Okay, maybe there's something behind that trusty paywall. But from what Dave has provided, we get one word - "islamist."
Now, here's a thing... "Islamist" does not translate into "religious fundamentalism." Islamism is simply the belief that Islam has some place in political life. As you can imagine, that conveys an extremely broad range of possible approaches and interpretations. Now of course, you have the Taliban, which is what I'm sure pops into many peoples' heads the first time they see the word, but then you have Tunisia... which the article mentions. Let's look at Tunisia for a moment.
In the 2011 elections, an Islamist party - Ennahda - won 41% of the vote for the Constituent Assembly. Are they some wild-eyed, chest-thumping, militant mob? Nope, not by a long shot - they're Islamic Democrats, centrists dedicated to democratic ideals with Islam as a moral compass, sort of like the Christian Democrats of Europe. Very interestingly, they're the only Islamist party represented in the Assembly - the rest are all secular. The next three largest are democrat-republicans, progressives, and social-democrats, in order of size. This is a nation where 99% of the nation identifies as Muslim, mind you. The assertion made that free elections will not happen again in Tunisia are fucking laughable, and on on its own is enough to make this writer worth less consideration than dried goat turds.
But let's move on.
Over in Egypt - also mentioned - we actually find a similar situation. There are several Islamist parties, including the Muslim brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice party. All together, they took - brace yourself - 45% of the vote. The president has shown himself to not be the most democratic person possible... but he's going down the traditional Egyptian military junta road, and not some Iran-style theocracy. In response, the people of Egypt are, uh... unhappy with him and are trying to exert pressure to go back to the democratic ideals they wanted. In other words, the Egyptians themselves are damn certain they will have more free elections, even if they have to knock over governments time after time to get it. While Morsi's attempted power grab casts a pall, once again we've got to laugh at Amos Harel talking bullshit.
By the way, feel free to get a laugh out of this guy clutching his pearls about Islamist parties of various political leanings winning less than half the votes in nations that are 99% and 87% Muslim respectively... while he himself sits comfortably in a nation completely, utterly defined by Judaism, where a coalition of right-wing Jewish supremacist parties rules over a population that is only 75% Jewish. Just saying, maybe Mr. Harel could afford a little introspection about some stuff he takes on assumption.
Speaking of assumptions, the article - as posted by Dave - makes two.
The first, implicit one is one you have revealed, Oberliner. The knee-jerk "ISLAMISM = FUNDAMENTALISM!" reaction. Mr. Harel is trying to scare his readers, and he is leaning on latent (maybe not-so-latent) islamophobia to get the job done. In addition to just plain lying about hte political prospects of Tunisia and Egypt, trying to cast them as "lost causes" take a look at the adjectives he uses; "so-called,""grimly," "disturbing," "extremely." Check out the simile he uses describing revolutionary efforts in Jordan and Bahrain; they're a "tidal wave" that those governments are holding back... Since of course tidal waves are a bad thing, their repression is a good thing. Toppling repressive monarchies bad, repressing popular movements good! The theme he is going for is that those people are dangerous and sinister, and nothing good can come of them!
The second, more explicit one is this:
As far as Israel is concerned, it will now be harder to attempt to reach peace agreements with Islamic regimes that derive their support from local public opinion (which is largely extremely hostile toward Israel ).
Stepping aside from my earlier point of western democracies' tendency towards having anti-Democratic foreign policy, take a look at my emphasis there.
First off, "extremely hostile" is a pretty loaded phrase - both words are the sort of thing that demand quantification. What do we mean by hostile? it simply means "antagonistic" which has a pretty broad spectrum. "Extremely" needs scale as well. Compared to what? I'm extremely hostile to the "ancient aliens" crap I run into now and then online, but I'm not about to run out and kick Giorgio A. Tsoukalos' ass, you know?
But more to the point... Why would that be the case? Why might public opinion not be particularly friendly towards Israel? Mr. Harel almost certainly doesn't posit such a question, much less give a thoughtful answer. The reader is left to reader assumptions... and the most likely one they'll reach (given the target audience of this piece) is that, well, Muslims just have an irrational hatred of Jews, right? There's no reason, no politics, no alternatives, it's just that Muslims are unthinking Jew-hating machines. This assumption is guided by the adjective "extremely" since "extreme," when applied to people, conveys irrationality, unreasonableness. Considering that maybe Arabs have legitimate grievances is of course verboten.
Also, the line "harder to attempt to reach peace agreements" is fucking stupid as well. For starters, there's the Arab Peace Initiative, which would give blanket diplomatic relations and recognition to Israel from the Arab world, is still a standing offer that Israel just flat refuses to consider. It wants peace and recognition and diplomacy with the Arab world so bad... but not badly enough that it'd be willing to make such "concessions" as, y'know, adhere to the treaties it's part of, even if only in spirit. or even talk that stuff over.
There's also the matter that Egypt and Jordan both have peace agreements with Israel, and Syria has offered a peace agreement very similar to the one with Egypt... but I guess Israel values Golan more than it values Sinai, so that's a dead proposal, even before the current civil war.
So in recap... Mr. Harel lies about two other nations and misrepresents a political idea in order to stoke his readers' fear of impending Muslim doom. He portrays popular pro-democracy uprisings against dictatorial regimes as a danger, something to be avoided and repressed. He spins a tale about irrational, intractable Arabs who are the sole impediment to peace because of their scary Islamist ways. And of course, there's Israel, a flawless pearl amid the swine, right? Cue dramatic sunshafts and angelic choir.
What a crock.
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