Jimmy Carter Unites Democrat and Republican Jews ...

Jimmy Carter Unites Democrat and Republican Jews in Renouncing his Convention Message

By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Published: August 9th, 2012

THE JEWISH PRESS

Former President Jimmy Carter visits the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.

Photo Credit: Kobi Gideon / Flash90

Imagine this: two Jews, one opinion!

And not only two Jews, but two Jewish organizations, one representing Jewish Democrats and one representing Jewish Republicans, and there is still only one opinion.

Who accomplished this miracle?  None other than former US president Jimmy Carter.

In what may be a first, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the National Jewish Democratic Council agree on something, and it is something important.  They agree that former US president Jimmy Carter should not be speaking at the upcoming Democratic Convention which will take place September 3 – 6 at the Time-Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Democratic National Committee announced this week that Carter will be appearing via videolink in a prime time slot during the upcoming convention.  The announcement included a quote from Carter who expressed his “steadfast” support for President Obama and who looks forward to “the progress he will make in the next four years.”

Given President Obama’s recent outreach efforts to assure Jews they still have a comfortable berth in the Democratic party, it is hard to understand why a platform would be given to Carter.  Jimmy Carter is the only Democrat to have garnered fewer than fifty percent of the American Jewish vote in any presidential election since 1924.   In 1980, when Carter ran against Ronald Reagan, Carter received only 45 percent of the Jewish vote.

In the press release announcing Carter’s participation in the convention, the 2012 Democratic National Convention Chair, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, described Carter as “one of the greatest humanitarian leaders of our time and a champion of democracy around the globe,” and a “lifelong champion of human rights.” However, not everyone — even within the Democratic party — was quite so enthusiastic.

NJDC chair and CEO David Harris called Carter’s record on Israel and the Middle East an embarrassment.  Harris also described former President Carter as “harmful to the peace process.”

Speaking from the same page as his Democrat Party colleague, Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, responded to the news of Carter being headlined at the Democratic convention in only a slightly more hostile tone.  In an email to Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, Brooks described Carter as “openly hostile to Israel,” and having publicly equated the Jewish Homeland to the South African Apartheid regime.  In 2006 Carter published a book about the Middle East peace process which largely blamed Israel for the conflict.  The title of Carter’s book is Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The Jewish Republicans also took the opportunity to blast the Democratic party for showcasing someone who is widely seen as anti-Israel.

But the NJDC’s Harris was still hoping to minimize the fallout from Carter being showcased at the Democratic convention.  While clearly distancing himself from Carter, Harris said he was “confident” that the former president would not be using his speech to talk about Middle East policy.

Perhaps Harris has not read the Democratic National Committee press release announcing Carter’s slot at the convention.  It promises Carter will be providing “his unique insights about President Obama as a global leader,” and lauds Carter for being “a champion of democracy around the globe.”  It is hard to imagine that Carter will not devote at least some air time to promoting his version of peace in the Middle East.

Nonetheless, perhaps Jimmy Carter deserves another peace prize – forget about the enmity between Israel and Egypt, now he is the impetus for two sets of many Jews to have the same opinion.  That opinion: Jimmy Carter should not be speaking at the Democratic Convention.

Carter will give his video-linked convention speech on Tuesday night, September 4th.

About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is also president of Z STREET, a pro-Israel, pro-truth organization, and chair of the executive committee of the National Conference on Jewish Affairs.

Bee's Note:

When I first read this announcement, my first thought was "You have got to be kidding me!"    However, after the initial shock, I have come to the conclusion that this is the very best thing to happen just before Nov. 6th.  Americans will once again be reminded of the horrible "leadership" of president Carter - the worst president in America's history.  But, now Obama is in the lead for that title and so, at the Democratic Convention, all the world can witness the two worst presidents in America's history on the same stage.  Nixon was a cupcake compared to these two men.   I think the GOP has just been handed a major bonus in assuring that Romney  wins the elections.  Thank you, President Obama!

