Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

While a great deal of attention has been paid to the motives and methods of the Middle Eastern protesters, the question of why so many governments have collapsed in the face of the protests has gone mainly unaddressed. The Middle East's governments are governments of men, not of laws. There are plenty of laws, but none of them actually matter as the ultimate authority in any situation is that of men, not of laws. Their institutions, from the military to the bureaucracy, depend not on laws, but on personal fealty. Laws are covenants. And covenants must derive their authority from some unifying principle. An idea that the entire society can agree on. National exceptionalism can then base itself on that covenant, depicting its national history as the expression of that ideal. The laws then become the guardians of that national ideal. For example, subtract individualism from America and the Constitution ceases to make sense, its hallowed principles become gibberish and the legal syst

The Egyptian city of Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world and the "timeless city" of Obama's Cairo speech, is suffering from a garbage crisis. The crisis has a very simple cause, the pigs that used to eat the garbage were killed to prevent the spread of Swine Flu. The pigs living in "Garbage City" had served as both organic garbage disposals and food sources for the Zabaleen, families of marginalized Christian Copts who made a living by collecting the garbage, reselling the inorganic garbage and feeding the organic garbage to pigs. The system worked fine so long as there were pigs, but without the pigs, Cairo's streets are filled with giant mounds of rotting garbage. It might be shocking for most people to realize that the trash collection system for the largest city in the Arab world, the capital of what passes for Arab Muslim civilization, depended on a class of "untouchable" garbage collectors as young as eight years old, and their pigs t

While the Bush Administration has very clearly committed itself to salvaging Iraq at any cost, including negotiating with terrorists and possibly striking a deal with Iran, and the State Department under Condaleeza Rice has returned to the same default mode it was in Pre 9/11 emphasizing negotiations and diplomacy over everything else and sending the message that the United States is unable and unwilling to stop Iran- -the real hope for stopping Iran may lie elsewhere entirely. Iran's emerging nuclear capability poses a great threat to Israel, to the United States, to Russia and to its Sunni neighbor states, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf kingdoms. Russia has chosen to profit by building up Iran's nuclear capability, arrogantly assuming that Iran won't turn its attention to the Muslim republics under Russian influence, including portions of Iran. The Sunni Arab kingdoms who have seen the start of Iran's influence tear apart Iraq and begin to tear apart

For the last few decades, apologists, the weak-minded and Palestinian sympathizers have had a ready made excuse for Palestinian terrorists. Israeli oppression and the supposed "helplessness" of the Arabs justified any atrocity. When a mob tore to shreds two Israeli reservists who had taken a wrong turn, when Palestinian Arab terrorists killed a mother and her children in a drive by shooting, when suicide bombers blew themselves up in cafes, pizzerias and shopping malls; that same mantra was always trotted out, don't blame the murderers, blame the victims. Now a gang of six serial rapists from a Bedouin village has been arrested, who assaulted girls as young as 13, in their words; " We are raping Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories. " The world has willingly gone along with justifications that began with, " We are murdering Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories ." Will it d

Gladness and cheering resounded throughout Ramallah on news that the ruling Hamas terrorist group and the ruling Fatah terrorist group had finally managed to reach an agreement that would result in a permanent and unbreakable truce. While former truces, included one tattooed on three camels, one signed at Mecca on fragments of the Kabaa and one printed on a Koran had utterly failed to hold, this truce is unlikely to be broken. "We drew on our experiences with Israel to create a true and lasting truce," said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, "whenever we signed a truce with Israel, we simply redefined the word 'truce' to mean killing people. Applying that negotiating experience to our current problem, I can now say that we have achieved a full and complete truce with Hamas and we do not foresee that this truce will end until they are defeated and annihilated." For their part Hamas terrorists had already reinforced the true with three bombings and a drive b

Three people were killed and two others were critically wounded Monday morning in an suicide bombing attack that rocked a shopping area located in Eilat's Izidor neighborhood. Two Palestinian groups, the Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - the military wing of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction - claimed joint responsibility for the attack. The Bush administration reportedly will grant $86.4 million to strengthen the Fatah forces, including Force 17, Abbas' security detail, which also serves as de facto police units in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The U.S. aid is meant to bolster Fatah, which the U.S. considers moderate, against Hamas. Rice announced U.S. military envoys in Israel created "a plan for security forces that can be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And this plan is not just to equip them and train them, [but] it is also to professionalize them, to unify them, to put them under a single command." Fatah's strongma

Most people remember the Iraqi Information Minister's outrageous statement that are no American troops at Baghdad International Airport. Some were outraged by it, others bemused by the sheer baldfaced denial of reality. Few realized that in truth they were getting a view into how Arab cultures cope with defeat. Arab cultures cope with defeat by first denying it happened and then by pasting conspiracy theories over it. Few Arab states ever admit they were defeated. Saddam erected statues to his victory in the 1992 Gulf War and the Iran-Iraq War. Egypt celebrates its victory in the Six Day War. This attitude is not just a matter of historical revisionism but how Arab countries and Arab societies approach wartime as well. With his entire air force destroyed and Israeli forces advancing on Cairo, Nasser and the entire Egyptian political and military establishment continued to insist that they were winning. Nasser even telephoned the King of Jordan telling him that the Israelis were on