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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