Toward a New American Policy. By Daniel C. Kurtzer. The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, February 10, 2013.
Kurtzer:
The
United States has invested heavily in Middle East peacemaking for decades.
While the strategic goal has been to achieve a peace settlement, the United
States has tended to focus on the essentially tactical objective of bringing
about face-to-face negotiations between the parties. With some exceptions—for
example, the Clinton Parameters in 2000 and the George W. Bush letter to Ariel
Sharon in 2004—administrations have eschewed articulating positions on the
substantive outcome the United States seeks. Because of the serious problems
confronting the region and the peace process today, it is time for the United
States to adopt a new policy, a new strategy, and new tactics.
Why Tilt at Middle East Windmills?
This
essay argues for the development of a new, comprehensive American policy and a
sustained strategy for advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It
advocates for American creativity, flexibility, and initiative in crafting the
tactics required to engage the parties and help them approach the required
mutual concessions. This argument does not rest on either the inevitability or
even the likelihood of early success, nor on the readiness of the parties to
overcome legitimate concerns and powerful internal opposition to confront the
tough decisions required to make peace. Indeed, there are strong reasons to
avoid working on the peace process at all.
However,
doing nothing or continuing down the same path that the United States has
traveled before—simply trying to get to negotiations—not only will not succeed,
it will deepen the challenges the United States faces in the Middle East and it
will exacerbate the very conflict that the United States has tried to resolve
over many decades. There are hard realities in the Middle East and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict that some try to ignore or argue away. It is time
to confront those realities and develop a reasonable but also bold policy and
diplomatic strategy worthy of American values and interests. Developing a sound
policy, a sophisticated strategy, and appropriate tactics to advance the peace
process is not tilting at windmills. It is doing what the United States has
shown itself capable of doing in the past to advance prospects for peace.
The
idea of a two-state solution—the cornerstone of American policy in the
region—is now on life support, and its chances of surviving cannot improve
without active diplomacy. Not only are governments losing interest, but more
importantly, public opinion is losing confidence that such an outcome is
achievable. The issues in the peace process are complex, and American policy
needs to address this complexity, whether or not there is a promise of
immediate success.
Current
upheavals in the region argue for investing in Israeli-Palestinian conflict
resolution. Hunkering down or managing the status quo is not a policy when it
assures the United States less leverage and less support for our policies
elsewhere in the region. With growing skepticism about and opposition to American
policy in the Middle East, a serious effort to advance peace can have a
transformative effect on our standing and credibility.
There
is no magic formula for success, whether it involves intense American diplomacy
or conflict management. Periods of engagement have often ended in frustration,
violence, and war. Trying to manage the conflict—for example, by focusing
solely on improving the situation on the ground—is not only a recipe for
inaction; it is actually far more dangerous than it appears.
Status
quos are not static. They either improve or they worsen. The status quo in the
West Bank appears to be improving, evidenced by economic activity in
Palestinian cities, the relative absence of terrorism, and several important
signs of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, for example, in security and in
economic affairs. This is, however, a misleading picture. Israeli settlement
activity has accelerated in recent years, and the Israeli government’s active
support and funding of settlement infrastructure have skyrocketed. As more
settlers move into the occupied territories, the area of the prospective
Palestinian state is shrinking, becoming less contiguous and less viable. To
believe that Palestinians will accept a state limited to their main population
centers—so-called Areas A and B in the West Bank—is delusionary. Calm on the
surface masks growing frustration and anger below. Any spark can ignite a
conflagration that will consume the status quo.
More
fundamentally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drains energy from the parties
and from the United States to deal with more pressing issues in the region, in
particular, Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yitzhak Rabin recognized this in 1992,
when he reportedly told then-President George H. W. Bush that Israel required
comprehensive peace with all its neighbors in order to free its energies to
prepare for the emerging threat from Iran, which Rabin assessed would be
evident within ten years. In 2002, Saudi King Abdullah and other Arab leaders
also recognized this reality when they adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, a
cosmic change in the position of Arabs toward Israel and the conflict. Arabs no
longer insisted on dealing with the “problem” of 1948, that is, the very
existence of the State of Israel, but rather promised Israel peace, security,
and recognition if the 1967 occupation of Arab territories and the persistence
of the Palestinian issue could be resolved. Iran was as much on the minds of
Abdullah and other Arab leaders in 2002 as it was on Rabin’s in 1992.
So,
while some argue that it is a waste of time for the United States to invest in
the peace process, the opposite is really true. Such an investment will pay
dividends if it moves the conflict toward resolution and allows the region to
act in concert to deny Iran its power ambitions. Doing nothing, or doing too
little, is a prescription for trouble.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Do Palestinians Deserve a State? By Dan Calic.
Do Palestinians Deserve a State? By Dan Calic. Ynet News, February 13, 2013.
Anybody Listening? Netanyahu’s Not the Obstacle to Two-State Solution. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 12, 2013.
Anybody Listening? Netanyahu’s Not the Obstacle to Two-State Solution. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 12, 2013.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Historian David McCullough on Work and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Historian David McCullough on Work and the Pursuit of Happiness. By Joseph Sunde. Acton Institute, February 11, 2013.
Life’s Work: David McCullough. Interview by Scott Berinato. Harvard Business Review, January/February 2013.
Life’s Work: David McCullough. Interview by Scott Berinato. Harvard Business Review, January/February 2013.
Muslim Brotherhood: Blaming “el Yahud.” By Zvi Mazel.
Blaming “el Yahud.” By Zvi Mazel. Jerusalem Post, February 7, 2013.
With the Muslim Brotherhood in power, anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Mazel:
Suddenly the world is discovering that the leaders of Egypt are not afraid to voice their hatred for the Jews and the Jewish state openly.
America is asking for clarifications regarding a blatantly anti-Semitic outburst from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Essam Erian, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has called on former Egyptian Jews living in Israel to come back to make room for returning Palestinians after the demise of the Jewish state, which he believes will happen within 10 years.
Erian thus puts into words the deep-seated anti-Semitism of the movement he represents: There cannot be a Jewish state, and Jews cannot aspire to be more than second-class citizens in Muslim countries, dhimmis subject to Shari’a (Islamic) law and living under the protection of Islam only as long as they accept their inferior status. In the past, they and other non- Muslim residents had to pay a special poll tax, the jizya; there are now calls in Egypt to revive that tax, which was abolished in the late 19th century by a much-weakened Ottoman empire.
Historically, Muslim hatred toward the Jews is rooted in the latter’s refusal to accept Islam and its preeminence over all other religions, as expressed in the shahada, the credo of the faithful: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”; Muhammad is the last of the prophets and ushers in an era in which Islam will rule the world through peaceful means – or through war.
Islam claims for its own both the Old and New testaments, and Muhammad was incensed that the Jews, who had introduced monotheism to the world, did not recognize him and accept his teachings. One can find in the Koran far more attacks against Jews than against Christians, who did not acknowledge Islam either. There are numerous verses vilifying the Jews, calling for their abasement and humiliation and, for instance, branding them as sons of pigs and apes, having to bear the wrath of Allah and being doomed to hell on Judgment Day unless they accept the true faith.
The Muslim Brotherhood gave a new slant to the age-old hatred. Hassan Banna, who founded the movement in 1928, transformed what was a “passive” phenomenon into a virulent doctrine, part of both his vision to restore the caliphate and his fight against the British occupation and Western influence on his country.
The hand of the Jews was seen everywhere; they were allegedly attacking Islam and targeting the whole world.
