Podcasts about egyptian israeli

On this show: Egypt warns that the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty could be broken if Trump carries out threats to stop sending billions of dollars in aid to Egypt and Jordan unless they agree to take in the Gazan Arabs. In addition, Egypt is amassing troops near Israel's southern border. Does this mean war? Also; * Hostages tell of torture while kidnapped * Trump's statement that 'all hell would break loose' - never happened. * The hostage deal - phase two? * Don't lose sight of Iran - They are still gearing up for a possible nuclear war. -with guest: Alan Silver, from 'A. Silver News' - The news that the World Is NOT told! Join his breaking news whatsapp group here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/ELFlxdR4zVLJJnDQAUxTef The Tamar Yonah Show 16FEB2025 - PODCAST

Candyman and Cultural Contradictions: Grateful Dead's Egypt AdventureIn this episode of the Deadhead Cannabis Show, host Larry Mishkin highlights two key topics: a favorite Grateful Dead show and his recent experiences at Goose concerts. First, Larry talks about an iconic Grateful Dead concert that took place on September 16, 1978, at the Sun et Lumiere Theater in Giza, Egypt, near the pyramids and the Sphinx. This event is special not just for its unique location but also for featuring collaborations with Egyptian musician Hamza El Din, who joined the Dead for a jam session. The Egypt shows are remembered for their blend of American rock and ancient Egyptian culture, marking a historic moment in music history.Larry also reflects on the song "Candyman" by the Grateful Dead, exploring its themes of melancholy and contradiction within the counterculture of the 1960s. He discusses how the song portrays a sympathetic yet flawed character, and how it resonates with the complex dynamics of that era, blending elements of peace, revolution, and criminality.Switching gears, Larry shares his recent experiences attending two Goose concerts in Chicago. He highlights Goose's cover of Bob Seger's "Hollywood Nights" and talks about the band's growing popularity. Larry attended the concerts with family and friends and praises the outdoor venue in Chicago, noting its impressive atmosphere and the city's skyline as a backdrop. He fondly recalls his connections to Bob Seger's music from his youth and marvels at how younger bands like Goose continue to bring classic rock into their performances.   Grateful DeadSeptember 16, 1978  (46 years ago)Son Et Lumiere Theater (aka Sphinx Theatre)Giza, EgyptGrateful Dead Live at Sphinx Theatre on 1978-09-16 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive Giza (/ˈɡiːzə/; sometimes spelled Gizah, Gizeh, Geeza, Jiza; Arabic: الجيزة, romanized: al-Jīzah, pronounced [ald͡ʒiːzah], Egyptian Arabic: الجيزةel-Gīza[elˈgiːzæ])[3] is the third-largest city in Egypt by area after Cairo and Alexandria; and fourth-largest city in Africa by population after Kinshasa, Lagos, and Cairo. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 4,872,448 in the 2017 census.[4] It is located on the west bank of the Nile opposite central Cairo, and is a part of the Greater Cairo metropolis. Giza lies less than 30 km (18.64 mi) north of Memphis (Men-nefer, today the village of Mit Rahina), which was the capital city of the unified Egyptian state during the reign of pharaoh Narmer, roughly 3100 BC. Giza is most famous as the location of the Giza Plateau, the site of some of the most impressive ancient monuments in the world, including a complex of ancient Egyptian royal mortuary and sacred structures, among which are the Great Sphinx, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and a number of other large pyramids and temples. Giza has always been a focal point in Egypt's history due to its location close to Memphis, the ancient pharaonic capital of the Old Kingdom. Son et lumière (French pronunciation: [sɔ̃n e lymjɛʁ] (French, lit. "sound and light")), or a sound and light show, is a form of nighttime entertainment that is usually presented in an outdoor venue of historic significance.[1] Special lighting effects are projected onto the façade of a building or ruin and synchronized with recorded or live narration and music to dramatize the history of the place.[1] The invention of the concept is credited to Paul Robert-Houdin, who was the curator of the Château de Chambord in France, which hosted the world's first son et lumière in 1952.[1] Another was established in the early 1960s at the site of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and a star attraction in Egypt, the pyramids of Giza offer a completely different experience at night, when lasers, lights, and visual projections bring their history to life. Here's how to visit the pyramids after dark. The sound and light show at Giza takes place every night for 55 minutes by the Great Sphinx of king Kephren, it is a laser show with history narration of your own language.  Kyle FitzgeraldThe National Standing under a total lunar eclipse at the foot of ancient power by the Great Pyramid, the Grateful Dead were concluding the final show of their three-night run at the Sound and Light Theatre in Giza in 1978.His hair in pigtails, guitarist Jerry Garcia wove the outro of the percussive Nubian composition Olin Arageed into an extended opening of Fire on the Mountain. “There were Bedouins out on the desert dancing … It was amazing, it really was amazing,” Garcia said in a 1979 radio interview. The September 14-16 shows in Giza were the ultimate experiment for the American band – the first to play at the pyramids – known for pushing music beyond the realms of imagination. And just as the Grateful Dead were playing in the centre of ancient Egypt, a landmark peace treaty was being brokered in the US that would reshape geopolitics in the Middle East. For as the Grateful Dead arrived in Egypt as cultural ambassadors, on the other side of the world US president Jimmy Carter had gathered his Egyptian counterpart Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to broker the Camp David Accords that led to an Egyptian-Israeli peace settlement. “No show that they have ever done has the international significance of their three performances in Egypt,” said Richard Loren, the Grateful Dead's manager from 1974-1981. “When we left the stage on the last show, everybody was high on acid, and the first news that came on: They signed the Camp David agreement. Sadat, Begin and Carter signed the agreement in Camp David. This happened during those three days.” Loren, who produced the shows, credited his friendship with Jefferson Airplane vocalist Marty Balin, who had a keen interest in Egypt, for developing his own fascination with the country. “The lead singer for Jefferson Airplane is the seed that resulted in the Grateful Dead playing in Egypt,” he said. Loren recalled riding a camel around the pyramid site during a three-week visit in 1975. To his right were the pyramids. In front of him, the Sphinx. “And I look down and I see a stage, and a light bulb went off in my head immediately. The Grateful Dead ought to play in Egypt,” he said. Loren, associate Alan Trist and Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh formed a scouting committee that would be responsible for liaising with American and Egyptian officials, Secret Service members and Egyptian first lady Jehan Sadat to allow the Grateful Dead to play in front of the pyramids. After the mission to the proposed site, meetings in Washington and Egypt, discussions with government officials and a party for the consulate, the band still needed to convince officials the purpose of the show was to make music – not money. And so the Dead paid their own expenses and offered to donate all the proceeds.Half would be donated to the Faith and Hope Society – the Sadats' favourite charity – and the other to Egypt's Department of Antiquities. “It was a sales pitch by the three of us – Alan, Richard and Phil,” Loren said. A telegram was sent on March 21, 1978, confirming the Grateful Dead would perform two open-air shows at the Sound and Light in front of the Great Pyramid and Sphinx. They would go on to play three shows. Describing the planning, bassist Phil Lesh said, "It sort of became my project because I was one of the first people in the band who was on the trip of playing at places of power. You know, power that's been preserved from the ancient world. The pyramids are like the obvious number one choice because no matter what anyone thinks they might be, there is definitely some kind of mojo about the pyramids."[11]Rather than ship all of the required sound reinforcement equipment from the United States, the PA and a 24-track, mobile studio recording truck were borrowed from the Who, in the UK. The Dead crew set up their gear at the open-air theater on the east side of the Great Sphinx, for three nights of concerts. The final two, September 15 & 16, 1978, are excerpted for the album. The band referred to their stage set-up as "The Gizah Sound and Light Theater". The final night's performance coincided with a total lunar eclipse. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann played with a cast, having broken his wrist while horseback riding. The King's Chamber of the nearby Great Pyramid of Giza was rigged with a speaker and microphone in a failed attempt to live-mix acoustical echo.[12] Lesh recalled that through the shows he observed "an increasing number of shadowy figures gathering just at the edge of the illuminated area surrounding the stage and audience – not locals, as they all seem to be wearing the same garment, a dark, hooded robe. These, it turns out, are the Bedouin, the nomadic horsemen of the desert: drawn in by the music and lights... each night they have remained to dance and sway rhythmically for the duration of the show."[13] Kreutzmann recalls "Egypt instantly became the biggest, baddest, and most legendary field trip that we took during our entire thirty years as a band... It was priceless and perfect and, at half a million dollars, a bargain in the end. Albeit, a very expensive bargain."[14] The concerts weren't expected to be profitable (proceeds were donated to the Department of Antiquities and a charity chosen by Jehan Sadat). Costs were to be offset by the production of a triple-live album; however, performances did not turn out as proficient as planned, musically, and technical problems plagued the recordings.[10] The results were shelved as the band focused instead on a new studio album, Shakedown Street.   INTRO:                     Candyman                                    Track #3                                    2:54 – 4:50 From Songfacts:  the American Beauty album is infused with sadness. Jerry Garcia's mother was still seriously injured and her still fate uncertain following an automotive accident, while Phil Lesh was still grieving his father's passing. The melancholic aura comes through in "Candyman" as much as any other song on the album.The effect of the melodic sadness on the song's context is interesting, to say the least. It makes everything about the candyman character in the song seem sympathetic, when the lyrics suggest that he is anything but. Dead lyricist Robert Hunter said he certainly didn't resonate with the character's penchant for violence (more on that below).The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang defines the term "candyman" primarily as a drug dealer and secondarily as a man who is lucky in general and lucky with women in particular. The latter version seems to fit better with the song, as the character announces his arrival to all the women in town and tells them they ought to open their windows (presumably to let him in). While there's no evidence to suggest that Hunter was getting at anything too deep with the song, "Candyman" does provide an interesting perspective on the contradictions of the 1960s counterculture. Mixed in with all the peaceniks and flowers were hard-drug pushers, violent revolutionaries, and common criminals. By 1970, this stew had long since become so mixed-up that its attendant parts could no longer be cleanly extracted from each other. The fact that American Beauty came out in the midst of the Manson Family "hippie cult killings" trial says just about all that needs to be said about the complicated reality that had arisen out of the 1960s counterculture.Beyond all that, though, the outlaw song that romanticizes criminality is a long-held and cherished tradition in American music. With American Beauty, Jerry Garcia wanted the Dead to do something like "California country western," where they focused more on the singing than on the instrumentation.  So the sang Hunter's lyrics: Good mornin', Mr. BensonI see you're doin' wellIf I had me a shotgunI'd blow you straight to HellThis is an oddly violent line for a song by the Grateful Dead, who sought to embody the '60s peace-and-love ethos about as sincerely and stubbornly as any act to come out of the era. It always got a raucous applause from the audience, too, which seems equally incongruous with the Deadhead culture.Hunter was bothered by the cheers. In an interview published in Goin' Down the Road by Blair Jackson (p. 119), he brings this phenomenon up when asked if any of his songs has been widely misinterpreted. He mentions that he had first witnessed an audience's enthusiastic response to violence while watching the 1975 dystopian film Rollerball and "couldn't believe" the cheers.Hunter tells Jackson that he hopes fans know that the perspective in "Candyman" is from a character and not from himself. He stresses the same separation between himself and the womanizer in "Jack Straw." As far as the Mr. Benson in "Candyman," David Dodd in the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics makes a great case for that being Sheriff Benson from Leadbelly's "Midnight Special" (who may very well have been based on a real sheriff). If true, this might place "Candyman" in Houston, Texas (though Hunter might not have had anything so specific in mind). Almost always a first set song.  Often featured in acoustic sets, back in the day. This version features this awesome Garcia solo that we were listing to.  