2011 Egyptian revolution orchestrated by Hamas, Hezbullah... and Obama?
Writing in The National, a daily newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates, Bradley Hope attaches much importance to the role of the heretofore largely ignored prison escape of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsy in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Hope reports that escape was orchestrated by Hamas and Hezbullah, and that the revolution started from pro-democracy NGO's financed by the United States, and was then hijacked by the Islamists.
According to the testimony by Omar Suleiman, the powerful former
director of Egypt's national intelligence directorate, the Wadi Natroun
prison break may have been part of a well-planned operation to liberate
jails across the country, carried out by Egyptian Bedouins with the help
of Islamists in Egypt and abroad.
Testifying on September 14, 2011, in the trial of Mubarak on charges
of complicity in the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising,
Suleiman said Egypt's spy agencies started monitoring communications
between members of Hamas and Bedouins in Sinai on January 26, 2011 - one
day after mass protests broke out.
"Hamas communicated with the Bedouins and agreed that they would
provide them with ordnance in exchange for assistance in freeing their
comrades from Egyptian prisons," said Suleiman, according to a
transcript of his court testimony.
The Al Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas, "created a
diversion so that the border guards would not pursue the smuggled
ordnance. Thus the weapons, ammunition and explosives were successfully
smuggled and given to the Bedouins," he said.
With up to 90 Gaza-based members of Hizbollah, Hamas militants then
entered Egypt illegally and led the assaults on prisons across the
country, said Suleiman, who died in July last year.
...
In his court testimony, Suleiman, acknowledged that unequal income
distribution, unemployment and other legitimate grievances of Egyptians
brought about Mubarak's downfall. He insisted, however, that external
actors exploited these wrongs to help bring his former boss down.
This view is now being taken further by some Egyptians as they seek
to explain their country's zigzag course back to a state of emergency,
one of the most reviled pillars of Mubarak's rule. The role of foreign
influences, including United States funding for civil society groups in
Egypt, looms ever larger in their attempts to explain and justify it.
To many former members of Mubarak's National Democratic Party such as
Ali El Dean Hilal Dessouki, it seems increasingly plausible to suggest
that foreign Islamists, with the aid of the Brotherhood, infiltrated the
protests and hijacked the revolution, setting Egypt on a path that
culminated with the military's intervention on July 3.
This "second revolution", as the coup against Mr Morsi is sometimes
referred to, is more meaningful and legitimate than the first, he said.
It is, Mr Dessouki said, the first "exclusively internal Egyptian uprising."
Asked why the Mubarak regime collapsed so quickly, he said it was too
soon to know for certain. But he pointed to many signs of foreign
intervention, including the prison break and foreign funding of
non-government organisations.
Undermining Mubarak's rule in the hope of turning Egypt into a democracy was the sort of naive action that we have come to expect from the Obama administration. It's why they've gotten the Middle East all wrong from the beginning (recall their insistence on the Muslim Brotherhood attending Obama's Cairo speech in 2009). And given the opportunity, he will compound his mishandling of the Middle East by creating a state of 'Palestine.'
Of course: Erdogan claims Israel behind 'coup' in Egypt
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims that Israel is behind the 'coup' that deposed Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsy from the Presidency of Egypt.
“Israel is behind the coup in Egypt, we have
evidence,” Erdoğan told members of his party at a meeting in Ankara on
Tuesday. He cited a French intellectual, without mentioning his name,
who, according to Erdoğan, said in 2011 that the Muslim Brotherhood
won’t be in power even if they are elected because “democracy is not the
ballot box.” Erdoğan stressed the Jewish identity of the French
intellectual.
Of course. If you're paranoid enough, that proves it. Anti-Semitic moron.
Israel pushing United States to back Egyptian army?
In an earlier post, I reported that 'out friends the Saudis' were pushing the United States to continue to support the Egyptian army and that Israel was trying to stay out of the picture. Now, the New York Times reports that Israel is getting into the picture, and may begin openly pressing the United States to support the Egyptian army.
With the European Union planning an urgent review of its relations with
Egypt in a meeting Monday, the message, in part, is that concerns about
democracy and human rights should take a back seat to stability and
security because of Egypt’s size and strategic importance.
“We’re trying to talk to key actors, key countries, and share our view
that you may not like what you see, but what’s the alternative?” the
official explained. “If you insist on big principles, then you will miss
the essential — the essential being putting Egypt back on track at
whatever cost. First, save what you can, and then deal with democracy
and freedom and so on.
“At this point,” the official added, “it’s army or anarchy.”
Israeli leaders have made no public statements and have refused
interviews since Wednesday’s brutal clearing of two Muslim Brotherhood
protest encampments. But even as the death toll climbed in ensuing
gunfights in mosques and on streets, officials spoke frequently to
members of Congress, officials at the Pentagon and State Department, and
European diplomats.
