BOOM! Terrorist attacks in Egypt

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

BOOM goes the dynamite!

I mentioned in the June 30th Revolt thread that dh said there probably won't be a civil war but that he was really concerned that there are going to be bombings now.

In Sinai there have been explosions on the gas pipe line, coordinated attacks on military, and a series of Christians being kidnapped and beheaded. *Vomits* All of which are AQ Islamist extremists hallmarks.

However, the recent bombings in Egypt have taken place outside of Sinai in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura. Which means - it's crossing into the mainland population. They seem to still be targeting the military at this point. Reports are still coming in on multiple explosions. Several people are dead and many more injured. There is property damage as well.

Also clashes are still ongoing between supporters and opponents in Cairo with eleven people left dead yesterday. The latest deaths in a series of widening and mounting bloodshed thus dividing the Egyptian people further and moving away from reconciliation.

It's a deadly Ramadan for some.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

There was also a bombing at a police station earlier this week in the Suez Canal city Ismailia.

Also an MB leader has called for a siege of attacks on the US Embassy in Cairo.

This comes after the popular Al-Ahram newspaper declared war on America metaphorically speaking. The article linked goes into depth about what it means, but in short the newspaper is playing on a popular anti-western sentiment conspiracy theory by saying America is pulling the puppet strings and supporting terrorism in Egypt because they don't want it to be stable.

The US Embassy in Cairo responded:

Front page of Al Ahram newspaper - July 22

The story published on the front page of Al Ahram newspaper today, July 22, is totally fabricated and completely untrue.

link

[A_M 7]

There is no reason for concern.What is happening in Egypt now is an attempt by groups Brotherhood terror to destabilize and to pounce on the unity of the Egyptian people after the elimination of the rule of a dictatorial and undemocratic in the era of ’خand the idea of ​​civil war excluded by reference to the history of the ancient and the modern, the Egyptian people overcome hardships and crises more difficult of what passes now ...All what we must do now is to pray for Egypt and for the people of Egypt to get over it.

[Heather&Ramy 22]

It's a deadly Ramadan for some.

So sad... praying for peace in Egypt. At the same time I admire the courage and resilience of the moderate overwhelming majority who are willing to pay this price to see Egypt freed from the rule of extremists and moving forward into the modern world.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

Another bomb went off in Northern Sinai today. This time it was a car bomb that went off prematurely killing the three people that were in route to detonate it elsewhere.

Attacks are mostly on Military and Police. Two more soldiers we killed today in Sinai both near the town al-Arish. One was a gunman at a check point and the other was a soldier on a water truck.

I saw a couple weeks ago, prior to Ramadan, that Egypt's military is preparing to launch a counter offensive in Sinai. The Egyptian Military had to get permission from the Israeli Military because of the standing Peace Accord. They have the go ahead and started somewhat to a degree moving into Sinai more. This may have flushed the Islamist extremists into Egypt's heartland as we've seen the bombings there in recent days. The news on the offensive in Sinai made the rounds again today when the Minister of the Israeli army, Moshe Yaalon, went on tours of the Israeli side of the border.

Two things have been happening in preparation for this offensive. Egypt started with closing 80% of the tunnels from Gaza. Israel has fortified their side of the border and placed a missile defense system there. The two military's are coordinating so watch, wait and see - something is imminent - as these guys aren't playing around. Much of Sinai was lawless prior to Morsi's fall but extremists activity has jumped considerably in the week leading up to June 30th. We've had rocket launches in and from Sinai, multiple solider and police deaths, bombings, beheading, gun battles, ect.

Following all what's been happening General Sisi has called for nation wide protests this Friday against terrorism and violence. Basically he's seeking the backing of popular support again to give him a mandate from the people to do what is necessary to end the violence and bloodshed that has been escalating since Morsi's ouster 3 weeks ago. It's the "peace through force" approach to restore law and order. Not unlike the return to a security state which is possibly why we're seeing the alarm from the US today.

The US signaled it's displeasure by halting partial military aid to Egypt in the form of F-16's that were to be delivered. This came from President Obama with the Pentagon backing. They want it to be a democratically elected government soon not a return to a security state.

Another indicator of the faucet of aid to Egypt slowly being shut off also came today when the US House passed a Pentagon Spending Bill that prohibits military aid to Egypt. Senator Rand Paul is calling for State officials to be at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing tomorrow on the crisis in Egypt and cutting off of aid. I think ya probably a representative should be there for something as big as this though I suspect there would be further diplomatic tap dancing on the Pres. Administration's position in regards to the coup vs. no coup. Heck isn't this what the entire meeting is about? Someone should be there to explain their reasoning so we come to consensus and move forward from here. However, maybe it's more important to hear from the specialists on this and how to go forward instead of watching political theater. I know I'll be watching it after it's posted.

