What is going on in Egypt was all foreseeable to those of us who did not harbor the romantic view of the Arab Spring, which in many places was just a venting of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel which had been suppressed by dictatorial rulers. Just ask Lara Logan, who was sexually abused in public as the crowd shouted “Jew” and “Israeli.”
In January, when protests broke out and Mubarak still was in power, I predicted a spiraling of the situation such that the Israelis might have no choice but to return to Sinai unless the transition were handled with care. The U.S. precipitously forced Mubarak out with no transition in place, and eight months later, things appear to be heading in the direction of military confrontation, we just don’t know if it is a matter of weeks, months or years away.
When over a million people packed Tahrir Square in February to chant “Onward to Jerusalem,” Obama still spoke of the Arab Spring in glowing terms and The NY Times whitewashed the event. Columnists at The Times fell in love with the “Arab Street,” while that street chanted “death to the Jews” outside a synagogue in Tunisia. When The Times finally woke up, it was too late.
Obama still is asleep as to the dangers, blaming the Arab Spring (incorrectly) for high oil prices while remaining largely silent as to the hostile intentions towards Israel.
Now crowds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters have ransacked the Israeli Embassy in Cairo as Egyptian troops stood by.
The “Arab Streets” in Egypt and elsewhere are itching for a war with Israel. Add to the Arab Street the Turkish Street, and there is a dangerous coming together of ego-maniacs like Turkish Prime Minister Ergodan who talks of military confrontation with Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It is no coincidence that the violence in Cairo comes just two days before Erdogan’s visit.
The 1979 Peace Treaty was a great achievement, one which is worth preserving. But the Egyptian Street, egged on by people like Erdogan, wants to throw it aside in favor of war. They might just get what they hope for.
As I predicted at the onset of the Arab Spring, we may yet see an Israeli return to Sinai, not out of choice, but out of necessity. None of this was unexpected, except apparently to the Obama administration and The NY Times.
Update: DEBKAFile provides this account of what happened when the Israeli Embassy was overrun:
… Egyptian security forces delayed for eight hours before tackling the mob smashing into the embassy building and rampaging inside – even after US Ambassador Anne Patterson interceded on behalf of the six Israel security officers barricaded in the embassy’s security room as the rabble battered on its steel door.
She acted to save their lives on direct orders from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after Ambassador Yitzhak Levanon and 80 members of staff and families had been collected from their homes and lifted out of Egypt by two Israeli military planes.
The Egyptian authorities only tackled the mob when violent groups broke into police headquarters in the
upscale Giza district, stripped the gunroom and shared the weapons among themselves before returning to the street. Before that, the local police stood by and watched them sacking and burning the embassy without moving.Scared of the rioters, the Egyptian commandos ordered to rescue the six Israelis under threat of lynch, discarded their uniforms and mingled with the crowd. When they reached the locked room, they were unable to open the steel
door. The head of Egyptian unit had to find the Israeli Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen, who was in urgent conference with Israel’s national leaders in the situation room, to obtain the code.They then dressed the six Israelis like typical Egyptians and hustled them to safety past a throng of 40,000 howling for Israeli blood.
The situation in Egypt is much worse than our mainstream media is letting on.
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Comments
As you know, prof, a man is deemed to have intended the natural consequences of his act. Obama cannot reasonably claim that he did not anticipate the events set forth in your post.
I concur with Rick. If I — an old pensioner down in South Carolina — could see it coming, the highly paid suits in Foggy Bottom should have seen – and DID see – it coming.
I think that this was the White House’s strategy with Egypt all along. Lose Egypt to the Muslin Brotherhood and you destroy the tenuous alliance between Egypt and Israel, an alliance that has helped to keep relative peace in the region for years. Let Israel swing in the breeze.
Make no mistake — someone will have to clean up this mess, and it won’t be Obama and it won’t be the Dems. They’ll just walk away and blame it on Bush.
For the life of me, I can’t see how any self-respecting Jew could support Obama, but not being Jewish, I guess I just don’t understand.