While Israel's concerns are obvious, not everyone in Israel agrees with the idea of openly supporting the Egyptian army.
“This is a very big mistake to interfere in what happens in Egypt,” said
Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and director of its
new Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam.
Dr. Kedar invoked an old joke about a lifeguard kicking a boy out of a
pool for urinating — from the diving board. “You can do things, but do
them under the water,” he said. “Israel, by supporting explicitly the
army, exposes itself to retaliation. Israel should have done things
behind the scenes, under the surface, without being associated with any
side of the Egyptian problem.”
But Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, praised Mr.
Netanyahu’s government for “acting very discreetly,” and Yitzhak
Levanon, Israel’s ambassador to Egypt until 2011, said the lobbying had
not been aggressive.
“We are talking to a lot of friends,” said Mr. Levanon, who teaches a
course on Egypt at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “Pushing? I
don’t think that this is the word. We are expressing what we believe is
best for the region.”
Mr. Shaked said that unlike the Obama administration and the European
Union, Israel did “not have any illusions about the possibility of a
democracy in Egypt.”
“I understand Washington and Europe with their criticism, but there is
no alternative to letting the army in Egypt try by force,” he said. “We
have to choose here not between the good guys and the bad guys — we
don’t have good guys. It is a situation where you have to choose who is
less harmful.”
That Israel would support the Egyptian army in this case seems obvious. I'm not sure it needed to be said.
Haaretz's Barak Ravid tweets that the source for both Rudoren's story and for another one by Herb Keinon in Monday's JPostis Prime Minister Netanyahu's close adviser and future ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. Maybe Ravid is jealous that Dermer didn't call him, but I disagree with Ravid's assertion. Given past Obama administration efforts to expose things Israel does quietly (see Syria), I suspect the source is someone in Washington.
For the same reason, the Gulf monarchies, having weathered the
immediate storms of the Arab spring and understanding the longer-term
threat the Brotherhood represents, have supplanted Washington as Cairo’s
principal paymasters: The $1.5 billion subvention to Egypt was always a
drop in the great sucking maw of the US Treasury; compared to what the
Saudis and the Emirs are ponying up, it’s looking less and less
consequential from the Nile end, too.
Out in the wider world,
Putin figures there’s a regional power play to be made, and that Moscow
can be back in Cairo in a big way for the first time in four decades.
All
these parties are pursuing their strategic interest. Does the United
States have such a thing anymore? Not so’s you’d notice. As a result,
the factions in Egypt are united only in their contempt for Washington.
Obama is despised by Sisi and the generals for being fundamentally
unserious; by the Brotherhood for stringing along with the coup; by the
Copts for standing by as the Brothers take it out on them; and by the
small number of genuine democrats in Egypt for his witless promotion of
Morsi’s thugs as the dawning of democracy. Any “national-unity
government” of the kind the usual deluded twits are urging on Egypt
would be united only in its unanimous loathing of Obama, his secretaries
of state, and his inept ambassador.
Meanwhile, out on the
streets, Washington is reviled both for standing by Mubarak too long and
for pushing him out too soon (eighty per cent of Egyptians say things
are worse than under the old man).
And, with the 2011 “Facebook Revolution” all out of “Likes”, the King
of Jordan and the Gulf emirs understand the meaning of the ailing,
abandoned strongman in his military prison cell in purely geopolitical
terms – that (as Bernard Lewis used to warn) America is harmless as an
enemy but treacherous as a friend.
The Sandmonkey has an interesting post that is addressed to Egyptians, but can help all of us to understand what is going on in that country.
1. The US is not against June 30
There is a strong held belief in Egypt that the US is against the June 30th
alliance and government, and is waging war against it for the sake of
MB. Egyptians perceive US discussion about cutting military aid as an
aggressive gesture and are meeting it with extreme hostility usually
reserved to slave owners by their freed slaves (It’s that level of
intensity). They are complaining daily that the US is against them and
supports the terrorism of the MB, and Egyptian social media has made
mocking & insulting President Obama a national past time. Despite me
being for any mockery of Obama, the reality is that the US is not
against June 30th at all.
Here is what the US cares about: for Egypt to be run by a ruler that
can stabilize it, and will form a government that makes their
relationship look good. The very contradictory reactions the US
regarding Egypt comes from two reasons 1.) The lack of any real foreign
policy regarding Egypt and the Arab spring for that matter, and 2.) The
legal conundrum they are facing now because of us. US law dictates when a
military removes a democratically elected leader that is considered a
coup, and any aid going its way must be stopped. In reflection of the
facts, yes, the military did technically remove Morsi and is now holding
him in a location even we, the people who revolted against him, do not
know (you do not have him held captive in your basement, do you?), so
the situation is meeting the legal definition.
The US administration, which is required to uphold its laws, has no
actual choice but to cut the aid, and in order to avoid doing so, it has
done impressive political gymnastics in order not to call it that.
...
2. There is no Giant global conspiracy against us
There really isn’t a global conspiracy against us; Europe is
concerned because of the death and the overthrow and jailing of a
“democratically elected” President, but they will not move beyond being
concerned. Even in the UN Security Council’s special session on Egypt,
the statement admitted that both sides of the conflict (i.e. government
and MB) are using violence and called for mutual de-escalation. This
means the UN is not buying the “peaceful warriors for democracy”
narrative that the MB is producing, but also cannot condone the almost
700 dead in one day of conflict either, because it is a horrifying and
indefensible number, so they went the route of balance. They are not
happy with the high death toll and they will not condone it forever,
which is important if you would like their tourists back, and you
should: your economy needs it.
That being said, Turkey and Qatar are truly against us, so is any and
every branch of the MB the world over, so you are not being completely
paranoid here. I also hear that Iran and the Taliban are not pleased
with us either. It is ok though, I think we can afford that.
3. The International media isn’t in the MB’s pockets
Egyptian social media is filled with posts, pictures and videos that
either a) hate the biased international coverage, or b) is comprised of
videos or images with a message that we share this in order to “show the
international media” the truth. The reason? The perception that
international opinion provides excessive support for the MB, which
develops at times to the belief that the international media is in the
MB’s pockets. Their proof? The lack of coverage of the MB’s violent acts
and that they are portrayed as peaceful protesters getting killed by
the state. “Why is no one supporting us?” They protest, in complete
denial that this is primarily their own fault. Oh yes. It’s true.
You see, in order for the international media to showcase your side
of the story, you actually have to have a side of the story. Your new
state needs to have a solid case why it overthrew the old one, which ,
fyi, is not being made in anywhere. For example local media, instead of
doing pieces that document and explain why the population revolted
against Morsi and his rule, is instead going with a simplistic narrative
of nationalism vs. terrorism, and doing a remarkable job
sensationalizing it. If they have zero intentions of being unbiased,
which seems to be the case, they should try to explain and set in stone
why the MB rule was undemocratic and criminal. It is not hard: An
investigative piece on all the people arrested/killed/maimed by the
police or MB during the Morsi reign, a 5 minutes video showcasing the
attacks on Christians or the disdain for religion cases, a report on
every single journalist or media personality that got persecuted by the
Morsi presidency or their supporters, a short documentary stating all of
the violations and crimes that the Morsi regimes committed, or maybe
explaining the perils of theocracy and why we should never ever toy with
its idea again. Hell, a simple you tube video explaining how we got
here and what are the lessons learned will do at this point, and no one
is doing it locally. Imagine what effects it could have on the
international level.
...
4. The War on Terror will not end this way
There is a reason why everyone is wary of the “war on terror”
narrative, for a very simple reason: Wars on concepts cannot be called
wars, because wars end and wars on terror don’t. You see, wars on
concepts or ideas definitely do not end with bullets, they end with a
counter idea that exposes or defeats the idea. What is your counter idea
to Islamism/MB ideology? Whoever does not agree with you is a traitor
and should be killed? Yeah, not a very good one, especially against
Islamists, who are generally ok with dying for their beliefs.
So you can go ahead and think you can kill your way out of this
conflict, and you may succeed to end all major confrontations with a
high body count within the month (and become known as butchers for
it).However, sooner rather than later you will start facing incidents
that pop up everywhere, with a few dying here in an explosion, and a few
dying there in a drive-by shooting, and it will not stop and you will
never be safe. It will not always be the MB behind the killings, but
rather the family members/friends of the non-MB Morsi supporter who got
killed in one of the clashes / jailed for wanting to defend his vote and
sees you stealing it and persecuting him for it.
Europe tries to outdo Obama, 'urgently reviewing' relationship with Egypt
The Europeans are determined to outdo US President Hussein Obama. Europe, which sent foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to visit Mohammed Morsy in his jail cell, announced on Sunday that they will be 'urgently reviewing' their relationship with Egypt over the coming days.
In a statement, the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy
and the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso called
on all sides in Egypt to show restraint and prevent further escalation
of the violence.
To this effect, together with its member states, the EU will urgently
review in the coming days its relations with Egypt and adopt measures
aimed at pursuing these goals," the statement said.
The crackdown
has, however, drawn messages of support from wealthy Arab allies such
as Saudi Arabia, which have long feared the spread of Brotherhood
ideology to the Gulf monarchies.
"Together with its member
states, the EU will urgently review in the coming days its relations
with Egypt and adopt measures aimed at pursuing" the goals of promoting
an "end to violence, resumption of political dialogue and return to a
democratic process," they said.
They added that calls for democracy and
fundamental rights "cannot be disregarded, much less washed away in
blood," saying further that "the violence and the killings of these last
days cannot be justified nor condoned."
