Is the Arab Spring a Threat to Israel?

In late May, even as U.S. and European leaders expressed hope that the revolutions unleashed in the Arab world would lead to broader democratization, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu darkly warned, "These hopes could be snuffed out, as they were in Tehran in 1979." Iran, of course, became a leader of the anti-Israel camp after the revolution and supports terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas against the Jewish state. Israelis fear that under new regimes Egypt and other states could, as they did in the past, sponsor terrorists to attack Israel. Israeli leaders' rhetoric has since softened, but their qualms remain. Israelis must put their fears aside: To fight terrorism effectively in the future, the Jewish state will have to work with the new regimes, and it cannot afford to reawaken old enmities.