Worldwide Java Jag: 2011-01-30

Monday, January 31, 2011

A Light Unto the Nations

Obscured in the sea of upheaval that is today’s Mideast is a little lighthouse of hope, a beacon to the peaceful, prosperous future yearned for by the oppressed. It is tiny, imperfect and often wrong…yet it is the brightest light in the ocean of darkness. It is, oddly, the destination that, if its revolutions are successful, the entire Arab and Islamic world yearns to arrive at.

Let us describe this place so we can see in its reflection what the Islamic street so desperately craves. First, there is the basic freedom to be heard. Whatever you have to say, you can. You are free to criticize, insult, offend, accuse and call for the downfall of any and every person in power. No leader is immune and no insult too strong—even the accusation that the president is a war criminal is allowed. Unlike the billions in the Arab world, China and Russia, no one will arrest you, throw you in jail, torture you or shut down your Internet account. You can criticize the local trash pick-up schedule, your child’s school principal or the commander of the army. You can do this in video, onstage or in the newspaper. Here, in this parcel of land, when there is failure there is accountability. When a war is lost, there is a commission of investigation, there is a published analysis, there are firings of generals and resignations of ministers. Criminal activity is punished, and no one is immune. A recent president could be and was sentenced to jail for his actions.

This most basic, most important freedom must be the cornerstone of any country that wants to provide a real life for its citizens. Israel is the solution.

Political change is via the ballot. This seemingly simple demand is at the head of the list for protesters from Teheran to Cairo to Tiananmen Square. Not phony, absurd elections like in Russia or Egypt, where the opposition is pre-eliminated. Not stolen elections and total fraud like Iran and Afghanistan, but real elections. Yes, elections are messy and confusing, many voices, many differing blocks and many shifting alliances, but they are the safety valve that would have eliminated all the rage taking place in the streets of the Islamic world. Yes to representatives accountable to you. No more military generals and their bayonets, which are willed to their sons and sons of sons. That goes too for Iranian mullahs who claim that God and the previous mullah has appointed them for life. Thuggery disguised as divine right has been exposed for the brutality behind it. The sprit of 1776 is now in the air, mingling with the smoke of roasted lamb. Free, fair elections from Teheran to Rabat to Tunis, whose leaders wouldn’t want that. Israel is the solution.

Economic opportunity. There are millions of Arab and Islamic youth today who see no economic future for themselves. This is where the rage comes from, and why it is so deep. China has made a deal with the democracy devil. They in essence have promised rising living standards in return for a politically unaccountable Communist party power. The Islamic world has failed to make even that bargain. Their leaders want the power without delivering an economic payoff. The street has said no. The street wants education, advances by merit rather than connections, opportunities presented and taken by entrepreneurship, the rule of law and the security of transactions. No more baksheesh. These demands are echoed over and over. They seem so basic to us but are so revolutionary to them. Rising economic power seen all over the rest of the world from Asia to Latin America is not lost on the youth of Islam—they want a slice of the pie. They want to travel, to have passports that are welcomed and to see progress. Israel is the solution.

Yes, the road ahead is very perilous. Like the Bolsheviks vs. the Mensheviks in 1917, the well-organized Islamic extremists may seize power in the political vacuum created by the abdicating generals. Yes, the threat to the West and to Israel from the Hezbollah-Hamas axis is very real. However, these are just mirror tyrannies to the secular shahs and generals. They are not the end game or the final stage. Iran is the example. It has the most repressive and murderous regime in all of Islam. Its citizens are less free and more enraged than anywhere, its economic opportunities granted to fellow fanatics, not the most talented. It too will fail and fall.

The road ahead is freedom for all in the house of Islam. When Islam awakens from its repressive slumber, it will look around for an example, a light to guide it to the path of freedom. For all its faults, for all its flaws, for all its shortsighted actions and silly leaders, Israel is the one place where change can and does take place through the process of democracy. It would be pretty hard for the Islamic world, when it is free to decide its own destiny, not to see that.