I wonder whether they've seen the videos with the Muslim Brotherhood gunmen standing among the 'protesters.'
How reliable is Yossi Beilin as a source? Beilin, a far-Left Israeli former politician claims that deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy and his Muslim Brotherhood party didn't really win the June 2012 elections, but that the army feared the consequences of announcing what truly happened.
According
to my source, who asked to remain anonymous, Ahmed Shafik, the former
air force commander and former president Hosni Mubarak's last prime
minister, actually won the race by a narrow margin. But the army
generals -- wanting to ensure that law and order would be upheld
following the elections -- feared that if Morsi was defeated, the Muslim
Brotherhood would refuse to recognize the results and would end up
conducting themselves just as they are now.
The official results,
51.73 percent for Morsi and 48.27% for Shafik, were almost the exact
reversal of what actually happened at the polls. After the results were
published, we barely heard any calls for protest or opposition among the
secular-liberals, while on the religious side -- loyal either to the
Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafi parties -- voters were happy with their
achievement.
Officials thought that
the inexperienced Morsi would accept help from the army and would avoid
crossing any red lines -- regarding Israel, for example. In reality,
what happened was a combination of a pathetic lack of management skills
and a string of efforts to rule by the same ideological orientation
espoused by a quarter of Egypt's population. Morsi tried running the
operation with the help of several associates who were completely
incapable of managing anything.
Many of Col. Gen.
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's fellow generals tried to convince him to spring
to action several months ago already, but Sissi wanted to give Morsi,
who favored Sissi over other generals as defense minister and commander
in chief of the armed forces, the opportunity to prove that what had
happened stemmed from the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood president was
an amateur.
This actually sounds plausible. The problems are that it's too convenient a narrative in light of what has happened, and I don't consider Beilin a particularly reliable source.
In the streets of Egyptian cities, Muslim Brotherhood activists
achieved their highest hope. They died in their Jihad against the
liberal opposition and the military, fighting against human rights for
women and Christians, against multi-party rule, freedom of speech,
museums, libraries and the future in the way that the armies of Allah
have died for over a thousand years.
Some died trying to kill Egyptian soldiers and police officers.
Others were killed by their own people in order to maximize the death
toll and spread shock and horror through the international community.
Like their Hamas outlet in Gaza, like their Syrian brigades who have
wrecked entire cities and filled them with corpses, and like Al Qaeda,
whose leaders have always been Muslim Brotherhood members; the
Brotherhood does not care whose blood it spills.
When your highest hope is dying for Allah, then everything else is a
detail. The Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders, men like Morsi and Khairat
el-Shater, are far less eager to die for Allah. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the
Brotherhood’s mad genocidal preacher, is still hiding out in Qatar and
spewing calls for violence from under the skirts of the equally cowardly
Qatari Emir, who finances the Brotherhood’s wave of death and terror in
the region while living it up in his palaces.
In his final speech, Morsi boasted of his willingness to sacrifice
his blood for power. The Brotherhood’s preacher of hate, Qaradawi, urged
Jihadists from around the world to come and be martyred in Egypt.
For the wealthy titans of the Brotherhood, their followers are pawns to
be disposed of, human shields for their political ambitions. The Muslim
Brotherhood spent their blood generously during the clashes with
Egyptian police the same way that Hamas and Hezbollah spill the blood of
their own people.
...
Responding to the carnage with new calls for an end to foreign aid is
an explicit form of collaboration in the Muslim Brotherhood’s
atrocities and the surest way to ensure that they will be repeated.
Egypt may deserve to lose its foreign aid, but issuing such calls now is
handing a victory to the world’s worst terrorist organization and
giving it every incentive to up the body count next time around.
The calls for Brotherhood participation in an Egyptian government are
senseless insanity. Is there room for a movement that seeks nothing but
death in the ranks of any government? Should murderous madness on such a
scale really be the currency that purchases power? Should the burners
of churches and the torturers of peaceful protesters be rewarded with
power a second time?
Western governments fear escalation in Egypt. And that fear is the
secret weapon of every terrorist group. The terrorist groups always
escalate, spending their currency of blood cheaply to break the will of
their enemies. The only way to break that cycle is to out-escalate them
by showing that their currency of blood is worthless because the people
and governments they are terrorizing will not be bent under its terrible
weight.
Wars aren’t won through de-escalation, but through escalation.
America lost in Afghanistan because it wasn’t willing to fight harder
and bloodier than the Taliban. The Egyptian government has shown that it
is willing to match the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthlessness without
backing down.
To reward the courage of the Egyptian soldiers and police who fought
the Muslim Brotherhood in the streets by forcing their government to
stand down and surrender to the terrorists who nearly turned Egypt into a
second Iran is an unmitigated crime. It is a crime whose consequences
will not only be felt by the women and Christians of Egypt, but by all
of us.
