The Israeli will to fight has deteriorated to nil, while the Arabs have been heated up by decades of anti-Zionist propaganda. The ultra-expensive IDF has very little staying power, perhaps no more than two weeks—a far cry from the protracted military effort of 1947-1948. Arab armies are sufficiently primitive to sustain themselves for months. In 1948, Iran was practically neutral; today it is a major enemy.

Obama’s ouster of Mubarak removed the bulwark that had prevented the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Egypt, the Brotherhood will win the elections, either directly or through its nominally independent proxies. In Gaza, the Brotherhood already rules through Hamas, which also subdued Fatah in the West Bank through the unity deal. In Jordan, the Brotherhood and Hamas control a parliamentary majority, and the king has promised that parliament will form the next government. The Brotherhood is strong in Sudan, thus linking the Mediterranean with Africa’s Al Qaeda and the Iranian orbit.

Iran virtually controls Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Though Hezbollah may become more independent from Iran now that the terrorist group heads the Lebanese government and has its own sources of income, it is unlikely to abandon Iran, which is its only diplomatic sponsor.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran are linked in Gaza, Sudan, and Egypt. Though their interests clash in Syria and will eventually clash in Egypt as well, both sides are pragmatic enough to cooperate against Israel. The Camp David peace treaty won’t hamper the Brotherhood’s efforts: it can simply re-militarize Sinai, forcing Israel to freeze its peaceful relations.

Saudi Arabia remains the only bulwark against the Brotherhood’s dominance, but Saudi policy is extremely capricious as it depends on the whims of the royals. An Iranian proxy war in the Saudi Shiite oil-fields region might prompt the Saudis to embrace isolationism. The Saudi alliance with Pakistan for nukes and manpower is unstable because Pakistan is vulnerable to takeover by its own Islamists, whose natural ally is Iran.

The clerical regimes of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood won’t last long. In the modern world, people prefer consumerism to transcendent values. Yet, Muslim societies will have to pass three stages—revolutionary euphoria, increasingly fundamentalist Islam, and nationalism—before settling into the milieu of nihilistic Western values. Even then, the clerical regimes will only be overthrown by revolutions. The entire Middle East will continue to be very hostile toward Israel for at least another forty years. Unlike six decades ago, they have substantial armies with advanced American and Russian weaponry, and will soon have nukes.

Israel has few options. Ad hoc alliances, such as with Saudi Arabia, can be useful, as can saber-rattling about our association with America (a paper tiger itself). The propaganda of sex, consumerism, and atheism in Muslim societies is useful against their Islamic rulers. A publicly adopted doctrine of the first use of nuclear weapons might boost Israeli deterrence. But overall, surviving in such circumstances would take a miracle, which Judaism bars us from counting upon.

“Peace” is merely a euphemism for a period between wars: there is no eternal peace. And I’m not going to dispel the silly notion that Israeli-Palestinian peace would somehow end the conflicts between Egypt and Sudan, Syria and Jordan, Iran and Iraq, Libya and Chad, Morocco and the Sahara, the Sudanese government and the Fur tribes, and so on.

Far from edging toward peace, the Middle East is close to an eruption of unimaginable scale and consequences. The region has only five entities which could be called states: Egypt and Iran are the powerhouses, Israel and Syria the second-tier players, and Turkey an outsider. Everything else is not a state in the sense of a polity of its citizens. Jordan is an apartheid society which excludes from political life all Palestinians, three quarters of its citizens―and there is no international outcry. Jordan is not ruled even by all its Bedouins, but by a single tribe. Every other tribe receives government subsidies in return for complacency. As the Jordanian economy crumbles, consumer expectations nevertheless continue to rise. Dissatisfied tribes will bring the monarchy to the knife, and Palestinians will finish them all off.

Yemen is already being torn by tribal conflicts. The American deal with Iran which left Houtis without Tehran’s support won’t stand: the US cannot offer Iran anything comparable to a large chunk of Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has not evolved in terms of statehood since T.E. Lawrence mobilized the Arabs against the Turks. To call the Saudis barbarians would be an offense to the ancient Gauls. A country which exports trillions of dollars in oil wealth has failed to establish any other domestic industry whatsoever. Its oil wealth is located in Shiite-populated regions, which will eventually become subject to Iranian influence and ultimately fall under Iranian control.

This brings us to the economic question. Except for Iran, Iraq, and Egypt, the Arab countries have no economy whatsoever, and no prospect of developing one. Egypt and Iran are the only two Muslim countries in the region which have developed work ethics. Syria, arguably, once possessed a work ethic, but seems to have lost it completely centuries ago. Turkey, it seems, has fallen irreversibly behind Western standards of work ethics. So far, Muslim countries in the region have survived for two reasons. First, primitive societies and authoritarian rule have limited demands for public welfare. Second, oil wealth has alleviated popular discontent. The population exploded has, democracy has brought welfare demands, and oil revenues are poised to dwindle due to fuel economy and alternative fuels.

States cannot be formed at will. Italy and Germany are hardly a century old, and separatist tendencies exist in many European states. The Arabs lag behind Europe in societal development by more than a century. The ability to live in a state derives from a centuries-long tradition of obedience to remote power―not to village chiefs.

The Middle East will eventually return to the historically normal division between Iran and Egypt, with Syria on the outskirts. All other states will fall into their sphere of influence. Fighting this trend is an exercise in futility. Lebanon is doomed, Yemen will return to tribal governance, and the best we can hope for in Jordan is that it will be overtaken by Palestinians, thus allowing Israel to annex the West Bank in a border dispute. In this sense, procrastination over signing a peace deal with the Palestinians is suddenly an option again. Instead of supporting an inherently non-viable tribal monarchy, Israel should help Hamas to bring it down. We will lose a buffer state with Syria, but Syria borders us directly, anyway.

Overall, the Middle East is returning to its historically standard bipolar model. Turkey will fall into Iran’s orbit, and Israel into Egypt’s. We lost that bet some twenty-five centuries ago. The bet looks no better today: supported by oil revenues, Iran is richer than Egypt; Iranians are also smarter than Arabs. Years ago, Israel could have partnered with weak Iran. Now that Iran is scoring one victory after another against the West, it won’t need a Zionist partner.

This is not to overestimate them; both Iran and Egypt will remain very weak states. Whatever was accomplished by their ancient civilizations, their populations have now fallen far behind the West in education, technology, and affluence. Nevertheless, they will be assertive and aggressive, and the y will take over the region the way primitive barbarians encroached on Rome. Hamas and Hezbollah’s relative successes against Israel confirm that in war and politics, determination beats technology.

The region is going to become flush with nukes. Partnering with nuclear Iran would have been a great option for Israel five years ago. Today, it would look like a capitulation. Whether we attack Iran or not, Israel cannot stop its nuclear program for long. Even if another regime were to succeed the ayatollahs, Iran is unlikely to halt its nuclear development, if only for nationalist reasons. If it does, we still have active nuclear programs in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, plus potential sales of ready-made bombs by Pakistan and North Korea. In the current political climate, there is no way Israel would attack Egyptian or Saudi military nuclear installations. The nuclearization of the Middle East is therefore certain. It is equally certain that nukes will make their way to terrorists: Iran has threatened that much in the face of belligerent American rhetoric.

Sam Huntington would say that Muslims are not prone to fighting among themselves, just as he ruled out intra-cultural wars between Russia and Georgia―mistakenly, it turned out. True, Arabs like other primitive peoples are cynical, not easily given to nationalist rhetoric, and strongly opposed to large wars. But large wars happen even in their milieu, the Iran-Iraq war being a primary example. Overall, nuclear weapons will make Arabs still more averse to large-scale wars. Their aversion, however, does not rule out the possibility of such wars. It is a matter of probability alone that a sufficiently radical ruler will eventually come to power in a nuclear state. Nukes will be used in the Middle East―as elsewhere―and the prideful Arab mentality won’t allow the targeted country to abstain from retaliating in kind.