“Make no mistake” I dislike that expression along with ‘Let me be clear”.
Resist we much!
Obama knew exactly what the consequences would be. The trend is clear. From throwing a Middle East ally, Mubarack who kept the peace for over 30 yrs, under the bus; to going after a nascent Libya while ignoring the more serious threats (Syria/Iran).
But Obama’s agenda extends to other threats as well. From chuming w/ Chavez to trying to over turn Honduras’ democratically elected government, in favor of the Communists.
Obama is getting precisely what he wanted:he thinks the end of that “shitty little country” is in sight. Israel surrounded by enemies, and America reluctant to go to her aid because, after all, we have so much men and materiel in Muslim lands that we ourselves will come under more fire than we currently are. Why should we, then, go to Israel’s aid? Did he not say that Israel has no better friend than Israel, or some such twaddle? Why Jews continue to support Obama is a mystery; I just put it down to a death wish.
I don’t think there ever was an Arab Spring, if the term means “an outbreak of freedom, democracy and religious pluralism”. It seems to have been an Islamist Spring instead.
For all their impressive-sounding credentials (and the resulting supreme confidence in their own intellectual capacity), both the Obama Administration and the NYT are frighteningly ignorant of what is really going on in the world. They suffer from a weird multiculturalism-driven paranoia in which they believe America is the Evil Empire.
May the Lord forgive me but the only way these progressives are going to learn is for us to banish George Soros to Egypt for his guilt in aiding the Arab Spring.
Soros will be in agreeable company then. He is as much a Nazi as they are, and we must never forget the Arabs gleefully aided the Nazis during WWII.
Now we hear word of many surface to air missiles are going missing from Libya’s weapons depots. What could go wrong?
Never could understand how any one, Liberal or Conservative, be least bit enthused or think democracy was in any way part of Arab Spring.
I’ve long taken an old testamental view of this: if God is on Israel’s side, who can be against her? The question is, do the secular Israelis want God on Israel’s side?
[…] Jacobson at Legalinsurrection: ‘What is going on in Egypt was all foreseeable to those of us who did not harbor the […]
I don’t believe the NYT or the State Department is a naive as some think. As for the Times, they are as anti-Israel as any of the mob who broke into the Israeli embassy yesterday- or do the names and positions of Roger Cohen, Nick Kristof and Robert Mackey not ring a bell? ( good news- Mackey is leaving the NYT for the Guardian, where, no doubt, he can push his anti-Israel agenda 24 hours a day).
The Obama/Clinton State Deportment believes that isolating Israel will force it to make concessions to the Islamic mob as the best way to bring “peace” to the Middle East. After all, they all know that building apartments in Ariel is the cause of instability of the Middle East. Their policy has failed as spectacularly as any foreign policy failure since the fall of the Shah of Iran.
“The Islamic Republic of North Africa”. Bank on it. Called it months ago.
Also, many American Jews do not support Israel because they are Liberals first. My Orthodox friends (I live in a community with a large Orthodox Jewish population) tell me “Jews” are generally secular and use the term for ethnicity rather than religion. The “Holy Book” of the secular Jew is NYT. “The Promised Land” is the US. Their religion is secularism.
That heresy about the Promised Land being the USA sure is a pisser. Talk about self-hating!
Awwww … strolling the “Arab Street” in the “Arab Spring,” romance and hope and change in the air … it’s enough to make one feel like a young, dashing Robert Fisk …
LukeHandCool (who finds it more than a bit ironic, but completely expected, that after a dictator is toppled, his former subjects then focus their anger on the one democracy in the area).
president downgrade is not asleep to the dangers.
He planned it this way.
Until we make it a strategic goal to LOWER the world price of energy/oil, or at least get ours from other then the Arab states, we are just continuing to finance the stagnation of a part of the world that is about 700 years behind the civilized nations of this planet. The Arabs are simply stuck in a feudal age and they will never advance to a civilized state that anyone alive today will ever see.
