Making Sense of Jihad

Return of the Arab Street

With radical Islamists and jihadists in control of a strategic area of the Levant; with the Lebanese army engaging Al Qaeda-linked elements; and with Syria building its forces along its border with Israel, it looks like it's going to be a long summer.  News even comes today of a rocket attack on Israel from Lebanon. 

It made me think of my old "Arab Street" chart.   This is a handy little line graph plotting the number of times "Arab street" is used in the context of Middle East conflict.  Leftists, academics and even Islamists use the term in hyperbolic fashion whenever they want to argue that any American or Israeli military action will spark a pitchfork revolution in the streets of the Arab world. 

Alas!  The much-anticipated Revolution never comes, for reasons I mention here and here. However, that doesn't stop folks from talking about it as if it's a real phenomenon.  There is a casual relationship between the number of times the phrase is used in the mainstream media and the timing of any U.S. or Israeli action in the region.  This has convinced me that the idea is the figment of some sort of collective, liberal imagination. 

I came to this conclusion when I was a CT analyst, but at least I'm not the only one.  Fouad Ajami, a man much smarter than I, mentioned this when he was discussing the sad, sorry state of Middle East studies programs in the United States with conservative talk show host Dennis Prager. 

...Middle Eastern Studies today ironically has more of the spirit of Edward Said than it does the spirit of--and the talent, and the craft--of Bernard Lewis. Bernard Lewis, 91 years of age, one of the great scholars of our time and of this last century is basically an outsider to Middle Eastern Studies. I mean, I am an outsider to Middle Eastern Studies, but forget me I'm not that large a figure. Bernard is unique, but they are invested--they romanticize the Arab street. They're invested in Arab radicalism and they believe in American guilt fundamentally. They believe that our country is responsible for the ills and the decay and the maladies of the Arab world.

With war appearing to be inevitable, here is my chart.  I predict that when I return to this chart in a month or two, June and July may see spikes of activity.  It's the return of the Arab street, folks.  A little bit of worthless, leftist fantasy reading for your summer vacation.

Mystery of the Arab Street

The worst meme ever peddled by the mainstream media is the fallacy of the Arab Street.  It's the leftist fantasy of a pitchfork revolution in the streets of Cairo, Amman, or the West Bank.  The problem is the Arab Street doesn't exist.  For reasons I discuss here, the Arab Street is nothing more than a western, leftist fantasy pulled out by a sympathetic media whenever a Western country like the US or Israel attempt to assert themselves diplomatically or militarily in the Middle East.

To prove my point, I've updated my Arab Street meme tracking.  Notice that the Arab Street -- that seething mass of common folk longing for revolution -- has mysterious vanished now that Israel is no longer bombing Lebanon:

MSM Meme Overload

According to NPR, there's a rising tide of the angry Arab street seeking a voice for the impoverished.  US and Israeli acts are just enraging them more and "strengthening support" for radical Islamist:

Political Islam is a rising tide, embraced by a younger generation who believe the way to good governance is through their religion. They also believe the Bush administration is waging an undeclared war on Islam; the battlefields are Iraq, Palestine and, most recently, Lebanon. These views show up consistently in opinion polls, and in conversations across the region.

The war in Lebanon has strengthened support for Islamist groups, as many Arabs believe that Arab leaders failed to stand up to Israel, while a disciplined Islamist movement inflicted serious damage to the Israeli army.

That was September 12, 2006. This is NPR reporter Linda Gradstein in January 2003:

GRADSTEIN: Abu Samed says he gained new respect among his peers when he joined Islamic Jihad, and he says he recruited eight of his friends to join as well. Their commander, a soft-spoken 25-year-old, says Islamic Jihad has more recruits than it can absorb and has had to turn people away. He says new recruits are carefully screened to make sure they are truly committed to Islam and to the Palestinian cause. Abu Samed says Israel's recent assassinations of Islamic Jihad leaders only strengthened the movement.

This from NPR's Sarah Chayes (after the US bombing of AQ training camps in 1998):

CHAYES:  Moaidzee and others say the strikes will have the symbolic impact of demonstrating that the United States won't remain passive if attacked.  But, critics suggest that the bombings might provoke a chain reaction of attacks and reprisals with armed Islamist groups and their sympathizers growing increasingly radical.

I don't have any time to go through all the examples.  NPR and other MSM outlets have been peddling the same damn narrative about the Middle East since the 1990s.

Meme Watch: Increasing Support for Hezbollah

With the news of an unfortunate outcome to an Israeli air strike against Hezbollah targets hidden among civilians, western mainstream media has picked up on one of the dumbest memes to emerge since the 9-11:  "rising" Arab support for Hezbollah. 

This from AP: Arab support for Hezbollah growing

This from ABCNews: Some see Hezbollah leader gaining esteem

This from the New York Times: Arab Opinion Turns to Support Hezbollah

The meme goes something like this: as a result of  western country X bombing Arab country Y, the Arab street is drawn to support Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, or whatever radical Islamist group is nearby. Liberal bloggers love to use this meme, even though they often provide no substantive support for the assertion.  The same goes for the mainstream media.  In the New York Times article linked above the assertion is based on

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a "new Middle East" that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Yeah, that's scientific!

