D.C.

ALL politics is local. That American aphorism is playing out across the Arab world.

The Zionist bogeyman that Arab rulers have relied upon for more than six decades to deflect their people's demands for freedom, democracy and economic opportunity won't work to save them now.

This time around there have been only a few feeble and transparent efforts by dictators to blame Israel for their problems, but no one is buying.

Syria's myopic ophthalmologist, President Bashar Assad, dismissed the demonstrations in his country as the work of an "American-Israeli conspiracy ... to dismantle Syria."

Even a longtime Assad family apologist, Patrick Seale, took him to task …