Mick Hartley

A long piece in Mosaic, by Ofir Haivry, on the Sunni Arab implosion:

As for the oil-rich Arab countries, for all the profuse revenues gushing into their coffers, they patently failed to create even a single significant industry apart from the petroleum business (itself largely Western-built and -operated), a single educational or research institution of note, a single admirable political or social experiment. Most of the oil revenue, moreover, went to funding extravagant lives for the ruling circle, pervasively inefficient and corrupt economic structures, and a gargantuan security apparatus aimed at crushing all internal dissent. With their populations veering increasingly between inert acceptance of the massive government bribes thrown at them and the allure of moral regeneration in the form of blood-and-fire Islamism, these regimes, too, though still financially solvent, courted bankruptcy of one kind or another.

And the grand pan-Arabic identity? Without exception, its one sustaining focal point became hatred of Israel, portrayed by regimes across the region as the tiny pebble preventing the mighty Arab machine from functioning smoothly. Everywhere, regime failure was laid at the door of the “Zionist Entity.” In the Arab narrative (dutifully adopted by many in the West as well), the Jewish nation served as the main culprit and lightning-rod for the stubborn refusal of the great Arab project to ignite.

Worth reading in full.