This is true, but Emiratis are a notable exception. The UAE may be the only Arab country where Jews are not only allowed to live, but can do so safely without fearing either their neighbors or their government.
For example, last year when a rabbi was murdered, the Emirati government reacted forcefully and made a point to sentence the perpetrators to death. Note, the perpetrators were not Emiratis.
> The modern Egyptian state is oriented toward close partnership with the US, and a large part of that was peace with Israel post '73.
While also true, the relationship between Israel and Egypt has been tense lately.
They are at peace, and the border is stable. And economic integration is tightening, for example with the recent $35B gas deal [1]. So it's plausible that UAE could align with both, as you say.
But at the same time, it's just as plausible that this alignment will become increasingly complicated for geopolitical reasons. As Israel grows stronger in the region, Egypt seems to have adopted a strategy of indirectly undermining them.
For example, Egypt's handling of the Gaza war has indicated that they were playing a double game - openly containing Hamas, while covertly allowing them to grow stronger. When the IDF captured Rafah in 2024, they uncovered massive smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, which could not possibly have been unknown to Egypt.
Sisi is also known for having cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood domestically, as they were his primary political rival. But externally, he has shown a willingness to support them as a tool to weaken his rivals, including Israel. This is a dangerous game which could easily backfire.
One more example: just this week Egypt is conducting a live fire military exercise 100m from the Israel border - a deliberate decision that is escalating tensions. [2]
[1] https://www.egyptindependent.com/all-you-need-to-know-about-...
[2] https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/egypt-live-fire-drills-is...
What about the military exercise though? Al-Jazeera is eagerly covering it, but it is in fact happening...
I'm thinking that two things can be true at once - Egypt sees Israel as a "soft rival" and will undermine it when it can, without risking the peace itself; and Qatar is actively trying to put a wedge between them. No?
(thanks for the thoughtful discussion).
It’s actually surprising it’s achievable for so long but in the long term doesn’t feel stable given the direction things are headed
As far as stability, I don't know. My view is that Arab democracies are unstable because they will elect Islamists. Dictatorship/monarchy has proven far more stable. Syria is trying to buck the trend; we'll see how it goes.
All of the Gulf monarchies as well as Jordan are essentially western creations that were created as states mostly by the British and then heavily reinforced by the US from the 70s onwards
why does that imply instability?
ennahada (tunisia), pks (indonesia), jui (pakistan) are all examples of islamist parties that have compromised or reached across the aisle at various points just off the top of my head.
besides, isn't the point of democracy to allow people to be led by those who represent their principles? if they are in power, why should the majority expect their elected leaders to compromise those principles?
Would love to read more on this. Naïvely, I shared OP’s view of Islamist parties’ intransigence. (Note to third parties: Islamist != Islamic majority or even Islamic parties, and certainly separate from Arab parties.)
> isn't the point of democracy to allow people to be led by those who represent their principles?
Yes. But nothing says democracies are fundamentally stable. It absolutely follows that intolerant populations can systematically elect intolerant leaders who then cause instability.
Brookings Institute has a series of papers about Islamist movements around the world: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rethinking-political-isla...
which includes both analyses from Western academics as well as responses from members of Islamist parties.
> It absolutely follows that intolerant populations can systematically elect intolerant leaders who then cause instability.
Intolerant of what, and what do you mean by "instability"? If the ideology of the political parties and institutions reflects that of the (vast) majority of the population, why would we expect "instability"?
Democracy can descend into demagoguery; I believe that occurs when the "people" feel like the state has been captured by an elite (oligarchy) that doesn't represent their interests (i.e. interests of the majority), "intolerant" or not - e.g. Gracchi brothers, Hugo Chavez, etc etc.
and secular/socialist/monarchic dictatorships have arguably worse effects on their neighbors and citizens - e.g. Saddam, Assad, Nasser, MBZ in UAE, MBS
I think the broader point is that a democracy is unstable when the electorate just votes for their favourite warlord / cleric, who promptly ends / rigs any further elections.
In the Middle East, there appears to be a pattern of electorates voting for / staging a revolution in favour of Islamists, which either leads to a terrible Islamist regime, or leads to an elite coup, which of course destroys the democracy in the process. Worst case scenario all of this happens at once in different places, and you get a terrible civil war.