Failed Rescue Mission

Apr 23, 1980

Carter ordered a rescue mission but also stated that their plan had to remain secretive, the hostages lives needed to be protected, and there had to be only a few Iranian casualties (LaMonica). Carter issued Operation Eagle Claw on April 23rd, but this mission failed. Sandstorms over the Iranian Desert caused delays and a helicopter exploded, killing eight Americans and abandoning the rest (LaMonica).

http://www.dipity.com/kkruszewski/Iran-Hostage-Crisis/

Hey Mitt Romney – “Call Obama’s Bluff”

by Ulsterman on August 6, 2012 with 29 Comments in News
ULSTERMAN REPORT
Fantastic column by Wayne Allen Root urges Mitt Romney to easily turn the tables on the Obama campaign by simply agreeing to release more tax returns (Romney has already released more than is legally required of him)  if Barack Obama will in turn let the American public view those sealed college records that he has spent so much time and expense keeping hidden.  Remember the story from mere months ago that detailed how Obama’s own self-published biographical summarystated he was a foreign student?  The mainstream media quickly covered that as a simple publishing “error” – even though that error had been republished several times over for over a decade – an error that Barack Obama himself never bothered to correct – until he was running for President of the United States.

I urge readers to click on the below link for the entire column.  Like Wayne Allen Root, I too have often wondered if the key to uncovering the truth about who Barack Obama really is – and isn’t, can be found within those hidden away college transcripts of his.  Know this readers – Obama has not disclosed ANY of his college records.  Not his grades, not the courses he took, not his financial aid records – NOTHING.  Why is that?  Such a question is not simple conspiracy nonsense – it’s a very basic request by the American people to know who is this man calling himself Obama – and why has he made such an effort to keep that past hidden from public view?

EXCERPT:

I am President Obama’s classmate at Columbia University, Class of ’83. I am also one of the most accurate Las Vegas oddsmakers and prognosticators. Accurate enough that I was awarded my own star on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars. And I smell something rotten in Denmark. Obama has a big skeleton in his closet. It’s his collegerecords. Call it “gut instinct” but my gut is almost always right. Obama has a secret hidden at Columbia- and it’s a bad one that threatens to bring down his presidency. Gut instinct is how I’ve made my living for 29 years since graduating Columbia.

…My answer for Romney? Call Obama’s bluff.

Romney should call a press conference and issue a challenge in front of the nation. He should agree to release more of his tax returns, only if Obama unseals his college records. Simple and straight-forward. Mitt should ask “What could possibly be so embarrassing in your collegerecords from 29 years ago, that you are afraid to let America’s voters see it? If it’s THAT bad, maybe it’s something the voters ought to see.” Suddenly the tables are turned. Now Obama is on the defensive.

My bet is that Obama will never unseal his records because they contain information that could destroy his chances for re-election. Once this challenge is made public, my prediction is you’ll never hear about Mitt’s tax returns ever again.

Why are the college records, of a 51-year-old President of the United States, so important to keep secret? I think I know the answer.

If anyone should have questions about Obama’s record at Columbia University, it’s me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of ’83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I’d heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia has ever met him, saw him, or heard of him.

But don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News randomly called 400 of our Columbia classmates and never found one who had ever met Obama.

… If you could unseal Obama’s Columbia University records I believe you’d find that:

A)   He rarely ever attended class.

B)   His grades were not those typical of what we understand it takes to get into Harvard Law School.

C)   He attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student.

D)   He paid little for either undergraduate college or Harvard Law School because of foreign aid and scholarships given to a poor foreign students like this kid Barry Soetoro from Indonesia.

If you think I’m “fishing” then prove me wrong. Open up your records Mr. President. What are you afraid of?

If it’s okay for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to go on a fishing expedition about Romney’s taxes (even though he knows absolutely nothing about them nor will release his own), then I think I can do the same thing. But as Obama’s Columbia Class of ’83 classmate, at least I have more standing to make educated guesses.

It’s time for Mitt to go on the attack and call Obama’s bluff.    LINK

______________________

BARACK OBAMA – IT IS TIME TO SHOW AMERICA YOUR RECORDS.

“Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyanfinance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.”  

Obama’s literary agent says he was ‘born in Kenya’. How did the mainstream media miss this?

Israel’s ‘You Built It’ Culture

Posted by Daniel Greenfield Bio ↓ on Aug 7th, 2012  - FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE

When Mitt Romney arrived in Jerusalem and suggested that Israel’s success contrasted with its Muslim neighbors was due to a culture of success, he was waving a red flag in front of a red bull. Romney’s comments were as provocative to the left as Obama’s  “You didn’t build that” remark was to us.

