Freedom House does an annual survey to determine the degree to which the people in countries around the world enjoy individual, political, and economic freedom.  Their latest report is out, and the summary can be seen HERE.  My focus today is on the Middle East, and the situation there is illustrated nicely by this graphic from the Freedom House report:

Notice that, as usual, Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is free by our western standards.  The next “partly free” group includes Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco, Libya, and Kuwait.  Bringing up the rear, the “not free” countries, are Jordan, Algerian, Egypt, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Iraq, UAE, Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the abysmally-rated Syria.