Tehran pulls strings of Gaza missile war, proxy Jihad Islami leads offensive

From a DEBKAfile Exclusive ReportAugust 21, 2011:


Iran's trap for Israel on the Eilat Highway

... Iran and Hizballah ...planned, orchestrated and funded the coordinated attacks on the Eilat Highway Thursday, Aug. 18 - in which gunmen shot dead eight Israelis and injured 40 - and its sequel: volleys of 90 missiles launched day and night from Gaza against a million Israeli civilians since then.

Yossi Shoshan, 38, from Ofakim, was killed by one of the dozen Grad missiles hitting Beersheba and his home town Saturday night. More than a dozen people were injured, at least one critically.

The prime mover in the missile blitz is Tehran's Palestinian arm, the Jihad Islami, which is responsible for 90 percent of the launches. Hamas is left on the sidelines, cut off for the first time from top levels of authority in Tehran and Damascus.

...Tehran managed to transfer to its Palestinian arm in Gaza, the Jihad Islami, more than 10,000 missiles well in advance of the violence launched three days ago. Most of them are heavy Grads bringing Beersheba, capital of the Negev and Israel's 7th largest town (pop. 200,000), within their 30-kilometer range for a sustained, massive missile offensive.

Tehran has now launched the hardware smuggled into the Gaza Strip ready for a Middle East war offensive for five objectives:
1. To leave Syrian President Bashar Assad free to continue brutalizing his population and ignoring President Barack Obama's demand backed by Europe that he step down.
2. To manufacture a direct military threat on the Jewish state, whose destruction is a fundamental of the Islamic Republic of Iran's ideology.
3.  To thwart the Egyptian military junta's operation last week for regaining control of the lawless Sinai Peninsula and destroying the vast weapons smuggling network serving Iran in its capacity as the leading international sponsor of terror.
4.  To render the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his bid for UN recognition of an independent state on Sept. 20 irrelevant.  His isolation was brought home to him last Thursday by the coordinated Palestinian terrorist attacks near Eilat last Thursday.
5.  To plant ticking bombs around Israel for potential detonation and explosion into a full-blown regional war.
debkafile's Washington sources disclose that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined this peril to Egypt's military ruler, Field Marshall Muhammad Tantawi, Saturday night, Aug. 20, to dissuade him from recalling the Egyptian ambassador to Israel over the deaths of three or five Egyptian police in the melee over the Palestinian terror attack near the Sinai border.

This danger was on the table of Israel's inner cabinet of eight ministers when they met early Sunday to decide on IDF action for terminating the Palestinian missile war.

... three facts stand out from the fog of uncertainty:

First, the security crisis besetting Israel has the dangerous potential for dragging the Middle East into a regional war.

Second, America and Israel are paying in full the price of their quiescence in the face of Iranian, Hizballah and extremist Palestinian belligerence and active preparations for war, including the stockpiling of thousands of increasingly sophisticated weaponry on Israel's borders.

Third, the first step an Israeli soldier or tank takes into the Gaza Strip to silence Jihad Islami's  missile fire is more likely than not to precipitate a second Iranian-orchestrated assault on another of Israel's borders.

Sunday morning, no one in any of the capitals concerned was ready to risk guesstimating how far Tehran was ready to go in its current offensive and what orders Hizballah and its Palestinian puppets had received.  

Islamist groups hijack Egypt's 'unity' protest

From Aljazeera, 30 Jul 2011:

Islamist groups take over "Friday of Unity" march, forcing secular parties to boycott protest movement.

Egypt's secular groups have said they no longer support the protest movement and have withdrawn their support after Islamist groups hijacked Friday's protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

The secularists' boycott came as tens of thousands of people gathered on Friday to demonstrate in what had been dubbed "The Friday of Unity and the People's Will" march.

...The assistant head of the Wafd Party, the oldest and largest secular party, urged the Muslim Brotherhood to come out and declare that it had no intentions of forming an Islamic state.
Several banners reading "Islamic law above the constitution" were displayed in Tahrir Square and protesters who fear Islamists will seek to dominate plans to rewrite the constitution demanded the banners be taken down. Similar tensions emerged in Suez.

...Separately, in the northern town of Arish, armed men attacked a police station, killing one police officer and wounding three police men, said Al Jazeera's correspondent Mohyeldin.Two civilians were also critically wounded in the attack.

Earlier in the day, masked gunmen fired in the air near a demonstration, wounding civilians.
In Tahrir Square, protesters massed before the start of Muslim prayers at noon and religious chants such as "There is no God but God" and "Islamiya, Islamiya" rang out.

"There are so many [Islamic] beards. We certainly feel imposed upon," said Samy Ali, 23, student in Tahrir, adding Salafists had tried to separate women and men camping there.
   
Islamists and more liberal groups have diverged on how hard to press the ruling generals for change.But the debate over the constitution, due to be re-written after parliament is elected this year, has also been divisive.
   
More liberal groups fear the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's best organised grouping, and other Islamists will dominate the vote and so be able to push for a more Islamic-leaning constitution.

"[There are] troubling signs that the 'Friday of Unity' may soon turn into a 'Friday of Division'. Let's hope that's not the case," wrote Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center on Twitter...

Egypt - from bad to much worse?

From BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 145, June 19, 2011, by Jagdish N. Singh:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Developments in post-Mubarak Egypt are beginning to mirror the process of Islamization that took place in Iran following the 1979 revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood is gaining support, while progressive forces – those that hoped to bring democracy to Egypt – have fallen silent. It may be up to a third party to prevent Egypt from becoming the next Iran.
One wonders if Egypt today is on the road to becoming another post-Shah Iran. After the fall of the Shah the 1970s, Iran's progressive forces became passive, leaving the great Persian civilization at the mercy of far more anti-democratic elements than the regime they had fought against. The pattern developing in Egypt in the wake of the "Arab Spring" looks more or less similar. With the fall of the relatively modern Mubarak regime, anti-social and anti-modern elements, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, are gaining strength and popularity.

A case in point: Egyptian Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi was welcomed back to Egypt after a 50-year hiatus and a 30-year ban from leading weekly Friday prayers. Best known for his program ash-Shariah wal-Hayat ("Shariah and Life"), broadcast on Al Jazeera and Islam Online, Qaradawi has long played a prominent role within the intellectual and spiritual leadership of the Brotherhood. His obscurantist philosophy, support of terrorism, and advocacy for killing the Jews have been judged so harmful – socially, economically and culturally – that countries such as the US and the UK have prohibited him from entering. Even many Muslim academics in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Palestinian territories have condemned him for giving sacred Islam “a bad name.”

Since the Muslim Brotherhood is now the single largest political group in Egypt, with an estimated 600,000 members, all other groups that matter in the country's politics have started rallying behind it to secure their eventual share of the national power cake. The Brotherhood was initially part of the Coalition of Young Revolutionaries, which led the protests against President Mubarak at Tahrir Square. However, after toppling the dictatorship, the more progressive members of this revolutionary alliance – the Qatar-based Academy of Change, former International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohamed El-Baradei and his associates, Egyptian women activists, etc. – have become marginalized, now playing second fiddle to the rising Islamist group.
 
Consequently, those who, until recently, praised the fallen Mubarak have suddenly aligned themselves with the Brotherhood. One such example is Sheikh Ahmad Mohamed al-Tayeb, the Imam of the al-Azhar Mosque – one of the most important Sunni religious centers. Sounding like a radical jihadist, Tayeb recently branded the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden an act of American "piracy" and called his burial at sea a "moral crime" that was "against Islamic law." He has also asserted that the main cause of terrorism is Israel's existence and actions as well as Western countries’ attempts to "dominate the Arab world." Such statements are likely to help the Brotherhood garner critical Sunni support in Egypt's upcoming parliamentary elections.
 
Another individual who appears to have joined the Brotherhood bandwagon is former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. Various reports suggest that Moussa and the Brotherhood have reached an understanding whereby the Brotherhood will not field a candidate against Moussa in the elections, enabling him to win the presidency. In return, Moussa will rubber-stamp all legislation passed by the Brotherhood bloc (perhaps a majority bloc) in parliament.
 
The Muslim Brotherhood’s work towards creating an Islamic state in Egypt closely resembles Ayatollah Khomeini's overhaul of the Iranian political system post-1979 Revolution. The Brotherhood shares a common ideology with the Iranian clergy – to promote Islam not just as a religion but as a belief system governing all aspects of political, economic and social life.

There is genuine concern that once the Brotherhood manages to establish itself within the country's political system, persecution of both Muslim and non-Muslim minorities will grow. There have been, of late, increased attacks on the Copts – a Christian sect that makes up roughly 10 percent of the Egyptian population – by Islamic extremists. While previously subjected to persecution of various kinds, they have begun to feel far more frightened in the post-Mubarak era.
 
The Supreme Council of Armed Forces, led by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, could play a critical role in halting the Brotherhood's momentum. Because of its relatively modernist nature and orientation, it already holds the trust and goodwill of the country's silent masses. The Council could use this type of platform for combating the lack of democracy and development that has caused the recent unrest in Egypt.
 
Currently the de facto ruler until parliamentary elections are held, the Council should take advantage of its position to promote progressive leadership based on pluralism, non-violence and democracy. Simultaneously, the Council could make serious efforts to improve the country’s social sector.

According to a recent Moshe Dayan Center study, the population of Egypt (83 million in 2009) is growing by about 1.8% a year and that of working age by 2.2%. But there has been little employment generation. Some 40% of its population today earns an income of $2 per day or less. Over 87% of Egyptian households have an annual income of less than $1,000. The inflation rate in 2010 increased by 12% and food prices specifically rose by 20%. Hundreds of thousands are living in graveyards and in other substandard accommodations. Furthermore, the current regime has not invested properly in education, with over 30% of its adult population being illiterate.
 
Social reform efforts could give a significant boost to the strength and popularity of genuine progressive democratic forces in Egypt. Given its strategic and economic interests in the region, the West could join the efforts of the Egyptian Council by invoking some kind of Marshall Plan, such as that which was adopted by the US in 1947-1951 to assist the rebuilding and economic regeneration efforts in war-torn Europe.

However, given that anti-Western attitudes run very strong in the Arab world in general and Egypt in particular, outsiders will have to be very careful when planning any such economic stimulus so that it indeed benefits the have-nots in Egypt. Aid that is not properly monitored will only benefit the corrupt and alienate the public, and provide anti-democratic forces with ammunition for a takeover.

But, alas, we must also humbly take note: The ability of Westerners to influence domestic outcomes in the Arab world is ultimately quite limited.

*Jagdish N. Singh is a senior Indian journalist based in New Delhi.

Egyptian delusions

From the JERUSALEM POST EDITORIAL 15 June 2011:

If the Grapel scandal is an indication of where the Arab Spring’s winds of change are headed, the portents are dismal indeed.

