Mark Byron

Enema of My Enemy

Interesting geopolitical development in the Middle East; the UAE is recognizing Israel. They're the first of the Gulf states to do so. Israel is putting a plan to annex large chunks of the West Bank on hold as the price of admission for the deal.

It's a gutsy move for the UAE. A number of Gulf states have friendly unofficial contacts with Israel, but this will make them a target for the anti-Jewish factions in Islam. Just in time for tomorrow's Friday mosque sessions; happy-happy-joy-joy. Iran will try and make hay out of the recognition, as will some of the more radical Sunni hotheads; jihads will now likely look to do something nasty to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. 

This could allow for the beginnings of an anti-Iranian inter-faith coalition in the region, including other Sunni Gulf states, the US and even non-Hezbollah Lebanese if the current unpleasantness there breaks into civil war. The Gulf states and Israel both look askance at Iranian influence and might be prepping a flushing of that influence; easier said than done.

Inverted Yield Curve, Meet Inverted Trope

For years, a common dig at American Jews was that they supposedly had "dual loyalty" to both the US and Israel. The same dig was made of American Catholics in days of yore; JFK had to suffer through that. I recall the classic quip credited to Harry Truman, who said "It's not the Pope that bothers me, it's the pop" referring to shady-dealing Joe Kennedy.

Nowadays, conservatives like Israel and (at least pre-Francis) the Vatican . They'd prefer a devout Catholic to a lapsed one and a pro-Israel Jew to a BDS-backing one. It helps that the current Israeli government takes a hard line on Iran and jihadi terrorists, making them geopolitical allies. 

These days, that trope is trotted out more on the left, where Israel is often seen as the last European colony abusing the Palestinian natives and trotting out Nazi and apartheid South African comparisons. For them, being pro-Israel makes one as a geopolitical neocon to be shunned.

Thus, we have the bizarre turn of the president turning that dual loyalty trope on its head yesterday.

"I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat -- I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty," Trump said. 

So, they're either dumb or double-dealing. Classic name-calling, making your foes either ignorant or evil. If they knew better and were good people, they'd agree with us.

I've seen more than one piece over the last year noting that Trump's minority-bashing hadn't extended to Jews...yet. Your classic right-wing redneck will be anti-non-white and anti-Jewish, but only the hard-core alt-righter will trot out anti-Semitic rhetoric given the conservative bias towards Israel. Trump's Jewish son-in-law and convert daughter seemingly helped prune some of that out of  The Donald if it was there to begin with.

It seems that Trump might have reverted to form on this one, that old traditional antisemitism might have bubbled to the surface;  growing up in NYC, he could well have been exposed to those tropes as the gentiles around him let their inner Archie Bunkers out. Either that, or it might be that bashing liberal Jews as part of his domestic Axis of Evil (Reformed Jews as the  henchmen of The Squad?) was coolly calculated; beating up on liberal Jews is a common parlor game on the right.

The downside is that it gives ammunition to liberals who will look at the philosemitism of the modern right as a smokescreen for the "real" anti-Jewish core, that Israel is only useful for either attacking Muslims or expediting the Second Coming.

 

 

 

Cold War 2.1

Very interesting Charles Krauthammer piece on Syria that's a read-the-whole-thing job. The gist is that with Raqqa and Mosul getting de-ISISed, the caliphate as a territory-holding critter is getting taken out. What won't be taken out as easily is both ISIS as a brand-name for Islamist militants to rally to or, most notably, the Sunni-Shia conflict that is evolving as a theater of a new Cold War, with Russia aiding the Shia (Assad-Iran-Hezbollah-Sadrite Iraq) arc and the US aiding the Sunni arc.

Here's Hammer Time's close- 

The Iranian-Russian strategy is a nightmare for the entire Sunni Middle East. And for us too. The Pentagon seems bent on preventing it. Hence the Tomahawk attack for crossing the chemical red line. Hence the recent fighter-bomber shoot-down.

A reasonable U.S. strategy, given the alternatives. But not without risk. Which is why we need a national debate before we commit too deeply. Perhaps we might squeeze one in amid the national obsession with every James Comey memo-to-self?

That would require something resembling thought and makes for lousy TV. We can't have that.

Neocons Rn't Us

Here's a possible way to square the circle posed by this Politico piece (and others) over touches of seeming antisemitism at Breitbart.

Nonetheless, Bannon’s critics have cited instances of what they call anti-Semitism on Breitbart.com when Bannon was the site’s editor, including a headline calling Weekly Standard editor William Kristol a “renegade Jew” and a column attacking Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum that conspicuously noted her Jewish identity. 

There is a rift between a polite, comfortable-with-modernity, globalist neoconservatism and a gruffer, old-school and more nativist paleocon bloc. Jewish thinkers, including Kristol's dad Irving, were early drivers of neocon thought, so Jewish=Neocon became a anti-neocon meme, as folks critical of their being both more polite and more cosmopolitan used their ethnicity as a ideological marker; a touch of actual anti-Semitism might well be in the mix as well.

The piece noted that there is a strong pro-Israel stance in that Breitbart universe which seems to run counter to the occasional Jew-baiting. In contrast to the Muslim Arabs in the Middle East, Jews are more normal to a nativist's eye; Haredi might get confused for ZZ Top, but at least they're not violently opposed to Western Civ. 

Post-9/11 (and arguably post-Shah if not post-1972 Munich), Muslims have become the dreaded Other. Since the Cold War, they've become the enemy of choice. Jews (especially the European-descended ones in the US) are seen as one of Us in comparison, passing on Christmas but otherwise part of the American cultural mix and the successes of Israel has given them a badass allure for many on the right. A tighter definition of Us can exclude them, but fewer people will draw that circle that tight these days.

There is an unhealthy chunk of alt-right thought (and alt-left as well) that cast Jewish-Americans as part of the problem, but in geopolitics, they're a feature rather than a bug for all but the Hitler fanboys.

Turkeys are Supposed to Gobble, Not Coo

It looks like the coup attempt in Turkey has failed. The rebels seemed to not have the support of most of the military nor the support of opposition parties, who took to the streets against the coup-plotters along with supporters of President Erdogan. That effect had odd echoes of the ouster of Marcos in the Philippines, where "people power" (and some of the military) refused to let him steal a presidential election. 

The coverage last night was somewhat surreal, as a very confused situation had reporters scrambling. Turkish broadcasters were raided by the rebels, and Erdogan was left to connect via a Facetime app, as a uncaptured station put the camera up to a cell-phone with Erdogan's feed playing; now that's a 21st century moment.

Erdogan has been far from helpful, showing an authoritarian streak, closing some unfriendly media outlets and escalating tensions with their Kurdish minority. He's also been rather problematic geopolitically, backing Hamas in Gaza and working at cross-purposes to the US in Syria, bombing Syrian Kurds who are allied with the US against ISIS and Assad and giving ISIS and al Nuzra fighters freedom of movement.

As I was toggling between Fox News and CNN last night, I was getting a bit exasperated with the Fox team, who seemed to be rooting for the rebels.

The elephant in the room that I haven't mentioned so far is Islam. Erdogan leads a pro-Islamic party, which in an era fearful of Islamic terror creates an instinctive dislike from American conservatives. Conservative Americans who would decry secularism when it encroaches on Christian culture are cheering the secularist heirs of Attaturk on when they try to stifle Islamic culture in Turkey.

For instance, merely wearing a scarf to work or school was a no-no in the pre-Erdogan era in their push to create a secular public square. Turkey's not alone on that front, for France has moved in that direction as well. Fox News has a regular column from Todd Starnes chronicling secularism on the march in schools and government against Christian expression and other non-PC activity, yet they seem to cheer on that march when it is Muslims being stifled.

When you add pro-Hamas and not-enough-against-ISIS moves by Erdogan in the recent past, he becomes persona non grata to the cause of prosecuting the "war on terror." That was hammered home last night.

A more secular government in Ankara would be helpful in the short term in Syria and to a lesser extent vis-a-vis Israel, although there has been a bit of a rapprochement between Israel and Turkey as of late, recovering from an incident a few years back where Israeli troops had to violently board a Turkish ship sending weapons along with humanitarian aid to Gaza. One would assume that a secularized military would be more anti-ISIS, less pro-Hamas and possibly a bit less confrontational about turning Turkish Kurds into "mountain Turks."

However, that would take the most democratic Muslim country (you can't quite say "only democratic..." since Indonesia is working on it, but is not as far removed from military rule) back to the "he's our SOB" era, where a large chunk of the population becomes disenfranchised. If only secularized folks need apply to work or send their kids to school, then it drives folks of faith out of the public square and fuels resentment. Without a peaceful outlet for redressing grievances, they might turn to violence, something all too familiar in that region.

Erdogan will likely need to purge the military, but he might need to couple that with being less confrontational with his peaceful political foes. The latter sadly seems to go against type, since he seems to have an in-your-face MO that is easy to dislike if you are on the other side of the aisle.

