluster. Iran is surrounded by geopolitical threats. Yet when they respond with bluster, we heighten our desire to go Visigoth on them.

An Athenian reads the situation one way, a Visigoth another. Postman hoped there would be more Athenians among us than Visigoths. So do I.

My thanks for Mariel G. for running this new piece adapted from my new book.

My new book is finally here, and it's available right over here. I'll share more information about it in coming days. But in a nutshell, it discusses my background in both conservative Islam and conservative Christianity--with an eye on how both religions have been compromised by their roles within contemporary politics and nationalism.

As one of Gail's "two readers," I find her perceptions of Muslims to be very troubling in this post. No doubt the larger Muslim world has serious issues to work through. I can agree with people ranging from the conservative Bernard Lewis to the liberal Reza Aslan on this. But Gail goes as far as to take Nonia Darwish seriously in the contention that the Muslim world is actively attempting to, uh, infiltrate the West.

To a degree, every proselytizing religion intends to infiltrate the rest of the world. That's the definition of proselytizing. Gail, don't imagine that your evangelical pro-Israel allies don't want the empty churches in Tel Aviv to someday be filled with persons like yourself.

Nonie Darwish reminds me of the former nun, Karen Armstrong, who's become a vocal critic of Christianity and a strong apologist for Muslims. Armstrong criticizes the Judeo-Christian tradition for being too mean to idolaters, but passes over Muslims' intense anti-idolatry. She claims that Christians have sexual hang-ups and that Muslims don't, which seems a stretch. She claims that Islam is more inherently forgiving than Christianity.

Mostly, she seems to be an angry child still railing about the injustices of Daddy. So does Nonie Darwish. Do you really believe Darwish is brave? She's an opportunist, refusing to grow up, because attention and money incentivize her continued immaturity. Both Armstrong and Darwish serve the interests of demagogues who like stirring up action against whole civilizations, by claiming, "But they started it."

Regarding the dilemma of airport profiling, let me go back to a piece from the rival paper that I wrote back in 2002. With some qualifications, i still stand by the basic premise. But having been profiled up and down in Israel in 2006, I find that it's easy for profiling to become obnoxious, which is why I don't much want to go again to Israel anytime soon.