It starts: Movement behind Morsi ouster calls on army to renounce Camp David, refuse US money
Last week, President Obama canceled a military exercise with Egypt in response to the crackdown on his friends in the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama complained that the exercise could not go on as 'business as usual.'
In response, the Tamarod movement, which was behind the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohammed Morsy, has called on the Egyptian army to renounce the Camp David treaty and refuse all further US aid.
Tamarod, who played a major role in the ousting of Egyptian President
Mohamed Morsi, demand the Egyptian regime to hold a referendum on
banning US aid, cancel the peace agreement with Israel, and reword
security-related treaties to allow Egypt to revive its national
sovereignty.
The movement claims that Israeli and international
peacekeeping forces in Sinai prevent the Egyptian military from sending
more forces to the peninsula to stop terrorist activity in the area.
Daily
News Egypt quotes the movement's media coordinator Mai Wahba as saying
the campaign will collect signatures from people, and that there was no
timetable for the campaign yet.
The "No to US aid" campaign has already gathered 300,000 signatures.
Ironically, most Israelis would like to see the Muslim Brotherhood crushed.
Israel
has opted to stay silent on the turmoil in Egypt to avoid disrupting
strategic security cooperation with the Egyptian military.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had aides instruct cabinet
ministers to avoid public comment about Egypt, according to an official
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Israel and the United States
see the situation in Egypt very, very differently and justifiably the
prime minister wouldn't want Israeli cabinet ministers to publicly
criticize American policy," Giora Eiland, a former national security
adviser, said on Channel 2.
In private, one senior Israeli
official expressed alarm at US President Barack Obama's condemnation of
the bloodshed in Egypt and cancellation of a joint military exercise
with Cairo.
"Eyebrows have been raised," the official said.
Many Israeli officials believe that Egyptian Army chief Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi has no choice but to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood.
“It was necessary,” Akmal William, standing in his auto-detailing shop
on Talaat Harb Street, said of the raid by soldiers and police officers.
“They had to be strict.”
Witnesses described a disproportionate, ruthless attack. Condemnations
came from human rights advocates, a few Egyptian political figures, and
from abroad. But many Egyptians viewed things differently, focusing on
what they said were continuing threats from Mr. Morsi’s supporters, who
were frequently referred to as terrorists. In their view, the army was
the only force standing in the Islamists’ way.
Between the parallel realities, others were torn between the claims of
the security forces of violent demonstrators who threatened the country —
a view parroted by the state news media — and what they heard from
Islamist friends about how the battle on the streets had unfolded on
Wednesday morning.
In Imbaba, a neighborhood that seems to catch all the nation’s political
currents in its congested alleyways, many people regretted the
bloodshed. But they asserted that the alternative was worse. The Muslim Brotherhood,
Mr. Morsi’s political party, was holding back the country with endless
sit-ins and protests, many said. And the longer the army waited to act,
the weaker Egypt seemed to them.
That conviction only grew stronger amid reports about Islamist violence,
including the storming of a government building in Giza early Thursday.
Mr. William, a Coptic Christian, was preoccupied by a spate of attacks
on churches and Christian homes across the country, a spasm of
collective scapegoating by some of Mr. Morsi’s supporters.
“They won’t go easily,” he said, adding that churches “are still being burned.”
Egyptians were fooled by the Muslim Brotherhood. They may not get another chance, and for now at least, many of them don't seem to care.
Stanley Kurtz urges the United States to give up its pipe dreams of democracy and to look out for its own interests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.
No peace without including the Muslim Brotherhood, which represents
so much of Egypt? Quite right. No peace. What this argument fails to
recognize is that the image of a national reconciliation that
encompasses all parties in Egypt — the goal the Times and the Post
want us to work toward –- is a chimera. The minimum consensus on social
fundamentals necessary for democracy to function is simply not present
in Egypt, and there is no reasonable prospect that it will be any time
soon.
Play out scenarios of a “democratic transition” in Egypt in
any serious way and you will see that the solution America’s
right-thinking establishment is working toward in Egypt is no solution
at all. (I’ll have more to say about this in the forthcoming issue of The Claremont Review of Books.)
What we ought to be doing now is tending to America’s key interests and giving up ill-founded fantasies of liberal democracy in a still thoroughly illiberal region. In any case, Times and Post notwithstanding,
our capacity to influence events in Egypt is fast disappearing. With
their literal and political survival at stake, the actors on the ground
are no longer much subject to what we have to say. The Gulf states are
giving more money than we are, and they want the Brotherhood crushed. So
whether the military stabilizes Egypt or we get a civil war, it’s now
largely out of our hands. The best we can do is keep the treaty with
Israel intact and the Suez Canal open and secure.
Jennifer Rubin sums up Egypt's civil warPresident Obama's monthly vacation.