Even if we are spared a nuclear war, the Arabs have amassed hitherto unseen arsenals. IDF may be the world’s fourth-strongest army, but Arabs procure some twenty times more weapons than Israel. IDF’s edge in aerial warfare is leveled by the Arabs’ S-300 and S-400 SAM batteries. Vast territories and swelling populations allow Arab states to conduct prolonged wars involving millions of troops, a luxury Israel lacks. The Arabs are improving the training of their armies, while the Jews, de-motivated by the peace process and continual concessions, have lost much of their fighting spirit. In 1948, we won by zeal; in 1967 by luck; and in 1973 because the Egyptians were not ready for mobile warfare. In a large war today, Israel would not have any conceivable advantages.

If Israel can manage to stay out of their conflicts, the Arabs will soon nuke themselves back into the Bronze Age.

That is a drastic change from the situation some 15 years ago. The West lost Turkey by refusing it EU membership and pushing it toward liberalization. Under Western human-rights criticism, generals ceded power to politicians. Due to the influx of the rural population into the cities, Turkey’s electorate was quickly losing its secularism. Populist politicians turned to Islam. Demoralized by the absence of Western support—even so much as rhetorical support—the generals did nothing to stem Turkey’s Islamization. Erdogan completed the dismantling of Turkish secularism by purging the old-caste generals and replacing them with fellow Islamists.

There is no chance today that the generals will return to power and expunge Islamism. Erdogan’s appointees have made considerable changes to the command structure of the army’s hierarchy. More importantly, they have gained control of Turkey’s very capable security apparatus. True, both the army and the intelligence services will fall into disrepair, now that they are being grossly mismanaged. Still, for years to come the Turkish army will remain more than able to target Kurdish insurgents. In their turn, the Kurds are not wedded to Israel. If Iran offers them significant territorial concessions in Iraq, they might well trade Israeli support for Iranian. So Turkey is lost, and may in fact join in the next war against Israel.

But something more important is going on there. Under the guise of friendship, Turkey is growing into a rival for Iran. Erdogan’s policy of friendly relations with everyone is just a stepping stone. Once Turkey completes the task of reorienting itself from West to East, it will become a player too weighty for mere friendship; a labrador, not a poodle.

Syria may find Turkey a more interesting partner than Iran. Despite its oil revenues, Iran remains a backward and poor country, unable even to foot Syria’s bills for Russian military goodies (which aren’t very good, anyway). Partnering with Iran stigmatizes Syria as an outcast, while partnering with Turkey opens channels to Berlin and Washington. Unlike Iran, Turkey is free to develop a nuclear cycle—and pass the pieces to Syria. Turkey can buy weapons that are prohibited to Iran. Turkey’s Western ties and Syria’s Russian connections are a match made in hell.

Iran cannot afford to lose Syria. Logistically, that would mean losing Lebanon, Palestine, and much of Iraq.
Hamas in Syria cannot easily switch its allegiance to Turkey, but Hamas in Gaza can. With Turkish money, Hamas can get weapons into Gaza without Iranian help. Since Yassin, Hamas has an uneasy relationship with Iran which constantly infringes on Hamas’ jealously guarded independence.
Turkey is also poised to clash with Iran over its influence in ex-Soviet Central Asian states.
Egypt could grudgingly ignore the rising power of Shiite Iran, but not that of secular Sunni Turkey—Egypt’s lookalike and competitor in every respect. Saudi Arabia, too, would have a problem with Turkey growing to become the major Sunni center of propaganda, influence, and learning.

Turkey’s rise to regional superpower status leaves Israel the least of the Arabs’ problems.