Maybe he was inspired by the pyramids or whatever magical spirits might have come out from within to see this American band the Grateful Dead.  Hopefully, it made those spirits grateful themselves. Played:  273First:  April 3, 1970 at Armory Fieldhouse, Cincinnati, OH, USALast:  June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA, USA  SHOW No. 1:         Hamza El Din                                    Track #10                                    7:30 – 9:00 Hamza El Din (Arabicحمزة علاء الدين) (July 10, 1929 – May 22, 2006) was an Egyptian Nubian composer, oudplayer, tar player, and vocalist. He was born in southern Egypt and was an internationally known musician of his native region Nubia, situated on both sides of the Egypt–Sudan border. After musical studies in Cairo, he lived and studied in Italy, Japan and the United States. El Din collaborated with a wide variety of musical performers, including Sandy Bull, the Kronos Quartet and the Grateful Dead. His performances attracted the attention of the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan in the 1960s, which led to a recording contract and to his eventual emigration to the United States. In 1963, El Din shared an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area with folk musician Sandy Bull. Following his appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, he recorded two albums for Vanguard Records, released 1964–65. His 1971 recording Escalay: The Water Wheel, published by Nonesuch Records and produced by Mickey Hart, has been recognized as one of the first world music recordings to gain wide release in the West, and was claimed as an influence by some American minimalist composers, such as Steve Reich and Terry Riley, as well as by Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart.[1] He also performed with the Grateful Dead, most famously during their Egypt concerts of 1978. During these three shows, Hamza El Din, performed as a guest and played his composition "Ollin Arageed" He was backed by the students of his Abu Simbel school and accompanied by the Grateful Dead.  After Egypt, hamza el din played with the dead in the U.S. On October 21st, back in 1978, the Grateful Dead were in the midst of wrapping up a fiery five-night run at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom. This string of shows was particularly special for the band, as they marked the first shows played by the Dead following their now-legendary performances near the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt a month prior. n an effort to bring their experiences in Northern Africa home with them to share with their fans, the Dead's '78 Winterland run saw sit-ins by Egyptian percussionist, singer, and oud player Hamza El Din. On October 21st, El Din opened the show solo, offering his divine percussion before the Grateful Dead slowly emerged to join him for an ecstatic rendition of “Ollin Arageed”, a number based off a Nubian wedding tune, before embarking on a soaring half-acoustic, half-electric jam, that we will get to on the other side of Music News: MUSIC NEWS: Lead in music:                  Goose — "Hollywood Nights" (Bob Seger) — Fiddler's Green — 6/8/24 (youtube.com)                  0:00 – 1:10             Goose covering Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band's Hollywood Nights, this version from earlier this year but Goose did play it Friday night in Chicago at the Salt Shed's Festival stage outside along the Chicago river with the Skyline in the background. Very impressive. "Hollywood Nights" is a song written and recorded by American rock artist Bob Seger. It was released in 1978 as the second single from his album, Stranger in Town. Seger said "The chorus just came into my head; I was driving around in the Hollywood Hills, and I started singing 'Hollywood nights/Hollywood hills/Above all the lights/Hollywood nights.' I went back to my rented house, and there was a Time with Cheryl Tiegs on the cover...I said 'Let's write a song about a guy from the Midwest who runs into someone like this and gets caught up in the whole bizarro thing.'" [1] Seger also said that "Hollywood Nights" was the closest he has had to a song coming to him in a dream, similar to how Keith Richards described the riff to "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" coming to him in a dream. Robert Clark Seger (/ˈsiːɡər/SEE-gər; born May 6, 1945) is a retired American singer, songwriter, and musician. As a locally successful Detroit-area artist, he performed and recorded with the groups Bob Seger and the Last Heard and the Bob Seger System throughout the 1960s, In 1973, he put together the Silver Bullet Band, with a group of Detroit-area musicians, with whom he became most successful on the national level with the album Live Bullet (1976), recorded live with the Silver Bullet Band in 1975 at Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan. In 1976, he achieved a national breakout with the studio album Night Moves. On his studio albums, he also worked extensively with the Alabama-based Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which appeared on several of Seger's best-selling singles and albums. A roots rock musician with a classic raspy, powerful voice, Seger is known for his songs concerning love, women, and blue-collar themes, and is one of the best-known artists of the heartland rock genre. He has recorded many hits, including "Night Moves", "Turn the Page", "Mainstreet", "Still the Same", "Hollywood Nights", "Against the Wind", "You'll Accomp'ny Me", "Shame on the Moon", "Roll Me Away", "Like a Rock", and "Shakedown", the last of which was written for the 1987 film Beverly Hills Cop II and topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He also co-wrote the Eagles' number-one hit "Heartache Tonight", and his recording of "Old Time Rock and Roll" was named one of the Songs of the Century in 2001. Which leads us to: Goose plays three nights in Chicago: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night at the Salt Shed.  I caught the Thursday and Friday show.  Went with my wife on Thursday and hung out with good friends John and Marnie, her brothers Rick and Joel, Stephan and others.  Friday with my son Daniel and good buddy Kevin who got us rock star parking and even more impressively killer seats dead center at the bottom of the grandstands in the back of the floor, a few feet off the floor and dead center so we could see everything, hear everything and have a place to sit and rest for a few minutes when needed. I have to say, I've now seen Goose five times and enjoy them more and more.  Great musical jams, great light show, lots of good energy from the band and the fans.  Rick Mitoratando is a first class guitartist and singer, Peter Anspach on keyboard and guitar and vocals, Jeff Arevalo, percussionist, Trevor Weekz on bass and newcomer, Cotter Ellis on drums, replacing original drummer, Ben Askind. Began playing in 2014 in Wilton Connecticut so this is their 10 year and they are just getting stronger.  They really love what they do and its shows in their live performances. Great set lists in Chicago: Thursday night they were joined on stage by Julian Lage, a jazz composer and guitarist for the last two songs of the first set, A Western Sun and Turned Clouds. If you have not yet seen Goose you need to see Goose.  Soon.  Jane's Addiction Concert Ends Abruptly After Perry Farrell Punches Dave Navarro Onstage 3.     Jane's Addiction Offer ‘Heartfelt Apology' for Fight, Cancel Sunday's Show Phish announce 3 night run in Albany Oct. 25 – 27 to benefit Divided Sky Foundation A residential program for people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse. The Divided Sky Foundation, a 46-bed nonprofit recovery center spearheaded by Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, will be an abstinence-based, nonmedical residence, one of the first ofits kind in Vermont. The Divided Sky Foundation is a charitable nonprofit founded by Anastasio; it purchased the Ludlow location to create a substance-use disorder treatment center back in 2021.  Anastasio, Phish's lead guitarist and vocalist, has dealt publicly with his own drug and alcohol use and later sobriety, a journey that brought him under the supervision of drug court in Washington County, New York, in the mid-2000s. There, he met Gulde, who worked in the court system at the time, and the two have stayed friends since.  Together, Gulde and Anastasio used their personal experiences with treatment facilities to implement a vision for the Ludlow space, she said.   Very cool organization, deserves everyone's support.  Trey turned it around which is why he is now 5 years older than Jerry was when he died in 1995 and Trey and Phish are just getting stronger and stronger. SHOW No. 2:         Ollin Arageed                                    Track #11                                    13:10 – 14:42 Musical composition written by Hamza El-Din.  He and members of the Abu Simbel School of Luxor choir opened the shows with his composition Olin Arageed on nights one and two, and opened set two of night three with the song as well.  Joined on stage by the band.  Fun, different and a shout out to the locals. The Dead played it a few more times with Hamza and then retired it for good.  SHOW No. 3:         Fire On The Mountain                                    Track #12                                    13:00 – end                                     INTO                                     Iko Iko                                    Track #13                                    0:00 – 1:37 This transition is one of my all time Dead favorites.  Out of a stand alone Fire (no Scarlet lead in) into a sublime and spacey Iko Iko.  Another perfect combination for the pyramids, sphinx and full lunar eclipse.A great reason to listen to this show and these two tunes. MJ NEWS: MJ Lead in Song            Still Blazin by Wiz Khalifa:  Still Blazin (feat. Alborosie) (youtube.com)                                                                        0:00 – 0:45 We talked all about Wiz Khalifa on last week's episode after I saw him headline the Miracle in Mundelein a week ago.  But did not have a chance to feature any of his tunes last week.  This one is a natural for our show. This song is from Kush & Orange Juice (stylized as Kush and OJ) is the eighth mixtape by American rapper Wiz Khalifa. It was released on April 14, 2010, by Taylor Gang Records and Rostrum Records. Kush & Orange Juice gained notoriety after its official release by making it the number-one trending topic on both Google and Twitter.[1] On the same day, a link to the mixtape was posted for download on Wiz's Twitter.[2] The hashtag#kushandorangejuice became the number-six trending topic on the microblogging service after its release and remained on the top trending items on Twitter for three days.[  1.                   Nixon Admitted Marijuana Is ‘Not Particularly Dangerous' In Newly Discovered Recording2.                  Marijuana Use By Older Americans Has Nearly Doubled In The Last Three Years, AARP-Backed Study Shows3.                  Medical Marijuana Helps People With Arthritis And Other Rheumatic Conditions Reduce Use Of Opioids And Other Medications, Study Shows4.                  U.S. Marijuana Consumers Have Spent More Than $4.1 Billion On Pre-Rolled Joints In The Past Year And A Half, Industry Report Finds   SHOW No. 4:         Sunrise                                    Track #162:08 – 3:37             Grateful dead song written, music and lyrics by Donna Jean Godchaux.  Released on Terrapin Station album, July 27, 1977             There are two accounts of the origins of this song, both of which may be true. One is that it is about Rolling Thunder, the Indian Shaman, conducting a ceremony (which certainly fits with many of the lyrics). The other is that it was written by Donna in memory of Rex Jackson, one of the Grateful Dead's crew (after whom the Rex Foundation is named). The song is about a Native American medicine man named Rolling Thunder, who spent a lot of time with the Dead."'Sunrise' is about sunrise services we attended and what Rolling Thunder would do," Godchaux said on the Songfacts Podcast. "It's very literal actually. Rolling Thunder would conduct a sunrise service, so that's how that came about."Donna Jean Godchaux wrote this song on piano after Jerry Garcia asked her to write a song for the Terrapin Station album. She said it just flowed out of her - music and lyrics - and was one of the easiest songs she ever wrote.The drumming at the end of the song was played by a real medicine man. "We cut it in Los Angeles, and he came and brought the medicine drum, so what you hear on the end is the real deal," Godchaux told Songfacts. "It was like a sanctuary in that studio when he was playing that. It was very heavy." It was played regularly by the Grateful Dead in 1977 and 1978 (Donna left the band in early 1979).This version is the last time the band ever played it. Played:  30 timesFirst:  May 1, 1977 at The Palladium, New York, NY, USALast:  September 16, 1978 at the Pyramids, Giza Egypt                                   OUTRO:                   Shakedown Street                                    Track #17                                    3:07 – 4:35                                   Title track from Shakedown Street album November 8, 1978 One of Jerry's best numbers.  A great tune that can open a show, open the second set, occasionally played as an encore, but not here.  It is dropped into the middle of the second set as the lead in to Drums.  This is only the second time the song is played by the band. Played:  164 timesFirst:  August 31, 1978 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO, USALast:  July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago, IL – opened the second set, the final set of music ever performed by the band.  Shout outs:             Karen Shmerling's birthday                       This week my beautiful granddaughter, Ruby, is coming to town to visit.  Can't wait to see her and her parents.  .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford UP, 2017) covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history.