Obama was briefed, said nothing and went back to golf. Secretary of
State John Kerry took a break from his fruitless obsession with the
nonexistent “peace process” to condemn the violence, but took no
questions and had no policy announcement. This, in a nutshell, is the
White House’s approach to the Middle East — the absence of any policy
and a lot of empty words.
Sam Tadros, a Egyptian expert at the Hudson Institute who is also
affiliated with the Hoover Institution, is not optimistic. Late
Wednesday he remarked to me on the military’s assault on its opponents:
“In a sense this was inevitable. You don’t ask the people to give you a
mandate and then sit by idly. The timing was only delayed because of
Ramadan and the Eid celebrations.”
Unlike the administration, he is
looking ahead — and doesn’t like what he discerns. “The question no one
seems to be asking is where the MB [Muslim Brotherhood] is supposed to
go after they end the protests,” he said. “They certainly won’t be going
home. Instead of one protest you will have smaller ones throughout the
country.” The victims will include non-Muslims as is so often the case
in the Arab world. He told me, “Christians will of course take most of
the damage. Already there are reports of many churches attacked. This
will continue.”
Indeed, it is continuing. Fox News reported on Wednesday that Muslim Brotherhood thugs burned down three churches.
The assailants threw firebombs at Mar Gergiss church in Sohag, a city
with a large community of Coptic Christians who comprise up to 10
percent of Egypt's 84 million people, causing it to burn down, the
official MENA news agency said.
Security officials told AFP that
another two churches were attacked in El-Menia province, leaving them
partially damaged by fire.
Coptic rights group the Maspero Youth
Union reported the same information, accusing Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood
movement of "waging a war of retaliation" against the country's
Christians.
Dozens of Morsi supporters were killed on Wednesday as
security forces moved in to disperse them from two major protest camps
in Cairo that they have occupied since around the time the army ousted
him six weeks ago.
The Coptic church backed Morsi's removal, with
Patriarch Tawadros II appearing alongside army chief General Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi as he announced the military coup on July 3.
Military coup? Did the Obama administration decide that there was a military coup? Not yet. In fact, they can't seem to decide anything.
The question now is what can be done and what role the United States
should play. Tadros is blunt: “As to outside powers, I am afraid it is
too late now. This is a zero-sum game and one side has to win.”
If the Egyptian military is, as most contend, far more effective than
Bashar al-Assad’s troops and makes quick work of former
government officials and their supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood
problem hardly goes away. Not without justification they will likely
conclude democracy is a dead end and will resort to other means to
assert their vision for Egypt. The military will have succeeded only in
driving MB members to return to violence and terrorism instead of
ballots and government ministries.
And so Jennifer Rubin concludes, Obama may as well play golf.
In a sense, then, Obama might as well play golf. He’s dropped the ball
on Egypt and the entire region, leaving the United States with few
options and the Egyptian people to a bloody future in the short run and a
repressive authoritarian junta in the longer run.
Yes, but they got the 'peace talks' going.... Maybe the Muslim Brotherhood can escape to Gaza.... What could go wrong?
Video: Egyptian protesters push full armored police van off 50 foot high bridge
Egyptian protesters pushed an armored police van full of officers off the 6th of October Bridge in Cairo on Wednesday, as scores of people were killed in riots touched off by police raids on tent camps set up by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.
There's a series of images of the van, and of the police officers inside it lying wounded under the bridge, here. Jerusalem-based cameraman Mick Deane of Sky News was killed in the riots.
While dead bodies wrapped in carpets were carried to a makeshift
morgue near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, the army-backed rulers declared
a one-month state of emergency, restoring to the military the
unfettered power it wielded for decades before a pro-democracy uprising
in 2011.
Thousands of Morsi's supporters had been camped at two
major sites in Cairo since before he was toppled on July 3, and had
vowed not leave the streets until he was returned to power.
With
the assault, the authorities ended the six-week stand-off with a show of
state force that defied international pleas for restraint. Egypt is the
strategic heart of the Middle East, striding the Suez Canal and with a
peace treaty with Israel.
Violence spread beyond Cairo, with Morsi
supporters and security forces clashing in the cities of Alexandria,
Minya, Assiut, Fayoum and Suez and in Buhayra and Beni Suef provinces.
The
bloodshed also effectively ends the open political role of the
Brotherhood, with the harshest ever crackdown on a movement that
survived underground for 85 years to emerge after the 2011 uprising and
win every election held since.
Security officials said senior
Brotherhood figures Mohamed El-Beltagi and Essam El-Erian were arrested,
joining Mursi himself and other Brotherhood leaders in jail. Beltagi's
17-year-old daughter was among the dead.
Before he was arrested,
Beltagi warned of wider conflict, and singled out the head of the armed
forces who deposed Morsi on July 3 following mass protests.
"I
swear by God that if you stay in your homes, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will
embroil this country so that it becomes Syria. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will
push this nation to a civil war so that he escapes the gallows."