Adopting the message and model of Christian anti-Semitism, the Brothers initiated a program of incitement against Jews living in Egypt and fomented pogroms against the old Jewish quarter of Cairo. In the 1930s and ’40s, Banna developed his theories in countless writings, declaring the Jews the agents of change and Westernization, and responsible for the decline of the West as well as of Islam.
There is an inherent contradiction there, since the Brotherhood is fighting the West and its democratic values, which are alien to Islam. However, Banna corresponded with Hitler; there were contacts between the Brotherhood and the Nazis, and the Brothers published a translation of Mein Kampf under the title My Jihad. Caricatures from Der Stürmer and Nazi texts were translated and printed in their publications.
The Brothers found willing allies in the strong German community living in Cairo in the ’30s, which included a number of Nazi agents.
Those agents also helped the new pro-Nazi party, Misr Elfatat (Young Egypt), established at that time to destabilize the regime and fight the Jews.
With the onset of World War II, Banna offered his services to Hitler while asking him to help Egypt in its fight against the British and the Jews. The clandestine terror organization he set up passed along information on the movements of British forces. A young officer by the name of Anwar Sadat was a member of the organization. King Farouk’s secret services ultimately found and killed Banna in 1949.
THE MAN who set down the religious basis for the fight against the Jews and developed its propaganda themes was Sayyid Qutb, often called the father of the Brotherhood ideology and grandfather of present-day jihadi extremists. Former president Gamal Abdul Nasser had him sentenced to death by hanging, and Qutb was executed in 1966.
In his best-known work, Milestones, he wrote that Jews were working to erase “all limitations imposed by faith and religion so that Jews may penetrate the body politics of the whole world and may be free to perpetuate their evil designs. At the top of the list of those activities is usury, the aim of which is that all the wealth of mankind end up in the hands of Jewish financial institutions.”
He also wrote an essay called “Our Battle against the Jews,” in which he states, “The Jews have confronted Islam with enmity from the moment the Islamic state was established in Medina . . . the Muslim community continues to suffer the same Jewish machinations and double-dealing which discomfited the early Muslims . . . This is a war which has not been extinguished . . . for close on 14 centuries its blaze has raged in all the corners of the earth and continues to this moment.”
He added that “the Jews have installed . . . a massive army of agents in the form of professors, philosophers, doctors, researchers... some even from the ranks of the Muslim religious authorities . . . intending to break the creed of the Muslims by weakening the Shari’a in many ways... with this and that they fulfill the ancient rule of the Jews.”
And there is a reference to the well known historical fake, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society. Principal among them are Marx, Freud, Durkheim and the Jew Jean-Paul Sartre.”
One could go on and on. Qutb even wrote that Allah had sent Hitler to punish the Jews.
IT WOULD be impossible to enumerate the countless books, essays, pamphlets and fatwas that the Muslim Brothers have published against the Jews – and are still publishing.
Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf Kardawi, who lives in Qatar, is the Brotherhood’s main theologian. He attacks the Jews relentlessly; in an Al Jazeera interview on January 28, 2009, he declared, “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. . . . The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. . . . Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”
Interestingly the Koran acknowledges the claim of the Jews to the Holy Land. However, Caliph Omar Khattab, who conquered the Holy Land, subsequently decreed that any land conquered by Islam would henceforth be forever part of the Islamic caliphate. Therefore, the rebirth of Israel was considered unacceptable to Arabs and Muslims – all the more because they were used to seeing Jews as a subservient minority and could not adjust to the new reality in which the Jews were “tearing away” a territory deep inside Muslim lands.
The fact that the small Jewish state defeated the armies of five Arab states during the 1948 War of Independence was seen as an added insult, and anchored hatred of the Jews in Arab and Islamic culture.
In Egypt and in the Arab world as a whole, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are generally seen as one and the same. And since the Jews were cursed by the Prophet, all their deeds are evil, and the creation of the State of Israel is worse. Egyptian media – the written press, television and radio – use “the Zionist enemy” and “the Zionist entity” interchangeably with “Jews” and “Israel.”
When former president Hosni Mubarak took office, Egyptian anti-Semitism included all the above-mentioned elements. The new president did not try to curb this phenomenon, and incitement went on in the media and in the mosques, though they were under state control.
For instance, it was forbidden at the time to criticize the president or the army, or to mention the existing discrimination against the Coptic Christian minority, but one could attack the Jews at will.
Thus there was a daily outpouring of hate against the Jews and against Israel; it was an unwritten rule that no item presenting Israel and/or the Jews in a favorable light could be aired. Whether it was planned at state level or not, this policy was intended to demonize the Jews and Israel and to bring about the delegitimization of the Jewish state and prevent normalization between the two countries.
News was deliberately distorted. Following the 2001 terror attack at the popular Dolphinarium nightclub in Tel Aviv, headlines in the state-owned Al Gomhuria daily screamed, “Pieces of Israeli flesh were thrown in the air as a result of the heroic operation.”
Then, too, state news agencies used various terms to avoid calling Israel by its name: “the occupation,” “the Zionist entity” or “the Zionist enemy.” Israeli cities were called “settlements” wherever they were; reports would describe “a fedayeen operation in the Haifa settlement,” blunting the effect of a terror attack on a peaceful city in the heart of Israel.
Israelis are usually called “el Yahud,” the Jews. Whenever Israel replied to an accusation or tried to set the record straight, the Egyptian media used the word “alleges” to illustrate their rejection.
Editorials in the Egyptian media routinely accuse Jews of all crimes under the sun, including treacherous actions such as “infiltrating into Africa to incite Africans against Egypt.” A recurrent theme is making the Jews responsible for the ongoing struggle between Egypt and upper Nile countries regarding the distribution of the river’s waters.
Some editorials explain that the very existence of Israel is illegal and that the country should be eliminated.
Holocaust denial is the norm, though it takes different forms:
• Regarding the event itself, deniers say that it never happened; that there was something, but on a far smaller scale, and the Jews are deliberately inflating numbers; that Jews are exploiting the event. They ask why Arabs should have to pay for something that involved Europe and the Jews. In any case, they say, Jews are worse than Nazis.
• Caricatures show Palestinian women and small children confronted by soldiers with machine guns and steel helmets marked with the swastika to show how cruel they are. Other caricatures, similar to those of Der Stürmer, depict religious Jews with oversized noses killing Palestinian children.
• There are books, films and television series based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, showing the Jews as monsters, and on the books of European Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy and David Irving.
In addition, Koran verses and Hadith are used to demonstrate the wickedness of the Jews and the way they attacked Muhammad and Islam, as well as the dire fate awaiting them on Judgment Day.
ONE CANNOT minimize the impact of these concerted measures on the Egyptian public, which is deprived of objective information and led to accept a distorted picture.
Repeated protests from the Israeli government have met with the bland reply that the media in Egypt are free. Here are three outstanding examples:
• When Pope John Paul II visited Egypt in February 2000, a scathing February 26 editorial in the state-owned daily the Egyptian Gazette accused the church of having yielded to Israeli blackmail and American intervention in issuing the Vatican II document “acquitting the Jews from the charge of killing Jesus.”
• In 2009, a self-proclaimed historian, Dr. Abdel Wahab Messiri, published his Encyclopedia of the Jews, Judaism and Zionism – eight volumes totaling 3,000 pages. In a television interview, he explained that he had undertaken this work to demonstrate that there was no such thing as a Jewish people. He received an award from Mubarak for his efforts.
