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‘We yearn for a democratic Middle East’ — until we don’t, that is!

Another Israeli is agonized by the democracy movement in Egypt. Donniel Hartman at first tries to say it’s a good thing, writing on the last day of January:

As Jews our natural affinity group is the oppressed. Legally, this has been the moral imperative of the Jew since our Exodus from Egypt. Instead of serving solely as a narrative depicting God’s covenant with the Jewish people, our tradition positioned the Exodus story as the paradigm for God’s covenant with the powerless and downtrodden….

When people take to the streets and lay claim to their inalienable rights as free people, when they ask that their government be of the people and for the people, when they plead for an equitable and just distribution of their society’s goods, the natural response of the Jew is to stand at their side. “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19)

Here, however, we Jews and especially Jewish Israelis find ourselves particularly challenged. We yearn for a democratic Middle East. Deep down, we often suspect that only in a democratic Middle East will we achieve the peace for which we aspire. Only when peace is made between free peoples, ratified by their elected governments, will it have a viable and sustainable future. In our experience, however, we have yet to meet such people.

But Hartman seems to resolve some of his agonies by February 2:

A government run by the people in accordance with the will of the people potentially undermines the status quo to which we have become accustomed and threatens to expand the reach of radical Islamic and anti-Israeli forces. Our border with Lebanon, instead of being the exception, could become the rule.

It is not that the existence of the State of Israel itself will be brought into question. Our faith in our military is such that, here too we believe we will be able to overcome any existential threat.

Thx to a Bir Zeit graduate and reader of Haaretz.

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