You need not be privy to classified intelligence information or have an intimate familiarity with the inner workings of Israel’s undercover agencies to grasp that Egyptian allegations of espionage leveled against against American-born Ilan Grapel, 27, are baseless.

“Delusional” was the way Grapel’s distraught mother Irene aptly put it, while father Daniel chose “totally false.” A senior government official traveling with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Rome added, as if it were necessary to make such clarifications, that there was not a shred of truth to the claim that Grapel was connected to the Mossad.

Grapel, known for his left-wing political views and love for Arabic, is a third-year law student from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been in Cairo since May 10 volunteering at St. Andrews Refugee Services as part of a program to advance democracy and constitutional rights in the Middle East. Something of a joker, Grapel cited on his Facebook page “preaching” at Al-Azhar University in Cairo as his job.

Egyptian officials do not merely lack a sense of humor, however. They are cynically exploiting the fact that Grapel made aliya and served as a paratrooper in the IDF (and was wounded in action during the 2006 Second Lebanon War) to remake him unfoundedly as a ruthless Mossad agent. A unit in the Egyptian security forces whose only job is to uncover Israeli espionage attempts has apparently concocted a story about Grapel to justify its own existence.

In this hallucinatory parallel world, young, adventurous Americans like Grapel are singled out and charged with outrageous, trumped-up charges: The Mossad, not Emory University, runs the absurd Egyptian security narrative, sent Grapel to Egypt to take advantage of a supposed “security vacuum” created in the wake of January’s Tahrir Square uprising. “Saeed,” a spokesman for Egypt’s general prosecutor, told CNN that Grapel, who had been followed “for months,” had been recruiting “informants” to provide Israel with vital military and political information. The purportedly “undercover” Grapel, who in actual fact openly posted his day to day activities on Facebook, was further alleged to have attempted to incite sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians (as if Egyptian Muslims needed any outside encouragement not already provided by radical Muslim religious leaders, who regularly incite against the embattled Coptic community).

Egyptian newspapers have lapped the story up, featuring it on their front pages Monday alongside photos of Grapel republished from his Facebook account. “Egypt arrests Israeli Intelligence Officer, a big blow to the Israeli Mossad Intelligence Agency,” one typically truth-deficient headline said.

SADDER STILL, it would be misleading to view the Grapel fiasco as simply a peculiar blip.
Anti-Semitism and anti- Israeli sentiments run deep in Egypt.
As Rivka Yadlin, a student of Egyptian anti-Semitism, pointed out two decades ago,

“The abominable traits expressed in the behavior of Israel are perceived as singular, inherent and intrinsic in its very Jewish being. They are inherited within the Jewish community and are thus shared by the whole of Israel as well as by other Jews.”

Little has changed since.

And Egyptians seem to have a particular fascination with the Mossad. Last December, for instance, when a 70- year-old German snorkeler washed up dead on the Red Sea shore with shark bites in her right thigh and right elbow, Egyptian officials claimed it was a Mossad plot. “What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hurt tourism in Egypt is not out of the question...,” South Sinai Gov. Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha was quoted as saying by state news site egynews.net.

A month before, Mostafa al-Feki, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Egypt’s People’s Assembly, claimed that the Mossad was behind violent clashes between Copts and Muslims. The fact that an increasingly Islamist Egyptian bureaucracy had refused to provide a construction permit for a new Coptic church was conveniently ignored by Feki.

WITH US State Department officials involved, it appears likely that Egypt will eventually relent and free Grapel. The sooner the better.

Those responsible for inventing the baseless accusations against him will doubtless never admit their folly, however. And what should give pause for concern – not just to Israelis but to all who value justice – is the ease with which such blatantly anti-Israel claims can be concocted and spread and believed by a captive Egyptian public regularly bombarded with anti-Israeli propaganda.

If the Grapel scandal is an indication of where the Arab Spring’s winds of change are headed, the portents are dismal indeed.

The hunger to come in Egypt

From The Asia Times, 10 May 2011, by Spengler (David P Goldman):

Egypt is running out of food, and, more gradually, running out of money with which to buy it. The most populous country in the Arab world shows all the symptoms of national bankruptcy - the kind that produced hyperinflation in several Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s - with a deadly difference: Egypt imports half its wheat, and the collapse of its external credit means starvation.

The civil violence we have seen over the past few days foreshadows far worse to come.

The Arab uprisings began against a background of food insecurity, as rising demand from Asia priced the Arab poor out of the grain market (Food and failed Arab states, Asia Times Online February 2, 2011). The chaotic political response, though, threatens to disrupt food supplies in the relative near term. Street violence will become the norm rather than the exception in Egyptian politics. All the discussion about Egypt's future political model and its prospective relations with Israel will be overshadowed by the country's inability to feed itself.

...The Ministry of Solidarity and Social Justice is already forming "revolutionary committees" to mete out street justice to bakeries, propane dealers and street vendors who "charge more than the price prescribed by law", the Federation of Egyptian Radio and Television reported on May 3.

According to the ministry, "Thugs are in control of bread and butane prices" and "people's committees" are required to stop them. Posters on Egyptian news sites report sharp increases in bread prices, far in excess of the 11.5% inflation reported for April by the country's central bank. And increases in the price of bottled propane have made the cost of the most widely used cooking fuel prohibitive.

The collapse of Egypt's credit standing, meanwhile, has shut down trade financing for food imports, according to the chairman of the country's Food Industry Holding Company, Dr Ahmed al-Rakaibi, chairman of the Holding Company for Food Industries. Rakaibi warned of "an acute shortage in the production of food commodities manufactured locally, as well as a decline in imports of many goods, especially poultry, meats and oils". According to the country's statistics agency, only a month's supply of rice is on hand, and four months' supply of wheat.

The country's foreign exchange reserves have fallen by US$13 billion, or roughly a third during the first three months of the year, Reuters reported on May 5. The country lost $6 billion of official and $7 billion of unofficial reserves, and had only $24.5 billion on hand at the end of April. Capital flight probably explains most of the rapid decline.

Egypt's currency has declined by only about 6% since January, despite substantial capital flight, due to market intervention by the central bank, but the rapid drawdown of reserves is unsustainable.

At this rate Egypt will be broke by September.

Egypt imported $55 billion worth of goods in 2009, but exported only $29 billion of goods. With the jump in food and energy prices, the same volume of imports would cost considerably more. Egypt closed the 2009 trade gap with about $15 billion in tourist revenues, and about $8 billion of remittances from Egyptian workers abroad. But tourism today is running at a fraction of last year's levels, and remittances are down by around half due to expulsion of Egyptian workers from Libya. Even without capital flight, Egypt is short perhaps $25 billion a year.

Egyptian Stock Market Index (EGX 30)

Source: Bloomberg

Price controls and currency depreciation have made it more profitable for wholesalers - including some employees of state companies - to export rice and cooking oil illegally. According to the daily al-Ahram, hoarding of rice by wholesalers has pushed up the price of the grain by 35% this year, while 200 containers per day are sold to Turkey and Syria.

"What is happening," the newspaper claims, is that that traders are storing basic items such as rice and barley, hoarded in barns and in large quantities, and are reluctant to send it to the rice mills in order to raise the price of this strategic commodity". The al-Ahram report, headlined, "Conspiracy to Monopolize Rice," demands physical inspection of containers leaving Egyptian ports.
The rest of the story is predictable. Once the government relies on young men with guns to police its merchants, hoarding will only get worse. The Egyptian revolution has cracked down on the commercial elite that ran the country's economy for the past 60 years, and the elite will find ways to transfer as much of its wealth to safety as it can. The normal chain of distribution will break down and "revolutionary committees" will take control of increasingly scarce supplies. Farmers won't get fuel and fertilizer, and domestic supplies will fail.

The Egyptian government will go to the International Monetary Fund and other aid agencies for loans - the government reportedly will ask for $7 billion to tide things over - and foreign money at best will buy a few months' respite. The currency will collapse; the government will print IOUs to tide things over; and the Egyptian street will reject the IOUs as the country reverts to barter.

... Egypt, which imports half its wheat and a great deal of the rest of its food, will actually starve.
... The 1921 famine after the Russian civil war killed an estimated five million people, and casualties on the same scale are quite possible in Egypt as well. Half of Egyptians live on $2 a day, and that $2 is about to collapse along with the national currency, and the result will be a catastrophe of, well, biblical proportions.

PA capitulates to Hamas

From JPost, 29 April 2011, by KHALED ABU TOAMEH:

No matter how one looks at it, the Palestinian reconciliation deal is a victory for Hamas.

...Moreover, the timing could not have been better for Hamas.

The Egyptian-sponsored deal came amid signs that Hamas was beginning to lose its grip on the Gaza Strip, as a result of the continued blockade and boycott by the international community.

Last month, thousands of Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Hamas security forces for the first time since the movement seized control over the entire Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.

Many Palestinians, including Fatah, said that the confrontations reflected increased resentment of Hamas.

But the unity deal with Fatah will now help Hamas reassert its authority over the Gaza Strip. It will also help Hamas emerge from political isolation by turning it into a legitimate and key player in the international arena.

One of the biggest achievements for Hamas is the fact that the unity deal does not require it to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip. In fact, Hamas would be permitted to keep its security forces in the Gaza Strip, further tightening its grip on the area.

Nor does the deal require Hamas to accept the Middle East peace process or accept the two-state solution.

Hamas will be brought into the unity government as an equal partner.

Until a few days ago, Hamas and Fatah were detaining and torturing each other’s supporters.

For the past three-and-a-half years, security forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad worked round the clock to eliminate Hamas’s presence in the West Bank.

Under the terms of the reconciliation accord, Fatah will have to release all “political detainees” belonging to Hamas. This will only help Hamas regain its strength in the West Bank.

The deal also allows Hamas to run again unconditionally in elections, as was the case in the 2006 parliamentary vote. There’s no guarantee that Hamas would not win again in the next elections, which are expected to take place within a year.

Hamas has been recognized as a legitimate partner and player not only by Fatah, but also by the most populous Arab country, Egypt.

The popular uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak out of office earlier this year has been nothing but a blessing for Hamas. The new Egyptian regime has since been working to improve its ties with Hamas through a series of goodwill gestures that include the reopening of the Rafah border crossing and permitting the movement to have its own “representative office” in Cairo.

Although some Palestinians remained skeptical about the prospects of the unity deal holding for a long period of time, many agreed that Hamas stood to benefit the most from the agreement.

See this TIP Timeline of Terror Attacks by Hamas Since Israel’s 2005 Gaza Withdrawal.

Dangerous liaisons (particularly for the West) between Egypt and Iran

From Il Giornale, April 23, 2011, by Fiamma Nirenstein*:

...after thirty hostile years, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Egypt are preparing to exchange ambassadors. The passage of two Iranian ships into the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal some weeks ago foreshadowed this new reality.