If Erdogan is smart, he'll not squander the goodwill generated by the coup and and respect human rights and be more polite to his critics. However, I have a degree in Poli-Sci, not Pollyanna, so it would be well within character to go into "kill them, kill them all" beast mode.

 

Out of Ammo?

If a cease-fire is holding in Gaza, Hamas must be restocking;-).

Israel is in a no-win situation... literally, as I pointed out over in a Connexions thread earlier in the week. Winning against Hamas, which has Jew-hating in its DNA, means either wiping them off the map or having Hamas become willing to coexist with Israel. The later would be genocidal and the former would require a major miracle.

So, Israel can't win in a narrow sense. That makes conventional Just War applications hard to do, since you can't wipe out an idea.

Israel's strategy seems to be to root out Hamas tunnels and other key military sites in Gaza. Sadly, Hamas stashes those sites in residential areas and under schools and hospitals, so they will have plenty of civilian casualties to show the world press. That makes Israel look to be the heavy, since more Gazans will die than Israelis, causing Israel to flunk the proportionality test that JW devotees will bring to bear.

Were Israel to act proportionally, only killing as many Gazans as they lose from Hamas, it won't do much to diminish their foe's capabilities and thus make the exercise futile. Doing nothing would be the only thing that would leave Israel blameless to its non-Islamist critics (committing collective suicide would be needed to make the Islamists happy), and only a certifiably saintly leader would be so peace-loving to let his people get bombed without doing anything in reply.

Bibi ain't Gandhi. Nor would any plausible Israeli center-left coalition be turning the other cheek to that level.

No Persian Carpet Bombing for Now

The Iranians have agreed to partial oversight of their nuclear program; it doesn't remove the threat of them being able to make nuclear bombs in fairly short order, but it also doesn't require a small war to get rid of them, either.

The glass-half-full view would note that Iran is involved in a Shia-Sunni brawl in Syria with spillovers into Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been attacked by (one would assume) anti-Syrian forces who are going after Assad's Lebanese allies who have sent troops into Syria to help Assad.

The odd development is that neither the Gulf monarchies nor Israel has any love for Iran or Syria and that the two might be strange bedfellows in an anti-Shia alliance. They couldn't say so publicly, but the Saudis wouldn't be disappointed if the Israelis took out some Iranian nuclear facilities and would politely ignore an IDF flyover of Saudi airspace to and from Iran.

What's the US game here? Path of least resistance. We're in roughly the same spot with Iranian nukes as we were with Syrian chemical weapons; an attack looks bad, rouses the rabble on the Shia street and might not do much good if our intel misses some of their stash. Slowing the Iranians down might be better than a dicey military strike.

Does it make Israel less safe? Good question. A lot depends on whether the Iranians are on a peace offensive just to buy time to keep the Americans happy while their real nuke program is a couple steps away from inspectors or whether the mullahs in Qum are willing to play nice with the rest of the world in order to have better economic relations with the US and Europe.

The Cameron Not-So-Crazies

Interesting vote in the UK today, where 39 members of the ruling center-right coalition voted against a resolution authorizing a strike on Syria, which was enough to sink the bill, 285 to 272.

That doesn't help President Obama; if a Conservative-led British government can't muster a majority for action, it makes Obama look like more of a unilateralist than the dreaded Dubya.

Do-Something Syndrome

I'm not sure what a tactical strike at Syrian WMD facilities would do for the situation in that country. I'd be saying this regardless of who's in the White House.

I don't think the Assad regime is going to change tenor with a few facilities removed from service. It will make him look like the victim of a big Western bully taking sides in a civil war and might actually help his position overall.

The administration doesn't want to engineer regime change... OK. What are they after?

What they might be after is to say they did something. Diplomacy isn't all that helpful when the two factions seem to have no common ground to come to other than a common grave to bury their dead. Thus, a minimalist military action plays to the "do something" response.

It's hard to sit back and say "I don't have a dog in that fight" and let two foes go at it; it runs counter to both American do-gooderism and Christian peace-making chords in me. China-Vietnam and Iran-Iraq were two examples from my youth where the best geopolitical response was be a long, messy stalemate. That would be the realpolitik play here, a drawn-out war of attrition that weakens both the Assad-Iran-Shia axis and the jihadi-Salafist-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood axis.

Not pretty, either way. Doing nothing empowers Assad to keep gassing the rebels. Doing a small attack makes Westerners feel good but gives Assad a high ground. Doing a big attack would either require a lengthy occupation or allowing a jihadi-state to pick up the pieces.

As the computer said at the end of War Games-"Strange game; the only winning move is not to play."

The Phantom Saboteur

Here's what I wrote on Monday-

The main Iranian nuke facility in Fordo seems to have had a massive explosion. News is spotty; Drudge links to a WND story, but there seems to be little mainstream collaboration. There's shades of the Egyptian-lynching-by-crucifix story that was covered in the anti-Islamist press but never confirmed outside of it; the story's a bit too good to be true, but could be true nonetheless.

As it turned out, my sniffer was right; it was merely a rumor with no basis in fact. There seems to a tendency to take stories that fit an anti-Muslim world-view and run with them if they seem truthy. The fact that broader media doesn't cover it can be written off as "this is stuff they don't want you to know about."

However, there wasn't any good reason for the MSM to cover up bad news about the Iranian nuke program. This news would call off the preventative-strike dogs for a while if the saboteur managed to save Israel a bomber run over look-the-other-way Arab neighbor's territories, so they would have had a vested interested in playing things up rather than downplaying it.

 

A Frodo in Fordo?

The main Iranian nuke faclity in Fordo seems to have had a massive explosion. News is spotty; Drudge links to a WND story, but there seems to be little mainstream collaberation. There's shades of the Egyptian-lynching-by-crucifix story that was covered in the anti-Islamist press but never confirmed outside of it; the story's a bit too good to be true, but could be true nonetheless.

If true, it could save the Israelis a trip into Iranian airspace. The WND piece assumes that Bibi is in a weakened state post-election, but I'm not sure if a new coalition would veto a strike if it was deemed proper; none of the proposed coalition members are particularly pacifist.

Fordo would almost seem like a good stand-in for Mordor from the Lord of the Rings. Ironically, it is a transposed letter from Frodo, the hobbit who melted down the Ring of Power there. Did we have a real-world Frodo earlier today, someone who sabotaged our modern-day Morgoth's road to destructive powers?

Israel sin Synagogue

The Israeli election always seems to have a new party or two show up on radar, and two new ones could factor into the governing equation. Likud has 31 seats and a centrist Yesh Atid has 19; coupled with a Jewish Home pro-settlement party's 11, and the trio has 61 seats, just enough to make a majority.

The interesting aspect of Yesh Atid is their desire to see everyone serve in the military and end seminary exemptions. A lot of the haredi ("ultra-Orthodox" is the common pejoritive for them) men spend most of their lives as Torah-students, living on government stipends and avoiding the otherwise-universal requiment to serve. The secular-leaning folks in Yesh Atid are moving to at least make them do their stint in the military.

That would make them poor matches for some of the religious parties like Shas, who champions the poorer Jews who have Arab-country heritage rather than European/US heritage. A center-right but secular coalition could be free to ignore those parties and make Israel a bit less easy to be a devout rabbi-in-training keeping the world at bay.

It might also have some effect on ongoing issues over accepting non-Orthodox Jews as immigrants and citizens; most American Jews are to the left of the Orthodox leaders in Israel who sign off on whether a person is Jewish enough to immigrate to Israel, which is an friction point between Conservative (center-left) and Reform (hard left) Americans Jews and Israel.

Time to Restock the Missiles, Abdul...We're Just About Out

Hamas and Israel agree on Gaza ceasefire.

Thrown Under the Bus...the Hard Way

Ten people are hurt in a Tel Aviv bus bombing that Hamas is praising. No deaths yet, but three folks are supposed to be in serious condition.

Folks in the Peanut Gallery who are critical of Israel (yes...I'm thinking of my Connexions friends) try reaiming some of your animus towards the real villains of the piece. Israel will frequently have some collateral civilian damage when it goes after Hamas targets in Gaza, but Hamas (or their allies, since there are a variety of hard-cases that don't like Israel) does it on purpose.

Do criticize Israeli excesses and pray for peace on both sides, but Hamas seems to start out excessive in the sense they think each and every Israeli is fair game; the same can't be said of the IDF, or else Gaza would already be a parking lot.

Related articles

The Missiles of November

The Missiles of November

Could we be looking at the first major war involving Israel in four decades? Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood-led government is backing their Hamas brethren, even sending their PM over to Gaza to give moral support while Hamas exchanges rocket-powered pleasantries with Israel.

Egypt and Israel have come to blows four times, most recently in 1973. After that, a rapprochement created an uneasy peace that saw Israel give the Sinai back to Egypt after grabbing it in 1967 as a buffer. Expect Jimmy Carter, who brokered the Camp David accords that codified that rapprochement, to be back in the news, likely bashing the Likudniks for breaching the spirit of Camp David.

I'm not sure if the Egypian government, having just gotten into power and still working to keep the Mubarak leftovers in check, is up to picking a fight with Israel. Camp David is part of the legacy of the Sadat-Mubarak team, but one that helped Egypt become allied with the US and a bit more prosperous than it otherwise would have been. Officers might well be inclined to drag their feet and not want to go back to the four-wars-in-a-quarter-century that crippled the Egyptian military.

____________

It's Friday morning; where are the Islamic rabble going to be roused today? Somehow, I expect something American to be trashed over the current unpleasentness in Gaza, since their isn't anything Israeli to be trashed in most Arab countries other than a Israeli flag to be burned in effigy. Friday is always a prime day for that, since it's go-to-mosque day and a good Jew-bashing sermon will get the rabble roused.

Flying the Unfriendly Skies

I remember a Ron Silver story from the Clinton innaugual in 1993; as a good liberal, he had a bit of disdain towards the military after 12 years of GOP rule and military build-ups. When some planes flew over Washington in a salute, he stated that "they're our planes now."

That vignette came to mind when I read this story about the Syrian civil war-

Pity the Syrian people. They had been given to believe that fighter jets in the arsenal of the state - those Russian-made MIGs they once viewed with pride - were there for the stand-off with Israel.

Now they know better. The runs over Aleppo, the bombings of Idlib, have laid bare the truth. It is no accident that the founder of this regime, Hafez al-Assad, emerged from the ranks of the air force, which is not often an incubator of coup-makers. There would come a day, the masters of this minority regime doubtless knew, when fighter jets would be used at home.

The planes seemed to be "theirs" when the threat was an assertive Israel making sure they stayed put on their southwestern border. However, government power doesn't just extend to external enimies, especially when it is a dictatorship unbounded by consitutions and elections.

That use of force brings to mind the libertarian disdain of the military, knowing that all that hardware and training could be turned on them if they were on the wrong side of a power-hungry government who was willing to play nasty. That's where the checks and balances of American government come into play, along with a long-standing standard against using the military in a domestic setting, whether it be border mainanance or disaster-relief.

Taking it to the Arab Street

I'm of two minds on how to handle Egypt and other emerging Arab democracies. The first is the hopeful, small-d democrat side, that wants to see folks have an honest shot at picking their leaders rather than dictating from the outside who those leaders can and can't be.

Here's a role-reversal that comes to mind; would we stomach seeing the Europeans and Japanese cutting off relations with a Romney administration because he's too culturally conservative, too Christian for civilized people to deal with? Would we tolerate outsiders saying that our leaders had to not be religious conservatives?

That's how some of the rhetoric from some quarters of the right would sound like to Abdul Q Public. If you tell him he has to vote for either the Mubarak leftovers or some egghead who spent more time in London and Palo Alto than in Cairo, that's not going to go over well.

What will a Muslim Brotherhood government look like? I'm not sure that it won't devolve into an Iranian style bounded-democracy, where you have to be approved by the Islamic powers that be to run and with civil rights only applying if you're what passes for a good Muslim. If it does, then plan B kicks in, but trying to do some Cold-War style coup and installing Mubarak 2.0 right now won't quite work.

Plan B could well look like making Islam the enemy if the bodies politic of enough Arab countries become radicalized and elect governments actively hostile to Western Civ. However, that's not how America rolls when it's on the side of the angels; the "he's a SOB but he's our SOB" school is best avoided.

 

 

To the Shores of That Other Tripoli

Interesting spillover of the Syrian civil car into Lebanon, where Sunni and Alawite factions are shooting it out in Tripoli, north of Beirut. That translates to anti-Assad and pro-Assad, since the Assads are Alawite.

The ruling government in Lebanon doesn't have a dog in the fight on ethnic grounds, since they are Shia (Hezbollah is their main party) with some pro-Syrian Christians thrown in; the rival Sunnis and heterodox Alawites aren't liked by the Shia, thus it's a bit like Catholics looking on while Protestants and Mormons have at it. To the extent that Syria is pro-Shia in Lebanese politics, the Shia like Assad, but it's possible that they are keeping their distance from things in order to be on the good side of whoever emerges out of the Syrian mess.

The prime minister is a Sunni, but that's because he has to be per Lebanon's constitution; however, he's likely politically on board with the Shia-dominated government.

Lebanese troops have moved in along what might become Tripoli's Green Line between the factions. How much effort they do to keep them apart remains to be seen.

Israel, the Insult Dog

An old joke that has made the rounds asks what the first car in the Bible was. The classic but wrong answer is a Honda, since the disciples were all in one Accord. Other folks think it was a Dodge-"I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my Fury."

Then there was David with an after-market muffler; his Triumph was heard throughout the land.

The most notable Triumph of modern days is Triumph the Insult Dog, who just went on a surprise Middle East tour and gotten a certain Twelver hot and bothered.

Israel's existence is an "insult to all humanity," Iran's president said Friday in one of his sharpest attacks yet against the Jewish state, as Israel openly debates whether to attack Iran over its nuclear program.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said confronting Israel is an effort to "protect the dignity of all human beings."

News flash, Mahmoud-ring. I read the end of the book, and our insult dog wins.

Run-DMZ

After the Camp David accords, the Sinai has been largely a demilitarized zone, since Israel has been fearful of having too many Egyptian troops close to its border; UN troops kept the sides apart for decades. However, that has left a vacuum where Gaza gun runners and local goons can operate without fearing a major armed backlash from the authorities, especially after the Arab Spring ditched Mubarak last year.

That has changed; with Israel's blessing, the Egyptian army is moving back in.

Hundreds of troops in armored cars drove out of the town to hunt Islamist militants blamed for killing 16 Egyptian border guards on Sunday, the biggest spike in violence which has been growing steadily since last year's overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

The gunfire in al-Arish, the nerve centre of the government's otherwise shaky control of the North Sinai region, showed how difficult it will be for Egypt to impose order. It followed attacks on checkpoints in the town on Wednesday.

Israel has welcomed Egypt's offensive while continuing to express worries about the deteriorating situation in Sinai, home to anti-Israel militants, Bedouin tribes angered by neglect by Cairo, gun-runners, drug smugglers and al Qaeda sympathizers.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Egypt was acting "to an extent and with a determination that I cannot previously recall".

It also puts new President Mursi in an awkward spot; Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, so he'd be going against some spiritual allies in cracking down on the smuggling of military goodies into Gaza. However, if Mursi is going to have any credibility with the west as an Islamic democrat, keeping Hamas at a distance and Israel as a peaceful neighbor would require such a crack-down.

That bode watching, for if Mursi can pull that off, there might be hopes for some form of housebroken Islamic democracy; the "Christian Democrats" of Europe come to mind as a bloc that is religious but not authoritarian. It would be a bit of a feat to see an Islamic Democrat when Islamic doctrine leans toward a church-state fusion.

Clubbed Med

I've been a bit under the weather over the weekend, so it's catch-up time.

Greece-postponing the crash that needs to happen; I don't see the Greeks making the cuts needed to balance things especially with the establishment parties that are now in charge. The second election surprised me, as their mainstream conservative New Democracy party got an expanded plurality, enough to patch together a majority with the mainstream socialist PASOK.

I was kinda rooting for the hard-left Syriza to win, since they'd give the ECB and IMF the MDS (middle digit salute) and get back to normal sooner, if normal includes nationalizing the banks.

_________

Egypt-Have Murci! Mohammed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, beat out the general's choice 52-48. The next question is how much authority the generals will let him have and whether they'll make their autocoup throwing out the parliamentary elections stick. Neither option seems all that palatable and Israel is seeing their Sinai border get more problematic; whatever happens in Egypt will have spillovers to the east, especially if the MB start to back their sister-movement Hamas.

___________

Syria-the Russians are sending a gator freighter there. The cover is to allow for the evacuation of Russian nationals, but it also give a shield to Assad and friends if the west does want to intervene; they might have to shoot at Russians to do so.

Coup of Grace?

The Egyptian analogue to the Supreme Court just declared the Muslim Brotherhood-led parliament unconstitutional and disbanded it, giving power back to the military interim government. That's bad news for democracy, but might be good geopolitics for the US and Christians in the region.

The court is made up of Mubarak appointees, so they have something of a vested interest into the pre-2011 status quo. What we're seeing is something akin to Turkey, where the military there has stepped in to toss governments that look too un-secular, although the current government seems to have escaped that fate as it tries to give Muslims more room to maneuver in the public square.

That sounds good from a freedom-of-religion standpoint, but it has also resulted in a less-pro-western government in Turkey, as they have ditched previously friendly relations with Israel. A MB government in Egypt will be more anti-Israel and more pro-Hamas than the current one, which leaves small-d democrats rooting for the MB and conservative foreign-policy types rooting for the Mubarak holdovers.

Adding to the mix is the Coptic Christians in Egypt who weren't exactly best buddies with Mubarak but were treated with some deference; the more radical Muslims in the new parliament might be inclined to put severe restrictions on the Copts if not forcing them underground. A similar dynamic is going down in Syria, where the Assads, religious minorities themselves as a Muslim analogue to Mormons (if I can take some poetic license; the Alwaitis are looked at as apostate by Shia and Sunni alike), treat their Christians much better than the opposition would; part of Russia's backing of Assad could well flow from an honorable looking after fellow Orthodox churchmen in Syria.

