Losing generations for fun and profit

One of my many guilty pleasures is watching moderately old Egyptian TV dramas. They are a universe on their own. It is hard to describe, but they are simultaneously poignant, superficial, kitch, classy, delusional, and excessively realistic. You have to see it to believe it. So, last August, I was watching one of my favorites from the early naughts. The show centered on class warfare (as always). The upper class girl runs away from her family and joins with the working class good guys (as is tradition).

In one scene, her mom stands there saying incredulously, "Why do you hate me so much, am I Sharon?"

This hit me in the summer of 2023 as extremely dissonant. Why is this a thing a mom would say to her daughter. It sounds too political, too forced even for an Egyptian soap opera. But I remember watching this show when it was released, and I vaguely recall this sentence not sounding jarring at all back then.

Then it flooded back. My memory has a weird tendency to work through odor. Suddenly, I could smell tear gas. Since signing the camp David accord with Egypt, Israel insisted on having its embassy on a high rise building on the Nile 700 meters away from Cairo University. So, when the second Intifada happened, I also happened to be there, between an angry mob of university students and the Israeli embassy.

I could suddenly remember why the students were so angry. The images of slaughtered Palestinians were seared into all our memories at the time. Yet twenty years were enough for this brand to fade away. In the summer of 2023, I no longer remembered why anyone would insult someone by calling them Sharon.

My generation had been lost for at least a decade, but it was forgetting. The generation of my kids had no idea what Israel is. They did not care for it, but also didn't care to hate it. They had no feelings about Israel. They vaguely understood that one day they tried to take away our land and we took it back. But when my kids asked me if we are OK with them now, I stammered. I honestly did not know. I guess so.

But that was August.

After Israel started responding to Hamas' attack, I expected another generation to be lost. I could see it coming because I've been through it before. Israel will shoot up a NICU or white phosphorous a refugee camp or something. And we will go into the seasonal cycle, the normal monsoon. People will start a boycott campaign that will be partly good, but partly self destructive. Things will taper off, and it will take another decade or two before we rinse and repeat.

But this time feels different. And it's been driving me crazy why.

I thought maybe the magnitude. When people asked Israel "What kinds of atrocities will you commit in Gaza this time around?" Israel answered "Yes!" But the difference isn't quantitative. There is something fundamentally different.

So I thought it maybe because Israel came out of the gate trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza into Egypt. But no, the difference in the generation being lost goes beyond Egypt.

And then I figured it out. The difference this time around is not about Israel. It is about two things: The west, and the Arab Spring. Specifically, this has to do with the Arab Spring happening and failing, then the West trying to recycle it recently; and then the way the west responded to Israel's ethnic cleansing. And it has to be in that order.

The Arab Spring, its failure, and consistently trying to revive it have been seen in two ways in the Arab world. The first is a portion of the population who saw the west as truly principled. They stand for individual freedoms, equality, and the right to expression. Sometimes things will crop up, for example the far right in Europe, but it is easy to gloss over it as part of the process by which the west cleanses itself peacefully. The Ukraine war proved the moral superiority of the west in supporting freedom and principles, and the moral depravity of the global south in taking a more nuanced approach. This gave the west the moral standing to dictate what is and is not acceptable in the Arab world. It allowed the West to piss allover Qatar's World Cup because Qatar had to give the same rights to LGBTQ people that America didn't ten years ago. It allowed the west to dictate to us who we should let speak, what constitutes a peaceful protest, and whether the choices we make are acceptable.

The other way to see all this is that the Arab Spring, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and certain "Standards" are just cudgels. They are used to beat us over the head when and if convenient. When and if convenient you can call him bone saw Bin Salman, and when and if convenient, you can give him a Fox interview.

The West now bans some protests and allows others. It is illegal to say you oppose genocide in some countries. If you oppose apartheid and want everyone in one country to have equal rights, you are hateful. You can get your visa revoked, get sacked out of your university, lose your job, or maybe even go to jail. Europe supports summary executions in the West Bank and suffocating premies in maternity wards in Gaza. Some countries, openly so.

I have no interest in why the west, particularly Europe is doing this. This is their business. This is their guilt. The Germans killed Jews because they were not white enough. They whitened Jews and are now supporting them in ethnically cleansing a new people who are not white enough, because you can't let the holocaust happen again. I have no capacity to approach how this logic works. It requires a different culture and history to understand this.

What I care about is the shock I see in all the millennials in Egypt who saw a Messianic savior in the west. They are facing the west that us older folk always knew was there. It is a bit funny, and there is Schadenfreude in seeing them contorting over this. But I worry about where it ends up.

There are two ways it will go. The first is to realize that the west shall not save thee, and thus we should start loving ourselves and our culture. We don't have to be a copy of them. We can be who we are and be proud of who we are. If someone says we are not democratic, we can laugh at them. If a European makes fun of how little we work in Ramada, we can send them daily work emails in August to see if they reply. We can insist that they respect who we are and leave us alone.

The other way this goes is more Islamic fundamentalism. This is how it's always gone. Killing, shock at hipocrisy, radicalization, then Islamist violence. And the final part of the cycle is a bunch of white people wondering where the violence comes from, which prompts them to do more killing. But here's the thing, we always end up losing in this. We are the ones who mostly get killed and held back. 

I really wish our youths learn the right lesson this time.

What is there to see, between the river and the sea?

When America was attacked on September the 11^th, it waged a righteous war in Afghanistan and a dumb war in Iraq. In both wars, when the US got intelligence on a target, they would trail it for days, picking an opportune moment to hit the target while minimizing civilian loss. These wars are characterized as disastrous failures rife with violations. 

In its current war against Gaza, if Israel gets vague intelligence that a target is hiding in a tunnel in an area, it carpet-bombs the entire neighborhood with armament intended to compact the soil. what happens to everyone in the neighborhood is not a consideration. I am realizing that Israel is not a normal country. To understand what Israel is doing and how we in the Arab world should respond, we must understand Israel from its own perspective.

So, what is Israel? Israel is the Jewish homeland. It started with the realization among European Jewry that Jews need a place to call their own country. Jews had been persecuted for centuries, and when they were not, they were dependent on the goodwill of those around them, which has always been fickle. They needed a place where it was normal and safe to be Jewish.

One common myth among Arabs is that the early Zionists did not necessarily target Palestine for settlement but wanted a home for Jews anywhere. They did consider options in Africa, Russia, and Latin America briefly, but they started with Palestine, continued to think Palestine, and ended in Palestine.

Why? Because Palestine is very important for Jews. Jews had a continuous presence among the other populations of the area for centuries. They also have origins in the ancient kingdoms of Judaea and Israel. 

The Jewish national origin myth is that of a people who were enslaved in Egypt, escaped, ethnically cleansed Canaan, and created a powerful united kingdom. This kingdom then split into a heroic southern kingdom, and an impure northern kingdom. The northern kingdom was broken up, but the southern kingdom held on because it was religiously pure.

The real story is that the Israelites were never in Egypt. They were a native Canaanite confederacy that worshipped a common storm god. There was never a united kingdom. Both the northern and southern kingdoms were “impure”, in that they included all kinds of people. Both were minor princedoms surrounded by equally minor Canaanite, Phoenician, and west Semitic principalities and city states.

This land was never pure and simple, it always included all sorts of ethnicities and religions. But there is no denying Jews have an origin in it, which is why Zionism was always going to go for Palestine.

When Israel was formed, it was on the trailing edge of colonialism. It had a narrow window to ethnically cleanse land, which it mostly managed to do. It then declared itself Jewish and Democratic. Both are critical. If Israel is not Jewish, it is meaningless regarding its original purpose. If it is not democratic, it loses the support of its patrons in the west.

As the Arab world emerged from colonialism, Israel found it very useful to contrast itself with its surroundings. It had to look secular, free, democratic, and in a certain way that nobody speaks but everybody understands, “white”. It had to hide religious Jews who creep out Europeans, put gay pride parades front and center, promote leftist (but not too leftist) ideals, and generally give off the image of a secular place full of vibrant diverse opinion.

Israel created this image, and sold itself as a heroic little white western David in a forest of barbaric brown Goliaths. Things could have settled right there, but Israel was a victim of its success and our failure. In 1967, Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, Sinai, and the Golan. Suddenly Israel asked itself: why not? I deserve it. I earned it. And it was enabled by the west.

Israel proper is Israel along the 1948 international borders. It has a population of roughly 10 million. About 7.5 million are Jews, 2 million ae Arabs, and the rest are migrant workers.

Above is an area known as Gush Dan. This is simply the Metropolitan area of Tel Aviv. It has a population of about 4.5 million. Most are Jews. Greater Jerusalem has a population of about 1.2 million. Of which around 700,000 are Jews.

The distance between the sea boardwalk in Tel Aviv and the edge of Israel’s easternmost settlement in Jerusalem, Maale Adumim is 62Km. The distance between Rishon Lezion, on the eastern side  of Tel Aviv and the Western reaches of Jerusalem is 37.5Km.

The distance between two satellite cities in Cairo, October 6 and 10^th of Ramadan is 96km. But this is a crazy trip that most people will not make in a lifetime. On the other hand, many people commute daily between New Cairo and 6 October, 60Km apart.

So about 5.2 millions of Israel’s 7.5 million Jews live in what would be considered in many places a single metropolitan area. The rest of the country is as follows: The Galilee, which is mostly Arab, the Negev which is about half Arab, Haifa which is about one third Arab, and the perimeter of the west bank, which is mostly Arab.

Here is another weird distance, the northern edge of Gaza, and the southwestern edge of the west bank are 33Km apart. If a Palestinian from Gaza wants to visit family at the end of these 33 kilometers, they have to cross into Egypt, fly to Jordan, and then enter the west bank from Jordan. The trip will take multiple days and require two entry visas. Once in the West Bank, the dude will probably take a few more days to move another 30Km from the Jordanian border to the eastern edge of the West Bank, 33Km from where he started. Along the way, he will need multiple Israeli passes and will be stopped at countless checkpoints for indeterminate periods.

That's a lot of distortion of the fabric of spacetime, and with one objective: to satisfy Israel's prerequisites about itself, to be democratic and Jewish. But what does that mean? What does Jewish mean? We are always asked to pledge our support for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. I honestly don’t know what that means. I think people have rights; I do not know if states have the right to exist as something specific.

But if we cut the bullshit, the “Jewish nature” of Israel means that it has a Jewish majority, speaks Hebrew, and has aspects of Jewish religion and culture integrated into laws and daily life. This makes it a safe haven for Jews anywhere should they need it.

But Israel also wants to expand. It feels it needs “lebensraum” sort of speak. The fact that most Jews in Israel essentially live in one city doesn't seem to register in this expansionist philosophy. Jews feel a historical right to all the land from the river to the sea. This is based on a deep connection that some Jews, especially religious ones, feel towards the west bank. The west bank is where ancient Judaea was after all. The west bank also elbows into lake Tiberias, the Jordan river, and the Dead Sea, all resources Israel wants to never give up.

So, between the river and the sea, there are 7.5 million Jews in Israel and the west bank. There are 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, the same number in the west bank, and about 2 million in Israel proper. This is dangerously close to the Jewish population between the river and the sea. Israel cannot allow everyone to be free from the river to the sea if it wants to be democratic and Jewish. If everyone is free, it is not comfortably Jewish. If it is Jewish between the river and the sea, it cannot allow itself to be democratic.

