"We support political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa that can meet the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region," U.S. President Barack Obama said in May 2011, less than half a year after the Arab Spring revolutions began. Indeed, the U.S. provided its support to the protesters, particularly in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Alongside the overthrow of their veteran dictators, American support contributed to the citizens' sense of optimism and to the feeling that a new era was beginning. But reality quickly crashed down on them. The old world order was restored and, in most cases, the achievements gained by the revolutions were reversed. In fact, excluding Tunisia (which instated a relatively democratic leadership), all the Arab states that launched Arab Spring revolutions failed to achieve democratic regimes. Not only that, but the women who spearheaded the demonstrations and called for the overthrow of oppressive dictators and the instatement of political and individual rights, have now been pushed to the sidelines, significantly worse off than they were before the revolution began. According to U.N. statistics, these women face oppression, rape, murder and sexual harassment as a matter of routine. Egypt, for example, where the now ousted Mubarak regime promoted women's rights and adopted a "feminism under the auspices of the state" program, women's rights have retreated severely and the incidence of sexual harassment is up by hundreds of percentage points. (A U.N. report from 2013 concluded that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women faced some form of sexual harassment.) In terms of human rights, things have also gone downhill since the Arab Spring revolutions. Citizens are arrested without trial, freedom of speech is often restricted, freedom of movement is infringed upon and much more. The instability in the public arena in these countries in the wake of the Arab Spring allowed Islamic terror organizations to step in, making it even harder to stabilize the region. According to international research organizations, some 100,000 innocent people have been murdered in terrorist attacks across the Middle East in the last year alone. Minorities are not the only victims of Islamic terrorism, but though the persecution of minority groups is nothing new, it has increased dramatically since the Arab Spring. The grave situation facing minorities in the Middle East is rather accurately reflected in the number of Christians: A decade ago, for every five Muslims in the Middle East there was one Christian, and today there is one Christian for every 20 Muslims. Their presence will continue to shrink, as will the presence of other minority groups, while the Muslims will continue to gain more and more strength. It seems, therefore, that the Arab Spring did nothing to improve the lives of the people who staged it, and that its negative implications will not disappear in the near future. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey concluded a speech in November 2013 by saying that the volatile, complex situation resulting from the events of the Arab Spring "will take a decade or more to finally settle." Perhaps things would have been better if the Arab Spring had never happened at all.
The Arab Spring: More harm than good
מערכת היום
מערכת "היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
