<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Ilan Pappe writes<div><br></div><div><font class="text14"><font class="content"><i>…The peace treaties with
Israel are the symptoms of moral corruption not the disease itself --
this is why Syrian President Bashar Asad, undoubtedly an anti-Israeli
leader, is not immune from this wave of change. No, what is at stake
here is the pretense that Israel is a stable, civilized, western island
in a rough sea of Islamic barbarism and Arab fanaticism. The "danger"
for Israel is that the cartography would be the same but the geography
would change. It would still be an island but of barbarism and
fanaticism in a sea of newly formed egalitarian and democratic states.<br><br>
In the eyes of large sections of Western civil society the democratic
image of Israel has long ago vanished; but it may now be dimmed and
tarnished in the eyes of others who are in power and politics. How
important is the old, positive image of Israel for maintaining its
special relationship with the United States? Only time will tell.<br><br>
But one way or another the cry rising from Cairo's Tahrir Square is a
warning that fake mythologies of the "only democracy in the Middle
East," hardcore Christian fundamentalism (far more sinister and corrupt
than that of the Muslim Brotherhood), cynical military-industrial
corporate profiteering, neo-conservatism and brutal lobbying will not
guarantee the sustainability of the special relationship between Israel
and the United States forever.<br><br>
And even if the special relationship perseveres for a while, it is now
based on even shakier foundations. The diametrically-opposed case
studies of the so far resilient anti-American regional powers of Iran
and Syria, and to some extent Turkey, on the one hand, and the fallen
ultimate pro-American tyrants, on the other are indicative: even if it
is sustained, American support may not be enough in future to maintain
an ethnic and racist "Jewish state" in the heart of a changing Arab
world. …</i>
</font></font></div><div><font class="text14"><font class="content"><i><br></i></font></font></div><div><font class="text14"><font class="content">He has hopes that the times are a-changing.</font></font></div><div><font class="text14"><font class="content"><br></font></font></div><div><font class="text14"><font class="content"><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11803.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11803.shtml</a></font></font></div></body></html>