This process is nothing new, and falls short of the previous extinction’s magnitude, when an entire type of animals—all the huge ones—perished. Though we regret the lack of opportunity to see dinosaurs on safari, the Earth is just fine without them.

Some humans are affected with a like problem of extinction. Throughout the ages, all humans were about equal. Their cultures were so alike in terms of advancement that Romans and Germanic barbarians competed equally; and when it came down to sword battles, the Germanics astonishingly prevailed. Today, barbarians seem to lack such an opportunity. Some Africans and Mexicans trickle into America, but the majority of them have no hope of plundering America’s riches. Africans increase their standard of living tremendously with the crumbs from Western technological advances. Their quality of life, starting from near-zero, rises tremendously in relative terms. But in absolute terms the gap has to increase. Some cultures proved inefficient. Acquiring a culture—and perhaps the ability—to study takes many generations, and by the time Black academics appear, Western societies would make the gap unbridgeable.

Historically, primitive societies took over advanced ones by military means. That option, Kalashnikovs against fighter bombers, is now closed. Decadence might do as well: unwilling to work or bear children, Europeans open themselves to the third world’s immigration. But the immigrants dissolve into the new culture within two generations. Descendants of Moroccans in France can do relatively well, while their homeland compatriots would be falling increasingly behind.

There is no Greenpeace to save these extinct cultures, nor do we need one.

In a short time, the majority of humans might become unnecessary in labor terms, and permanently unemployed. Huge numbers of human beings in Africa lack any prospect of employment: the world’s economy just doesn’t need so many working hands. A third of the world’s population in China and India will never share in the technological booms of their advanced areas. Russia stands ever-ready to invade someone or stir trouble in someone else’s backyard. Russians and Arabs are critically vulnerable to oil demand. Major breakthroughs in nuclear energy, electric cars, and heating, as well as stricter emissions controls, can send hyper-inflated oil prices into free fall, and leave half a billion Russians and Arabs on the verge of starvation.

Muslims swarm European cities, undoing the Reconquista. America might soon be the only Western country left without a huge proportion of Muslims. Israel, full of Muslims and Jewish defeatists, may become the proving ground for Ezekiel’s saying, “Man’s sword will be against his brother”; the cabbalistic War of Jacob. The Arab-Russian alliance closely resembles the war of Magog, in which the utmost northern kingdom (and Russia is currently a kingdom) joins the traditional enemies of Israel.

In Ezekiel, God promises to rain fire and brimstone on Magog, and by now we know what the prophet means. In the words of Mahabharata, “A column of smoke and flame as bright as a thousand suns.” God gave us close to two hundred such weapons.

Every weapon in human history was used to the fullest possible extent. Many nations will obtain nuclear weapons soon; the technology is out in the wild. Everyone’s self-restraint in using them would be incredible. Israel, specifically the Judea area, is the only place on earth safe from nuclear weapons: no Muslim terrorist, Islamic state, or Christian enemy of Israel would detonate a nuclear device near the holy city.

An economy develops in clusters. Success builds on itself. Successful economies continuously upgrade themselves. Lackluster societies fall behind. Modern manufacturing or agriculture doesn’t require many hands, and many nations compete for primitive labor-intensive operations in the world of economic specialization. Several Asian nations had an opportunity to slip into the gap in the post-WWII world economy. Salaries in the US were very high relative to other countries, the worldwide demand was huge, supply was insufficient, new technologies were many, and tariff barriers were moderate. That window of opportunity is long closed, and will remain so until the next crisis or technological revolution.

Academics can argue forever what went wrong with Muslim societies. The hot climate, which is not conducive to agriculture or society-building, is one obvious answer. It doesn’t answer why in the hot climate Thais are friendly while neighboring Indonesians are xenophobic. It explains the lackluster performance of Saudi Arabia but not that of Iran. Iran is a millennia-old agricultural society, with the development framework of statehood, relatively tolerant religiously, and its people are not Arabs. Iran is well advanced of its Arab neighbors, but lags far behind the developed Asian economies. Many explanations are possible, but who cares about them? The fact is, the Muslim societies have fallen behind in the world economic race and won’t rebound in the foreseeable future. Israel is surrounded with failed civilizations, the global inner city.

