Interim government is lesser of two evils

The West needs to understand the Muslim Brotherhood is no different from Hamas or the Taliban, writes Ben-Dror Yemini

JESSICA BOULOUS, a 10-year-old Egyptian girl, was shot in the head on her way home in Ein Shams, Cairo.

She had no chance. Her sole crime was to be a Coptic Christian. Dozens of churches in Egypt have been torched in recent weeks.

Boulous was only one of many victims. The Islamist brothers of the Muslim Brotherhood in Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Lebanon murdered and killed in the past week nearly 300 people. Leaving the civil war in Syria to one side, this persecution of Christians is a story all to itself.

From the West’s point of view, the Egyptian regime’s attempt to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood seems awkward, brutal, uninhibited. Videos from the conflict in Egypt make clear that neither of the two sides come well out of this story. There is no righteous side.

Sadly, these are the appalling rules of the game in the Middle East. No soft hand. No crowd-dispersal techniques according to the Geneva Protocol. Even now, after a terrible series of crimes against humanity, of countless massacres and slaughters of innocents, the West would buy any arrangement that would bring peace to Syria, including keeping the arch-murderer Bashar Al-Assad in power.

For all that, the Egyptian regime’s fight against radical Islam in its own country is getting the cold shoulder in the West. Jihadist infestation of the Sinai Peninsula threatens to turn it into an independent terror base camp. Does the West think that the Muslim Brotherhood will fight the jihadists there? Is the West in touch with reality? Sometimes there is no alternative but to choose between a great evil over a much greater evil.

Egypt’s interim government is a great evil, but the alternative is much worse. The connoisseurs of righteousness can continue to turn their noses away in disgust.

The problem is that such fastidiousness can only encourage the success of radical Islam in the most important Arab country. Instead of one Iran, we will get two. Instead of Hamas, which controls 1.3m people, we will get a Hamas that controls more than 80m, equipped with one of the strongest armies in the Middle East.

It will not be a victory for democracy. It will be a victory for a murderous ideology, which is racist and oppressive.

Egypt is a sick country. Money to buy wheat is about to run out. A quarter of the population lives on less than $1.64 (€1.22) a day. A little further on, and everything up to now may be small change compared to what is to come.

So the Western countries in general, and the US in particular, must make a decision: To sit on the fence or to help the less worse side to save Egypt from collapse?

Only time will tell what was the contribution of US President Barack Obama to the deterioration of the Middle East and to the Islamic winter that fell on Tunisia, Syria, and possibly Egypt. Obama had great intentions. What is clear is that, the more conciliatory he tried to be, the more hated he and the US became.

He managed to manoeuvre himself into the worst possible position: Now both sides despise him. His administration has fought against radical Islam in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, yet it refuses to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood is cousin to Hamas and the Taliban.

The free world has the chance to stand alongside the secular camp. Not because it is best, but because it is the best there is. Will Obama and the countries of Europe insist on missing this opportunity?

*Ben-Dror Yemini is a journalist for the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv