Things Be Rotten in the State of Egypt

By Barry Rubin

There’s a new political timeline for Egypt. Apparently horrified by disorder and radicalization, the military junta has decided to slow things down.

Its proposal is for parliamentary elections on November 28, with the resulting parliament choosing a committee to write a new constitution by April 2012. That group will have a year to produce the new document and only then — after April 2013 — will there be presidential elections. Bottom line: The generals will retain executive power for the next 18 months.

What’s likely to happen in the elections? My estimate is that the Muslim Brotherhood will be the single largest party, with 30 to 40 percent of the seats.

In contrast to the united Islamists, there are more than a dozen moderate parties. The three main ones are the left-oriented Justice Party, the opportunistic Wafd Party, and the Free Egyptians’ Party, the closest thing to an anti-Islamist moderate force.

These three will each get roughly 15 percent of the seats and will consequently be much weaker than the Brotherhood and will perhaps be willing to make deals with it in order to get a share of power. Most of the remaining seats are likely to go to a party favoring the old regime. That party might do better than expected as bad conditions make some Egyptians nostalgic for the Mubarak days.

If so, the Brotherhood won’t be taking power in Egypt soon, but there will be a radical (leftist, nationalist, Islamist) majority in parliament. As different as these ideologies are, they’re united by their opposition to America, the West, and Israel and their support for radical groups abroad — especially Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

In addition, the Brotherhood will play a central role in writing the new constitution, which will enshrine Sharia as the main but not sole source of legislation.

There are many other ways in which the Brotherhood can lay the foundation for its future rule. For example, it wants to bring the two top Islamic offices — mufti and Al-Azhar University head — under parliamentary control. This will let it control Islam in Egypt, even choosing mosque preachers and religious teachers throughout the country.

Yet the Brotherhood doesn’t seem eager to take power quickly. The group continues to have a strong cautious — though that’s not the same thing as moderate — streak, having suffered bloody repression in past decades. To move too fast might upset the military and unite the group’s opponents, whose divisions will make them easier to conquer.

There’s another reason for the Brotherhood’s hesitation. Egypt’s economic situation is terrible and likely to get far worse. The Brotherhood doesn’t want to be blamed when the crash comes, preferring to go tsk-tsk at the alleged evils of capitalism, the Mubarak era, foreign aid, and the International Monetary Fund. It could then approach a frightened public with the comforting assertion that Islam is the answer to all of Egypt’s woes.

Is a war with Israel possible? If the military holds onto executive power into the second half of 2013, that’s far less likely. The worst-case scenario is if Hamas deliberately starts a fracas with Israel — firing rockets and mortars by the score and launching cross-border raids — to provoke retaliation.

The Brotherhood, radical nationalists, Salafi super-extremist Islamist groups, and leftists would then demand that Egypt go to the aid of the brothers next door. At a minimum, this would mean letting volunteers, money, and weapons flow into the Gaza Strip. At a maximum, it could bring direct involvement of an Egyptian leadership too frightened and stirred up to resist. Probably, though, until Egypt has a president, that outcome is not so likely.

Meanwhile, what is far more probable is that the domestic situation will deteriorate further, with the first and greatest victims being Egyptian Christians. The number of Coptic Christians in Egypt is greater than the entire population of Israel, Jordan, or Lebanon. A recent report by an Egyptian human rights group claims that almost 100,000 Christians have left the country since January.

With almost daily attacks on Christians and the destruction of churches by mobs, the violence is escalating. Neither government officials nor the army will help the Christians, who can also not depend on any foreign protection.

Except for the military — and it often appeases anti-Christian, Islamist, and anti-foreign forces — there is absolutely nothing to prevent the further radicalization of the situation in Egypt, which also includes rampant crime and skyrocketing inflation. The dream of a moderate, stable, and democratic Egypt is quickly becoming a nightmare.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

NATO's Interference in Libya Led to more Civilian Casualties

by Israeligirl

Six  months ago civilian struggle erupted in Syria and Libya. While so far, western countries were not able to pass any serious resolution about Syria's civil oppression, Libya is a different story.

Concern for Libya's oil reserves led NATO to launch military mission against Libya. Of course it was never described this way, formally the aim of NATO's mission was to save civilians in Libya.

But sadly it seems the opposite has occurred. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that NATO’s interference in the conflict between the Muammar Gaddafi regime supporters and the Libyan opposition has increased the number of casualties among civilians.

He highlighted the problem of interfering in civil wars saying, "Members of the international community, first of all our Western partners, have chosen the path of supporting one of the sides in the civil war – probably the party that represented the Libyan people's legitimate aspirations, but this still increased the number of casualties among the civilian population".

People everywhere deserve freedom. The people of Libya, the people of Syria, the people of Egypt and anywhere else in the world – they all deserve freedom and democracy. But as a result of drastic revolution and change these countries are now in anarchy. In Egypt, 24 people died yesterday in religion clashes, the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February. Libya fighting still rages on despite the disappearance of Gaddafi.


Photograph: Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

By supporting the Libyan rebels against Gaddafi, Nato is supporting Al Qaeda influenced elements. Missing anti aircraft missiles have probably been smuggled out of the country already as the United States races to help account for thousands of the weapons stockpiled by the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.

As tempting as it is to make it all right, western interference may lead to catastrophic results. While the Arab spring grabbed news headlines across the world, Iran quietly advanced its nuclear weapon program. If there is one lesson that Arab leaders have learned from Gaddafi's tale it's that without nuclear weapons, NATO can take them down as well. That's a frightening future to consider.

30 years ago this week, Egyptian president Anouar Sadat was assassinated for being brave enough to make peace with Israel. He was able to take that leap of faith in peace because he was a strong leader with full control of his army and the people. Let's hope that such leaders will emerge and bring Egypt and Libya out of anarchy and into the road to freedom and democracy.

Here and There in the Middle East: Fleeing Christians, “Moderate” Imam, Mad Turkish Leader, Syrian Revolution

By Barry Rubin

1. Fleeing Christians

Christians are fleeing the Middle East and Western Christians are indifferent. More than half of Iraqi Christians, threatened with death and terrorism are out of that country, though many are in neighboring Syria. Virtually all Christians have fled the Islamist Gaza Strip and Syrian Christians generally (though not all) support the regime there, fearing an Islamist takeover.

But Egypt is home to millions of Christians that dwarf these numbers. In fact, the number of Christians in Egypt exceeds the populations of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia.

Copts have emigrated in the past, but they have been so rooted in Egypt as to tend to remain there. Now the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organizations reports that 95,000 Christians have emigrated since March 2011. If Egypt continues to look as if it is going down an Islamist road, or at least if the government and military appear ready to tolerate such assaults, one can easily imagine one million or so Copts heading for the exits in the next few years. How would Europe like to receive these people who—in contrast to many other immigrants—would be legitimate asylum seekers with a genuine fear for their lives?

2. Mad Turkish Prime Minister

It’s rather clear that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist regime hates Israel. What’s less apparent to many people is that Erdogan has gone off the deep end into antisemitic insanity. If you didn’t know who was speaking you’d think Erdogan was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

While Turkey, like other countries, isn’t perfect, in modern times the Turkish Republic has been a rather sane and development-oriented countries. It’s quite a change to have a Turkish leader literally foaming at the mouth, to the point where the opposition leader asked a few months if Erdogan was planning to go to war against Israel. Now that the regime—with no international opposition or criticism—has crushed the armed forces, there’s nothing to hold Erdogan back.

On a CNN interview, Erdogan ridiculed the idea that Israelis need fear massive rocket and mortar barrages from the Gaza Strip because few Israelis were killed, while in contrast Israel had killed—according to the CNN translation “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.” The Turkish government responded that he had not said that figure but merely “tens of thousands.”

