NYT: US Support for Israeli Self-Defense Hurts Moderate Muslim Revolution That Was Just About to Happen
Add this one to the tediously long and constantly growing list of bad things that were already going to happen anyway - but that Israel is nonetheless being blamed for:
Moderate reformers across the Arab world say American support for Israel’s battle with Hezbollah has put them on the defensive, tarring them by association and boosting Islamist parties. The very people whom the United States wanted to encourage to promote democracy from Bahrain to Casablanca instead feel trapped by a policy that they now ridicule more or less as "destroying the region in order to save it." Indeed, many of those reformers who have been working for change in their own societies - often isolated, harassed by state security, or marginalized to begin with - say American policy either strangles nascent reform movements or props up repressive governments that remain Washington’s best allies in the region.
So in addition to causing Muslim hostility toward Israel (because that was on the decline) and preventing the freeing of liberation of Shalit (because that was about to happen), Israeli self-defense has now apparently blocked the impending success of Arab moderates throughout the Middle East. What? There was no actual evidence that any kind of success was probable for any Muslim reformer any time in the near future? You're such a racist!
Here's the other problem: there hasn't been a week in the last three years without a New York Times article to the effect that the US presence in Iraq has crushed Arab moderates. But now they're saying that the US shouldn't support Israel because if they do, it'll hurt Arab moderation - something that the US has supposedly ground into a fine dust some time right after the overthrow of the Iraqi dictatorship. So either Arab moderates are doing much better than the Times has been hysterically insisting or Arab moderates have been hopelessly undermined by the Iraq war - yet the Times wants to also denigrate US support for Israel. In other words, either the Times has been misleading people about the actual Arab reaction to the liberation of Iraq or they're misleading people now about why Arab moderates are failing - and wouldn't you know it, it's Israel's fault.
[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
Moderate reformers across the Arab world say American support for Israel’s battle with Hezbollah has put them on the defensive, tarring them by association and boosting Islamist parties. The very people whom the United States wanted to encourage to promote democracy from Bahrain to Casablanca instead feel trapped by a policy that they now ridicule more or less as "destroying the region in order to save it." Indeed, many of those reformers who have been working for change in their own societies - often isolated, harassed by state security, or marginalized to begin with - say American policy either strangles nascent reform movements or props up repressive governments that remain Washington’s best allies in the region.
So in addition to causing Muslim hostility toward Israel (because that was on the decline) and preventing the freeing of liberation of Shalit (because that was about to happen), Israeli self-defense has now apparently blocked the impending success of Arab moderates throughout the Middle East. What? There was no actual evidence that any kind of success was probable for any Muslim reformer any time in the near future? You're such a racist!
Here's the other problem: there hasn't been a week in the last three years without a New York Times article to the effect that the US presence in Iraq has crushed Arab moderates. But now they're saying that the US shouldn't support Israel because if they do, it'll hurt Arab moderation - something that the US has supposedly ground into a fine dust some time right after the overthrow of the Iraqi dictatorship. So either Arab moderates are doing much better than the Times has been hysterically insisting or Arab moderates have been hopelessly undermined by the Iraq war - yet the Times wants to also denigrate US support for Israel. In other words, either the Times has been misleading people about the actual Arab reaction to the liberation of Iraq or they're misleading people now about why Arab moderates are failing - and wouldn't you know it, it's Israel's fault.
[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
