Arab Protestors Rocketed...and More

No, not in Israel.

In Yemen:-

Rockets hit a protest camp in Yemen's capital Sanaa, killing at least two people on Tuesday, witnesses said, on the third day of violence since the government's deadliest crackdown yet on pro-democracy demonstrations...Witnesses told Reuters at least three missiles struck the camp just after morning prayers at around 5am local time (0200 GMT).

"The rockets hit some men walking outside past a market. I have two dead," said Dr. Mohammed al-Qubati, the director of a field hospital at the protest camp on a site which the protesters have nicknamed Change Square. He said ten were hurt.

And how are we doing in Syria?

Syrian forces shot dead at least six villagers and two rebel soldiers on Monday, in a sweep of countryside north of the city of Homs, one of the most defiant regions in pro-democracy protests, activists and residents said.

Syria's ruling elite, from the country's Alawite minority sect, have intensified military assaults in the last few weeks to stop a six-month uprising that has triggered increasing defections among the mostly Sunni rank and file military.  The United Nations human rights division said pro-Assad forces had killed 2,700 protesters since an uprising demanding his removal started in March, including at least 100 children.

And in Libya:-

Nearly a month after Gaddafi was driven from power, his loyalist holdouts have beaten back repeated assaults by NTC forces at Bani Walid and Sirte, Gaddafi's birthplace. NTC fighters have been sent fleeing in disarray after failing to storm Gaddafi bastions.  NTC forces with huge rocket launchers and artillery gathered outside Sirte on Monday, saying their were preparing for a fresh assault, as hundreds of families fled the town.

NTC fighter Mohamed Ahmed told Reuters the troops were advancing slowly, but holding back their heavy weaponry until civilians were clear.  Rockets fired by Gaddafi loyalists fell near NTC lines, throwing up clouds of dust.  Humanitarian groups have voiced alarm at reported conditions in Sirte.  "There's no electricity, no phone coverage. Nothing," resident Ibrahim Ramadan said, standing by a car packed with his family at a checkpoint.  Residents said homes had been destroyed and cars smashed to pieces as disorder spread through the city.

All normal in the Arab world?

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Is This A Better-Later-Than-Never Case?

Let's give this a literary motto, from Kafka's A Message From The Emporer:

The emperor—it is said—has sent to you,

the one apart, the wretched subject,

the tiny shadow that fled far, far from the imperial sun,

precisely to you has he sent a message from his deathbed.

What we knew and wrote back in February:

Revolutions devour their children. The spoils go to the resolute, the patient, who know what they are pursuing and how to achieve it. Revolutions almost invariably are short-lived affairs, bursts of energy that destroy much on their pathway, including the people and ideas that inspired them. So it is with the Arab uprising. It will bring about radical changes. It will empower new forces and marginalize others. But the young activists who first rush onto the streets tend to lose out in the skirmishes that follow. Members of the general public might be grateful for what they have done. They often admire them and hold them in high esteem. But they do not feel they are part of them. The usual condition of a revolutionary is to be tossed aside.

The Arab world’s immediate future will very likely unfold in a complex tussle between the army, remnants of old regimes, and the Islamists, all of them with roots, resources, as well as the ability and willpower to shape events. Regional parties will have influence and international powers will not refrain from involvement. There are many possible outcomes—from restoration of the old order to military takeover, from unruly fragmentation and civil war to creeping Islamization. But the result that many outsiders had hoped for—a victory by the original protesters—is almost certainly foreclosed...The West likely will awake to an Arab world whose rulers are more representative and assertive, but not more sympathetic or friendly.

And that was from - The Arab Counterrevolution, September 29, 2011, by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in The NY Review of Books, your source for liberal progressive outlook.

Feh, as my grandmother would say.

My friends and I discussed this and a few wrote and published but who would pay attention to "rightwing Zionist bloggers"? Who would believe that the best candidate for power takeowver is the worst palyer: Muslim Brotherhood, al-Queida and othe radical Islamist groups?

That framework was unacceptable to our Western-oriented commentators who wished, and hoped, and desired democracy, and human rights and progress. Their fulfilling prophecy was about themselves not about Egypt, nor Libya nor the other Arab regimes.

It is Islam. It is tribalism. It is clans.

And to make matters worse, read this from another article there:

With Mubarak now gone, many of his business cronies (including his close friend Hussein Salem, who orchestrated the gas deal) behind bars, and the nation in the grips of a new kind of nationalism, the question of what will become of relations with Israel has become critical. For the ruling Military Council, adhering to Camp David comes at a cost, but until it finds a better alternative—one that includes strategic training, resources, and intelligence support, as well as regional security guarantees—it is worth the price.

But for all the major contenders for Egypt’s new civilian leadership—including both secular and Islamist candidates—maintaining the existing arrangements is intolerable...On August 20, even as the government was figuring out its own response to the killings, a group of political parties and presidential hopefuls met at the headquarters of the Islamist Al-Wasat party to discuss “how to handle the Israeli question.”