The Muslim Brotherhood said Gen. Sisi is calling for civil war with this Friday protest. Already there are cracks in the opposition about the call for protests with Egypt's Nour Party and 6 April rejecting El-Sisi's call for Friday rallies. However, the Tamarod youth group back Gen. Sisi's call for protests. Just because the leaders of these groups call for things doesn't mean that the people will follow either way. What happens this Friday remains to be seen.

It really doesn't have to be this way at all and go down this dark downward spiral and path of destruction, but the Muslim Brotherhood is still rejecting calls for reconciliation while calling for more protests and more attacks. A peaceful approach would be go home guys and accept defeat. Start over with the rest of the country to avoid further bloodshed because the Egyptian Military is going to win this one. Of course that's never going to happen with the MB, is it? They'll make martyr's of themselves first before having peace with a military transition back to democracy.

Oh, and in other news domestic tourism is being revived in Egypt's coastal resort region. The red sea resorts have largely remained peaceful during the ongoing unrest. People from Cairo are escaping to the coast this summer to cool down from the summer heat, get away from the turmoil, and take advantage of the huge discounts at most places that have taken a hit with the decline in foreign tourism.

Edited July 25, 2013 by ॐ

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Egypt's al-Sisi Drags the Country Closer to Civil War

Posted: 07/24/2013 6:32 pm

The address which was delivered by the Egyptian minister of defense, Lt. General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, on the July 24 was, in effect, an official declaration of a civil war, an additional proof that the military coup against the elected Egyptian president was an act which was extremely miscalculated and poorly handled. Sisi, by his speech, put aside the civilian government facade he appointed and wanted to use as fig leaf, has exposed himself as the new pharaoh of Egypt.

Three weeks after the toppling of Morsi, with its attendant arbitrary detentions, intimidation, and smear campaigns against his supporters, it is now apparent that the political crisis in the country is further away from a solution. The military senses that the supporters of the deposed president have begun to win the battle. They were surprised, as well as the so-called liberal forces (which support the coup), that the masses, which rallied in the squares of Cairo and cross Egyptian cities throughout the period, were much larger than they expected.

This indicates two things; first that the masses who opposed the coup are not only from the membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, a critical point that those who conducted the coup and their media outlets seek to emphasize. The other issue is that the determination and resolve of the protesters is much stronger than was expected. Despite the armed attacks on the protesters by the Egyptian security forces and those known as the baltagiya -- thugs, which resulted in more than 200 deaths and thousands of injured; even so, the anti coup protesters continue to increase.

The military leaders of the coup derived their legitimacy from the opposition demonstrations of June 30, since they claim that the army is the guardian of the will of the people, however, since the supporters of Morsi also succeeded in organizing massive rallies, the legitimacy which was ascribed to the coup has been shaken. This has led to the call by the minister of defense to his supporters to demonstrate.

The address given by al-Sisi, which contained lengthy justifications for the coup accused supporters of Morsi of engaging in violence and terrorism. He concluded with a demand that can possibly ignite a veritable civil war; he called upon his supporters to demonstrate on Friday, July 27, on the same day on which supporters of Morsi are preparing to stage huge demonstrations. He ominously added that he wants from the masses a mandate to carry what is necessary to fight 'violence and terrorism.'

Actually what al-Sisi intends from this mandate to confront what he calls 'violence' and 'terror' is to disperse the sit-ins supportive of Morsi by force. This would entail the shedding of blood of a section of the people according to a mandate granted by another section, despite the fact that the armed forces justified its coup against the democratic process as a necessity to prevent the shedding of Egyptian blood.

...

The army's leadership has thrown it into a destructive political battle; one that is more complex than its ability to administer its consequences. It erred in its assessment of the situation when it depended on the political collaboration of liberal and some former regime remnants, which do not have genuine popular support, even though they enjoy extensive media influence. Media may succeed in distorting the consciousness for a limited period, but it cannot change the constants of societies.

...

Western positions vary between hesitancy in supporting the coup on the one hand, and justification on the other. Perhaps the worst calculated and most short-sighted is that of the American administration who refused to describe, what took place, as a coup. Instead it attempted to justify it by pointing to President Morsi's failures. It is an unprecedented stand on the history of world democracy. If we allow armies of states whose governments suffer from poor performance or loss of popularity to topple the political process, the armies of many countries will topple their own governments and military tanks will descend on world capitals, even in the heart of Europe.