Democracy is great, but it requires an electorate that actually wants to sustain and retain a democracy. Those appear to be few and far in between.
that pattern is hardly unique to middle east/islamists though. look at central/south america. guatemala, chile, brazil etc all had democracies overthrown by "elite" coups.
like almost every instance in the middle east, there is actually a common denominator between these coups... resistance to the US-led order magically seems to invite instability.
> resistance to the US-led order magically seems to invite instability
Or perhaps 'resistance' is an awfully popular rallying cry for demagogues who bring instability, and the US is just the hegemon du jour. "It's the US' fault your crops are wilting! And international capital! And immigrants! And, oh, I don't know, the gays, why not. Rise up for El Generalissimo! Enlist your sons in the blood struggle, that will definitely improve things!" /s
Much sexier to be a revolutionary fighting shadowy foreign forces than to actually fix any of your own problems. No, no, tomorrow's problems will be America's fault too.
you said
> Arab democracies are unstable because they will elect Islamists.
whereas my claim is that governments (democracies or not) that run afoul of their local hegemon tend to have a short shelf life. this is not unique to US hegemony.
see: Brezhnev doctrine (USSR), or the canonical example of Athens and Melos from Peloponnesian war
> Rise up for El Generalissimo! Enlist your sons in the blood struggle, that will definitely improve things!" /s Much sexier to be a revolutionary fighting shadowy foreign forces than to actually fix any of your own problems. No, no, tomorrow's problems will be America's fault too.
I'm sorry, you seem triggered by this discussion, it doesn't seem productive to continue on my end.
Realism has more way explanatory power in geopolitics than idealism. Idealist explanations are typically incoherent (e.g. above thread).
I suppose shall have to make do without 101-level instruction in Chomskyian anti-Imperialism, woven through with whataboutism and international conspiracies.
> whereas my claim is that governments (democracies or not) that run afoul of their local hegemon tend to have a short shelf life. this is not unique to US hegemony.
Wow, big if true. Someone let Iran know.
How many trillions of dollars and gallons of blood did the US expend to make Afghanistan non-Taliban, or Vietnam non-Communist? And who rules Afghanistan and Vietnam today? You mention the Brezhnev doctrine, and yet literally not one of these countries is Russian-aligned today. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan failed just as hard as the British and American ones, all at the height of those respective countries' powers. Not very powerful, these alleged hegemons.
My overall point is that the Middle East (and Latin America, etc) has many local issues (e.g. corruption, misgovernance, sectarianism, organised crime), and an unhelpful habit of blaming some ill-defined global hegemony for misfortunes that are readily explicable as the consequences of these local phenomena. The US is no innocent lamb, but it does no service to the people of any of these regions to pretend that another hundred years of anti-Imperialist rhetoric will somehow bring benefits that the previous hundred years did not.
In these countries, this brand of tired anti-Imperialism is a figleaf for authoritarians. In the West, it is masturbatory politics for a certain type of narcissistic Westerner with a saviour complex, who fundamentally believes only Westerners have agency in the world, and everyone else are just motes of dust floating in the West's shadow. It's this confluence that results in absolute travesties like Chomsky supporting the Khmer Rouge, a far greater evil than all the worst allegations against America stacked together.
If you want to help the Middle East, get involved in civil society building efforts that help bridge the gap between sectarian communities; support charitable and poverty relief efforts that are not affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood; get involved in civil rights advocacy on behalf of the oppressed in the Middle East (women, LGBT communities, religious and ethnic minorities, the list goes on); partake in initiatives aimed at tackling corruption, organised crime, etc. Or at the very least encourage and support the people who do these things, rather than regurgitating half-remembered anti-Imperialist tropes from your polsci 101 class, as though that were a contribution of any value whatsoever.
The one thing that will absolutely not help them, at all, is more meandering, false narratives about how they have no agency in the face of shadowy global hegemons, and how should just lie down and wait impassively for some sort of new, more just world to be given to them by their Western betters.
Chomsky never backed the Khmer rouge, he questioned some of the claims and western focus on the Khmer rouge, which was ignoring US culpability. He also never denied that the Khmer rouge were committing atrocities.
Was he wrong? Yes, at least in specific instances. But he was never outright supportive of the Khmer rouge. This is very old propaganda.
