I am often faulted by fellow Arab leftists for paying too much attention to Palestine as a criteria forpolitical parties and ideologies. I, however, never maintained that Palestine is a necessary and sufficient criteria of politics.

Zionists are furious that Arabs focus on foreign policy and evaluate politicians in their countries through the prism of foreign policy. They want the Arab people to be as ill-informed and as ignorant of world affairs as the American public. That, of course, suits Zionism. The ignorance of the American public facilitates the operation by which the Zionist lobby imposes its will on Capitol Hill (with the full cooperation and consent of US presidents).

It is perhaps this factor – of American public ignorance of world affairs – that helps explain why the American public remains uniquely pro-Israeli when people around the world – including in Western Europe, which was the center of Zionism after WWII – have switched from support of Israel to identification with Palestinian struggle. Zionists are basically bothered that the Arab people don’t like that the regional potentates – most of whom are imposed, armed, and funded by the US – are mere servants of US and Israeli in foreign policy.

But that is not the case. The Arabs remain deeply committed to foreign policy, and local TV stations in Arab countries devote much attention to world affairs. Domestic developments, from Iran to the US, are still of great interest to Arab people. The findings in Shibley Telhami’s new book, The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East prove yet again that Arab and Islamic identities remain potent for the Arab citizen. Arabs still see themselves as part of a larger community of people – far beyond the confines of the narrow nation state that Arab tyrants (including those adhering to the ostensibly Arab-nationalist Baathist regimes) have been propagating and reinforcing over the decades.

Palestine remains a central issue and political parties are expected to offer strong views against Israel and its occupation and aggression. As much as the US and Israel preached to Arabs that foreign policy does not matter, and that they should stick to issues of bread-and-butter, Arabs continue to judge politics through the criteria of domestic and foreign policy. And it is not true that the Arab uprisings have failed to reveal constant interest in foreign policy among the young generation.

I am often faulted by fellow Arab leftists for paying too much attention to Palestine as a criteria forpolitical parties and ideologies. I, however, never maintained that Palestine is a necessary and sufficient criteria of politics. Nazis and those anti-Semitic foes of Israel should never be acceptable politically, and even from the standpoint of Palestine. But Palestine has to be judged along with issues of social justice for the fulfillment of political conditions of progressiveness.

For example, Hezbollah has had a consistent track record of opposition to Israel and of effective military struggle against Israeli occupation and aggression, but it fails miserably if judged by the criteria of social justice. Hezbollah is not a leftist party and is quite reactionary and conservative in social and economic issues. Thus social justice and foreign policy are both important.

But foreign policy is a necessary factor and can in fact be used to judge a party in power. The Muslim Brotherhood (and their variants) are now ruling in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and have pursued foreign policies that are congruent with the foreign policy of the ancien regime. And economically, the governments of Egypt and Tunisia have been quite cozy with the World Bank and the IMF and have endorsed the recipes of the US.

But this is all related to foreign policy. A government that can advance social justice in an Arab country has to be one that breaks with US hegemony and that takes a strong stand against Israel and its occupation and aggression. In other words, the assertion of sovereignty – real and not nominal – can take place only through defying the will of the US-Israeli alliance. Does that mean that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has satisfied such conditions? Of course not. Because it has not taken a concrete stand against Israeli occupation of Syrian lands and it has accepted recipes of Western financial institutions (Bashar recently admitted in a meeting with an Arab delegation from Jordan that he followed economic policies that were “pressed” on him by Western governments).

The Arab youth can now easily judge a new government in power. A truly independent government, one that takes seriously the sovereignty of the country and without even associating with Arab nationalist causes, is one that can have the will to defy the US-Israeli will in the Middle East. It is this necessary but not sufficient condition that can allow such a government to tackle economic and social policies that are not imposed from outside. In both of these criteria, the Muslim Brotherhood has already failed miserably, especially that their promises in both spheres were loudly and rhetorically the opposite of what has been pursued by them.