The cravings for peace are utopian.

Islam exercises less control over daily lives than Rabbinical Judaism and classic Pauline Christianity. Every Muslim cleric, theoretically, can issue fatwas, but so can any rabbi. The Jewish Conservative Movement institutionalized that chaotic approach: every half-educated rabbi (including lesbian “rabbis”) in a backwater synagogue can issue halacha, legal opinion, which is obligatory for his flock. On other hand, the extreme centralization of religious authority in Catholicism led to scores of wars much bloodier than jihad. The Fatwas of small-time clerics hold very little value in Islam. They have to come from recognized religious authorities, ideally from a (non-existent) caliph. Radicals interpret Islam to their ends, but Christian radicals similarly interpret their religion. Muslims are monotheists, do not worship images, follow reasonable laws, and substantially observe the Noahide laws for Gentiles. Islam is democratic, and beyond the core values—liberal.

Islam has a wonderful instrument for venting the mob’s feelings: communal prayer-like lectures. Often politicized, they supercharge the masses and perhaps recruit a few terrorists, most of whom would volunteer anyway. The Zeal of the masses escalates to unsustainable levels and soon evaporates. Muslim communal prayers are more like Western boxing matches than modern Christian preaching. Jews, with their formalized prayers, lack the psychological vent of fiery religious propaganda. Communal prayers convey powerful symbolism of their own: photos of million-strong crowds praying in Mecca are popular computer screensavers among Muslims.

Religions cannot afford tolerance, but like any corporations, erect monopolistic barriers against competitors. Zeal and a degree of violence are indispensable to religions. Polytheistic religions competed like small firms—attracting others to their temples, but not attempting to put other temples out of business by legislative pressure. Monotheist Islam and relatively monotheist Christianity act as global corporations, influencing legislation to banish competitors. Islamist zeal is a natural behavior for a monopolist religion. Christianity answered the encroachment of Islam into Europe with the Crusades. Monopolists resort to as much violence as they can within a given legal framework; the stakes are very high, and global religions cannot be picky about means.

Just like with corporations, successful restructuring of mature religions is uncommon. Christianity reformed itself through Protestantism and survived as an active religion for another four centuries. Muslims lack the relative cultural homogeneity of Western Christians, and the reformation of Islam is unlikely to succeed. Moderate Islam will remove the already low cultural barriers and allow the assimilation of Muslims into the culture. Zealous Islam is the only Islam which can survive as something other than an indigenous tint on American culture in the Middle East.

Islam-baiters love to cry wolf about the alleged signs of female oppression, such as veil. In the 24th sura, women are commanded not to display their beauty—a reasonable suggestion among Bedu people, a matter of safety as well as modesty. The sura enjoins men similarly. In the 33rd sura, women are commanded to wear a cloak in order to be recognized as related to Mohammed—also a measure of safety. The purported reference to the veil in the same sura is just the opposite of the Islamic tradition: ibn Malik tells Mohammed’s guests to talk to his wives from behind a curtain (hijab), among other suggestions on how to avoid bothering him. It is men rather than women who need the curtain. In that case, the curtain acts like a wall, protecting the privacy of women in the house, so that the men don’t enter their space unannounced. There is no veil in the Koran. It is Christianity that expressly prescribes a veil in 1Cor11:6.

Islam prohibits usury, but Mohammed left the term undefined. Koran 2:282 deals at length with loans. 3:130 prohibits usury which doubles and compounds the original amount. 2:275 equates trade with usury, but allows trade. It seems that the Koran bans only excessive interest, rather than business loans. Judaism, more practically, prohibits interest charged to neighbors only. Classical Christianity prohibited interest altogether.

