The Couscous Revolution

The toppling of Tunisian leader Ben Ali brings the revolutionary spirit back to the Mid-East. Not since the Iranian revolution of 1979 has a spontaneous popular movement thrown out an entrenched strongman via civil unrest. While this is already being called the Twitter revolution and everyone will make a big deal that Facebook also played a part (as I am sure they did), the fabled Arab street communicated that it had enough. The message is important, the medium less so. This revolt is perhaps the most profound event since the Iranian revolution and has incalculable and important implications for Israeli policy makers.

The back-story is that the entire Arab world has traded political repression, low economic growth and the denial of personal freedom for the war against Israel. One cannot exaggerate the anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish drumbeat that has gone on since Israel’s founding in 1948. It permeates every Imam’s Friday night sermon, every political platform and every media outlet in the Arab world. The day that Al-Aqsa, the Temple Mount, is liberated is all that matters. Martyrdom was not only blowing yourself up, it was also sacrificing yourself and your family the basic human needs for progress and betterment. Entire countries like Lebanon, which could have been the Switzerland of the region, have given themselves over to Hezbollah's “resistance.” They have brought upon their children war and death. If the Shia in Lebanon’s South is to believe they want even more death and destruction as the missiles, they are hiding attest.

Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Saddam’s Iraq spent more energy focusing on Israel than the plight of their citizenry. Tunisia’s revolt says that may be over forever. The ultra youthful Arabs don’t really remember the Nakba, the same way American Jews don’t really feel the Holocaust any longer. However, they do remember the corrupt civil servant that demanded a bribe to get their shop license. They remember the police being everywhere holding them down. They remember the price of every basic necessity skyrocketing due to entrenched state monopolies. They do remember there were absolutely no jobs when they graduated with college degrees. Most of all they remember their contact with the affluent freedom based nations of Europe and the Americas.

I remember a decade ago having long talks with an Egyptian youth who worked at a parking garage in Manhattan. He had a huge extended family back home and had to return to help them but he did so sadly, reluctant to give up all the simple freedoms he found in America. There are hundreds of millions of Arabs that share this experience even if it is just on a TV or computer screen, they have access to and have tasted a wider world than their local Mosque.

They are not going to suffer for the Palestinians any longer. They are fed up with their societies and are done sacrificing to the fantasy of reclaiming Jaffa. Since it doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon, this just makes them even more furious. All you need to know is that last year Iranian youth turned the annual hate Israel day called Quds Day into a hate Iranian leaders day, and were brutally suppressed.
I believe this: if Israel withdrew from the West Bank tomorrow, five of six Arab governments would not last a year, and if they did it was because they doubled down on the use of censorship, force and brutality. The end of the occupation would be the end of Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia and possibly Morocco, Algeria and Libya. None of these dated militarily repressive regimes are delivering what their youthful citizens need. A Palestinian state would free these youths to demand change.

Ironically, the Tunisian Couscous revolution may ease the pressure on Israel to leave the West Bank. The Arab governments just listed aren’t fools, their strongmen and hereditary rulers can look at what happened in Tunis and see the same thing I do, heck the Zionist occupier card is all they know. They may start to actually subtly support the occupation and savor the view as the Israelis continue their unending and nasty task of repression. The more Palestinian fathers shot at Israeli checkpoints, the better for them.

Read the Arab press, these constant shootings get far more play in Saudi Arabia than the lack of jobs in Riyadh or the continued rape of underage girls forced into a fourth marriage.

Or it could get worse. The Arab governments feeling really threatened may all go the Nasser/Saddam/Ahmadinejad route and heavy up the “kill the Jews” rhetoric. Don’t count that out. So many Arab leaders live in the past and are so out of touch with their own citizens; they don’t know what to do. Corruption, lies, repression, and the stench of failure are what they know.

Things may slip back into the familiar for a while. We need to see what the new military government in Tunisia does next, but for Israel and the Arabs a new day is upon them.