When I first arrived here nearly 40 years ago Beirut was a more European, secular city in outlook. People dressed and acted pretty much as they did in Paris or Geneva.
Forty years ago we discussed the advent of civil marriage in Lebanon, imagined a single, secular state in Palestine, debated socialism vs capitalism in the Arab world. Today the barriers against civil marriage are still in place, no one sees clearly how a secular state in Palestine could happen, and all forms of secularism are under sharp attack from explicitly religious world views.
Who benefits?
Forty years ago Israel had to mask its explicitly sectarian project of a state for Jews. It advertised itself as the 'only democracy in the Mideast'. In the West, this worked. No one knew, or cared, that less than a third of the population of Palestine had taken over from the other two-thirds, expelling hundreds of thousands in the process...to achieve this apparently 'Jewish' polity. The Arab world was grappling with the residues of colonialism, Nasser had scared the West, and the Arab dictators had begun their rise.
Still, secular forces seemed poised to challenge Israel's copyright on the word 'democracy'. Lebanon, for example, was a messy but, functionally speaking, reasonably democratic state, with pretty good prospects. In comparison to the Jewish state next door, whose 'democracy' depended on expelling vast numbers of Palestinians and making the rest second-class citizens, Lebanon tried to accommodate a bewildering array of sects and communities into one state. At the time, things actually looked pretty good.
Then the war came. Messy democracy and relative freedom turned into sectarian enclaves and the end of what the french would call 'cohabitation'. Lebanon over time became the hotbed of inter-communal obstructionism, sectarian hatred and functional chaos that it is today. The vision of democracy that relies on cooperation and shared resources, and on a common loyalty, evaporated, leaving only the democracy of materialism and the 'free market'.
Who benefits?
In the last two decades the process has expanded exponentially, and the whole world is now involved. Bin Laden, Jihad, al Qa'eda, Salafists, the Ikhwan - all these terms now belong to our common vocabulary. And they all carry an explicit threat, a menace that leaves us uneasy no matter how far from the Mideast we live. More than 2 years after the Arab Spring, Egypt teeters on the edge of chaos and non-secular regimes still rule in most of the region. The democratic project in the Mideast seems more distant than ever and here people talk of the forthcoming emergence of even smaller sectarian states carved out of the dissolution of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and so on.
Who benefits?
I bring all this up because here I discover an answer that seems self-evident to nearly everybody. Back in the US I doubt it could get a serious hearing. As a theory, it's not without problems. But it's also not without important strengths. As scientists like to say: it's infuriatingly hard to falsify. The theory is simple: this whole historical process benefits Israel and has been engineered by Israel and its sometime patron/sometime lapdog the US. Let's take a look:
In the US we tend to see all the developments I alluded to above as largely independent of US volition and policy. Even if we know that US policy has to have had something to do with events, it's not clear to us that the US is in any fundamental sense actually responsible for fomenting the exact events that have ultimately given rise to the very things we claim to be fighting, including the 'war on terror'. So, for example, the Iranian revolution and the rise of the Islamic Republic/Mullahcracy was an Iranian event. The war in Lebanon was the result of the inability of the Lebanese to get along. The fact that Saudi Arabia is a theocracy where no one is his/her right mind would want to live is because of the manifest flaws in Arab/Islamic culture. The rise of Jihadi Islam and of indiscriminate, pointless terror all over the world is because 'they're crazy'.
To the utter disappointment and disgust of my friends here in Lebanon, let me state that I have some sympathy for this point of view. Every historical trend, in my opinion, has multiple causes. Some are internal, some are external. The Iranian revolution was carried out by Iranians, to an Iranian conclusion. The rise of fundamentalist, explicitly violent, theology in the Mideast is in important ways a product of its region and culture. (For those who find this objectionable, let me point out that it's no different than saying that the rise of Nazism and Fascism were a product of European culture and history.) And so on.
