Yossie Klein Halevi
Yossie Klein Halevi and I went to Brooklyn Talmudical Academy High School together. We really didn’t know each other, but I was aware of his activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry.
While Yossie was attending mass protests, bravely smuggling prayer books into Russia for the oppressed Jews, and being stalked by the KGB, I was sitting in movie theaters stalking the movies of Akira Kurosawa, Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks.
Sigh.
For years, I have followed Yossie’s career, read his fine books—Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist is my favorite—and just a little over a year ago Offspring #3 married Yossie’s maternal nephew.
So, now we’re family—and good friends.
Living in Israel, with his pulse on the Israeli street and with highly placed sources in the government and the military, Yossie is uniquely suited to analyzing the turmoil in Egypt and what it means for Israel.
Israelis want to rejoice over the outbreak of protests in Egypt’s city squares. They want to believe that this is the Arab world’s 1989 moment. Perhaps, they say, the poisonous reflex of blaming the Jewish state for the Middle East’s ills will be replaced by an honest self-assessment.
But few Israelis really believe in that hopeful outcome. Instead, the grim assumption is that it is just a matter of time before the only real opposition group in Egypt, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, takes power. Israelis fear that Egypt will go the way of Iran or Turkey, with Islamists gaining control through violence or gradual co-optation.
Either result would be the end of Israel’s most important relationship in the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood has long stated its opposition to peace with Israel and has pledged to revoke the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty if it comes into power. Given the strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas’s control of Gaza and the unraveling of the Turkish-Israeli alliance, an Islamist Egypt could produce the ultimate Israeli nightmare: living in a country surrounded by Iran’s allies or proxies.
Click here to read the entire article.
Yossie is the featured speaker at the next Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture here in Los Angeles on Sunday June 5, 2011.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
8 Comments
Israel is never alone. They have One who watches and does not slumber.
Posted by: CL at February 4, 2011 12:21 PM
Israel also needs friends on earth.
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This is off topic, but my husband went to Brooklyn Tech.
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Israel is never alone. They have One who watches and does not slumber.
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I am hearing concerns about the MB by some commentators so it’s not universally accepted that they are some kind of peaceful group.
What I find particularly distasteful is Obama is going from and to worse as his time in the job increases.
Where was he for Iran’s protestors? I am beginning to believe that he is doing what he can to destroy Israel, subtly or not so.
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Israelis have an extraordinary capacity for keeping on keeping on, for going on about their business. I can see it from where I’m sitting, right now.
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Yossi likes to forget/ignore that we’ve always been alone.
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You’d think this would be obvious to all well-meaning people, but it’s not.
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Halevi hit an important point that the peace with Egypt never spread to other countries. A cold peace with Jordan or Syria was about the best that could be expected while Iran freely supported parties like Hamas and Hezbollah. Peace with Egypt never allowed other regimes to publicly support Israel while privately cheering them on to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.
I keep hearing echos from 1979 when people like ElBaradei say the MB is not about violence or imposing a muslim theocracy in Egypt. Just like the liberals that kept saying Khomeini was just a religious leader that only cares about freedom for Iranians. Not like the evil Shah. When people talked about Obama being another Carter I was thinking of it being in the realm of our domestic economy. But now we get the Iran replay and I sure hope our embassy has enough firepower to prevent another takeover by “students”.
If the MB get power in Egypt, their shovel ready project is an 8 lane highway into Gaza. So much easier than those tricky and dangerous tunnels. Expect an increase in the lethality of attacks on Sderot as Gaza becomes a playpen for anti-Semites around the world.
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