Thus, conservatives would have some things to be happy about if the military stays in power in Egypt, except that the neocon vision of spreading democracy around the world takes it in the chops. One could see the Pat Buchanans in the realm cheering but the Weekly Standard crowd being of mixed thoughts.

It might well be worth letting one of these popularly-elected Islamist government actually be allowed to govern and see if they can coexist with the rest of the world. If they can coexist, that will take a lot of the steam out of al Qaeda and their ilk if we can give would-be jihadis a political outlet to change corrupt systems rather than forcing them to arms to get their way. If the powers that be keep pulling the plug when they win, they'll stop being part of the political process and take up arms or bombs.

There is an election coming up for president, pitting a MB guy versus a Mubarak leftover; the winner would be in position to move things in their direction, although a MB president going up against the military might result in a civil war far bloodier than we saw last year.

Going Forward

President Obama and PM Netanyahu might not agree on much, but Forward seems to be popular with both of them. It's the theme of the Obama reelection campaign; if I can borrow from the old Nixonian acronym, they'll CREEP Forward, which makes more progress than MSNBC's "Lean Foward" or Newt's Lean Six Sigma.

Over in Israel, Netanyahu was seemingly all set to call early elections when he instead brought Kadima, Arial Sharon's old centrist party, into the fold; Kadima means Forward in Hebrew, the Forward is also the name of a noteworthy Jewish-American magazine.

Surpringly, Sharon's still with us, but just barely. I hadn't recalled an obit; that's because he's hanging in there in a mostly vegged state, with enough there to not pull a Shaivo on him. The party he created is on shaky turf as well, as they're expected to lose ground in the next election when it is held.

However, Kadima's blend of hawk and dove would be a good cover for Bibi as he goes forward, especially as they mull a preemptive move against Iranian nukes. If Kadima is on board with a strike, it will gives him some street cred in diplomatic circles, as Kadima often tries to cast itself as the good cop opposite Bibi's bad cop.

Bay of Halal Pigs?

The Syrian civil war is taking interesting turns, as we saw an amphibious raid by rebels; I can't recall seeing that anywhere in my adult lifetime, which has to go back to the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by dissidents with US help for a matching reference. Somehow, using "Bay of Pigs" in a battle between Muslim factions has a bit of irony.

Syrian rebel gunmen in inflatable dinghies have attacked a military unit on the Mediterranean coast, with deaths on both sides, state media report.

It is thought to be the first rebel assault from the sea. Separately, Lebanon says its navy has seized weapons destined for the rebels.

Clashes between security forces and deserting troops left heavy casualties near Damascus and Aleppo, reports say.

The issues are beginning to take a regional angle, as the rebels have support in northern Lebanon, where Tripoli's Sunni majority is often at odds with its Alawite minority; that enmity might well extend to fighting the Alawite Assad clan running Syria. The containers of arms was heading to Tripoli and thence to the rebels, something that the pro-Syrian Lebanese government would like to stop.

The good news for the fans of the rebels is that support is getting in. The bad news is that the Lebanese government is trying to stop things, which might wind up turning the fight into an international one.

When Doves Cry

A bit of sniping in Israel, were some former intelegence officials are questioning the wisdom of an anti-nuke attack on Iran. The headliner in this BBC piece is former Shin Bet boss Yuval Diskin, making critiques that echo the post-Iraq war debates in the US; Dishin thinks such an attack would backfire and make an Iranian nuke more likely and is accusing the current regime of making up things and being "messianic."

There may well be a hawk-dove divide with Diskin being a dove. Diskin's Wikipedia has him doing a stint as advisor to then-Mossad boss Meir Dagan. Dagan was a Arial Sharon appointee who was kept on by Sharon's successor Ehud Olmert; Sharon was on the dovish side in his latter days, as was Olmert. Dagan had a falling out with PM Netenyahu and has been critical of his Iran policy for the last year and a half since leaving his Mossad post.

Just like Paul tells us to test the spirits, we need to test expert opinions; folks of the left can be right on the follies of war, but they can also give too rosy a view of human nature, espcially those who aren't interested in playing nice. Of course, the BBC will eat such stuff up, so take it with the proper grains of salt.

Mecca for Post-Moderns

I recall the end of a current ad where the head of the household is in the process of eating his daughter's goldfish as sushi. When the fishies turn up AWOL, the dad says "whadya gonna do?"