It is important therefore to save Egypt and the region from the impending violence. We are about to see the Middle East, as a huge contiguous field of violence and chaos, and it is upon the world to assume its responsibility and hasten to adopt an initiative that would allow the resumption of the democratic process. It is true that the initiative for reconciliation and the end of the conflict appears stalled at present except that a truce between the contesting factions, which would halt the drift towards violence, is needed and possible. This initiative must consist of steps that prepare an atmosphere for genuine reconciliation, beginning with the release of those detained after the coup, on top of them the elected president Morsi, and guarantees for the right of all Egyptians to demonstrate with protection from attacks and guarantees of freedom of the press to all by allowing media institutions which were closed by the army to resume their broadcast. That should also entail a commitment by all parties, of all forces, to abstain from resorting to violence.

The coup in Egypt has created a huge split in the souls of the region's people and if we do not capture it, we will be on the verge of opening a new chapter based on the resort to violence as the only way of political engagement. Then, no one will be able to convince the Arab masses that the peaceful transfer of power is possible because the calls for democracy have been buried under the heavy boots of the military.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wadah-khanfar/egypt-military-coup_b_3647871.html

Also:

Egypt's army should release Mohamed Morsi for its own sake

The detention of the former president and a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood will only escalate the country's political crisis

• Peter Beaumont
• The Guardian
• Wednesday 24 July 2013 14.23 EDT

A supporter of Mohamed Morsi runs from tear gas fired by riot police during clashes in Cairo. Photograph: Mohamed Abd El Ghany/REUTERS

Egypt's first democratically elected president was overthrown on 3 July after mass protests. Since then he's not been heard from. He is being held, Egypt's military insists, in a "safe place" – even if it won't say where. No charges have been filed, although it's been suggested that Morsi could be charged with "conspiracy with foreign actors" or "insulting the judiciary". These circumstances, says Amnesty International, are tantamount to "enforced disappearance".

The mystery over Morsi's whereabouts and fate comes amid new evidence that Egypt's generals are planning a wider crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

On Wednesday army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi called for nationwide rallies on Friday to give the military a mandate to confront what he called "violence and terrorism" – not much of a code for those who have been protesting against Morsi's detention and this month's army-backed coup.

You don't have to approve of what Morsi represented in his year in office – the democratic and other failings of his government – to be concerned over the legal basis of his arrest and that of his key aides. What little is known about his whereabouts is based on hints supplied in calls made by other detained aides to family members suggesting they are being held together at an army base somewhere.

The disappearance of Morsi is part and parcel of a continuing systemic failure of Egypt's politics and institutions since the revolution that removed Hosni Mubarak. And without clear mechanisms and strong and legally valid institutions, each group that has tried to exercise power in the recent period has subverted the courts and rule of law to its own ends – including Morsi himself through his extra-legal November decree which put his acts beyond judicial review. First it was the army in alliance with the Brotherhood, then the Brotherhood alone, and now it is the army in alliance with the coalition of forces ranged against the Brotherhood.

But while Morsi may have exacerbated Egypt's political crisis, claiming his victory at the ballot box as justification for his pursuit of a disastrous and increasingly unpopular agenda, holding him incommunicado only makes Egypt's crisis more fraught in the long run. Morsi represents a wide constituency. His detention, as Khalil al-Anani, a Middle East scholar at Durham University, argued forcefully earlier this month , far from persuading the wider Brotherhood to acquiesce, is likely to be counterproductive.

"During crisis time," he wrote, "the Muslim Brotherhood as a social and ideological movement tends to turn inward in order to maintain its unity and solidarity of members. It invokes tribulation – or "mehna" – as a shield to protect the movement from divisions and splits. Indeed, it is the only way the Muslim Brotherhood could survive the current crisis."

The reality is that the release of Morsi and other senior Muslim Brotherhood figures – as demanded by the EU last week – should be a question of political self-interest in pursuit of stability (as well as justice) for those now claiming to govern Egypt. For if one of the lessons of the past year is that Morsi and the Brotherhood could not lead Egypt alone if they alienated other key actors in the country's post-revolutionary political landscape, it should be evident that the opposite holds equally true.

Indeed, only two months before 3 July, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre suggested that, while Egyptians were deeply pessimistic about the issues – from law and order to the economy – and were increasingly unhappy about the way their new democracy was functioning, the Brotherhood itself was still regarded positively by a large majority.

And the alternative, in any case, is what? Already the fact of Morsi's detention, some anecdotal evidence suggests, has attracted some to Muslim Brotherhood-organised protests who might once have been more ambivalent.