None of this is new. Israel has always known it had only four options. These are: the two-state solution, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the one state solution.

In the early nineties, Israel opted for the two-state solution. This is the solution favored by the Arab world and the west. It is also the safest. It has challenges. Israel will have to contend with an independent Palestine so close to its major (and let’s be real only) population center in Gush Dan. The Palestinians will have to contend with forming a viable state on the tiny resource poor land of the west bank and Gaza. But everyone else was ready to help both sides be successful, and there was hope it could work.

This perhaps died with the assassination of Rabin and was buried by Sharon and Netanyahu. The expansion of Jewish settlements deep in the hill country of the west bank now makes it impossible to have any viable land swap, and Israel will not evacuate these deep settlement blocks. The right wing in Israel set out to kill the two-state solution, and they were successful.

The apartheid solution was Israel’s long-term vision starting with Sharon. In this solution, Israel partitioned its demographic problem so they can deal with it. The theory is the “Arabs” between the river and the sea should not be seen as a monolith. This is against the Israeli propaganda, which promotes Arabs as an amorphous blob, this traditionally allows Israel to rally western support for ethnic cleansing. But Israelis can face reality when it’s to their advantage. “Arabs” between the river and the sea really are:

• The bedwins of the Negev, who Israel managed to recruit. Israel had little interest in taking over all of the resource poor desert, and they were happy to trade some privileges for bedwin allegiance to the Jewish state.

• The Druze of the north, who had to endure centuries of persecution and were more than happy to declare allegiance to the Jewish state. Druze and bedwin soldiers in the Israeli army tend to be among the most ruthless to Palestinian civilians.

• This leaves a more manageable 1.5 million Muslim and Christian Palestinian citizens of Israel who can be contained to segregated communities in the Galilee.

• In the west bank, Palestinians will be strangled by ever shrinking Bantustans and a pass system. This will allow Jewish settlers to gradually takeover all of the resources in the land, making life near impossible for the Palestinians who remain.

So, what is wrench in the gears here? Well, the open-air prison of Gaza with 2.5 million Palestinians. Any equation from the river to the sea is ruined by Gaza. The narrow strip is exploding with the progeny of refugees cleansed from south central Israel during its creation. 

So, Israel decided to withdraw from Gaza. But a Gaza without Israel, even with Hamas, had the possibility of improving. If a de facto independent Palestinian city-state improved, it could inspire uprising in the West Bank. So Gaza could not succeed. Enabling Hamas was instrumental here, since Hamas are not really interested in good governance. But Gaza also had to be cutoff from its resources. And for Gaza, this is the coast and airspace, which Israel completely took control of.

Meanwhile Israel aided by western media pushed a narrative that Egypt is participating in the siege through closing the Rafah crossing. The Rafah crossing processed 200,000 crossings in 2022. Five hundred trucks carrying goods flowed through it every day. So why is the west, Islamists, and Israel claiming it is “closed”?

Because the opening of Rafah that all these people want is an unconditional opening, and open border. This will make Egypt responsible for all the needs of Gaza. Meanwhile Gaza is not allowed to develop because it does not have access to its air and water. This way Israel will rid itself of 2.5 million pests without allowing them to inspire the remainder of the 7 million. Getting Egypt burdened is an added perk.

And for a long time, this complex ad hoc “plan” was working. Israel had a booming advanced economy, the world pretended Israel was a democracy, and Gulf countries ran to normalize with Israel. Life went on.

October 7^th hit Israel’s very definition. Because if Israel is a Jewish state, then it must be the safest place on Earth for Jews. On October 7^th, it became the most dangerous place on Earth for Jews.

Which is why I think Israel has now chosen answer number 3: ethnic cleansing. I think most Israelis now support genociding or chasing away all Palestinians from Gaza and the west bank. And I think the west will not oppose them. But I also think they will fail. Israel is trying to make things so unbearable for the world, that the world will solve its demographic problem for it. If Egypt is not going to take the Palestinians, Canada can, or Fance, or Turkey, or whatever. Israel just wants to keep killing people and destroying things till it feels safe again.

If it takes killing fifty thousand children and ethnically cleansing millions for Israel to be Jewish and democratic, so be it. And then Israel will be a beacon of light in a sea of brown darkness.

Which is why I think we, as Arabs, should hold Israel’s feet to the fire. Ethnic cleansing and genocide are major war crimes. If the west supports it, we should make them say they support it. The two-state solution was destroyed by Israel, we should stop talking about it.

There is only one solution, the one state solution. And we should be very clear about what that means. This means everyone living between the river and the sea gets to live there. Nobody gets thrown in the desert, nobody gets thrown in the sea. Everyone has the same rights. If these rights are many, they are for all. If they are few, they are for all. Jews everywhere in the world should have the right of “return” or refuge in this one state, let us call it Israel. But every Palestinian whose grandparents were kicked out of this land should also be able to go back.

One democratic secular state with equal rights, safety, and freedom for all. Israel’s worst nightmare. 

Gates of Habu, Way of Horus, Trail of brain farts

The mortuary temple of Rameses the third on the west bank of Thebes is a sight to behold. I am particularly obsessed with the preservation of colors on its walls and ceilings, which until the most recent restoration at Karnak was unique. Outside the temple though, you can see the remains of much less glorious mud brick walls that were used to protect the temple. Then you get to the entrance, which is through a narrow doorway in a huge pylon that looks like the ramparts of a castle. Kind of overkill for a temple.

To understand why, you have to see some of the less colorful depictions inside the temple. They show (and tell of) the victory of Rameses III over the sea people. This is one of the best accounts of this mysterious wave that triggered the Bronze Age collapse. Among the people that Rameses fought were a people that gave their name to the Roman province of Palestine.

On the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, the gateway looks curiously like that of the temple at Madinet Habu. In fact, most New Kingdom temples kind of look like fortresses. This paranoia is based entirely on Egypt's experience with its northeast. In the second intermediate period, a people known as the Hyksos invaded Egypt from Canaan and caused the country to crumble. There is a sense of “never again” from the New Kingdom on Canaan. But it would happen again, and again.

Egypt always understood that key to its strange relation with the Levant is Sinai. Sinai is a place where Egyptians have been since the pre-dynastic period. The mines of southern Sinai were integral to Egypt's economy and all through dynastic Egypt, there was a particular fixation with ensuring the area always remained under Egypt's control. Key to preserving the peace in Sinai is the way of Horus, a series of fortresses along the coast in northern Sinai, designed to strengthen Egypt against the inexorable attacks coming from that direction. Anyone who wanted to enter had to go through a gauntlet of gates of Habu.

Egypt’s entanglement with the Levant never stopped. In Fatimid, Ayubid, and Mamluk Egypt; the Levant was the source of never ending crusader attempts to invade the country. Although this sometimes came from the sea, it often came from the Sinai. In Mamluk Egypt, an existential threat came from farther east and descended upon Egypt from the Levant: the Mongols. Egypt was on its way to disappear from the surface of Earth, like Khwarazm before it. But the Mamluks decided that the only way to save Egypt was to fight the Mongols where Egypt’s weakness lies. The first battle between Mamluk Egypt and the Mongols was in Gaza. Egypt won.

In 1956, during the Suez crisis, Israel, unprovoked, invaded Sinai in collaboration with France and the UK. Moshe Dayan stood in the Knesset and declared that Israel had established a new reality. The “armistice lines” of 1948 (read international borders) no longer meant anything. Many westerners wonder why “The Arabs” never tried peace with Israel. All evidence we have is that Nasser was initially very interested in peace with Israel, but that moment in 1956 certainly gave everyone in Egypt pause. Was Israel interested in peace?

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, reactions in Egypt was mixed. There was the usual cohort of Islamists, western sponsored democracy activists, and leftists who were giddy at "Palestinians freeing themselves with their own hands". But the nature of the Hamas attacks also meant that for the first time there was sympathy for Israel. The Israelis also did a good job with communicating, and sometimes miscommunication what Hamas did in this initial stage. On a human level, a lot of people in Egypt felt sorry for the civilians in Israel who in a way had nothing to do with the suffering of the Palestinians.

But we know the playbook. It would take ten days for Israel to burn a bunch of Palestinian kids to a crisp and any Egyptian sympathy for the Israelis would disappear. Westerners would hold on a bit because Israelis killing children is different because of reasons. But a week later maybe they'd catch up. And this is playing out as usual for most countries. Except Egypt.

Because almost immediately after the attacks, Israel started suggesting, sometimes explicitly, that the Palestinians should exit Gaza to the Sinai. Western officials also immediately embraced this, talking about "humanitarian corridors".

Now the reaction from Egypt towards this would not surprise anyone in Egypt. What I find surprising is that the west was shocked at Egypt's reaction. In Egypt, the suggestion confirmed what many had always suspected: Israel plans to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai so it can annex Gaza. It would do the same for the West Bank, this time depopulating it into Jordan. While some had always dismissed this as far fetched, it was now explicit. Israel as an expansionist entity that knows no borders was reignited in the minds of many.

This is rejected in Egypt. It is rejected in upper Egypt and in lower Egypt; by Muslims and Christians; by secularists, Islamists, and non-ists. It is rejected at the political level, at the military level, at the cultural level, and at the popular level. It is rejected for the sake of Palestinians and for the sake of Egyptians. It is rejected on a boat, it is rejected with a goat. And Egyptian officials, including the president have been blunt and direct in how much rejected this is in language Egypt has not used in decades.

None of this is surprising to anyone who knows the bare minimum about Egypt. Which is why what I find surprising, is the surprise of American and European officials at the reaction of Egypt. It seems they genuinely thought we would be OK with depopulating Gaza and giving up the Sinai. Or maybe they had no idea what causing an exodus from Gaza would mean. I do not know which is worse honestly.

I have always known that westerners view everyone in the region as just an amorphous blob devoid of culture, history, or national identity. And I have always not cared. But I had forgotten that these perceptions sometimes have real world impacts. And here was one. The west saw Egypt as non-distinct and having no national identity. The west, saw Egypt as having no national identity. Egypt. The country that invented national identity.

Even to officials at the highest level of government, we are all just interchangeable brown people. And then there are others, who see us refusing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and then say, hey it seems the Egyptians hate the Palestinians. Well, again I don't care if you do not understand, but the problem is this is starting to have real world consequences. For example, how western media keeps insisting that Egypt does not want to open Rafah for aid, when Israel explicitly keeps screaming that they are the ones who refuse to open it.

Thus, it took a few days of disbelief on both sides as Europeans and Americans say things like hey Palestinians, Egyptians, what’s the difference; while Egyptians stare in disbelief at the utter lack of understanding of culture, history, and the worth of people. I do not think that westerners understand how this suggestion is insulting to both Egyptians and Palestinians.

But there is also an incredible lack of insight. Let us assume Egypt lets everyone in from Palestine. How? How can you guarantee that Hamas doesn’t also come in? And if they come in, wouldn’t that allow them a much longer border from which to attack Israel? I don’t know if Israel didn’t think of this. Perhaps they did and this is the feature not the bug. Maybe they want a pretext to invade Sinai again. But did Europe and America not think of it? Because I don’t know which is worse, if they thought it out or if they didn’t.

