A good deal is made of certain "reformers" and advocates for "civil society" in the Arab countries. But if one examines them closely, those "reformers" often turn out to disappoint. For they are supporters, in the end, of the Muslim agenda, perhaps muted, perhaps less aggressive or less fervent, but still supporters. One example is Saad Eddin Ibrahim. He owes his freedom -- that is, he owes the Mubarak government's pressure to have his sentence overturned, and for him to be absolved -- to the fact that, at Bernard Lewis' urging, Egypt was threatened with a cut of $30 million dollars out of its (preposterous and maddening) $2 billion in annual American aid. It worked, of course -- if we ever bother to put pressure on Egypt, it will always work (we so seldom bother -- we'll do it to spring a "civil society" quasi-reformer, with a good press, but not to force them to crack down on the antisemitism and anti-Americanism of which the Egyptian press and television are now world centers).

Having heard Saad Eddin Ibrahim, I know that he is completely hostile to Israel, and is not one of those -- like Ali Salem -- who shows a sense that the Jihad against it is pointless and even wicked. And he is also a supporter of dhimmitude, for his remarkable silence about the persecution of the Copts needs to be noted. If the Ibn Khaldun Center, his instrument, were to denounce the systematic persecution and murder of Copts, even just once, that would begin, perhaps, to earn it the quite-unwarranted admiration of Western observers who seem to set the bar very low for all those claiming to be "civil society" reformers. Let's not be so accomodating, shall we?

And what about sad-eyed dhimmified scared Boutros Boutros Ghali? Despite being the U.N.'s Secretary-General, he always was, and always will be, a court Copt, kept around because he is useful (and his French is so much better than that of the Muslims in Egypt's Foreign Ministry), in disproving that Egypt really does persecute the Copts.

Boutros Boutros Ghali must always keep in mind the assassination of his great-grandfather and namesake -- and that long ago, when Egypt under the Cromer administration, and with the Europeans and Levantines of both Alexandria and Cairo, a far more civilized and tolerant place than it is today, having been engaged first in clearing out the Greeks, the Jews, the Italians, the Armenians of Alexandria (no Durrellian exotica about it), having shut down the lycees and the old French and English-language media, having eliminated a whole world of fez-wearing hubble-bubble aficionados who would have been at home at the Blue Parrot, along with Sydney Greenstreet, the Egyptians were left only with the Copts. And these are the people whose lives are more being made intolerable. Sadat put Pope Shenouda under house arrest; under the thuggish Mubarak, there have been many cases of torture, and murder -- by Muslim neighbors, by Egyptian police, by the army. Not a word from the U.N., not a word from the World Council of Churches, the Vatican (who cares about those pesky monophysites!), not a word from anyone.

But why be surprised? The failure to read Mubarak the riot act on this, as on his media's treatment of Israel, and on Egypt's failure to live up to a single one of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords, is simply par for the appeasement course -- you know, the course we are staying?

Who cares if the Copts are the original Egyptians and the Muslim Arabs the invaders? The Jews could say that, and the Christian Maronites, and even the non-Arab Kurds, and the Berbers of the Kabyle as well. But no -- we are endlessly told that this is the "Arab world." No one else exists, really. No one else can. No one else, anywhere in that Arab world.

There's so much darn news there's just no room for this in the newspapers or the evening news or on cnn.com. Try next week.

Hugh, please keep posting, I read all your articles avidly. The least the Coptic heirarchy can do right now is distance itself from the ritual Israel-bashing that some of them engage in. They must surely realise that throwing the Jews to the wolves is not going to buy them peace.