Sympathy for the devil: Israel’s efforts on behalf of Cairo’s generals
By Chemi Shalev
20th of August 2013
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/.premium-1.542403
In June 1941, on the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill famously told his personal secretary John Colville “If Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” The next day he expressed unequivocal support for his arch-enemy Stalin and dispatched military assistance to beleaguered Moscow.
This “principle of the lesser evil” that Churchill so pithily expressed has been the guiding principle of much of America’s post-World War II policy. In its name, the U.S. has supported a long line of disgusting dictators and terrible tyrants who were considered to be critical for vital American interests such as combatting Communism and terror or safeguarding oil supplies in the Middle East. Democracy and human rights, in most cases, took a back seat, often for many decades.
This is the general theme of the Israeli effort to persuade Washington not to cut U.S. military aid to the Cairo regime, despite its transgressions. America and Israel share an overriding interest in preserving the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and in preventing Sinai from turning into a launching pad for Al-Qaida attacks, Israel says. Former ambassador to Egypt Eli Shaked told the New York Times on Monday, “We don’t have good guys. It is a situation where you have to choose who is less harmful.”