It’s nice to know that Israel is just being accused of being a mass murder on a smaller scale. Eogan also says that the world is a slave to the UN Security Council (a precise copy of Ahmadinejad’s long-standing theme) and demands sanctions against Israel. He also copies Ahmadinejad in asking why Israel can have nuclear weapons and Iran not have them. (Aside from Iran’s threats of genocide, one reason is that Iran’s program breaks an international agreement signed by that country.) At times, Erdogan has talked about war against Israel, his main complaint being the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been ruled legal under international law and, anyway, is made pretty irrelevant by the opening of the Egypt-Gaza border.

Israel cannot be trusted, Erdogan says; it is the villain that has prevented peace. It’s just plain evil. One almost expects Erdogan to break out in German. Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, famously said that his country’s foreign policy was one of “peace at home, peace abroad.” Erdogan sounds more like: Today Gaza, tomorrow the world!

The idea that such a huge and powerful country as Turkey is led by a guy acting like a madman who throws temper tantrums (his performance at the Davos conference is a case in point) has not prevented the Obama Administration from doing nothing and, indeed, increasing hi power. After all, Turkey is now co-chair of the new U.S. counterterrorism organization and the designated mediator for the future of Syria. And the same applies to the escalating repression and crushing of democracy within Turkey.

3. Syria’s New Stage: Civil War

–Can Assad hold on?
The simple answer is that nobody knows. One thing is for certain: looking at other dictator having been hung, put on trial, or fleeing into exile, the family of President Bashar al-Asad and his allies will not go quietly. Only if they are forced out of power at gunpoint will they be displaced.

The wider problem is that the government does have a strong base of support among the Alawite minority, Christians, and some Sunni Muslims. These people are worried about being targeted by a revolution, even with the possibility of massacres against the first two groups, which comprise roughly one-quarter of the population.

In other words, the battle will continue for months, will probably become more violent, and the outcome is not certain.

–What are the prospects for civil war?

I think we are now entering the civil war phase.

–Is there a signifcant danger of Islamists wielding great power like in Egypt?

There is a very real chance of an Islamist takeover but it is lower than in Egypt. The Syrian are more urbanized, more secular, and most important of all far more diverse. Remember that in Egypt 90 percent are Sunni Muslim Arabs while in Syria that figure is about 60 percent. The Syrian Brotherhood has never been as strong as its Egyptian counterpart.

The best assessment, then, is that the danger is less. But what is very worrisome–even insane–is the Obama Administration’s insistence on using Islamist Turkey as mediator, a mediator that favor the Islamists!

–Would a post-Assad Syrian govt likely be friendlier to the US?

There is some real anti-Americanism in the opposition. The Obama Administration has put the Untied States into the position of being regarded by many Syrians as protector of the Asad regime. It’s one thing to have that happen in Egypt–a government that was allied with America–but why in Syria, the most anti-Ameriican of all Arab regimes?

If a non-Islamist regime emerges it would be less hostile to the United States but whether that’s by a small or significant margin is open to question.

4. “Moderate Imam”

In a June 23, 2011 article, Ahmad al-Tayeb, the head of al-Azhar, took a quite moderate line in interpreting Islam and showing openness toward Christianity and Judaism. A MEMRI articledoes a good job of describing what he wrote. For

example, he said:

“A Muslim cannot imagine all of mankind sharing a single creed or turning to a single religion – even if this religion is Islam. As long as this remains the case, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims [must be] one of mutual recognition.

But why did he write it? I suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood has made it clear that al-Tayeb is not welcome to continue in his job under the new order. It wants to put in one of its own people, both as head of al-Azhar and as Egypt’s qadi (leading Islamic official). The Brotherhood wants to use these positions to revolutionize Islam in Egypt and turn it into a radical Islamist institution.

Remember that even if the Brotherhood doesn’t take over the government or control the presidency it is likely to make deals with other parties: We will support what you want in exchange for your giving us control over religious institutions.

And why, just a little later did he launch a virulent attack against Shia Muslims? Because he is defining his position as being hostile to Iran and Hizballah as Egypt’s enemies. This anti-Shia position is more congenial to the Brotherhood which shares this hotility.

So Tayeb is carving out for himself the position of moderate Muslim who backs Egyptian national interests in order to build a support base against the Islamists. This aligns him not only with reformists but also with nationalists. The political battle in Egypt may be mirrored by a struggle over the control of Islam in that country.

A third plank in the al-Azhar platform was put forward by one of Tayeb’s deputies a few days later in a virulently antisemitic tirade that hints at genocide against the Jews, reminding us that Middle East “moderation,” after all, almost always has its limits.

5. Egypt’s Election: Party Maneuvers

The Wafd Party has ended its electoral alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party because it thinks it can do better on its own. The Wafd wasn’t satisfied with the number of seats the Brotherhood offered in the deal.

Note that this has nothing to do with differences between a liberal democratic add an Islamist party. The problem is merely how much the Brotherhood would pay. As the Wafd spokesman explained:

“We withdrew from the electoral alliance because we had a lot of candidates and the available places in the list weren’t enough,”

There are now three blocs led by the Muslim-Brotherhood and Wafd—with members of their now-defunct alliance choosing sides—and a 14-party group called the Egyptian Bloc, led by the left-leaning liberal Justice party. Note how the “liberal” parties are splitting their vote while the Islamists have united.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com 

Here Come The Arab Elections (Oh Goody)

By Barry Rubin

Tunisia has scheduled elections for October 23. The National Constituent Assembly will have 218 members and will draw up a new constitution. Remember, by the way, that Tunisia has the most secular-oriented constitution in the Arab world. One wonders what will happen in that regard.

This assembly will also set the rules for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held at some time next year.

Tunisia’s Islamists are weaker than in any other Muslim-majority country in the Middle East. A different problem, however, has developed: the incredible division of other parties. Thus while the Islamist party, Ennahda, is at only about 20 percent, the rest of the vote is divided about 80 parties, no one of which has huge support at this point. To give a sense of this mess, note that there are about 11,000 candidates for these seats, which means about 50 per seat!

That fact could turn a 20 percent Islamist vote into an Islamist landslide. Remember that the Islamists seized control of Turkey with only about 30 percent of the votes. And it gets worse. Imagine when parties are negotiating over the Constitution and the election rules. The Islamists will have extra weight in forming alliances and making deals.

Thus, as Westerners celebrate the joys of democracy in Tunisia — 11,000 candidates! See how the people love freedom! — the Islamists might be using it to seize state power.

What could Western countries be doing? Well, it’s not very nice but in the real world they could be persuading and pressuring moderate anti-Islamists to form alliances and set up joint tickets using funding and other resources.

In the late 1940s, the U.S. government worked covertly to ensure that the Communists didn’t win the elections and take power in France and Italy. That doesn’t sound good if being taught about in an early twenty-first century classroom but the world is a lot better off as a result. Presumably, that isn’t going to happen in this case.

Egypt will be holding parliamentary elections on November 28. There are some parallels with Tunisia—united Islamists; divided leftists, radical nationalists, and moderates — but in Egypt the Islamist vote level looks to be around 30 to 40 percent. There is little doubt that Islamists would emerge as the single largest party there.

But the military has just pushed through an agreement that many political parties have signed though it angered a lot of their members. According to the plan, after elections for the People’s Assembly, the lower house of parliament, and the Shura Council, the upper house, the two would choose a committee to draft a new constitution between April 2012 and April 2013. Only afterward would a presidential election be held, which means the military junta would continue to hold executive authority.

Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition has formed a Turkey-based (note the connection) Syrian National Council headed by Burhan Ghalioun, who is an academic who lives in Paris. Members include Mohammed Riyad al-Shaqfa of the Muslim Brotherhood The 29-member leadership is described as including the following: six from Local Coordination Committees, five Brotherhood and tribal representatives, four from the Damascus Declaration and four for Ghalioun‘s liberal group, five independents, four Kurds, and a Christian, he said.