Danny and Derek are innocent, with news to boot. This week: in Gaza, Israeli bombs displaced Palestinians in tents (0:29) despite the ICJ ruling calling for a halt in that operation (4:36), global opinion on Palestine continues to shift (7:12), Egyptian-Israeli border clashes (13:59), and more; some developments regarding Iran's nuclear program (18:19); a summit attended by representatives of China, South Korea, and Japan (22:35); the DPRK/North Korea has a failed satellite launch (25:55); an update on Sudan, namely the besieged city of El Fasher (27:56); the Burkina Faso military junta delays the transition to civilian control (29:54); in Ukraine news, Vladimir Putin hints at a ceasefire recognizing the current territorial status (34:22) while Antony Blinken hints at the US greenlighting Ukraine using American long-range weapons to strike Russia (36:09); in Mexico, a presidential election on Sunday (39:56) while Mexico City is on the verge of losing its water supply (41:59). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.americanprestigepod.com/subscribe

Danny and Derek are innocent, with news to boot. This week: in Gaza, Israeli bombs displaced Palestinians in tents (0:29) despite the ICJ ruling calling for a halt in that operation (4:36), global opinion on Palestine continues to shift (7:12), Egyptian-Israeli border clashes (13:59), and more; some developments regarding Iran's nuclear program (18:19); a summit attended by representatives of China, South Korea, and Japan (22:35); the DPRK/North Korea has a failed satellite launch (25:55); an update on Sudan, namely the besieged city of El Fasher (27:56); the Burkina Faso military junta delays the transition to civilian control (29:54); in Ukraine news, Vladimir Putin hints at a ceasefire recognizing the current territorial status (34:22) while Antony Blinken hints at the US greenlighting Ukraine using American long-range weapons to strike Russia (36:09); in Mexico, a presidential election on Sunday (39:56) while Mexico City is on the verge of losing its water supply (41:59).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

#EGYPT: Will Cairo close the Hamas tunnels to Sinai?? Haisam Hassanein is an adjunct fellow at FDD, analyzing Israel's relations with Arab states and Muslim countries. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Washington Institute, focused on Egyptian-Israeli relations and U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Malcolm Hoenlein @Conf_of_pres @mhoenlein1 https://www.ft.com/content/015ceea7-d324-46cf-8d72-8b1864885260 1962 Egypt in Yemen

This week we talk about the Gaza Strip, the Yom Kippur War, and Egypt.We also discuss 9/11, charged topics, and sneak-attacks.Recommended Book: Pinpoint by Greg MilnerTranscriptIn 1972, the Egyptian military started building up its offense-capable forces, buying things like MiG fighter jets and T-62 tanks from the Soviet Union, while also gutting its swathe of generals—many of whom attained the rank for political, not experiential reasons—replacing them with more capable versions of the same.This buildup and swap-out of leadership was being conducted in the lead-up to an invasion of Israel, with the intention of reclaiming territory that Egypt lost during the Six-Day War in 1967: a conflict that saw Egypt, Syria, and Jordan all going to war with Israel, mostly because of the simmering bad relations Israel had had with all its Arab neighbors since the First Arab-Israeli War, which ended in 1949, but the catalyst for that conflict was Egypt threatening to close the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping; something that would be devastating to Israel's economy, and which the Israeli government had previously said would serve as a casus belli—a justification for war—and which was already the casus belli for the aforementioned First Arab-Israeli War.So the same general ingredients that led to the First Arab-Israeli War in the mid-20th century were in place again in the late-60s: strained relations between Israel and its neighbors, one of those neighbors threatening to clobber the Israeli economy by denying them the use of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran for shipping exports, and though the second time around the Egyptian military was pulled back into a defensive position after announcing that ban on Israeli shipping using these water channels, the Israeli military preemptively struck Egyptian forces and launched a ground offensive into Egypt that ended less than a week later. This conflict left tens of thousands of Arab soldiers from these three countries dead, while Israel only suffered about a thousand fatalities. The Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian governments gave up territory to Israel as part of the ceasefire following this relatively brief war, and the territory Egypt gave up—the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, which it had been occupying, directly informed that 1972 buildup of Egyptian forces and recalibration of their military leadership.Throughout that buildup and booting of generals, though, the Egyptian government tried to get Israel to accept a deal that would involve them giving the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in exchange for the Egyptian government formally recognizing Israel's rights as an independent state—something none of its Arab neighbors were willing to do, which perhaps understandably had been an ongoing source of tension in the region.Everyone, including Israel's most powerful ally, the US, were keen on this agreement, but the Israeli government said no, as the deal wouldn't guarantee their protection from Egypt in the future.This pissed off a lot of those allies, and the Egyptian government continued to float the idea right up to the moment they attacked Israel in 1973—an attack that was anticipated by essentially everyone, including the Israeli government, because it had become well-understood that the Egyptian government, for reasons both economic and governmental, wouldn't really be able to survive as an independent state without the Sinai territory that was now under Israel's control.Egypt conducted a bunch of military exercises between May and August of that year, which is why similar exercises, right next to the Suez Canal in late September, were ignored by many in the Israeli establishment as just more exercises, nothing to worry about. And tens of thousands of the soldiers participating in those exercises were given permission to make their pilgrimage to Mecca a few days before the attack, which reinforced the idea that this was just more posturing on the part of Egypt—and that proved convincing, even though the Israelis received eleven warnings of an impending attack from well-placed sources.The Israeli government finally scrambled to call up reservists a handful of hours before Egypt moved in, though, and despite being in the position to make a preemptive strike, they were dissuaded from doing so by US leadership, which told them they should do everything they could to avoid being the one to start a new war in the Middle East, also saying that if they did start something, they wouldn't receive any support from the US; the Soviet Union, for their part, made similar efforts to dissuade the Egyptians from starting a new conflict, but to no avail.What became known, in Israel at least, as the Yom Kippur War, because it began on that holy Jewish holiday, ultimately lasted just shy of three weeks; it saw successful Israeli counterattacks into Syria and Egypt, eventually led to the beginnings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and importantly, led to the 1978 return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt as a consequence of the Camp David Accords, which also led to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty—which included Egypt's acknowledgment of Israel as a legitimate nation that should be allowed to exist.One defining trait of the Yom Kippur War, though, which has remained locked into the collective psyche of the Israeli military establishment in the decades since, was the surprise-attack nature of the conflict, and how Egypt, alongside Syria and Jordan, all hit Israel at a moment in which they weren't fully prepared, and when they had many reasons to believe an attack wouldn't be forthcoming.What I'd like to talk about today is a more recent attack on Israel that many are comparing to the outset of Yom Kippur war, what we know so far about the conflict and the intentions of those involved, and what might happen next.—This is an incredibly fast-moving and emotion-evoking story, so there's a very good chance some component of what I'm about to tell you will have changed before this episode goes live, and that a lot of conversation about it, in personal and broadcast contexts, will be fraught.But that said, what we seem to know at the moment is this:Early on the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a sneak-attack against Israel.Hamas, which is more formally called the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas is an acronym for that name in Arabic, is an organization that governs the Gaza Strip, and has since 2007, when they took control of the region, capturing it, basically, following a five-day conflict with the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, or Fatah—there were elections in the area before that, but since then it's mostly just been Hamas running things, and they have influence in the West Bank—another area within Israel designated for Palestinians, though separated from Gaza by Israeli cities and security infrastructure—as well.This sneak-attack was, by all indications, almost entirely unexpected and came as a surprise to Israel's military complex, alongside that of allied nations, like the US and European countries; there have been murmurings, as tends to be the case after these sorts of attacks, that some people did know or suspect what was about to happen, it's just that those suspicions were't taken as seriously as they could have, and in retrospect, should have, been. But this attack caught the Israeli government more or less completely unprepared, and it was fairly complex, involving attacks from the land, the sea, and the air, the latter accomplished using thousands of rockets fired within hours of each other, but also motorized paraglider that allowed fighters to quickly get behind defensive lines, allowing them to secure bases and checkpoints, which in turn allowed more heavily armed commando units to break through the usually well-defended walls and fences guarded by Israeli soldiers, and to then sweep through neighboring areas, killing and capturing as they went.The killing and capturing was quite brutal: this wasn't a firefight between soldiers, it was largely a wave of well-prepared Hamas fighters rolling through a relatively small number of soldiers, and then butchering, torturing, raping, and kidnapping civilians of all ages. Current estimates suggest that Hamas militants have killed more than 1,300 people, so far, including people of many different nationalities, but mostly Israeli citizens, and they've wounded several thousand more—primarily during this initial, stealthy attack, which some Israeli higher-ups have called their country's 9/11, because of how out of nowhere it seemed, and how many civilian lives were claimed.Israel's government officially declared war on Hamas the following day, and have since killed nearly 3,000 people, and wounded at least 9,600 more, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—most of those deaths and injuries the consequence of Israeli counterstrikes, which have until now mostly been in the shape of missiles fired into Gaza.That "until now" caveat is important, as, as of the day I'm recording this, the day before this episode goes live, the Israeli government has indicated it intends to invade Gaza, beginning in the more-populated northern portion of the Strip, and it reinforced this intention by telling Palestinians in Gaza, via the UN, that they had 24 hours to evacuate to the southern portion of the Strip. Such an evacuation is easier said than