Leftist bloggers and lazy reporters didn't invent this meme, however. It's been around a while, and shows itself every time American, Israeli or other western country asserts its power in the Middle East:

WSJ (1996):

The recent rounds of shelling have had the opposite impact. Across the political spectrum in Lebanon, support for Hezbollah has increased, not diminished. Hezbollah fighters are seen as freedom fighters...

Chicago Tribune (1996):

A week into Israel's air, sea and artillery offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas, support for the Islamic militant group grew in Lebanon as civilian suffering mounted on both sides of the border and Arab and French diplomats intensified efforts to broker a truce.

CSM (1997):

Rantissi says that Hamas support has grown since Israel imposed a clampdown on Palestinian territories after a July 30 bombing in Jerusalem, and now measures "about half" of the population.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1997)

In the last year Hamas' support had dwindled among the 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It only began to grow recently as Palestinians grew more resentful toward Israeli policies.

Washington Post (1997)

With Hamas's support growing steadily -- Israeli and Palestinian analysts estimate the Islamic resistance movement is backed by 40 to 50 percent of Gaza and West Bank residents -- they suggest that Israel must consider the long-term consequences of rubbing Arafat's nose in the dirt.

Hamas' support grew "steadily" in 1997, and then somehow it fell, or was falling, or...something.

LA Times (1998)

The most important lesson of the Sharif episode is that the Oslo peace process includes three parties, not two, and that one of those parties is--incontrovertibly--Hamas. Support among Palestinians for Hamas may not be broad--indeed, a recent poll shows only 9% of the Palestinian population supports the organization--but it is deep and sentimental.

New York Times (1999)

Hamas's support among Palestinians has declined steadily since Yasir Arafat returned to Gaza in 1994, and now stands at about 20 percent of the population. Israeli security officials say that whenever peace prospects improve, the risk of attacks goes up.

etc, etc.

Hezbollah was popular among a certain segment of the Lebanese population long before Israel's '06 offensive. And it still is.  Does that mean Druze and Christians are going to run out and throw all their support around Nasrallah? I doubt that.  Does it mean that Hezbollah will win more seats in the Lebanon's next election, maybe.  If there's anything left of it to play politics.  But the idea that the Arab governments or the omnipresent Arab Street (see Meme Watch:  The Arab Street) are going to throw their loyalties to an arm of the Iranian military is absolutely preposterous.  If anything, regional governments were stunned by the strength of Hezbollah's resistance, and fearful of what could have been if Iran had been given more time to build up its Arab army.

Embedded deep in this meme is the chauvinist idea that somehow Arabs are incapable of making distinctions between immediate needs (surviving Israeli bombardment) and long term strategy (winning political power in a pluralist society).  This is a progressive idea, well-rooted in real-politik foreign policy that got us into this mess in the first place.

Meme Watch: The Arab Street

The Arab Street doesn't exist.  Really, it doesn't exist.  It's the dumbest meme ever invented by the mainstream media, but unfortunately it's part of the conventional wisdom.  Its hold is so strong that this non-existent entity has some sort of influence over world events.  It has an influence over US foreign policy, too, because analysts and policy makers believe it exists, though there had never been a shred of evidence to prove it.   

Sure, there's always the close-up shot of 100 angry men protesting after Friday prayers in the streets of wherever, burning a US flag, but the wave of revolution hoped for again and again hasn't reached beyond Iran's borders.

Instead what we have is an idea peddled at moments of convenience by news outlets, leftist academics and media commentarians.  It's like a rhetorical threat.  If we fight, the argument goes, the "Arab Street will rise up" against friendly governments, etc.  The chart below shows the number of times the phrase "Arab street"  occurs per  month since January 2001.  I restricted my data, using a subset of the Factiva database that only includes major U.S. newspapers.

The Arab Street materializes during the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and then, suddenly disappears.  It's reappearing right now, as Israel bombs Hezbollah. In an month or two, it will have been put to rest until the US or Israel or some other western power needs to assert itself in the Middle East.

In other words, it's a figment of the imagination of a bunch of old hippies and neo-Marxists in government and the media who are projecting their failed revolutionary hopes on a fantasy population of "Arabs" who intend to rise up and seize control of their governments.  These Arabs don't exist.  They're not going to be waving pitch forks or storming the palace of whatever king or president-for-life represents their government.

Revolution is a Western idea, based on Western models of politics and government. Islam is both religion and government.  Shariah is divine law.  Revolution against government is, in essence, revolution against divine will.  It takes a lot of effort to convince a Muslim populace to undo their government. Islamist have been working at this since the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they haven't been very successful.  Iran was the first (and only), but it's going to take more than just Iran (Shiite and non-Arab) to convince Arabs to follow suit.  In other words, it's not going to happen.

I used to argue this point to fellow government analysts, but they didn't understand.  Spoon fed the messianic hope of Middle Eastern revolution by worthless academics, government analysts think in the very Western ideas of neo-Marxist and post-colonial theory.  And so they believe in the power of the Arab Street, an idea perpetuated in the mainstream media with little thought to its source or meaning.