This is a measure of the Brotherhood’s far weaker status in Syria as compared to Egypt. The proportionally low representation of Christians is presumably related to that group’s tendency to support the regime due to fear of the Islamists. The Kurds have not been enthusiastic about this new council because they believe the Muslim Brotherhood has become too powerful — perhaps they know about hidden Islamists disguised among the other members? — and worry about Arab nationalists overwhelming them.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

Hey Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, "Don't Tear Down This Wall!"

 by Barry Rubin

“You have always yearned for this chance and now you have it. A wind is blowing from paradise sweet with the smell of martyrdom.” — Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s leader Hasan al-Banna, December 10, 1947 \

“The world will see it is impossible to beat Arabs by force.” — Arab Summit Declaration, December 24, 1947

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down!” — Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”

How is Egypt’s revolution different from a real democratic revolution, as in Eastern Europe? Here’s a symbolic way to remember it.

The most famous line, at least from an American, on the road to Eastern Europe’s transformation cane from President Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Eventually the East German people did the job. The tearing down of the wall was a symbol of opening the borders, letting in the light of the outer world, throwing out the old totalitarian ideas that had sat on the people’s heads and pecked at their brains for decades.

While the tearing down of a wall in Berlin signaled a democratic and liberating revolution in Eastern Europe, it symbolizes the decision to make the Egyptian revolution the basis for a new dictatorship of hatred, blindness, and destruction.

Consider Robert Frost’s 1914 poem about walls. Its often-misunderstood theme is that his stubborn neighbor insists on the fence being repaired, explaining, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Frost wants a peace process up in New Hampshire. It’s a lot of work for him to maintain the wall, natural forces keep subverting it, and there’s really no threat that requires it. Of the two properties the fence divides, Frost complains:

“He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines….”

Frost’s poem is so popular because it expresses a very common Western idea so often deployed in discussions in the Middle East: There’s no real problem! Can’t we all be friends? Who needs walls that divide people? Conflicts that are irrational, that give no material benefit to either side, can and must be quickly terminated.

Frost describes his stubborn wall-repairing neighbor in the way that many Western politicians, “experts,” and media describe Israel, “like an old-stone [age] savage armed,” so backward and paranoid as to still want to keep up fences in our enlightened age. Enemies are illusions, or at the least of our own making. Defending yourself is an act of aggression, of primitivism. The September 11 attacks were thus caused by America’s sins.

Thus, they say, Israel doesn’t need defensible borders when it can have a perfectly good piece of paper ensuring that all problems go away.

But Frost, being a good poet and a farmer who didn’t learn everything he knows about reality in a classroom, also explains one reason his own wall kept crumbling — a never-quoted section of the poem corresponding to the kinds of things the mass media usually leaves out:

“The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.”

Gorbachev’s fences were to keep in oppressed people; our fences are to keep out those inciting “the yelping dogs” in their murderous rage. Sometimes you need a fence when your neighbor really is trying to kill you. And he doesn’t want that fence there because it’s in the way of his homicidal goal.

Let me insert here a metaphor for understanding contemporary Arab politics. Arab nationalists have been hitting their heads against a stone wall for 60 years, trying to destroy Israel, defeat the West, and reestablish a great empire. The few moderate pragmatists propose to stop this madness. Instead, the Islamists explain that the way to piety, glory, and total victory is to spend 60 years more battering their heads against that stone wall much harder. Guess who is winning the debate?

One such wall, a flimsy fence actually, marks the Egypt-Israel border. A group of terrorists recently cut through it so they could attack and kill Israeli civilians on a nearby road inside Israel.

Since the terrorists sought to exterminate Israel and stage a revolution in Egypt, this was the kind of event that should bring neighboring countries to work together against a common threat. That would have happened during the Mubarak regime. Now, however, with that government gone, a junta fearful of the mob, partly sharing its views, and denied the tools of repression stands aside.

It is generally forgotten, but a neglected verse of a certain American song, written in September 1814, almost two hundred years ago to this day, shows a time when the United States knew precisely that kind of threat of national destruction:

“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
…A home and a country [they] should leave us no more!”

Well, in Israel’s case that band is located in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, and in several other places (including a surprising number of Western university campuses) and is now opening a new franchise in Turkey.

Some other walls and murderous bands are within Egypt itself. These include protective walls built by Christians around churches. Mobs of Egyptian Muslims attack these walls as police or soldiers stand by and don’t intervene, albeit ready to spring into action to shoot or arrest the Christians defending themselves. There is a word in Jewish history for such situations: pogroms.

The underlying basis of these attacks is Sharia, Islamic law, that mandates no synagogue or church can be built anew or repaired in lands (or, as we are starting to see in Europe, even urban neighborhoods) ruled by Islam. Why? Because the Sharia’s “tolerance” is merely a form of patience: let the non-Muslim places of worship crumble; those people will lose their religion, and eventually become Muslims.

Of course, such Sharia laws have often gone unenforced over the centuries, or were circumvented by bribes. That’s why there are still lots of churches despite the Sharia’s dictates. Why is today different? Not because Islam is eternal, unchanging, and inevitably oppressive. but precisely because a “modern” systematic ideology called Islamism insists that Sharia must be interpreted and enforced in a consistent, intransigent manner. And have no doubt that in an Egypt largely dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood those laws will be enforced. An actual Muslim individual can be flexible due to different interpretations, pragmatism, sloth, liberality, ineptitude, or venality; an Islamist Muslim cannot.

Now, the wall around the Israeli embassy, undefended by the police and security forces, fell to the assault. The mob’s minimal goal, a symbolic target or a preface to what they intend to do to Israel itself — was to tear down Israel’s flag. Americans know something about the significance of such situations. They even incorporated one into their national anthem:

“Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

If the flag had come down over Fort McHenry, the British could perhaps have conquered America entirely, the treaty of recognition they had signed a quarter-century earlier might have been torn up. But Egypt is not at war with Israel. Under international law, the Egyptian authorities are responsible for defending the embassy but didn’t do so because that is unpopular with the mob. After the elections, the mob will be in charge.

As part of their attack on Israel’s embassy, the demonstrators broke pieces from the nearby statue “Egypt’s Awakening.” The symbolism is perfect. Egypt’s Awakening is equated with killing the Jews, yet it is in fact Egypt’s Awakening being sacrificed in the obsessive, ultimately suicidal, hatred against Israel.

According to Raymond Stock, who pointed out the statue’s role in the assault, an apparent secular liberal, who said that he had participated personally in the action, remarked on Facebook that he was glad this iconic work of art could serve the cause. Israel, he said, is my enemy, while the Muslim Brotherhood is a piece of cake — i.e., no obstacle to a democratic future. Revenge and blind hatred overwhelm even supposedly cool-headed, hi-tech Facebook types.

This reminds me of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1857 Dred Scott case upholding the legality of slavery. The chief justice explained that those with black skin were “So far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Unfortunately, that is how Jews and Christian minorities are seen in Egypt and the other lands in the region: they have no rights that a Muslim or Arab is “bound to respect.” Those who make peace with Israel, and the agreements themselves, are by definition illegitimate, to be overturned as soon as possible, with any gains used legitimately to wipe Israel off the map. The land must always remain Muslim and Arab.

Such views are not completely inevitable but they are extraordinarily powerful. Moderate Arabs or Muslims can reject that view — as King Hussein of Jordan and Presidents Sadat and Mubarak did — but moderates nowadays are few in number and even fewer in power. And no matter what their pretense or Western gullibility, no populist regime or Islamist can defy the lynch mob.

As Egyptian mobs assault the walls protecting Christian churches and Israel’s embassy, the “international community” assaults the borders and policies protecting Israel. How can anyone still seriously claim that there will be a two-state solution, all strife will end, and everyone will live happily ever after? The dream of prosperity, social progress, peace, or better lives for one’s children — none of these things can withstand the demand for revenge, raw hatred, denial of any rights to the “other.” What you in the West think matters nothing — look with your eyes, listen with your ears, and see what the reality is.

Surely, it is best to have peace between timber men and apple-growers. Undoubtedly, it is wonderful to need no fences. But when things are otherwise, having bad neighbors do necessitate having good fences.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com> 

News From Egypt, DAMN Those Jews are GOOD!