done, though, as more than 1.1 million people live in the area the Israelis were suggesting people should leave, or else, so the Israeli government has gotten pushback from international organizations, as there's no way that many people can safely move that far in that short a period of time, which means Israel risks losing the moral high ground, seeming not to care what happens to everyday Palestinian civilians, despite gesturing at giving them the option of getting out of harm's way before the hammer comes down, Israeli soldiers flooding into the area intent on hunting down Hamas' leadership and collapsing every last bit of their military infrastructure.And that dynamic, of Israel being just incredibly overpowered compared to Hamas, and using that power against everyday Palestinian civilians, is part of why some outside analysts have suggested the 9/11 comparison is apt; not just because of how the attack happened and who the primary victims were, but because Israel's response, so far at least, has been similar to that of the United States following 9/11: namely, a lot of international support wavers because, back in the day, the US government scrambled to find someone to blame and ended up hurting a lot of innocent people alongside those who were substantially less innocent, and because now, Israel might be readying itself to do the same, everyone feeling really bad for them and what they have suffered, but increasingly wondering if the victim might be setting themselves up to become an even greater victimizer—lashing out as a result of that pain and horror and desperate need to feel some semblance of security and safety again.As was the case back in 2001, there are many valid perspectives on this, and folks around the world have responded to what's happening in Israel and Gaza in a variety of ways.Some people, those on what we might call the pro-Israeli side, have argued that Israel was attacked, out of nowhere, a huge number of civilians were killed, other civilians—something like 200 of them—were taken hostage, and this is very not okay, and Israel is well within its rights to hit back at those who hit them first, and to do what they need to do to ensure those who did the initial hitting are not in a position to do so again in the future, even if that means some innocent people are caught in the crossfire.Others, those on what we might call the pro-Palestine side, have argued that millions of Palestinians have been essentially kept in an open-air prison for almost two decades, and thus it's understandable that they might do whatever they can—or support organizations that will do whatever they can—to hit back at the force, the Israeli government, that came in and took their land, locked them up, and who have trampled their human rights in all sorts of internationally acknowledged ways.It's also worth noting here that there are plenty of Palestinians who don't like Hamas, and/or who don't agree with what they did in this instance, or with other attacks they've made against other Palestinian groups and Israelis over the years; there are likewise plenty of Israelis who don't agree with the militarization that has occurred under the current, and other recent Israeli administrations.And it's possible, I think, to acknowledge that it's civilians on both sides that are suffering the most from these attacks, recent and historical, while those at the top often use them as an excuse to continue inciting and justifying violence of all sorts, while reinforcing their own hold and garnering more power for themselves—and can be true of attacks that look a lot like terrorism, and those that are easier to justify in the eyes of the international community.So there are people on all sides of this, there are uncomfortable discussions happening all around the world, centering on this subject, but the concrete reality on the ground is that Hamas scored a brutal military strike against the much larger and more powerful Israel, Israel is now leveraging that power to hit the residents of the Gaza Strip, including Hamas, hard, and we're all waiting to see how far this will go, and what the broader consequences will be.Because as horrible as that initial attack was, and as horrible as Israel's counterattack has been, the real fear for many is that this conflict will expand to encompass more players, regional and international.The most likely entrants would be those that have been involved in previous attacks against Israel, like Egypt and Lebanon and Syria, and while Egypt seems not keen on the idea right now, mostly trying to play peacemaker and trying to keep a flood of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from fleeing Gaza into their territory, Lebanon has been a bit more fuzzy on the matter: there have been reports of mortar attacks across the border, and some reporters have suggested that the level of attacks are higher than usual, maybe indicating that Hezbollah, which is a major political and military force in Lebanon, could get directly involved in the conflict, seeing it as an opportunity to hit Israel when they're wounded and when their forces and attentions are divided—though it could also be a matter of Hezbollah wanting to pull some of Israel's resources north, which would make their work in Gaza a lot more cumbersome. That would potentially be doubly-bad, too, because Hezbollah is backed by Iran, which has made no secret of its desire to see Israel wiped off the map, and which is the major force many people on the Israeli side, and on the side of simply not wanting to see the war expand, are worried might decide to get involved, as that would mean a whole nationstate getting its country-scale military involved in the fight, which would substantially complicate things, not to mention seriously raising the potential of a huge body count and a spiral into WWIII. The Iranian government has said it won't engage militarily with Israel unless Israelis attack them, so that concern would seem to be less pressing at the moment, though it's hard to predict, early on in a conflict, how such statements will age as realities on the ground change, and Iranian officials have made other statements that suggest they're keeping their options open.There are more distant concerns that the US or Russia or China might get involved, and it seems unlikely that any of those bigger, global players would step in directly at this point, though a huge number of countries have announced military and humanitarian support for Israel, and a few have done the same for the Palestinians, as well; so that's better in some ways, as it reduces the chances of those bigger players coming into direct conflict with each other, but less-good in the sense that it raises the possibility of this turning into a proxy conflict, which could then spin-up into something pretty big, for better and for worse, if things at some point escalate.Looking further afield, there are concerns within Ukraine that this conflict could pull attention and resources away from Kyiv, redistributing them to Israel, or maybe even just wearing people out on the idea of throwing resources at international conflicts—democratic support for such aid drying up as people start to wonder how much money will be spent and how many of these things we'll see popping up in the coming years. We're not far enough along to know if that's likely to be the case or not, but it's enough of a concern that Ukrainian President Zelensky has been going out of his way to announce support for Israel, even asking to visit the country, personally, in order to stay front of mind and possibly to build a connection in the eyes of the world between the two conflicts.One other big development is a pause on efforts by the Israeli and Saudi governments to normalize their relations with each other; this has been a huge, long-term diplomatic effort that could help the Middle East stabilize a bit, and could help the region better interconnect economically and diplomatically, but the Saudi government said they were back-burnering the agreement while Israel is attacking Gaza, and it's anyone's guess as to whether they'll start that back up, and if so, when.Something else we don't know is Hamas's motive for this attack. Some speculate that it might be as simple as wanting to hurt a longtime enemy, while others have suggested it might be the lead-in to some other kind of attack: an attritional, weakening blow meant to soften Israel up for an invasion from the north, or an attack from Iran. Still others contend that it was probably a means of derailing the aforementioned normalizing of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia—something Hamas would be keen to prevent, and which they may have predicted this sort of attack and Israel's inevitable response to it, would hamstring.Wilder speculations, for which there's no evidence, as far as I'm aware, suggests that this might be a five-dimensional chess ploy by Russian President Putin, since Putin met with Hamas leaders who traveled to Moscow for the visit in March of 2023, and the group's politburo leader visited Moscow again in early September. The theory is that Putin wanted to pull international attention and support away from Ukraine, while also punishing Israel for supporting Ukraine, and he did so by either supporting Hamas directly, or via Russia's ally, Iran—and while it has been confirmed that Iran helped Hamas prepare for this attack, there's no confirmation that Russia had anything to do with it; this, and several other pieces of evidence pointing in this direction, so far at least, are all circumstantial.This gestures at the broader problem right now, though, of trying to understand and contextualize something so horrific, because lacking that deeper understanding, it's difficult to know what will help, what will make things better in a region in which all the variables seem to be set up in such a way that things just get worse and more volatile over time, rather than the opposite, and what will be the consequences of the, as of the day I'm recording this, ongoing counterattack by Israel, and the exploding humanitarian situation that's arising in Gaza as a consequence of that counterattack.Show Notes* https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/* https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1711027540536471994* https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23910641/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-explainer* Depressing Take on the Conflict* Conflict update* https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/israel-hamas-gaza* https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip/* https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/* https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/zelensky-israel-hamas-war-gaza-visit-netanyahu* https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/13/palestinians-flee-their-homes-towards-southern-gaza-after-israeli-order* https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-war-refugees-6cf0ff04e513ecec12cf9152656ac1b6* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_enclaves* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

Since the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement of 1979, there have been two geostrategic earthquakes with long-term significance for the Middle East: the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Against the background of these developments, Israel has sought to attain security and peace through consistent efforts in four areas: acting decisively to prevent those countries committed to its destruction from developing weapons of mass destruction; seeking an accommodation with the Palestinian national movement on the basis of partitioning the area included in Mandatory Palestine; pursuing peace agreements with the four states on its borders; and working to bring about normalization and peaceful relations with all the countries in the Middle East. In this episode, Dr. Polisar analyzes the strategic reality in which Israel has functioned during the last four decades and its successes and failures in each of these four areas.

