A veiled Egyptian woman walks in front of symbolic coffins honoring protesters killed in recent clashes with security forces at an encampment in front of the cabinet building in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011. Islamist parties captured more than 60 percent of the vote in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary elections, according to partial results released Sunday. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
A veiled Egyptian woman walks in front of symbolic coffins honoring protesters killed in recent clashes with security forces at an encampment in front of the cabinet building in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011. Islamist parties captured more than 60 percent of the vote in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary elections, according to partial results released Sunday. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
JERUSALEM (AP) ? For Israelis, the Islamist election surge in Egypt is depressing confirmation of a deeply primal fear: An inhospitable region is becoming more hostile still.
This sentiment has been accompanied by a bittersweet sense that Israel was dismissed as alarmist when it warned months ago that the Arab Spring ? widely perceived as the doing of liberals yearning to be free ? could lead to Islamist governments.
Speaking for most people here, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the emerging result of the first round of parliamentary voting in Egypt "very, very disturbing" and expressed concern about the fate of the landmark 1979 Egyptian Israeli peace treaty.
"We are very concerned," added Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, who has long warned that Egypt could potentially pose a threat. Speaking to The Associated Press Sunday, Steinitz expressed hope that Egypt "will not shift to some kind of Islamic tyranny."
Experts here, as elsewhere, point out that political Islam comes in varying shades of green: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has about a 10 percent lead over the more radical Salafists and appears far less eager to impose a devout lifestyle or seek conflict.
But most Israelis appear to have little patience for such distinctions. There is a sense that moderate Islamists are pulling off something of a con, lulling opponents into complacency, projecting a seemingly benign piety to exploit a naive public's hunger for clean government after years of corrupt, despotic rule. And there is a long memory of Iran, once friendly to Israel, where secular forces including the military helped depose the Shah in 1979 only to swiftly be steamrolled by fundamentalists.
"These upheavals are a bad thing for the modern world, for Israel," said Yitzhak Sklar, a 50-year-old Jerusalem resident. "There is something in their religion that pushes them to extremism. Their religion calls for murdering anyone who opposes them."
Smadar Perry, Arab affairs writer for Israel's top selling Yediot Ahronot daily, bemoaned Islam's "coming out of the closet" in Egypt, symbolized by the "disappearance of jeans-clad youngsters in favor of (those with) long beards and eyes ablaze with fanaticism." Islamist rule in Egypt under any stripe would be "a terrifying problem," she wrote.
Some of the fears ? for example, that an Islamist-led government in Egypt would mold itself in Iran's image ? may be overblown. Iran's clerical rule is unique in the Middle East, and the Muslim Brotherhood stresses the idea of a theocracy has no place in its ideology. Instead, it says it's committed to an Egypt that is civil, democratic, modern and constitutional.
Israeli concerns about political Islam can be traced to its longstanding battle against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and more recently to 2006, when the Islamist Hamas group swept Palestinian legislative elections.
The Hamas victory triggered a process that ultimately left the militant group, considered a terrorist organization by much of the world for its suicide bombing campaigns and other violent acts, in control of the Gaza Strip. Since then, Hamas and other militants have used the territory as a launching pad for firing rockets into southern Israel.
The stakes in Egypt are much higher. Egypt is the largest and most influential Arab nation, with a U.S.-backed army that has staunchly honored a 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
The peace agreement has been a cornerstone of Israeli security policy for three decades, allowing the military to divert resources to fight foes in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. The treaty has also been a boon for Egypt, bringing in billions in U.S. military assistance.
"We hope that any government that will be formed in Egypt will recognize the importance of the existence of the peace treaty," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech Sunday.
At the same time, he said he had ordered a speeding of the construction of a massive fence being built along Israel's long and porous border with Egypt. Netanyahu said the fence, originally envisioned to stop the inflow of African migrants into Israel, has an "additional importance, security importance" now. In August, militants entering Egypt from the Gaza Strip infiltrated that border and killed eight Israelis.
The recent Islamic election victories in Tunisia and Morocco, considered the most moderate of Arab states, along with a growing Islamic influence in post-revolution Libya, have reinforced concerns.
"What we are facing in Egypt (and) elsewhere in the Middle East is an Islamic tsunami that we in Israel, in the West, will have to cope with in coming years," said Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt.
Shaked reflected the feeling of many in Israel that electoral wins by groups that may respect majority rule, but less so individual rights, is hardly a victory for democracy. "It seems that democracy in the Middle East has never been so far away as it is now," he said.
Israeli diplomats have cautioned against jumping to conclusions, noting that the final result in the elections for the Egyptian parliament's lower house won't be known until all stages of voting are completed in January and that presidential elections are next summer.
Yitzhak Levanon, who retired as Israel's ambassador to Egypt just last week, said officials in Cairo are well aware of the value of the peace agreement with Israel.
"There is great awareness of the importance of relations between Israel and Egypt," he told Israel Radio. "But Egypt is undergoing transformation. ... We have to monitor what's going on closely and be on guard."
He predicted tensions in the coming months between the military, parliament and a new president over division of powers. That tension and negotiations to form a majority coalition in the legislature could also limit the aims of more radical parties.
Others assess that taking on Israel cannot possibly be at the forefront of any group in an Egypt that is struggling with a desperate economic crisis. Indeed, the Brotherhood has said its priorities were to fix Egypt's economy and improve the lives of ordinary Egyptians, "not to change (the) face of Egypt into (an) Islamic state."
The Brotherhood, while no fan of Israel, has not said it wants to end the peace deal although it feels the treaty should be reviewed. The Salafis, new to politics, have not commented publicly on it.
On the societal level the Brotherhood differs as well, not favoring the imposition of strict Muslim law, preferring instead to lead by example. Elements of the Brotherhood are also known to have good ties with the military.
An emerging debate among the Islamist groups in Egypt seems to reflect this divide.
Yet on this point too Israelis consider mainly the case of Hamas, remembering their 1980s governments which ? less experienced with Islamists ? provided the group with quiet support to undermine Fatah, which was still banned here at the time.
Hamas went on to torment Israel with suicide bombings and then win the 2006 Palestinian vote because Fatah, by then Israel's ostensible peace partner, had become corrupt and detached. Palestinian voters yearned for better government, not more religion, many observers had said. Yet within a year Hamas had expelled Fatah-led Palestinian Authority forces from Gaza and has since slowly imposed its religious tenets on the population there while building up its military force.
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Follow Dan Perry at www.twitter.com/Perry(underscore)Dan and Josef Federman at www.twitter.com/joseffederman
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Public release date: 5-Dec-2011
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We're all going shopping this holiday season, but some will score better deals than others. How to know if you're getting the best items from the best stores at the best price? Easy: technology. From getting the inside scoop on the biggest discounts to making sure you get price reductions after you purchase, here's how to use apps and extensions to automate your shopping savings. 
If it's a really big purchase make a list of the features important to you. If you're not sure what features to look for in a new product, consult a buying guide like PriceGrabber's Shopping & Buying Guides (powered by Consumer Reports), which cover everything from appliances to clothing to toys.
Narrow down your list of potential items: Mega-retailer Amazon may be the best source for narrowing down the universe of all things to buy, with its best sellers and top rated lists of the top 100 products by category. Head over to the best sellers list, filter by category, and start perusing your options, checking the product descriptions to see if they match your list of important features. (You could cross-reference the best sellers list with the top rated list, but generally the most popular items are the ones with the highest ratings anyway, and we're going to look at other rating sites in a bit). Once you have, say, 2-5 products, it's time to hit some other sites.
Check deal sites: Sometimes saving money is more important than getting the absolute best item, or sometimes you'll feel like doing some virtual window shopping first. That's a great time to check deal sites to see what's on sale right now. Sometimes the deal is too good to pass up, even though it might not be the best item in the category. To avoid spending all day wandering around the deal sites, though, just hit up DealNews' Editors Choice page for the best picks and Slickdeals. In Slickdeals, you can do a quick search by keyword, then sort by rating.
Compare user reviews from around the web: Visit previously highlighted Wize to get a quick look at user reviews pulled from Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Twitter, and more (including professional reviews from CNET). Wize applies a rank based on the aggregate reviews for a broad range of categories. You can also get a handy comparison chart for the top-rated products (useful for comparing specs for a laptop, for example).
Professional and enthusiast reviews: You'll also want to check out in-depth reviews from people who've actually kicked the tires on the product and write about that category regularly. You might also find some recommended items outside of the Amazon list. TrustedReviews is a good source for electronics and computers, as is Tom's Hardware and Wirecutter (Whitson also mentioned a couple of other good sources in the lesson on building a computer from scratch.) For networking hardware in particular, don't miss SmallNetBuilder; for really thorough photography equipment reviews, there's dpreview; and for coffee equipment, Coffee Geek. You get the picture, there are specialist and enthusiast sites for just about everything. Cool Tools is another neat review site for a broad range of useful items, and also offers this list of great, focused review sites including ones for mountain bikes, board games, and even flashlights.
Use browser extensions: Install previously mentioned browser extension Invisible Hand for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or IE. The add-on checks what product you're looking at or searching for on Google, then searches other sites for a lower, real-time price; when it finds one, you get a cool little notification in your browser telling you where those other deals are. Similar extension PriceBlink does the same thing but with coupons and mail-in rebate notices, and without the Google search lookup. Take your pick.
Quickly check shopping comparison and deal sites: Both add-ons are terrifically useful, but not perfect. A couple of times, for example, Invisible Hand suggested a cheaper price for an item slightly related but not the exact product or didn't make a suggestion at all. If you find this is the case for you, hit up PriceGrabber to compare prices yourself or simply do a Google Shopping search (which can also tell you if products are in stock at stores near you, for those times when you don't want to wait on shipping).
Use mobile shopping apps: If you're already shopping in a store or at the mall, you can still make sure you're getting the best prices thanks to great shopping apps for iPhone and Android. I'm using both RedLaser and ShopSavvy to compare local store prices with online ones. Since the two apps are so similar, it might seem like overkill, but in my experience they each sometimes miss a deal the other offers.
Retailmenot is one of the best web sites for coupon codes, but even better is their Firefox add-on and Chrome extension, which automatically notify you when coupon codes are available for the site you are on. You might not want it installed year-round, but it's definitely worth it while you're doing your holiday shopping.
Is the price with coupon still outside your budget? Set up price alerts to be notified when the price drops. This is also useful if you're holding out on buying because you think prices might drop even further. Previously mentioned Decide can predict if you should buy an electronics item now or wait and set up alerts for you, or you can install the Camelizer Chrome or Firefox extension to embed a price history chart right within Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, Backcountry.com, and zZounds so you can see if prices for all kinds of products are rising or dropping.
Many retailers offer price drop protection, but manually checking those price drops is a chore. Let previously mentioned Slice do that for you; the webapp combs through your emails to organize receipts, track packages, and, yes, notify you of price drops.
