Street "Democracy" In Egypt and the Middle East Raise the Specter of Virulent Anti-Semitism

What holds a national society together? At critical stages of national social formation, as in Europe in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, monarchs used anti-semitism as a means of overcoming and bonding together disparate regional cultures, religious groupings, and ethnicities. The Jews were identified as a negative corruption that could be stronger, as a bond, than dangerous social differences. This role of anti-semitism came at a time when one social order was collapsing and another social order trying to emerge. Anti-semitism fit the needs of social unification in Christianity, because for many Christians their religion was supercessionist. I think we are on the verge of seeing such a terrible phenomenon reappear again, this time in the Middle East. Why? Because Islam is also a supercessionist religion. As autocratic central territorial governments weaken, in the face of street democracy, for want of a better term, the temptation will be to bind together social factions through anti-semitism and, its cousin, anti-zionism. For good reason, Israel is nervous. To the north, Lebanon--now in the hands of Hezbollah--, Syria, and Iran are militantly anti-zionist. Democratic Iraq, which briefly looked like it might be neutral toward Israel, declared Israel its enemy over a year ago, and the US did nothing. To the south, the Palestinians refuse to renounce their demand to reclaim Israel for themselves. Now Egypt, at peace with Israel for over thirty years, is on the brink of street democracy. Why should Israel or we think that an Egyptian street democracy won't use anti-semitism/anti-zionism to unify the country? Do we think the Muslim Brotherhood is suddenly going to embrace religious tolerance? Why should Israel or we think that a street democracy ruling Egypt won't renounce the peace treaty and ally itself with the anti-zionist Islamic states? This is the danger that the Obama administration apparently has no plan to counter, as it encourages this street democracy to replace Mubarak. Of course, there is only one path for this resurgent anti-semitism/anti-zionism to take. That path is war against Israel. How can anyone doubt that such war will be the fruit of the Obama administration's thoughtless confusion of street demonstrations for democracy?