• When Shimon Peres visited Egypt in April 2001, a photomontage in the Nasserist weekly Al Arabi showed him wearing a Gestapo uniform.
Unfortunately the fall of Mubarak did not usher in a new era. Protesters brandished pictures of the president with a Star of David to show that he was a puppet of the Jews. American journalist Laura Logan was assaulted in Tahrir Square by a mob yelling, “Jew! Jew!” Focus on Israel and the Jews grew as the Muslim Brothers emerged as the leaders of the revolution, yet the West, blinded by what it saw as a spring of hope and democracy, was reluctant to mention the fact. In January 2012, the Brothers made an all-out – and successful – effort to block the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Abu Hatzera, a Jewish holy man buried in a small village not far from Alexandria – a pilgrimage that attracts Jews from all over the world.
Gamal Hashmet, a newly elected parliament member from the Brotherhood’s not-so-aptly named Freedom and Justice Party, proclaimed that for the Israelis to come would be “suicidal,” adding that “the Abu Hatzera problem is that of a people who rejects normalization [with Israel] and the presence of any Zionist on Egyptian soil. . . . No one can force the inhabitants of Damanhour to accept normalization.”
The Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces ordered all Egyptian representations not to issue visas for the pilgrimage.
Now that the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, is in power, Islamic anti-Semitism, which is at the core of the group’s doctrine, has become part of the regime’s ideology. Though there is a measure of continuity in anti-Semitism from Mubarak to Morsi, the impact is now far greater.
Clerics, feeling that they have the support of the government and can look forward to the elimination of the Jewish state in the near future as a step toward the establishment of a renewed caliphate, rant against the Jews on a daily basis from their pulpits in mosques or in the media. Since he became president, Morsi has been careful not to voice openly his hatred for the Jews and for Israel, and when confronted on some of his more extreme outbursts – such as those quoted in The New York Times this past January 14 (see below) – he declares blandly that they were “taken out of context.”
But the Brothers had no such qualms. Already during the campaign for the parliamentary elections, they had organized a mass rally “to fight the Judaization of Jerusalem” at Al-Azhar University.
On November 25, 2011, 5,000 protesters heard Sheikh Azhar, who does not belong to the Brotherhood, warn that Al-Aksa Mosque was under attack by the Jews. “We shall not let them Judaize Al Quds,” he declared, adding that the Jews had attempted at the dawn of Islam to embroil the followers of Muhammad in civil war, and “today they are trying to prevent the union of all Muslims.”
Speakers for the Brotherhood called for a jihad to free Palestine and quoted a famous hadith: “The day will come when we shall kill all the Jews, and even the trees and the stones will cry out, ‘There is a Jew hiding behind us, come and kill him!’” This event will be remembered as one of the strongest recent demonstrations of hatred by the Muslim Brothers.
For all his caginess, Morsi himself swore, during the campaign, to deliver Jerusalem and listened with apparent complacency to the violent diatribes of local clerics.
The aforementioned New York Times article quoted him as saying Muslims needed to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for Jews and Zionists.”
The Times added that in a television interview months later, the same leader had described Zionists as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”
After Morsi’s election, there was a sharp increase in attacks against the Jews in the Egyptian media from intellectuals, journalists and clerics. The most extreme can be found on the site of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
MEANWHILE, THE Brotherhood is openly pursuing its religious aims while allegedly leaving Morsi to lead the country “pragmatically.” However, all the members of the ruling Freedom and Justice Party are senior members of the movement. Last October, movement leader Mohamed Badie, who holds the title of “supreme guide,” renewed the tradition of Koran and Shari’a teachings that Banna had initiated and that had stopped with his death.
In one of his first lessons, he called on all Muslims to conquer Jerusalem by jihad, since according to him, it was not possible to do so through negotiations or the UN. He added that it was the duty of every Muslim to do so.
Badie alleged that “the Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places, including their own.” In June of the same year, he stated that “Allah had warned us about the treachery of the Jews and their dangerous role in fomenting wars. The war in Sudan and the partition of the country is their work, as is the fight between Ramallah and Gaza.”
Hatred toward the Jews sometimes takes the strangest forms. Thus on November 5, Freedom and Justice, the party’s official newspaper, quoted a learned sheikh as saying, “If Islam had been fated to disappear from the world, then it would have disappeared the day rose the star of the accursed Jew [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk . . . who committed the greatest crime against the Caliphate.... But it did not happen, because the Caliphate still burned bright in the heart of the Muslims.”
During the mass protests in Tahrir Square during the IDF’s Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip, Brotherhood fighters were chanting, “Give us guns, give us guns and send us to Gaza.”
Jews were also a recurrent theme during the campaign of the referendum on the constitution. The preacher of one of the largest suburbs of Cairo called on the faithful to go and vote, since the Jews were trying to destroy Egypt by paying huge sums of money to Egyptians so they would vote against the constitution.
Last year, the Egyptian pavilion at the Frankfurt book fair, the largest in the world of publishing, displayed a number of anti-Semitic books with lurid covers announcing their content. The Simon Wiesenthal Center protested, but to no avail.
ANOTHER EXPRESSION of the boundless hatred of Israel and the Jews in present-day Egypt was evident in an episode that took place last August. Well-known actor Iman Kandil was invited to a television studio for what he had been told was an interview with a German television show. There, the pretty Egyptian interviewer told him it was in fact for Israeli television. It was a joke, of course, but Kandil did not wait for an explanation and reacted violently, pushing her against the wall and hitting her while cursing until the penny dropped. He did not really apologize, and explained that it was her fault.
The same thing happened with an actress, who also started shouting that Allah cursed worms and moths as he cursed the Jews.
Anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture, among both devout and secular people.
Unfortunately, as Islam is on the rise both in Arab countries and in the West, no change for the better can be expected – unless the West sits up and takes notice at long last, and decides to do something about it.
With the Muslim Brotherhood in power, anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Mazel:
Suddenly the world is discovering that the leaders of Egypt are not afraid to voice their hatred for the Jews and the Jewish state openly.
America is asking for clarifications regarding a blatantly anti-Semitic outburst from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Essam Erian, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has called on former Egyptian Jews living in Israel to come back to make room for returning Palestinians after the demise of the Jewish state, which he believes will happen within 10 years.
Erian thus puts into words the deep-seated anti-Semitism of the movement he represents: There cannot be a Jewish state, and Jews cannot aspire to be more than second-class citizens in Muslim countries, dhimmis subject to Shari’a (Islamic) law and living under the protection of Islam only as long as they accept their inferior status. In the past, they and other non- Muslim residents had to pay a special poll tax, the jizya; there are now calls in Egypt to revive that tax, which was abolished in the late 19th century by a much-weakened Ottoman empire.
Historically, Muslim hatred toward the Jews is rooted in the latter’s refusal to accept Islam and its preeminence over all other religions, as expressed in the shahada, the credo of the faithful: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”; Muhammad is the last of the prophets and ushers in an era in which Islam will rule the world through peaceful means – or through war.
Islam claims for its own both the Old and New testaments, and Muhammad was incensed that the Jews, who had introduced monotheism to the world, did not recognize him and accept his teachings. One can find in the Koran far more attacks against Jews than against Christians, who did not acknowledge Islam either. There are numerous verses vilifying the Jews, calling for their abasement and humiliation and, for instance, branding them as sons of pigs and apes, having to bear the wrath of Allah and being doomed to hell on Judgment Day unless they accept the true faith.
