Israel and The Arab Spring

Drudge headlines: Obama, Cameron compare themselves to Reagan, Thatcher for over-seeing the Arab Spring.

USA Today reports that Israelis are wary of the Arab Spring for good reason:

Tarek Khouly, a coordinator for the April 6th youth movement in Cairo... says "We're not at a situation now where we can confront Israel... Once Egypt is strong... Israel will choose to go away."

Netanyahu, in his adress to Congress, warned that the democratic "hopes could be snuffed out, as they were in Tehran in 1979... [and] Lebanon’s democratic Cedar Revolution.". Ben Stein argues they were a fraud to start with.

The simple truth is this: The Arab world has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-ground their societies in liberty and democracy. Whether -- or to what degree -- they succeed, or whether they condemn themselves to another generation of tyranny, will be a strong function of whether they -- paraphrasing Golda Meir -- love their own more than they hate the other. It is most straightforwardly so in Syria, where Assad would long ago been overthrown if Alawites didn't reasonably fear massacre, but it is equally true in Egypt where both the Army and Muslim Brotherhood will happily manipulate passions to thwart liberty and democracy.