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The Real "Spring" Is Not Arab

(Times of Israel) Emanuele Ottolenghi - The most remarkable and potentially disruptive development of 18 months of uprisings is the return of ethnic, tribal and religious identities to the political stage as a challenge to the notion of a uniform Arab world. The truth is that the Arab world is an artificial concoction, the child of European colonialism and Arab nationalism. When, after World War I, France and Great Britain carved out the Ottoman Empire into protectorates, they largely ignored the principle of peoples' self-determination. Once in power, Arab nationalists disregarded the rights of non-Arab minorities. They discriminated, persecuted, and often expelled minorities. Those who remained often suffered forceful Arabization. Many of the European revolutions associated with the word "spring" were about national self-determination - national uprisings against multi-ethnic empires that, through authoritarian rule, trampled both individual rights and national identities. With the fall of Arab tyrannical rule, something similar is now happening in the Arab regional order. The writer is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2012-06-04 00:00:00
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