How bad is the neighborhood getting?

September 11, 2011 - 9:26 AM by

Egyptian protesters run from tear gas during the clashes outside the Israel Embassy in Cairo on Friday. (Reuters)

On the same day the daily papers in Israel splashed headlines across their front page about the Egyptian mob that attacked and laid siege to the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, nearly lynching the six Israeli staffers inside, US President Barack Obama wrote a commemoration for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 that appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

The articles about Cairo described a frenzied mob of some 5,000 Egyptians swarming the embassy after breaking down a concrete barrier and the Israeli security guards being holed up behind a metal door and having to be extracted by Egyptian commandos upon the special request of Obama after a phone call from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Obama’s essay included a reference to the ‘Arab Spring’ that has swept across the region over the last year that perhaps he may have changed had he written it after the Cairo incident. He wrote:

“Meanwhile, people across the Middle East and North Africa are showing that the surest path to justice and dignity is the moral force of nonviolence, not mindless terrorism and violence. It is clear that violent extremists are being left behind and that the future belongs to those who want to build, not destroy.”

The weekend’s violent extremism against Israel in Cairo shows that the US president is perhaps being a premature in his assessment, and causes great reason for concern in Israel, as it should in the US.

For those of us who have taken for granted the peace treaties we have with Egypt and Jordan, enabling at least two relatively incident-free borders (although last month’s attacks from infiltrators from Egypt show that even that is tenuous), the reality that we may unfortunately soon be returning to the days of being ‘surrounded by enemies’ is indeed a depressing and frightening thought.

Tags: • Category: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics 

Comments

3 Comments on How bad is the neighborhood getting?

  1. Nostalgia Sunday – 9/11: The international view | ISRAELITY on Sun, Sep 11th 2011 5:05 PM

    2. [...] reporting the story of the day: a look back at the decade following 9/11. (Sad to say, the weekend attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo was only a blip on the international news [...]

  2. Gray, Germany on Tue, Sep 13th 2011 12:41 PM

    3. Well, a deteroriation of neighborhood relations often isn’t a one sided issue, but at least two parties are to be blamed, ain’t that so? What has Israel done in the last decade, especially under Netanyahu’s government, to improve the situation? Really, what?

    As I see it, the rather passive reaction on the change for the worse (in my mind, I see you shrugging your shoulders and saying ‘nu, it can’t be changed’) is part of the problem. Shouldn’t there be a public discussion about how to react on the more populist course of Egypt and the other neighbors, and about what can be done to get to a better understanding between the people? Without any iniciatives by Israel, and that necessarily includes making progress on the peace negotiations with the Palestinians, there won’t be any improvements, only a steady decline. Would be great to see people in Israeli protesting for this, too, and not only for lower rents.

    Just my two Eurocent, as an observer from far away. Of course, the situatiuon probably looks different for you, but pls consider that sometimes a picture becomes clearer when seen from a larger distance.

  3. Jo on Fri, Sep 16th 2011 3:59 PM

    4. Palestinians want no peace. Sadly they are being used by their leaders as pawns to keep up this discontent with Isreal. Land was given for peace how many times and no peace was seen.
    The issue is not land, it is the destruction of Isreal. Too bad you don’t see it that way. But your vision of the situation is distorted like so many in the world.

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