This is one of those small moments in which you see the culture turning. Yesterday on Fresh Air (you can listen below), Terry Gross hosted Marc Lynch, editor of a new book on the Arab revolutions, and in commenting on the Arab support for the Libyan no-fly zone, he uttered an idea that we are all expressing these days, but that is rarely heard in the liberal discourse.
Its time has come. Gross had no rejoinder (except to ask about Israel’s future later in her broadcast). The pressure to lift the savage blockade of Gaza will only grow in weeks to come.
“This [Arab] support is generally thin. There’s a counter narrative, deeply shaped by Iraq…. This competing narrative of the United States as imperialist… a war on Islam, war for oil, and general complaints about double standards. One of the lines I’ve heard the most often in the Arab media and talking to people is, No fly zone over Libya, that’s nice, where is the no-fly zone over Gaza? All these things come together into a powerful counter-narrative…”
