WaPo Discovers Egyptian Anti-Israel Movements, Gets Story Wrong Anyway
No matter how much strategic depth Israel gives away, no matter how many decades of US aid is poured in, peace deals with Israel's Arab enemies last only as long as Israel's enemies want it to:
Egypt's best-known democracy movement has switched causes and is now focused on demanding an end to the country's peace treaty with Israel. The campaign by the Kifaya group is a sign of how the war in Lebanon knocked momentum from democracy efforts and left many reform activists deeply resentful of the United States. Over the past two years, Washington has made promoting democracy a key part of its Middle East policy. But now reformists accuse Washington of supporting Israel in its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas, which wreaked widespread destruction in Lebanon...
The Egyptian-Israeli treaty ended hostilities between the two neighbors, after four wars between 1948 and 1973, and is cited by successive U.S. administrations as a model for peaceful coexistence in the region. But it failed to dent the animosity most Egyptians feel for Israel...
"The most prominent casualty of Washington's policy during the Lebanon war was its program for democracy in the Middle East," said Amr Hamzawi, a Middle East expert at Carnegie Endowments, a Washington think tank. "When an elected government in Lebanon faced a challenge, the American administration blatantly took the side of Israel."
(1) Wrong - Seriously, what would we do if not for experts? Experts held consumers of journalism understand things so well. Like the US government not supporting the Lebanese government during the war:
According to the professional sophisticates helping to decide the US State Department's Middle East policy, the Lebanese government doesn't really have much to do with this whole regional war thing. Alberto Fernandez (Director of Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department) took pains to be very clear on this point in a conversation with Jim Zogby's Arab American Institute: "Fernandez rebuk[ed] Israel's position toward the Lebanese government. He specifically said: "If it gets me in trouble, it gets me in trouble. I don't care. The Israeli Government has said 'we hold the Lebanese government responsible.' The US Government has not said that, and we don't believe that.... We have been cognizant of the efforts of the Lebanese Cabinet to be responsible and to act in a mature and serious way. This is one of the best governments Lebanon ever had, it's a serious government, and the result of a democratic process."
(2) Stupid - If the vast majority of Egyptians want to renew hostilities with Israel then how does renewing hostilities with Israel reflect a failure of democracy promotion? Isn't it more the other way - populism enables Arab animosity towards Israel to become official policy, which is the one man-one vote-one time rightist critique of Bush?
(3) Doubly stupid - What does resentment toward the US have to do with Egyptian loathing for Israel, which is expressed in the country's rampantly anti-Semitic media in the form of Elder of Zion TV programs and horrifically vicious cartoons? Does the WaPo really want its readers to think that the reason that popular Egyptian resentment of Israel - or even the widespread idea that Egypt should withdraw from Camp David - began with Lebanon II? Do they know how to use Google?
(4) We'll agree it's true! - But this isn't because of US policy or anything Israel has recently done. It's because fundamentally Egypt gets to play the same nudge-nudge wink-wink that the rest of Israel's enemies do when they engage in peace negotiations: pocket tangible concessions, drag your feet on implementation until you're willing to break the treaty, and then break the treaty and renew hostilities from a stronger, reorganized position.
Egypt's best-known democracy movement has switched causes and is now focused on demanding an end to the country's peace treaty with Israel. The campaign by the Kifaya group is a sign of how the war in Lebanon knocked momentum from democracy efforts and left many reform activists deeply resentful of the United States. Over the past two years, Washington has made promoting democracy a key part of its Middle East policy. But now reformists accuse Washington of supporting Israel in its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas, which wreaked widespread destruction in Lebanon...
The Egyptian-Israeli treaty ended hostilities between the two neighbors, after four wars between 1948 and 1973, and is cited by successive U.S. administrations as a model for peaceful coexistence in the region. But it failed to dent the animosity most Egyptians feel for Israel...
"The most prominent casualty of Washington's policy during the Lebanon war was its program for democracy in the Middle East," said Amr Hamzawi, a Middle East expert at Carnegie Endowments, a Washington think tank. "When an elected government in Lebanon faced a challenge, the American administration blatantly took the side of Israel."
(1) Wrong - Seriously, what would we do if not for experts? Experts held consumers of journalism understand things so well. Like the US government not supporting the Lebanese government during the war:
According to the professional sophisticates helping to decide the US State Department's Middle East policy, the Lebanese government doesn't really have much to do with this whole regional war thing. Alberto Fernandez (Director of Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department) took pains to be very clear on this point in a conversation with Jim Zogby's Arab American Institute: "Fernandez rebuk[ed] Israel's position toward the Lebanese government. He specifically said: "If it gets me in trouble, it gets me in trouble. I don't care. The Israeli Government has said 'we hold the Lebanese government responsible.' The US Government has not said that, and we don't believe that.... We have been cognizant of the efforts of the Lebanese Cabinet to be responsible and to act in a mature and serious way. This is one of the best governments Lebanon ever had, it's a serious government, and the result of a democratic process."
(2) Stupid - If the vast majority of Egyptians want to renew hostilities with Israel then how does renewing hostilities with Israel reflect a failure of democracy promotion? Isn't it more the other way - populism enables Arab animosity towards Israel to become official policy, which is the one man-one vote-one time rightist critique of Bush?
(3) Doubly stupid - What does resentment toward the US have to do with Egyptian loathing for Israel, which is expressed in the country's rampantly anti-Semitic media in the form of Elder of Zion TV programs and horrifically vicious cartoons? Does the WaPo really want its readers to think that the reason that popular Egyptian resentment of Israel - or even the widespread idea that Egypt should withdraw from Camp David - began with Lebanon II? Do they know how to use Google?
(4) We'll agree it's true! - But this isn't because of US policy or anything Israel has recently done. It's because fundamentally Egypt gets to play the same nudge-nudge wink-wink that the rest of Israel's enemies do when they engage in peace negotiations: pocket tangible concessions, drag your feet on implementation until you're willing to break the treaty, and then break the treaty and renew hostilities from a stronger, reorganized position.