The coalition was not only Islamist: it included Amr Moussa; Ayman Nour, the Al-Ghad Party leader; Hisham Al-Bastawisi, the widely-respected judge and presidential candidate; George Ishaq, the founder of Kefaya, the broad-based reform movement; and representatives of the Al-Wafd (liberal in coalition with Islamist parties), Al-Ghad (liberal, secular), El-Hadara (liberal, secular), El-Asala (Islamist) and El-Nahda (Islamist) Parties. After the meeting, the group announced that the Mubarak regime, which was a “strategic treasure” to Israel, is gone forever. “It has been replaced by a strong nation that doesn’t know weakness and knows how to get justice for the blood of its martyrs. In the face of the [Sinai incident], Egyptians have united across ideologies, political parties, police and army and put aside their differences for the sake of the nation.” The coalition announced a list of eight demands to be handed to SCAF. They include banning Israeli naval forces from passing through the Suez Canal, increasing Egyptian armed forces presence in Sinai, and reconsidering the gas deal...

...What they are demanding is redress for what they regard as deep-rooted grievances: about a treaty they believe denies them of basic rights to sovereign land (the Sinai); and more significantly, that compels relations with a government that has dealt repeated blows to the Palestinians and to fellow Arab states. The Israeli blockade of Gaza continues to be a key point of contention—including Egypt’s own continued part in that blockade. These grievances may become increasingly critical, as the military struggles to maintain its carefully tended security relationship with Israel amid growing tensions in Gaza, and as Egypt attempts to affect a rapprochement with Hamas even as it tries to control militancy in Sinai.

So, that's why there were Egyptian terrorists who participated in the Eilat attack.




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Whose Behind the New Arab "Revolt"?

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Could it be?
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How To Excuse Tens of Millions

For decades, Arabs have identified with, supported, fought for and acted with unspeakable hostility and hate on behalf of their leaders.

But Fouad Ajami finds a way to excuse all that as if it wasn't their fault and that they had no or little responsibility for participating in all the horrors:

Over the decades, Arabs took the dictators’ bait, chanted their names and believed their promises. They averted their gazes from the great crimes. Out of malice or bigotry, that old “Arab street” — farewell to it, once and for all — had nothing to say about the terror inflicted...Average men and women made their accommodation with things, retreating into the privacy of their homes. In the public space, there was now the cult of the rulers...The traditional restraints on power had been swept away, and no new social contract between ruler and ruled had emerged...Fear was now the glue of politics, and in the more prosperous states (the ones with oil income) the ruler’s purse did its share in the consolidation of state terror. A huge Arab prison had been constructed, and a once-proud people had been reduced to submission. The prisoners hated their wardens and feared the guards, and on the surface of things, the autocracies were there to stay.

This is much too facile, too simplistic, too forgiving of the "regular people".

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Where, O Where?

This is what goes for deep analysis and punditry on the situation we face, the Arab world possibly going under or at the least, into instability:

...Then as if we haven’t learned, up pops Hillary Clinton – first of all calling for reform in the Arab world, then for “stability” in Egypt – stability being universal code-word from Beijing to Brazzaville for dictatorship – and then suddenly when the mob gets heavy the dictators are supposed to open up Facebook again.

It is all very reminiscent of – well, of the 1980s...There was one important factor which made those transitions easier than they might have been, however, and very successful in the cases of some, such as South Korea and Taiwan. That was the leadership of charismatic but, importantly, broad-minded leaders who while demanding change understood key concepts, such as babies and bathwater...That brings us, of course, to Nelson Mandela, currently ailing in South Africa. South Africa is no South Korea, it is true, but as we all know the worst fears of western pessimists of a bloody revenge for the horrors of apartheid were averted, in part due to the magnanimity of men like him...

and then it gets worse:

...The fragmentation and conflicts of the Arab world have buried such figures of authority and prestige under a welter of conspiracy theory, obscurantism and dogma. [and why is that? is it intrinsic to the political culture? to the nature of Islam?] There are plenty of ordinary people who – as sensible people across the world do – feel ambiguous about America, loving its openness and prosperity, fearing its heedlessness to the families who are on the receiving end of its foreign policy blunders...

A bit of light in his tunnel, though:

I have yet to hear anyone blaming Israel for this week’s uprising. But no doubt someone is somewhere.

And his vision?

What is needed, instead, is someone to lay out a vision of the new Egypt, the new Tunisia, the new Libya, Saudi and Yemen...where’s the Arab Mandela when you need him?

That's it?

Well, we all have then a long wait.

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Getting Hot, Really Hot In the Arab World

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Egyptian man sets himself ablaze in downtown Cairo

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4 protesters light themselves on fire in Algeria

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