That said, let's take a look at why this theory isn't 'falsifiable' - i.e. if it's difficult to prove, it's even more difficult to disprove. It turns out there's lots of evidence for it.
- The Iranian revolution was a direct result of our deposing the elected Prime Minister (Mossadegh) and replacing him with a manufactured 'Shah'. By 'our' I mean the....CIA.
- The Lebanese Civil War was, in very large part, fomented by Israel. Israeli involvement became quite open in the war's later stages. Earlier on, you had to be there to see it. I was. From a friend's house near the town of Jounieh I used to watch at night as Israeli boats would arrive and disgorge arms and supplies for the rightwing militias. Persistent rumors flew that Israeli officers were actually staying in town and working very closely with these groups. At the time these were just rumors: later revelations showed they were entirely true. Even Ariel Sharon seems to have spent time in Jounieh on at least one occasion.
- I didn't mention Hamas in the intro above, but it needs to be added to the list. This is because I personally witnessed - and reported on - Israel's secret support for Hamas in the years before the first Intifada. No, that's not a typo. Israel encouraged the rise of a militant group opposed to its very existence. Why would it do that? See below for the answer. (Hint: think how the Bolsheviks subverted and eventually ran the organizations created to oppose them.) (Hint number 2: How must the Israeli governement have felt when the PLO explicitly offered to cooperate in a single, secular state for Arabs and Jews?)
- The slow motion breakup of Iraq into sectarian mini-states, with the endless death and misery it has entailed, is the direct result of....well, I don't even need go further. We all know how that happened.
- The rise of al Qaeda and the 'crazy Islamists' began in Afganistan, during the war against the USSR. Who gave these guys their start, supplied weapons and training, encouraged their militancy? One guess. You win!
The Algerian, Libyan, Tunisian, Egyptian and Syrian cases are perhaps more complicated. One is tempted to ask immediately what possible advantage might accrue to Israel from the rise of fundamentalist movements and regimes in North Africa and the Arab world. Answer immediately below.
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So, why would, why could, all these things actually prove that Israel and the US have conspired for years to increase tensions in the Mideast, to promote sectarianism and violence, to force the dissolution of the post-colonial states into warring statlets, to encourage a gathering showdown between Shia' and Sunni which, if it breaks out, will cost untold lives? Why?
PR. The answer boils down to, essentially....PR. Here's how: Israel knows it can't gloss over forever the fact that 'Jewish democracy' is a contradiction that is incompatible with Western notions of democracy. And the more secular and successful the surrounding countries become, the harder it is to maintain this fiction, to have a democracy for one part of the population while subjugating another. Eventually, European support will dry up and even the reliable old US may begin to experience doubts.
This theory stipulates that at some point in the last few decades the Israelis realized that, since there was no question of changing Israel into a true democracy, they needed to make the rest of the region look like what they were trying to create: states in which one group or religion is given absolute priority over all others. Israel in the midst of a democratizing Mideast made up of multi-confessional states looks bad. Israel in the midst of a chaotic jumble of sectarian mini-states endlessly feuding and squabbling looks very, very good. IOW, PR.
Of course, like any good policy, there are other benefits beyond just PR. Under the theory above Israeli military dominance of the region would be assured, and the ability of Israel's enemies to ally and mount a coordinated attack would be virtually nil. Economic dominance would be another plus, as Israel would clearly be dominant in all but oil resources. Those resources which it didn't own outright would eventually come under its control via trade or political penetration.
As good as it sounds, I see several problems with this theory. Just to mention one: Saudi Arabia. The fundamental flaws in Saudi society, and, from my point of view, they are numerous, stem not from some by-product of US policy, but from an interpretation of a book sent by God. And this interpretation was already well-established in the Mideast when Thomas Jefferson was sworn in. So, when we see Saudi and Qatari money at play in every conflict, revolution and uprising throughout the region, we might need to acknowledge that other factors and players are very important in determining developments and outcomes.
Still, it has a lot going for it.
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