It seems that for now the west seems to have backed off from supporting ethnically cleansing Gaza into Sinai. Ethnic cleansing bad. But the new plan is in. When asked what next, Israel is now suggesting that they will “cut ties” with Gaza. And we are already starting to hear brilliant ideas about “integrating” Gaza with Egypt coming in from the Likes of John Bolton.

Now there is a built in resistance to resettling Palestinians in Sinai that goes across the board in Egypt, which is why the country came down on this suggestion like a brick wall. There has not been enough time to develop resistance to the idea of an “Egyptian administered Gaza”. I can see some Nasserists and maybe some Islamists being fine with it. I can see cracks.

But this is a very bad idea. First, it destroys the Palestinians, because Israel all of a sudden gets rid of half the Palestinian population between the river and the sea. It can then turn to the real prize, the west bank where annexation and ever shrinking Bantustans can finally kill the Palestinian cause and lead to a mini “Greater Israel”.

But even for Egypt this is a shit idea. What does “integrating” Gaza mean? And what is Egypt’s responsibility for this “integrated Gaza”? How do we keep security in it? Will we? Why are we supposed to govern a totally different people? Because yes, they have their own distinct identity, and it's time for western people to realize this.

But I am not really worried that Egypt will end up with this burden. Because I have finally decoded the Israelis. Israel is a tactical marvel. Give the Israelis a specific aim and they will do it brilliantly and efficiently. Control this area, and kill this guy! They will do it and they will do it better than anyone. They have a professional, well trained, and motivated army; and they are brilliant with high tech.

However, I do not think Israel ever had strategy. Israel never had vision. Even the strategic and self evidently beneficial decision to have peace with Egypt, I don't think the Israelis would have ever done it. This was started by president Sadat, and the Israelis tried their best to sabotage it even if it was obviously good for Israel and good for Jews. It took a lot of sticks and a lot of carrots from the Americans to get Israel to do it.

Israel's strategy and vision has always been a trail of brain farts. It is hard to see this because they are technically and tactically proficient to a degree that staggers an observer. But it is true. Asking them what the plan is for anything is never going to get you anywhere, and it's not because they have a master plan, it's because they don't know. They are just crossing bridges as they come, but they have no idea to where.

So this brilliant plan for Gaza, what will Gaza be? OK so Israel "disengages" from Gaza, and then what. Egypt will never annex Gaza. So what is Gaza? There are only two options, an independent Gaza, in which case they get control of their borders, territorial waters, harbor, and airport. This is a nightmare for Israel because they would start messing with it in the Mediterranean and would inspire a lot of hope in the West Bank. So Gaza is not independent? Then Israel has not disengaged from Gaza, because it will keep it under blockade at sea and through the air.

So what are the Israelis thinking? Well, nothing really. It's just another ephemeral cloud in the trail of brain farts. The question is, will the west continue to give unconditional support to this aimless trail?

Why do people protest?

Protests sweeping the world today seem to be a strong echo of the protests that rocked the middle east in the Arab spring. People are trying to find a unified reason for these protests as they tried for the Arab spring, and they are having barely any more luck. This is because people are looking in the wrong place, and because what we identify as a catalyst is actually a cause.

People are protesting because of the Internet.

It is not that protests are made easier by the Internet. It is not that social media makes it easier to organize. The Internet is the actual root cause of the current round of protests, the Arab spring, the election of Trump, flat earthers, incels, and the rise of the right in Europe. All these things are a manifestation of only one thing: entitlement.

And I don’t mean entitlement in a bad way. I just mean it in a descriptive way. For example, people seem to agree that millennials are entitled. This is the experience of everyone everywhere all over the world. I don’t think there has ever been a time where people in all areas of the world agree that there is a certain trait that characterizes a whole generation. Even after historic events of epic proportions like the second world war, the impact on the war generation was always different. The UK was not affected the same way India was. Hell, the impact on France and the UK wasn’t even very similar.

So what has changed. The internet. It’s pure and simple. It is true that the Internet, and particularly social media has worked as a catalyst for protest movements by providing a means of organizing. And it is true that protests almost always have some foundational causes, and that they are almost always leveraged by the governments of powerful countries to gain influence. But that’s not what these protests are about. These protests be they street protests, social movements, or voting decisions, are an expression that people are finally discovering that they are worth something.

It is a cry against an elite of some sort. An economic elite, a political elite, a scientific elite, or a woman-hogging elite. But it is always a cry against the dominant order by people who, for very long, have had to contend with being second rate. The Internet finally gave voice, form,  and credence to these counter-movements. “Counter” they no longer had to be, they did not have to be defined as marginal. They were as good as whatever they are countering, because they are an expression of real people who for very long did not have a voice.

It is difficult and sometimes dangerous to try and make sense of these protest movements. It is difficult because there is something there, there is an element of legitimacy. But if you approach these movements that way you will never understand them, because they are not about legitimate concerns or logical discussion. They are not about finding a solution or the real world, they are about an expression of exasperation. And when you start to dig a little deeper you find a lot to make fun of. The whole thing crumbles, serious street protests as fast as flat Earth experiments. Which is dangerous, because you then run the risk of being tarred and feathered by the establishment common wisdom.

There are a few axioms that are assumed about all these protest movements, some of which are true and some are myths:

-They are often thought to be leaderless. And they very often are. Some people have trouble getting to grips with this, assuming there must be a nefarious foreign hand involved. And there often is! The two things are not mutually exclusive. It is naïve to think western intelligence is not stoking tensions in Hong Kong to put pressure on China. In fact, if western intelligence didn’t, western intelligence would be criminally negligent. But also, these movements are often spontaneous and leaderless. It’s a little tough to believe, but that’s because you are missing that critical component: the Internet. It has allowed a swarm intelligence to develop around many subcultures in a very undirected manner.