The Muslim Brotherhood gave a new slant to the age-old hatred. Hassan Banna, who founded the movement in 1928, transformed what was a “passive” phenomenon into a virulent doctrine, part of both his vision to restore the caliphate and his fight against the British occupation and Western influence on his country.
The hand of the Jews was seen everywhere; they were allegedly attacking Islam and targeting the whole world.
Adopting the message and model of Christian anti-Semitism, the Brothers initiated a program of incitement against Jews living in Egypt and fomented pogroms against the old Jewish quarter of Cairo. In the 1930s and ’40s, Banna developed his theories in countless writings, declaring the Jews the agents of change and Westernization, and responsible for the decline of the West as well as of Islam.
There is an inherent contradiction there, since the Brotherhood is fighting the West and its democratic values, which are alien to Islam. However, Banna corresponded with Hitler; there were contacts between the Brotherhood and the Nazis, and the Brothers published a translation of Mein Kampf under the title My Jihad. Caricatures from Der Stürmer and Nazi texts were translated and printed in their publications.
The Brothers found willing allies in the strong German community living in Cairo in the ’30s, which included a number of Nazi agents.
Those agents also helped the new pro-Nazi party, Misr Elfatat (Young Egypt), established at that time to destabilize the regime and fight the Jews.
With the onset of World War II, Banna offered his services to Hitler while asking him to help Egypt in its fight against the British and the Jews. The clandestine terror organization he set up passed along information on the movements of British forces. A young officer by the name of Anwar Sadat was a member of the organization. King Farouk’s secret services ultimately found and killed Banna in 1949.
THE MAN who set down the religious basis for the fight against the Jews and developed its propaganda themes was Sayyid Qutb, often called the father of the Brotherhood ideology and grandfather of present-day jihadi extremists. Former president Gamal Abdul Nasser had him sentenced to death by hanging, and Qutb was executed in 1966.
In his best-known work, Milestones, he wrote that Jews were working to erase “all limitations imposed by faith and religion so that Jews may penetrate the body politics of the whole world and may be free to perpetuate their evil designs. At the top of the list of those activities is usury, the aim of which is that all the wealth of mankind end up in the hands of Jewish financial institutions.”
He also wrote an essay called “Our Battle against the Jews,” in which he states, “The Jews have confronted Islam with enmity from the moment the Islamic state was established in Medina . . . the Muslim community continues to suffer the same Jewish machinations and double-dealing which discomfited the early Muslims . . . This is a war which has not been extinguished . . . for close on 14 centuries its blaze has raged in all the corners of the earth and continues to this moment.”
He added that “the Jews have installed . . . a massive army of agents in the form of professors, philosophers, doctors, researchers... some even from the ranks of the Muslim religious authorities . . . intending to break the creed of the Muslims by weakening the Shari’a in many ways... with this and that they fulfill the ancient rule of the Jews.”
And there is a reference to the well known historical fake, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society. Principal among them are Marx, Freud, Durkheim and the Jew Jean-Paul Sartre.”
One could go on and on. Qutb even wrote that Allah had sent Hitler to punish the Jews.
IT WOULD be impossible to enumerate the countless books, essays, pamphlets and fatwas that the Muslim Brothers have published against the Jews – and are still publishing.
Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf Kardawi, who lives in Qatar, is the Brotherhood’s main theologian. He attacks the Jews relentlessly; in an Al Jazeera interview on January 28, 2009, he declared, “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. . . . The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. . . . Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”
Interestingly the Koran acknowledges the claim of the Jews to the Holy Land. However, Caliph Omar Khattab, who conquered the Holy Land, subsequently decreed that any land conquered by Islam would henceforth be forever part of the Islamic caliphate. Therefore, the rebirth of Israel was considered unacceptable to Arabs and Muslims – all the more because they were used to seeing Jews as a subservient minority and could not adjust to the new reality in which the Jews were “tearing away” a territory deep inside Muslim lands.
The fact that the small Jewish state defeated the armies of five Arab states during the 1948 War of Independence was seen as an added insult, and anchored hatred of the Jews in Arab and Islamic culture.
In Egypt and in the Arab world as a whole, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are generally seen as one and the same. And since the Jews were cursed by the Prophet, all their deeds are evil, and the creation of the State of Israel is worse. Egyptian media – the written press, television and radio – use “the Zionist enemy” and “the Zionist entity” interchangeably with “Jews” and “Israel.”
When former president Hosni Mubarak took office, Egyptian anti-Semitism included all the above-mentioned elements. The new president did not try to curb this phenomenon, and incitement went on in the media and in the mosques, though they were under state control.
For instance, it was forbidden at the time to criticize the president or the army, or to mention the existing discrimination against the Coptic Christian minority, but one could attack the Jews at will.
Thus there was a daily outpouring of hate against the Jews and against Israel; it was an unwritten rule that no item presenting Israel and/or the Jews in a favorable light could be aired. Whether it was planned at state level or not, this policy was intended to demonize the Jews and Israel and to bring about the delegitimization of the Jewish state and prevent normalization between the two countries.
News was deliberately distorted. Following the 2001 terror attack at the popular Dolphinarium nightclub in Tel Aviv, headlines in the state-owned Al Gomhuria daily screamed, “Pieces of Israeli flesh were thrown in the air as a result of the heroic operation.”
Then, too, state news agencies used various terms to avoid calling Israel by its name: “the occupation,” “the Zionist entity” or “the Zionist enemy.” Israeli cities were called “settlements” wherever they were; reports would describe “a fedayeen operation in the Haifa settlement,” blunting the effect of a terror attack on a peaceful city in the heart of Israel.
Israelis are usually called “el Yahud,” the Jews. Whenever Israel replied to an accusation or tried to set the record straight, the Egyptian media used the word “alleges” to illustrate their rejection.
Editorials in the Egyptian media routinely accuse Jews of all crimes under the sun, including treacherous actions such as “infiltrating into Africa to incite Africans against Egypt.” A recurrent theme is making the Jews responsible for the ongoing struggle between Egypt and upper Nile countries regarding the distribution of the river’s waters.
Some editorials explain that the very existence of Israel is illegal and that the country should be eliminated.
Holocaust denial is the norm, though it takes different forms:
• Regarding the event itself, deniers say that it never happened; that there was something, but on a far smaller scale, and the Jews are deliberately inflating numbers; that Jews are exploiting the event. They ask why Arabs should have to pay for something that involved Europe and the Jews. In any case, they say, Jews are worse than Nazis.
• Caricatures show Palestinian women and small children confronted by soldiers with machine guns and steel helmets marked with the swastika to show how cruel they are. Other caricatures, similar to those of Der Stürmer, depict religious Jews with oversized noses killing Palestinian children.
• There are books, films and television series based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, showing the Jews as monsters, and on the books of European Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy and David Irving.
In addition, Koran verses and Hadith are used to demonstrate the wickedness of the Jews and the way they attacked Muhammad and Islam, as well as the dire fate awaiting them on Judgment Day.
ONE CANNOT minimize the impact of these concerted measures on the Egyptian public, which is deprived of objective information and led to accept a distorted picture.
Repeated protests from the Israeli government have met with the bland reply that the media in Egypt are free. Here are three outstanding examples:
• When Pope John Paul II visited Egypt in February 2000, a scathing February 26 editorial in the state-owned daily the Egyptian Gazette accused the church of having yielded to Israeli blackmail and American intervention in issuing the Vatican II document “acquitting the Jews from the charge of killing Jesus.”