There is an old story about a Jewish man who goes to his rabbi to let him know he is converting to Christianity and joining a Neo-Nazi party. Shocked the rabbi says, "But Bernie, you are such an observant Jew, you keep kosher, go to Synagogue and pray 3x every day, you are our number one Torah reader. what would make you do something like convert and become a Nazi?"

"Well Rabbi," says Bernie, "I come to Synagogue and and hear talk to the other Jews, all I hear is bad stuff, the Arabs hate us, the Europeans hate Jews, the President hates us. I hear the same thing, over and over and over.

"But the Nazi party?"  Says the Rabbi?

"You Bet," says Bernie, "I went to one meeting and there was nothing bad, all they kept saying was the Jews own the Banks, the Jews run the government, the Jews own the media and Hollywood. It made me so proud.

I know how Bernie feels especially when reading about Antisemitism in Egypt. They are so creative. Sure they pass along the hateful propaganda that Jew own the media, Hollywood, banks and control the US government, but they also come up with such unusual ways to slander the Jewish people.


Remember what happened last December when Egyptian swimmers were attacked by sharks. An Egyptian official claimed that a shark that killed one person and left four others injured in Egypt could have been placed there by agents from Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.

It wasn't some low level official either,

Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha, the regional governor, claimed it was not "out of the question" that Israel could have planned the attacks on tourists to dent the Egyptian economy.

After reading that story, all I could think was "Damn We're good, even though I knew the story was nonsense.

The latest news from Egypt contains another one of those "Damn We're Good" moments, combined with a little bit of nonsense from Adam Sandler's movie, You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

Israeli citizen Ofir Harrari, recently accused by Egypt of spying for Israel, was allegedly involved in a complicated scheme intended to harm Egyptian reproduction abilities, Egypt's official state paper Al-Ahram has claimed.

Harrari, accused by Egypt of being an agent of the Mossad, is set be tried in absentia on charges of "spying for a foreign country with the purpose of harming Egyptian national interest," news agency MENA reported on Sunday.

"According to the public prosecutor's office's investigation, 'Mossad agent Ofir Harrari' instructed Jordanian Ibrahim abu-Zaid to set up a company in Egypt which would exclusively import an Israeli hair product, for both men and women, which causes infertility. This in order to completely destroy Egyptian reproduction abilities," Al-Ahram states.

Gee whiz, the Mossad messing with Egyptian hair products as to make Egyptians sterile.

Isn't it great how one of only two nation's that has made peace with the Jewish State has such great respect for the Jewish people that they make up stories just to show our brilliance?  Damn, Those Jews are good!

UPDATED: Al Qaida Attack In Israel! Eight Dead, Terrorists Infiltrated From EGYPT

Southern Israel was attacked by four different terrorist cells today resulting in at least seven dead six were civilians (two young children aged 6 and 4) and one was a soldier (Staff Sergeant Moshe Naftali, a 22 year-old soldier from Ofra). At least another 40 have been injured.

The coordinated terrorist attack hit buses taking vacationers to the Israeli resort city of Eilat It is believed that the attack originated from Gaza but the terrorists infiltrated from Egypt an indication that unlike the Mubarak government, it is open season on terrorists using the Sinai peninsula as a terrorist staging ground. In fact some of the murderers were wearing Egyptian Army uniforms.

According to sources inside of Israel the attacks began when gunfire was opened at an Israeli bus. 14 people were injured as a result and evacuated to nearby hospitals. Simultaneously, fire was opened on an additional bus and two civilian vehicles, injuring several people.

Another terrorist was wearing a homicide belt, blew himself up near IDF soldiers arriving at the scene a short while afterwards, injuring several of them.



Apparently (according to the Prime Minister's office) the purpose of the attack was to kidnap an Israeli solder.

The Popular Resistance Committee (PRC)  has claimed credit for the attack. The  PRC,  is a terrorist group which calls for a worldwide Islamic Caliphate.  Its actions have at times been funded by  al-Qaeda, which in recent times has created a presence in Gaza and the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt

Below is a chronology of the terrorist incursion (in Israeli time)

12 p.m. – At least three terrorists open fire at Egged Bus 392 traveling on Road 12 between Eilat and Mitzpe Ramon. The terrorists, apparently infiltrated into Israel from Egypt and wore what appeared to be military uniforms. Some 14 people are injured.

12:30 p.m. – An IDF vehicle that arrived at the scene starts chasing after the terrorists who detonated a roadside bomb next to the vehicle, injuring a number of soldiers. Mortar shells and light gunfire follow, possibly fired from terrorists still in Egypt.

1:30 p.m. – Another cell of terrorists fire an anti-tank missile at a civilian vehicle and open fire at another bus. Five people were killed in this attack.

2:00-4:00 p.m. – IDF soldiers and members of the police’s elite YAMAM counter-terror unit located the terrorists and gun battle ensued, during which seven terrorists were killed.

3:00 p.m. – Defense Minister Ehud Barak claims that the terrorists originated in the Gaza Strip and that Israel will respond “forcefully and decisively.”

6:30 p.m. IDF strikes terror targets in Rafah in the Gaza Strip in response to the terror attacks. Three Palestinians reported dead in the air strikes.

7 p.m. One person injured in an additional shooting attack near Eilat.

According to witnesses the driver of the first bus averted a greater tragedy. Benny Belevsky, the 60-year-old driver continued to drive through the hail of gunfire, doing his best to escape the terrorists. Passengers on the bus also reported a few soldiers on board fired back at the terrorists as the bus sped away.

Just before Netafim junction I heard gunfire," the driver told Ynet. "The bullets hit the bus and two of them shattered the window near me, passed just above my head and hit the ceiling. I am experienced enough to know that I should keep driving and that I mustn't stop so that the damage doesn't get worse."

Belevsky added that the passengers panicked, and that some of them were hurt, but he knew he had to get to the IDF checkpoint at Netafim. "It was scary – you never think something like this will happen to you. But I did what I had to do," he said.

The packed bus was filled with passengers, mostly on their way to a pleasant summer vacation. "The driver accelerated and was able to prevent a much more serious outcome," one said.

Witnesses are now saying that those that fired on the buses were dressed in Egyptian Army uniforms! Egypt is denying that they were involved.

An Egyptian security official has denied Thursday that Egypt had any involvement in the terror attacks in the south of Israel. The official, told Egyptian media that the armed terrorists operated from within Israel's borders.
"Egypt was in no way involved in the incident, since it is difficult to penetrate the Egypt-Israel border. Moreover, it is impossible to open fire from the Egyptian side to Israel because of the distance," said the source.

Several mortar shells were simultaneously fired from the Gaza Strip at soldiers conducting routine maintenance work on the security fence on the Israel-Egypt border.

According to Historian and Middle East Expert, Dr.  Barry Rubin :

This isn’t just another terrorist attack—it’s a major escalation, a new phase in the Arab-Israeli conflict in two ways. First, it is the bitter fruit of the U.S.-backed downfall of the government of President Husni Mubarak in Egypt, opening the Egypt-Israel border as a new front in the war. Second, it is probably the first successful al-Qaida attack on Israel. (The Palestinian Popular Committees, a Gaza-based al-Qaida affiliate is the prime suspect.)

Reports are coming in that Israel's "Peace Partners" are already celebrating (H/T Elder of Zion):

Palestine Press Agency, which is a Fatah-leaning site, has commentators saying

"God praise the [Hamas] Al-Qassam Brigades" (they have not taken responsibility)

"Our Lord is with the heroes"

"[I] call for resistance in the Gaza with rocket fire and suicide bombings and the Glory of God and His Messenger"

"Tribute to the Heroes of each attack and no matter what their affiliation"

"God is great and victory is coming"

By far the most popular comment in the Hamas-oriented PalTimes is "God is great."

Firas Press has a numbr of "God is Great" comments as well as one referring to the victims as "monkeys."

