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Cook-ing up (pro-Israel) reform of the Middle East

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | May 6, 2011

How many pro-Israelis have to support the Arab uprisings before people begin to suspect that Israel might be partial to a little “democratic change” in the region?

Among those who have enthusiastically backed what Shimon Peres approvingly refers to as the Arab “awakening,” I’ve already noted the following Israel partisans: Robert Kagan, Elliott Abrams, Ellen Bork, William Kristol, Carl Gershman, Martin Peretz, Natan Sharansky, Bernard Lewis, David Keyes, Ronald Lauder, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Diamond, Jared Cohen, Tamara Wittes, George Soros, Peter Ackerman, Kenneth Wollack, Sheldon Himmelfarb, Robert Satloff, David Pollock, Norman J. Pattiz, Walter Issacson, Nicholas Kristof, Anne Applebaum, Kenneth Pollack, Josh Block, Max Kampelman, Joshua Muravchik, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Nicole Lapin, Jason Liebman, Madeleine Albright, Joe Lieberman, and last, but certainly not least in his fealty to the Jewish state, John McCain.

The latest pro-Israel advocate of democracy promotion in the Middle East to come to my attention is Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) senior fellow Steven A. Cook. Writing on his CFR blog on May 3 about the unrest in Syria, the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies urged President Obama to publicly back the opposition, increase sanctions, and call for President Assad’s departure. Despite the risk of “generalized instability” that would likely ensue from Assad’s fall, Cook opined that the “potential for isolating Iran … is worth the risk.”

Like many a policy “expert” willing to take risks with American interests, Cook has quite an impressive pro-Israel pedigree. In the late 1990s, he was a Soref Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the AIPAC-created think tank. In 2004, he authored “The Unspoken Power: Civil-Military Relations and the Prospects for Reform” for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy — named after Haim Saban, the Egyptian-born Israeli-American media mogul who admitted to the New York Times that Israel was the only issue that concerned him. In that paper, Cook advocated political liberalization and economic reform in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world, a theme which he pursued as director of the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. policy toward reform in the Arab world, and in his 2007 book, “Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey.” But when he isn’t busy promoting democratic reform in Israel’s neighbourhood, he reportedly “works overtime” to make sure the U.S. shares Israeli policy objectives.

And like the National Endowment for Democracy’s program officer for Middle East and North Africa, Amira Maaty, and former State Department official and CFR adjunct fellow Jared Cohen, (who “has written about how technology can empower citizens in repressive regimes”), Cook just happened to arrive in Cairo in time to witness the protests that could herald the reform he has long sought.

May 6, 2011 - Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel

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