A depressing epiphany

Sometime between when I went to bed last night and when I woke up this morning, a fellow blogger rocked my world.  She did this by the simple act of sending me a link to an Egyptian blogger who calls himself by the unlikely name of 'Sandmonkey'.

Several of the Israeli bloggers I regularly read have made a point of closely following Arab bloggers located in neighboring countries countries as well as Judea, Samaria and Gaza.   I have never publicly chided them (before now, that is) for what I had long considered an unhealthy fascination with viewpoints that seemed to be unsympathetic to Israeli interests.  In my heart I will admit that I was honestly baffled at why they would take such an interest in what Arabs think of Israel.  After all, we know what they think, right?

In order to understand how I could mentally chastise people I respect yet never say anything to them, you have to realize that I am a (just) right-of-center Israeli who secretly wishes that the left-of-center Israelis would occasionally be proved right about their optimistic outlook for peace in the middle-east.

To this end, on more than a few occasions I have followed links to various Palestinian, Lebanese and even Iranian bloggers hoping to discover a kinder, gentler Arab/Muslim than what I imagined. 

Perhaps I just clicked over on the wrong days, but each time I made the attempt to broaden my horizons I found myself reading fairly intelligent, well-educated people spouting more subtle versions of tropes I had come to know too well from the news such as 'Israeli global aspirations', 'deliberate oppression of the Palestinian people', 'brutal occupation', and so on. 

Granted, I never came back to see if I had simply caught them during an uncharacteristic rant (such as the ones I've been posting over the past few days)... but time is short and we all have things to do.  Busy, busy, busy.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning and checked my email, there was this link to an Egyptian blog that I have seen discussed... but which I had never bothered to visit. 

Sandmonkey is a well-born, well educated Egyptian writer who has the added layer of perspective of having lived and studied in the US for several years.  His post that I read this morning talked about how he had just attended an Egyptian left wing 'peace rally' and how he had found the crowds chanting decidedly pro-war, anti-Israel militaristic slogans.  He then compared the Egyptian left wing peace rally to Lisa's description of an Israeli left wing peace rally, and made the following startling statement:

"But then I rememebrd that we- the majority of us anyway- don't want peace with Israel, and are not interested in any real dialogue with them. We weren't then and we are not now. The Entire peace process has always been about getting the land back, not establishing better relations. Even when we do get the land back, it's not enough. People in Egypt lament daily the Camp David treaty that prevents us from fighting. In Gaza they never stopped trying to attack Israel. In Lebanon Hezbollah continued attacking even after the Israeli withdrawel. And the people- the majority of the arab population- support it. Very few of us are really interested in having any lasting Peace or co-existance. I mean, if our left is asking for war, what do you think the rest of the population is thinking?

I think that the Israeli want peace with us because they don't want their lives disrupted. They don't want to have the IDF soldiers fighting in Gaza, rockets coming into their towns from Hamas or having to go to wars against Hezbollah to get their soldiers back. I think they want peace because they want their peace of mind. They view us as if we were a headache. We view them as if they are a cancer.

And this is why there will never really be any peace in the middle-east."

Huh?  Here I was... so excited to have finally found an Arab blogger who wrote from the heart with intellectual honesty... and he was making the sort of depressing statements that I would have actively called 'unhelpful' had they been written by right wing Israeli bloggers or commenters.

Now what?

To be fair, despite the fact that he used inclusive language in his statement, I think it is fairly clear that Sandmonkey doesn't include himself in the sentiments and aspirations he assigns to his fellow Egyptians and the Arab world at large. 

And to be equally fair, Sandmonkey doesn't seem to realize (at least he doesn't make mention of it) that the demonstration Lisa photographed was not at all representative of the Israeli left at the moment, and that there is actually (for the immediate present, anyway) an unsettling odd, almost eerie, national consensus in favor of the current military campaign. 

So, if he is misreading the significance of the Israeli peace rally, it's just possible that his extrapolated theories about thinking and trends amongst Arabs in the region on which he is basing his personal observations just might be also flawed.

But still... I honestly don't know what to do with my new discovery this morning.

I have finally discovered an Arab writer who writes honestly about his feelings and observations...and not just what he has been taught to think (something I thought I would never find).  But the things on this writer's mind seem to confirm the most depressing assertions about Islamic conventional wisdom and the 'Arab street' which people like Joseph Farah have been telling us for years.

In short, I've had a depressing epiphany this morning.  Like a toddler who discovers that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are really mom & dad, I secretly wanted preserve the possibility of my secret optimistic views of this region for just a little while longer.

It will take me a while to sort out all the conflicting feelings I have right now... and I have no idea how it will impact my politics going forward.  But I am certainly going to give other Arab bloggers/journalers a fresh chance to tell me what's on their mind.  It would be foolish not to.

And it goes without saying that I am going to be keeping my eye on Sandmonkey.