The popular Paldf.net forum site has hundreds of messages of praise as well as digging up every possible scrap of rumor they can find.

I have yet to find a single expression of sadness or condemnation for the attack. One person thought that it was "suspicious" and implied it was a Zionist false flag attack to be a pretext for invading Egypt or Gaza; that's the closest I could find to a reservation about the attack. Everyone else is pouring out happiness and congratulations to the heroic terrorists.

An Israeli friend Roni on summer vacation from the Guyus pro-Israel information sharing network wrote,

Democratic elections are yet to be seen in Egypt, but the direct result of the revolution is that anarchy rules in Sinai. The local Egyptian police is afraid of the armed Bedouins that rule the area and the smuggling route to Gaza is open to all.

Such anarchy is the perfect breeding ground for radical Islam. Today's terror attack is proof of that.

The beautiful town of el Arish in Sinai is known for its beaches and luxury resorts. But in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, el Arish is becoming known for something far different from tourism. A well-armed jihadist group is making its presence felt on the dusty streets here, intimidating opponents and demanding Egypt becomes an Islamist state.

If the Egyptian authorities do not move quickly to crush the extremists and regain control, the Sinai Peninsula could soon become a separate Islamic emirate run by Salafis, Hamas and Al-Qaeda.

The Arab revolution is creating fast paced changes in the Arab world. Sadly these fast paced changes will not lead to democracy and freedom for the Arab people.

Instead radical Islamic groups are quick to hijack the winds of change aiming to create Islamic regimes instead of democratic ones.

The United States condemned the attack, but tomorrow our anti-Israel President will most probalby resume his pressure for Israel to make major concessions to these terrorists.

Today's terror attack represents a major escalation in the war to destroy Israel. It is the first successful terror attack by an Al Qaida affiliated organization, and it was an attack where the terrorists infiltrated from Israel. Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian Army has ceded control of parts of Sinai, unfortunately today's attack is a result of that cession.

A few hours  after the attack, Israeli warplanes attacked suspected terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip . As many as six Palestinians – including the chief of the Popular Resistance Committees – were reportedly killed in the Israeli attack on the Gaza city of Rafa. IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Ganz that Israel targeted that area because it is “where we believe the planners of the attack are based.”



Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went on Israeli TV at about 1PM EST. He announced the deaths of the people who planned the attack.

Firstly, I would like to express my condolences to the families of the civilians murdered, and to those of the soldiers who fell while responding to today's terrorist attacks.

I share their pain. I know that their lives will never be the same. I also want to express my hopes for a speedy recovery to those injured in these attacks and are currently undergoing treatment in hospital.

We all witnessed today an attempt to escalate the terrorist war against Israel by launching of attacks from the Sinai. If there is someone who thinks that the State of Israel will let this pass, he is mistaken.

I have set out a principle - when the citizens of Israel are attacked, we respond immediately and with strength.  That principle was implemented today.  Those who gave the order to murder our citizens, while hiding in Gaza, are no longer among the living.

I commend the IDF and the security services who eliminated today in Gaza the senior figures of the organization which carried out the terror attacks in the south. I commend the soldiers, police, and members of the security services who acted swiftly, determinately and bravely against the terrorists, and who thereby prevented an even greater tragedy.

If the terrorist organizations believe that they can attack our citizens and get away with it, they will soon learn how wrong they are. We will exact a price, a very heavy price.

UPDATE: 1am Israel time- Hours after  the initial attack , terrorists who had apparently gone undetected attacked again, and a member of an elite police counter-terrorism unit was killed, the eighth Israeli fatality, according to Chief Inspector Alex Kagalsky, a spokesman for the Israel police.

Gunfire continued on both sides of the  border late into the evening. After nightfall, Israel’s “Iron Dome” anti-missile system intercepted a rocket fired by Gaza militants at the city of Ashkelon, the military said.

Mortars have been fired from Egypt and Gaza intermittently through out the day. 

Terrorism Returns to Egypt, Will Sanity about Islamism Arrive in the West?

By Barry Rubin

As I’ve predicted since February, a major consequence of the Egyptian revolution and the rise of radical Islamism there will be a return to the terrorism of the 1990s which destroyed the tourism industry; targeted Christians; murdered moderates and secularists; and killed government officials and bystanders.

Now a group has attacked two police stations in el-Arish. And of course CNN misses the point. Those responsible, it reports, are, “Takfir-wal Higra, a group sympathetic to al Qaeda’s goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.” Actually, the group originated in Egypt long before Usama bin-Ladin began his political activity. And in Egypt, terrorist Islamists come out of the Muslim Brotherhood, demanding faster and more extreme tactics. We will be seeing a lot of such people in the coming months and years.

Once again, this recalls to me the 1981 book of Muhammad Abd al-Salaam Faraj, The Forgotten Commandment. I read it soon after it appeared. At the time, the book seemed like the ravings of a marginal figure, one for whom even the Takfir-wal Higra group of the time was too moderate. Faraj posited that jihad had been brushed aside for centuries by those who wrongly interpreted Islam and must be restored, immediately, to be top priority.

In retrospect, Faraj did ideologically for Sunni Muslims what Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did for Shias: the creation of a new and powerful revolutionary Islamist movement. In the 30 years since this book was written, the once-obscure ideas of Faraj have swept the minds of millions of people and caused many thousands of deaths. They are now in sight of hegemony in the Sunni Muslim world.

Here’s another interesting point. Faraj proves wrong both of the two major sides of the Western debate on Islam. If Islam is so innately a religion of peace then why did Faraj’s argument–based on the holiest texts–become so successful? Obviously, one is not dealing with a few extremists but with radicals who can mobilize mass support and persuade people to accept their view of Islam as the correct one. And they are winning.

But if Islam is so innately warlike and extreme, why did Faraj have to write the book and there mustbe a battle to make Muslims behave as the radical Islamists want? Why are so many of those killed or intimidated by the Islamists those who also consider themselves pious Muslims, whether reformist or, as is far more common, conservative-traditionlist?

The policy lesson, then, is neither to demonize nor apologize for Islam but to ally with the Islamists’ enemies among Muslims and to lose all naivete about the Islamists’ strength, intentions, and ability to draw on deeply held Islamic texts and beliefs.

So Islam can and is interpreted in different ways. Those who show that Muslims don’t always adhere to the texts and still consider themselves to be good Muslims are right. Yet those that show the revolutionary Islamists have strong arguments based on the holy texts and–most important of all–are winning over many others–are also correct.

Up until now the mainstream Western position has been that the Muslim Brotherhood will protect people from the “radicals,” now called Salafists. Yet even if the Brotherhood isn’t advocating violence now it is only because they are making such good progress toward seizing power and transforming Egypt in other ways. Like Hamas and Hizballah, they have no problem in running election campaigns and murdering opponents simultaneously.

The first attacks have been against the gas pipeline to Israel, which the government has been “helpless” to stop and against Christians, where the government has often acted vigoriously…by arresting the Christian victims.

So far, though, most of the violence has been in the form of criminal anarchy. (I’m tempted to write that Cairo is becoming as bad as Paris and London.)

Now even CNN figures out that terrorist groups are forming. Soon they will swing into action.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com   

Ten Months Since Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Declared Jihad on America the U.S. Establishment Still Doesn’t “Get It”

By Barry Rubin

Wow, time flies when you’re having revolution. Almost a year ago I wrote an article entitled, “Muslim Brotherhood Declares War on America. Will America Notice?” The answer was “no.”

Four years ago I made a detailed analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood that explained, “The banner of the Islamist revolution in the Middle East today has largely passed to groups sponsored by or derived from the Muslim Brotherhood.” I pointed out the differences—especially of tactical importance—between the Brotherhood groups and al-Qaida or Hizballah, but also discussed the similarities. This exposure so upset the Brotherhood that it put a detailed response on its official website to deny my analysis.

