On his visit to Jerusalem, US President Barack Obama peevishly urged Arab countries to take part in the collective candle-blowing ceremony and mark the ‘official' birthday of the Jewish state in the Middle East (ME). Obama deliberately went to the ‘contested' Jerusalem to extend his invitation to the hesitant neighbours. He prodded Arabs to come forward and sing ‘Happy Birthday' in a chorus to their neighbour. The US president scolded Arab countries under Islamist control for allegedly slackening their enthusiasm towards full normalisation of ties with the Jewish state. He indicated that the rise of Islamists to positions of power in territories neighbouring Israel, and their ambitions to create pure Muslim states, should tolerate the declaration of a Jewish state in the region. By helping Islamists, regardless of their poor experience and toughness, to swing themselves into the saddle and ride off across the Middle East, the US must have easily eliminated prejudices fomented in the Arab world against the Jewish state at the heart of the Arab world. Obama has a good point to contest in this respect that is not easily dismissed: the allegedly divinely-bounded Islamists are determined to establish a Muslim empire in the region that will eventually cover the entire planet; so, why should Israel be denied the right to declare itself a Jewish state? The competition between Jews and Islamists over religious identity will soon encourage different faiths to do likewise. Washington would love to see the game reach its height in the region when race and religion play the major role in stamping the nation's identity. The predominant Christian identity of South Sudan made its initiative successful when it separated from the North Sudan (and its Islamic identity) in 2011. Encouraged by the US's and Israel's new arrangements in the Middle East, Christians, Kurds, and Shi'ites, who may be able to walk on the tight rope safely, will be spurred to consider separation as demonstrated by South Sudan's successful experience. After its catastrophic political divisions in the past century, the Middle East in the new century is being divided – religiously. Last century's political divisions had exhausted the Arab world's immense natural and human wealth at the expense of development projects and much-needed improvements in human rights. Bidding farewell to the 20th century, most of the Arab countries (and distant Muslim countries as well) were categorised as the biggest territory for all kinds of social and health ailments; such as abject poverty, abuse of human rights, absence of low-cost healthcare programmes, miserable education, and appalling class segregation. With very few being the exception, Muslim states across the world came to represent perfect examples of states where injustices are committed against humanity. Perhaps the most disturbing part is that these injustices were done by none other than other Muslims, collaborating with cynics in Tel Aviv, Washington, London and Paris in particular. The irony was that the 20th century's affluent countries (the US and certain European states) were so generous that they channelled hundreds of billions of US dollars to help political divisions pick up more steam and rage far and wide in the region. It was all the more ironical that Washington and its European allies used to cruelly confess their criminal role in ME political struggles by offering the victims (the helpless nations) caught in the crossfire a morsel of humanitarian aid. The US and European humanitarian and relief aid were carefully and deliberately suggested to help the victims of the power struggle better endure more brutalities and acts of oppressions by the various competitors, who used to receive the biggest portion of American and European money, which was named ‘democracy-powering money'. Although symptoms of sadism would be easily discernible on the faces of the last century's chief competitors, Washington used to give them pet names affectionately. Their favourite dictators of the week were called ‘allies' while the victims were condemned for being ‘Islamists, radicals, extremists or terrorists'. It was the pitch of the protest cry that determined which of these categories the condemned were forced into. Though dubious and criminal by and large, Washington's role in the past century in the ME must have received widespread applause at home. In Israel, in Europe and perhaps among a big sector of American society, US presidents, who stuck their ears throughout the last century to the hotline with their ME's allies were – and are still – lauded as national heroes and the best friends of the Jewish state. That is why every new US president is always determined to outshine his predecessor by lending the inhabitants of the Jewish oasis in the midst of an Arabian jungle such firmly committed support. The US president's undivided and seemingly inalienable support to the Jewish state should not by any means be mistaken for a geo-political conspiracy allegedly threaded by Israel – and the UK – in the Land of Palestine since 1948. Rather, last century's dictators in Arab countries, and Palestinian leaders from different factions, willingly pampered the US guy to bask in his logistic and financial support, which could help them rout their enemy at home. We'll go back to Obama's speech in Jerusalem next week; and the new sequence of ‘Islamists do well to the US' will appear later on.
