Why is everyone surprised that Egypt has a new Pharaoh? And why are news interviewers shocked that President Mursi’s supporters can claim with straight faces that a greater, more stringent dictatorship will lead to a greater, freer, liberal and democratic Egypt.
Not only do we not learn from history; we don’t even learn from recent history.
Every revolution and coup in the Middle East in the last forty years has produced greater dictators than the ones ousted. One devil is cast out and seven more, even more evil, take his place. The Shah of Persian was replaced by the mullahs of Iran, paving the way for a beady-eyed, Holocaust-denying, Hitler wannabe who wants to finish what his German counterpart started. And no leftist liberal in the West thinks he means it when he says he will destroy the Zionist entity.
Hamas is the democratically elected government in Gaza, as we are reminded by Israel’s critics. But the last election in Gaza was seven years ago; when will the next election take place? Hamas has no political opponents to be afraid of; they killed them all off after their rise to absolute power. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt supports Mursi’s measures to safeguard the revolution, which means there will be no more elections in that country for the foreseeable future. In both Gaza and Egypt the persecution of Christians has increased since the two Islamic parties came to power.
After Sadam Hussein was ousted from power, the situation in Iraq went from bad to worse. And what will happen there will be the same that is happening in the Israel/’Palestine’; the Islamists will continue to terrorise until they achieve their totalitarian objective.
These countries were ruled by devils but were replaced by far worse devils.
It looks set to be the same in Syria. But Syria has stockpiles of chemical weapons and, according to some, Sadam’s weapons of mass destruction. At least the current regime in Syria made no attempt to deploy the barbaric instruments of warfare at their disposal against Israel but there is no guarantee that a rebel regime won’t.
What will it take to wake western leaders up to the fact that Muslim countries don’t think like we do? What will it take to make our leaders realise that these radical governments cannot be trusted. When will we remember that they are the heirs of the leaders of Arab nations who met in Khartoum in 1967 after the Six Day War to declare there would be no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel and no peace with Israel.
Hence, last week we witnessed the farce of Egypt, whose government has said it will unilaterally tear up the peace agreement with Israel it signed over thirty years ago, brokering a cease fire between Israel and Hamas. It should have come as no surprise, then, that Gaza continued to fire missiles at Israel after the cease-fire came into place.
What hope of peace is there? There can be no possible political solution but at least let’s remember what the situation really is and stop bullying Israel to ‘be serious about peace’. Israel is the only party in this conflict situation that can’t afford not to be serious about peace.