While Muslims murder Muslims in Egypt and Syria, it's relatively quiet here in Israel. But John Kerry is laying the groundwork for 'Palestinians' to rise up when their 'peace talks' fail. What could go wrong?
Egyptian defense chief: Hagel calls every day, but we never hear from Obama; anti-Obama belly dancer video goes viral
An anti-Obama YouTube video made by an Egyptian belly dancer has gone viral with well over 100,000 hits in the last four days. Meanwhile, Egypt's defense chief complains that while he gets regular calls from US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, he has yet to get a single call from President Obama.
Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is at the vanguard of the
street protests against Morsi's ouster, claim the US supported the coup.
Those opposed to the Brotherhood claim Washington has been and still is
supporting the Islamists.
An example of the vitriol in the country can be seen in a new video clip
featuring a song by Egyptian performer Sama Elmasry. Titled "You Obama,
Your Father, Mother," it attacks the US president for allegedly
preferring Islamic radicals over the army. It has gone viral, with over
160,000 views since last week.
The clip features Obama in traditional Islamic dress. Elmasry curses
him while mentioning that he had called for former president Hosni
Mubarak to leave immediately, seeming to imply that this proved he was
pro-Brotherhood.
The song also mentions Obama?s support for
Islamist-led Turkey as well as Israel. It is highly nationalistic in
tone and ends with a photo of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led the
anti-Morsi coup.
...
Sisi went on to note that the US administration "has a lot of
leverage and influence with the Muslim Brotherhood," and that he would
like Washington to use this leverage to end the current standoff with
Morsi supporters.
He also said that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had been calling him almost daily, but that Obama had not called since July 3.
Has there been a change of heart in Washington toward the Egyptian army-led regime of Abdel Fateh el-Sisi? Two indications that the answer to that question is 'yes.'
First, in Washington on Thursday, 86 US Senators beat back an attempt by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) to cut off aid to Egypt and use the money for America's roads and bridges.
The
amendment, which 86 senators voted against, was an effort by Tea Party
Republican Sen. Rand Paul to redirect the $1.5 billion in funding to the
reconstruction of dilapidated roads and bridges across the United
States.
Paul considers himself an isolationist on a range of foreign policy matters – foreign aid chief among them.
“The
president sends billions of dollars to Egypt in the form of advanced
fighter planes and tanks, while Detroit crumbles,” Paul said on the
floor of the Senate, calling the law “unequivocal” on the issue.
US law on foreign assistance prohibits the funding of foreign governments that have experienced military coups.
...
“The frustration of our
citizens regarding foreign aid, given the economic conditions we face,
is understandable, so we have a responsibility to explain why American
leadership in the world in many cases helps prevent our involvement in
conflicts that would be far more costly,” Corker said.
“We should
be the steady hand that pushes Egypt toward a peaceful transition to
democracy without undermining our interests or Israel’s security,
especially when conditions in the region are as they are today.”
Even more significantly - unless it was another gaffe - US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday commended the Egyptian army for 'restoring democracy.'
US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Pakistan Egypt's army had been "restoring democracy" when it toppled Morsi.
"The
military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all
of whom were afraid of a descendance into chaos, into violence," he
told Pakistan's GEO TV.
"And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment so - so far."
The Muslim Brotherhood is seething over Kerry's statement.
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood criticized Kerry for saying the military had been "restoring democracy" when it toppled Morsi.
"We
totally reject these statements and we are very disappointed in them,"
said Mohamed Ali Bishr, a senior brotherhood leader and a minister in
Morsi's former government.
"The United States is a country that
speaks of democracy and human rights and they say something like that. I
hope that they rethink their position and correct it," he told Reuters
Poll: 71% of Egyptians don't want the Muslim Brotherhood back
71% of Egyptians have told pollsters that they don't want to see Mohammed Morsy or the Muslim Brotherhood back.
The Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research-Baseera survey found that 71 percent of Egyptians
opposed the Brotherhood's protests. A year of Morsi and the
Brotherhood's rigid policies and inflexibility that failed to address Egypt's economic crisis has left many Egyptians frustrated.
"The real problem that we're facing right now is from the time of
President's Morsi's taking over, it has been a zero-sum political game.
It is all or none and that is mainly the reason he was pushed out of
power, because he would not share it with anyone else. He would not
succumb to the opposition," Wael Eskandar, an Egyptian blogger with Al Ahram, said in an interview with Russia Today.
"And now that he has been pushed out of power, the same attitude
prevails, that they are not willing to make compromise at all and the
reason is because the organization is bent on dominating and pushing
their way of politics. It is difficult to see any way out of this
without any side compromising."
The poll found that 78 percent of men and 65 percent of women
disapproved of the protests. It also found that younger people are more
sympathetic to the protests then their elders.
"[T]he people right now are disenchanted with the MB that they are
willing to accept anything but the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a sign
of how polarized things are at the moment and how the Muslim Brotherhood
and Morsi made matters inside Egypt," Eskandar said.
