Micah Halpern Thinks on World Affairs

~~Thursday April 11, 2013~~

I've Been Thinking:

Qatar just promised to give Egypt another $3 billion. That is on top of the $5 billion that they already gave. Libya also promised to give $2 billion in support.

Egypt is in bad need of cash.

The Egyptian economy is failing. The IMF is in negotiations with Egypt about creating important economic guidelines in order to make them eligible for an IMF loan of $4.8 billion. The economy cannot grow without the money. They need it to create new industry, new jobs and to stimulate new investments.

But despite the effort to help them, Egyptians harbor real resentment toward the IMF and toward the demands they are making in order to receive the loan. Egypt does not want to put the safeguards and processes that the IMF is suggesting into place. And the Islamic parties do want Egypt to take a loan outside of Sharia, Islamic law.

The money from Qatar and Libya is critical, Egypt needs a back up in case, in the end, they do not receive the IMF money.

Wednesday April 10, 2013~~

Bahrain has just declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization. This is a huge statement.

Bahrain is now the first Arab country to call Hezbollah what it is. More Arab countries will soon join the club.

The story behind the declaration is this: Hezbollah is Shiite and Bahraini leadership is Sunni. Over the past two years there have been ongoing protests and almost a popular revolt in Bahrain by the 70% Shiite majority population against their Sunni minority rulers.
Hezbollah has been training the Bahrain fighters in urban terror tactics.

It has always been clear to the many Sunnis in the Arab world that Hezbollah was a terrorist group but it did not matter when they were attacking Israel. Now the Shiite terror group is fomenting unrest in a Sunni country. And Sunni nations are going to be up in arms about that.

There is only one Shiite controlled nation in the world right now. That nation is Iran. The inner division within Islam is going to emerge as a way of isolating both Hezbollah and Iran.

This announcement by Bahrain has several beneficiaries. It is good for Israel and it is good for the West and it is good for everyone else - except Hezbollah and Iran, of course.