One of the most urgent and least discussed reasons to justify foreign military intervention in the Syrian civil war is not just the potential takeover of the country by the most fanatic of the Sunni rebel groups, but the potentially disastrous fate that awaits her Alawi or more accurately Nuseiri minority, once the Sunni rebels gain the upper hand. Unless a powerful foreign military force is deployed to the country before the end of this year, there is a real possibility that a Rwanda-scale massacre of Nuseiri Syrian civilians will occur, even though the vast majority of Nuseiris have had nothing to do with the Assad regime’s war crimes.
Just next door to Syria, another Middle East minority, Israel’s Jews, is struggling to define its place and the fate of its future generations in the complex fabric of ethno-cultural groups that call the Levant their home. While a powerful military and a nuclear arsenal have thus far spared this minority the need to answer for the crimes of their own fanatics, it is unclear how in fifty years their great-grandchildren, who by then might represent 25% of Israel’s population, will deal with a rebellion by the non-Jewish majority within their borders. (Let alone the fact that Jews are likely already a minority within the borders of historical Palestine.)
It is possible that in the Levant as a whole and as happened in the Balkans after the bloody civil wars of the 1990s, ethnic solidarity based on nationalist mythology will be trumped by an individualistic consumerist culture that raises economic development and personal enrichment to the level of a nationalist ideology.
Just as happened in Serbia and Croatia under the economic incentive programs of the EU, when both countries jettisoned the nationalist mythology that had caused them so much pain in the 1990s and handed over their own war criminals to the International Court in the Hague, we could see discredited Pan-Arab and Pan-Islamist ideologies in the Levant replaced with a down to earth and politically innocuous me-first ideology of personal enrichment. If that happens over the next fifty years, official national borders between Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon might remain; however, group identity politics will wither away as 21st century transportation and communication technologies will allow labor and capital to easily move across borders for the highest returns.
What hope will Israel’s Jews then have of maintaining their military and economic grip over the Palestinian majority inside the country’s 1967 borders in fifty years, when they become a 25% minority and the countries around them rapidly develop and integrate economically?
“once the Sunni rebels gain the upper hand”
Was this written a year ago?
Jewish birthrates are rising. Read stuff by Yoram Ettinger.
Admittedly, it is not as rosy as Ettinger paints, but it is not as gloomy as you picture it.
With the Arab birthrate in free fall and the Jewish birthrate on an upswing….Israel appears set to be around in another 50 years. The Arab World is disintegrating. While the Jews are a minority in the Middle East, they have formed the only peaceful country in the region based on religion. Arabs are mutually hostile to each other and slaughter each other at the drop of a hat. The greatest Arab problem today isn’t the Jews – its an Arab World being locked away in the Dark Ages, with unequal distribution of wealth and no real future for its young people. This led to the Arab Spring in contrast to the Arab dictators’ use of Israel as a diversion from their addressing their people’s real problems – which amount to a crisis of an existential nature. Nabil Al-Khowaiter’s obsession with Jews and their future indicates what is wrong with the Arab World. Its dying even while its leaders offer no real way forward to except to blame the Jews for all their problems. The real question is not whether Israel will be around in 50 years but whether the Arabs can even rebuild their societies by then. Arabs are in great need of an “Arab Awakening” and are being ill served by intellectuals like al Al-Khowaiter.
“One of the most urgent and least discussed…”
It’s never seriously discussed because it’s the most hollow argument of all: help racists to win a war of aggression to stop racism. If it would be meant seriously it would mean supporting the Syrian army, Hisbollah and Iran, who distinguish from the Western/Zionist/Wahhabi racist “rebel” terrorists by not being racists.
“… reasons to justify foreign military intervention in the Syrian civil war … ”
There is already a massive foreign military intervention going on. NATO- and GCC-countries together with Israel arm, train and support in Syria a bunch of most racist terrorists of the Al Qaeda brand whose target is nothing else than a sectarian genocide.
“… the potentially disastrous fate that awaits her Alawi or more accurately Nuseiri minority …”
Despite all the Zionist, Western and GCC media trying hard to stoke sectarian hatred alongside with the terrorism of the Al Qaeda groups these country support, the Syrian government and the Syrian army led by a Sunni minister of defense does a rather good job at protecting the Syrian society including it’s minorities against the NATO-GCC-backed sectarian terrorists. So, what about asking the “Alawi or more accurately Nuseiri minority” about it? If you ask the minorities what they want to feel better protected, they will tell that the NATO-GCC-countries should stop support terrorism in Syria and stop spreading propaganda inciting sectarian hatred.
“… once the Sunni rebels gain the upper hand …”
There are no Sunni rebels anywhere in Syria close to having an upper hand. In some regions in the north of Syria infidel Wahhabi maniacs of the Al Qaeda brand control territory. With their hatred they alienated the population and the minorities there fled to the government, so these infidel Wahhabi maniacs are close to total defeat.
The only way to save Al Qaeda from a defeat in Syria is a foreign military intervention and that’s exactly the reason why the backers of these maniacs in Western countries discuss that. NATO-country Turkey for example is currently very “concerned” and “worried” that Al Qaeda was defeated in the Syrian border town of Ras Al-Ain by Kurdish forces not driven by a racist Western/GCC/Zionist ideology, and not even the Turkish militay was able to prevent this defeat of Al Qaeda though it tried hard.
“… we could see discredited Pan-Arab and Pan-Islamist ideologies in the Levant replaced with a down to earth and politically innocuous me-first ideology of personal enrichment.”
Discredited Pan-Arab ideology??????????
What the hell are you talking about? Only the opposite is occurring with Egypt’s Revolutions and Bashar’s smack-down of the foreign Takfiris invading Syria. Surely you’ve heard that Arab secularism (which is the root of Pan Arabism) is on the political rise again.
And to compare the futures of Alawites to jews in the Greater Levant? Very weird comparison considering that the majority of jews in occupied Palestine are from europe – which also begs the question: what about the 18 million Alawites living in Turkey, on the outer rim the Levant basin? Where do they figure in your calculations?
You even use the derogatory “Nuseiri” to refer to Alawites.
“Alawites are sometimes derogatorily referred to as “Nusayris” (Nuṣayrī Arabic: نصيرية). Another name, “Ansari” (al-Anṣāriyyah), is believed to have been a mistransliteration of the former”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites
Man! I guess Arab zionism is thriving out there in Saudi Arabia.
And really, we here at MW would have been better served by a Saudi writer writing about the ‘mysterious’ inner machinations of Saudi Arabia, and not submitting forth some whacky out-of-focus vision of the future of the Levant.
(Is this writer known or related to ‘womanunveiled’? Same passive-aggressive zionist propaganda style, that’s for sure).