I'm not an administrator, but I think this topic deserves a fork.

Peace with Egypt has been pretty instrumental to Israel, the basis for peace with all the other Arab states, and that peace has been with Mubarak's government.

You do have to remember the context. For the first three decades of Israel's existence, the one certainty of Israeli foreign policy was that the Arabs would never, ever, ever make peace. They were a welded alliance against them. That wasn't just opinion; the Arab nations fought three wars as a semi-unified force. So the idea that an Arab leader -- any Arab leader -- would drop it all, fly himself to Jerusalem, and speak peace before the Knesset -- was as mind-blowing as a double dose of psilocybin.

And Anwar Sadat did just that. More than that, he paid the price for it -- with his life. And Mubarak stood to enforce it, even as the whole Arab world howled in outrage at Egypt breaking ranks.

So no, I don't see it as completely crazy that Israel is sorry to see Mubarak go. He and his boss gave Israel the tangible proof that hoping for Mideast peace wasn't crazy. That said, all things must end, and doing anything but preparing for the new day is pointless.

Israel tends to overreact. I understand why, and even sympathize, even as I also recognize that it's still overreacting. There are old men and women living in Israel today... thousands of them... who still remember watching the Nazis slaughter their families. There are millions more who suffered terribly under the Communists. And there are millions more who were evicted from their homes across the Mideast when Israel was created. Even for those who are not among these groups, they live among them every day... and a large percentage of Israelis are their descendants. They grew up seeing the suffering that anti-Semitism caused. I'm not surprised at all that Israelis, as a people, are some of the most hardened about national defense in all history.

AND YET... it's still overreacting. Israel tends to bite at things that are harmless, and smash things that couldn't hurt a fly. It tends to shoot first and ask questions later. It tends to hold onto things much longer than is in its own best interest, just because it needs the security blanket. In short, Israel is an entire country with PTSD. It can't see the world without seeing its own nightmares. And while a new Egypt could become an enemy again... it could also be the chance Israel has never had. To actually speak with the Arab people, not the generals... to do business with them, get to know them, and maybe, just maybe, stop being quite so afraid of them. Because if the Jews and the Arabs ever stop fighting long enough to see how alike they are, this whole business becomes surprisingly easy to resolve.

The only thing we have to fear is phobophobia.

In theory, they'd like to support democracy in the middle east (democracies are less likely to go to war with each other)

Democracies with strong civil societies and economies are less likely to go to war with each other. People tend to forget that Hitler was elected. So was Napoleon III. And of course, both sides of the American Civil War had governments made up entirely of elected officials. But in each case, there were serious flaws in either the economy (slavery, hyperinflation) or civil society (monarchist vs. republican chaos) that made it possible for warmonger(s) to slip through.

That's what everyone is afraid of. Not just Israel. Not just us. Europe's afraid of it, China's afraid of it, the other Arab states are afraid of it. The Egyptian Army is afraid of it. Heck, if you can trust anything he says, Mubarak is afraid of it. And if the leaders of the revolution have any sense, they will be afraid of it too.

but when you get right down to it, democracy is government by the people. Egypt's government newspaper has, in this millenium, essentially reprinted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact...

And how much do you think the people of Egypt trust their government newspaper?? Pull up the al-Jazeera English feed and you'll get an idea.

Revolutions are not often conducive to stable governments, and as much as we'd all love for Egypt to become a secular "democracy based on social justice", it could just as easily swing the other way.

I'd even take a truly hybrid system with army, democracy, and religion each having a share. It would still be freer and fairer than the s***pot Egypt's governance is at the moment. But revolutions can be hijacked. Watching first the Muslims circle the Coptic churches for protection after the bombing at Christmas, and then watching the Copts return the favor for the Muslim prayers in the midst of the protests, I am dead certain that the Egyptians are not in favor of a hardline Islamist government. That doesn't mean that one might not emerge.