The detention of Morsi – and a crackdown on the Brotherhood – cannot bring genuine stability. Nor can a political process be allowed to be directed by the generals who have, thus far, served their own interests in their changing alliances. The lesson from successful reconciliation processes – including South Africa and Northern Ireland – is that it requires a wide level of inclusion in any dialogue. All of which requires de-escalation and Morsi's release.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/24/egypt-army-release-mohamed-morsi

And:

...the current media campaign that aims to demonize the MB, and portray them as "terrorists," seems useless and could be counterproductive. It provides the MB with a "free service" to increase its support and sympathy among the Egyptian public. Not surprisingly, many Islamists who aren't affiliated with the MB have decided to join the protests against the military. Indeed, they fear if the MB lost this battle, they would be the next targets of the police state, which according to them, came back to life after the June 30 protests more powerful and hostile to Islamists. When I asked a member of Ansar Al-Sunna group, a purely religious movement with no interest in politics, why he joined the MB protests, his answer was: "to protect my religious freedom." Therefore, many of those who join the MB's protests now are driven by fear of the return of Mubarak's brutal state, which repressed them for three decades.

...

It would be naïve to believe that the MB is finished or that political Islam in Egypt came to an end after the downfall of Morsi as some accounts are arguing. It is important to remember that Morsi's regime has gone but its patron still exists. Moreover, the MB is more than a political party, it is a rooted social movement with a large and devoted constituency. And it still has the most well knit organization and structure in Egypt. Furthermore, the MB has a secret and underground network that can vividly operate and adapt with such an oppressive environment.

To sum up, it might be true that the political project of the MB was defeated when it fell short in addressing Egypt's many problems, yet as a religious and social movement, the MB will remain as long as Egypt has a highly conservative and religious society.

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/15/the_brotherhood_revives_its_mehna_narrative

[sandinista! 1,816]

Why are Egyptian media demonizing Palestinians?

Hanine Hassan

The Electronic Intifada

23 July 2013

130723-egypt-morsi.jpg

Accusations of association with Hamas have been used to smear deposed Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi.

(Ahmed Asad / APA images)

On 6 July, Egyptian TV host Shafki al-Moniri, on Al-Yawm TV, apologized to her viewers that she wasn’t in the country a week earlier for the 30 June protests that served as the backdrop for the army’s ouster of President Muhammad Morsi.

But she had been eager to fly home as soon as possible to join the celebrations. As her fellow passengers were checking in for their flight to Cairo from Barcelona, she recounted that one traveler “was very nervous and we didn’t know why he was nervous. We boarded, and a while later, Egypt Air had to offload him.” He turned out to be Palestinian, al-Moniri said.

“The flight attendant explained that there is an order to offload this passenger,” and there was more delay as the passenger’s luggage was located.

She said she was sure this wasn’t an action against all Palestinians, but that there must be a question mark over the particular Palestinian removed from the flight.

At that moment, al-Moniri said, she felt safe because “the army and the police forces are wide awake and acting properly.”

After telling this story, al-Moniri, overcome with emotion and joy, broke down in tears on camera as she repeated, “I love you Egypt, I love you Egypt,” and had to be comforted by her fellow TV host.

It is unclear if al-Moniri knew that in fact, one of the first acts taken by the military regime that overthrew Morsi on 3 July, was to ban Palestinians from entering Egypt through Cairo airport, leaving thousands stranded all over the world, preventing them from returning home to Gaza through Rafah crossing — the sole point of entry and exit for the vast majority of Gaza’s residents. All over the world, Palestinians were denied boarding on Cairo-bound flights and dozens were deported from Cairo’s airport.

These actions against Palestinians have been widely justified with constantly repeated rumors — never backed by evidence — that Palestinians are interfering in Egypt’s affairs, causing turmoil, and are even responsible for attacks on Egyptian security forces by militant groups in the Sinai peninsula.

The allegations have been leveled at Palestinians in general, and Hamas in particular.

To further feed the paranoia, on 8 July a speaker on Al Kahera Wal Nas TV made the allegation that toppled President Morsi is “of Palestinian origin,” an inflammatory and bigoted allegation in the present atmosphere. After the guest made the supposed revelation, the host, instead of asking for evidence, turned to the camera and said, “we must repeat it, President Morsi is of Palestinian origin.”

It is now common to hear members or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood being denounced as “Palestinians,” or to hear claims that most of those taking part in the ongoing sit-in by Morsi supporters at Cairo’s Rabia al-Adawiya square are themselves Palestinians, or in some cases, Syrians.

Baseless allegations

On Tahrir TV, on 6 July, host Ahmad Moussa directly accused Hamas of the killing of 16 Egyptian border guards in Sinai in August 2012, and claimed the evidence would be revealed at an international press conference within a few days. More than two weeks later, no such evidence has been revealed, but the accusation that Morsi has helped Hamas cover up its alleged role continues to be used to justify his overthrow.