> The law imposes the death penalty on persons convicted of fatal terrorist attacks. In military courts, the death penalty is the "default"; only Palestinians are tried. In civilian courts, both Israelis and Palestinians are tried, but the law applies only to those who "'intentionally cause the death of a person with the aim of denying the existence of the State of Israel'—a definition designed to exclude Jewish terrorists". It therefore "effectively enshrines capital punishment for Palestinians alone".
And to preempt the "but that's Palestinians, not Israeli Arabs" bit, nope:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terms_for_Palestinian_citizens...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel lists all sorts of other smaller inequities:
> In 2005, the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education said that the Israeli government spent an average of $192 a year on Arab students compared to $1,100 for Jewish students.
> In the 2002 budget, Israel's health ministry allocated Arab communities less than 1% of its 277 m-shekel (£35m) budget (1.6 m shekels {£200,000}) to develop healthcare facilities.
Nevertheless, you should always ask yourselves: would you prefer being an gay Arab in Tel Aviv or a gay Jew in Gaza?
A decent number of Israeli Jews have to do that as well, since Israel recognizes Jewish marriages only under orthodox rabbis. Some Israeli Jews are not even considered Jews under strict orthodox rules.
They don't have to if they are one of the approved religions. That's a restriction on religious freedom.
> since Israel recognizes Jewish marriages only under orthodox rabbis
I don't get how is this evidence of religious freedom.
marriage = civil union + religion
Of course everyone should be free to call their civil union whatever they like and the government shouldn’t differentiate at all if your civil union has a religious blessing as well. Just because some governments appropriated the religious terminology and/or the civil union developed from a union sanctioned by a priest doesn’t mean that a government needs to guarantee everyone a religious marriage. To the contrary. Everyone should be able (and required) to register the civil union if they want to be treated as married by the state. I’m not here to defend the status quo of all the laws in Israel - I’m here to emphasize that your reading of the laws about civil unions and marriages in incomplete and the standards you apply to Israel are a hundred times higher than those you seem to apply to any other country. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Yeah, we tried "separate but equal" here too.
> On the other hand, does Hamas recognise a Jewish marriage?
Being the good guys is about more than being "second worst".
> Being the good guys is about more than being "second worst".
If you cannot think about any group that’s not as bad as Hamas, but worse than Israel, I‘m happy to help… just ask!
That's great.
That's not Israel's setup.
> If you cannot think about any group that’s not as bad as Hamas, but worse than Israel, I‘m happy to help… just ask!
"Others are worse" is not the moral standard one should aspire to, either.
Edit: just check it, it’s true. “You can choose to have EITHER a religious ceremony OR a civil ceremony if you’re getting married.” [0]
So since we’ve established that it’s a common practice in some countries that marriages can be either religious or civil, but still equal before the law, could you please elaborate how exactly civil unions in Israel are discriminated against compared to religious marriages?
[0] https://www.gov.uk/marriages-civil-partnerships/plan-your-ce...
No one gets (civil) married, everyone can get a civil union: Fine!
Certain people can get (civil) married, others get a civil union: Not fine.
This is very simple. "Separate, but equal" never works.
Also: this kind of discrimination - if there is any - is targeting Arabic and Non-Arabic Israelis in the exact same way. So I don’t fully understand why you pointed this out as an Act of discrimination against Arabs.
You, in your own comments, acknowledged they are similar, not identical.
For starters, you have to go abroad for one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_of_civil_marriage_...
They also aren't valid abroad sometimes.
"In 2017, the Florida Third District Court of Appeal held that although Israel recognizes 'reputed spouses' as a legal union, the union is not a marriage under Israeli law, and therefore, Florida law does not recognize the relationship as a marriage."
And some people (an atheist marrying a religious person, for example) can't get one at all within Israel.
"In 2010, Israel passed the Civil Union Law for Citizens with no Religious Affiliation, 2010, allowing a couple to form a civil union in Israel if they are both registered as officially not belonging to any religion."
> Also: this kind of discrimination - if there is any - is targeting Arabic and Non-Arabic Israelis in the exact same way.
"It's fine, we discriminate against other minorities!" is not the argument you imagine it to be.
> "Others are worse" is not the moral standard one should aspire to, either.
OP stated that all Arabs hate Israel. This opens up the debate if living in an Arabic ethnofascist state such as Gaza or a Muslim fundamentalist state like Saudi Arabia would be the better choice for those 2 million Arabs. So yes, I think being the lesser of two evils is already the answer to that binary choice.