To the left, success has become the Mark of Cain. Where success once used to be proof of good character, the balance has shifted and it is now proof of bad character. The left blames all disparities on injustice. If A has less than B, then B has somehow discriminated against A. All that’s left is for the sociologists and critical race theorists to plug in the variables, write their papers and explain the mechanism for the injustice and how it can be remedied through centralized redistribution.

This is the era of “You didn’t build that” where achievement is inherently unfair and an object of guilt. To succeed is to steal. Anyone who has achieved more than those around him has unfairly taken from them. And the more he succeeds, the more he has to feel guilty about and the more he must atone through social justice.

Mitt Romney didn’t build companies; he unfairly redistributed what should have been equal resources in an unequal way to create that success. America also didn’t build anything; it just looted the resources and markets that should have been divided equally among the nations of the world. And the same goes for Jews and the Jewish State. Individual success is not exceptionalism; it’s stealing from the collective.

The left already knows why Israel is more successful. Because it’s a greedy country whose success has come at the expense of its poorer neighbors. The left finds the idea of explaining success in terms of character, either individual or national, to be offensive. To suggest that success is due to personal virtue is to also imply that failure is due to a lack of virtue. The left is not interested in exploring what’s wrong with nations or groups that fail, only in explaining how their failure is no fault of their own.

The left was only interested in Jews as an oppressed minority and in Israel as a small doomed country. Once Jews became successful and Israel emerged victorious, the left turned on them and on Israel.

Israel’s success is one of the greatest weapons that the left uses against it. If Israelis were still living in tents and trying to get the power to stay on for more than a few hours a day, the Jewish State wouldn’t make nearly as tempting a target. Israel’s transformation from a bunch of refugees and farmers armed with third-rate weapons to a prosperous nation of flowering orchards, booming tech companies and new towns rising out of the earth, is proof of its immorality. If the Jewish State were truly moral, it would have stayed poor.

Most offensively Israel’s economic success has kept pace with its transition from socialist collectives to free enterprise, going from a “You didn’t build that” culture to a “You built it” culture. While the Palestinian Authority and most of Israel’s Muslim neighbors still operate under government monopolies, Israel’s tech industry revolution has boosted its international trade while making it possible for a few army or air force veterans to cobble together a company that brings a revolutionary new product to market.

USB flash drives and instant messaging software came out of that “You built it” culture. On the other side of the border malaise and misery, bombs and fanatics, have come out of the economic monopolies wielded by military rulers, tribal leaders and religious despots.

Like the left, the Muslim world believes that Israel’s success and its failure is proof of guilt. But even out of the Muslim world come glimpses of the basic truth.

Khalaf Al-Harbi, a Saudi columnist, wrote, “The secret to Israel’s survival, despite all the great challenges it has faced, lies in democracy and respect for the worth of the [Israeli] individual… The secret to the collapse of the Arab countries, one after another, lies in dictatorship and in the oppression of the individual… [Israel] drew its power from the honor it granted to its citizens, while its Arab neighbors trampled the [poor] creatures known as their citizens.”

Al-Harbi, no friend of Israel, went further than Mitt Romney did. If Mitt Romney crediting freedom and democracy as the ingredients that make for Israel’s culture of success is racist, then the Democrats must also charge Al-Harbi with racism.

Mitt Romney came to Israel to try and explain Israel’s success in the same terms that he has explained the success of the American businessman, by crediting the labor and dedication of the free individual in a culture that values freedom and accomplishment.

Every Israeli, like every American, who set foot in a new land, had to start all over again. They had to build houses, plant fields and raise cattle. They had to learn how to build armies and run institutions. And they had to do all those things while surrounded by enemies. They had to learn to sink or swim.

While the Muslim world wails over Palestinian refugees, the Jewish State is a nation of refugees populated by refugees from Czarism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Nasserism and Islamism. And each of those refugees had to begin a new life. The process wasn’t easy and Israel is still struggling with the challenges of absorbing millions of people from cultures as far apart as Russia, Yemen and France. But the refugee camps where they once lived, the tents and shacks, are a distant memory.

The survivors of the Holocaust are not still living in DP camps in Europe and Iraqi Jews aren’t living in tents in Israel. The last DP camp in Europe closed in 1959. The last of Israel’s refugee camps shut down in 1963. Meanwhile the Shatila refugee camp for Palestinian Arabs has been an ongoing concern in Beirut since 1949 making it older than many Israeli towns.