-The movements are always legitimate. They aren’t always. In fact, they almost never are. While some are based in legitimate concerns, they do not have legitimate demands, realistic goals, or even a world view that accepts diversity.

-The movements provide an alternative to what they are rebelling against. They don’t. There aren’t always two sides to every issue. Flat Earth is not an alternative, it is bullshit. There aren’t good guys on the neo-NAZI side. And equally true, the Lebanese protestors aren’t protesting the right things, and protestors in Chile are making things worse.

The last two statements are dangerous. It is forbidden to criticize street protests, especially ones in which people die or are wounded. And double especially if there is legitimacy to the grievances. The Lebanese leadership is corrupt, kleptocratic, and sectarian. The Lebanese protestors are indignant about a situation that they themselves causes, they are making it worse, and they are demanding things that can never happen. Both sentences are true.

And yet, you have to give them legitimacy. Why? Because our brains aren’t programmed to grasp the concept that movements so large and so seemingly purposeful could be chaotic, destructive, ineffective, or aimless. That’s because we are living in a universe that is being reshaped by the democratization of self-worth. You do not have to be right. You do not have to learn. You do not have to prove. You are worth something because you are you.

What we are witnessing is a manifestation of the post-truth world in which there are versions of reality and alternative facts. This transcends left and right, White and Black, religious and atheist.

We are in the alternative fact universe.

The Arab Spring going home to die

Western neo-liberals and neo-conservatives alike have had varying degrees of ease defending and promoting the Arab Spring. The high point was probably Tahrir square in Egypt in 2011. The facade of well-connected, modern, diverse, and secular youth fighting a sclerotic tyrant was very easy to sell. Any Egyptian on the ground trying to communicate the fact that the Islamists formed a huge driving force in the square was brushed aside as reactionary. Normal people who were concerned about the immediate deterioration of normal life were labelled government agents. It was easy to brush everything aside. Any concerns or whistleblowing from normal people was labelled conspiracy theory. Any real disaster like the storming of prisons or the burning of police stations, was immediately explained by insane conspiracy theories that were quickly established as "facts".

Things changed over time. Beyond Egypt and Tunisia, the Arab Spring experiment invariably disintegrated into civil war. But it was always easy to blame the civil war on anything but the Spring. The war was because the west did not immediately go in and remove Bashar. But then again, the west did go in and take out Ghaddafi, so how do you explain Libya?

Shush.

Shush, I said you Mubarakist reactionary.

It was a bumpy ride, but western neo-conservative, and western liberals in particular had a lot of stamina. The mental gymnastics required increased with time, but these people's superpower to keep at it was almost super human. The idea had to live on. The idea of a glorious "spontaneous" leaderless revolution sweeping away old regimes had to go on. It really does not matter what replaces what these revolutions remove. That is secondary. People's quality of life is secondary. People's life or lack thereof is secondary. The idea is primary.

The idea is important, because it combines two things that a western liberal desperately needs. It combines the white man's burden with a modern multiculturalist sheen. It allows the Guardian reporter to tell Arabs what they should do to save themselves, while at the same time acting as if they are just supporting what said Arabs want to do. It allows interventionism with a hands-off approach. It is amazing and effective. And the best thing about it, is that when it blows up and people's lives go to shit, you don't have to pay the price. In fact, you can still keep pontificating about the revolution and how to truly truly get rid of the old regime.

There was one big huge setback though. It was a mile thick concrete wall that the bandwagon crashed on, and nobody saw it coming.

The election of Donald Trump.

I have to admit it was funny seeing western liberal suddenly screaming about things we screamed about in 2011, only to be accused of being Mubarak cronies. Suddenly western liberals were crying about how they only wanted change, not a breakdown of all normalcy and civil behavior. And I laughed. All of a sudden there is an overwhelming concern about how social media is weaponized and used to push an agenda. Suddenly foreign interference is a bad thing. Suddenly, we are supposed to seriously discuss "Russia sowing discord and chaos in America". All things we said in 2011 as we saw life crumble. All things we were ridiculed for. And we are still being derided for wanting to preserve the very essentials of basic life. The gall.

The second wave of the Arab Spring came to the rescue. Sudan and Algeria were a breath of fresh air. Certainly we can avoid the "mistakes" of the first wave. We can insist the protestors on the ground never move until they get to their goal, until Sudan is Switzerland. And for a while, this first wave seemed to be working. In both countries, the change seemed to be fundamental, and in Sudan, the "mistakes" of trusting the military in Egypt were avoided. Also the Islamists don't exist. Dadadada, can't hear you.

But as Algeria and Sudan fizzle down to the reality of post-revolutionary entropy, the new and rising star is Iraq.

And Iraq is interesting for many reasons. Iraq is the birthplace of the Arab Spring. No matter how much you want to deny it, Bush's invasion of Iraq is what started the domino. And the current demonstrations in Iraq are something else. They are the exemplary Arab Spring demo. Leaderless, violent, chaotic, rudderless, and allover the place.

Iraq is where all this was born. It is where all this goes to die.

For Iraq is the answer to all the excuses of why the Arab Spring failed. The old regime in Iraq was decimated. There were no remnants left. The police was destroyed. The military melted in acid. There was no trace left of anything that had to do with the old regime. The new regime is democratic. There are elections, and nobody has special influence on the elections. The constitution is spotless. The process should allow participation by everyone. It was all brand new and spotless clean, created by neo-conservatives in the image of western liberals.

And it has been a constant implosion. Civil war, marginalization of minorities, breakdown of the state, loss of territory, ISIL, breakdown of basic services, and an economy in constant decline even when it is not in decline. Iraq has never managed to get up again, no matter how much it tries. Removing governments does not seem to work. Peaceful handover of power does nothing to change anything. The army keeping out of it only allowed two thirds of the country to breakaway.

