Without vision, the nation riots

"Egypt’s popular uprising, surprisingly, is not in general driven by economic failure. To explain the demonstrations, we must look elsewhere, to passions."

By SHLOMO MAITAL
Jobless Graduates (photo credit: Associated Press)
Jobless Graduates
(photo credit: Associated Press)
ASKED ABOUT THE SITUATION IN EGYPT, IN THE wake of Tunisia’s so-called Jasmine Revolution, the newly appointed head of the Israel Defense Forces military intelligence branch, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, affirmed Egypt’s stability.
“There is no concern at present about [President Hosni] Mubarak’s rule,” he said in a briefing on January 25 before the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee.
That same day, violent demonstrations broke out in Cairo, spreading to Suez, Alexandria and other cities. As I write this, the demonstrations continue. While Israel was focused on its northern border, on the militant Shi’ite movement Hizballah’s seizure of government in Lebanon, unexpected trouble has broken out in our normally peaceful southern neighbor.
Mubarak, a pillar of Mideast stability, is likely headed for forced retirement. There goes the neighborhood. But why Egypt? In his book “Wealth of Nations” (1776), Adam Smith observed that only two forces drive human behavior: passions (emotion) and interests (material wellbeing).
Egypt’s popular uprising, surprisingly, is not in general driven by economic failure. To explain the demonstrations, we must look elsewhere, to passions.
I visited Cairo in 1995 and found the Egyptians affable, hospitable and resilient. I also found chaos – including an enormous hole in the ground in central Cairo, where an underground railway was being built. It has since been finished and is splendid. As longtime CNN Mideast correspondent Ben Wiedeman has noted, some 30 years ago Mubarak inherited from his predecessor Anwar Sadat crumbling infrastructure, including phones that did not work, undelivered mail and lawless cities, and brought order and stability. Mubarak rebuilt the economy.
As far back as 1999, a report in the respected British magazine The Economist praised Mubarak for dumping Egypt’s socialist economy and replacing it with a modern, market-oriented one. And in 2008, the International Monetary Fund cited Egypt for its outstanding economic reforms.
Egypt’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 5.2 percent in 2010, much faster than Israel’s. Official unemployment is about 9 percent of the workforce, less than in the US, though there is extensive hidden unemployment. Egypt exports 90,000 barrels of oil daily, and 8.6 billion cubic meters (11.25 billion cubic yards) of natural gas yearly, including some to Israel. Over the past year, Egypt’s stock market rose by 13 percent, equal to the rise in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The budget deficit is high, but smaller than America’s.
A major problem is inequality, disguised by Egypt’s reasonable $6,000 per capita GDP. Up to half of Egypt’s 86 million people live on $2 a day, or less. They look at the villas, yachts and Mercedes of the billionaires and seethe at the tight link between wealth and political influence.
But the same disparity between wealth and poverty exists in all 22 Arab nations. Why then is Egypt exploding? And why are the demonstrations led principally by the middle class, who have done relatively well? There are two huge deficits in Egypt, and both are fundamentally emotional in nature. One is the deficit in freedom – freedom to protest, to speak out, to vote freely, to elect representatives. Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections were widely regarded as fraudulent – not a single member of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood was elected.
The second, more bitter, deficit is the deficit in the freedom to dream. Egypt’s young people go to college, join Facebook, tweet on Twitter, see their peers abroad thrive on the Internet and blog fiercely about their leaders, then get an inferior education in backward colleges and are dumped into low-paying government jobs without meaning or purpose, at starvation wages. Young educated Egyptians cannot dream or aspire. The same phenomenon exists all over the Arab world.
Proverbs 29:18 says, “without vision, the nation perishes.” The word used for perish is yiparah, which has the same root as the Hebrew word to demonstrate or to riot (l’hitparei’a). We may therefore translate the Bible’s words as, “without vision, the nation riots.”
All over the Arab world, a generation of young people has been offered college education without hope of using it, because backward economies that fear Western technology have little use for their education.
There are two possible solutions. One is that of Islamic fundamentalism, to persuade everyone to abandon the Western vision of a free, progressive, modern society. The other is to embrace that vision. The path Egypt’s next leaders choose will be crucial, for Israel, the Mideast and the world.
The writer is a senior research associate, S. Neaman Institute, Technion.