In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt addressed the Cambridge Union and told them, “Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.” That assessment is the final rebuttal to the class warfare worldview of the left. Success is not in what you have, but in what you make of it.

A culture of free men and women who believe that they are here to build rather than destroy is able to do great things. And a culture of slaves of Allah who believe that they are here to destroy what others build and who prefer the public martyrdom of the suicide bomb and the refugee camp cannot hope to equal their accomplishments.

When the individual has the power to build then he is living in a “You built it” society. But when he only has the power to complain or destroy, then he is living in the Islamic or leftist “You didn’t build that” society.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

About Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

MOVIE VIDEO: "Against All Odds: In Search of a Miracle" (2005)

Uploaded by Istvan731102 on Oct 2, 2011

"Against All Odds: In Search of a Miracle" (2005)
Experience what some have called the modern miracles of Israel through the eyes of a seasoned journalist, Michael Greenspan, and explore the question: why has Israel survived against all the odds? This 13 part dramatic television series, appropriately tilted, "Against All Odds: In Search of a Miracle", takes a fascinating journey into the documented stories of supernatural phenomenon, which birthed and preserved modern Israel. Eyewitness accounts and commentary by high ranking government officials, generals, soldiers, foreign leaders and rich dramatic recreations compel the audience to ask, are these events miracles? You decide...

H/T Edward F. Villa

Gaffesville

Bee's note:  I am thankful for Fresno Zionism's comments on the latest so-called "gaffe" contributed to a statement by Governor Romney about Israel's "Kibbutz".  Since early this morning, the MSM has been all over it and unfortunately, many have been made to believe that Romney's strong support for Israel has suddenly turned for the worse.  Surprise!  Isn't that exactly what the campaign for Obama would like everyone to believe, considering the fact that Obama is losing the Jewish votes here in America?!  The Obama administration has only themselves to blame for losing all trust by both the Israelis and the Jews here at home after almost four years of kicking Israel and its leaders to the curb.  They cannot change their record  and so, the only thing left to them is to continually demean every word spoken by Romney.  Good luck with that one liberal media - we're not falling for your propaganda and lies again!

FRESNO ZIONISM
August 8, 2012

I’m beginning to think that if Mitt Romney were overheard ordering scrambled eggs for breakfast, it would be reported as a “gaffe.”
First, he said that the Brits weren’t properly prepared to host the Olympics. Well, a) as the head of the 2002 Winter Games committee, he should know, and b) ask any resident of London.
Next, his press secretary told an incredibly annoying reporter, who was shouting insulting questions at Romney at the Polish tomb of the unknown soldier, to “kiss my ass.” While this was not technically a Romney gaffe, it was called a ‘gaffe’ nevertheless. But watch the video and see if you wouldn’t have said the same thing, or worse.
Then he went on to commit the unpardonable sin of recognizing reality and calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel. While this has been the case since Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, the Obama Administration insists that this is a matter for “final status negotiations,” in effect making Jerusalem’s status dependent on Palestinian Arab approval!
After that we had the unexceptionable claim that economic success is related to culture. Well, isn’t it? Especially when the comparison is between Israel and the Palestinians.
The argument seems to be that the US can’t afford to anger the Palestinians (they anger easily), or they won’t cooperate. But they are not cooperating now, and one of the reasons is that the US encourages them to continue living in a dream world in which they will have a right of return to Israel, that Israel is not the state of the Jewish people, that Israel will withdraw to the 1949 cease-fire lines, etc.
A more realistic position from the US may not make the Arabs more likely to compromise, but at least we can be spared the cognitive dissonance of watching administration spokespeople ducking and weaving (short video here) to avoid the simple truth.
Did I mention that he said that Israel could use “any and all measures” to defend itself against Iran? That is supposedly a gaffe, too. What’s the alternative, suicide?
Now Romney has said that

It’s individuals and their entrepreneurship which have driven America. What America is not is a collective where we all work in a kibbutz or we all in some little entity … Instead, it’s individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises.