No religion differentiates between political and religious life. Islam is no exception. Jewish society was a theocracy for most of recorded history. The Vatican sought political dominance, and Protestantism shaped the legal systems of its host countries. Think of how religious beliefs shape American life, from Christmas holidays to the prohibition of polygamy to opposition to the Islamic enemy. Iraq under Saddam was only a bit more religious than America. Egypt, Palestine, Dubai, and Bahrain are hardly religious at all. The Saudis like to legitimize themselves with religious nonsense, but other Muslims are skeptical about the Saudis’ Islamic credentials.

Rome was cynical about religion. Medieval Europeans were superstitious atheists rather than fervent Christians—look at the French cathedrals with their persistent pagan themes. The Renaissance swept dogmas away. Then came the religious resurgence. Something that the human psyche needs as deeply as religion cannot go away. Look at the number of books on Christianity and Buddhism at the US bookstores. Look at many Americans’ experimentation with Hinduism and various types of Buddhism.
Christian sentiment is behind the anti-Muslim clash-of-civilizations hysteria. How are Iraq and Afghanistan different from the crusades? Both are the Christian world’s reaction to Muslim encroachment. Politically correct societies substitute “culture” for “religion” and “Islamism” for “Islam.” Or witness the public debates over gay marriage and abortion—a purely religious issue. Children are as much afraid of entering dark rooms in the twenty-first century as they were three thousand years ago. Religion—call it culture, civilization, psychology, or ideology—is the most powerful drive of human beings, transforming a powerless individual into an interconnected part of a transcendent all-powerful system, whether angelic or equally superstitious nationalist.

It’s a delusion that suicide bombers feed on earthly failures and religious extremism. They are common nationalists, ready to die for their cause. Secular Russians were conducting suicide missions en masse during WWII.

There is no Judeo-Christianity. Rabbis permit Jews to attend mosques, but never churches. Islam is very close to Judaism in its affirmation of a single God and prohibition against worshiping images. And whatever the atheists say, no piece of Arab literature comes close to the language of the Koran.

Most female leaders are inherently weak, and have to rely on someone. Bhutto, a woman, cannot control the Pakistani army directly, but needs a proxy. If she opted for a proxy general, he would soon overturn her. So she chose the Islamists for the proxy function. Incidentally, Bhutto’s policy put the Islamists in charge of the Pakistani nuclear weapons. Many Pakistani nuclear scientists are hardcore Muslims anyway, but Bhutto’s supporters are Islamists’ Islamists, the professional Muslims.

The US Administration’s obsession with Bhutto’s pro-Western attitude is ridiculous beyond words. Western diplomats commonly show such attitudes toward Western-educated, English- or French-speaking local thugs. When they lack Western education and don’t speak English, any other affiliation goes; Ukraine’s Yuschenko became the US Administration’s darling after he married a State Department official. Another textbook case of deception is the West’s obsession with Ahmed Shah Masood, a ruthless Afghan Islamist warlord who speaks good French and wears a Bob Dylan style beard.

Bhutto leads an essentially monarchic clique called the Pakistan People’s Party, which was previously led by her father and mother. There is just no way that two women can be democratically elected to lead a political party in a rigidly Islamic country. Bhutto spent a very short time in Pakistan, staying mostly in the US, UK, and United Arab Emirates. She had very little contact with common Pakistanis, certainly not enough to have led to the groundbreaking rise of a woman to prime minister in an Islamic country. Bhutto’s leadership of PPP demonstrates qualities exactly opposite to those the US Administration ascribes to her. Bhutto ascended to power in no democratic way, and is no supporter of democracy. She is the head of a clan, just barely short of a queen. Specifically, she is the head of an Islamist clan: her support comes from Punjab, an Islamist region. Bhutto routinely acts in accord with Jamaat e-Islami, the political front for Pakistan’s Islamists. She installed the Taliban in Afghanistan. PPP explicitly promotes Islamic socialism, and was very close to the Soviet Union.