(Also see our previous posting on this subject: "Egypt Minister Proposes Opening ‘New Page’ With Iran")



Nabil el Arabi, just appointed Egypt’s Foreign Minister by the new post-revolutionary government, immediately stated he intended to restore relations with Teheran. Then he met with an Iranian official, Mugtabi Amani, in the first institutional visit since Mubarak was deposed. El Arabi then negotiated the opening of the respective embassies in Teheran and Cairo with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akhbar Salehi. It seems that Ali Ahbar Sbuyeh, an Iranian career diplomat, will serve as Iranian ambassador to Egypt. Egypt has said that it is too early to announce his Egyptian counterpart. The delay in selecting the new Egyptian ambassador to Iran is probably the result of Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf’s very recent meeting with the Saudi King, who has made clear his dislike of this new reality.

Discussions are also underway regarding other consequences of the new reality: Egypt’s stance toward Hamas, Iran’s God-child, has changed, and weapons smuggling to Gaza through tunnels from Egyptian territory is no longer stopped by Egyptian security forces. Iran might want more explicit support for Hamas, and might also request protection for Iranian convoys carrying weapons through Sudan.

Egypt and Iran are the two historical pillars, the two great and well-armed forces, of the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam. They counter-balanced each other.

While the Sunni branch is ambiguous toward the Muslim Brothers and al Qaeda, it has much better relations with the West and has resisted extremism in its territory.

The stronghold of the Shiite branch, on the other hand, is the Islamic Ayatollah regime, which explicitly champions the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamic caliphate. It supports terrorist groups whether Sunni or Shiite, including Hamas and Hezbollah. A few days ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran again made unbridled anti-Western threats running along these lines:

“The United States and other Western nations foment the Middle Eastern revolutions to save the Zionist regime. They want to overturn Syria because it is our friend… the revolt of the Arab world will in any case lead to the collapse of the Zionist regime...the USA is disloyal to the Arabs and will be kicked out of the Middle East ”.

The current Egyptian government probably questions the fidelity of the USA and Obama. After all, it was no coincidence that Obama flew to Cairo on his first presidential trip where he gave his first speech to the Arab world. Egypt, which for decades was loyal to its friendship with the USA, is certainly wondering why President Obama abandoned Mubarak without thinking twice. Mubarak was the most pro-American of all the leaders of the Arab world and would have never broken the peace with Israel.

The new Egypt, now in search of allies, is under pressure from its population which moves in a much more Islamic direction. If it is true, and it is, that the Muslim Brotherhood accounts for thirty percent, it will therefore dominate the Egyptian parliament. Two days ago, the secretary and deputy supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood announced that sharia, with its hand cutting, stoning and terrible abuses of women, will soon be imposed.

Furthermore, after the Tahrir Square revolution, only 35% of the Egyptian population is in favour of keeping the peace treaty with Israel. Demonstrators assaulted the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.

Even Egyptian cabinet ministers can no longer restrain themselves: Samir Radwan, Minister of Finance, referring to new Israeli investments in Egypt, declared:

“We do not need investments from the enemy”.

Relations between Iran and Egypt broke off after Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel; it matters that this renewed friendship rests upon anti-Israeli hatred. The Iranian government dedicated a monument to Khaled al Istambuli, who murdered Sadat in the name of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Members of the commando, such as Abboud al Zumar, are now released. Al Zumar has said he was disappointed that his revolution resulted in Mubarak. He should wait a moment: he still has to see the results of this one.

*Vice-president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chair of the Committee for the Inquiry into Antisemitism, Italian Chamber of Deputies

Hamas and Fatah try reconciliation (again)

From Christian Science Monitor, April 27, 2011, by Kristen Chick, Correspondent:
Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah say they've agreed to end a four-year rift. If the agreement holds, it could pave the way for the first Palestinian elections since 2006 and end a period of simmering hostilities...
In a deal brokered by Egypt, the two sides agreed in principle to form an interim government made up of “independents” and to hold elections in a year, officials said at a press conference. Officials said they would formally ink the deal within weeks.

... Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have watched regional revolutions and held small protests against their own leaders, whom they see as unaccountable and corrupt. They've also urged the factions to put aside their differences for the sake of creating a Palestinian state. That has dragged Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas's Khaled Mashaal back to the negotiating table.

Yet many observers are skeptical that the deal will hold, particularly when its comes to implementation.

“Looking at the past four years, at the lack of trust, the lack of confidence, the incitement on both sides, it makes every reasonable person question whether this will be implemented on the ground,” says Mkhaimer Abusada, political science professor at Al Azhar University in Gaza...

Schism developed in 2007
The schism between Hamas and Fatah opened in 2007, when Hamas wrested control of Gaza from Fatah in a bloody conflict. Since then, Fatah has controlled the West Bank and Hamas has ruled Gaza. The divide has complicated efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Egypt, under the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, tried unsuccessfully for years to bring the two Palestinian factions together. Some Hamas officials were skeptical he was an honest broker however, since Mubarak detested their movement, an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood...

The quick success of the new government in brokering a deal will be a source of pride for Egypt, whose regional influence has declined....

Israel and the US, however...have said in the past they will not recognize a Palestinian government that includes the Islamist organization unless Hamas first renounces violence and recognizes Israel’s right to exist.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the agreement. “The Palestinian Authority must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. Peace with both is not possible,” he said.