On the same channel, on 9 July, hosts Mohamed al-Ghaity and Samir Ghatas discussed what they purported was an official Hamas memorandum marked “top secret” disclosing that “500 terrorist militants from the al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas, are ready to destroy Egypt in order to stand by their Muslim Brothers.” Conveniently, they claimed, Hamas was acting under the orders of the prime minister of Qatar, a backer of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Ghaity then displayed a document purporting to be from the Muslim Brotherhood to the “Hamas terrorists.” These documents are impossible to verify and almost certainly fake, but their use in this way has fed the anti-Palestinian frenzy.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Wagdi, Egypt’s former interior minister, told the Ismailia Appeals Court on 8 June that “elements of al-Qassam brigades affiliated to the Islamist movement of Hamas, in collaboration with the [islamic] Jihad and the Islamic Army groups in Gaza and the Shia Lebanese party of Hizballah, teamed up during the early days of the 25 January 2011 uprising that overthrew Mubarak to attack Egyptian prisons and release Islamist detainees” (“‘Exposing’ Hamas and Hizbullah’s roles,” Al-Ahram Weekly, 12 June).

Hence, on 11 July, Egyptian officials said that an investigation would be launched into allegations that Morsi, who had been detained by authorities during the 2011 uprising, was himself broken out of prison by Hamas, and that proof of foreign intervention on Egyptian soil could lead to charges of treason.

Demonization

While talking heads on satellite TV have been demonizing Palestinians around the clock, social media have been filled with rumors including that Palestinians want to occupy the Sinai peninsula. Many are as familiar as they are absurd: that the nearly 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza are causing shortages for Egypt’s population of 83 million by siphoning off food, fuel and medicines.

The rumors were undoubtedly fed when, on 17 June, weeks before the ouster of Morsi,ONtv broadcast unsubstantiated press reports that Hamas had sent 3,000 troops into Egypt to support President Morsi.

Such wild claims have been used to justify Egypt’s efforts to destroy the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, a lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza amid the intense Israeli siege.

False reports planted in the press travel quickly, as when, for example, The Times of Israelpicked up a report from the London-based, Saudi-funded Arabic daily Al-Hayat citing an Egyptian “security official” who claimed that the Egyptian army had killed some 200 gunmen in Sinai, including 32 from Hamas.

In that, case, at least, there was a firm denial from Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials (“Officials on all sides deny report that Egypt killed 32 Hamas fighters in Sinai,” 11 July).

More often, however, such claims have gone unchallenged, as when Major General Osama Askar, commander of the Egyptian military’s Third Army, claimed on 18 July that his forces had captured 19 Grad rockets belonging to the military wing of Hamas on the Cairo-Suez highway. They were, he said, destined for Cairo “to help the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The “captured rockets,” Askar asserted, “are capable of destroying an entire neighborhood which indicates that they were on their way to be used in terrorist attacks against the Egyptian people” (“Third Army Commander: Hamas rockets captured in Suez capable of destroying entire neighborhood,” al-Dustour (Cairo), 17 July [Arabic]).

Such lurid tales about Hamas are given credence because, although organizationally separate, Hamas grew ideologically out of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is therefore presented as natural that Hamas would come to the rescue of its mother organization.

The propagandists also draw parallels with Hamas’ rise to political power. Although Hamas won the majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, it was by force of arms in 2007 that it secured its position in Gaza against the rival Fatah forces which would not cede power. Egyptian media are telling audiences that this is the model the Muslim Brotherhood “terrorists” plan to follow.

These same propagandists consistently forget to mention that Morsi’s policies towards Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza did not differ in substance from Hosni Mubarak’s.

Full partnership with US

With Egypt’s history as the vanguard of Arab nationalism and the Arab struggle against Israel, it may seem shocking that such contempt for the Palestinians — and lately Syrians, who are being subjected to similar forms of incitement — could be so loud and pervasive.

During his rule from 1956-1970, President Gamal Abdel-Nasser upgraded the rights of Palestinians in Egypt, giving them equal status to Egyptians. Initially, even after the 1973 war against Israel, his successor, President Anwar Sadat, seemed to follow the same course.

But amid economic crisis, rising unemployment and poverty, Sadat sought a way out in the form of his pivot toward the United States, his neoliberal economic reforms and his 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

A whole new class rose, ready to profit from what the Egyptian embassy in Washington still calls the the full “partnership” between the two countries, at the expense of the poor. Sadat knew that by recognizing his Zionist neighbor, he was going against the will of his people. He and his supporters therefore launched a vicious anti-Palestinian campaign in Egypt, frequently portraying Palestinians as ungrateful betrayers who sold their land to the Zionists and who were dragging Egypt into costly wars. His prime minister, Mustafa Khalil, famously declared: “No more Palestine after today” (Oroub el-Abed, “The Invisible Community: Egypt’s Palestinians,” Al-Shabaka, 8 June 2011).