We're much in the same predicament as the tweenager in the ad with Iran right now. There isn't a lot that can be done about the attempted assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador. Any diplomatic solution by the US seems trite and any military solution seems overkill.

The best solution might come from the Saudis themselves. They have something that Iranians are keenly interested in... Mecca. Were the Saudis to declare the Haj off limits to Iranians, it would get the Iranian's attention in a hurry. It would inflame Sunni-Shia relations in hot spots like Iraq and Lebanon and possibly result in at least one civil war breaking out or resuming.

There are a lot of interesting sub-plots here if this isn't just an Amateur Night sting of a Iranian would-be spy. If the Iranians were actually thinking of recruiting the Zetas as hit men, it might start a major US intervention in Mexico, as the drug war and the "War on Terror" get a quick and dirty merger.

The Zetas are likely smarter than that; being caught helping the Iranians would make them Public Enemy #1 in the US and bring a US response that would militarize northern Mexico beyond the flawed run at Villa in the 1910s. Thankfully for them, it was a US agent posing as a Zeta.

Not Yo' Promise Anymore

Here's an interesting flak going on between Israel and Arab Catholics. I'm not sure how much of this is Catholic doctrine and how much of it is convenient application of hermeneutics-

Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, head of the commission which drew up the statement, went one step further, saying: "The theme of the Promised Land cannot be used as a basis to justify the return of the Jews to Israel and the expatriation of the Palestinians."

"For Christians, one can no longer talk of the land promised to the Jewish people," the Lebanese-born head of the Greek Melkite Church in the United States said, because the "promise" was "abolished by the presence of Christ."

That sounds a bit like Replacement Theology, where the modern Church takes over the role of Israel in prophecy. Either that, or you have an amillennial approach that throws any future role for Israel out the window.

Or, it's just bad theology where Jew-bashing is the coin of the realm. A lot of folks on the left wing of the Church are pro-Arab to the point of being anti-Israel as Israel becomes seen as a colonial menace; that's going to be heightened by having Arab churchmen playing to the crowd back home.

I don't think that's Vatican doctrine. Both popes John Paul II and Benedict have been polite towards both Jews and Israel, so there will likely be some feather-unruffuling between Rome and Jerusalem.

"But what will we do after lunch?

That's the punchline of an old IDF joke where one soldier proclaims "Today, we take [fill in neighboring capital]!"

However, they are literally talking like that about Lebanon after a border scuffle earlier this month-"Israel was ready to implement a plan to destroy within four hours all Lebanese military infrastructure, including army bases and offices, should a similar confrontation occur in the future."

Yes, that does fall short of actually wrapping up Beirut by noon, but give us some poetic license.

Veiled Threats

Veil-banning countries now include France, Belgium and... Syria? It is worth a statist chuckle to note that is was the higher education minister of the Syrian government that announced the ban of veils in college classes- over here, we question whether we need a federal education department, and there it gets broken into more than one free-standing agency.

One of the things that people forget about Syria is not just that the government is secular and nationalistic in nature, the Baathists that gave us Saddam Hussain and company in Iraq, but that the Assad clan is part of the heterodox Alawi branch of Islam. While the Alawi are moving back towards a more orthodox view of Islam, a move towards a more radical Islam might turn their attention to their half-infidel leaders.

Israeli Jew Review

Here's some interesting legislation in Israel that could have a major impact on US-Israel relation, especially with American Jews. The Knesset is looking at a law that would give the chief rabbinate authority over determining whether a conversion to Judaism is valid.

The problem with that, from an American standpoint, is that the rabbinate is skewed to the theological right. The vast majority of Israeli Jews are Orthodox, even though many, if not most, aren't all that observant; thus you have those devout rabbis who oversee things labeled "ultra-Orthodox" by less devout folks.

However, Orthodox Jews only make up about 20% of the Jewish landscape, with Reform and Conservative branches making up the majority. If the Orthodox can be compared with Evangelicals in their small-o orthodoxy, Conservatives are moderate main-liners and Reformed are your liberal mainliners.

Like many evangelicals looking down their noses as "nominal Christians" in the mainline denominations, Orthodox Jewish Israelis tend to dismiss their Reform and Conservative counterparts as fake Jews and not entitled to Israeli citizenship. That will make relations between American Jews of the center-left and Israel and may make US foreign policy interesting, as Evangelical Christians might be more pro-Israel than liberal Jews.

Meanwhile, the politics of Israel might be driving things. A number of devout Orthodox parties, including the Shas party catering to Sephardic Jews of Arab origin, make up the swing vote in the current coalition. This might be a way for their more secular kin of throwing Israel's religious right a bone, but it is one that American Jews might wind up choking on.