Is this supposed to be upsetting to Israelis? Apparently the LA Times reporter who wrote the story thinks so, adding that there might be a “flap” about the remark.
What’s to flap about? Keep in mind that Israel’s recent success as a high-tech powerhouse has come after the economy underwent a major shift from one in which major industries were socialized to a free-market model. This is not the only reason, but it’s certainly part of it.
For that matter, Israelis are not especially enamored with the classical kibbutz. Since the 1980′s, kibbutzim in Israel have moved away from socialist or communist principles. Today almost all of them are ‘privatized’, with members earning salaries according to their jobs, children living with their parents, etc.  Even in their heyday, no more than about 3.5% of Israel’s population were kibbutzniks. Much of the success of the kibbutzim came as a result of subsidies provided by successive Labor governments, and not every Israeli considered the kibbutz — with its enforced limitations on individual choice in many areas — as the model for an ideal community.
Could it be that the media are by and large unfair to Romney? No, impossible!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8, 2012 at 10:36 am

How to Celebrate Ramadan? With Anti-Semitism.

Bee's Note: Ah yes, Ramadan-bomb-a-thon!  Here's something to think about: "Why are the Muslims attacking in the Sinai and attempting to murder Israelis, if Ramadan is is the celebration of the Muslim "holy" month?"  Isn't this proof positive that Islam hides under the guise of a religion, while invoking their real purpose of Jew hatred, infidel-bashing, war-mongering, terrorist-attacking, bomb-throwing, bodily-mutilations, etc. and to think, Washington, DC has allowed this ideology to creep into our federal government agencies! --- How foolish!

LOVE OF THE LAND

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
05 August '12..

Last month President Obama noted, as he does with all major religious events, the start of the Muslim holy month Ramadan and commemorated the holiday by calling it a time to “cherish family, friends, and neighbors, and to help those in need.” That was an appropriate statement but in much of the Islamic world, it also appears to be a time to indulge in Jew hatred. While holiday specials in the United States are noted for their saccharine tone, Ramadan specials appeal to a very different sort of sentiment. As the Anti-Defamation League noted on Thursday, the 30 days of fasting and prayer has been marked in a number of Muslim countries with special television programs that are rife with anti-Semitism and intended to foment hatred of Jews and Israel.

The significant factor about these shows is not just that they are drenched in the traditional tropes of anti-Semitism in which Jews are portrayed as cheap as well as cheats and villainous victimizers of Muslims. It is that these programs are clearly crafted to appeal to a popular audience throughout the Middle East. While they can be rightly accused of promoting hatred at the same time they must also be understood as a reflection of the attitudes prevalent in Muslim societies. The producers of these shows are guilty of pandering to the deeply ingrained prejudices of the Islamic world as much as they are feeding them. That some of these shows like the Egyptian “Firqat Naji Attalha” are comedies in which the bias against Jews is merely the backdrop for humor tells us more about popular opinion in these countries than anything else. According to the MBC network, which is broadcasting the show throughout the Middle East, “Firqat Naji Attalha” gives audiences “the sweetest jokes about the ‘cheap Jew.’”

The Egyptian comedy portrays the exploits of an attaché at the country’s Israeli embassy that performs acts of sabotage in Israel including robbing a bank disguised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew. The show includes lots of references to negative Jewish stereotypes and celebrates terrorist attacks on Israel.

Other Ramadan television highlights are less funny but not less disturbing. “Ashar il Sabt” runs twice a week in Egypt and features an Egyptian professor who pretends to be an expert on Hebrew literature and discusses anti-Semitic libels such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as part of an effort to trash Judaism.

Another Ramadan favorite is the Egyptian version of the old American standard “Candid Camera.” As we previously noted in Contentions, one episode centered on tricking Egyptian celebrities into thinking they were appearing with Jews on Israeli television which sent the victims in paroxysms of rage and violence, salted with anti-Semitic invective.

Also playing on Arab television screens this month is a production of the popular Al Manar channel run by Hezbollah. Their contribution for the holiday is a series called “Al Ghalibun” that predictably depicts Israelis as cruel invaders of Lebanon while treating anti-Israel terrorism as laudable.

As the ADL reports, this isn’t the first time Ramadan has been used by Arab and Islamic television to promote hatred of Jews. Both Egyptian television and Al Manar have run blatantly anti-Semitic shows in the past. Indeed, the entertainment industry in the region appears to believe such shows are exactly what their audiences want most during the holiday.