Last September I read a speech by the new head (supreme guide) of the Muslim Brotherhood. I was astonished. The speech represented a major new escalation of Brotherhood rhetoric beyond what I’d seen before. The basic analysis is that America was weak, the Egyptian regime was weak, and so now was the time to go to jihad and overthrow both.

To understand the true significance of this one has to know something about Muslim Brotherhood ideology. Having seen the organization destroyed in the 1950s and its leadership sent to concentration camps where they were tortured, the Brotherhood leaders from the 1970s–when President Anwar al-Sadat allowed the group to return to existence but not to be legal–until 2010 were cautious.

The leadership justified this policy and tried to hold back hotter heads (many of whom went to revolutionary groups that used terrorist violence and brought on a civil war in the 1990s) by a strategic theory. Egypt was still in the period of “da’wa,” that is, revolutionary base-building. More literally the term means Muslims trying to convert others and make their fellow religionists more pious. Only when the day came for going to the revolutionary (jihad) stage would the Brotherhood shift gears.

I regarded this speech I was reading as the signal for the great transition. Within four months the Egyptian revolution began. The Brotherhood had close connections with the Facebook kids of the April 6 Youth Movement. What! Yuppie bloggers working with radical Islamists? Yes, that’s precisely how things work in Egypt and other places, too, at times.

I’m not saying this was a conspiracy. Nobody knew what would happen in January 2011 and the Brotherhood was cautious even then. Only when it saw that the government wasn’t repressing the demonstrations, there was widespread support for the protests, and the army was staying out of it did the Brotherhood jump in with both feet. But clearly the Brotherhood had prepared itself for the moment and could claim to have predicted it.

This isn’t surprising. Mubarak was becoming less popular and was on his last legs. A lot of people, even in the establishment, hated his son and assumed heir. I predicted that Egypt would be a big, perhaps the biggest story, of 2011 because I expected Mubarak to die and there to be a crisis over the transition. Instead, the projected transition and Mubarak’s incapacity caused the crisis before they were fully manifested. I’d suggest that the revolution succeeded because the army and establishment was fed up with Mubarak more than because of the protesters in Tahrir Square, though the latter gave an occasion for the former to move against the dictator.

There are other important things about this article—and, of course, the speech itself. It showed the extreme radicalism and Islamism of the Brotherhood, obvious things so often denied in the West in the months since January 2011. It also showed the explicit support for violence and spreading revolution that is central to the Brotherhood’s worldview.

When you want to understand what the Muslim Brotherhood thinks you don’t go to Western reporters you go to the supreme guide’s words.

As I noted, nobody much quoted or noticed this article. It was not mentioned in the massive coverage of Egypt that was to follow. Indeed, I only recall seeing one article in all the British and American mainstream media over the last six months that actually quoted a speech or article written by the Brotherhood at any length with any degree of understanding.

Yet in an era when the head of American intelligence can deny that the Brotherhood is an Islamist group and in which virtually every intellectual, “expert,” journalist, and government official appearing in the mainstream media insists that the Brotherhood isn’t radical and doesn’t approve of violence, reading the actual words of the Brotherhood’s leader seems to be rather important.

The West is still in denial about the Brotherhood’s role in Egypt. Many Egyptians are just becoming resigned to living in a country that’s increasingly Islamist, more Islamic-oriented, and perhaps even run by the Brotherhood. I don’t think the Brotherhood is about to take power in Egypt. I think it is about to become the single most powerful organization in Egypt and that it will play a central role in writing a new constitution and taking over institutions. More likely, within five years the Brotherhood will either be running Egypt or engaged in a very bloody battle to seize control over the state.

The result for Egyptians, America, Israel, and the West will not be good.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com 

Polls Prove Strength, Not Weakness, of Islamists in Egypt

By Barry Rubin

Several recent polls purport to show the Muslim Brotherhood is unpopular in Egypt. An article in the Atlantic is particularly laughable, claiming the Brotherhood is less popular than Richard Nixon when he resigned!

The most important single point is this: the Brotherhood isn’t at an “unpopular” 17 percent but a very popular 34% from Egyptian voters who declared support for a party that might win seats. In other words, one in every three Egyptians who have decided and will have a real role in the outcome are ready to cast their ballots for the Brotherhood. It is the largest single party. And it has advantages that make it likely to get more than 33 percent of the seats.

That isn’t bad in an election with more than 20 parties. With 20 political parties would you call the one supported by one-third of decided voters “unpopular”? In the United States you need 50 percent plus one vote to win but the current ruling parties in multi-party Israel, Holland, and Turkey came to power with that level of direct support. In the last German elections, the Christian Democratic Union won with 27 percent of the votes (which yielded 31% of the seats); the Socialists have won French parliamentary elections with 39 percent.

Here are my adjusted figures for parties based on voters who back a party likely to win seats (more than 5 percent support in the polls). I am not saying this analysis is perfect (for example, a party with 5 percent might get 2.5 percent of the seats due to half being elected on a national level) but it does give a good general idea of the situation.

1, Islamists: 34% Muslim Brotherhood (Freedom and Justice Party). Note that Salafist (even more radical) Islamist groups don’t do well. Islamist voters are uniting behind the Brotherhood despite all the talk of splits.

2. Pro-Old Regime: 14% National Democratic Party, Mubarak’s old party.

3. Liberal, pro-democratic
14% Free Egyptians Party, a liberal, anti-Islamist party founded by big businessman Naguib Sawiris.
10% Justice Party. This is the party most associated with the Facebook kids and well-known opposition leaders.
22% Al-Wafd Party, historic liberal party.

Total for liberals: 46% That is impressive but far less than it seems. Keep in mind, though, that it is better to have 34% for one candidate than 46% for three. In a district with that outcome the Brotherhood would win.

Moreover, liberals are badly divided. The Wafd has at times toyed with a Brotherhood alliance, while the Justice Party has some far left leanings. The Free Egyptians seem to be a really serious anti-Islamist party but it is largely dependent on the largesse of one man. If liberals got one-third of the seats they could block the Brotherhood from power but not from having tremendous influence. By the same token, the Brotherhood would block a liberal majority. These three parties don’t like each other though if they cooperate and make election agreements that are implemented this might really change things.

So far i’ve left out the divided radical left, four parties combining hardline anti-American, neo-Marxist and radical nationalist views: Egyptian Labor, ElGhad Party, Tagamoe, and ElKarama. All together, they take 19 percent. But since they are rivals they would probably get about 10% of the seats.

The bottom line is that the Brotherhood will be the most powerful party in Egypt’s first election. There are a number of reasons to think it would get more than 34 percent:

–It is quite likely that just five parties—Brotherhood, Wafd, Justice, Free Egyptians, New Democratic Party—will have any significant representation. With many votes “wasted,” the Brotherhood will have the advantage as the largest single party and might well take 40 percent of the seats.

–The Brotherhood could win in many districts merely by coming in first albeit with only a minority of overall ballots. Liberal parties will “steal” votes from each other and put Brotherhood candidates into office in many places. Hamas only won the Palestinian elections because Fatah candidates ran against each other.

—Egypt’s first elected government will be very unpopular within a year or two. The economy is going to collapse; promises cannot be kept. The Brotherhood might prefer to be in the opposition during this period to reap more support in future.

–The Brotherhood can coopt independent candidates using ideology, offers of electoral backing, or rewards in parliament (such as—if you excuse the expression–“pork” projects for their districts). Thus, the Brotherhood in parliament could command seats outside of its own official delegation more easily than its rivals.

–Given its better organization, the Brotherhood will get its voters out on election day. Intimidation and the pressure for conformity so powerful in Egyptian society will also count, especially in the many tradition-oriented villages and poor areas of the big cities.

–Don’t assume the far left and Brotherhood won’t cooperate. They have similar views on foreign policy.

–Presumably the National Democratic Party will be a pariah and neither liberal nor Islamist blocs will work with it. Thus, another 14 percent of the seats will be irrelevant in forming any coalition, proportionately increasing the Brotherhood’s numerical edge. Liberals cannot deal with the hated old regime party but leaders of the National Democratic Party could make a deal with the Brotherhood in order to keep their privileges. Brotherhood supporters would support such a bargain if it helped obtain their main priorities.

