Russia’s Growing Influence in Egypt

Since coming to power in 2013, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—his faith in his country’s alliance with the U.S. shaken by the events of the previous two years—has been cultivating improved relations with Russia. Ramy Aziz explains the new alliance, and warns against its dangers:

Russia is challenging the West, including through its current effort at gaining a foothold in Syria and in a number of [other] countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. . . . To take but one striking recent example: in December 2017, at a summit with the Egyptian president in Cairo, after signing the final contracts to establish the el-Dabaa nuclear plant, Vladimir Putin said that he was trying to create more cooperation with Egypt, and described the country as an old and reliable partner in the Middle East and North Africa. . . .

Putin believes Sisi to be the right match for a military partnership. Putin found what he had long been looking for: a military man who had risen up in politics and was trying to rule in difficult circumstances, and was therefore in need of support and ready to offer concessions. . . . [H]e worked with full determination to turn Egypt into a country within the new Russian orbit. The most important aspects of [Putin’s] effort have been military, economic, and political. . . .

Russian and Egyptian forces carried out military exercises known as “Protectors of Friendship” in September 2017. Earlier the same year, some Russian special forces were deployed at a military base in the [country’s] western region, adjacent to the Libyan border, to . . . offer assistance to Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan militias, which enjoy both Egyptian and Russian backing. Recently, the two countries agreed to prepare a cooperation document allowing Russia to use Egyptian skies and military bases for military operations. . . .

Although the current U.S. administration continues to give Egypt military and economic support in its war on terrorists and insurgents in the Sinai, this has not succeeded in breaking ties between Moscow and Cairo and has not managed to stop Russia’s persistent efforts to establish influence in Egypt. Sisi views Russia . . . as an ally that can be depended upon more than the United States, notwithstanding all the aid that the United States has given Egypt. For that reason, the United States needs to adopt clearer and stronger language with Sisi regarding his rush to embrace Russia, like the language it used when it discovered cooperation between Egypt and North Korea. In the long run, Russia and Putin are no less dangerous than North Korea and Kim Jong-Un, and so the United States should work to end Russia’s efforts to establish influence in Egypt.

Read more at Washington Institute for Near East Policy

More about: Egypt, General Sisi, Libya, Politics & Current Affairs, Russia, U.S. Foreign policy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society