So why does the West keep trying to bring him back?
The picture above was taken in Tahrir Square in Cairo around 7:00 pm on Saturday by an Egyptian blogger named The Big Pharoah. But the action is happening elsewhere in Cairo at a rally of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted President Mohammed Morsy. The Egyptian health ministry is admitting to 38 deaths at that rally, while the Brotherhood is claiming that more than 100 people have been killed and some 1500 wounded (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The anti-Morsi camp occupied Cairo's Tahrir
Square in support of the army, after its chief, Gen Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi, had urged people to demonstrate to provide a mandate for its
intervention.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Morsi supporters continued their sit-in protest at the mosque in the Nasr City area.
On Saturday, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim vowed to end
the sit-in, saying local residents had complained about the encampment.
He said the protest would be "brought to an end soon, and in a
legal manner" with an order from the prosecutor, although this has yet
to happen.
The BBC's Jim Muir in Cairo says the latest violence is the
most serious since the army's intervention to remove President Morsi,
but this does not appear to have been a planned campaign to clear the
area around the mosque.
...
It appears that clashes began after some of the Morsi supporters
tried to block a main road in the area, and security forces responded.
The state news agency Mena quotes a security official as
saying they had been trying to stop fighting between rival sides, and
that eight security personnel had been injured.
The official added that live fire had not been used, only tear gas.
But our correspondent says medics at the hospital believed about 70%
of the casualties were caused by live fire - with many of the victims
hit in the chest or head by snipers firing from rooftops.
Ahmed Nashar, a Brotherhood spokesman witnessed what happened
near the Nasr City mosque where demonstrators built a wall to protect
themselves.
"When I arrived, bullets were whizzing past my ears," he told
the BBC. "Today was just brutal - people were fired at, with live
firearms."
Our correspondent says Morsi supporters are furious about the
role the military is taking, and in particular the head of the army,
General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom they say is killing Egyptians.
Does anyone really see western troops being sent in to fight for Morsy? I wouldn't hold my breath. Much as President Hussein Obama is in love with the Muslim Brotherhood, he wouldn't dare put American troops at risk for them. Would he?
State news agency Mena said the mooted charges against Morsi included
conspiring with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, killing prisoners
and officers "deliberately with prior intent", kidnapping officers and
soldiers, and setting fire to the prison of Wadi el-Natroun.
They
relate to his escape from the prison in 2011, when he was arrested
during the uprising against Mubarak, and provide legal grounds for his
continued detention.
Morsi has been held by the military since the
army ousted him from office on July 3 following huge street protests
against his troubled, one-year rule. Washington has previously called
for him to be freed.
His Muslim Brotherhood denounced news of the accusations.
"At
the end of the day we know all of these charges are nothing more than
the fantasy of a few army generals and a military dictatorship,"
Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said. "We are continuing our
protests on the streets."
Throwing down the gauntlet to the
Brotherhood, army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has called on
Egyptians to rally nationwide on Friday to give the military a "mandate"
to confront weeks of violence unleashed by Morsi's removal.
A
military official said the army had given Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood a
Saturday deadline to end its resistance and join a military-set road map
to new elections, signalling a turning point in the confrontation.
The
Brotherhood fears a crackdown to wipe out an Islamist movement that
emerged from decades in the shadows to win every election since
Mubarak's fall but then struggled to tackle Egypt's growing economic and
social woes.
There may be a civil war there by the time Shabbat ends. Shabbat Shalom everyone.
Egypt's Jon Stewart: Morsy would have purged enemies had he stayed in office
Satirist Bassem Yussuf, known as Egypt's John Stewart, says that had Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy not been replaced, he likely would have purged his enemies and opponents.
Morsi had already begun implying, days before the rallies and after a
year of Muslim Brotherhood rule, that the time to accommodate political
opponents had passed. Had the subsequent anti-government rallies
failed, Youssef envisions that the following weeks would have seen literal bloodbaths:
He said it in four words that inflamed the audiences’
fervour. He said: “A year is enough!”… The president’s supporters
clapped and cheered. Then they began screaming their favorite chants
“purge, purge.” It’s this same chant that was repeated during all of the
president’s popular conferences – “the people want to purge the media.”
I now remember the angry faces who in previous conferences requested
the president to begin flushing the “puging”. But he would signal with
his hand to calm them and say we things like how should be patient with
one another and how we should give eachother chances. But this time, “a
year is enough” meant there would be no second chances…
My dear reader, in the parallel world, you won’t read this article
because its writer will either be imprisoned or killed. You will switch
on your TV to watch Misr 25 broadcasting live footage of the burning
studios of private TV channels. The people would be chanting “it’s done,
the people have purged the media.” Protesters would be raising banners
that will immortalize the president’s famous sentence: “one year is
enough.”
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