I never thought the Brotherhood will get a majority. My concern is that it will control around 40 percent of the seats, be the largest single bloc, and get most of what it wants in a new constitution. The president will most likely be Amr Moussa, a radical nationalist who opposes Islamism but will probably buy off the Brotherhood, Salafists, and radical left with a militant foreign policy.

(Fun Fact: In my parallel analysis of the Palestinian elections, I predicted the same thing about Hamas, that it would be the largest party and most powerful single bloc. In fact, it won. Perhaps I’m being too cautious over the Brotherhood’s prospects in Egypt, too.)

In such a situation, the idea that the Egyptian government would be friendly to the United States is laughable. At most it would do the bare minimum to keep U.S. aid. The Obama Administration is likely to be easy to please so it can claim a diplomatic success with Egypt.

Of course, I will have plenty of time to revise my analysis as the campaign develops. But the key factor that would soundly defeat the Brotherhood–unity and good organization on the liberal side—-just isn’t there. As usual, note that literally none of the points suggested above has appeared in a mass media determined to prove that there’s nothing to worry about.

Methodology: Taking the Newsweek poll, I’ve recalculated by dropping the no opinion and “other” categories as well as the support for parties with less than 5 percent. I assume that small party votes will be largely wasted and that undecided voters will choose along the same lines as decided voters.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports.

Libyan Rebels, Egyptian “Democracy” Become Main Weapons’ Suppliers for Terrorist Hamas

By Barry Rubin

As I predicted in early February, it is now clear that Egypt no longer tries seriously to stop weapons and terrorists and money from flowing into the Hamas arsenals in the Gaza Strip. Western newspaper headline statements by the military that it will keep the treaty with Israel but Egypt is already an ally of Hamas.

Haaretz reports:

“Egyptian security forces’ diminished control in Sinai has allowed the Palestinians to exponentially increase their weapons smuggling into Gaza, senior Israeli defense officials say. In the past few months, Hamas has acquired improved high-trajectory rockets, ready-made explosive devices, anti-tank missiles and possibly anti-aircraft missiles, the sources told Ha’aretz….”

“Former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter told Ha’aretz: “The Sinai went from being an area through which they smuggle weapons to an area through which they simply transfer weapons….No Egyptian security official dares to confront the Bedouin anymore.” Dichter said parts of the steel fence on the Rafah border, which Egypt began to construct last year, were already being dismantled by the Bedouin. He said Iran and Hamas want to concentrate large stores of weapons in Gaza and, when the opportunity arises, to deliver them to the West Bank.

But there’s more! The article continues:

“After the Libyan army lost control of vast weapons stores in the east of the country, local arms dealers made contact with Gaza smugglers, and new weapons began to flow by a much shorter and easier route.”

In other words, the Libyan rebels capture Libyan army weapons, then sell them to arms dealers who sell them to Hamas.

Do you know what that means? It means that the NATO and U.S.-backed Libyan rebels have now become the main source of arms for Hamas.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com
 

Egypt’s Religious Establishment Takes On the Muslim Brotherhood

By Barry Rubin



In a major new development, an Islamic force has arisen to challenge the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and support a more moderate regime in that country. This is a surprising opponent but the only one that could be of significance: al-Azhar University. Why is Egypt’s Islamic establishment taking on Egypt’s Islamists? Simple: survival and self-interest.

The prestigious al-Azhar is a conservative traditionalist institution that has been dominated by Egypt’s regime and used to oppose revolutionary Islamists. The Egyptian government decided who would run al-Azhar, who would be the country’s chief mufti (authority on Islamic law), who would preach in the mosques, who could build a mosque, and what clerics could appear on television and other media. If you wanted to build a career as an important Islamic cleric in Egypt you needed to get the rulers to like you. Their Islamist critics called them “parrots,” not only because they repeated the government line but also because a parrot is used like the English word, “bird-brained.”

Over the years, however, the establishment has made concessions to the new wave of radical interpretations. For the last few months, following Mubarak’s downfall, the al-Azhar leadership appeared ready to cut its own deal with the Brotherhood.

But the Brotherhood pushed too hard, demanding a totally new leadership for Egypt’s religious institutions. Facing a choice between resistance and total surrender (getting fired and perhaps facing a firing squad), al-Azhar’s heads decided to oppose the fundamental transformation of Egyptian society by the Brotherhood.

Thus, al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyib, whose resignation the Brotherhood had demanded, has issued a declaration on Egypt’s future favoring a “modern” and “democratic nation-state” based on a constitution including rights for women, checks and balances among governmental institutions, freedom of speech, and other such things.

Tayyib is allied with Egypt’s other leading official cleric, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa. Both men were closely associated with the Mubarak regime, so a sweeping change in religious institutions would get them fired and possibly even facing legal charges under a Brotherhood-dominated government.

There are lots of subtleties in the statement that hint at opposition to an Islamist state, total Sharia law, and a caliphate. It puts al-Azhar into an alliance with democratic reformers and nationalists against the Brotherhood and its even more extreme allies.

Obviously, one shouldn’t romanticize an Islamic establishment that served the dictatorship and is not exactly liberal. This is merely an alliance of convenience for senior clerics acting out of self-interest. For example, one of the main provisions of al-Azhar’s political declaration is to maintain the university’s independence rather than, as the Brotherhood proposes, subordinate it to a president and parliament in which the Brotherhood will be very powerful.

Another element here is the conflict between the credentialed Muslim clerics and the self-taught preachers who often play a leading role in the revolutionary groups. The al-Azhar statement says that only licensed clerics can produce religious rulings.

The Muslim establishment is preferable to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafists. Al-Azhar has thrown down the gauntlet. If the Brotherhood and its allies win parliament there will definitely be a thorough purge of the religious hierarchy. If not, the anti-Islamists will have to make concessions to the official clerics to “prove” their pious credentials by making Egypt somewhat more Islamic than it has been for the last 60 years.

To read more about these issues and their historic background, Noha el-Hennawy has written a really excellent survey.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

Thanks To Barack Obama Egypt Is The New Iran

By Barry Rubin

1. How Egypt is the New Iran

To put it simply, what has happened in Egypt is not just the undoing of the “Mubarak regime” but the undoing of the “Sadat regime,” that is, repealing the revolution Anwar al-Sadat made in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Sadat changed Egypt’s course from a radical state trying to destabilize other Arab countries, destroy Israel, and oppose U.S. interests. He deemphasized spreading revolution, made peace with Israel, and allied Egypt with the United States.

Now, with help from President Barack Obama, those processes have been undone. Egypt will return to the pre-Sadat era to support radical forces, try to wipe Israel off the map, and oppose U.S. interests.

According to a recent poll, 65 percent of Egyptians said they supported the revolution because of economic reasons; only 19 percent cited lack of democracy. Eighty percent of Egyptians say they believe their economic situation will improve in the next year. But it won't. Foreign investment won’t risk sending money to Egypt; tourists won't risk going.

When Arab governments can't provide cheap bread they turn to cheaper hatred and foreign adventures. The only question is the relative proportion of radical nationalism and Islamism there will be in that mix. The mass media will discover this in September. Yet it is obvious in June.

Egypt’s transformation will be for today what Iran’s meant for the last thirty years. Inasmuch as U.S. influence had an effect, Jimmy Carter’s incompetence helped give us Islamist Iran, Barack Obama’s incompetence and ideology helped give us radical (perhaps Islamist) Egypt.

2. Egyptian "Moderate" Leader: We Don't Want to Fight Israel; We Just Have To.

And what about the Facebook kid moderates? One of their main leaders, Ahmed Maher, gave a talk at MIT on April 29. He said, according to the translation:

“We do not want to have any problems or war with anyone. But there are things we cannot ignore. There are people beside [neighboring} us being oppressed and killed. And they have been treated very harshly, Palestine. We cannot remain silent about something like this."

