Tunisia: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman's Analysis

By Barry Rubin

If you are interested in what's happening with Tunisia and why that country has a chance of making it democratically, read Bruce Maddy-Weitzman's article in Middle East Forum. He suggests four key reasons for optimism on Tunisia:

1.a compact, well-defined national entity with a particular history as an open Mediterranean trading country, and thus a strong collective sense of self;


2.a modernization process that produced a substantial, educated middle class, the highest rate of female literacy and lowest rate of population growth in the Arab world, and a systematic effort to raise the status of women, including the banning of polygamy (no other Arab country has dared to explicitly do so, as it contradicts the Qur'an);

3.a tradition of active civil society, particularly labor unions and the bar association; and

4.a small-sized, non-politicized military, whose chief of staff, Rachid Ammar, pointedly refused Ben Ali's directive to fire on protestors, instead acting to control policemen, security and intelligence personnel, and affiliated thugs. He also turned aside any suggestion that he and his fellow officers, and not civilians, assume control of the country.

Here In One Sentence is What Obama Doesn't Understand About the Middle East

This article is published on PajamasMedia.

By Barry Rubin

Here's the sentence:

The changes in the region are producing more extremism, not more moderation.

That applies to attitudes toward America and Israel as well as on internal social issues.
Rachi Ghanouchi, head of Tunisia's Islamist movement--a man long portrayed as a moderate in the West--just publicly came out and called for Israel's destruction. And what does Voice of America tell us and the Arabs? That Ghanouchi is a moderate who doesn't want an Islamist state! Your tax dollars at work. What does CBS News tell us? That the Islamist party denounced the killing of a priest. Obviously very tolerant people.

Of course, the Tunisian Islamists are far weaker than those in Egypt. Still, the West is deluding itself in thinking they are moderate.

Yet let's listen--thanks to MEMRI--to what the VOA and CBS producers' counterparts in the Arab world is saying. In an article written for a Qatari and a Jordanian newspaper, entitled "Israel Is Surely Temporary," Samir al-Hijjawi says

"It's time for Israel to go... It's time for the end of the great lie... It's time [for Israel] to go because the regimes protecting [it]... are toppling one by one." He added that the recent  protests on Israel's borders prove the Palestinians and Arabs will never relinquish all of Palestine because it is sacred Muslim territory.

I'll bet that every producer and pretty much every staff member of al-Jazira--the station Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recommended as accurate--agrees.
Get it? For Obama, the "Arab Spring" means moderation and democracy. To most Arabs and Muslims, it represents a resurgence of Islamism and nationalism, the prelude for getting rid of Israel and U.S. influence in the region.

I'd be bothered less if Obama acknowledges that but claimed that his proteges would win. The fact that he has zero percent understanding of the threat is the prelude to disaster. The fact that almost all Western newspapers and television news operations think the same way as Obama makes the situation even worse.