"Staunch Ally of Israel" Hosni Mubarak?

SS..
CAMERA/Snapshots..
01 August '12..

A report by Isabel Kershner and Elisabeth Bumiller discussing the controversial letter allegedly sent by newly-elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to Israeli President Shimon Peres provides another example of how The New York Times's distorted view of Israel and the Middle East seeps into its news reporting.

Contrasting the tense relationship between Israel and Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood political leadership, Kershner and Bumiller write,

Since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, a staunch ally of Israel, there has been no high-level dialogue between the Israeli and Egyptian political leadership...

A reality check is in order here. The former Egyptian president maintained the peace agreement with Israel and cooperated on isolating Hamas-ruled Gaza. For that he deserves praise. But a staunch ally? The New York Times has set the bar so low here it would challenge an expert limbo dancer. Under Mubarak's long rule, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish invective flourished in Egypt, including its state-controlled media. Economic relations stagnated and tourism was in one direction only - from Israel to Egypt. Mr. Mubarak, himself, set an example by never visiting Israel in an official capacity in 30 years as president. He visited Israel only once - a non-state visit - to attend Yitzhak Rabin's funeral.

With staunch allies like that, who needs tentative allies?

Link: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2012/08/hosni_mubarak_staunch_ally_of.html

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From Israel: Brief Thoughts on Egypt

Arlene Kushner
Arlene from Israel
11 February '11

The situation is very much in flux as I write, and preparations for Shabbat prevent me from doing more than make these brief, but not unimportant, comments now. There will be no further posting until after Shabbat, and who knows what the situation will be by the time people in N. America and elsewhere read this. However...

I wish to emphasize something I've certainly written about before but which merits repeating, and repeating:

There is no such thing as instant democracy. Democracy requires preparation of a populace and institution of values that will support it -- freedom of speech, respect for the individual and for minorities, etc. etc. There is no tradition of these things in Egypt.

~~~~~~~~~~

There is also no such thing as democracy by mob. There is a vision of this mob in the Cairo square representing "the people" such that their gaining control of the situation would lead to a popular democratic government. Utter and dangerous nonsense.

If this mob was (in the main) of one mind and one moderate ideology, headed by a charismatic leader, having consolidated and planned over a period of time, and in possession of funding, and a solid platform and specific democratic principles they would want to institute if governing, then maybe. Just maybe.

But the reality is that disparate groups are within the mob. They are represented by no strong leader. They have no one set of guiding principles and seem in the main just set on seeing Mubarak go (and, if he went, I suspect Suleiman and everyone else tainted by the old regime).

But following this would be chaos. (And I'll come back to this.)

~~~~~~~~~~

I emphasize this because Obama yesterday made a statement about a speedy transition in Egypt to a genuine democracy.

My friends, these are buzz words that reflect either a serious misunderstanding of the situation or an attempt to represent a certain stance for political purposes -- or a little of each.

~~~~~~~~~~

Egypt: The Turning Point, The Regime's Plan on What to Do Next

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
01 February '11

In 1978 and 1979 I followed the Iranian revolution on a daily and hourly basis. Even before the hostage crisis, recognizing the importance of this event, I began work on a book. The title? Paved with Good Intentions. This came from the expression, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

This is precisely might be what is happening now. Out of "good intentions," the United States is headed--though I hopes it can still be averted--the biggest catastrophe in the history of its relations with the Middle East. Thirty years after Iran's revolution produced a similar situation, nothing has been learned by U.S. policymakers. Nothing.

Let me be clear: Removing Mubarak is NOT the problem. There is little doubt that he will lose power personally, something that would have happened within months any way given his age. The most hated and corrupt figures will flee the country.

The question is whether the regime--the current system--will survive. As of this moment (for reasons you can read four paragraphs down) I believe that the regime that has ruled Egypt for 59 years is finished. Is that a good thing? Well, it depends on what happens.

It is not inevitable that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. Even the Brotherhood doesn't want that in the near future. It is far more likely, though, that Egypt would become a radical, anti-American state perhaps with some restraint (see point 1, below). The army will play a critical role one way or the other.

But nobody should neglect the reality of public opinion. Here's a report direct from the massive demonstration in Cairo today by a friend interviewing people there:

Demonstrators in Tahrir Square are increasingly saying this is not a fight against Mubarak. This is a fight against Israel and the United States whose interests he's implementing.

But, many will say, isn't it the fault of these countries for supporting Mubarak? The answer is: And would the situation be better if they had never done so? At any rate, it is January 2011 and, like it or not, one has to deal with the existing reality.

(Read full "Egypt: The Turning Point, The Regime's Plan on What to Do Next")

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Middle Eastern Moment of Truth

P. David Hornik
frontpagemag.com
31 January '11

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/01/middle-eastern-moment-of-truth/

Over a quarter-century Israel fought Egypt in the 1948 Independence War, the 1956 Sinai War, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1967-1970 War of Attrition, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Since then, for 37 years, Israel and Egypt have not fought. This may have been made possible mainly by the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty; or it may be that Egypt, deterred by having lost the wars and desiring realignment with the West, would have kept the peace in any case.

Given the stark difference between the 1948-1973 epoch and the 1973-2011 epoch, Israel has reacted to the current crisis in Egypt without foolishness—heard elsewhere in the West—about the supposed moderation of the Muslim Brotherhood or its ally Mohammed ElBaradei. Israelis are alarmed across the political spectrum.

Left-of-center Haaretz columnist Aluf Benn writes that “Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who ‘lost’ Egypt…. If [a superpower] abandons its allies the moment they flounder, who would trust it tomorrow?” Another left-of-center Haaretz columnist, Ari Shavit, writes harshly that “Obama’s betrayal of Hosni Mubarak is not just the betrayal of a moderate Egyptian president who remained loyal to the United States…. Everyone grasps the message: America’s word is worthless; an alliance with America is unreliable; America has lost it.”

And President Shimon Peres, who not long ago believed in “the New Middle East” and was a central figure in Israel’s dovish turn, said that “We still have great respect for Mubarak. Not everything he did was right, but he worked to keep peace in the Middle East.” And regarding possible developments in Egypt: “A fanatic religious oligarchy is not better than lack of democracy.”

Israelis know that Mubarak’s “peace” (since 1981, when he took over from his assassinated predecessor Anwar Sadat) was cold, that Egypt continued treating Israel as an enemy in international forums, and that its society remained intensely anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic. At the time the crisis broke out last week, there appear to have been only a few hundred Israeli tourists—out of an Israeli population of seven million—in neighboring, officially “friendly” Egypt.

It's never been about Palestine

John Podhoretz
New York Post
Mon., Jan. 31, 2011, 9:23 AM

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/it_never_been_about_palestine_207FqIaxNIcGbmG7w24aVP

The anti-Mubarak revolution won't only topple an authoritarian regime. It will also topple 40-plus years of wrong-headed thinking about the causes of Middle East instability among the world's foreign-policy cognoscenti.

In that view, the horrible relationship between Israel and the Arabs is the dominant issue for the Near East's 20-plus nations and its 250-million-plus people -- and the root cause of the region's tempestuousness.

But now that Tunisia's street revolt against a corrupt dictatorial regime has led to Egypt's similar revolt only in a matter of weeks, with God knows what to follow elsewhere, the plain truth can no longer be denied: Israel is a sideshow.

The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state. But one of the little-told stories of the last four decades has been the steady easing of that state-on-state belligerency.

Jordan effectively quit the fight after Israel's triumph in the 1967 war cut Jordan in half. So too did the Arab states that did not share a border with Israel. The bloody toll of the '73 war then led Egypt and Syria to surrender their ambitious military efforts to drive Israel into the sea.

So, for the last 30 years, Israel's violent difficulties have not been with other Middle East states, but with terrorist groups and movements supposedly representing Palestinian interests based either in the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza or thriving parasitically in the southern part of the ruined state of Lebanon.

From Israel: Convoluted and Painful Process

Arlene Kushner
Arlene from Israel
31 January '11

The issues are anything but simple, and resolution of the situation in Egypt will not happen overnight, or in a week or a month. I do not intend to focus exclusively on this situation. And yet... it is so important, and so fraught with major consequences, that we must continue to keep a very watchful eye.

~~~~~~~~~~

At present there is a sort of holding pattern, or stalemate. Mubarak is refusing to step down. He has appointed a new cabinet and instructed the new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, to "allow wider participation" of political parties, and to address unemployment concerns.

These orders touch upon two key issues.

Financial difficulties being endured by the Egyptian people have a great deal to do with what brought tens of thousands into the street. (Anxiety about the subsidization of bread -- a staple in Egypt --because of Egyptian fiscal policies that have brought higher prices may have figured into this.)

Wider participation of political parties is meant to signal the very beginning of governmental reform; what actually happens in this regard remains to be seen.

The "new" cabinet has seen some people replaced, but still consists of many familiar faces.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the meantime, the protests are still going on in the street, with tanks roaming about and helicopters overhead. Protesters insist they are not stopping until Mubarak leaves.

The expectation in many quarters is that Mubarak will resign shortly and make way for his vice president, Suleiman -- who certainly has the experience and capacity to take control.

Zvi Mazel, who served as ambassador to Egypt, has written:

"The people are no longer clamoring for food and work, they want him gone, and it is doubtful that they will settle for less. Even if Mubarak manages to hold on, it will be as a diminished president..." (Thanks here to Lily S.)

What seems most clearly the case is that if there is to be stable reform in Egypt -- that moves even tentatively in the direction of democracy -- it must be done via a moderating and reformulated version of the current regime, and not via a takeover by the street.

If Mubarak is to finish his term, writes Mazel, "he will have to implement political and economic reforms, including significant salary raises and increased subsidies, though it is not clear where the money will be coming for. The emergency laws which granted him extraordinary powers will have to be scraped, together with the special clauses introduced in the constitution to limit the possibility for an independent to be candidate for the presidency."

~~~~~~~~~~

There is much talk about who the leaders of the protest movement are and which ideologies they represent. Young people -- educated and often radicalized -- are seriously invested in the rebellion. But what becomes more and more evident is how deeply involved is the Muslim Brotherhood, even though it has not moved to officially assume leadership.

As Shmuel Even, writing for the Institute for National Security Studies, put it:

"The outcome of the riots may not necessarily be connected to what or who ignited them, rather to whatever power structure is created and those who succeed in leveraging it for their own benefit."

The Brotherhood has announced official backing for El-Baradei, who first demanded Mubarak's ouster, and now has the Brotherhood's blessing to negotiate a "unity government."

~~~~~~~~~~

Down the road, it goes without saying, the Egyptian military, and the leader it supports, will have considerable effect on what happens.

~~~~~~~~~~

From Israel: Exceedingly Worrisome Situation

Arlene Kushner
Arlene from Israel
30 January '11

I write with the assumption that (almost) everyone reading this will have been following the news regarding Egypt, at least at a minimal level. And I write, as well, aware that within hours after I send this out, the news may have shifted. In fact, my best efforts to get this straight notwithstanding, it's close to impossible to get a handle on the shifting details.

It's clear to everyone following these events that they have less than nothing to do with Palestinian Arabs or a "two state solution." Egyptians are most decidedly not rioting in the streets because there is no Palestinian state. This should (unfortunately, it won't) put to rest once and for all the fallacious idea that what happens between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs is at the heart of what goes on elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world.

~~~~~~~~~~

The uprising that started on Tuesday and has escalated for days since -- with rioting in the streets, more than 60 dead and over 2,000 injured, refusal to obey curfews, and more -- has been directed against the repressions of the Hosni Mubarak regime of almost 30 years. Those repressions -- as well as wide-spread corruption, economic problems, and failure to enact promised reforms -- are very real. Most hated are the police, whose vehicles and stations have been attacked and torched.

Chaos has been exacerbated by prison break-outs at first in four different sites, with thousands of prisoners, including terrorists and political prisoners from the Muslim Brotherhood, going free after clashing with guards and starting fires. They have gone on a rampage of looting, with marauding gangs releasing even more prisoners.

~~~~~~~~~~

The army has replaced the police now in Cairo, a teeming city of 18 million, with tanks stationed everywhere. This morning there was uneasy quiet in the streets of the city. But this, I believe, had as much to do with the need of demonstrators to rush home and protect their families and properties from the escaped prisoners as it did the actions of the army. There were stories of householders standing off looters with razors and broken bottles.

Now thousands have returned to central Cairo, with more soldiers and tanks being brought in, and reports of helicopters overhead. Jets have been heard overhead as well.

Egyptian Internet was shut down the other day, and apparently Al-Jazeera has now been cut off as well.

~~~~~~~~~~

Mubarak, who earlier was reportedly in hiding in Sharm El-Sheikh, has since visited military headquarters. He has fired his government, promised real reforms, and perhaps most significantly, appointed intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to fill the post of vice president -- a post that had been empty.

Suleiman, 74, has been serving since 1993 as the head of the General Intelligence Directorate. Egyptian journalist Issandr Amrani, cited in today's JPost, describes the Directorate as an organization that "combines the intelligence-gathering elements of the CIA, the counterterrorism role of the FBI, the protections duties of the Secret Service, and the high-level diplomacy of the State Department."

In other words, Suleiman is one very powerful man, and has proved himself adept at handling terrorists and controlling Islamist elements in Egypt. Additionally he has frequently served as a diplomatic envoy and is savvy with regard to Israeli issues. He is considered corruption-free. While he is said to be considerably more popular than Mubarak, there are elements among the protesters who reject him because of his association with the old regime.

The pragmatic fantasy

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
28 January '11

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/01/the-pragmatic-fantasy.php

Today the Egyptian regime faces its gravest threat since Anwar Sadat's assassination 30 years ago. As protesters take to the street for the third day in a row demanding the overthrow of 82-year old President Hosni Mubarak, it is worth considering the possible alternatives to his regime.

On Thursday afternoon, Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohammed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency returned to Egypt from Vienna to participate in anti-regime demonstrations.

As IAEA head, Elbaradei shielded Iran's nuclear weapons program from the Security Council. He repeatedly ignored evidence indicating that Iran's nuclear program was a military program rather than a civilian energy program. When the evidence became too glaring to ignore, Elbaradei continued to lobby against significant UN Security Council sanctions or other actions against Iran and obscenely equated Israel's purported nuclear program to Iran's.

His actions won him the support of the Iranian regime which he continues to defend. Just last week he dismissed the threat of a nuclear armed Iran telling the Austrian News Agency, "There's a lot of hype in this debate," and asserting that the discredited 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate that claimed Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 remains accurate.

Elbaradei's support for the Iranian ayatollahs is matched by his support for the Muslim Brotherhood. This group, which forms the largest and best organized opposition movement to the Mubarak regime is the progenitor of Hamas and al Qaida. It seeks Egypt's transformation into an Islamic regime that will stand at the forefront of the global jihad. In recent years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been increasingly drawn into the Iranian nexus along with Hamas. Muslim Brotherhood attorneys represented Hizbullah terrorists arrested in Egypt in 2009 for plotting to conduct spectacular attacks aimed at destroying the regime.

Elbaradei has been a strong champion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Just this week he gave an interview to Der Spiegel defending the jihadist movement. As he put it, "We should stop demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. ...[T]hey have not committed any acts of violence in five decades. They too want change. If we want democracy and freedom, we have to include them instead of marginalizing them."

The Muslim Brotherhood for its part has backed Elbaradei's political aspirations. On Thursday it announced it would demonstrate at ElBaradei's side the next day.

Hypocrites in Washington: What Egypt's Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah Really Want

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
03 September '10
Posted before Shabbat

Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, who were invited to Washington attend the launching of direct negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, went there out of concern for their regimes, and not because they cared so much about the Palestinians or the Middle East peace process. The two Arab leaders accepted the invitation mainly due to the growing problems each one is facing at home.

Mubarak's trip to Washington comes amid growing opposition in Egypt to the idea of his son, Gamal, succeed him as president. Posters carrying the pictures of Gamal and seeking support for his candidacy have appeared in many places in the country, drawing sharp protests from many Egyptians.

The 82-year-old Mubarak is understandably desperate to have his son succeed him, but knows that without the backing of the US and the approval of the mainstream media in the West, Gamal will never be permitted to step into his father's shoes.

Such backing from the US and other Western countries is even more important than winning the support of the Egyptians, whose opinion doesn't matter anyway.

After all, these are the same Egyptians who, over the past three decades, have been giving their beloved dictator more than 95% support in government-sponsored referendums where the president's only rival is the president himself.

(Read full post)

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The myth of the Arab triangle

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
04 May '10

The last couple of weeks have shed the spotlight again on the tensions between Egypt and the regional Iranian axis, which includes Syria. The tensions surged with the conviction of Hezbollah cell members by the Egyptian judiciary, as well as with Cairo’s friction with Hamas and the persistence of its strained relations with Syria. Despite talk of reconciliation between Cairo and Damascus, the gap dividing the two states remains wide, as they have conflicting objectives and opposing strategic alignments.

The possibility of Egyptian-Syrian reconciliation had received ample airtime ahead of the Arab Summit in late March, but it amounted to very little. During the summit, the political differences dividing the two states were on display, pitting Egypt and Syria in opposing camps on key issues such as Palestinian politics, the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, their respective positions on “resistance,” and, in general, Syria’s strategic position within the Iranian camp.

In the end, the Egyptians and Syrians only agreed to stop media campaigns against each other, which had reached a fevered pitch. It was speculated that the freeze in media wars was to pave the way for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to visit his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, who had undergone surgery.

(Read full article)

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Redeeming the Jewish Wimp

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
16 April '10

In his press conference last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu lamented that his Turkish counterpart has been attacking Israel since Operation Cast Lead. Actually, Erdogan’s anti-Israel salvos have a longer history.

In 2004, Erdogan called Israel a “terrorist state” after we eliminated Sheikh Yassin. In February 2006, he hosted Hamas leader Haled Mashal in Ankara. In January 2009 he staged a temper tantrum at the Davos Conference calling Shimon Peres an expert killer. In October 2009, the Turkish state television started airing fiction series showing Israeli soldiers intentionally murdering Palestinian children. In November 2009, Erdogan declared that he’d rather meet with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (accused of war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court) than with Benjamin Netanyahu. In March 2010, Erdogan claimed that the Temple Mount, Hebron and Rachel’s tomb were never Jewish sites. Last week, Erdogan used his official visit to Paris to call Israel the greatest danger to the world and to peace.

Israel has been quietly putting up with Erdogan’s antics for no justifiable reason. True, Avigdor Lieberman decided to finally say something by comparing Erdogan to Chavez and Gaddafi. That was ineffective and silly: nothing could make Erdogan happier than being categorized as anti-American Don Quixote. All Lieberman had to do to embarrass Erdogan and expose his hypocrisy was to mention the Armenian genocide, Turkey’s refusal to grant a “right of return” to the post WWI Greek refugees, Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus, Turkey’s “apartheid wall” and “settlers” in Cyprus, Turkey’s adamant refusal to accept the establishment of a Kurdish state, and Turkey’s stubborn insistence on holding to a territory it grabbed from Syria (the Alexandretta Province).

Alas, Israel is a wimp –and not only with Turkey. Israel would never dare to “upset” Egypt by complaining about the fact that Mubarak’s state-controlled media are full of anti-Semitism, blood libels and Holocaust denial. When Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said he would burn any Israeli book he found in his country, Israel didn’t have anything to say.

(Read full post)

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The son also rises, for Arab misfortune

Michael Young
Daily Star (Beirut)
08 April '10

Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star. Another excellent piece on who are the people in your neighborhood.

In his book “What’s Left,” the British author Nick Cohen quotes a onetime Foreign Office official as saying, “All isms are wasms.” That amusing phrase is an apt summation of Arab nationalism, as regimes throughout the Middle East claiming some sort of fealty to nationalist ideology find themselves at different levels of political breakdown.

The most flagrant sign of the decline of Arab nationalist regimes is their transformation into hereditary republics. Recently, Hosni Mubarak returned from an operation in Germany to face questions about his future. What ailed him remains unknown, but it is no secret that the 81-year-old Egyptian president has long sought to prepare the way for his son, Gamal, to succeed him.

In this, Mubarak is little different than the late Hafez Assad, whose son Bashar followed him as president of Syria. Had Saddam Hussein remained in power in Iraq, he would almost certainly have handed over to one of his psychopathic sons. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, hopes one day to see his son Ahmad in office. In Libya, Moammar Gadhafi appears to have similar aspirations for one of his boys, perhaps Seif al-Islam or the younger Moatassem. And in Tunisia, President Zein al-Abedin bin Ali is rumored to want his son in law, Sakher al-Materi, to one day lead the country.

Forgotten in these family plots is that, in several countries, nationalist regimes once drew their legitimacy from overthrowing monarchical orders perceived as corrupt or in the pocket of foreign powers. Inherent in the Arab nationalism of the latter years of colonial rule and the first decades of independence was a conviction that the ideology was a byword for reform. Baathism in Syria and Iraq introduced purportedly egalitarian socialist principles, as did Nasserism in Egypt. Habib Bourghuiba gave Tunisian women rights while also introducing improvements in education and more.

Yet that did not prevent all Arab regimes from consolidating autocratic rule, usually in the guise of family-led kleptocracies. Whereas specific nationalist leaders may have enjoyed legitimacy upon taking office, all came later on to rely substantially on violence to maintain order. This was the case in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia after Bin Ali, and the list goes on. Arab nationalists, previously thought of as representing the vanguard of a new Middle East, instead merely reproduced the methods of pre-Independence regimes, usually in far more brutal ways.

(Read full article)
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Another Tack: In awe and esteem

Sarah Honig
JPost
05 November 09

Extreme acts are sometimes exonerated by history. When we view the world through our insular prism, we can easily lose perspective. Things may be swiftly magnified to grotesque proportions, like our trepidation of world censure, for instance. Frantically exaggerated anxieties then send us into a panic of self-reproach. Most often our self-inflicted alarm is unwarranted. Occasionally exploits sure to get Israel into hot water internationally may be the right thing to do. Losing our collective head isn't only unnecessary, it's downright harmful.

This was true even before our state was born, before we could be painted as an ogre imperialist Goliath, when we were history's most helpless underdogs. The world hardly empathized with us then either.

Exactly on this date 65 years ago - November 6, 1944 - two young Lehi fighters, 19-year-old Eliahu Hakim of Haifa and 22-year-old Tel Avivian Eliahu Beit-Zuri, assassinated Walter Edward Guinness, first Baron Moyne, in Cairo. He was the British minister resident in the Middle East. While the Holocaust was still ongoing, world opinion managed to expend more outrage on the two Eliahus, as they came to be known, than it did on their victim's appalling record.

The Labor-led Zionist establishment in pre-state Israel lost no time or vehemence in denouncing the assassination and launching what came to be dubbed the saison (the "hunting season" in which Lehi and Irgun members were pursued and turned over to the British). On November 20, 1944 David Ben-Gurion addressed the Histadrut convention and ordered the expulsion of "all Revisionists from all workplaces - be they in an office, factory or grove... the same goes for students in higher or secondary education, or any other school."

YET, INCREDIBLE as it sounds - given the strident anti-Israel incitement of Cairo's current state-run media under Hosni Mubarak's aegis - the Eliahus evoked widespread sympathy among Egyptians. Students demonstrated for them in the streets and rallied against sentencing them to death. Prominent Egyptian lawyers volunteered to represent them, adhered to the political defense decreed by the Eliahus and avidly espoused their nationalist Jewish sentiments.

Hakim set the tone: "We are the accusers at this trial. We accuse Lord Moyne and the government he represented of murdering hundreds of thousands of our brethren and usurping our homeland... Where is the law that would hold them answerable for their crimes? Though absent from the books, it is engraved in our hearts. Hence we had no alternative but to take justice into our own hands."
(Continue to full article)
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Egypt’s Moments of Decision?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
01 November 09

The two main and contending political forces in Egypt—the government and the Muslim Brotherhood—are both facing the choice of a new leader. Will they make a clear decision or postpone their decisions?

Regarding the government, the ruling National Democratic Party is holding its annual meeting. Everyone is asking: will it endorse Gamal Mubarak, 46, son of the current 81-year-old president, as the country’s next leader? While President Husni Mubarak has been building up his son, the incumbent has not crossed over into definitely indicating that this is his choice of successor.

Gamal has his supporters but he could be a disastrous choice. On the positive side, he is friendly to the West, a technocrat who might handle the economy well, and a man oriented toward internal affairs who would be unlikely to cause much international trouble or seek regional leadership.

On the negative side, he might be too Westernized and not a good enough politician to rule, nor would he probably be a strong leader in opposing Iran and the Islamist forces.
(Read more...)
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