Those who believe such attitudes are caused by West Bank settlements or the refusal of Israel to make enough concessions to the Palestinians need to understand that the hatred of Jews is not so much a function of politics but of culture. Until there is a sea change within the Muslim world in which this kind of hatred is not only no longer popular but rejected by mainstream opinion, Middle East peace is just a dream.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/08/05/celebrating-ramadan-with-anti-semitism-television/

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
. 

A Map to the Muslim Middle East - by Sultan Knish

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

The Muslim Middle East has three types of governments. Military, Tribal and Ideological. A military government is formed when senior officers take power. A tribal government is based around a group of prominent families. An ideological government is based around a party, whether secular or Islamist. All these governments are tyrannies, though they may occasionally hold elections, they never open up the system. The elections serve as a means for passing from one tyranny to the next.

While these types of governments are different in some ways, they are not exclusive. Most overlap in a number of ways.

Military and ideological governments will become tribal as a few officers, leaders or Ayatollahs use their control of the economy to enrich themselves and their families. That is what happened in Egypt and in Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood differs from Mubarak in any number of political ways, but on a personal level, its leaders share his goal of enriching their families.

Whether a new government starts out as Islamist, Fascist or Socialist; these facades inevitably revert to the tribal. That is the fate of all governments in the Muslim Middle East, which do not evolve, but devolve.

Every Muslim leader, beginning with Mohammed borrowed ideas brought in from outside to form a new system that became identical with the old. Mohammed borrowed from Judaism and Christianity to create the religious structure for yet another tribal government controlled by his father-in-law. In the 20th Century the Muslim Middle-East borrowed from the British Empire, France, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the USSR and the United States, to create hybrid systems that were either overthrown or devolved into tribalism with an ideological facade. Like Mohammed, the bright new ideology ends up with a bunch of relatives in charge of the loot.

Muslim countries are forever at war with themselves. Military governments fear popular protests organized by ideological movements to seize power. And the ideological governments fear military coups. Tribal governments fear everyone and cripple their own military and bribe their own people to avoid being overthrown by officers or ideologues.

Every government is only a few bad months away from losing power and so every government fears being overthrown by its enemies and implements a regime of secret police and prisons. No sooner do the revolutionaries step out of prison to usher in a new era, than the same thugs are rehired to torture enemies of the new regime.

The victors of the Arab Spring know that another few bad months could toss them out of power as easily as the bad months put them into power.  Like every other regime in the Muslim Middle East, their main priority is staying in power by making it impossible for others to do to them what they did to their predecessors.That leads to a cycle of repression, broken by temporary liberalization as alliances with the opposition are explored and then abandoned, because the opposition cannot be trusted not to seize power for themselves.

Everyone in the region is playing rock-paper-scissors all the time which leads to total regional paranoia and conspiracy theories. Everyone distrusts everyone else by necessity and keeps trying to guess how many fingers their rivals will put out while defending against their own weaknesses by preemptively attacking everyone else. 

Military governments persecute ideologues. Ideologues imprison top officers. Tribals seek out military protectors-- and then undermine them by backing their ideological enemies so as to stay in control of the relationship.

That is what happened to us and the Saudis, who, along with the other Gulfies, depend on our protection, but undermine us by supporting terrorism and Islamization to gain the upper hand. Paradoxically, the more that the Saudis need us, the more they undermine us, much as any feral population that is dependent on the charitable welfare of the majority lashes out against that majority to the exact degree that it is dependent on it.

The borders of Muslim nations are artificial and fluid. Their nationalism has no depth no matter how often Socialist ideologues borrow from European nationalism to proclaim the glories of the nation. The Muslim Middle East is not purely nomadic, but it is nomadic enough that large families stretch out across different nations and their tribal allegiances stretch with them. Ethnic groups like the Kurds cross national borders carrying with them the dream of an ethnostate carved out of the Sunni states that dot the desert. 

The Palestinians are a fraud, but so are the Jordanians, and to a lesser degree, the Egyptians and the Syrians. Every nation is an artificial entity ruled over by powerful families or old soldiers who are keeping the whole thing together with guns and bribes, not to mention imported bread and circuses.

The British treated the region as a grab-bag of clans, and backed any powerful family willing to throw in with them. That is how the Hashemite kings and the Arab-Israeli wars came to be. Unlike the Brits, the United States was not interested in an empire, just in oil rights, which is how we got in bed with one of the most powerful families in the region, who became far more powerful thanks to their association with us. And who repaid us by trying to conquer us in their own way.

