The "Arab Spring" Has Turned Into An "Israeli Spring" -- Now Go Solve The Middle East's Real Problems

In short, the more violent and chaotic the Middle East becomes, the more secure and exceptional Israel appears.
Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson writes that thanks to 'The Israeli Spring,' Israel’s enemies are doing more damage to each other than Israel ever could:

In terms of realpolitik, anti-Israeli authoritarians are fighting to the death against anti-Israeli insurgents and terrorists. Each is doing more damage to the other than Israel ever could — and in an unprecedented, grotesque fashion. Who now is gassing Arab innocents? Shooting Arab civilians in the streets? Rounding up and executing Arab civilians? Blowing up Arab houses? Answer: either Arab dictators or radical Islamists.


The old nexus of radical Islamic terror of the last three decades is unraveling. With a wink and a nod, Arab dictatorships routinely subsidized Islamic terrorists to divert popular anger away from their own failures to the West or Israel. In the deal, terrorists got money and sanctuary. The Arab Street blamed others for their own government-inflicted miseries. And thieving authoritarians posed as Islam’s popular champions.

But now, terrorists have turned on their dictator sponsors. And even the most ardent Middle East conspiracy theorists are having troubling blaming the United States and Israel.

As interesting as this turn of events may be, it is also worth looking at how this has changed the political landscape of the Middle East -- and the political fortunes of those who thought they knew the area well.

Among Hanson's examples:

• Despite John Kerry’s insistence on the crucial importance of his peace talks between Israel and the Abbas regime -- one would be hard-pressed to defend Kerry's concentrating on Israel and ignoring the ethnic cleansing of Egypt’s Coptic Christians and Assad's apparent gassing of his fellow people.
  
  
  
  
• Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plans to resurrect the Ottoman Empire have stalled -- in part because his virulent anti-Israel foreign policy has become irrelevant.
  
  
• The Saudis and Kuwaitis along with the rest of the Persian Gulf suddenly find that their goals in the reagion match those of Israel in the search for stability.

Read the whole thing.

While the pundits return once again to the old point of how important it is that Israel now make the concessions necessary to finally bring the Abbas regime back to the peace talks, the fact remains that there are bigger problems in the Middle East which have nothing to do with Israel.

And those are the trouble spots that need to take precedence.

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