Who was right? Barack Hussein Obama or Omar Suleiman?
Former Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman passed away this week while in the United States for treatment.
Here's an interview he did with a gushing Christiane Amanpour on ABC in early 2011. Amanpour is spouting the Obama line that the Egyptian revolutionaries who just wanted their rights and their freedom. Suleiman has a different view. Watch from about the 3:30 mark.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Sunlight).
Who do you think was right? Anyone know where Wael Ghonim is today?
In an earlier post, I talked about how Egypt's arrest of democracy activists shows how the country could not be thrown straight from dictatorship to democracy, and how it would have been wiser to have a transition period.
Some of you may recall the photo at left. It was from an interview on Egyptian television with Wael Ghonim, the young Egyptian Google executive who was based in Dubai and who set up the Facebook and Twitter pages that were credited with the Egyptian revolution. The interview took place a year ago this week. You can view that interview with Ghonim with English subtitles here.
In Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, author Lee Smith gives an insider account of the Egyptian revolution, based on interviews with Ghonim and with American-Egyptian journalist Ashraf Khalil (both of whom have now written books about their experiences). Smith concludes - as I did in my earlier post - that Egypt's enemy wasn't Mubarak but the army, and that both the US (which should have been smarter) and the revolutionaries (he names Ghonim, Khalil and the blogger Sandmonkey) were used as tools by an army that wanted to get rid of Mubarak.
Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of protesters over those two weeks, but compared with casualties during the 10-month uprising in Syria, where human rights groups estimate that Bashar al-Assad’s security forces have killed nearly 7,000 people, the toll in Egypt was very low. Why didn’t Egyptian forces commit themselves to the same levels of bloodshed? The answer goes to the essential tragedy of the revolution.
It is true, as Khalil writes, that “Hosni Mubarak was never as brutal, ruthless, or sadistic as some of his contemporaries”; moreover, it seems that the White House warned the regime against turning its weapons on civilians. But that’s not why Egypt’s security and military apparatus didn’t send more protesters to their deaths. One of the revolutionaries’ most famous chants was that the army and the people went hand in hand. However, events over the past year have shown that Egypt’s beloved army is interested in one thing only — maintaining the formidable economic interests that make it the most powerful and therefore the most corrupt institution in a country where wasta (connections) and baksheesh (bribery) have made corruption systemic for centuries.
Mubarak was not the regime; he was merely the civilian facade of a military order that has ruled since Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the monarchy in 1952. The irony is that Mubarak made the same error as the protesters in assuming that he was the ultimate authority. His unstated but obvious desire to pass the presidency on to his youngest son, Gamal, outraged not only the demonstrators but also the army, which availed itself of the opportunity the revolutionaries had created by going to the streets. Once the White House came out against Mubarak, the old man was finished, toppled by a military coup with which both Washington and the revolutionaries had unwittingly collaborated.
The current power-sharing arrangement between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the Islamists, who include some of the same terrorists that Ghonim’s interrogator fought in the ’90s, means that the revolution’s two biggest losers are the revolutionaries and the United States. The fall of Mubarak cost Washington an ally who had kept the peace with Israel for 30 years, at some risk to his own life. The Camp David accords turned the United States into a power broker and underwrote its position in the Middle East. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty showed other Arab states what prizes would come to them should they simply make peace with Jerusalem: American money, American prestige and of course American weapons. The peace was for the sake not only of Israel but also of Egypt, which receives roughly $2 billion a year in U.S. assistance if it avoids risking national suicide again in another war with Jerusalem’s superior, and nuclear, forces.
By appearing to turn its back on Mubarak, the United Statessuggested that perhaps peace with Israel isn’t that important. Egypt, with more than 50 percent of its population too young to remember the devastation of the 1967 and 1973 wars, is perhaps inclined to agree. Those who dismiss the likelihood of renewed Israeli-Egyptian conflict assume that the Egyptian army does not dare forfeit the $1.3 billion that flows to it in U.S. military aid each year. However, the army’s priority is not to obtain American cash but simply to stay in power. Over the past half-century, international, regional and domestic dynamics have repeatedly driven Egypt’s rulers and its army to make war against Israel in spite of what would seem to be their better interests. A military that represses its people for the sake of its own wealth is liable to make any sort of mistake.
The end of the Camp David accords? Two million Egyptians aim to 'liberate' Jerusalem
I was surprised to discover that I have had a lot of hits from Egypt lately. I'm not sure why. Unfortunately, it's becoming clear that the new 'democratic' Egypt is likely to be an enemy of both Israel and the United States. Here's Giulio Meotti writing at Contentions.
All the secular forces in Cairo are asking for a review of or a break from the relations with both Israel and the United States. The protagonist of the revolts, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said that Israel is the biggest threat in the Middle East. “Israel has signed a peace treaty with Mubarak, not with Egypt,” said the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Leftist Karama Party leader Hamdeen Sabahi proclaims the end of the “American-Israeli domination over Egypt.” And the generals in power have just asked a former judge of the State Council, the so-called “moderate islamist” Tariq al-Bishri, to chair the committee that will reform the Egyptian constitution. Praising the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Mr. Bishri said that, against Israel, “all forms of resistance must be deployed, including violent resistance.”
The old Wafd Party wants to strengthen Egypt’s ties with Islamic countries such as Sudan. The largest leftist party, Tagammu, claims “anti-Zionist principles,” promotes solidarity among Arab states, supports the “Palestinian cause,” and opposes “normalization with Israel.” The Nasserist Party wants to “solve the Palestinian issue through the expulsion of the occupying forces from all Arab lands” and opposes the “normalization of relations with Israel.”