Bhutto’s “commitment” to transparent government is supported by Interpol’s warrant for her arrest on corruption charges. Bhutto was sentenced for money laundering—not in the dubious Pakistani courts, but in impeccable Switzerland’s. During her terms as Pakistan’s prime minister, Bhutto did nothing worthy of mention except to enrich herself and her cronies. To all purposes, she proved herself grossly incompetent as the country’s leader—a natural outcome for graduates of Harvard and Oxford, where the leftist education is divorced from reality.

Bhutto is not particularly popular in Pakistan; how could a woman who is essentially a foreigner and a corrupt politician be popular? PPP got only 23 percent of the seats in the 2002 elections, and even of that modest number, many MPs do not support Bhutto; some have even defected to other factions.

It is puzzling what the US Administration finds wrong with General Musharaff, who staunchly supported the US Afghan invasion, abandoned the Taliban and Islamic fighters in Kashmir, and represses Muslim terrorists. Musharaff staked everything on rapprochement with America. He alienated every good Muslim in Pakistan, even down to Osama bin Laden. In return, the US Administration didn’t even release to Pakistan the fighter jets which Pakistan had paid for long ago, and whose delivery had been frozen ever since.

It would be soothing if the US Administration pursued the sensible plan of installing Bhutto in Pakistan to use her home base in Sindh province as a camp for operations in Iranian Baluchistan to sabotage the Ahmadinejad regime. Such strategic thinking, however, is unlikely. More likely, the black professor in the White House sympathizes with a fellow female who holds an academic degree from an American university.

The Muslim Brotherhood won’t be able to launch a good war against Israel. Such a war requires major foreign sponsors, but Russia will remain somewhat apprehensive of the Islamic regime, Iran won’t want a competitor for leadership in the Muslim world, and countries like China or Pakistan cannot foot the bill for fighting Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood will follow Iran’s path to glory with nuclear development and also copy Iran by fanning peripheral wars with Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood will support Palestinian insurgents in Gaza and supply them conventional weapons. Islamist Egypt will contest the Iranian influence in Syria and re-establish long-term military cooperation. Egypt could aid Jordan whether officially or through the Palestinian majority.

The Muslim Brotherhood is relatively moderate. They aim at establishing a just Islamic state, not a Taliban-style caliphate. Their program could work in mid-size communities, perhaps in a small country, but not in a diverse, aspiring society like Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood will fail economically and like other economically failed regimes, will seek military and foreign glory.

The Muslim Brotherhood continuously produces militant offshoots such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. It’s almost impossible to strike a balance between moderation and a strong sense of religious identity. The moderate Muslim Brotherhood produces a stream of hard-line Islamists – a small minority of the adherents, but enough to bug Israel and the West with terrorism. Moderate members cannot abandon their zealous brothers and give them financial, logistical, and political support. The Muslim Brotherhood will fan the war of attrition on Israeli borders.

Muslims are backward but not fools, and more practical than the West burdened with its idealistic morality. They understand they lag behind the civilized world and stand no chance in an economic race or a military confrontation. They know what they would have done if the positions were reversed: conquer, kill, and loot – and wait for the West to do the same. The West, as Muslims see it, plays devilish game with them: pays for oil rather than taking it by force, sells them weapons, shows them respect and generally behaves nicely – presumably lulling their vigilance before a major thrust. The nicer the West is to them, the more suspicious the Muslims are. Typical of their siege mentality, they hate everyone, but especially benefactors. They simultaneously suffer from paranoia and try to identify with potential executioners, thus imitating the West.

Talking to Muslim societies is useless. In their warped mentality, the best intentions look like the worst threats. They are frightened to death, thus ready to die, preferably apocalyptically. They wait to deliver a blow to the West, even a suicidal blow.