Dr Seth Anziska (Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations, University College London), gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. Based on newly declassified international sources, Preventing Palestine charts the emergence of the Middle East peace process, including the establishment of a separate track to deal with the issue of Palestine. At the very start of this process, Anziska argues, Egyptian-Israeli peace came at the expense of the sovereignty of the Palestinians, whose aspirations for a homeland alongside Israel faced crippling challenges. With the introduction of the idea of restrictive autonomy, Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the chances for Palestinian statehood narrowed even further. The first Intifada in 1987 and the end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for a Palestinian state, but many players, refusing to see Palestinians as a nation or a people, continued to steer international diplomacy away from their cause (Princeton University Press).

The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR's Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions of Arab-Israeli violence but part of longer sustained conflict between Israel and the Soviet Union. The role of Soviet “advisors” in Egypt in the period is well known. Using memoirs and testimony of Soviet veterans, Ginor and Remez show that the Soviet involvement was much more direct and provocative than previously understood. In addition, the authors significantly change our understanding of the eventual rapprochement between Egypt and the United States. The usual story relies heavily on the memoirs of Henry Kissinger, who naturally takes much of the credit for the supposed “expulsion” of Soviet advisors and the decision by Sadat after the war to move closer to the American camp. The problem is, as Ginor and Remez show, the advisors (and other military personnel) never left. Rather, they were shuffled around for the benefit of news people and foreign agents, then returned to their units. Crucially, these Soviet units advanced the air defense network to cover the Suez Canal– itself the prerequisite for any Egyptian attack. For these reasons and more, this book is well worth your attention. Enjoy the interview. Because this is an ongoing project, the authors are eager to collect more information. If there are veterans, diplomats, or others with some involvement in these conflicts who would be willing to share their stories, please contact Ginor and Remez at the Truman Institute: truman@savion.huji.ac.il.

The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions of Arab-Israeli violence but part of longer sustained conflict between Israel and the Soviet Union. The role of Soviet “advisors” in Egypt in the period is well known. Using memoirs and testimony of Soviet veterans, Ginor and Remez show that the Soviet involvement was much more direct and provocative than previously understood. In addition, the authors significantly change our understanding of the eventual rapprochement between Egypt and the United States. The usual story relies heavily on the memoirs of Henry Kissinger, who naturally takes much of the credit for the supposed “expulsion” of Soviet advisors and the decision by Sadat after the war to move closer to the American camp. The problem is, as Ginor and Remez show, the advisors (and other military personnel) never left. Rather, they were shuffled around for the benefit of news people and foreign agents, then returned to their units. Crucially, these Soviet units advanced the air defense network to cover the Suez Canal– itself the prerequisite for any Egyptian attack. For these reasons and more, this book is well worth your attention. Enjoy the interview. Because this is an ongoing project, the authors are eager to collect more information. If there are veterans, diplomats, or others with some involvement in these conflicts who would be willing to share their stories, please contact Ginor and Remez at the Truman Institute: truman@savion.huji.ac.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions of Arab-Israeli violence but part of longer sustained conflict between Israel and the Soviet Union. The role of Soviet “advisors” in Egypt in the period is well known. Using memoirs and testimony of Soviet veterans, Ginor and Remez show that the Soviet involvement was much more direct and provocative than previously understood. In addition, the authors significantly change our understanding of the eventual rapprochement between Egypt and the United States. The usual story relies heavily on the memoirs of Henry Kissinger, who naturally takes much of the credit for the supposed “expulsion” of Soviet advisors and the decision by Sadat after the war to move closer to the American camp. The problem is, as Ginor and Remez show, the advisors (and other military personnel) never left. Rather, they were shuffled around for the benefit of news people and foreign agents, then returned to their units. Crucially, these Soviet units advanced the air defense network to cover the Suez Canal– itself the prerequisite for any Egyptian attack. For these reasons and more, this book is well worth your attention. Enjoy the interview. Because this is an ongoing project, the authors are eager to collect more information. If there are veterans, diplomats, or others with some involvement in these conflicts who would be willing to share their stories, please contact Ginor and Remez at the Truman Institute: truman@savion.huji.ac.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions of Arab-Israeli violence but part of longer sustained conflict between Israel and the Soviet Union. The role of Soviet “advisors” in Egypt in the period is well known. Using memoirs and testimony of Soviet veterans, Ginor and Remez show that the Soviet involvement was much more direct and provocative than previously understood. In addition, the authors significantly change our understanding of the eventual rapprochement between Egypt and the United States. The usual story relies heavily on the memoirs of Henry Kissinger, who naturally takes much of the credit for the supposed “expulsion” of Soviet advisors and the decision by Sadat after the war to move closer to the American camp. The problem is, as Ginor and Remez show, the advisors (and other military personnel) never left. Rather, they were shuffled around for the benefit of news people and foreign agents, then returned to their units. Crucially, these Soviet units advanced the air defense network to cover the Suez Canal– itself the prerequisite for any Egyptian attack. For these reasons and more, this book is well worth your attention. Enjoy the interview. Because this is an ongoing project, the authors are eager to collect more information. If there are veterans, diplomats, or others with some involvement in these conflicts who would be willing to share their stories, please contact Ginor and Remez at the Truman Institute: truman@savion.huji.ac.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions of Arab-Israeli violence but part of longer sustained conflict between Israel and the Soviet Union. The role of Soviet “advisors” in Egypt in the period is well known. Using memoirs and testimony of Soviet veterans, Ginor and Remez show that the Soviet involvement was much more direct and provocative than previously understood. In addition, the authors significantly change our understanding of the eventual rapprochement between Egypt and the United States. The usual story relies heavily on the memoirs of Henry Kissinger, who naturally takes much of the credit for the supposed “expulsion” of Soviet advisors and the decision by Sadat after the war to move closer to the American camp. The problem is, as Ginor and Remez show, the advisors (and other military personnel) never left. Rather, they were shuffled around for the benefit of news people and foreign agents, then returned to their units. Crucially, these Soviet units advanced the air defense network to cover the Suez Canal– itself the prerequisite for any Egyptian attack. For these reasons and more, this book is well worth your attention. Enjoy the interview. Because this is an ongoing project, the authors are eager to collect more information. If there are veterans, diplomats, or others with some involvement in these conflicts who would be willing to share their stories, please contact Ginor and Remez at the Truman Institute: truman@savion.huji.ac.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions of Arab-Israeli violence but part of longer sustained conflict between Israel and the Soviet Union. The role of Soviet “advisors” in Egypt in the period is well known. Using memoirs and testimony of Soviet veterans, Ginor and Remez show that the Soviet involvement was much more direct and provocative than previously understood. In addition, the authors significantly change our understanding of the eventual rapprochement between Egypt and the United States. The usual story relies heavily on the memoirs of Henry Kissinger, who naturally takes much of the credit for the supposed “expulsion” of Soviet advisors and the decision by Sadat after the war to move closer to the American camp. The problem is, as Ginor and Remez show, the advisors (and other military personnel) never left. Rather, they were shuffled around for the benefit of news people and foreign agents, then returned to their units. Crucially, these Soviet units advanced the air defense network to cover the Suez Canal– itself the prerequisite for any Egyptian attack. For these reasons and more, this book is well worth your attention. Enjoy the interview. Because this is an ongoing project, the authors are eager to collect more information. If there are veterans, diplomats, or others with some involvement in these conflicts who would be willing to share their stories, please contact Ginor and Remez at the Truman Institute: truman@savion.huji.ac.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacob Shapiro and Kamran Bokhari discuss the geopolitical importance of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and whether the realities it created will define the future. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here: hubs.ly/H06mXwR0 TRANSCRIPT: JS: Hello everyone and welcome to another Geopolitical Futures podcast. My name is Jacob Shapiro, I am the director of analysis for Geopolitical Futures and I am joined again this week by Kamran Bokhari, who is our senior analyst, welcome Kamran. KB: Thanks for having me, Jacob. JS: I just want to apologize to our listeners, I know that we didn't manage to get a podcast out last week, so we're going to try and get two out this week. In general, we are going to try to stick to one a week, so we appreciate you guys bearing with us as we go along. Last time we talked, Kamran, we talked about the Islamic State and we talked about the Islamic State's origins and its futures. And one of the things I think is interesting right now is that the Middle East is really in a state of flux. The balance of power in the Middle East is changing. We can see it changing all the time. One of the things we are chronicling in our writing is how the balance of power in the Middle East is changing all the time. You brought up to us when we were thinking about what to talk about today, that we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and also Lebanon and Iraq had some token forces in there, but really it was between Israel and Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The 50th anniversary is coming up in June. How about you lay out for our readers why you think this is such an important anniversary to note? KB: I think 50 years is a good point in time to go back and review and measure just how things have unfolded in the region. And 1967 is particularly important because it really shaped the way the region has unfolded. It was a pivotal moment. Israel, as a result of that war, its massive victory over three Arab states, really established it as a military power in the region. And it was only 19 years old, Israel was only 19 years old when that war happened. And at the time, no one could've foreseen that Israel would be able to defend itself against three major Arab powers, at least they were perceived as major Arab powers. And the whole perception of Arab strength was essentially laid bare. The image of the Arabs was tarnished. I mean the fact that in the collective Arab memory, June 5, 1967, is seen as Yawm al-Naksa, which is loosely defined or translated as the day of setback, although ‘naksa' in Arabic is far more, if you will, stronger than just the word ‘setback' as we know it in English, but nonetheless, it left a deep imprint on the Arab world and established that the Arab world was very much hollow and it could not impose a military solution on Israel. JS: Kamran, I think this was one of the things you brought up last week that was interesting, which was when we were talking about the Islamic State and we were talking about the rise of radical jihadist Islam as a major ideology in the region, you pointed towards this moment as the moment at which the political ideology of the time, which was secular nationalism, Arab nationalism – in 1967 Egypt was still known as the United Arab Republic technically, right, which is an ode to the short-lived entity that existed when Egypt and Syria were part of the same republic from 1958 to 1961. So you sort of pointed out last week just how important this moment was in history and how it really defined how the Arab world was going to move forward. It amounted to the failure of Nasserism and in some ways, it was the moment that Egypt abdicated leadership in the Arab world, wouldn't you say? KB: Absolutely, and I think that it was forced to do that. I think that nobody could argue and nobody could sustain the image of this leadership role that Egypt had projected, that it was the leader of Arab nationalism, the Arab soul, the Arab world. When the Egyptian Air Force was destroyed in a matter of hours on the fifth of June, you couldn't make that argument anymore. And it was essentially the beginning of the end of the Nasser regime, at least Nasserite Egypt – though some would argue that we are still living in the legacy of Nasserite Egypt – but Nasser himself didn't live too long after