From then on, an entire propaganda machine was set in motion against the Palestinians.

Chauvinist nationalism

As Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad has observed, this campaign had as a motive developing a “chauvinist Egyptian nationalism in place of Egyptian Arab nationalism” (“Egypt’s nouveaux riches and the Palestinians, Al Jazeera English, 9 August 2012).

Palestinians in Egypt began to suffer from discriminatory policies that treated them as a threat to the country’s national security. Younger Egyptian generations were completely misinformed about Palestine and the struggle there.

Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, and his agents in the press occasionally deployed vicious anti-Palestinian campaigns to distract from their misdeeds. The propaganda intensified after the Muslim Brotherhood greatly increased their seats in Egypt’s 2005 parliamentary elections, and Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections the following year.

After Fatah refused to hand over power to Hamas, leading to armed clashes and the 2007 expulsion of Fatah forces from Gaza, the Mubarak regime painted Hamas as an even more dangerous foe. Egypt set to work zealously enforcing the Israeli-declared blockade of Gaza. During the January 2011 uprising that eventually toppled him, Mubarak’s media agents actively spread rumors that Palestinians and Hamas were behind the Tahrir Square protests.

This ultra-chauvinist stance has at times descended into open hatred. At the height of the conflict between Hamas and Fatah, Egyptian TV host Amr Adib, a former propagandist for the Mubarak regime with ties to his ruling National Democratic Party, saluted Israel on television and said that Hamas should be “finished off.”

On 13 July, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information published a statement from a coalition of Egyptian human rights organizations condemning the surge in incitement to hatred and violence against Syrians and Palestinians. The groups singled out Egypt’s CBC and ONtv, as well as presenters Amr Adib, Lamis Hadidi and Ahmad Moussa, as among the worst purveyors. This incitement, the statement said, would only become more common after the “silence about hate speech and incitement targeting some Egyptian citizens because of their religious or political backgrounds.”

Targeted and humiliated

UN General Assembly Resolution 59 (1) of 1946, defending freedom of the press, declares that “Freedom of information requires as an indispensable element the willingness and capacity to employ privileges without abuse. It requires as a basic discipline the moral obligation to seek the facts without prejudice and to spread knowledge without malicious intent.” These duties are embodied in any notion of journalistic ethics. And yet, sadly, in the current Egyptian media frenzy of rumor-mongering, racial incitement and demonization, no such ethics can be found.

The fruit of these years of hateful misinformation are being harvested now, as Palestinians find themselves targeted and humiliated by hate speech repeated by cab drivers, salespersons, students, police officers and even intellectuals claiming to be revolutionaries. Palestinians today feel trapped in a fellow Arab country, fearing false accusations, leading many to avoid the streets, hide their origins and change their accent when communicating with Egyptians.

Yet at the same time, support for Palestine and antagonism towards Israel and Zionism remained deep-rooted in Egyptian political culture and national consciousness, demonstrated by waves of public support in the course of the years, during the Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982, the first intifada in 1987, the second intifada in 2000, and the attack on Gaza in 2008.

But the waves of solidarity end as soon as the latest spasm of Israeli violence abates, and too many Egyptians succumb again to yet another full-blown media assault against the Palestinians. Meanwhile, principled Egyptian activists and intellectuals continue to insistently reject anti-Palestinian rhetoric and argue for solidarity with Palestinians, as well as for the centrality of the question of Palestine to Egypt. But their voices are being drowned out in the present national discourse.

Hanine Hassan is a researcher and doctoral student studying aspects of mental torture and humiliation under occupation. Her family fled Jaffa, Palestine in 1948 and is waiting to return. She tweets at @hanine09.

[mounir412 101]

God bless Egypt !!!

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

Omar Suleiman who is known to be one of the most brilliant, brutal and efficient intelligence officers in the Middle East in the last 15 years said it shortly after the revolution. "It will be easy to restore the State. The only obstacle is the Islamist & their sympathizers."

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Omar Suleiman who is known to be one of the most brilliant, brutal and efficient intelligence officers in the Middle East in the last 15 years said it shortly after the revolution. "It will be easy to restore the State. military dictatorship. The only obstacle is the Islamist & their sympathizers. democracy."

Fixxored.

Omar Suleiman = Mubarak II wannabe.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

No need for fixing anything as it's fairly evident in the original statement. However, one suggestion I might offer to make your position more clear is to elucidate a summation of your points in 500 words or less and citing the original article instead of copy and pasting and putting in bold the text of another author's original content. Or perhaps instead while writing your ideas online try quoting the relevant text when referencing the material so people don't have to read through the distorted mess and attempt to extrapolate and cipher the sometimes cryptic meaning. Make your points clear and thus relevant to the discussion. Nobody is going to want to sort through it for you and try to understand what you're saying when it's presented like that.