This all underscores why we should do everything we possibly can do to drill for the oil that is under our own feet and to go for the gusto with oil sands and shale oil and fracking for natural gas.
Better they should have less money – much less. Perhaps then they will begin to develop some character?
That is an excellent thought.
Why can’t we just take over Libya. It has good oil, it’s a great location for a whole lot of things…
O’s views are in line with buddies Rashid Khalidi and Bill Ayers. He’s overjoyed to be able overturn the Arab/Israeli status quo.
The Israelis know exactly who he is…..
We have a BINGO. Everyone, HOLD your cards. Could read you read your card back please.
I suspect that O views the “Arab Spring” as a stroke of good luck: turn the Middle East upside-down, with hardly an O fingerprint to be found.
So, Muslims are dreaming of “Islamic enlightenment,” where they control and conduct progressive involuntary exploitation of unbelievers and other dissenting voices.
Meanwhile, in Sudan, Tunisia, and other African nations, black Africans (e.g., Christians, Jews, pagans, etc.) are being murdered, tortured, enslaved, and coerced into submission before the Muslim hordes.
Meanwhile, in America, Somalian gangs in the Midwest have their sex slave rings, Hispanic gangs in the West have their sex slave rings, and groups like ACORN, the ACLU, and other businesses, who are purportedly defenders of human and civil rights, support and defend a selective rule of law, which favors the existence of criminal syndicates and promotes progressive corruption of individuals and society.
All the while, there is a steady chant proclaiming the exclusivity of “white” prejudice, bigotry, and phobias, by America’s left. I realize that competition can and is brutal, but these primitive tactics are surely unbecoming a “progressive” people.
Did I mention that the majority of violent crimes (including murder and rape) against “white” people are committed by the so-called “minorities”, principally Blacks and Hispanics? Did I also mention that the majority of violent crimes (including murder and rape) against the so-called “minorities” are committed by other so-called “minorities”, principally Blacks and Hispanics?
I know the economics of prejudice, bigotry, and manufactured phobias, is profitable; but, this is progressive nonsense and entirely the product of a regressive enterprise.
Frankly, I’m surprised that this ridiculous venture has been as effective as it has been. There is much to be said for appeals to emotion and the continuing vulnerability of most people to its corruptive influence. You would think such a debilitating weakness would have long ago been removed from our psyche. Supposedly, Homo sapiens have been selected to excel for their rational predisposition; but, the evidence would suggest otherwise. It is only through conflict and contention that we develop the strength required to preserve our dignity.
Oh well. At the rate that other populations, but especially Muslims, are reproducing, this intellectual curiosity will likely be a mere footnote in a history which records our civilization. Well, that, and a desire to normalize abortion, sexual promiscuity, and other deviant behaviors, will surely not contribute to the fitness of our civilization, let alone our species. I suppose we should enjoy instant gratification — the product of our ancestors and predecessors — for as long as it is sustainable.
As for the “Arab Spring,” it appears to be nothing more than a changing of the guard. The current administration is positioning people favorable to its short and long-term interests in key authorities. That is what competing interests do to gain an advantage for themselves and their sponsors.
The instability observed in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Jordan, etc., is the result of an external perturbation. Maybe the Palestinians decided it was time for another coup attempt. However, taking into consideration their past failures, it is unlikely they acted alone.
Looters Steal Gadhafi’s weapons, including surface-to-air missiles
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged the Libyan rebels to protect Gadhafi’s weapons stockpiles “to ensure that weapons from Qaddafi’s stockpiles do not threaten Libya’s neighbors and the world.” It may be too late. Bouckaert of HRW warns that they are now “in the hands of unknown people.”
Interesting. This outcome wasn’t at all predictable.
So, the administration is arming the drug cartels in Mexico, while, presumably through negligence, is arming “unknown people” with the means to start a global terror campaign.
Someone is lying.
A simple observation: WE ARE IN DEEP SHIT. As long as we depend on Arab oil, this will continue.