As far as the British attitude to the formation of the state of Israel goes, we were utterly cynical in our intent there as well. As Sir Ronald Storrs, the Brit

As far as the British attitude to the formation of the state of Israel goes, we were utterly cynical in our intent there as well. As Sir Ronald Storrs, the British Military Governor of Jerusalem stated in the early 1920's ; "It will form for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism." I guess he was right about some of the similarity with Ulster, though perhaps not in the way he intended. edit - as for democracy leading to theocracy in that part of the world, firstly Indonesia is almost 9,000 km away, and secondly I do not think there has been any recent time where external powers have not been massively fucking about round there, so you cannot really draw any conclusions about this being a feature of the local culture.