The Middle East Media Sampler 10/28/2012: The Surprise Moderate Arab From Syria

From DG:

1) Buying peace from a tyrant

After dismissing the significance of a recent report that PM Netanyahu is negotiating peace with Syria, Natan Sharansky writes in Trying to buy peace from the Syrian tyrant:

Barry Rubin: Here’s What Middle Eastern Moderates Actually Think and Say

Here’s What Middle Eastern Moderates Actually Think and Say

by Barry Rubin

Over and over again I hear them: Egyptians who have lost hope that their country can be saved from Islamist dictatorship (this is what the people want, one says); the Lebanese who can no longer stand up to the threats of the Hizballah-dominated government; Turks disgusted as the Western media ignore the arrests and persecutions of respected people who have devoted their lives to the country or contemporary dissidents; and so on.

In a recent letter to me, a Middle Eastern democracy advocate who fled revolutionary Islamism to the West--there will be thousands more in the years to come--reflected on his experiences in light of my articles. These are the people the West is betraying, to its own detriment. The so-called liberals (leftists pretending to be liberal) who apologize for, lie about, and even help anti-Western Islamist dictatorships should take note of such individuals who are the hope of their homelands but have themselves lost hope:

Barry Rubin: Good-Bye, Middle East! Liberals and Minorities are Fleeing

Good-Bye, Middle East! Liberals and Minorities are Fleeing

By Barry Rubin

What’s so terrible about the ideological, agenda-based domination of the mass media and academia is that people don’t ask critical questions that undermine their political positions. Here’s one:

The Egyptian government says it will put on criminal trial 16 people who distributed funds to Egyptian moderates from pro-democracy forces. One of them is the son of U.S. Labor Secretary Ray LaHood. The prosecutions are going forward despite Obama administration threats to cut off all aid to Egypt, which mostly goes to the Egyptian military, which happens to run the country at present.

If Egypt’s government is ready for a confrontation risking its U.S. aid over this tiny and insignificant issue, then why should we believe that the fear of losing U.S. aid will keep it from imposing Islamization on its people, sponsoring anti-Israel terrorism, becoming entangled in a war with Israel, and doing all sorts of much more important stuff?

Haven’t seen that anywhere else, right?