Even the popular movement Kefaya movement calls for “the opposition to the influence of Israel and the United States in the region.” Kefaya’s leader, George Ishak, said that “the Camp David agreement is only ink on paper.” The April 6 Movement, born a year ago, also asks for the cancellation of the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. The Democratic Front plans to “resist Israeli expansionism and support the Palestinian cause.”
But it isn't just Israel. Mort Zuckerman writes that Egypt is in danger of becoming America's greatest enemy in the Middle East.
Nobody knows the true strength of the Muslim Brotherhood among the young or in Egyptian society as a whole. Nobody knows what the composition of the next Egyptian parliament might be, once it is elected in free, rather than fraudulent, elections. What we do know is that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only organized force within the opposition and as such has the best chance to exploit the post-revolutionary confusion. In the aftermath of a revolution, the people who seize power need not be the most popular, only the most organized, and in Egypt that is the Muslim Brotherhood. It believes in what? It believes in an Islamic democracy based on the principles of sharia, or Islamic law, and the investiture of a supreme guide—something eerily similar to Iran's Islamic state. Islam has a unique appeal in Egypt and indeed in the broader Arab world where secular dictators ruled for decades except in the mosques, which they were unable to close. So the mosques became the center of political activism and Islam the doctrine of opposition.
The Brotherhood opposes a secular state as well as Western civilization, but supports taqiyya, which means lying is allowed if it helps to ultimately defeat the infidels. As for the Brotherhood mellowing, a notion that is the love child of our mass media, this mostly reflects the organization's recruitment of media-savvy spokesmen, who can espouse the virtues of a pro-democracy platform as a smokescreen for the group's real views and intentions.
Polls in Egypt reveal that the people want democracy—but that they also want an Islamic state with sharia and all of its restraints on minorities, religion, and women. As Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said this month, "The Muslim Brotherhood is not, as some suggest, simply an Egyptian version of the March of Dimes." Opinion polls of Egyptians in past years indicate that 60 percent or more support Islamists and favor the re-establishment of a single Islamic state, or caliphate. In a Pew poll last spring, fully three quarters of Egyptians said they favored strict sharia punishments, and of those who saw a struggle between fundamentalists and groups that want to modernize the country, only 27 percent favored modernizers. Half expressed favorable views of Hamas, 30 percent Hezbollah, and 20 percent al-Qaeda. If these convictions or inclinations govern Egypt's future politics, ousted President Hosni Mubarak's military authoritarianism might well be replaced by Islamic authoritarianism.
Remember when Egyptians had the chance to choose their legislators in 2005? Where they could, they favored the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood. If that happens again, the United States' greatest ally in the region will become its greatest enemy, and Israel's peace partner will become its greatest foe. As Bernard Lewis, the renowned historian of Islam, said recently: "Many of our so-called friends in the region are inefficient kleptocracies. But they're better than the Islamic radicals." It's a judgment that is well captured in the phrase "the evil of two lessers."
On Friday, 2,000,000 people gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square to hear the Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whom I previously discussed here. I'd like to show you a video of that event.
Let's go to the videotape.
For those whose Arabic is a bit weak, the first commenter on YouTube translated what they were shouting into English.
"To Jerusalem We go, for us to be the Martyrs of the Millions."
And I'm sure some of you are wondering what became of Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who 'lead' the revolution. Well, here are a couple of comments about Ghonim by a couple of morons from the New York Times, followed by the reality (Hat Tip: Soccer Dad).
Indeed, it is no surprise that the emerging spokesman for this uprising is Wael Ghonim — a Google marketing executive who is Egyptian. He opened a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said,” named for an activist who was allegedly beaten to death by police in Alexandria. And that page helped spark the first protests here. Ghonim was abducted by Egyptian security officials on Jan. 28, and he was released on Monday. On Monday night, he gave an emotional TV interview that inspired many more people to come into the square on Tuesday. And when he spoke there in the afternoon, he expressed the true essence of this uprising.
The sea of people pulsated with energy, galvanized by the words of Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who got the Mubarak treatment — 12-day disappearance, blindfolding, interrogation — before a tweet that will one day be etched in some granite memorial: “Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for it.”
Google executive Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a leading voice in Egypt's uprising, was barred from the stage in Tahrir Square on Friday by security guards, an AFP photographer said. Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.
So much for Ghonim and his yuppie friends and their wishful thinking Western cheerleaders. So much for Egypt's 'secular revolution.' I see little chance that Camp David or any arrangements between Egypt and Israel survive this. We're right back where we were on June 4, 1967. Except that now the Egyptians have a modern, American-equipped army at their disposal.
On Sunday night, 60 Minutes interviewed Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who set up the Facebook page that was the starting point for the Egyptian uprising.
Video: Interview with Wael Ghonim (Egyptian opposition leader)
This is an interview on Egyptian television with Wael Ghonim, the manager of Google in the Arab countries (from the interview it's clear that he's an Egyptian who is now based in the UAE). It has English subtitles.
Ghonim was arrested, held without charges and tortured for 12 days by the Egyptian authorities until Google got him released last Sunday. After his release, it came out that he was running the website that the people who started the demonstrations used for planning and recruitment purposes.
In the interview, he gets very emotional about all the people who were killed in the riots. In the end, he can't take it anymore, and he gets up and walks out of the interview.
I found myself feeling sorry for him and for his predicament. I can only hope and pray that he's right that the Muslim Brotherhood will not take control of what he and his comrades have started. But I'm very pessimistic on that score.
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
