Viva la revolucion!

Like everyone else I know, I'm more than a little nervous as to what comes next in Egypt...

But only an utterly heartless person can see the joy of the people throwing off an autocrat and not be extremely proud. Proud not to be an American -- proud to be a human being. Today is a great day. We should all salute the Egyptians who helped make this happen.

Someone I know said, "You don't really think it's going to be a democracy, do you?"

Sadly, no I do not. The sneaking suspicion I have (which is due in part to my there's-no-such-thing-as-good-news Jewish nature) is that the Muslim Brotherhood will step in to fill the power void. Which could tilt Egypt towards two things that I really don't want to see: Sharia law and war with Israel.

But that chapter has not been written yet. I refuse to not honor the Egyptians for doing what was long overdue: Casting off tyranny.

Moreover, not only did the Egyptians rightly refuse to compromise (Mubarak had to step down. Every other ship had sailed.) But they got what they want with such admirable restraint. This revolution has been largely bloodless -- and I'm slightly stunned by this.

In a region where for the last decade or so, Palestinian suicide bombers have been egged on to do their horrific work, well, this is different. This is a change. Dare I say, a big one. And I very much hope the Palestinians are paying close attention to what happened in Cairo for the last 18 days.

We'll all see what happens tomorrow. I'm nervous. But excited, too. Viva!

Gaza goes bananas

Lawrence Wright (the author of what was far and away the single best book about Al Qaeda, The Looming Tower) has a must read piece in the New Yorker this week about Gaza.

I think the more interesting part of the article is the beginning and end (the stuff about Israel's recent Gaza war is mostly familiar).

Gaza sounds like absolute hell. And Hamas seems to be only getting crazier. As a portrait of the Byzantine nature of life in Gaza right now, it's one of the best recent pieces I've yet read. It also includes the following quote:

'Mozini [one of the Palestinian negotiators with Israel] began reciting the names of Gazan prisoners who had received sentences of more than a thousand years [whom Mozini insisted be released]. Hassan Salameh, a Hamas operative, is serving forty-eight consecutive life sentences for recruiting suicide bombers. Walid Anjes helped plan the bombing at Moment and two other devastating attacks. He has twenty-six life sentences. Mozini mentioned a prisoner named Abdel Hadi Suleiman Ghneim: “He was riding in a bus. All he did was grab the steering wheel and take it over a cliff.” He laughed. “Sixteen people were dead and many wounded—even Ghneim was wounded!” Ghneim received a life sentence for every person who died on the bus. These punishments struck Mozini as ludicrous.'

This is the kind of thing that makes you think there is no hope whatsoever.

I mean, Palestinian officials are surprised that Israel would sentence terrorists who drive buses off cliffs to hundreds of years in prison? This is what gets them outraged? (Or, even worse, makes them laugh?)

If the Palestinians want to get outraged at Israel, Wright offers more than enough ammunition. The fact that 300 children were killed in the recent operation is enough for me.

This doesn't mean that Israel loses all moral credibility, obviously -- but it is also obvious that the Israelis were much more reckless than they are willing to concede in this January operation. Look, war is hell, and collateral damage is inevitable. But why was Israel shelling schools, for chrissake? I'm sure that part of the reason was faulty intelligence. And Israel would much rather conduct their war from the safety of a predator drone relying on what intelligence they have. But that's really no excuse. Israel has a responsibility to shield the Palestinian civilians -- and they've done a shitty job. If they are going to invade another country, Israeli soldiers need to assume some risk. They avoided it with horrible consequences.

Tzipi Livnit also has a memorable quote: "Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild."

Quite frankly, I think Livnit is right. Israel should respond (aggressively) towards acts of terror against its civilians. That's not the issue. But not all Palestinians are terrorists -- and I'm not sure Israel has learned this lesson.

The only thing hopeful in this whole article is towards the end. Hamas sponsored a workshop entitled, "How to Talk to Israel" -- and the Palestinians were asking the kinds of questions I've always wished they asked. (I.e., that they should stop saying one thing amongst themselves -- that they'd like to destroy Israel -- and another thing to the rest of the world; that they should think through the consequences of indiscriminate acts of violence; that they have atrocious leadership problems.)

Let's hope they keep asking these questions -- but I don't see how you can finish reading this article and feel even a glimmer of optimism.

Now THAT sucks

One of the big questions I've had for the past four years was:

If Ariel Sharon has been in a coma since his stroke four years ago... is he still fat?

I mean, he's on an IV drip, no? Don't you lose weight on those things? He's certainly not eating like he used to. I figured that the one good thing for Sharon would be waking up from his coma and discovering himself a hundred pounds lighter. I mean, would that make up for the coma? No. But it would be the one really awesome fringe benefit.

Well, it turns out, he's still fat.

"He looks about the same," says his doctor, Shlomo Segev in this article in the Daily Beast. "You would recognize him."

Man, that sucks.

A generation of schlubs?

Over the long weekend, I was reading Kenneth Pollack's new book about the Middle East, A Path out of the Desert (which I'm not quite finished with yet -- and will likely post about again later in the week).

As is usually the case with Pollack's books, there is much that is fascinating, much that is indisputable, and much to disagree with. But I'm not concerned with the politics just yet. There was this passage that jumped out at me which I'd like to throw out there for my fellow schlubs:

"'Studies indicate that the most widespread style of child rearing in Arab families is the authoritarian mode accompanied by the overprotective,' according to the 2003 Arab Human Development Report. 'This reduces children's independence, self-confidence and social efficiency, and fosters passive attitudes and hesitant decision making skills...'"

Whoa! This never occurred to me before, but might the big problem with the Arab world be that they've become a generation of schlubs?

There was another passage, too, that's worth citing (if only for readers of FSTS): 

"Indeed, a great many government offices in the Arab world and Iran are occupied by people with the title of 'engineer' whom you would not want to build a bridge for you."

Sounds pretty schlubby to me.

When I brought this up to Grosspere and Grossmere, they suggested that the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, might be a schlub.

I'm not 100 percent sure I agree with them about that one. I've always believed that to be a schlub, you have to be a benign personality. (Or at least not be a terrorist.) But you have to admit: The guy might not have been a schlub, but he was certainly hapless. The idea of blowing up a plane using a bomb you're carrying around in your shoe? Not being able to light the match that will ignite your bomb? Well, I'm not trying to diminish the seriousness of the guy's crimes but he has some eerily schlubby traits.