At some point we forgot that the Saudis, the King of Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and most of our so-called allies, are just powerful families with territorial claims based on that power. And even slightly more civilized countries such as Egypt, aren't really any better, the invaders who overran them just absorbed more culture and civilization from their conquests and their proximity to more civilized parts of the world. 

Mostly they're feudal states with skyscrapers planned by foreign architects and built by foreign labor and if you can imagine Dark Ages Europe striking oil and selling it to industrial Incan mercantile democracies, with the barons plotting to settle and invade the new land, in between cutting each other's throats over rights of succession, then you have a good picture of the Muslim Middle East.

No sudden Arab Spring will transform the Muslim Middle East. Uprisings can change governments but they cannot bring civilization. The Muslim world has access to Western learning, just as it had access to Indian, Roman and Greek learning. It made use of some of those ideas in a slapdash fashion just as it made use of Judaism, Christianity, Socialism and Democracy, in a similar fashion.

A primitive society confronted with an advanced civilization does not become civilized, it adopts some of the habits and facades of civilization in cargo cult fashion, it uses some of its tools, and hybridizes some of its ideas, but all this is done in pursuit of its existing goals. Everything that the Muslim Middle East has taken in from the civilized world has been used to pursue the same goals that it was pursuing a thousand years ago.

Imagine savages buying advanced steel knives, designed with space age technology, manufactured to never rust or grow dull, then shipped by jet plane to their island, where they are used to perform ritual human sacrifices so that the crops may grow. That in a nutshell is the relationship between the civilized world and the Muslim Middle East-- except that the savages are not content to stay on their island and perform their human sacrifices only on their own tribe.

The Muslim leader of today may call himself a president or prime minister, more honestly he may call himself king, but whatever he calls himself, he is much the same figure that he was a thousand years ago.

The only place that the Muslim Middle East ever goes is backward. The great achievement of the Arab Spring was to hand over power in Egypt to Mohammed Morsi, a man who not only carries the same name as a 7th century warlord, but whose party is based on restoring Egypt to the values of that 7th century warlord as a cure for the damaging modernism of civilization. And those values are tribal power, ownership of women, repression of outsiders, and Muslim power under a Caliph-god whose fondest wish is that Muslims will one day get around to conquering the world in his name.

The true Allah of course is Mohammed Morsi, as it was once Mohammed, as it was Saddam, the Ayatollah Khomeini and a thousand other clerics, warlords, presidents, prime ministers, imams and great men of endless titles. Allah is whoever is at the top. Whoever tells the clerics what to say. Until he is toppled by the soldiers, clerics, merchants, terrorists, socialists, dissidents, old guardists, or some combination of all of them-- and then there will be a new Caliph-god. A new Allah. 

Since all Middle Eastern Muslim power structures devolve to the tribal, personal power is the only power that matters. And personal power is a zero sum game. No one can trust anyone else, because the only rule that counts is that the one with the most toys wins. That instability has led to a great deal of tyranny and misery, but it has also made it difficult for Islamic power to extend itself all that far.

Personal power is limited to a single tyrant and his feudal underlings. A highly effective conqueror can push his borders outward, but the whole thing inevitably collapses into broken emirates and then into backwardness and decay. The conquest may impose Islam on a population, but that just dooms the people under the yoke of the Koran to be less competent, less innovative and more backward than their neighbors. 

A Muslim conqueror may begin by raiding infidels for plunder and glory, but usually ends by turning on his rivals in a conflict that creates deep fractures and divisions, some of which like Sunni and Shiite, last to this day. Despite all the professions of faith, the Jihad devolves into tribal power, and Muslim kills Muslim for a chance at the golden throne.

Feral populations invariably do more harm to each other, than to their enemies. This is small comfort to those who fall prey to them, but it is a reminder of the innate limitations of human evil. Evil can wield a great deal of power temporarily, but the exercise of that power also devolves and destroys it. Islam is a sharp sword, but the hand that wields it is weak and the sword turns and cut its bearer. A feral population can topple great cities and civilizations, but it cannot replicate their achievements until it leaves behind its barbarism and becomes civilized.

In the desert nothing really changes. One day turns into another. The footprints of the past are buried by the next sandstorm and tomorrow's traveler arrives to marvel that his feet were the first to mark a path that lies buried just beneath his feet.

by Daniel Greenfield/Sultan Knish