Soros Scapegoats Israel for Egyptian upheaval

In his Washington Post Op-Ed, “Getting Egypt right” (February 3) George Soros got it wrong.

Soros scapegoated Israel for the anti-government upheaval then gathering force in Egypt. He alleged that the Jewish state was “the main stumbling block” to reform in its neighbor, the largest Arab country.

Yet when Soros wrote, mass protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere around the country focused on President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, political repression, economic stagnation, corruption, unemployment, rising food prices and other domestic issues. Numerous news reports made clear Egyptian demonstrators were inspired by earlier protests over many of the same causes in Tunisia that had led to the ouster of long-time ruler Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Egyptian demonstrations evinced relatively little overt anti-American or anti-Israeli sentiment.

Soros, who made his billions in international currency speculation, was an odd choice by The Post to opine on democracy-building in the Middle East, let alone Israel’s role. He once said that his sense of connection to Judaism “did not express itself in a sense of tribal loyalty that would have led [me] to support Israel.”

In his commentary, Soros caricatured the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the registered pro-Israel lobby, as “monolithic” when, in fact, AIPAC members and board members range from liberal Democrat to conservative Republican. Soros did not mention his own role, until recently covert, as one of the two main funders of J Street, a sort of anti-AIPAC. J Street has, among other things, urged the United States to support anti-Israel moves at the United Nations. Nor did Soros reflect on his criticism of the Bush administration for “actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas.”

Soros said his foundations stand ready to support the transition in Egypt. That will bear scrutiny: Among recipients of his largess is Sojourners, a left-wing Christian group that frequently denounces legitimate acts of Israeli self-defense.

Someone less interested in using — no matter how improbably — the latest news as a club to beat Israel and its supporters with, and more interested in democracy promotion in the Middle East, might have seen that there is a country in the region Egypt could use as a model for democracy, with free, fair multi-party elections, a free press, independent judiciary, minority and women’s rights and so on. Its name is Israel. What The Post saw in Soros is hard to tell. — Joseph Brewer, Washington research intern.