William J. Dobson writes: Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi certainly knows how to dress the part. On Wednesday, wearing dark sunglasses, full military dress, and a chest full of medals—despite never having seen combat—Egypt’s defense minister looked every bit the junta leader that his critics say he is. “Come out to give me the mandate and order that I confront violence and potential terrorism,” he declared in a nationally broadcast speech, as he called for Egyptians to take to the streets in a show of support for him and the rump government the country’s generals have propped up. “I’ve never asked you for anything. I’m asking you to show the world. If violence is sought, or terrorism is sought, the military and the police are authorized to confront this.” After weeks of violent clashes, Gen. el-Sissi wasn’t interested in tamping down the unrest or demanding a return to calm; he was stirring Tahrir for his own ends.

He sounds like a man looking to start a fight — or at least for the political cover to begin a crackdown on his opponents in the Muslim Brotherhood. Ever since el-Sissi ousted Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, on July 3, the government has increasingly used the “terrorist” label in association with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military may desperately need that label to stick—because a threat like terrorism is the perfect legitimizing tool for a government that is being ruled by a military cabal. Having come to power through undemocratic means, the generals know that Egypt’s chaos can make their rule more necessary than ever. [Continue reading…]

Sarah Carr writes: Former President Mohamed Morsi was stripped of power illegally in a military coup, even if this decision was backed by a large majority of the general public.

It was mostly the privately owned satellite media and newspapers that became the army’s court jester, or at least did so with the most gusto. Logos appeared on screens insistently informing viewers that 30 June was a popular revolution, not a coup. Then the terrorism rhetoric began, and the pro-Morsi protesters were no longer just a bunch of skin-disease ridden, cult supporting lunatics, but also terrorists. Again, this happened almost seamlessly. Television presenters indulged themselves in the vilest xenophobia against Palestinians and Syrians, who they claimed were camped out in pro-Morsi sit-ins and meddling in Egyptian affairs.

Only the weakest of evidence was produced to support these claims, including a video of some men dancing dabke to this Palestinian pro-Morsi song. The aim, of course, was twofold: Firstly, to support the claim that the Brotherhood has links with Hamas and other foreign groups involved in acts of insurgency in Sinai, and secondly, to isolate the Brotherhood even further, turn it into a “them” separate from the rest of the population. The fastest and most foolproof way to do this in Egypt is to establish that a group has links with foreign powers. It works every time.

The media campaign has been disastrous for Syrian refugees, whether already in Egypt or seeking to cross its borders. Syrians who want to come to Egypt to flee the devastation in their country must now gain security authorization before doing so. Syrians already in Egypt are quietly being rounded up at army checkpoints and detained—even individuals registered with the United Nations.

The general public was sold. It ran stumbling and screaming into Sisi’s protective arms and nestled in his bosom. Almost overnight, people mutated into barrel-thumping nationalists celebrating a victory against a foreign enemy, when no battle has yet been won and their enemy is one of them. Hot air—lots of hot air — has been blown into former President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s corpse. Perhaps they are trying to blow his spirit into Sisi. Three years after the heady independent days of 25 January, and Egyptians are once again seeking out the army strongman to hold their hand, and an enemy—invented or real, it does not matter—to define and shape their cause. Like all nationalist movements, this is sentiment partly informed by fear and hate. There is nothing of real ideological substance here, no long-term goal other than either containing the Brotherhood or crushing the Islamist movement. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Egypt’s army gave the Muslim Brotherhood until Saturday afternoon to sign up to political reconciliation, a military official said on Thursday, after the army issued a veiled threat to use tougher tactics against the group.

“We will not initiate any move, but will definitely react harshly against any calls for violence or black terrorism from Brotherhood leaders or their supporters. We pledge to protect peaceful protesters regardless of their affiliation,” the official said, saying they had 48-hours to comply.

The New York Times reports: The commander of the armed forces asked Egyptians on Wednesday to hold mass demonstrations that would give him a “mandate” to confront violence and terrorism, appealing to one side of Egypt’s sharply divided populace and raising the specter of broader unrest.

During a speech to recent military graduates, the commander, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, warned of forces taking the country into a “dark tunnel,” a clear reference to Islamist supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, and he asked Egyptians to protest on Friday.

“I’m asking you to show the world,” he said. “If violence is sought, or terrorism is sought, the military and the police are authorized to confront this.”

The call for mass mobilization thrust the general into the center of Egypt’s contentious politics, raising questions about his ambitions while contradicting the military’s pledges to defer to civilian leaders after removing Mr. Morsi. His appeal also hinted at a broader crackdown against Islamists, whose leaders have already been detained.

As the Muslim Brotherhood planned competing protests on Friday, Egyptians faced another threat of bloody street clashes in what has become a long and wearying cycle.

In a statement, the Brotherhood said the general’s speech amounted to a call for “civil war.” [Continue reading…]

Al-Monitor reports: The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor at his Capitol Hill office, said that he opposes cutting off US military assistance to Egypt and that Egypt’s armed forces are “doing the right thing” to support democracy in Egypt.

In contrast to Sen. John McCain and others who have called for stopping military aid to Egypt because of its armed forces’ role in deposing former President Mohammed Morsi, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, who has been chairman of the committee since January 2011, said that Egypt’s military has been a “stabilizing influence” and its actions were necessary to put Egypt’s democratic transition back on track.

Those who support cutting off military aid to Egypt argue that US foreign assistance provisions require ending assistance in the event of a military coup. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Egypt’s new government has imposed the toughest border restrictions on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in years, sealing smuggling tunnels, blocking most passenger traffic and causing millions of dollars in economic losses.

Some in Hamas fear the movement is being swept up in the same Egyptian military campaign that earlier this month toppled the country’s democratically elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi — like the Gaza rulers part of the region’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt’s military has said the Gaza restrictions are part of its security crackdown in the Sinai and has not suggested it is trying to weaken the Hamas government or bring it down in the process.

Past predications that Gazans fed up with the daily hardships of life under blockade will rise up against Hamas have not materialized.

However, the new Gaza border restrictions are tougher than any enforced by Morsi’s pro-Western predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, a foe of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, according to Gaza residents and Hamas officials. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: President Obama, in his first punitive response to the ouster of Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt, has halted the delivery of four F-16 fighter planes to the Egyptian Air Force.

Mr. Obama, administration officials said, wanted to send Egypt’s military-led government a signal of American displeasure with the chaotic situation there, which has been marked by continued violence, the detention of Mr. Morsi and other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a transition that has not included the Brotherhood.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel relayed the decision to Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the head of Egypt’s military, a senior official said, and did not say when the Pentagon might reschedule the delivery.

“Given the current situation in Egypt, we do not believe it is appropriate to move forward at this time with the delivery of F-16s,” the Pentagon press secretary, George Little, said Wednesday. He did not cite any specific actions by the Egyptian military. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy reports: Overlooking the scene where 55 supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi died during a standoff with the Egyptian military two weeks ago are two 16-story apartment buildings whose residents are perhaps the only unbiased witnesses to what happened.

With no videos or photos having surfaced of the initial violence, Morsi supporters and the military have offered two very different versions of what set off the confrontation, the deadliest incident since the military toppled Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, early this month. At least 100 people have since died in clashes between the military and Morsi partisans, most recently Tuesday, when nine people were killed.

But the July 8 incident outside the Republican Guard headquarters in eastern Cairo remains a touchstone for those who say Morsi was toppled in a military coup and that the military has since taken an approach to Islamists that guarantees years of low-level warfare. Many here fear that Morsi’s incompetent Islamist government has been replaced by an excessively brutal security force reminiscent of the three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Indeed, it was a call against police brutality that launched the January 2011 uprising that led to Mubarak’s fall.

The military’s version of events says pro-Morsi protesters tried to storm the Republican Guard headquarters, where Morsi partisans think the deposed president is being held, and that security forces turned to live bullets only after they’d fired warning shots, blank rounds and tear gas to no effect.

Protesters say they were simply praying when an unwarranted attack began.

The stories of nine occupants of the apartment buildings whom McClatchy interviewed seem to back the protesters’ version of events, even though many of those residents said they had little sympathy for Morsi and had grown frustrated with the protesters’ constant chants, which had gone on for days. [Continue reading…]

Adam Shatz writes: On 4 July, the day after the army overthrew Mohamed Morsi and suspended the constitution, I got an email from a friend in Cairo. A photograph of the 30 June demonstrations in Tahrir Square was emblazoned with the words: ‘This is not a coup’. He didn’t say what else it might be, but soon enough others did. A second revolution, a ‘people’s coup’, a ‘re-colution’: terms coined to describe how the events felt to them, or perhaps to bridge the discomfiting gap between experience and reality. It’s not the first time a coup in Egypt has been called something else: Nasser and the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in 1952 also called their coup a revolution. What’s different today is that the most ferocious critics of coup-talk are people like my friend, veterans of the 2011 uprising against Mubarak.

Their insistence is understandable: having brought down another hated president, they’re proud of what they’ve achieved and resent the suggestion that they’ve been manipulated – especially when it comes from Westerners. The youth movement Tamarrod collected 22 million signatures for a petition urging Morsi to resign, and organised the biggest demonstrations in Egypt’s history. You can argue that Morsi’s removal set an alarming precedent, but not that it was unpopular. You can’t even cast it as an elite secular conspiracy against the pious Islamic masses: General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, commander of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, is a devout Muslim (his wife wears a niqab) and has the support of the Salafi al-Nour party. The Salafis are to the right of the Muslim Brotherhood, but they didn’t appreciate the Brothers’ authoritarian style, and they knew an opportunity when they saw one. Within days of Morsi’s removal they flexed their muscles by blocking Mohamed ElBaradei’s appointment as interim prime minister; ElBaradei, who used to say he would never collaborate with the Scaf, accepted the vice presidency as a consolation prize. For now, an obscure jurist called Adli Mansour is acting president, and the economist Hazem el-Beblawi is prime minister. But why bother to remember the names? The ‘re-colution’ will eat its children, just as the revolution did. [Continue reading…]

Max Blumenthal writes: The debate over the legitimacy of Egypt’s new, military-installed government has become a popularity battle, with some of the most vocal supporters of the coup claiming that the June 30 protests against President Mohammed Morsi represented the largest demonstrations in human history, a real-life Cecil B. DeMille production, with crowd sizes ranging anywhere between 14 to 33 million people – over one-third of the entire population of Egypt.

Substituting subjective head counts for vote totals, Morsi’s opponents have also pointed to the 22 million signatures supposedly gathered by the newfangled Tamarod youth movement. To them, the tens of millions in the streets were a clear sign that “the people” had sided unequivocally with the army and its political allies.

The importance of head counts to the military-installed government’s international legitimacy was on display at a July 11 press conference at the US State Department. Pressed by Matt Lee of the Associated Press on whether the Obama administration considered Morsi’s ouster a coup, and if it would respond by canceling aid including a planned shipment of four F-16’s to Egypt, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki countered by citing Tamarod’s figures, declaring that the US could not reverse the will of the “22 million people who spoke out and had their voices heard.”

Days later, the Pentagon announced that the F-16 sale would proceed as planned. As far as the US was concerned, Egypt had not just witnessed a military coup. Instead, “the people” – or at least 22 million of them – had spoken.

With Egypt’s new army-backed regime relying on jaw dropping, record-shattering crowd estimates and petition drive figures to assert its democratic legitimacy, it is worth investigating the source of the numbers, and asking whether they add up at all. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: When the military ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Zeinhom Hassan Ibrahim slaughtered a sheep, hired a DJ and threw a block party for his neighbors.

Ibrahim, a former parliamentarian from longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak’s now-defunct National Democratic Party, had lived through the year of Mohamed Morsi’s rule in blinking disbelief, as if the whole world had turned upside down.

But now, things are finally getting back to normal.

Egypt’s new power dynamic, following the July 3 coup that ousted Morsi, is eerily familiar. Gone are the Islamist rulers from the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood. Back are the faces of the old guard, many closely linked to Mubarak’s reign or to the all-
powerful generals. And for a seemingly broad array of Egyptians, that’s exactly the way they want it.

The overthrow of Morsi has yielded a new appreciation for military rule in a country that so recently shunned it, and a striking return to the way things were before the 2011 revolution against a Mubarak regime that was widely considered irredeemably corrupt and exploitative.

Telltale signs of the old guard are cropping up in Egypt’s new cabinet, where Mubarak-era figures abound and Islamists are absent; in the halls of the nation’s justice system, where prosecutors are investigating the nation’s pre-coup leaders on charges of incitement; and in darkened jail cells, where prisoners are blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated about their adherence to the Brotherhood.

Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the man who delivered news of Morsi’s dismissal on national television, has now assumed the role of deputy prime minister in addition to his earlier titles of defense minister and commander of Egypt’s armed forces. Few observers doubt that he pulls the levers behind a facade of civilian rule. [Continue reading…]

Tahrir Square banners, Cairo.

Marc Lynch writes: This week, Hosni Mubarak’s old media boss, Abdel Latif el-Menawy, published an astonishing essay on the website of the Saudi-funded, Emirati-based satellite television station Al Arabiya. Menawy described a wild conspiracy in which the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, directed Muslim Brotherhood snipers to murder Egyptian soldiers.

It would be easy to dismiss the ravings of an old Mubarak hand if they were not almost tame compared with the wild rumors and allegations across much of the Egyptian media and public. Even longtime observers of Egyptian rhetoric have been taken aback by the vitriol and sheer lunacy of the current wave of anti-American rhetoric. The streets have been filled with fliers, banners, posters, and graffiti denouncing President Barack Obama for supporting terrorism and featuring Photoshopped images of Obama with a Muslim-y beard or bearing Muslim Brotherhood colors.

A big Tahrir Square banner declaring love for the American people alongside hatred for Obama rings somewhat false given the fierce, simultaneous campaign against CNN and American journalists. The rhetoric spans the political spectrum: veteran leftist George Ishaq (Patterson “is an evil lady”), the Salafi Front (calling for demonstrations at the U.S. Embassy against foreign interference), the reckless secularist TV host Tawfik Okasha (whipping up xenophobic hatred), leaders of the Tamarod campaign (refusing to meet with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns because the United States “supports terrorism”), and Brotherhood leaders (blaming the United States for the military coup).

Would it be strange for Egyptians not to make a sharp distinction between the American press and the U.S. government? All too often CNN, the New York Times and other pillars of the media establishment display such a cozy relationship with government that even if they are not technically arms of state media, they very often act like that.

To treat what are explicitly attacks on the U.S. government as though they represent attacks on the American people seems just as irresponsible as some of the conspiracy theories themselves. Maybe this difficulty in discriminating between the government and the people isn’t so much a problem for the Egyptians as it is for someone who is both trapped inside the Washington bubble and has been an occasional adviser to the White House.

The Washington Post reports: The men and women who have taken up residence at the Muslim Brotherhood protest camp on the outskirts of Cairo emerged from their tents into the scorching July sunshine on Tuesday with new determination, their defiance reinforced by a night of demonstrations that culminated in deadly clashes with police in the center of the Egyptian capital.

Seven people were reported killed in the encounter, during which police personnel fired tear gas, bird shot and, the Brotherhood says, live ammunition at several thousand supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi who had marched into Cairo’s Ramses Square to call for his reinstatement.

Far from deterring the protesters, “this only makes us stronger,” said Marwan Ghanem, an accountant who was among those who fanned out from the camp to join in the Brotherhood’s boldest push yet into the heart of the city. “We have to rely on the streets to send our message.”

The message that the Brotherhood is seeking to send, two weeks after Egypt’s first democratically elected president was overthrown by the country’s powerful military, is that Egypt will become ungovernable unless Morsi gets his job back. The impromptu encampment outside a mosque in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City where the Brotherhood’s supporters and its fugitive leaders have gathered stands at the center of their escalating campaign of civil disobedience. [Continue reading…]

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: Ousted President Mohamed Morsy is not being detained by the army and is being well looked after, according to Colonel Ahmed Mohamed Ali, the official spokesperson for the Armed Forces.

The army has prioritized protecting the ex-president due to the instability witnessed on the Egyptian street, Ali said.

The military spokesperson denied that Morsy was in detention because he was not facing any judicial order to that end.

In an interview with Al Arabiya satellite channel, published on its website on Wednesday, the army spokesperson said that nobody will be excluded from Egypt’s politics in the future. No one would be hunted down for their political opinions, he added.

Ali claimed that the army has no presence in politics because Egypt already has a president and a Cabinet. The army would concentrate on security Egypt and its borders, he said.

Ursula Lindsey writes: I have been out of Egypt since late May, and my reaction to all that’s happened there is shaped by that distance, by not having had the contact high of millions on the street, the ambient euphoria of collective will flexed and fulfilled. But in this case perhaps it was a good thing.

When I left the Tamarrod campaign seemed significant but unrealistic, part of the politics of regret and indignation that was all the powerless non-Islamist groups had left. Now lo an behold their improbable demands have all been granted, the compass of power has flipped, and we have Islamist leaders facing prison and men like Mohamed El Baradei in government.

But who had the power to make these dreams come true, to so drastically alter Egypt’s political reality? Who were the millions of protesters calling on to act? The deus ex machina, once again, is the military. For the second time in three years the Egyptian army, acting in response to enormous protests, has deposed a president. The first was a dictator of 30 years. The second had been elected, by a slim majority, a year ago, and had gone on to alienate, infuriate and terrify a good number of his countrymen.

I’ve spent the last year railing against the Brotherhood’s increasing bigotry, bullying, incompetence. They failed, on strategy and substance. They don’t have the vision or the guts or the skills or the decency to govern Egypt and make something better of it. And the divisiveness the country suffers from now is largely their fault — they could never represent anyone beyond themselves, and they could never believe that there were so many who they did not represent at all.

But that doesn’t mean one should support unwarranted retaliation agains them, or countenance the dehumanization (and murder) of their supporters. And that doesn’t mean one should celebrate now — quite the contrary, I fear. Since June 30, on social and old-fashioned Egyptian media, I have found a startling lack of lucidity. The endless denunciations of US meddling — the alleged American backing of the Brotherhood, CNN’s biased coverage — and the endless aspersions cast on all Islamists are pathological, a way to change the subject, to use indignation as a rhetorical and psychological feint. The denial of the pivotal, dangerous role played by the army and the police in what happened (a role that continues to be documented in greater detail) is, as one observer puts it, “a delusion so outlandish that it must be willfully self-induced, a device to conceal the enormity of a shameful choice.” [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: In the clearest statement yet of the United States’ position on the military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, a senior American diplomat warned on Monday that the generals would jeopardize Egypt’s “second chance” at a democratic transition if their new interim government continued to crack down on Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters.

“If representatives of some of the largest parties in Egypt are detained or excluded, how are dialogue and participation possible?” the diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns, told journalists after meeting with generals and the interim officials they have appointed.

“It is hard to picture how Egypt will be able to emerge from this crisis unless its people come together to find a nonviolent and inclusive path forward,” Mr. Burns said.

Mr. Burns, the first senior United States official to visit Cairo since the takeover, spoke against the backdrop of a standoff between the military’s interim government and tens of thousands of Islamists who have staged a two-week sit-in to protest the ouster of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president.

New clashes broke out between the Islamists and the police within hours of Mr. Burns’s statement. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Egypt’s new rulers gave new credence to a court case against the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday over their escape from prison during the uprising that toppled his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

The case was transferred from an appeals court to the State Security prosecutor for further investigation. No charges have yet been filed. Its acceptance by powerful prosecutors follows the arrest of many Muslim Brotherhood members and is a new blow to the group by the military-backed government.

The detentions have been criticized by rights groups and the Obama administration, which spent Thursday walking back remarks made early in the day by a State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, seeming to criticize Mr. Morsi as undemocratic and in so doing seeming to validate the military’s move to oust him.

Reuters reported that Ms. Psaki’s counterpart at Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, Badr Abdelatty, interpreted her remarks as a welcome signal that the United States understood “the political developments that Egypt is witnessing in recent days as embodying the will of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets starting on June 30 to ask for their legitimate rights and call for early elections.”

The Muslim Brotherhood denounced her remarks as hypocritical and further proof of what it has called American endorsement of the military takeover in Egypt.

At her regular State Department briefing on Thursday, asked about the reactions, Ms. Psaki said she had been “referring to all of the voices that have been — we have heard coming — the millions, I should say, coming from Egypt, and how strongly they have voiced their views about his rule.” She added, “But beyond that is up for the Egyptian people to determine.” [Continue reading…]

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: The Brotherhood Without Violence movement, founded by a number of young Muslim Brotherhood members, has proposed to stop violence in exchange for the release of Mohamed Morsy, Hazem Abu Ismail, and all Brotherhood leaders.

Scores of people were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes between supporters and opponents of Morsy after he was toppled by the armed forces.

Ahmed Yehia, coordinator of the movement, called for amending the Constitutional Declaration issued by interim President Adly Mansour, insisting that early presidential elections be held before parliamentary elections, military trials of civilians be outlawed, conditions for the committee amending the constitution be set, and all religious channels be reopened, pledging to renounce all forms of violence in exchange.

Hürriyet Daily News reports: The Obama administration has still refrained from calling former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster a “coup,” but top U.S. officials have thrown their backing behind the military rulers.

“It’s clear that the Egyptian people have spoken,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, when asked whether Washington still considered Morsi the legitimate president.

“There’s an interim government in place … this is leading the path to democracy, we are hopeful. And we are in touch with a range of actors. But obviously, he is no longer in his acting position.”

Challenged about the fact that, before his ouster, Egypt already had a democratically elected government, Psaki replied: “It wasn’t a democratic rule. That’s the whole point.”

A U.S. decision to brand his overthrow a coup would, by U.S. law, require Washington to halt aid to the Egyptian military, which receives the lion’s share of the $1.5 billion in annual U.S. assistance to that country.

Egypt’s interim government praised the United States for showing “understanding” by describing the rule of ousted Morsi as undemocratic. Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said the U.S. comments “reflect understanding and realization … about the political developments that Egypt has been witnessing in recent days, as embodying the will of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets starting on June 30 to ask for their legitimate rights and call for early elections.”