Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now things are far worse for the Jewish state.
Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on. Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before — and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.
One thing unites Syrian and Libyan dissidents: They seem to hate Israel as much as the murderous dictators whom they have been trying to throw out.
The so-called "Arab Spring" was supposed to usher in Arab self-introspection about why intolerant strongmen keep sprouting up in the Middle East. Post-revolutionary critics could freely examine self-inflicted Arab wounds, such as tribalism, religious intolerance, authoritarianism, endemic corruption, closed economies and gender apartheid.
But so far, "revolutionaries" sound a lot more like reactionaries. They are more often retreating to the tired conspiracies that the Israelis and Americans pushed onto innocent Arab publics homegrown corrupt madmen such as Bashar Assad, Muammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak.
In 1967, the more powerful periphery of the Middle East — the Shah's Iran, Kemalist Turkey, a military-run Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies — was mostly uninvolved in the Israel-Arab frontline fighting. Not now:
A soon-to-be-nuclear Iran serially promises to destroy Israel.
The Erdogan government in Turkey brags about its Ottoman Islamist past — and wants to provoke Israel into an eastern Mediterranean shooting war.
Pakistan is the world's leading host>>>
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