that. He died in 1970, and that really closed that chapter of Arab nationalism, but it also demonstrated that the Arab states, and here we are talking about Egypt, I mean Egypt is the heart of the Arab world given it is the largest Arab state by population, any type of cultural renaissance, new ideologies that take shape in Egypt, in Cairo particularly, and then disseminate to the rest of the Arab world. So that was the status of Egypt. That war really, really demonstrated the impotence of the Egyptian military in the face of Israel, which was seen as a weak state at that point, and it really established many of the boundaries that we are currently dealing with and the relationships that Israel has with many of its Arab neighbors. So we know that in 1978, Israel and Egypt made peace and in many ways the outcome of 1967, really laid the foundation for that eventual rapprochement and the diplomatic relationship, the uneasy diplomatic relationship that has existed since then. Likewise, the relationship with Jordan, even though the formal peace treaty between Jordan and Israel did not emerge until 1994, but it is well known that Israelis and Jordanians have had a very close security relationship, especially as it pertains to the Palestinians and those living in the West Bank. The Israeli-Syrian relationship was also established. The hostilities that exist till this day, the state of war as many would refer to it, was established in 1967 when Israel conquered the Golan Heights and was able to seize that territory from the Syrians and the Syrians have not been able to take that back. So the entire geopolitical landscape that we now know as sort of the defining borders and the boundaries that established the Arab-Israeli dynamic were set in the aftermath of the 1967 war with a little bit of modification within the case of the Sinai, which Egypt was able to take back in the form of the peace treaty. JS: Well you are right to an extent, I will say that you are overlooking a little bit just how important 1973 was. So Israel and Egypt again fight another war in '73, and as much as 1967 was a success for the Israeli Defense Forces and for the strategy of preemptive attack, I mean Israel was in a weak position in some sense and it was forced to attack Egypt preemptively if it was going to be able to achieve its objectives. This led to a certain amount of arrogance on the part of the Israelis and in '73, there was a massive intelligence failure where they dismissed Egyptian mobilization in the Sinai. Israel ended up winning that war with U.S. support and then that sort of is what led to the peace treaty in the end. But I think you are right in the sense that a lot of the geopolitical realities that have defined this part of the world, which is the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, the sort of frozen state of conflict between Syria and Israel as I would call it, Israel obviously went into Lebanon a couple more times after that. But another thing that I think we need to point out here is that before '67, there really wasn't a very strong relationship between the United States and Israel, at least not the way that people think about that relationship now. Israel's success in the '67 war was really the moment the United States realized two things, first of all that most of the Arab states were in the Soviet Union's camp and that there was no getting them back, and second of all, that Israel could be a meaningful partner in balancing power against the Soviet Union in the Middle East. And I bring this up because I think it raises an interesting point, because you're right that a lot of the seeds of how things developed after '67 were laid in the results of that war. But at the same time, if we look 50 years later, a lot of those things are beginning to fall apart, right? The Soviet Union has collapsed, people are making a lot of Russia's involvement in the Middle East, but it's very miniscule compared to the chest pumping that everybody talks about. You know the Russians are not funding or massively arming states that are thinking about attacking Israel or other U.S. allies in the region. Egypt is an economic basket case, it just went through a pretty massive political transition, which began you know with the Arab Spring around 2010-2011, and they have issues of their own. Jordan is sort of the miracle of the region, how Jordan hasn't been affected by the stuff that's going on in the region is pretty incredible. Syria, I mean Syria is basically half a state right now. The Assad regime has been able to consolidate itself, but Syria, which really was one of the biggest vulnerabilities Israel faced from a military point of view, Syria is completely involved with its own fight against its own anti-regime rebels, and the Islamic State is there and they are having to rely on Hezbollah and all this other stuff. So when Israel looks out at its current strategic landscape, it doesn't see Egypt and Syria and Jordan as these major problems anymore. In '67 the major concern was, well what if Israel gets attacked by three entities at the same time. Those three entities aren't there. When you think about Israel's strategic position right now, the sort of first, most immediate thing that comes to mind is Hezbollah. We had those reports recently of Israel just a couple days ago striking a weapons convoy, an alleged weapons convoy of Hezbollah in Palmyra, which is pretty far in for the Israelis to go into Syria. So that's sort of the first thing. But Hezbollah is also completely distracted by the Syrian civil war. But then you take a step back and the challenges for Israel really aren't set by 1967, they are set by different things. So the first thing I would say is that, you know, what is going to happen with the Islamic State? Maybe the Islamic State is going to get defeated and maybe it's going to collapse but the real concern for Israel is the state of disrepair that is in the Arab world won't reign forever. Is there any potential for some kind of radical Sunni entity to rise in the Arab world and unite the factions and once again treat Israel as a common enemy? Taking a further step back, you look at Iran which was dealt a setback with the Syrian civil war and with the degradation of the Assad regime, but still maintains a lot of influence in Iraq and is still aggressively trying to push its influence in the region. And then farther back is Turkey. Turkey is rising, one of George Friedman's most identifiable forecasts and one of the things we write about a lot and that we get a lot of attention for, is our position that Turkey is going to rise and it's going to be the major power in the Middle East. Right now, there are decent relations between Israel and Turkey, but I think Israel's long-term thinking is about what a strategic landscape looks like, it has to think about Turkey as this major power reasserting itself in the region. So I agree with you in the sense that it's important, and '67 really did set the chain for a lot of different events, but in some ways, it's become obsolete. Would you agree with that characterization or do you want to argue with any of that? KB: No, I think you are right. I think we are still dealing with the post-1967 architecture but with the caveat that that architecture is in a meltdown mode. Defeating three of its neighbors at the same time established Israel's superiority in a military sense and really consolidated the state of Israel, and since that time, what's become clear, even though we had the 1973 war, it became clear to Egypt that there was no military solution. This almost romantic view of being able to establish Arab hegemony over all of historic Palestine through military means was shattered. That perception was completely shattered. And even though 1973 happened and was a surprise and intelligence failure for Israel, nonetheless the Egyptians I would argue did not think when they launched that war that they would be able to militarily defeat Israel. There's always the possibility you could do that, but deep down you know and if you have been dealt a blow like 1967, that really weighs heavily on your national psyche and your military strategy moving forward. And if you look at the way the negotiations panned out after that, with the moderation or the intercession of the United States, it becomes clear that really 1973 from the Egyptian point of view was enhancing your bargaining power. Improving your position to achieve some sort of, if you will, win-win scenario in which the Egyptians can come back and say yes, we were able to retake the Sinai from Israel and we restored national dignity. But 1967 really showed that the military option was no longer there for the Arabs. And moving forward from the Israeli point of view, those very states that were threatening them in 1967, Israel really relied on their behavior to not wage war against Israel as part of its natural security doctrine. Keep in mind that these are autocratic regimes that may view Israel in a certain way because they believe in it or maybe because it's pragmatic and because they are in power and have to balance pressures from all sides. But the sentiment in many of these countries until this day is one of hostility towards Israel. Israel relied on these capitols: Damascus, Cairo and Amman, to make sure that that national sentiment did not alter the national behavior of those countries, and Israel would not be threatened again. Now if you fast forward to the Arab Spring, that whole strategy seems to be falling apart, because if these countries, if these regimes cannot maintain order within their own country, then that is a problem. And if you have a power vacuum, we just recently published a couple of articles on how Jordan is weakening, and the implications particularly for Israel are massive, if the regime were to weaken much and God forbid fall, that could create a vacuum in which Israel faces a new kind of threat, an uncertainty. Clearly this is not a threat from a state, but non-state actors create a new dynamic. If we look at what is happening in Syria and how the Israelis have been trying to balance between the hostile forces on the Sunni side of the conflict, which includes ISIS, which includes al-Qaida and all those whom we call the moderate Sunni Arab rebel forces. They're not friends of Israel. Given a chance, they would wage war against Israel. On the other side is Syria, Iran and Hezbollah – again enemies of Israel. And Israel has to do this careful balancing act. At the moment, the Sunni side is not in a position to threaten Israel and therefore Israel is trying to make sure that Hezbollah does not gain more power than it already has and pose a bigger threat than it already does to Israel. Should those circumstances be replicated in Jordan and Egypt, then that's a tough balancing act for Israel to maintain. Because we're talking three different countries on the entire periphery of the Jewish state. JS: Well let's dig into that a little bit then. We know that Syria is in a state of civil war, the Assad regime seems to have been able to consolidate control there. For the most part that situation is actually ok with Israel because it's weakened an enemy, but not so much that there is just chaos reigning everywhere. But you've brought up Jordan and you've brought up Egypt. You said that Jordan is weakening. How about we dig a little more into that? What do you mean when you said Jordan is weakening? KB: Well if you look at Jordan geographically, it is sitting at the crossroads of major areas of conflict. It borders both the countries in which ISIS is operating i.e. Syria and Iraq. It has the second largest refugee population coming from Syria after Turkey. We're talking somewhere around 680,000 people. That's a huge strain on an already poor country. The economy really historically hasn't done well, it's gotten by with assistance from both the West, the United States and the U.K., and of course assistance from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. But with the price of oil declining, and we know that Saudi Arabia is in trouble on the home front, it has less and less financial bandwidth to come to the aid of Jordan. We also see the situation in the West Bank evolving towards a crisis where President Mahmoud Abbas is at an advanced age. He's not ill or anything, at least apparently. But when you reach, go beyond 80, you are operating on borrowed time. So what will happen to the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, especially in the wake of Israeli policies that are now aggressively pushing more settlements? That creates a large pressure on the Jordanians whose population is somewhere a little above 50 percent of Palestinian origin. Many of those people came in the aftermath of the 1948 war, a lot of them came after the 1967 one. But there's already an existing Palestinian population, which has been to one degree or another, if you will, assimilated into Jordanian mainstream political life. We recently had protests because of the cutting of subsidies by the government. There are no shortage of Islamist forces, from the Muslim Brotherhood, it has at least two major factions. You have a large Salafi population. You have al-Qaida there. The founder of ISIS, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is from Jordan and the town of Zarqa. And you have Hizb ut-Tahrir. And then you have the spillover effect from Syria. So these are circumstances, to expect Jordan that it will continue to behave the way it has since the '67 war or over the decades, I think that would be a mistake. I don't think that the Israelis are looking at it that way. Recall the recent report in which the Jordanian ambassador to Amman told the IDF chief that he is worried about stability and security in the Jordanian kingdom. We've not had these kind of statements coming from Israel. So if the Israelis are worried, I would say that is a good barometer of how the situation is deteriorating in Jordan. JS: Yeah although, I would challenge you to go a little bit deeper, which is to say that you've just laid out a pretty scary laundry list of challenges for any country let alone one like Jordan that really doesn't have a lot of natural resources of its own, which like you say, has an incredibly diverse population. There's a lot of Palestinians in Jordan. Really Jordanians are Hashemites right, there are actually very small numbers of people who can actually claim to be Jordanian, so many of them are Bedouins and Circassians and this, that and the other thing. How do you explain the fact that Jordan hasn't succumbed to all this stuff? Because unlike Syria or unlike Egypt or unlike even Lebanon it has for the most part avoided a lot of the domestic political instability and a lot of the violence that a lot of the Arab states around it haven't avoided and with much fewer resources. KB: So I would say that there are three aspects to that in terms of how the Jordanian regime has maintained stability and security. So the first and foremost is that the Jordanian security establishment has been very competent. Particularly the General Intelligence Department, its main intelligence agency, it has a very good handle in pre-empting and not being on the reactive side that things happen and then the Jordanians act. They've been ahead of the curve in terms of making sure that any radical elements, be they ISIS or others, that they are kept under lock and key and so that's one aspect. The other aspect I mentioned earlier is that there has been this historic relationship between Israel and Jordan, a quiet one that is not really talked about much and understandably so from the Jordanian point of view, and that has helped quite a bit. Then it is a very close ally of the West, the United States and prior to that, the U.K., and the U.K. continues to be an ally of the Hashemite monarchy. They also have had assistance from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to the extent that they have been able to do that. So I think a mix of forces has allowed Jordan to continue to maintain stability even though we're six years out from the Arab Spring. But I think that the pressures are building and this is not a sustainable situation. Should there be a, we talk about the southern provinces of Syria where the government and different rebel factions and ISIS is in the mix as well. There's sort of this lack of clarity over who has the upper hand, its sort of a balance of weakness in southern Syria when it comes to the civil war, it has not been a major theater compared to Aleppo or Palmyra or ISIS-land up near Raqqa or Damascus. These are the things that have maintained order and these are the factors that enabled the regime. But to assume that this will continue, especially at a time when the established states, I mean Saudi Arabia is the largest state in that region and it also shares a large border with Jordan, although historically a quiet one. But nonetheless, if Saudi Arabia is having less and less financial bandwidth to assist countries around its periphery, then we are looking at a situation that is not something that the Jordanians will be able to handle on their own. There's a lot of hope that goes into this idea that Jordan will continue to manage its domestic politics and of course the wider geopolitics, it's a balancing act. But I think we need to get out of this assumption that things will continue and nothing will go wrong and there's a need for out-of-the-box thinking. JS: Although I just want to drive home for our listeners that a lot of people when they think about geopolitics, they think about geographical determinism, and what I mean by that is they think that it's as easy as looking at a map. And a map is going to be able to tell you exactly what's wrong with a country and what is going to happen to a particular country. Jordan is a really good example of where just the basics of a map or just the basics of geography or a layout of resources isn't enough to tell you everything. I think there is a conservative element in Jordanian society and an element that has always had to fight an uphill battle against a real lack of resources. I mean Jordan, its borders were not drawn in any logical way when you are thinking in terms of nationality or economic production or just about anything. So I agree with you that Jordan faces many challenges, but one of the things about Jordan is this intangible thing that has kept the kingdom together so far, and I think will serve it in good stead. But leaving Jordan aside for now, it's a relatively small country. One of the things that people brought up from the last podcast and I think it fits in exactly with this conversation, because we started by talking about 1967 and as you mentioned, in a lot of ways 1967 was one of the moments where Israel and the United States realized that they had interests in common. Those interests really were about blocking the Soviet Union and about Israel becoming a U.S. ally in a region that was becoming dominated by Arab states that were allied with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union obviously is no longer there, and the strategic basis of the relationship between Israel and the United States is not as strong as it once was. I know that there was a lot of talk about how special the relationship is and how close it is. But that strategic reason for the relationship has gone away and I think you've seen the United States and Israel pull away from each other a little bit. That's both because Israel has a lot more freedom of action than it did before and also because from a U.S. perspective the interests don't line up quite as well as they used to. But the question that I am circling around here is, so we've talked about how we're in this 50 years since 1967, but we're also in a Middle East that is changing rapidly, how does the U.S. respond to the things were talking about here, how does the U.S. respond to the hollowing out of the Arab world, how does the U.S. respond to Jordan and the serious challenges that Jordan is facing and what is the U.S.-Israel relationship going to look like going forward? I know that a lot of people were thinking that Donald Trump was going to make that relationship much different than the relationship with Obama, but as with so many things with President Trump, he said one thing before getting into office and continues to say things all the time, but the things that he's actually doing don't always line up with what he says. He has not moved the embassy to Jerusalem, he has criticized the Netanyahu administration for settlements at some level, all things that Trump said he was going to do, but when we look in practice, it looks remarkably similar to before and it also seems like Trump is willing to throw his hat in the ring and to be yet another U.S. president who wants to try and solve the eternal conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, so I just threw some things at you but I think the main thing is so what does the U.S. do, how does the U.S. deal with all these dynamics we've brought up? KB: We've written about how the United States is pursuing a balance of power strategy. A balance of power strategy doesn't mean that there is a nice balance, that you can essentially create this system that's going to work for a while. It's a constant act of balancing, it doesn't end at one point, it doesn't begin at one point. You just have to continue to play with it, tweak it, to make sure that it is working and the U.S. balance of power strategy relies on working with the major powers of the region, we've identified them as Turkey, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Now if you go into each one of them, we've talked about the historic relationship with Israel, and there is this disconnect between Israeli and American interests, but I still think that despite that divergence in interests, the United States and Israel aren't really that far apart if you look at it from a strategic point of view. Yes, tactically there can be many differences, you know, we can say that the United States does not want Israel to build new settlements but I think that that's sort of a minor issue in the larger regional geopolitical scheme of things. I don't think that the United States does not want Israel to assume a posture or an aggressive interventionist posture in its neighborhood and I don't think that the Israelis want to do that either. So if you look at the airstrikes in Syria, they do not demonstrate any desire on the part of the Israelis to intervene in the way they did in Lebanon, and that's great from an American perspective, because the United States is already dealing with a whole lot. The United States under the Obama administration was able to end that hostility that erupted between Turkey and Israel over the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in 2010, and there was the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations and a sort of normalization. So I think that there again is another example of the United States trying to balance. The United States needs Turkey to manage Syria, and it has made it very clear to the Israelis that we need your cooperation. If the Israelis and the Turks are going after each other, then that undermines the United States' interests. You flip over to Iran's nuclear program and the way the nuclear agreement was forged, yes there was a lot of huffing and puffing on the part of the Israelis, there was a lot of bellicose rhetoric and unhappiness, and the media was all about how Netanyahu's personality clashes with that of Obama, but at the end of the day, Israel didn't do anything substantive to block that agreement from taking place. Israel maintains that it has very little faith in that agreement to produce the desired outcome, but that's a different story than saying we will go and actively work against American interests. JS: I am going to jump in and disagree with you a little bit in the sense that I think you are understating just how much the Netanyahu administration opposed the Iran deal. Israel didn't do anything in terms of Iran's nuclear program and won't do anything in terms of Iran's nuclear program, at least anything overt, because it doesn't have the capability. It simply does not have the military capability to go in and knock out the Iranian nuclear program. If it did, I would submit that it probably already would have done it. It did that with Iraq, it did that with Syria. If it felt like it had the capability, I think it would have gone and done it already. And I don't think it was a small thing what Netanyahu did when he came and addressed the U.S. Senate and gave that very flowery speech about how it was a bad deal and how the Obama administration had committed a catastrophic mistake. I don't think that Israel had much of a choice in the end though. At the end of the day, Israel knows where its bread is buttered and knows that it needs the United States as a key strategic ally. If this was the path that the United States would go down and this was the path that the United States thought was most in U.S. interests, Israel wasn't going to be able to thwart that. But I think that Israel in general is very intimidated by Iran, especially by Iran's rhetoric, and they would've preferred a much stronger U.S. reaction to Iran. I think that's one of the areas where you see that there's not going to be a break in relations between the United States and Israel but I think there you see a very, very different set of priorities. Israel is still a small country in a very hostile neighborhood that looks at things one way and the United States is the most powerful country in the world with a lot of different challenges in a lot of different regions. You've got everything going on with Russia, you've got everything going on with China, you've got allies all over the place, you've got a NATO alliance that isn't working the way the United States wants it to, the United States does not have time to get involved in every little thing inside the Middle East. The United States really can use Iran, not necessarily as an ally, I am not saying the United States and Iran are going to become best friends or anything, but the United States needs an Iran it can work with on a pragmatic basis, because there are bigger fish to fry. You've got ISIS sitting there right smack dab in the Middle East, you've got whatever is going to come after ISIS, you've got this huge jostling and competition for what's going to come after the hulking carcasses of Syria and Iraq going on there, so I think that's actually one of the areas where you see a little bit of the divergence and where you see that the challenges of '67 and the challenges that have really defined relations in the region since '67 are beginning to change. KB: Yes they are changing, but what I was pointing towards or trying to make the case for is that there is the divergence, and yes it is a function of capability that Israel did not opt for a military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue and went along with the U.S. diplomatic option, but at the end of the day, this is that difficult balancing act we've been talking about. The difficulty in maintaining a balance of power strategy whether it's between Turkey and Israel or Israel and Iran, I mean even between Turkey and Iran, although this is one of those relations that has yet to really emerge in terms of where it's going at this point. Even though they are at odds with one another over the outcome of Syria, Tehran and Ankara are not going to be seeing eye-to-eye, but for now they have both decided that it's not in their interests to go head-to-head with one another. I mean similarly if you look at how the U.S. is sort of caught. On one hand, there is an Iran that can be useful in the fight against ISIS in making sure that Iraq functions in some kind of semi-coherent way. But at the same time, the more that the Americans appear to be working with the Iranians – that deeply upsets the Saudis and the other Arab states, and therefore yet again you have a balancing act. We saw a lot of this balancing, it's not as if the United States can just say okay, Saudi Arabia has very little to offer and Iran has a little more to offer, therefore we're going to sort of swing that pendulum in the direction of Tehran. I don't think that would sort of undermine the entire thesis of a balance of power strategy, but once you immerse yourself into that, you put yourself in the shoes of Washington, it's a difficult balancing act. How do you make sure that the enmity between the Iranians and the Saudis does not upset your interests in the region. On one hand, the United States does not like the Saudis sponsoring militias in Syria that are not very different honestly from al-Qaida and ISIS. But at the same time, the United States needs the Saudis to make sure that the Iranians don't jump out of their box and become disproportionately powerful. So I guess, I am talking about a very complex balance of power strategy that will continue to twist and turn whether it involves the U.S.