After for several years being convinced that it was 1938, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who appears to live in a time warp, has now decided that it’s 1979. Iran was Germany and now Egypt is Iran.
From Jerusalem, the prospect of Egyptians fully-armed with votes looks more dangerous than Iranians stockpiling enriched uranium.
Further evidence of Israel’s concerns in response to the dangerous proliferation of freedom in Egypt is that hundreds of Egyptian troops are now being rushed into Sinai, heading towards Sharm el-Sheikh — the location where Hosni Mubarak is rumored to be mounting his last stand. Under the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, Sinai is a demilitarized zone and thus the troop movement required and received Israel’s consent.
Mubarak has ordered his new prime minister to begin talks with the opposition to find out their specific demands and protesters, recognizing that “Down With Mubarak!” might not be specific enough are now adding that he needs to be out by Friday.
Protesters gathering at Tahrir Square are now having their IDs check by the army. Heba Fatma Morayef, a Human Rights Watch Egypt researcher, said: “When I asked why a soldier replied: ‘it’s to keep the police out and make sure none of the escaped criminals get in.'”
Fear of public expressions of solidarity with Egyptians, now extends from Gaza, to the West Bank, and to China.
Israeli officials are appealing to Egypt’s newly-appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman to maintain the siege on Gaza.
Meanwhile, Washington dithers — I mean, continues to monitor the situation.
After emerging from a White House meeting on Egypt on Monday, Marc Lynch, a foreign policy expert who blogs on the Middle East as Abu Aardvark, wrote on his Twitter feed: “as usual a lot of what you’re hearing about the administration’s policy is wrong.”
He then responded on the social network to a plea from the Cairo-based blogger and journalist Issandr El Amrani – who wrote: “@abuaardvark Since they can’t explain themselves clearly, perhaps you can translate for us!” – by summing up the Obama administration’s current stance in this simple Twitbite:
@arabist U.S. Egypt policy translated: keep army from using violence + get transition to a post-Mubarak real democracy, but not sure how.
One of the experts at the meeting told Politico:
While the administration is considering various options — including the possibility of at some point telling Mubarak privately it’s time to leave — “I don’t think they are there yet.”
How come those so called experts missed it? Is this country that screwed up that there are no people who know anything except what the sycophants tripe of the day is? This is showing that the U.S.A. is run by a bunch of incompetent fools that drink the poisoned koolaid served up by the equally incompetent ivory tower think tanks. Perhaps it should be a prerequisite that those so called experts spend at least 2 years service in the peace corps in the country they are supposedly expert on, then maybe, just maybe, there would be some semblance of reality to what comes out of their mouths. This Government needs an overhaul from the top down. Perhaps that’s why Wikileaks received the trove of dispatches that it has! Time to stop this B.S. & clean house.
Out by Friday? I guess they’re estimating how much longer they need to finish shredding incriminating documents. As for Washington’s “dithering,” I hope it’s more like sweating, because its pax Americana chickens are now coming home to roost.
How delicious that the pundits are so hard pressed. Just yesterday, I observed Tom Friedman perspiring like a schoolboy who has failed to swot for his test properly as he tried to maintain his normal pompous coherence. Also beautifully silent were those veteran propagandists, Fouad Ajami and his now probably senile friend, Bernard Lewis.
The honesty of the male AND female youths who started this revolution in Tunisia and Egypt moves me to tears. How brave. And what a slap in the face to those pundits and government advisors whose thinking is so corrupted by hypocrisy. Naivety? Maybe, but consider the recent Wikileaks revelations on Palestine and Israel. It seems Hamas owns the future for the Palestinians and the Israelis may be forced to wheel out Marwan Barghouti as an alternative…LOL…
In any event, the Israelis are now being coerced to behave with integrity. something they have been able to avoid for far too long. Call me an anti-Semite if you must, I am just so tired of seeing the Palestinians continually cheated, vilified, and bullied by Israel’s supporters as a matter of course. Maybe these sea changes in the Middle East will create a niche of reality not seen since T.E. Lawrence.
I am really hopeful for the region’s future for the first time since 1948.
RE: “In Bibiland Iran was Germany but now Egypt is Iran” – Woodward
WELCOME TO ISRAEL ~ “The Land of Delusions”
How deeply will Netanyahu bend over in order to fit in with the cabinet he supposedly leads?
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/israel-urges-world-to-curb-criticism-of-egypt-s-mubarak-1.340238?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.225%2C2.226%2C
Bibbi was Israel’s first leader to realize that Israel cannot exist so long as it is a coward, expressing its fear through vicious, violent bullying. He alone realized that, in dealing with Arabs, Israel has only two options: (1) to lead them from their darkness as “a light onto the [Arab] nations, to modernity or (2) to exterminate them all—now even adding to the list even the Persians and Turks– so that Israel may feel safe. We now learn that what the “Unabomber” did in America– sending corporate execs letter bombs– Israel has been doing to European execs for decades in order to prevent Arab modernization. All the time Euros were wondering: is Israel insane? The answer is YES, insane from fear. All their nukes, all their allies, all their superior forces and still they realized that there was one difference between them and the Nazis whose violent methods they ape: the Nazis were not afraid of anyone, right or wrong. Thus, the Israelis can’t really copy the Nazis to attain dominance in the Middle East because they are afraid of every little thing, especially the demise of their importance in the minds of Diaspora Jews.
Mubarak made Israelis feel safe because he was an incompetent leader of Egypt that resorted to torture and murder of Egyptians. So long as someone else is doing that, instead of them having to do it, Israelis feel safe. That’s also why they loved the Shah of Iran and Jordan’s King Hussein.
Pan-Arabism made Israelis giggle, for as soon as PanArabists united a few nations, the unity degenerated into squabbles. The failure of PanArabism was followed by the attraction of the Jihadis. But they only made Israelis giggle because the Jihadis killed Muslims to Infidels in a ratio of 10:1. And Israelis loved to see Bush-it at work because it killed 10x as many Arabs as Israel could in its extermination campaigns, as recently in its Lebanon and Gaza campaigns.
But now the Arab World clearly is in a THIRD WAVE: Arab Modernism. Invariably, the hunger of the Arab World’s majoritarian youth for modernization and sci/tech evolution rose up with such energy (as opposed to the hysterical rage exhibited in the previous two waves) that corrupt Arab leaders ran off to a Saudi Arabian refuge for crooks. Suddenly, in the midst of the Jihadi demonstration of their ability to only kill the very Muslims they are trying to “save” from “takfir” regimes and the “far enemy,” America, Arab youth– irreverently and impertinently—rose up en masse to demand MODERNIZATION, thus leaving both their secular and religious “tafir” shyster masters dumbfounded. From Tunisia to Saudi Arabia and extending to Iran, this 9.0 earthquake shook the Muslim World. The Zionist controlling American media tried to portray this modernists uprising as “total chaos.” But al-Jazzira showed it for what it is: constructive determination, insisting, “NO MORE!….It’s time for change….YES WE CAN!” So, once again, al-Jazzira, once again, discredited the Zio-hasbara world press.
And how did Netanyahu react? Did he exhibit the chutzpah with which he took office not long ago? Well, no, eaten and digested by the cannibals in his cabinet, he adopted their psychotic panic; seeing that Arab youth wanted to CONSTRUCTIVELY become everything Israel had become with $billions from the West he panicked like them and called for support of Mubarak.
Having proven themselves as good in battle as the Israelis, young Arabs no longer feel that they have something to prove and so they risk the vulnerability of an uprising, insisting on a new order that will catch the Arabs up to the very West that oppressed them by funding their oppressive corrupt leaders. Bibbi’s frightened cabinet asked “Can they achieve that?” Then, someone asked, in typical Jewish answer to a question with a question: “why not?” That’s when the panic started I Israel. How else can you explain Netanyahu’s equivalent of pissing in his pants in fear, then exposing himself by demanding that the US stand by Mubarak?
The same Israelis who demanded that we overthrow the “dictatorial” Ahmadinejad Regime in Iran are now demanding that we support the “dictatorial” Mubarak Regime in Egypt! Why?
Because the Israeli leaders are all cowards and cowardice is contagious. Alas, Bibbi was never immunized, despite his bad past experiences as a shyster and his newfound mensch-hood. So he’s afraid to reach out to the Tunisians and Egyptians, Jordanians……and say: “YOU FREE YOURSELVES AND WE’LL GUIDE YOU INTO MODERNIZING JUST AS WE’RE GOING TO *CONCURRENTLY* HELP THE PALESTINIANS DO!
No, these cowards are screaming like little girls about their security. This would only leads to one conclusion: ISRAEL MUST BE STRIPPED OF ITS NUCLEAR WEAPONS because, sooner or later, fear will drive it to use them as it TWICE almost did. On the other hand, if Israel seizes the moment and declares:
“Bravo to you, our young Arab cousins! You are finally liberating yourselves from
your violent past and ready to modernize, just as we Zionists liberated ourselves
of our Haredi past and created a modern state. We will not leave you to flounder
because we are all one regional Semitic family so if one of us falls, we all fall. So
bring stability, democracy and openness to your governments and we will send you
teachers and sci/tech experts to help modernize as quickly as we did. We’ll also take a
lot of your kids into our schools so that there can be no blinding glare of ignorance
between our two cultures of one family. In the meantime, watch what we do with the
Palestinians helping them acquire a democratic modern state identical to ours despite
our fear of HAMAS.”
I beg Netanyahu to show mensch-hood and do just that– in the name of my Jewish mentors– survivors of a DOUBLE HOLOCAUST, Hitler’s and Stalin’s– all. Of these, those that settled in Israel as of the 1950s did just that with Palestinians….so there’s your proof, Bibbi, that Jews are NOT cowards. Now get to work, Bibbi, and prove once again that you’re not a coward, by welcoming the youthful charge of your Arab cousins towards modernity. Help them and they’ll help you so together, neither of you will ever have to come, cup in hand to America, invoking the Holocaust and begging for $$$ from the West.
I’ve got Al Jazeera going online and CNN going on the tv. CNN (Anderson Cooper) is all about violence and guns, Al Jazeera is all about energy and excitement–and a lot of intelligent interviews with Egyptian experts, not hysterical no-nothing pundits.