And now people are in the streets. Because a military leader was removed by civilian leaders.

People are in the street because the military leader bitched and moaned on TV about being demoted.

And because they hate everything, they hate the ruling class, they hate the elites, they hate how nothing seems to improve.

And it's all meaningless and will lead to one of two things: either a military strongman taking power and ending the chaos, or a spiral or constant violence. Why? Because what do the protestors want? They want good stuff, but it is neither well-defined good stuff, nor is it achievable and realistic.

The problem is that Arabs keep protesting against governments. The problem is not governments, the problem is much more fundamental. The problem is limited and receding resources. The problem is a growing youth population because people keep having children without actually thinking if they can afford it. The problem is a culture that does not value facts, science, or work. This is not a government culture, it was not created by governments, and will not be solved by governments. Arabs can keep protesting all they like, but the very same things western elites respect about these demos is why they will never work. If you protest, protest about something specific, have leadership, and have specific achievable realistic demands.

The true Arab Spring will happen when the population rises against the conservative religious forces keeping their soft power and culture locked up. A true revolution will happen once people cross the culture of entitlement created by Arab socialist regimes and decades of petro-dollars in the kingdoms and the emirates.

Until then, it's all vain.

The west’s MbS BS problem

One thing characterizes the intrigue around the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi: Confusion. There is confusion about what happened to him, who did it, and how to respond to it. There is confusion about who he was, how much one should mourn him, and how to even pronounce his name. There is confusion in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and above all in the US.

There should not be that much confusion. In the middle east confusion comes from the very definition of what the middle east stands for. This is the home of fake news, conspiracy theories, and utter bullshit. The utter trash pushed by Al-Jazeera and Sabah is only rivaled by Al-Arabiya. But this is par for the course for the mideast. This is the raison d’être for Al-Jazeera, and is the well-practiced plan-B for Al-Arabiya.

What is really interesting is how the trash reporting has infected western media. On the one hand one has to ask how this news has been the exclusive main headline on CNN for almost two weeks. This is a feat rivaled only by 9/11 or the Iraq war. So is this event on the same magnitude. But even more interesting is the calibre of news that has occasionally seeped to Reuters and AP, and has consistently been a staple of CNN’s coverage.

Western media will at one point find itself bewildered by the ride they have been taken on. And it’s not the first time. The Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war have also been characterized by mideast bullshit infecting western media. There are sensationalized reports on audio and video recordings, playing music while bone sawing corpses, burials in remote woods, in consular backyards, and far away beaches. There is a black and white narrative in which the victim is whitewashed and the perpetrator is portrayed as a DC villain. It’s all very Arab Spring. And it’s all a load of bullshit.

And it’s not a mystery either. The reasons this virus has infected western media is very clear: They report from mideast sources. Of course if you use any mideast source, the news will not be reliable. It really does not make a difference if it’s Israelis, Qatari, Turkish, Saudi, or Egyptian. It’s all a load of bull. And western media should know it. But for some reason, when it comes to covering the middle east, a good and evil narrative is inescapable.

So how does one approach a problem like this? The only way to approach anything that has to do with the middle east is to use an evidence based method. Do not believe anything without plenty of evidence. Be very cognizant of what you consider evidence. Use a lot of healthy skepticism. But avoid skepticism in the face of absolute proof, because this is the home of conspiracy theories.

There is one fact in the whole Khashoggi case: He entered the consulate in Istanbul, and there is zero evidence that he left it. Nothing else is a fact. Nothing.

But there are corollaries that you can draw from this fact. You can comfortably say that the maximum likelihood scenario is that the Saudis killed him in the consulate. Why? Because there is plenty of motivation now to show evidence that they did not. And they surely DO have video recordings of what did happen. Even if they had kidnapped him, it would be less harmful now to show him in some Saudi jail than to show nothing. Thus, he was most likely killed, and most likely by them.

Another very strong corollary is that the Turks were spying on the Saudi consulate. And that they are probably spying on many other diplomatic missions in Ankara and Istanbul. It is also very likely that the Turks knew he was being killed or even was going to be killed ahead of time but chose to give the Saudis more rope to hang themselves.

Nothing else is a fact or even likely. You should be agnostic about everything else. No bonesaws, no overdoses, burials, black cars, fifteen diplomats, people close to MbS, or any of the other intriguing details. Everything else is bullshit until proven not bullshit. And the standard for proving it not bullshit is that a western intelligence or diplomatic source informs a western media outlet of having first hand witnessed the evidence. Any sourcing in which a Turkish official or Turkish media are involved is as good as void and null.

The question remains, what should the west do about this. How much and how far should Saudi Arabia be “punished”. What should they do about that rogue of a prince, MbS.

The problem is that western media, and perhaps a lot of western politicians expect there to be clean, clear, and uncompromising answers to the middle east. This was the great sin of the Arab Spring. Obama assumed that there is a moral position to take on Tahrir Square. Mainstream media in the west echoed the sentiment. This delusion stems from the way the west sees things in the middle east.

The west wants to see clean and clear images. And to see these images, they use their friends and connections in the middle east. Their “activist” connections and friends are happy to oblige.

Tahrir Square was a very comforting scene. An old, frail, autocratic, oppressive, and violent dictator on the one hand. A diverse, tolerant, youthful, media connected, freedom loving, secular, and hopeful mass of normal people on the other. The decision was easy. But the outcome was not as expected.

Nor was it anywhere that the Arab Spring virus hit. Why? Because the image exported to the west was bullshit. The west was shown what the west wanted to see in Tahrir Square. The realities on the ground were hid. The Islamists kept to the sideline. The plight and fears of minorities, secularists, and the millions of people who had legitimate interests were ignored. The real price in terms of economic fallout and loss of development was brushed aside. And Mubarak was painted as a one dimensional character, the darkness necessary for the light of Tahrir to shine.

