First it was the BBC admitting it’s fetish with Israel, then it was the Guardian’s turn, Rubin further exposes their troubling habit. KGS
Arab Political Upheavals: Obsession with Israel Blinded Westerners to the Real Middle East
By Barry Rubin
As we consider the lessons of the dramatic upheavals in Arabic-speaking countries one of the main ones is this: the overriding obsession with the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel-Palestinian conflict, and Israel as the supposed cause of all regional problems has repeatedly blinded people to the realities of the region.
The “normal” issues of repression, dictatorship, economics, social questions, human rights, corruption, and so on have been neglected as everything has been subsumed to a remarkable extent in the idea that issue is the issue, the sole issue, the main issue, and the fundamental issue in the Middle East.
But Arabs are actually people! They have other concerns! Arab regimes are not just the representative of the just wrath of the masses against the West and Israel!
Ironically, this event follows the Wikileaks affair that showed the same thing, that the regimes were not obsessed with Israel but had other concerns, namely revolutionary Islamism and Iran.
Not everything is linked to the Arab-Israeli issue. There have been ethnic and internal conflicts all over the place. When Sunnis and Shias fight in Iraq, for example, it is not a resut of Israel’s existence. Yet so powerful is the obsession that one wonders if anything will really change in the Western perception of so many people in influential positions.