Anyways, here is the video of the video on today's hearing of the Senate Foreign Services Committee on the Crisis in Egypt that I referenced in a prior post.

LINK

The Honorable Daniel C. Kurtzer

S. Daniel Abraham Professor in Middle Eastern Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Princeton University

Princeton, NJ

The Honorable Dennis Ross

Counselor

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Washington, DC

Dr. Michele Dunne

Vice President for the Atlantic Council and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East

Atlantic Council

Washington, DC

Edited July 26, 2013 by ॐ

[sandinista! 1,816]

Perspective — July 30, 2013, 1:02 pm

On the Selling of the Egyptian Coup to Liberals

How the mass killing of Islamists is being justified in America

By Ken Silverstein

Immediately after the Egyptian military ousted Mohamed Morsi on July 3, supporters of the army’s actions began circulating a YouTube video of twelve-year-old Ali Ahmed, a well-dressed and articulate young man whose comments they cited as evidence that the overthrow of an elected president wasn’t a coup but a shining example of democracy. The video, which went out under titles like “12 Year Old Egyptian Explains Revolution in Minutes,” “Egypt: The Next President,” and “Brilliant Egyptian Boy Explains What’s Happening in His Country,” had been filmed six months earlier in Cairo by a news outlet called El Wady.

Who can resist adorable little Ali Ahmed? He comes across as an ardent champion of democracy and gender equality; indeed, it’s striking how deeply he seems to care about these issues. “We didn’t get rid of a military regime to replace it with a fascist theocracy,” he says. “The social objectives of the revolution are yet to be achieved — economic empowerment, freedom and social justice.”

Let’s pretend that these are genuinely Ali’s spontaneous thoughts, and that he wasn’t coached by adults or merely parroting their sentiments. It’s obvious from the video that he comes from Egypt’s tiny upper class, which under normal circumstances interacts with poor Egyptians only rarely. As a commentator on Egyptian social life, he has all the credibility of Richie Rich being interviewed on CNN about the plight of the American working class. Worse, though, is the way people in Egypt and America are using him to try to justify what was clearly a military coup as part of a democratic “revolution,” in turn legitimizing the subsequent mass killings of Islamists by the Egyptian army. This is especially pathetic when the supporters are Western liberals, who have deluded themselves into believing — as some once believed that military intervention was a route to democracy in Iraq and Libya — that American-style secularists have significant popular appeal in Egypt.

The truth is that the secularists beloved of the American political class have little support among Egyptians. Mohammed ElBaradei, who settled for the post of vice president after the military initially chose him to lead the “interim” regime, had returned to the country after the mass demonstrations that led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. “If [people] want me to lead the transition, I will not let them down,” he said at the time. But the people didn’t want him to lead. Though he declared his intention to run for the presidency, he withdrew when it became clear he didn’t have anywhere near the support he would need to be elected, and Morsi ultimately won the race in 2012.[1]

[1] In a post-coup interview with the New York Times in which he defended the arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members and the shutdown of Islamist television, ElBaradei said, “We just lost two and a half years. As Yogi Berra said, ‘It’s déjà vu all over again,’ but hopefully this time we will get it right.”

In Egypt, only two forces genuinely possess the ability to rule at the moment: the army, by virtue of the bayonet; or the Muslim Brotherhood, by virtue of the ballot. Morsi angered many (including his own supporters) with his actions, but he was also facing down the impossible expectations of a populace desperate for change after decades of military rule, and he had not lost his legitimacy. Parliamentary elections had been scheduled for later this year; those elections were the proper vehicle for a change of government, not a coup.

Whether the Muslim Brotherhood would have been defeated in elections is unknown. Western media accounts have said that as many as 33 million people had protested against Morsi before the coup, but as Shadi Hamid, director of research for the Brookings Doha Center, told the Washington Post, that number “defies what we know of physical spaces.” Certainly huge numbers of people took to the streets to demonstrate against Morsi, but his supporters have also been out in huge numbers, before and after the coup, and unlike his enemies they are risking their lives to do so.

This isn’t an endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood, many of whose policies and ideas I find abhorrent, especially regarding civil liberties. But I am quite certain that General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the man who appears to be in charge now and who provoked last weekend’s bloodbath, is also not a fan of gays and feminists (who didn’t thrive under Mubarak, either).[2]

[2] On a past reporting trip to Egypt, I met with female members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and while they might not have classified themselves as feminists as we define the term in the West, they were certainly feminist in their aims. They believed they could work through the Brotherhood to achieve political change, and to improve the status of women in Egypt.