On Saudi Arabia and MbS, this same addiction to fairy book clarity still plagues the west. The same dependence on suspect sources still persists. And the same lack of realism still plagues them.

Saudi Arabia is a strange and complicated country. If you visit Jeddah the first thing that would hit you is how similar it is to American cities. Saudi Arabia has always been a very odd mix of modernity and conservatism. It is an odd mix of understandings, agreements, coercion, and compromise. Tribal balance, family connections that extend for thousands of miles and across millions of people, and an odd form of fairness and equitable distribution of wealth.

But this peculiar equilibrium has never been liked by the west, particularly western elites. Some of this dislike is based in western elites failing to understand that other societies can be different from them without being evil. This, for example, was the case when western elites accused the Saudi royal family of hoarding wealth and impoverishing their own people. This is unfair, untrue, and counter productive. And thus no matter how much this line was pushed as an inroad to “liberate” the Saudi people it never worked, because it has no resonance on the ground.

But in some other respects the western elites were right. Saudi Arabia’s alliance between the house of Saud and the Wahabi clergy has indeed done tremendous harm to the world and the Muslim world in particular. Its enormous wealth has allowed Saudi Arabia to influence world Islam more than any other country in the twentieth century. And the end product has been an Islam that is less tolerant, more violent, and more crippling than any historical form of the religion. Yes, Saudi Arabia stands almost single handedly responsible for everything from Al-Qaeda to ISIL. And yes, Saudi Arabia has been a leader in the oppression of women and minorities in the Muslims world.

This crippling stagnation was perhaps most clearly felt by Saudi millennials. With the advent of social media, Saudi youth felt that their country was not what it could be. Saudi Arabia was wealthy, but it was slow, old, conservative, and reactive. This was how they saw their country on the inside as well as from the outside. There was plenty of appetite for a more muscular, progressive, aggressive, and assertive Saudi Arabia.

And MbS was the answer to their prayers. Understanding the above sense is important to understanding MbS and why he might have more support than western media thinks. The main sentiment of Saudis is that their country can and should do more. It certainly has the potential to do so. In other words, they felt their country was losing when it should win. And MbS was promising them they were going to win so much, they would get tired of winning. Which should be a familiar sentiment to many western countries whose own governments are being swept by nativism.

So how should we judge MbS? Is he a false messiah because he apparently killed Khashoggi? Maybe the answer is that this is not a mutually exclusive choice because the world is not that simple. MbS is the reformer he was hailed as, he is also the war criminal everyone has been screaming about, and he also killed a dissident in a consulate.

He did ban the religious police. This is a fact. And anyone who lived in Saudi Arabia knows how fundamental a change this is. He did allow women to drive, and yeah you might think it’s not perfect and it shouldn’t be seen as such a magnanimous gift, but it is; because this is Saudi Arabia not Switzerland. He is trying to modernize the country, diversify the economy, and create a tolerance for expats and diversity that Saudi society never really had. 

He has also started a war where the most powerful country in the Arab world has mercilessly pounded the poorest Arab country into unbearable levels of destitution. The Yemen war is a horror of horrors. It is a debacle for those prosecuting it, and a terror for those upon which it is being prosecuted. And MbS is its main instigator. But no country can claim any moral authority on this war because all countries in the world have either been participants in this war, or silent bystanders.

MbS did kidnap the prime minister of Lebanon. And he did force him to film a ransom video before letting him go. This awful act was a manifestation of the Saudi’s feeling that the region has been milking them for too long while giving nothing in return. The Lebanese Sunni coalition has been happy to accept Saudi money, but slow to do Saudi’s bidding. And this was going to stop. Saudis were going to give no more free lunches.

And this is where MbS and his youth base really made a mistake. Saudi Arabia was not in the business of free lunches. Saudi Arabia was in the business of cultivating alliances, maintaining stability, and nurturing allegiance. The old school Saudi monarchy did not expect vassals, they expected allies, and allies they got. When push came to shove, the Arab world always stood by Saudi, as everyone with whom they cultivated a relation did during the invasion of Kuwait.

MbS’s tenure of screwing with the balance of the middle east is part of the reason they suddenly find themselves with only tepid support from allies. But his disruptive nature should only be a let down to the Arab world, it should theoretically be welcome by western elites. After all, he is disrupting old and corrupt norms, isn’t he?

But that’s where the west starts to face the reality of what it really wants. Is the west really interested in a Saudi Arabia that reforms itself, but inevitably becomes more independent, disruptive, and potentially destructive? Or does the west want stability and sane measured government? It is the same dilemma of the Arab Spring, except that the stakes are at once more manageable and more dire.

So what should a moral person do in this situation? One should be aware of facts. All facts. A man was killed. He was brutally killed. He was killed in a backstabbing way in a location where nobody should expect to be killed. He was killed by his own government.

That man was not a reformer, a democrat, or a mild mannered thinker. He was a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, anti-Semite, and a discriminatory muslim supremacist.

Those who bemoan the death of Jamal are not reformers or democrats. Qatar has supported as much atrocity as Saudi. Turkey is a despotic autocratic country that imprisons more journalists than any other country. All the activists crying over the death of Jamal are eager to politicize it and use it to start some sort of Islamist revolt in Saudi Arabia and the region.

MbS is a disruptive killer. He is a war criminal par excellence. He is also a reformer, and probably more of an egalitarian democrat than the “journalist” he killed in the consulate. Messy, right? So is life.

These are the facts, do with them as you want. But whatever position you take, the most immoral thing to do is to ignore the facts.