In fact, though, the translation was wrong. He used the word “ibada,” which doesn’t mean “oppressed and killed” it means “genocide.”

This mistranslation softens the point and the extreme hatred even Egyptian “moderates” have toward Israel. But let’s leave that aside to consider what Maher’s saying:

We don’t want conflict or war with our neighbors BUT there’s genocide next door and so….

If you believe genocide is being committed next door one must act, right? If the United States went to war to “protect” Libyans; how can Egypt not do so to save fellow Arabs and Muslims from being murdered a few miles away?

Thirty years after the Egypt-Israel peace treaty; eighteen years after Israel agreed to the Palestinian Authority ruling almost all West Bank/Gaza Palestinians;  and six years after Israel withdrew from all of the Gaza Strip, the basic Egyptian moderate's view of Israel has not changed one bit.

A group that openly proclaims it wants to kill all Jews (genocide, ibada) rules the Gaza Strip. It violently represses any opposition, helps to expel all of the Christians there, teaches children that they should grow up to be terrorists and kill Jews, breaks a functioning ceasefire and openly attacks Israel militarily. Israel defends itself. But to this Egyptian moderate (whose statement on Israel the audience at MIT applauded wildly) Israel is supposedly the one committing genocide.

Why should Israel's giving up all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem have any more effect than Israel leaving the Sinai Penninsula, the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and the populated portions of the West Bank? And how can anyone dare assert that doing so would end the conflict without even having the decency to deal with these facts?


Contemplate those three paragraphs before advocating the idea that more Israeli concessions will bring peace.

This is no abstraction. After September, Egypt will have a radical, possibly Islamist parliament. Before the year’s end it will have a radical, possibly Islamist, president.

--What hope is there for the 30-year-old Egypt-Israel peace treaty?

--Will the U.S. government recognize and do something about it if/when Egypt stops honoring the peace treaty (whether or not it is explicitly announced?

--If Hamas attacks Israel again (inevitable) will Egypt join in the war?

--Will Egypt let thousands of terrorists and volunteers cross into Gaza to fight? Weapons to flow freely from Iran and Syria? Huge amounts of money to go into Gaza to finance the war?

--Will Egypt let—or just not try too hard to stop—terrorists crossing the Egypt-Israel border to wage attacks, thus possibly triggering an Egypt-Israel war?

OBAMA AND EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY ADDRESS NONE OF THOSE ISSUES; THE MASS MEDIA DOESN'T DISCUSS THEM. 

3. So Who Are the Good Guys in Egypt?

A star is born and her name is Yasmine el-Rashidi. She’s written an E-book on Egypt’s revolution. Her article is featured in the New York Review of Books. El-Rashidi is good at describing conditions in Egypt. Her article begins:

“On a recent afternoon...in a busy downtown Cairo street, armed men exchanged gunfire, threw rocks and Molotov cocktails, and freely wielded knives in broad daylight. The two-hour fight, which began as an attempt by some shop-owners to extort the customers of others, left 89 wounded and many stores destroyed. In the new Egypt, incidents like this are becoming commonplace. On many nights I go to bed to the sound of gunfire….”

“Even more worrying, it seems increasingly clear that a variety of groups have been encouraging the violence….There have been a series of attacks on Copts, and the perpetrators seem to include hardline Islamists (often referred to as Salafis), remnants of the former regime, and even, indirectly, some elements of the military now in charge, who have allowed these attacks to play out—all groups that in some way have an interest in disrupting a smooth transition to a freely elected civil government and democratic state.”

The second paragraph is a typical view hinting at a conspiracy rather than facing the reality that Muslim militants have long hated Christians and that preachers and key Islamic texts incite that violence.

If any Arabs are facing "ibada" it isn't the Palestinians, it's the Christians of Egypt, and also the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Pakistan, and several other places.

At any rate, el-Rashid shows she’s sophisticated by not blaming Zionist and American agents. Many or most Egyptians will do so. Indeed, in one of the first talk-backs to her article an Arab reader says this instability is being promoted by the United States, Israel, and the Gulf states (i.e. Saudi Arabia).

So who are the good guys? El Rashid proposes a candidate: the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, it genuinely does want a smooth transition to an elected government since they’re the ones who’ll be elected. In her long article, El-Rashid only mentions the Muslim Brotherhood to praise it as being moderate and a force advocating tolerance.

Yet the Brotherhood is allied with the “radicals.” The two groups work together and their differences are merely tactical, not strategic.

What's emerging in many places as the new line among Western media and experts:

Al-Qaida, Salafi extremists, bad!

Hamas, Syrian regime, Muslim Brotherhood, good!

We’re already hearing that theme regarding the Gaza Strip and as a rationale for opposing a revolution in Syria. Perhaps that’s what they’ll tell us after the Brotherhood emerges as the most powerful bloc in Egypt.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

Read It Now: The Possible/Probable Major International Crisis for 2012

By Barry Rubin

Save this note. Last year I predicted that Egypt's instability might well be the big story of 2011. Why wait until December?

The central scenario for the Middle East in 2012:

Hamas attacks Israel with mortars, rockets, a few missiles, and a few attempts at cross-border attacks. Israel counterattacks into the Gaza Strip.

What does Egypt do?

A. Egypt with President Amr Mousa and parliament with Islamist (Muslim Brotherhood plus Salafist) majority or at least a radical nationalist-Islamist majority.

B. Egypt with President Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh of the Muslim Brotherhood with Islamist majority in parliament or at least a radical nationalist-Islamist majority.

There will be a great temptation for such a government, in either case, to join the war, setting the entire region ablaze.

Why wouldn't Egypt do so?

A. The Egyptian army thinks it would lose. Then persuades the government to keep out. Pragmatism over ideology.

B. The Egyptian government doesn't want to lose U.S. aid money. Pragmatism over ideology.

Problems with these constraints:

A. Radical nationalists and Islamists are not known for putting accurate calculations of military forces or money above ideology. See, for example, Egypt in 1967 starting a war with Israel; Iraq invading Iran and then Kuwait; Iran taking U.S. hostages and thus throwing away U.S. military aid; Afghan Taliban backing September 11 attack, etc.

B. Islamists especially believe in the power of their Allah-allied ideology to overcome any material factors.

C. Even if Egypt lost the war the regime would benefit in terms of popularity.

D. The regime would (wrongly) believe that it would draw in other countries thus changing the balance of forces and beginning a series of wars culminating in Israel's destruction. It would be encouraged by massive pro-Egypt rallies in Damascus, Amman, and other Arab cities. Slogans include, "With blood and fire we redeem you oh Jerusalem!" "Jews remember Khaibar, the army of Muhammad is coming!" And various anti-American slogans. Possible attacks on U.S. embassies.

E. Radical nationalists and Islamists believe America is already their enemy, so what's to lose?

The fact that the Egyptian army's wealth and privileges are largely based on the U.S. aid is the main defense against this scenario. But will it be sufficient?


How would the U.S. government respond?

A. President Barack Obama warns Egypt that breaking the U.S.-guaranteed Egypt-Israel peace treaty would bring a strong military response from America, an immediate aid cut-off, sanctions on Egypt, full U.S. aid to Israel, and possible U.S. military action against Egypt.

What? Oh, sorry, I was daydreaming for a moment. Let's start that section over again....

How would the U.S. government respond?

President Obama would make a speech, call for a solution of the Israel-Palestinian issue, express his admiration for Islam, stress the need for further study, and play golf.

Have I left out anything?

I'm not saying this will definitely happen. Hamas might decide to delay seeking a confrontation; Egypt's government might content itself with letting arms flow to Hamas and Egyptian volunteers flow into Hamas's ranks.


I'm saying this could happen. It is a good idea to plan on how to handle such a crisis. It is even a better idea to stop such a scenario from happening at all.

And here's an Egyptian demonstration outside Israel's embassy. Today.



Don't see any police protecting the embassy, do you?


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.