-Israeli relationship, the U.S.-Iranian tensions, the tensions that currently exist between Turkey, which we have identified as being the key to the American strategy for the long haul in Syria and in the wider region. We see great tensions, at least in the short term, there's a divergence of interests especially over the Kurds and the extent to which Turkey wants to commit forces in the fight against ISIS. But nonetheless the two sides have to work with each other, so Washington has been caught in between these four powers. JS: It's funny as you were talking, it's really striking to me when you think in terms of, you know, if you think about the 1960s and '70s, it was punctuated by these very intense wars. We call them wars in the full sense of the term. But overall it was a much more stable situation in the Middle East. You know, there were the people that were in the U.S. camp, there were the states that were in the Soviet camp and the states themselves were fairly stable. Egypt was a fairly stable state, Syria you know, there was the coup d'etat in ‘61 that brought the Baath party to power, but once the Assads eventually came to power, Syria also was very stable, the Hashemite kingdom has also been there since the 1940s. Right now, it's not so simple. The Arab world, as you said, really has been hollowed out. And there's a great deal of instability and there's a great deal of uncertainty about what is going to emerge out of it. I would suggest that if we are looking forward another 50 years, if we are talking about 100 years from 1967, I think that what we might see is we might see the pendulum swing back to the stability that we saw in '67. I just think the actors are going to be very different. I don't think that Egypt and Syria and war between Arabs and the Israelis is going to be the thing animating the region. I think the thing to really focus on is the rise of Turkey, how Iran is going to respond to that, how the Arab world is going to deal both with its own problems with radical Islam and then how Israel is going to try to navigate through all this and who the U.S. is going to use and how. I want to close, I just want to hit one more topic while we're here Kamran. It's one we've sort of danced around and it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it feels like the eternal conflict. And in some ways, it's strange to go to this issue after talking about such large weighty things, because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in strategic terms really does not matter that much. And I wonder how you are going to answer this question, because it's something that I ask people all the time. Why do you think there is such a degree of fascination and attention with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East? The attention that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that it gets, really I don't think lines up with the strategic importance that it has overall, and I think it's appropriate to talk about it in this conversation, because as you said 1967 is when Israel takes over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and it hasn't relinquished them since. And the Palestinians, which used to be – the West Bank was a Jordanian problem and the Gaza Strip was an Egyptian problem. Since '67 it became an Israeli problem. So why do you think that there is such a level of focus such that even the Trump administration is sending out envoys talking about solution to this conflict that has eluded every single president. KB: I think there are two reasons for that. I think the first reason has to do with the fact that the Palestinian issue remains unresolved. In many ways there is, as time has gone by and as we move forward, the situation becomes more and more complex and resolution appears more and more elusive. But the fact is that the question of Palestine, the Palestinian issue, has not been resolved in some shape or form to where we can move beyond this idea of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though successive American administrations have failed to really tackle this issue. I think the closest that we ever came was in the Clinton administration when there were final status talks between Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the late '90s. But we've drifted far from that and we've come to a point where the entire Palestinian landscape has become so incoherent that even before we talk about an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, there has to be some form of intra-Palestinian settlement and nothing tells me when I look at the Gaza Strip, when I look at the West Bank, when I look at Hamas, and when I look at Fatah and I look at the other Palestinian factions and the disunity and the incoherence, I look at it and I say we are moving even further away from anything called a Palestinian national entity. And therefore it becomes even less and less possible for a serious Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. But I think that there is another assumption built into the way we in the West look at this problem. Which is that if we were to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict then somehow the Middle East becomes far more manageable. I don't believe that. But that is the way I think that many within the various governments in the West, whether it's the British government or the French or the German or the American. And in many ways, this narrative has been peddled by the Arab regimes and the wider Muslim world, you know Turkey has been pushing this as well on its end, that you need to solve this problem, if you solve this problem then we won't have radicalism. Radicalism and al-Qaida, ISIS exist largely because of what has happened to the Palestinians and the wider fallout of that. I think there's the failure to recognize that it's not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab Muslim world faces a deep malaise. We talked about this in our first podcast a couple of weeks ago. And that is at the heart of this issue, but I think that there is this obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being central to the wider problems of the Middle East. I will argue that even assuming somehow we can miraculously solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and we have this quote-unquote two-state solution before us, the problems of Syria, Egypt and Iraq and the rest of that region are not going to go away. But nonetheless because it's a historic continuing unfinished business, there is this tendency to sort of organically link it to the other problems, and if you look at every administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration and even now the Trump administration, there's always this effort, this new effort to say let's get the Israelis and the Palestinians to start talking in a serious way. But at the end, we haven't seen any breakthrough, because the fundamentals have not changed, they've actually become worse. You have two Palestines, effectively there are two Palestinian Territories, not just geographically separated, they are ideologically separated, they are politically separated. Right now, the Israelis don't occupy Gaza, that is a Palestinian sort of self-ruled territory spinning on its own axis controlled by Hamas. That will continue, I don't think the Israelis are going to go in anytime soon or in the foreseeable future and reoccupy Gaza. So what can happen in the form of some negotiation is that there may be another Palestinian territory that emerges as a semi-quasi-sovereign in the West Bank. You will effectively have two Palestines. Does that solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I would argue no, it just makes it much, much more complex. JS: And I think just the way I always talk about the Middle East when people ask me about it is my favorite metaphor to describe it basically as a chess board, that really for over a century now the Middle East has been a chess board for major powers outside the region to try and make moves against each other. And for the most part since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, it's been mostly pawns on the chess board with mostly people moving back less valuable pieces as they challenge each other. And I think the most important thing to think about going forward when we think about the next 50 years and where we are going to be 50 years from now is to watch the powers in the Middle East itself that are beginning to come up. I think really that means keeping a very close eye on Turkey, keeping a very close eye on Iran, keeping a very close eye on Saudi Arabia and whether and how it's able to tackle many of the issues facing it. I know that here at GPF, we're fairly bearish on Saudi Arabia's ability to do that, they are just facing too much. And then Israel, as it always has been, you know smaller country in a very messy neighborhood trying to figure out its right place in it all and trying to build the right level of strategic relationships that allow it to exist with a maximum amount of independence. All right, thanks Kamran. Thank you for joining me. Thank you everybody for listening. If you want to send us questions or comments, you can comment on our website or on SoundCloud. You can also send comments to comments@geopoliticalfutures.com. Again, I am Jacob Shapiro, I'm the Director of Analysis for GPF and this is Kamran Bokhari, and we will see you next time.

In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades. From the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty up to the present, Brownlee describes four areas in which the U.S. strengthened Egyptian leaders: national defense, coup proofing, macroeconomic stability, and domestic repression. The book outlines the evolving relationship between Washington and Cairo, from Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union, to working with Egypt in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Brownlee explains how repeated U.S. rhetoric of spreading democracy and human rights did not always match its actions, and how strategic interests almost always trumped idealistic goals, both in the past, and potentially in the future.

In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades.  From the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty up to the present, Brownlee describes four areas in which the U.S. strengthened Egyptian leaders: national defense, coup proofing, macroeconomic stability, and domestic repression. The book outlines the evolving relationship between Washington and Cairo, from Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union, to working with Egypt in the fight against Islamic terrorism.  Brownlee explains how repeated U.S. rhetoric of spreading democracy and human rights did not always match its actions, and how strategic interests almost always trumped idealistic goals, both in the past, and potentially in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades.  From the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty up to the present, Brownlee describes four areas in which the U.S. strengthened Egyptian leaders: national defense, coup proofing, macroeconomic stability, and domestic repression. The book outlines the evolving relationship between Washington and Cairo, from Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union, to working with Egypt in the fight against Islamic terrorism.  Brownlee explains how repeated U.S. rhetoric of spreading democracy and human rights did not always match its actions, and how strategic interests almost always trumped idealistic goals, both in the past, and potentially in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades.  From the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty up to the present, Brownlee describes four areas in which the U.S. strengthened Egyptian leaders: national defense, coup proofing, macroeconomic stability, and domestic repression. The book outlines the evolving relationship between Washington and Cairo, from Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union, to working with Egypt in the fight against Islamic terrorism.  Brownlee explains how repeated U.S. rhetoric of spreading democracy and human rights did not always match its actions, and how strategic interests almost always trumped idealistic goals, both in the past, and potentially in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades.  From the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty up to the present, Brownlee describes four areas in which the U.S. strengthened Egyptian leaders: national defense, coup proofing, macroeconomic stability, and domestic repression. The book outlines the evolving relationship between Washington and Cairo, from Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union, to working with Egypt in the fight against Islamic terrorism.  Brownlee explains how repeated U.S. rhetoric of spreading democracy and human rights did not always match its actions, and how strategic interests almost always trumped idealistic goals, both in the past, and potentially in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades.  From the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty up to the present, Brownlee describes four areas in which the U.S. strengthened Egyptian leaders: national defense, coup proofing, macroeconomic stability, and domestic repression. The book outlines the evolving relationship between Washington and Cairo, from Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union, to working with Egypt in the fight against Islamic terrorism.  Brownlee explains how repeated U.S. rhetoric of spreading democracy and human rights did not always match its actions, and how strategic interests almost always trumped idealistic goals, both in the past, and potentially in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices