Egyptian Attitudes To Israel

http://justjournalism.com/media-analysis/egyptian-attitudes-to-israel/

"Not only has the thirty year peace accord failed to improve perceptions of Egypt’s neighbour, but several bodies actively oppose efforts to ‘normalise’ relations between the two states. These factors challenge the argument that the ‘blossoming of freedom’ would automatically benefit Israel."

WSJ: Hamas, the Brotherhood and Egypt

Review & Outlook: Hamas, the Brotherhood and Egypt - WSJ.com   2/4/2011

 

"Egypt can have a viable democratic future, provided that the democracy is for democrats."

 

What the U.S. mistakes of 2006 can teach Arab democrats.

 

Hovering like a dark cloud over the demonstrations in Egypt is the memory of the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. For critics of the Bush Administration, those elections, in which Hamas scored an unanticipated win, were proof... that the "freedom agenda" would only grease the way for anti-American, Islamist parties to come to power. And for critics of the Obama Administration, the elections are a cautionary tale about the risks the U.S. now runs by abandoning Hosni Mubarak in his hour of need.

The 2006 elections really are a cautionary tale, though not in the way critics of the past or current Administration usually suppose. Whatever else might be said about those elections, they did not create Hamas, which is an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and which had been gaining political strength among Palestinians for nearly two decades. Hamas's popularity owed much to its militant hostility to Israel. But it was also admired for its opposition to Yasser Arafat's corrupt, incompetent and frequently brutal Fatah party.

So it was with good reason that President Bush sought to promote liberal-democratic openings throughout the Arab world. For the Palestinians, that meant replacing the old land-for-peace formula with a democracy-for-statehood concept, in which the U.S. would recognize a Palestinian state only if it met certain political criteria.

"I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror," Mr. Bush said in a June 2002 speech. "I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. . . . True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism."

That was a viable formula and it yielded some real results, not the least of which was that the relatively moderate Mahmoud Abbas was named prime minister and later elected president in a race boycotted by Hamas. And so it might have continued had Hamas not decided to contest the next elections, with the acquiescence of both Mr. Abbas's Palestinian Authority and Condoleezza Rice's State Department.

Such acquiescence should never have been granted: Hamas operates its own armed militia and it categorically rejects the 1993 Oslo Accords that are the entire basis of the government for which elections were being held. Yet Ms. Rice demanded that Israel accede to Hamas's participation in the vote, on the theory that "we have to give the Palestinians some room for the evolution of their political process." Her State Department also argued that disarming Hamas was a long-term goal, not a precondition to their political participation.

All this contradicted the vision President Bush had laid out nearly four years earlier, and it's no credit to his leadership that he allowed his Secretary of State to so mismanage the process. Ms. Rice is widely reported to have been taken utterly by surprise by the election results, and that in turn is no credit to U.S. diplomats who should have seen it coming.

But the basic error wasn't about polling. It was to insist on an election before the proper groundwork had been prepared. And it was to allow an armed Hamas to participate in a political process whose very legitimacy Hamas rejects. Anti-democratic parties cannot be a part of a democratic system, a lesson the world might have learned as far back as 1933.

It's also a lesson the world should bear in mind as events unfold in Egypt. Those who believe that a democratic Egypt is doomed to fall into the Muslim Brotherhood's hands frequently cite the 2006 elections as Exhibit A. But the lesson of those elections is that Hamas should not have been allowed to participate, not that elections should never have been held.

If the Brotherhood wants to participate in elections, it should have to promise to play by democratic rules, respect religious and social pluralism, and honor Egypt's treaty commitments, especially to Israel. And because promises can be broken by those in power, Egypt needs a constitutional system of checks and balances to withstand any attempt to impose one man, one vote, once. Egypt can have a viable democratic future, provided that the democracy is for democrats.

 

Source:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703960804576120072249468908.html

video: Hamas rocket barely misses wedding party

Grad rocket hits Netivot, Israel, evening of January 31, 2011.










Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkQxhwlIhKY&feature=player_embedded

( h/t Honest Reporting) http://honestreporting.com/video-rocket-narrowly-misses-israeli-wedding-reception/

Dore Gold: The Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Crisis

Vol. 10, No. 26 2 February 2011

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Crisis

Dore Gold

Will the Obama administration’s policy toward Egypt be based on a perception that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood would be extremely dangerous? Or have they taken the position – voiced in parts of the U.S. foreign policy establishment – that the Brotherhood has become moderate and can be talked to? Initial administration reactions indicate that it does not rule out Muslim Brotherhood participation in a future Egyptian coalition government.

 

Since January 28, the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement has become more prominent, with its support of Mohamed ElBaradei to lead the opposition forces against the government. In the streets of Cairo, Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators disdainfully call people like ElBaradei “donkeys of the revolution” (hamir al-thawra) – to be used and then pushed away – a scenario that sees the Muslim Brotherhood exploit ElBaradei in order to hijack the Egyptian revolution at a later stage.

 

There has been a great deal of confusion about the Muslim Brotherhood. In the years after it was founded in 1928, it developed a “secret apparatus” that engaged in political terrorism against Egyptian Copts as well as government officials. In December 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Nuqrashi Pasha. It also sought to kill Egyptian leader Abdul Nasser in October 1954.

 

Former Brotherhood Supreme Guide Muhammad Akef declared in 2004 his “complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America.” In 2001, the Muslim Brotherhood’s publication in London, Risalat al-Ikhwan, featured at the top of its cover page the slogan: “Our Mission: World Domination.” This header was changed after 9/11.

 

The current Supreme Guide, Muhammad Badi’, gave a sermon in September 2010 stating that “the improvement and change that the *Muslim+ nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death, just as the enemies pursue life.”

 

Initially, it was widely observed that the Muslim Brotherhood has been very low-key during the current crisis in Egypt. Most analysts admitted that it is the best organized and largest opposition group in Egypt, but they played down its role. Yet since January 28, the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement has become more prominent. One tangible example is the support the Brotherhood has given to Mohamed ElBaradei to lead the opposition forces against the government.

 

In the streets of Cairo, Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators disdainfully call people like ElBaradei “donkeys of the revolution” (hamir al-thawra), to be used and then pushed away.1 Thus, there is a scenario that sees the Muslim Brotherhood exploit a figure like ElBaradei in order to hijack the Egyptian revolution at a later stage.

 

What is the Muslim Brotherhood? It is known as Ikhwan al-Muslimun in Arabic, or just Ikhwan, established in 1928 by an Egyptian schoolteacher, Hassan al-Banna. Outwardly, it was a social and religious organization, but over the years it developed a “secret apparatus” that engaged in military training of its cadres and political terrorism against Egyptian Copts as well as government officials. This dualism continued years later. In December 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Nuqrashi Pasha. It also sought to kill Egyptian leader Abdul Nasser in October 1954.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood also had an expansionist agenda right from the start, and called for the re-establishment of the Islamic Empire. In the late 1930s, its newspaper called for retaking “former Islamic colonies” in Andalus (Spain), southern Italy, and the Balkans.2 This theme was maintained in recent years by its former Supreme Guide, Muhammad Akef, who in 2004 declared his “complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America,” with the caveat that Westerners will join Islam by conviction.3 Others have also made this point. According to Sheikh Yousef Qaradawi, widely regarded as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood:

 

Constantinople was conquered in 1453 by a 23-year-old Ottoman named Muhammad ibn Murad, whom we call Muhammad the Conqueror. Now what remains is to conquer Rome. That is what we wish for, and that is what we believe in. After having been expelled twice, Islam will be victorious and reconquer Europe....I am certain that this time, victory will be won not by the sword but by preaching.4

 

Over the years, the Muslim Brotherhood opened branches in a number of Arab countries and even has front organizations in the UK, France, and the U.S. But it has not disavowed its original commitment to Islamic militancy and its global ambitions. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood’s publication in London, Risalat al-Ikhwan, has maintained a clearly jihadist orientation; in 2001 it featured at the top of its cover page the slogan: “Our Mission: World Domination” (siyadat al-dunya). This header was changed after 9/11, but the publication still carries the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto which includes: “Jihad is our path; martyrdom is our aspiration.”5

 

The current Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Muhammad Badi’, gave a sermon in September 2010 stating that Muslims today “need to understand that the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death, just as the enemies pursue life.”6 In short, the Muslim Brotherhood remains committed to supporting militant activities in order to advance its political aims. From looking at the biographies of its most prominent graduates, one can immediately understand the organization’s long-term commitment to jihadism:

 

1. Abdullah Azzam (of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood) and Muhammad Qutb (of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) taught at King Abdul Aziz University in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where they had a student named Osama bin Laden. Azzam went off to Pakistan with his student, bin Laden, to help the mujahidin fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

 

2. Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden’s deputy) grew up in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

 

3. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (the al-Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) came out of the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood.

 

Given this background, the Muslim Brotherhood has been widely regarded in the Arab world as the incubator of the jihadist ideology. A former Kuwaiti Minister of Education, Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab’i, argued in Al-Sharq al-Awsat on July 25, 2005, that the founders of most modern terrorist groups in the Middle East emerged from “the mantle” of the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

Many columnists in the Middle East have warned in recent years about the Brotherhood’s hostile intentions. Tariq Hasan, a columnist for the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram, alerted his readers on June 23, 2007, that the Muslim Brotherhood was preparing a violent takeover in Egypt, using its “masked militias” in order to replicate the Hamas seizure of power in the Gaza Strip. And columnist Hussein Shobokshi, writing in the Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat on October 23, 2007, said that “to this day” the Muslim Brotherhood “has brought nothing but fanaticism, divisions, and extremism, and in some cases bloodshed and killings.” Thus, both Arab regimes and leading opinion-makers in Arab states still have serious reservations about the claim of a new moderation in the Muslim Brotherhood.7 4

 

Ironically, in the last five years, prominent voices in the West have considered opening a political dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, Dr. Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke published an article in the March-April 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs called “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood” in which they advised the Bush administration to enter into a strategic alliance with the organization, which they referred to as “moderate,” calling it a “notable opportunity” to use the Brotherhood to promote American interests. James Traub echoed many of their arguments in the New York Times Magazine on April 29, 2007, in which he claimed that “the Muslim Brotherhood, for all its rhetorical support of Hamas, could well be precisely the kind of moderate Islamic body that the administration says it seeks.” In addition, a committee in the British House of Commons also advocated the UK opening a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, as well.

 

At the same time, some U.S. officials and dignitaries seemed to have softened their approach to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed President Mubarak to open up participation in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, resulting in a major increase of elected Muslim Brotherhood members from 15 to 88. Subsequently, Mubarak became more reluctant to take U.S. advice.

 

Visiting U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met twice in 2007 with the head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, according to Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan.

 

The critical question is whether the Obama administration’s policy toward Egypt will be based on a perception that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood would be extremely dangerous. Or have they taken the position – voiced in parts of the U.S. foreign policy establishment – that the Muslim Brotherhood has become moderate and can be talked to? The initial reactions of the Obama administration indicate that it does not rule out Muslim Brotherhood participation in a future Egyptian coalition government.8 Unfortunately, there is a dangerous misconception about the Muslim Brotherhood in parts of the foreign policy community in the West that could affect calculations in Washington and London in the weeks ahead.

* * *

Notes

1. Yoni Ben Menahem, Israel Radio - Reshet Bet, February 1, 2011.

2. Brynjar Lia, The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt – The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement 1928-1942 (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1998) p. 80.

3. Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 92.

4. Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, “The Muslim Brotherhood: A Moderate Islamic Alternative to al-Qaeda or a Partner in Global Jihad?” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jerusalem Viewpoints, No. 558, 1 November 2007.

5. Ibid. 5

 

6. “Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide: ‘The U.S. Is Now Experiencing the Beginning of Its End’; Improvement and Change in the Muslim World ‘Can Only Be Attained Through Jihad and Sacrifice,’” MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), Special Dispatch No. 3274, October 6, 2010;

http://www.memri.org/report/en/print4650.htm.

7. Halevi, “The Muslim Brotherhood.”

8. Paul Richter and Peter Nicholas, “U.S. Open to a Role for Islamists in New Egypt Government: But the Muslim Brotherhood Must Renounce Violence and Support Democracy, the White House Says,” Los Angeles Times, Latimes.com, January 31, 2011; http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-us-egypt-20110201,0,2958266.story/.

* * *

Ambassador Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was the eleventh Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations (1997-1999). Dr. Gold served as foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first government and has advised Israeli governments since that time on U.S.-Israel relations. He is the author of the best-selling books: The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City (Regnery, 2007), and The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West (Regnery, 2009). 

 

This Jerusalem Issue Brief is available online at: http://www.jcpa.org

NYT: Islamists at the Gates

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/opinion/02Halevi.xml

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Video: Egyptian protesters call for destruction of Israel

CNN's Nick Robertson speaks with some of the apparently religious Muslim protesters who advocate the destruction of Israel as a consequence of freedom.




"[Mubarak] is supporting our enemy, Israel. We hate them all."

(paraphrase: once the revolution frees Egyptians, people have to be free elsewhere in the Arab countries, including Palestine. The Palestinians have to destroy Israel.)

" The United States [and the European governments] supports Mubarak ...The country that controls that United States is Israel."

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWcKewmyh_o&feature=player_embedded
(h/t http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/)

Jewish communities in Egypt are apparently safe

The Jewish community in Cairo and Alexandria both declined to speak with the media, but told The Jerusalem Post that all of its members were safe and going about their daily routine as normally as possible.