by Dr. Reuven Berko
The old Arab proverb
seems to encapsulate applied politics in the Middle East: "He who
marries my mother shall be called my uncle."
This realpolitik
approach accepts inconvenient truths like the one mentioned in the
proverb -- a stranger having intimate relations with your mother.
Western politicians
cannot come to terms with the fact that the Middle East is governed by
such rules. Because they are misinformed, they make fatal mistakes,
resulting in embarrassing missteps in the face of regional crises and
conflicts.
To compensate for their
shortcomings, European and American politicians often resort to
limitless hypocrisy and flattery as they try, with only partial success,
to portray themselves as Orientalists like Lawrence of Arabia. When the
West overdoes this gesture, such amateurish behavior elicits ridicule
from the Arabs. They realize that the West simply wants to appease them
and that this blatant hypocrisy is just to curry favor with them. This
hurts the West, making it look weak and all to obvious in the eyes of
savvy politicians in the plot-laden Middle East, both Arabs and Jews.
This hypocritical
shallowness was also evident in the way the European Union has come
around to designating Hezbollah as a terrorist group recently. But,
since it was mainly concerned with how its Islamic terrorists would
react at home, the EU tried to offset this decision by imposing a
boycott on products manufactured in Judea and Samaria.
U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry's manipulative attitude toward Israel of late, including his
threatening hyperbolic rhetoric threat that Israel might face a
delegitimization campaign "on steroids," is another example of the
West's two-faced hypocrisy and the double standard toward the Middle
East. His warning that Israel must comply with his demands and follow
his initiative lest it face such a scenario was issued just as the EU
made its settlement decision. This is very suspicious.
The U.S. -- the
superpower that whisked its ambassadors out of the area upon hearing of
the mass al-Qaida prison break in Iraq and the impending terrorist
threat coming out of the organization's affiliate in Yemen (a behavior
that only emboldened Islamic terrorism) -- insists that Israel must make
concessions and withdraw from territories even if that compromises the
security of Israeli men, women and children, who have to contend with a
much greater terrorist threat on a daily basis.
The U.S. has adopted a
double standard by demanding that Israel release deadly terrorists for
the sake of the mirage called peace talks with Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas, who barely represents himself, while at the
same time it holds on to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, not to mention
Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish inmate who has not killed anyone
and who made no threat against any American.
Although the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the least pressing issue in the war-torn
Middle East, the U.S. has for some reason decided to train its sights
on solving it. It has effectively decided to search for the missing coin
under the Israeli lamp post, the only place that is actually lit in the
Middle East.
That the U.S. and
Europe have refused to lift a finger in the face of the mass slaughter
taking place around the world, and particularly in the Middle East, is
just absurd. The West has come across as helpless in the face of Iran's
nuclearization, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's nuclear
audacity and the Russian Federation's Cold War mentality that has it
increasing its footprint in Syria and other places. Not one finger is
being lifted, by anyone.
Western powers were
quick to impose sanctions on the Egyptian military following the coup it
staged (yes, it was a coup). This clearly underscores the fact that
there is more than just hypocrisy in play. It's one thing to have
hypocrisy or adopt a double standard toward Islam, out of cowardice and
naivete. But the West's kowtowing and the fallacies behind the pointless
sanctions are alarming. Maybe this all boils down to a lack of
understanding.
When all is said and
done, Col. Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has been crushing the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt and Sinai, where the organization has served as a
hotbed for global terrorism. Sissi's actions are the best thing the West
could have hoped for.
"He who is wet fears
not the rain," says another Arab proverb. Sissi has no choice but to
win, with or without Western assistance. The West should throw in its
lot with Sissi and end this ridiculous democratic charade that no one
seems to be taking seriously.
Dr. Reuven Berko
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5437
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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