• In 2009, a self-proclaimed historian, Dr. Abdel Wahab Messiri, published his Encyclopedia of the Jews, Judaism and Zionism – eight volumes totaling 3,000 pages. In a television interview, he explained that he had undertaken this work to demonstrate that there was no such thing as a Jewish people. He received an award from Mubarak for his efforts.
• When Shimon Peres visited Egypt in April 2001, a photomontage in the Nasserist weekly Al Arabi showed him wearing a Gestapo uniform.
Unfortunately the fall of Mubarak did not usher in a new era. Protesters brandished pictures of the president with a Star of David to show that he was a puppet of the Jews. American journalist Laura Logan was assaulted in Tahrir Square by a mob yelling, “Jew! Jew!” Focus on Israel and the Jews grew as the Muslim Brothers emerged as the leaders of the revolution, yet the West, blinded by what it saw as a spring of hope and democracy, was reluctant to mention the fact. In January 2012, the Brothers made an all-out – and successful – effort to block the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Abu Hatzera, a Jewish holy man buried in a small village not far from Alexandria – a pilgrimage that attracts Jews from all over the world.
Gamal Hashmet, a newly elected parliament member from the Brotherhood’s not-so-aptly named Freedom and Justice Party, proclaimed that for the Israelis to come would be “suicidal,” adding that “the Abu Hatzera problem is that of a people who rejects normalization [with Israel] and the presence of any Zionist on Egyptian soil. . . . No one can force the inhabitants of Damanhour to accept normalization.”
The Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces ordered all Egyptian representations not to issue visas for the pilgrimage.
Now that the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, is in power, Islamic anti-Semitism, which is at the core of the group’s doctrine, has become part of the regime’s ideology. Though there is a measure of continuity in anti-Semitism from Mubarak to Morsi, the impact is now far greater.
Clerics, feeling that they have the support of the government and can look forward to the elimination of the Jewish state in the near future as a step toward the establishment of a renewed caliphate, rant against the Jews on a daily basis from their pulpits in mosques or in the media. Since he became president, Morsi has been careful not to voice openly his hatred for the Jews and for Israel, and when confronted on some of his more extreme outbursts – such as those quoted in The New York Times this past January 14 (see below) – he declares blandly that they were “taken out of context.”
But the Brothers had no such qualms. Already during the campaign for the parliamentary elections, they had organized a mass rally “to fight the Judaization of Jerusalem” at Al-Azhar University.
On November 25, 2011, 5,000 protesters heard Sheikh Azhar, who does not belong to the Brotherhood, warn that Al-Aksa Mosque was under attack by the Jews. “We shall not let them Judaize Al Quds,” he declared, adding that the Jews had attempted at the dawn of Islam to embroil the followers of Muhammad in civil war, and “today they are trying to prevent the union of all Muslims.”
Speakers for the Brotherhood called for a jihad to free Palestine and quoted a famous hadith: “The day will come when we shall kill all the Jews, and even the trees and the stones will cry out, ‘There is a Jew hiding behind us, come and kill him!’” This event will be remembered as one of the strongest recent demonstrations of hatred by the Muslim Brothers.
For all his caginess, Morsi himself swore, during the campaign, to deliver Jerusalem and listened with apparent complacency to the violent diatribes of local clerics.
The aforementioned New York Times article quoted him as saying Muslims needed to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for Jews and Zionists.”
The Times added that in a television interview months later, the same leader had described Zionists as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”
After Morsi’s election, there was a sharp increase in attacks against the Jews in the Egyptian media from intellectuals, journalists and clerics. The most extreme can be found on the site of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
MEANWHILE, THE Brotherhood is openly pursuing its religious aims while allegedly leaving Morsi to lead the country “pragmatically.” However, all the members of the ruling Freedom and Justice Party are senior members of the movement. Last October, movement leader Mohamed Badie, who holds the title of “supreme guide,” renewed the tradition of Koran and Shari’a teachings that Banna had initiated and that had stopped with his death.
In one of his first lessons, he called on all Muslims to conquer Jerusalem by jihad, since according to him, it was not possible to do so through negotiations or the UN. He added that it was the duty of every Muslim to do so.
Badie alleged that “the Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places, including their own.” In June of the same year, he stated that “Allah had warned us about the treachery of the Jews and their dangerous role in fomenting wars. The war in Sudan and the partition of the country is their work, as is the fight between Ramallah and Gaza.”
Hatred toward the Jews sometimes takes the strangest forms. Thus on November 5, Freedom and Justice, the party’s official newspaper, quoted a learned sheikh as saying, “If Islam had been fated to disappear from the world, then it would have disappeared the day rose the star of the accursed Jew [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk . . . who committed the greatest crime against the Caliphate.... But it did not happen, because the Caliphate still burned bright in the heart of the Muslims.”
During the mass protests in Tahrir Square during the IDF’s Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip, Brotherhood fighters were chanting, “Give us guns, give us guns and send us to Gaza.”
Jews were also a recurrent theme during the campaign of the referendum on the constitution. The preacher of one of the largest suburbs of Cairo called on the faithful to go and vote, since the Jews were trying to destroy Egypt by paying huge sums of money to Egyptians so they would vote against the constitution.
Last year, the Egyptian pavilion at the Frankfurt book fair, the largest in the world of publishing, displayed a number of anti-Semitic books with lurid covers announcing their content. The Simon Wiesenthal Center protested, but to no avail.
ANOTHER EXPRESSION of the boundless hatred of Israel and the Jews in present-day Egypt was evident in an episode that took place last August. Well-known actor Iman Kandil was invited to a television studio for what he had been told was an interview with a German television show. There, the pretty Egyptian interviewer told him it was in fact for Israeli television. It was a joke, of course, but Kandil did not wait for an explanation and reacted violently, pushing her against the wall and hitting her while cursing until the penny dropped. He did not really apologize, and explained that it was her fault.
The same thing happened with an actress, who also started shouting that Allah cursed worms and moths as he cursed the Jews.
Anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture, among both devout and secular people.
Unfortunately, as Islam is on the rise both in Arab countries and in the West, no change for the better can be expected – unless the West sits up and takes notice at long last, and decides to do something about it.
Will the al-Qaeda Affiliates Ousting Assad Turn to Israel Next? By Mitch Ginsburg.
Will the al-Qaeda affiliates ousting Assad turn to Israel next? By Mitch Ginsburg. The Times of Israel, February 10, 2013.
Jihadi warriors are fueling the violent rebellion in Syria. Some fear their successes are reviving wider regional ambitions.
Syria crisis: al-Qaida fighters revealing their true colours, rebels say. By Martin Chulov. The Guardian, January 17, 2013.
A schism is developing in northern Syria between jihadists and Free Syrian Army units, which threatens to pitch both groups against each other and open a new phase in the Syrian civil war.
Syria: how jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is taking over Syria’s revolution. By Ruth Sherlock. The Telegraph, February 8, 2013.
Aleppo has been plunged into despair. Riven with war, life in Syria’s most populous city has become a dog-eat-dog existence: a battle for survival in a place where the strong devour the weak.
Jihadi warriors are fueling the violent rebellion in Syria. Some fear their successes are reviving wider regional ambitions.
Syria crisis: al-Qaida fighters revealing their true colours, rebels say. By Martin Chulov. The Guardian, January 17, 2013.
A schism is developing in northern Syria between jihadists and Free Syrian Army units, which threatens to pitch both groups against each other and open a new phase in the Syrian civil war.
Syria: how jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is taking over Syria’s revolution. By Ruth Sherlock. The Telegraph, February 8, 2013.
