(San Francisco Chronicle) Joel Brinkley - For more than half a century, ever since the day Israel was founded, Arab leaders have used one consistent strategy to keep their people in line. Our life's goal, they would say over and over, is to take back "Palestine." Nothing else matters. For many years that seemed to work. Then came satellite television, the Internet, and over time, ordinary Arabs began to realize that Israel had nothing to do with their own circumscribed lives. All of it was the fault of their corrupt, implacable dictators. Even after decades of indoctrination, the protesters, in state after state, have nothing to say about Israel. That conflict is not even a tertiary concern. Few Arabs hold warm feelings toward Israel. But for nearly all of them now, Israel is just an unfortunate fact of life, not an obsession. These people now know that their dictators' alarmist warnings about Israel were cynical distractions.
2011-03-07 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive