Posted by Evan Pokroy May 18th 2011 at 9:10 am in International, Islam, Mainstream Media, Time Magazine May 14th. On this day 63 years ago the Modern state of Israel was founded, it is celebrated yearly on the Hebrew date as Yom HaAtzmaut, Independence Day. More recently another name has been attached to it; “Nakba.” Nakba is an Arabic word meaning catastrophe; it was originally coined to describe the splitting of Palestine from Greater Syria by the League of Nations. This formed the Mandate for Palestine as a protest of the description of the Arabs living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean as not being part of Syria. It is generally observed by Arabs living in Israel by throwing rocks at passing vehicles and burning things.
This year was slightly different. While it was more of the same in Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, there was also a mass movement of people on the Israel’s Northern border. Thousands pushed through the fence on the border with Syria, breaking into the Golan, and many more massed on the Lebanese border as well. The protest march broke into low level violence here and there, and Israeli troops running down various infiltrators shot and killed four of the Syrian invaders. More were killed on the border with Lebanon, but it is unclear who shot them.
TIME magazine has looked upon this somewhat peaceful invasion and has seen the “Arab Spring” writ large. The march was well organized, with workshops and training, by Israeli Arabs using Facebook and other social media. To the eyes of the people at TIME this connects it directly to the popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
There are, of course, a few minor differences, but I will concede that some of the goals are the same. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria all saw internal protests against stagnation and ongoing human rights abuses by minority autocratic dictatorships. All of which were met with vicious repression. The one thread that has been seen repeatedly in many of these uprisings is a promise to “deal with” Israel when they’ve dealt with their own country first.
The Muslim Brotherhood has played a major role in the goings on in Egypt. They’ve openly declared that they would abrogate the existing treaty with Israel if they come to power. The Libyan opposition has ties with Al-Qaeida that they have done little to hide. I have personally received messages from Syrians saying that as soon as they are done with the Assad regime they will be coming for Israel and that I should hide my children.
That is the only point of intersect between these groups.
The riots on the borders were of people who have never lived in Israel. They are not striving for freedom, since the people oppressing them are not those they are ostensibly protesting. They only wish to destroy the Jewish state. This is another tactic in their overall strategy. It served one purpose and one purpose alone, to provoke Israel into opening fire on “peaceful” protesters to score PR points. Meanwhile, the world sat aside and watched as Iran brutally repressed its people peacefully striving for more freedom and did nothing for weeks as the Syrian regime slaughtered protesters.
It goes without saying that, if Israel had responded as any normal country did to a mass invasion, especially when there was no way of knowing if people were armed until after the fact, it would have been pilloried in the court of public opinion. There would have been special sessions of the Human Rights Council and the UN Security Council to condemn Israel’s wanton aggression.
In the end, the whole idea of an Arab Spring is still on shaky grounds. All of the countries that have so far participated in the public protests have yet to show that they will move towards a freer more Liberal form of government. Initial signs are not promising.
What is clear is that none of this bodes well for Israel. TIME clearly has no problem with that.
Big Journalism
