The new Middle East | Dan Schueftan

Broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti speaks to professor Dan Schueftan.

I’ve posted Dan Schueftan before. 

Many will find him too… Right Wing. I’d rather call him Sound. Robust. Based. 

Some of his points:

In the Middle East you have to be strong. And you have to show your strength. If you are weak and seen to be weak you risk attack. Israel has shown its strength since October 7. It has come out of two + years of war much stronger. 

If someone is not afraid if you, you have to be afraid of them. You can’t appease. On that, Israel has come out of this latest war much stronger. It has weakened Iran and all its proxies. Weakened Syrian Jihadist forces. 

Arab countries support Israel because they’re decimating their strongest enemies, the Muslim Brotherhood. They have to diss on Israel because that’s what the Arab Street expects. 

“I don’t like the Jews or Jewish society — too noisy, too messy. But I Love them.” 

Meantime western countries like Britain, the EU, Australia and even the U.S. allow the Muslim Brotherhood free rein, with its dozens of allied bodies. Which Arab countries do not allow. They ban the Brotherhood. They tell us we must do the same. We ignore them. Because we are smarter. We know more than all these Muslim states. Right. 

From the Show Notes:

Condemned by mobs on the streets of the West, denounced by governments across Europe and beyond, and vilified by the United Nations and its satellite institutions, Israel might nevertheless be in a stronger strategic position than at any point in its history.
 
Two years after October 7th, Israel’s international standing has deteriorated even as its regional power has expanded. What appears in Western capitals as isolation and moral failure is understood very differently in the Middle East, where strength is measured not by approval but by the capacity to act, to endure condemnation, and to defeat enemies who interpret restraint as weakness.

This discussion moves beyond the battlefield to examine why Europe has drifted from strategic thinking into ideological paralysis, why progressive politics treats self defence as a moral failure, and why Israel’s greatest strength lies not in its political leadership but in a society willing to fight, endure and rebuild without illusions.

👁‍🗨 Watch if you want to understand why Israel’s unpopularity in the West has coincided with a historic consolidation of power in the Middle East, and what that reveals about the condition of Western opinion.