Does IsraHell Want Chaos?

NOVANEWS

Someone referred me to this article in the Economist on Israel’s rela­tion­ships with the Islamist movements that have taken power in Tunisia, that will take power in Egypt, and that are currently sup­port­ing an adven­tur­ist and ill-fated armed uprising against the state in Syria:

Israelis often reckon that order, even if imposed by a hostile entity, is better than chaos. (This may apply to Syria under the Assad family too.) Moreover, thanks to Israel’s indirect and informal contacts with Hamas, a modicum of peace has returned to Gaza. “With Hamas, we can do whatever we wish,” says an Israeli who talks to it.

Calming pragmatic state­ments by Muslim Broth­er­hood leaders in Cairo hint at an accom­mo­da­tion. Muhammad Salem Awa, a leading Brother, condemned the attack on Israel’s embassy. The Brothers’ election manifesto says that Egypt’s inter­na­tional agree­ments must be upheld, pre­sum­ably including those with Israel. The Brothers’ desire for good relations with the West and for tourism to revive will make a con­fronta­tion less likely.

In a sign of things to come, Rachid Ghan­nouchi, head of Nahda, the Tunisian Islamists who are close to the Broth­er­hood, recently met Israelis dis­creetly in Wash­ing­ton. He said that Tunisia’s con­sti­tu­tion would not ban further contact. “The new political Islam is more realistic,” says Israel’s outgoing ambas­sador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, who wants to engage.

That same source said that since Israel prefers order, we should prefer chaos. That is not a political program. That is nihilism, and one that converts the symbolism of Israel as the peak and most visible residue of colonial violence in the region into practical – or in this case imprac­ti­cal – politics. Israel cares about destroy­ing regimes poten­tially or actually unfriendly to it and putting in place friend­lier replace­ments. Failed states are prefer­able to resisting states. Orderly and quiescent is better than chaotic and bristling with resis­tance.

Israel didn’t mind the chaos in Lebanon or Iraq. But the most important thing is that the mumbling, kvetching, and pseudo-Islamophobic ramblings we read in main­stream news sources about “Islamists” is pro­pa­ganda. The US and Israel are quite happy to work with “Islamists” when it suits their agenda and when those “Islamists” are tame and can be coaxed into effective nor­mal­iza­tion with Israel and espe­cially when they support neolib­eral economic policies.

Prefer­ably both. “Islamism” tells us nothing in par­tic­u­lar about the ori­en­ta­tion of political factions, and bashing Israeli or American Ori­en­tal­ism vis-à-vis “Islamist” political parties and movements when both states con­stantly make deals with “Islamists” provides them cover while obscuring the under­ly­ing political economy and strategy of their alliance system in the region. The Egyptian Muslim Broth­er­hood is bought and paid for, cynically deploying support for Palestine as they did several weeks ago only to in turn provide cover for their own fun­da­men­tally bourgeois agenda. The sooner we get beyond culture-talk of “Islamism” to talk of the political economy of Islamist social support or support for the empire, the better.

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