It all began with Mohamed Bouazizi, one frustrated vegetable vendor in Southern Tunisia. After the means of his livelihood were confiscated, only to be returned upon payment of an exorbitant and unjust fine would he get his fruit stand back.
In final, despairing protest, he immolated himself, setting ablaze simmering unrest and outrage that had oppressed and depressed the Arab millions for generations throughout the Middle East. Such has characterize the outset of the Arab Spring, a massive protests of Arab youth turned political revolution.
Bouazizi's blazing demise heralded an uprising which pushed from power President Zine al-Abidine ben Ali, a moderate dictator in comparison to his more bloody-thirsty contemporaries.
Almost a year after the Tunisian president's flight from power, the Tunisian people have elected the long-outlawed Islamist Ennahda party, which has promised to secular and moderate elements of the country not impose draconian Sharia law or to renege on international treaties. Still, Jews in large numbers are fleeing the region, skeptical that the intended peace will last in the midst of the trying transitions certain to strain Tunisia.
With weeks of ben Ali's sudden resignation, the Egyptian people rose up against their entrenched dictator-President Hosni Mubarak, an open though cold ally of the Jewish State and the United States. Following weeks of growing unrest, with the army defecting in larger number to the protesters, Mubarak finally resigned and fled to Sharm al-Sheik, only to be captured, arrested, and put on trial for capital crimes and corruption against the Egyptian people.
In the wake of youth mobilizing innovative technologies to coalesce their unrest, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, another banned political entity, has come to the surface, with assured victory in its wake, bringing with its future ascendancy Sharia Law and a core hatred of Israel.
After Mubarak's fall, flight, and capture, the Libyans broke out in civil war. Moammar Gadhafi, the eccentric megalomaniac in power for more than four decades, finally awoke from his complacent haze of tyranny, visibly troubled as he defied the "rats" in his country to take him down. Contrary to his vain illusions, Gadhafi's people loathed him and longed to remove him from power. Refusing to leave his native land, Gadhafi staved off his overthrow for six months, only to run from the Libyan capital to his hometown, where he was captured, humiliated, and slaughtered by his own people.
Reports that received little press during the internecine conflict suggested that Gadhafi was in fact a Jew who could capitalize on his pedigree and flee to Israel under the Jewish state's law of return. Despite this outrageous allegation, growing anti-Semitic unrest target the Mad Dog of the Middle East as a Zionist puppet, further delegitimizing his dying reign.
Now that the Libyan Transitional Council has established itself as the legitimate authority in Libya, they have declared their nation an Islamic state that will govern in accordance with Sharia Law. As a portentous harbinger of this disturbing trend, a prominent Libyan Jew attempted to return to his homeland and reestablish the last remaining synagogue in Tripoli. He was summarily denounced, denigrated, and dismissed from the country by military personnel, who responded to growing mob violence and protest refusing to permit Jews to resettle in the country.
Yemen and Syria are also being torn apart by inner strife. The supporters of Ali Abdullah Saleh are staking their loyalties on keeping their leaders in power, at the risk of releasing tribal factions into chaotic upheaval for dominance. A former ally of the United States, Saleh has promised to resign from power and call for new elections, then has reneged on his promise, suffering terribly in on a direct assault by Yemeni rebels. Although the radical Islamic element is strong in the region, which is doom for the Jewish State, the lingering power based of al-Qaeda also poses a threat, not just to neighboring Saudi Arabia, but also to the United States.
Syria, one of the fiercest foes of the Jewish state, is striking back more forcefully against civilian insurrection. Unlike the now-deceased Gadhafi, President Bashar al-Assad commands the respect of the military and the Syrian merchant class, bent on restoring order rather than instigating revolution. To this day, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a prevalent text, one that has indoctrinated generations of Arabs to despise Jews and harass Israel.
With the parallels of dissolute and well-educated youth challenging authority, corruption, and poverty, the Arab Spring has become Occupy the Arab World, where populist protests are not just dominating the public square in bold defiance of long-standing autocratic regimes, but now are devolving into open violent conflict, with the express interest of targeting the 1% in power. Yet this hatred has boiled over not just from one Arab state to another, but has now amassed itself against the Jewish State. The moneyed 1% currently the object of opprobrium in the United States has become the Jewish 1% for Arab rebels in the Middle East. Israel is the increasingly maligned and target minority that has fostered ongoing hate among radical element in the Arab world for decades.
Whatever the final political outcomes may be in Yemen and Syria, the Jewish State has never been in a more precarious position than now. Former Arab heads of state who were friendly or at least not openly hostile to Israel have now been removed from power. Through the popular franchise of general elections — a weak and misunderstood element of democratic liberalism — Arabs have elected Islamic radicals, who had concentrated their power and propaganda, waiting for a vacuum of leadership to emerge in order to occupy the Arab World with Sharia Law.