We may not like the Muslim Brotherhood, but we can’t have democracy in Egypt without it, and the same holds true for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. As I wrote for Harper’sin 2007 after interviewing senior officials in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah, the U.S. government needs to deal with “radical” Islamists because they are widely supported actors in their countries. The alternative to giving them a fair share of power is mass arrests and executions.

Of course, some coup supporters seem to be perfectly comfortable with such tactics. As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times, “Radical Islamists are incapable of running a modern government. Many have absolutist, apocalyptic mind-sets. They have a strange fascination with a culture of death.” And as theWashington Post noted yesterday, the response in Egypt and abroad, including from the Obama Administration “has been fairly muted,” despite the fact that a Human Rights Watch investigation found that many of the demonstrators killed over the weekend “had been shot in the chest or head by live ammunition.” The Post article went on to lay bare the dynamic at work: “The brutality of Egypt’s once-feared security state helped spark Egypt’s 2011 revolution. Now those security forces are swinging back into action, and this time they are being hailed as heroes by many of the secular activists and liberals who once campaigned against them.”

You cannot preach about democracy then accept the outcome only if your side triumphs. In 2006, Hamas won a devastating victory in legislative elections in the Palestinian Authority. The following year, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas dissolved a Hamas-led unity government and swore in an emergency cabinet, leading the Obama Administration to reinstate aid that had been suspended under Hamas’ rule. This type of hypocrisy heightens anti-Americanism, sends the message that elections are meaningless, and encourages terrorism.[3]

[3] For instance, radical Islamic terrorism in the Sinai appears to have surged since Morsi was deposed.

On Sunday, I came across this line from Voltaire in the documentary The Act of Killing: “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” Though the film is about events in Indonesia in 1965, it brought to mind the intellectual contortions of Egyptian-coup supporters who have justified the mass killings of Islamists in the name of democracy. Back in 1965 it was Islamic militias killing Communists in the name of democracy. The common denominator is that the killers were seen as pro-Western — and so, the trumpets are sounding once again in America.

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/07/on-the-selling-of-the-egyptian-coup-to-liberals/

[nurse1967 287]

The moderate youth of Egypt are never going to allow an extremist Islamist state to take hold. God Bless Egypt!!

[shekooo 4]

finally ,they cleared the sit ins this morning

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

No need for fixing anything as it's fairly evident in the original statement. However, one suggestion I might offer to make your position more clear is to elucidate a summation of your points in 500 words or less and citing the original article instead of copy and pasting and putting in bold the text of another author's original content. Or perhaps instead while writing your ideas online try quoting the relevant text when referencing the material so people don't have to read through the distorted mess and attempt to extrapolate and cipher the sometimes cryptic meaning. Make your points clear and thus relevant to the discussion. Nobody is going to want to sort through it for you and try to understand what you're saying when it's presented like that.

Anyways, here is the video of the video on today's hearing of the Senate Foreign Services Committee on the Crisis in Egypt that I referenced in a prior post.

LINK

The Honorable Daniel C. Kurtzer

S. Daniel Abraham Professor in Middle Eastern Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Princeton University

Princeton, NJ

The Honorable Dennis Ross

Counselor

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Washington, DC

Dr. Michele Dunne

Vice President for the Atlantic Council and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East

Atlantic Council

Washington, DC

Lol.

Despite your illusions, you are hardly the school marm of MENA (nor, might I add, a credible "reporter/analyst" of anything related to the region.) You know so painfully little about the politics, culture and society of the Middle East that it‘s hilarious that you continue to presume that you could “school“ anyone about it.

Your post history here is well-known to me and to most of the veterans on this board, so given your track record, it is no surprise that you suddenly announce that you are unable (or unwilling) to process or discuss short citations from mainstream news articles on the subject of your thread (much less slightly more advanced pieces from Foreign Policy magazine) or come up with any coherent response, and instead demand some Cliff Notes-type synopsis to help you digest a few paragraphs. 500 words, eh ? The snippets are mostly less than that. And yet you would style yourself as a journalist

“Cryptic” and “distorted” ? Bwahahahahhahahaha ! Fact is: You’re out of your league.

What kind of "progressive" "Western" "secular" "liberal" would defend an army firing live ammunition on unarmed demonstrators ?

What kind of "progressive" would defend an army placing a democratically elected leader under house arrest ?

What kind of "progressive" would defend shutting down journalists and television stations that represent opposition viewpoints ?

What kind of "progressive" would cheer all this on as a "revolution" instead of calling it what it is - a violent military coup to overturn the results of a democratic election and reinstate a former regime (the army elite and their coterie) known for its oppression and abuses of human rights.