The Threat to Israel From the 'New' Middle East

Louis René Beres is professor of political science and international law at Purdue University.

Revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East is plainly ongoing and perilously "contagious." Aside from confirming the longstanding illegitimacy of essentially all Arab regimes, the still-spreading popular discontent reveals that the "Palestinian Problem" has never been more than a cynical contrivance of corrupt Arab monarchies, dictatorships, and "authorities."

Israel, it must now be obvious to all, bears no responsibility for causing the region's core problems. To the contrary, if the Arabs had simply embraced rather than demonized Israel from the start—a perfectly rational embrace that would have been enthusiastically welcomed by all Israelis—the Arabs themselves would have benefited enormously. These considerable benefits, moreover, would have been felt politically, intellectually, medically, scientifically, and materially.

What is real in world politics, is not always rational. Because of endless manipulation by the Arab governments, demonization of Israel, not symbiotic embrace, was de rigueur from the very beginning. Nonetheless, in the wake of multiple and more or less interdependent revolutionary eruptions underway across the Arab world, Israel will remain in the cross-hairs of determined regional enemies. More specifically, long-suppressed Islamist forces will soon surface and seek power across the area. These disciplined and capable forces will expand with an utterly renewed dedication to cruelty masked in sanctimony.

There is more. The literally explosive results of this energetic rededication will be felt not only in the Arab world and Israel, but also in Europe and the United States. The consequences of this Jihadist resurgence will be palpable not only in Cairo and Tripoli, but also in Tel-Aviv, London, and New York.

[See a slide show of 15 post-Cold War uprisings.]

In Gaza, al-Qaeda, not to be outdone by newly-emergent Muslim Brotherhood elements now coalescing throughout the Hamas-controlled strip, will redouble its own commitment to "sacred" violence. Significantly for all Jihadist terrorists, violence and the sacred will remain inseparable.

Today's headlines from the "revolutionary" Middle East are often misleading, and generally incomplete. At its core, Jihadist terrorism always has little to do with war, politics or resistance to oppression. The essential meanings of these recurrent excursions into barbarism can be found within purely personal feelings of fear, dissatisfaction, cowardice, and loathing.

These feelings include: a consuming, though unrecognized, horror of death (relieved for "martyrs" by a compelling promise of immortality); an unfulfilled wish for ecstasy, or intense pleasure; a satisfying and self-righteous joy, drawn from the mandatory targeting of those who "lack sacredness;" and, even more acutely after Mubarak, an abiding hatred of all "apostates" and "infidels."

In searching for the truest meanings of regional revolutionary fervor in the Middle East, the implications for Jihadist terrorism will never be fully discoverable in official declarations, charters, and covenants. Nor will they be made gainfully understandable in less formal Islamist diatribes. Obliquely, but profoundly, these deeper meanings will remain securely hidden in the incalculable sufferings inflicted by Jihadists upon their past and future victims.

In Egypt, and also elsewhere in the volatile region, Jihadist terror will soon re-emerge with a "sacred" vengeance. Seeking to express Shahada, or Death For Allah, the now still-seemingly secular goals of revolutionary terror will create a convenient smokescreen for unalterably religious objectives. When "democracy" appears to replace dictatorship, Islamism will be the principal beneficiary.

[See photos from the uprisings in Egypt.]

Human language can never describe agony. It follows that the defiling horror of Jihadist terror-violence can never really be understood or felt by others. Expert commentaries notwithstanding, this horror can never be reduced to any tangible, measurable, inventory of casualties.