Israel's performance in Lebanon and Gaza was a consequence of its leaders' adoption of the Arabist worldview.
No Arabist, Buttonwood probably knows as much as most about Saudi Arabia, which is to say very little.
It is vital for Israel to stop catering its foreign policy rhetoric to the preferences of its Arabist camp.
However, their names were withdrawn after the Pentagon apparently objected that they would be too Arabist in their mindset.
But their hostility toward Israel doesn't explain how Israel's adversaries continue to successfully hide their Arabist ideology behind the "realist" label.
Mr Sarkozy, who has shifted French diplomacy towards a less Arabist and more pro-Israeli position, has been characteristically busy in the Middle East recently.
No doubt an Israeli body-blow to the Arabist worldview will compel Kaplan and other new members of the anti-Israel camp to reconsider their views.
In 1995, Kaplan published a critical book about the Arabist elite at the State Department in which he condemned their simplistic foreign policy outlook.
In light of this, it is obvious that the Arabist desire to see Israel weakened is not supported by Israel's performance in Lebanon and Gaza.
So too, Israel's leaders' adoption of the Arabist view caused the Rabin-Peres government to empower and legitimize terrorists from Fatah and the PLO in the 1993 Oslo Accord.
He said although there were generally good relations between Libyan Arabs and Berbers, their rejection of pan-Arabist ideology and insistence on a distinct Amazigh identity made them a continued target for criticism.
Successive governments in Jerusalem, from the Rabin-Peres government to the Barak, Sharon and Olmert governments, all embraced the Arabist view that regional stability and hence Israeli security is enhanced by a weakened Israel.
In each case, buying into the Arabist view that stability is enhanced through Israeli weakness rather than strength, Israel exacerbated regional instability and imperiled its own citizens by empowering its enemies at its own expense.
Mr. Bush urgently needs to place someone who shares and advocates his views in charge of the Mideast portfolio at the policy-coordinating National Security Council, not someone detailed from NEA and loyal to its Arabist agenda.
He wants to be for the 1980s and 1990s what Gamal Abdel Nasser was for the 1950s and 1960s: the preeminent Pan-Arabist, the leader of an as-yet-unborn third force telling Soviets and Americans to stay off his turf.
Kaplan cited Israel's incompetent handling of the war with Hizbullah in 2006 and its bungling of the campaign against Hamas in Gaza this past December and January as proof of the Arabist claim that it is a strategic burden.
Ehud Olmert's much-derided 2005 assertion that "we are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, " was simply a whiny affirmation of Israel's leaders' embrace of the Arabist worldview.
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