Aleppo has been plunged into despair. Riven with war, life in Syria’s most populous city has become a dog-eat-dog existence: a battle for survival in a place where the strong devour the weak.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Carpe Diem Nation. By David Brooks.
Carpe Diem Nation. By David Brooks. New York Times, February 11, 2013.
Brooks:
Europeans who settled America gave their lives a slingshot shape. They pulled back so they could shoot forward. They volunteered to live in harsh conditions today so their descendants could live well for centuries. The pioneers who traveled West did the same thing. So has each generation of immigrants — sacrificing the present for the sake of the future.
This slingshot manner of life led to one of those true national clichés: that America is the nation of futurity, that Americans organize their lives around romantic visions of what is to be.
In 1775, Sam Adams confidently predicted that the scraggly little colonies would one day be the world’s most powerful nation. In 1800, Noah Webster projected that the U.S. would someday have 300 million citizens, and that a country that big should have its own dictionary.
In his novel, “Giants in the Earth,” Ole Rolvaag has a pioneering farmer give a visitor a tour of his land. The farmer describes his beautiful home and his large buildings. The visitor confesses that he can’t see them. That’s because they haven’t been built yet, the farmer acknowledges, but they already exist as reality in his mind.
This future-oriented mentality had practical effects. For decades, government invested heavily in long-range projects like railroads and canals.
Today, Americans have inverted this way of thinking. Instead of sacrificing the present for the sake of the future, Americans now sacrifice the future for the sake of the present.
. . . . . . . . . .
Why have Americans lost their devotion to the future? Part of the answer must be cultural. The Great Depression and World War II forced Americans to live with 16 straight years of scarcity. In the years after the war, people decided they’d had enough. There was what one historian called a “renunciation of renunciation.” We’ve now had a few generations raised with this consumption mind-set. There’s less of a sense that life is a partnership among the dead, the living and the unborn, with obligations to those to come.
The political debate, though, is largely oblivious to this mental shift. Republicans and Democrats are so busy arguing about the merits of government versus business that they are blind to the problem that afflicts them both.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama is apparently planning to give us yet another salvo in that left-right war, as he did in his second Inaugural Address. One of his aides, in a fit of hubris, told Politico that the president will be offering Republicans a golden bridge to ease their retreat.
But it would be great if Obama gave an imaginative speech that reframed things as present versus future.
If the president were to propose an agenda for the future, he’d double spending on the National Institutes of Health. He’d approve the Keystone XL pipeline. He’d cut corporate tax rates while adding a progressive consumption tax. He’d take money from Social Security and build Harlem Children’s Zone-type projects across the nation. He’d means test Medicare and use the money to revive state universities and pay down debt.
Would Americans buy that agenda? Maybe. Americans are neglecting the future, but I bet they’re still in love with it.
Brooks:
Europeans who settled America gave their lives a slingshot shape. They pulled back so they could shoot forward. They volunteered to live in harsh conditions today so their descendants could live well for centuries. The pioneers who traveled West did the same thing. So has each generation of immigrants — sacrificing the present for the sake of the future.
This slingshot manner of life led to one of those true national clichés: that America is the nation of futurity, that Americans organize their lives around romantic visions of what is to be.
In 1775, Sam Adams confidently predicted that the scraggly little colonies would one day be the world’s most powerful nation. In 1800, Noah Webster projected that the U.S. would someday have 300 million citizens, and that a country that big should have its own dictionary.
In his novel, “Giants in the Earth,” Ole Rolvaag has a pioneering farmer give a visitor a tour of his land. The farmer describes his beautiful home and his large buildings. The visitor confesses that he can’t see them. That’s because they haven’t been built yet, the farmer acknowledges, but they already exist as reality in his mind.
This future-oriented mentality had practical effects. For decades, government invested heavily in long-range projects like railroads and canals.
Today, Americans have inverted this way of thinking. Instead of sacrificing the present for the sake of the future, Americans now sacrifice the future for the sake of the present.
. . . . . . . . . .
Why have Americans lost their devotion to the future? Part of the answer must be cultural. The Great Depression and World War II forced Americans to live with 16 straight years of scarcity. In the years after the war, people decided they’d had enough. There was what one historian called a “renunciation of renunciation.” We’ve now had a few generations raised with this consumption mind-set. There’s less of a sense that life is a partnership among the dead, the living and the unborn, with obligations to those to come.
The political debate, though, is largely oblivious to this mental shift. Republicans and Democrats are so busy arguing about the merits of government versus business that they are blind to the problem that afflicts them both.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama is apparently planning to give us yet another salvo in that left-right war, as he did in his second Inaugural Address. One of his aides, in a fit of hubris, told Politico that the president will be offering Republicans a golden bridge to ease their retreat.
But it would be great if Obama gave an imaginative speech that reframed things as present versus future.
If the president were to propose an agenda for the future, he’d double spending on the National Institutes of Health. He’d approve the Keystone XL pipeline. He’d cut corporate tax rates while adding a progressive consumption tax. He’d take money from Social Security and build Harlem Children’s Zone-type projects across the nation. He’d means test Medicare and use the money to revive state universities and pay down debt.
Would Americans buy that agenda? Maybe. Americans are neglecting the future, but I bet they’re still in love with it.
A Godly Man in an Ungodly Age. By Pat Buchanan.
A Godly Man in an Ungodly Age. By Pat Buchanan. Real Clear Politics, February 12, 2013.
Buchanan:
Among Catholics, there has long been a dispute over the issue: Did Vatican II cause the crisis in the Church, or did the council merely fail to arrest what was an inevitable decline with the triumph of the counterculture of the 1960s?
As one looks around the world and back beyond the last half-century, it seems that Catholicism and Christianity have been in a centuries-long retreat. In the mid-19th century, Matthew Arnold wrote in “Dover Beach”:
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar . . .
In Christianity’s cradle, the Holy Land and the Near East, from Egypt to Afghanistan, Christians are subjected to persecution and pogroms, as their numbers dwindle. In Latin America, the Church has been losing congregants for decades.
In Europe, Christianity is regarded less as the founding faith of the West and the wellspring of Western culture and civilization, than as an antique; a religion that European Man once embraced before the coming of the Enlightenment. Many cathedrals on the continent have taken on the aspect of Greek and Roman temples – places to visit and marvel at what once was, and no longer is.
The Faith is Europe, Europe is the Faith, wrote Hilaire Belloc. And when the faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, and the people die. So historians and poets alike have written.
Surely that seems true in Europe. In the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Western Man, under the banners of God and country, conquered almost the entire world. But now that Christianity has died in much of the West, the culture seems decadent, the civilization in decline.
And the people have begun to die. No Western nation has had a birth rate in three decades that will enable its native-born to survive.
Dispensing with Christianity, Western peoples sought new gods and new faiths: communism, Leninism, fascism, Nazism. Those gods all failed.
Now we have converted to even newer faiths to create paradise in this, the only world we shall ever know. Democratic capitalism, consumerism, globalism, environmentalism, egalitarianism.
The Secular City seems to have triumphed over the City of God. But in the Islamic world, an ancient and transcendental faith is undergoing a great awakening after centuries of slumber and seems anxious to re-engage and settle accounts with an agnostic West.
As ever, the outcome of the struggle for the world is in doubt.
Buchanan:
Among Catholics, there has long been a dispute over the issue: Did Vatican II cause the crisis in the Church, or did the council merely fail to arrest what was an inevitable decline with the triumph of the counterculture of the 1960s?
As one looks around the world and back beyond the last half-century, it seems that Catholicism and Christianity have been in a centuries-long retreat. In the mid-19th century, Matthew Arnold wrote in “Dover Beach”:
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar . . .
In Christianity’s cradle, the Holy Land and the Near East, from Egypt to Afghanistan, Christians are subjected to persecution and pogroms, as their numbers dwindle. In Latin America, the Church has been losing congregants for decades.
In Europe, Christianity is regarded less as the founding faith of the West and the wellspring of Western culture and civilization, than as an antique; a religion that European Man once embraced before the coming of the Enlightenment. Many cathedrals on the continent have taken on the aspect of Greek and Roman temples – places to visit and marvel at what once was, and no longer is.
The Faith is Europe, Europe is the Faith, wrote Hilaire Belloc. And when the faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, and the people die. So historians and poets alike have written.
Surely that seems true in Europe. In the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Western Man, under the banners of God and country, conquered almost the entire world. But now that Christianity has died in much of the West, the culture seems decadent, the civilization in decline.
And the people have begun to die. No Western nation has had a birth rate in three decades that will enable its native-born to survive.
Dispensing with Christianity, Western peoples sought new gods and new faiths: communism, Leninism, fascism, Nazism. Those gods all failed.
Now we have converted to even newer faiths to create paradise in this, the only world we shall ever know. Democratic capitalism, consumerism, globalism, environmentalism, egalitarianism.
The Secular City seems to have triumphed over the City of God. But in the Islamic world, an ancient and transcendental faith is undergoing a great awakening after centuries of slumber and seems anxious to re-engage and settle accounts with an agnostic West.
As ever, the outcome of the struggle for the world is in doubt.
As Vatican Leader Pope Benedict Never Had a Chance. By John Moody.
As Vatican leader Pope Benedict never had a chance. By John Moody. FoxNews.com, February 11, 2013.
Farewell to an Uninspiring Pope. By John Patrick Shanley.
Farewell to an Uninspiring Pope. By John Patrick Shanley. New York Times, February 11, 2013.
Young, Liberal, and Open to Big Government. By Sheryl Gay Stolberg.
Young, Liberal, and Open to Big Government. By Sheryl Gay Stolberg. New York Times, February 10, 2013.
The Legacy of the Silk Road. By Valerie Hansen.
The Legacy of the Silk Road. By Valerie Hansen. Yale Global Online, January 25, 2013.
In an era of tolerance, ancient Silk Road routes opened way to rich cultural exchange.
In an era of tolerance, ancient Silk Road routes opened way to rich cultural exchange.
Is the U.S. Ready To Be Number Two. By Kishore Mahbubani.
Is the U.S. Ready To Be Number Two. By Kishore Mahbubani. Real Clear World, February 12, 2013. Also find it at Yale Global Online.
Why Obama Is Really Launching a Drone War on Terrorists. By Aaron Klein.
Why Obama REALLY launching drone war on terrorists. By Aaron Klein. Audio. Klein Online, February 10, 2013.
Klein did research at The Center for Speical Studies, part of The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel, which has an archive of Muslim Brotherhood documents.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Klein [starting at 7:30 in the audio file]:
So Muslim Brotherhood ideology is based on the worldview that Islam as the solution for every individual social and political problem. This is after going through so many documents from the Muslim Brotherhood itself. They institute a comprehensive Muslim world order which they believe will be possible by means of a long term process of multiple stages. Now this is very important, because the Muslim Brotherhood absolutely supports terrorism when it’s targeting, for example, Israel. They see Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. They have no problem with attacks against any country that they believe is being occupied by a Western power, or by non-Islamic powers. For example Syria they see as being occupied by the secular Alawites in the Assad regime. Jordan they believe is Muslim territory that is being occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. They look at Saudi Arabia which is being occupied of course by the Saudi kingdom that is not exactly Islamist, although they play major games, they’re playing with fire with the Wahhabist mosques that I think are going to blow up in Saudi Arabia’s face, just as it’s going to blow up in the face of the King of Jordan in the very near future.
Now here’s the thing. The Muslim Brotherhood is not Al Qaeda. The Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda have the exact same ultimate goal, which is an Islamic planet. But Al Qaeda sees that they have to achieve this by violent means; whereas the Muslim Brotherhood, believe it or not, is actually quite pragmatic. They even have some real pro-democratic elements and real politically tolerant elements within Islam within the Muslim Brotherhood, although actually their combined weight does not outweigh the more so-called conservative, a.k.a. radical elements, in the Muslim Brotherhood.
However, one thing the vast majority of Muslim Brotherhood leaders agree on is that they do not like, they actually oppose very strongly, Al Qaeda’s global terrorism. In other words they have no problem with Al Qaeda fighting the so-called occupation of Iraq – well actually Iraq was occupied – Afghanistan, elsewhere, what they claim is occupied including in Israel. However, when it comes to Europe, when it comes to the West, they absolutely oppose attacks against Americans. Look at Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the rock star of the Muslim Brotherhood. He said very clearly that one day Islam will take over America, will take over Europe, not overnight, but gradually through immigration and through proselytizing. And guess what, it’s happening right now. Have you been to London lately? Have you heard the reports lately of the number one baby boy’s name being born in London is Mohamed? Have you gone to Spain lately? Did you see the riots in France? The Muslim Brotherhood dream/vision of gradual takeover is absolutely clearly coming to fruition throughout the West, maybe not yet in America. . . .
And so maybe now we can make better sense of this drone warfare. Actually the Muslim Brotherhood supports it. . . . I have absolutely no doubt that it’s actually the Muslim Brotherhood that is feeding the information to the CIA on where the different Al Qaeda leaders are. The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t like the Al Qaeda leaders that attack America, that attack the West.
Klein did research at The Center for Speical Studies, part of The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel, which has an archive of Muslim Brotherhood documents.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Klein [starting at 7:30 in the audio file]:
So Muslim Brotherhood ideology is based on the worldview that Islam as the solution for every individual social and political problem. This is after going through so many documents from the Muslim Brotherhood itself. They institute a comprehensive Muslim world order which they believe will be possible by means of a long term process of multiple stages. Now this is very important, because the Muslim Brotherhood absolutely supports terrorism when it’s targeting, for example, Israel. They see Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. They have no problem with attacks against any country that they believe is being occupied by a Western power, or by non-Islamic powers. For example Syria they see as being occupied by the secular Alawites in the Assad regime. Jordan they believe is Muslim territory that is being occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. They look at Saudi Arabia which is being occupied of course by the Saudi kingdom that is not exactly Islamist, although they play major games, they’re playing with fire with the Wahhabist mosques that I think are going to blow up in Saudi Arabia’s face, just as it’s going to blow up in the face of the King of Jordan in the very near future.
Now here’s the thing. The Muslim Brotherhood is not Al Qaeda. The Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda have the exact same ultimate goal, which is an Islamic planet. But Al Qaeda sees that they have to achieve this by violent means; whereas the Muslim Brotherhood, believe it or not, is actually quite pragmatic. They even have some real pro-democratic elements and real politically tolerant elements within Islam within the Muslim Brotherhood, although actually their combined weight does not outweigh the more so-called conservative, a.k.a. radical elements, in the Muslim Brotherhood.
