One of the better articles written about the crisis in Egypt was penned by Caroline Glick today. The piece appears in the Jerusalem Post and takes the pragmatists in Israel - and US State Department - to task for their blindness in believing they can appease the Arab street by cutting cynical deals with dictators in the region.
The problem, as Glick points out, is that these dictators are very vulnerable. And their replacements are likely to be catastrophic for Israel.
The Egyptian "dissident" Mohamed ElBaradei is a good example. Moderate sounding and beloved by western liberals, ElBaradei supports the goals of the Islamists:
Elbaradei's support for the Iranian ayatollahs is matched by his support for the Muslim Brotherhood.This group, which forms the largest and best-organized opposition movement to the Mubarak regime, is the progenitor of Hamas and al-Qaida. It seeks Egypt's transformation into an Islamic regime that will stand at the forefront of the global jihad. In recent years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been increasingly drawn into the Iranian nexus along with Hamas. Muslim Brotherhood attorneys represented Hizbullah terrorists arrested in Egypt in 2009 for plotting to conduct spectacular attacks aimed at destroying the regime.
Elbaradei has been a strong champion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Just this week he gave an interview to Der Spiegel defending the jihadist movement. As he put it, "We should stop demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. ...[T]hey have not committed any acts of violence in five decades. They too want change. If we want democracy and freedom, we have to include them instead of marginalizing them."
The Muslim Brotherhood for its part has backed Elbaradei's political aspirations. On Thursday, it announced it would demonstrate at ElBaradei's side the next day.
Then there is a supposedly secular opposition group:
Then there is the Kifaya movement. The group sprang onto the international radar screen in 2004 when it demanded open presidential elections and called on Mubarak not to run for a fifth term. As a group of intellectuals claiming to support liberal, democratic norms, Kifaya has been upheld as a model of what the future of Egypt could look like if liberal forces are given the freedom to lead.But Kifaya's roots and basic ideology are not liberal. They are anti-Semitic and anti-American.
Kifaya was formed as a protest movement against Israel with the start of the Palestinian terror war in 2000. It gained force in March 2003 when it organized massive protests against the US-led invasion of Iraq. In 2006, its campaign to get a million Egyptians to sign a petition demanding the abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel received international attention.
Glick thinks the Camp David Accords are history no matter who takes over in Egypt after Mubarak leaves. If that's the case, the pragmatists, who have given away much land in return for unfulfilled promises of peace, have a lot to answer for.
Share