In recent weeks a number of key right-wing Israelis and their supporters have been pressing hard on the idea of the need for bringing democracy to the Arab world. At first sight, this seems a puzzling thing to do. Why would they want the will of the people, in places such as Iraq, to determine the country's politics? Surely, many must have thought, this runs counter to many decades of pressure from the Zionists to prop up anti-democratic or pseudo-democratic regimes in the Arab world as the best defense they can have against angry Muslim populations who see their brothers and sisters in Islam being brutally robbed of their homes, businesses, land, and lives in Palestine? Indeed it does. So what is going on?

Well, the war that the Israelis so desperately want on Iraq is becoming an ever-harder argument to make. The double standards about enforcing UN resolutions are just too glaring. The only way anyone might claim that these are not double standards is to say that they have one standard for democratic countries and one standard for undemocratic countries. Of course, historically, this is a blatant lie. But, never mind, we can begin our new policy now: Preemptive strikes on all non-democratic states.

Frankly though, most people will recognize this for what it is: a ploy. The United States is not going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars overthrowing someone they don't like just to allow the people to elect someone else they don't like. Someone who would want US troops and companies to leave as soon as possible. Someone who may be even more belligerent towards Israel. For example, if the newly elected leader were to announce a program to develop weapons of mass destruction to deter Israel from further aggression, what would the US do? What would those Israelis, so vocal for democracy in the Arab world, say then?

This is just another feeble attempt to cover the blatant double standard that US foreign policy has held to for the last few decades. The blatant bias towards Israel and against her enemies is the reason why the Muslim world has not been subjected to pressure from the US to develop properly democratic forms of government, with all the benefits they bring. In fact, the pressure has often been in the opposite direction. The lack of democracy in the Arab world is a direct result of the double standard the US has been applying. It is not, as the Israelis are disingenuously claiming, the cause of the "apparent" double standard.

Whatever UN resolutions Saddam has defied, whatever crimes he has committed and gotten away with, it will be easy enough for the people of Iraq to claim that they were done "not in my name". This excuse cannot be made of the Israelis, who vote in their leaders. If sanctions hurt the people of Iraq, who cannot vote out their leader, it is wanton harming of innocents. If sanctions were put on Israel to change their government and its policies, it would be direct punishment and pressure on those who actually approved of all the crimes of their elected government, and any claim that it was harming the innocents would therefore be rubbish.

Lamaan Ball is the editor of the Ask About Islam page of IslamOnline. He is also the founder and author of Investigating Islam.

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