However, one thing the vast majority of Muslim Brotherhood leaders agree on is that they do not like, they actually oppose very strongly, Al Qaeda’s global terrorism. In other words they have no problem with Al Qaeda fighting the so-called occupation of Iraq – well actually Iraq was occupied – Afghanistan, elsewhere, what they claim is occupied including in Israel. However, when it comes to Europe, when it comes to the West, they absolutely oppose attacks against Americans. Look at Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the rock star of the Muslim Brotherhood. He said very clearly that one day Islam will take over America, will take over Europe, not overnight, but gradually through immigration and through proselytizing. And guess what, it’s happening right now. Have you been to London lately? Have you heard the reports lately of the number one baby boy’s name being born in London is Mohamed? Have you gone to Spain lately? Did you see the riots in France? The Muslim Brotherhood dream/vision of gradual takeover is absolutely clearly coming to fruition throughout the West, maybe not yet in America. . . .
And so maybe now we can make better sense of this drone warfare. Actually the Muslim Brotherhood supports it. . . . I have absolutely no doubt that it’s actually the Muslim Brotherhood that is feeding the information to the CIA on where the different Al Qaeda leaders are. The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t like the Al Qaeda leaders that attack America, that attack the West.
Understanding Mohamed Morsi. By Joshua Hammer.
The Riddler: Understanding Mohamed Morsi. By Joshua Hammer. The New Republic, December 20, 2012. Also find it here.
More posts on Morsi and Egypt here.
Hammer:
I had traveled to Al Adwa hoping that Morsi’s hometown might shed some light on a man who has only become more enigmatic during his brief time in the spotlight. Since he became Egypt’s first democratically elected leader last June, Morsi has displayed both extraordinary political acumen and a tone-deafness that has plunged his country into deeper unrest. In November, he deftly helped negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, averting a bloody ground war in the Gaza Strip. Days later, he lost much of the goodwill he had earned by issuing an edict that awarded his office near-dictatorial powers.
Sometimes, Morsi can seem like the inspiring guardian of Egyptian democracy—such as when he courageously dismissed the military junta that had claimed the right to rule post–Hosni Mubarak Egypt. At other times, he can seem like a mouthpiece for the deeply conservative Muslim Brotherhood—declaring women unfit for high office and advocating for an international law to ban religious insults. (And sometimes he simply seems awkward, such as when he sat down for a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gilliard in September at the United Nations and proceeded, for several excruciating seconds, to publicly adjust his genitals.) So far, the only certainty about Morsi is that his ultimate intentions remain unknown.
Among Morsi’s many critics, the suspicion remains strong that he is an Islamist at heart—and that this identity, shaped in the small conservative town where I was standing, will ultimately define his presidency. On the second floor of his three-story red brick childhood home, he still keeps a small study. His cousin, a skinny man in his early twenties, showed me the room, with its bare cement floor and battered sofa. He pointed at a scuffed wooden table: “Whenever he comes home, he works at this desk.” Books and pamphlets that Morsi had left behind were stacked haphazardly: a treatise by Hassan Al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; a biography of a disciple of the Prophet Mohammed; a manifesto that had been distributed by the Freedom and Justice Party, which the Muslim Brotherhood founded immediately after the revolution that deposed Mubarak. On top of the pile rested a slim volume: Teach Yourself French in Five Days.
I noticed a poster hanging on an otherwise bare wall. It showed the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem above the slogan, in Arabic, “WE WILL RETURN, OH AQSA.” I asked his cousin how I should interpret these words. “A war will happen again between the Arabs and the Jews,” he told me matter-of-factly, “and we will regain Jerusalem.”
. . . . . . . . . .
A hundred miles and a world away from Nour’s penthouse apartment, however, those who have known Morsi the longest say they have little doubt where his true values lie. Sitting beside his fields on the outskirts of Al Adwa, Said Morsi told me that his older brother remains rooted to the uncompromising Islamic beliefs that stamped his childhood and that have guided him throughout his life. “All of the vacations before becoming the president, he would come back here and work the fields, and sit with me, and talk,” he said, smoking a cigarette as the wail of the muezzin began to sound from a few hundred yards away. “In his heart, he belongs to the village.”
More posts on Morsi and Egypt here.
Hammer:
I had traveled to Al Adwa hoping that Morsi’s hometown might shed some light on a man who has only become more enigmatic during his brief time in the spotlight. Since he became Egypt’s first democratically elected leader last June, Morsi has displayed both extraordinary political acumen and a tone-deafness that has plunged his country into deeper unrest. In November, he deftly helped negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, averting a bloody ground war in the Gaza Strip. Days later, he lost much of the goodwill he had earned by issuing an edict that awarded his office near-dictatorial powers.
Sometimes, Morsi can seem like the inspiring guardian of Egyptian democracy—such as when he courageously dismissed the military junta that had claimed the right to rule post–Hosni Mubarak Egypt. At other times, he can seem like a mouthpiece for the deeply conservative Muslim Brotherhood—declaring women unfit for high office and advocating for an international law to ban religious insults. (And sometimes he simply seems awkward, such as when he sat down for a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gilliard in September at the United Nations and proceeded, for several excruciating seconds, to publicly adjust his genitals.) So far, the only certainty about Morsi is that his ultimate intentions remain unknown.
Among Morsi’s many critics, the suspicion remains strong that he is an Islamist at heart—and that this identity, shaped in the small conservative town where I was standing, will ultimately define his presidency. On the second floor of his three-story red brick childhood home, he still keeps a small study. His cousin, a skinny man in his early twenties, showed me the room, with its bare cement floor and battered sofa. He pointed at a scuffed wooden table: “Whenever he comes home, he works at this desk.” Books and pamphlets that Morsi had left behind were stacked haphazardly: a treatise by Hassan Al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; a biography of a disciple of the Prophet Mohammed; a manifesto that had been distributed by the Freedom and Justice Party, which the Muslim Brotherhood founded immediately after the revolution that deposed Mubarak. On top of the pile rested a slim volume: Teach Yourself French in Five Days.
I noticed a poster hanging on an otherwise bare wall. It showed the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem above the slogan, in Arabic, “WE WILL RETURN, OH AQSA.” I asked his cousin how I should interpret these words. “A war will happen again between the Arabs and the Jews,” he told me matter-of-factly, “and we will regain Jerusalem.”
. . . . . . . . . .
A hundred miles and a world away from Nour’s penthouse apartment, however, those who have known Morsi the longest say they have little doubt where his true values lie. Sitting beside his fields on the outskirts of Al Adwa, Said Morsi told me that his older brother remains rooted to the uncompromising Islamic beliefs that stamped his childhood and that have guided him throughout his life. “All of the vacations before becoming the president, he would come back here and work the fields, and sit with me, and talk,” he said, smoking a cigarette as the wail of the muezzin began to sound from a few hundred yards away. “In his heart, he belongs to the village.”
Oh, No! Not Another Apologia from a Journalist Who Won't Vote! Oh, Yes—But This Time, Blame Russia. By Julia Ioffe
Oh, No! Not Another Apologia from a Journalist Who Won't Vote! Oh, Yes—But This Time, Blame Russia. By Julia Ioffe. The New Republic, November 6, 2012.
Ezra Klein Cannot Be Stopped. By Julia Ioffe.
Ezra Klein: The Wise Boy: A tale of striving and success in modern-day Washington. By Julia Ioffe. The New Republic, February 12, 2013. Also find it here.
America in Strategic Retreat from the Middle East. By Riad Kahwaji and Theodore Karasik.
America in Strategic Retreat from the Middle East. By Riad Kahwaji and Theodore Karasik. Real Clear World, February 7, 2013.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)