Officials in Cairo tried to head off a confrontation with Israel, implying the interim government would be made up of technocrats and not factional figures. They also said they had agreed on security cooperation, a key area in the ongoing dispute, but did not go into detail. Mr. Abusada said the agreement stipulated that Hamas would remain in control of security in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank until new elections are held and the government restructures the security apparatus. Hamas’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, has rejected laying down arms or giving control of security to the very forces they fought fiercely in 2007.

...Hamas ...with a more neutral arbiter in the new Egyptian government, essentially ran out of excuses not to agree, says Emad Gad, an analyst at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

Gad says the upheaval currently under way in Syria, which hosts Hamas’s politburo, was likely a factor pushing the organization to the table. And it also couldn’t ignore the impatience of Gazans, who were tired of living under the blockade Israel imposed after Hamas took control of Gaza. As the wave of protests swept the region, Gazans organized protests of their own against Hamas, which were swiftly put down by Hamas security forces.

But the initial signs on the ground in Gaza were not positive, says Abusada. When Gazans went to a central Gaza City square to celebrate the announcement, they were dispersed by baton-wielding Hamas policemen. “That makes me wonder whether Hamas on the ground and Al Qassam is going to accept this and is ready to implement it,” he says.

Egypt Minister Proposes Opening ‘New Page’ With Iran

The bad guys include Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas...then Lebanon, Turkey ....now EGYPT TOO???

From Bloomberg, Mar 30, 2011, by Mariam Fam:

Egypt is ready to “open a new page” with Iran, with which it hasn’t had full diplomatic relations since 1979, Foreign Minister Nabil el-Arabi said, according to the state-run Middle East News Agency.

“The Egyptian government doesn’t consider Iran to be an enemy state,” MENA cited el-Arabi as saying. “We’re opening a new page with all countries, including Iran.”

...Egypt has accused Iran in the past of using proxy groups such as the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement to increase its influence in the Middle East. The two countries haven’t had full diplomatic relations since 1979, when former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gave refuge to the deposed Iranian shah, Reza Pahlavi.

Israel Seizes Ship Loaded With Iranian Arms for Gaza

From The New York Times, March 15, 2011, by ISABEL KERSHNER:

JERUSALEM — Israeli naval commandos intercepted and commandeered on Tuesday a cargo vessel en route from Turkey to Egypt that was loaded with weaponry, Israeli officials said.

Military officials said that the ship, which was flying a Liberian flag, had sailed to Turkey from Syria. ... the assessment was that they were bound for Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave controlled by Hamas.

...The interception took place outside Israeli territorial waters 200 nautical miles west of the coast and was in accordance with international maritime law ...the weapons shipment originated in Iran ...

...The ship was being escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod where the crew would be questioned and the cargo would undergo further inspection, officials said.

...Israel was careful to emphasize that it had ascertained that there was no Turkish or Egyptian involvement in the incident., to avoid any misunderstanding...

40 million Egyptians are about to become very, very hungry (but they still mutilate their women)

From The Asia Times Online, 10 Feb 2011, by Spengler (David P Goldman):

...Not until June will we know the extent of the damage to China's winter wheat crop, virtually all its production. Extremely low rainfall this winter parched more than 5 million hectares of 14 million hectares planted, and the next few weeks' weather will determine if the world faces a real shortage of the staff of life.
Hoarding on the part of North African countries, starting with Algeria, has already pushed up the wheat price in the Mediterranean to a 20% premium over the price shown on the Chicago futures market. The immediate risk is that pre-emptive purchases of wheat will price the grain out of the reach of poor Egyptians, not to mention Pakistanis and Bengalis.

And if reserve-rich China, usually self-sufficient, goes into the world market to buy millions of tons of wheat, the price of wheat can rise to an arbitrarily high level.

There is a root cause to the Egyptian uprising ...and it is not Israel, but China:
prosperity in Asia creates inelastic demand for grain, such that a minor supply disruption such as the 2010 droughts in Argentina and Russia causes huge price increases. American economist Larry Kudlow observes as well that ethanol subsidies artificially inflate grain demand as well, contributing to the present price spike.
About 40 million Egyptians live on less than US$2 a day - far poorer than the Gazans who are now selling the food they received through Western largesse to Egypt...

...The trouble is that people want to eat almost every day. Pundits and political scientists talk of a choice of political models as if they were at a Ford dealership rather than the scene of a national catastrophe. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen titled his February 7 offering, "Tehran 1979 or Berlin 1989?"...

...Automobile models and political models, though, have one thing in common: you can't have them unless you can pay for them. Iran in 1979 pumped 6 million barrels of oil a day, and petrodollars can pay for a lot of stupidity. Germany was in 1989 and remains one of the world's most productive economies...

  ...Egypt has no oil, insignificant industry, small amounts of natural gas, and 40 million people who are about to become very, very hungry. Without figuring out how to feed the destitute bottom half of the Egyptian population, all the talk of "models" is window-shopping.

That is also why an Iranian outcome is less likely than Iran's exultant leaders seem to think. A radical Islamist state is like J P Morgan's yacht. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.

Iran wants "another Gaza in Egypt", Netanyahu warned on February 2. That might be true.
But there's a difference between a Gaza floating in foreign aid, and the bankrupt failed state that Egypt is about to become. The difference will be measured in starvation.

The United States alone has pledged $580 in annual aid per Gazan, slightly less than the annual per capita income of the bottom half of Egypt's people. The Palestine Authority (PA) transfers $1.2 billion a year to Gaza, mostly in salaries for the 77,000 PA employees still on the payroll. The United Nations throws in about $250 million. Iran subsidizes the Hamas government with at least $100 million a year, although the PA claims that the flow is much greater.

The numbers are slippery, but according to a study for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published in the January 13 Jerusalem Post, the Hamas government in Gaza takes in several thousand dollars for each of the strip's 450,000 residents.

Being such a statelet is great work, if you can get it. The misplaced fixation of the major powers on Israeli-Palestinian peace gives Hamas (the Palestine offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) an enormous claim on foreign aid. The Brothers back in Egypt won't be so lucky. There are 178 Egyptians for every Gazan, and not much aid to go around...

...What happens next? Egypt's stock market has collapsed, and its pound has fallen to the lowest level since 2005, with some brokerage-house analysts warning of a 20% decline during the next several weeks. Foreign investors have deserted the market for Egyptian treasury securities, so the central bank will print money to give to the banks to buy government debt.

After half a century of military rule since the 1952 Free Officers' coup, Egypt's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the old regime and its family and friends. If this regime is overthrown, and the corrupt nexus of army and business faces expropriation, the entire liquid wealth of Egypt will make a run for the border, along with its current proprietors.

This is a formula for a classic currency breakdown and galloping inflation, which invariably means panic purchases of commodities and hoarding: a collapse of the Egyptian pound, uncontrolled capital flight, inability to finance a current account deficit in the $15 billion range, and chaos in the Egyptian economy. Egypt might appeal to the international community for help, but the largesse offered to 450,000 Gazans will not extend to the 40 million Egyptians living on less than $2 a day.

...At this point, Egyptians will begin to starve. The government's immediate response is to spend more. Egypt's new Finance Minister Samir Radwan promised on February 5 that government subsidies would offset the rise in the world market price of food. The government budget would help to "achieve social justice", Radwan told reporters.

The trouble, as the rating agency Standard and Poor's explained, is that the government deficit will climb into the teens, from the 8.1% deficit registered last year.

How long Egypt can finance its external deficit, or its internal deficit, without recourse to the printing press, depends less on internal events than on the weather in China.

The Times' Friedman writes rapturously that Egyptians "want to shape their own destiny". Unless Egyptian intelligence has secretly mastered weather modification, Egyptians have very little say about their own destiny.

The New York Times on February 8 quotes Mohamed ElBaradei, the figurehead opposition leader, complaining that the Arab world is "a collection of failed states who add nothing to humanity or science" because "people were taught not to think or to act, and were consistently given an inferior education. That will change with democracy."

It's too late. A country that still practices female genital mutilation cannot undertake a grand leap into modernity (by way of comparison, China began to abolish foot-binding in 1911 and eradicated it entirely shortly after 1949).

In Food and failed Arab states, February 2, Spengler also noted that

"35% of all Egyptians, and 45% of Egyptian women can't read. Nine out of ten Egyptian women suffer genital mutilation... The most authoritative Egyptian Muslim scholars [such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who last week addressed the demonstrators in Tahrir Square] continue to recommend genital mutilation... Three-quarters of acts of genital mutilation in Egypt are executed by physicians. What does that say about the character of the country's middle class? ..."

In this case, Oswald Spengler's motto applies: Optimism is cowardice. Memo to the temporary residents of Tahrir Square: pray for rain in China.

Egypt tries to reconcile 'Twin Terrors' Hamas and Fatah

From IsraelNationalNews, 25 Feb 2011, by Gil Ronen:

The Egyptian effort to mediate between Hamas and Fatah has resumed, Wasel Abu Yousef, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said Thursday.

Abu Yousef said that senior Egyptian intelligence officer Muhammad Ibrahim will meet the Palestinian Authority senior leadership under Mahmoud Abbas next week, and will also confer with leaders of other "streams and national forces"  in order to end the rift within the PA.

In an interview with Arab news agency Quds.net, Abu Yousef said that Muhammad Ibrahim's visit to  the PA signals that Egypt has gone back to its role in sponsoring reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

...Both Hamas and Fatah are terror militias that also have political sections.

Since 1993, Israeli governments have treated Fatah as a legitimate political force, despite the fact that it continues to honor terrorist child-murderers while its subgroups take pride in point-blank executions of Jewish civilians.

Under deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, then-Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman was the person in charge of reconciling the feuding terror militias. Suleiman is now the Deputy President of Egypt but he announced that Mubarak had transferred his powers to the army.

The Coming Plagues of Egypt

From BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 131, February 21, 2011, by Dr. Mordechai Kedar*:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In Egypt, there is almost no social contract to govern the conduct of its citizens – as there is in democratic societies. The norm, then, is to behave without inhibition, and violent confrontation is usually the standard response to conflict. With Mubarak out of the picture, and with the behavior of democratic society not yet learned, it seems likely that in the near term Egypt will be a society plagued by political intrigue and instability – providing alarming headlines almost daily. The governments of the world must be alert and vigilant for developments that could threaten the Suez Canal, the peace with Israel and regional stability.

...The citizen in a democracy imposes upon himself a strict etiquette: not to push; not to steal; not to harass women and girls; not to harm or insult others; to stop at a red light, even if it is three o'clock in the morning; not to cheat in business; to hold the door open for the person behind you; to stand in line; not to behave in a socially unacceptable manner; and other such dos and don'ts which the citizen in a democratic society feels obligated to abide by at every moment. He upholds these rules not out of fear of the regime (which is in no way intimidating), but out of self-discipline and conviction that only thus can a society run smoothly.

Thus, a democratic society is one that is based upon the self-restraint of its citizens, and this self-restraint allows society to live a life of freedom and comfort...

In Egypt, however,...there is no such social contract – no rules, no laws, no restraints and no self-dictatorship. Each person does as he chooses at any given moment with no self-restraint or consideration for others, unguided by even the most basic rules of conduct. A red traffic light is a mere recommendation; bribery is the norm; anyone can build what he wants where he wants; any manager can appoint his sons, daughters and brothers-in-law to any position under him, irrespective of their qualifications; and resorting to violence against the weak is widely prevalent. The individual feels free to act on his impulses and is not required to answer for his actions and misdemeanors.

...In democratic societies, groups develop codes of conflict management through legitimate means such as debate, public organization and peaceful demonstration. Everyone abides by the same "rules of the game" which enable all groups, even if they differ in worldview and agenda, to coexist and conduct open, fair and non-violent public debate among themselves. In contrast, in a society lacking democratic experience there are no political rules, no limitations, no restraints or constraints. Groups tend to enter into violent confrontation on every issue. In fact, the Egyptian regime executed heads of the Muslim Brotherhood, while the Brotherhood and other organizations assassinated President Sadat, ministers of the Interior and police officers.

Egyptian society has just been released from the grip of Mubarak's regime. The current situation in Egypt resembles a pressure cooker whose lid has been suddenly removed. The general population's awareness of legitimate tools for conflict management have yet to form, and each group sets demands, develops expectations and is prepared to launch a struggle – sometimes violent – to realize its aspirations.

Instances of assault on police stations, looting of museums, government offices and supermarkets and even sexual assault (as CBS's Lara Logan experienced) are the result of such lawlessness, and such behavior may prevail in Egypt for some time. This is similar to what we witnessed in Iraq after the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Terrorist attacks by Islamic groups should not be ruled out either.

The army has now suspended the constitution for six months in order to impose order; in other words, to put the lid back on the pressure cooker. Nevertheless, Mubarak's National Democratic Party, the Wafd party, the Nasserites, the Socialists, the Communists, the extremist religious groups, of course, and the various "Muslim Brotherhood" Islamists will all attempt to pull in their own direction. ...Such internal struggles could create a political vacuum, drawing in foreign interference. Iran, Hamas, Hizballah and al-Qaeda are all waiting to be “called-in” for assistance by one or another Egyptian faction. Much the same happened in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam's regime in April 2003, and to this day the Iraqi domestic political system has not yet stabilized.

The army will endeavor to lower the flames, or smother them, should they get too high. While the army has thus far not expressed any desire to take power into its hands permanently, it is certainly possible that after whetting its appetite the army will "discover" a taste for ruling, and Egypt will revert to the rule of generals.

The Muslim Brotherhood have now demanded a repeat of the elections for the Legislative Council (Majlis a-Sha'b), held last November, whose results were clearly "fixed" by Mubarak's regime. The Brotherhood won only one seat out of 454, when their electoral strength might have earned them over half the seats. If the army responds to their demands and holds fair elections, we might see an Egyptian parliament with an Islamic majority, such as in Turkey, which will appoint a government with an Islamist agenda. An Islamist president elected in fair elections together with an Islamist parliament might change the constitution to prevent the passing of the country into secular hands, as was done in Iran after the 1979 Islamist revolution.

The coming period could indeed be one of social and political unrest in Egypt, with governments rising and falling, an elected parliament unable to function, a military refraining from taking power despite its authority to do so and politicians forming and rapidly changing allies within a short period. We may also witness a series of political assassinations, as the quarreling camps seek ascendancy.

This situation of unrest could awaken within many Egyptians the wish to bring to Egypt a strong and dependable figure, with a clear, unwavering agenda. The choice will probably be one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Sheikh Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi is a celebrated Egyptian in the Arab and Muslim world, an eloquent speaker, well-read and knowledgeable, and a practically-permanent guest on the "Shari'a and Life" program on Aljazeera TV. Already this past weekend, he was back preaching in Cairo, and could yet be called upon to rescue Egypt from chaos, leading the country in the Islamist direction.

In the near term, then, Egypt will likely be a society plagued by a whirlpool of political intrigue and instability – providing alarming headlines almost daily. The governments of the world must be alert and vigilant for developments that could threaten the Suez Canal, the peace with Israel and regional stability.

*Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a 25-year veteran of Israeli military intelligence, is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Qaradawi: Egypt's Khomeini?

From the Rubin Report, Friday, February 18, 2011, by Barry Rubin:

Friday, February 18 may be a turning point in Egyptian history. On this day Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the best-known Muslim Brotherhood cleric in the world and one of the most famous Islamist thinkers, will address a mass rally in Cairo.

It was 32 years ago almost to the day when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned in triumph to Tehran to take the leadership of that country. Qaradawi has a tougher job but he's up to the challenge if his health holds up.

.... Long resident in the Gulf, he is returning to his homeland in triumph. Through internet, radio, his 100 books, and his weekly satellite television program, Qaradawi has been an articulate voice for revolutionary Islamism. He is literally a living legend.

Under the old regime, Qaradawi was banned from the country. He is now 84 years old--two years older than the fallen President Husni Mubarak...

It was Qaradawi who, in critiquing Usama bin Ladin and al-Qaida, argued that Islamists should always participate in elections because they would, he claims, invariably win them. Hamas and Hizballah have shown that he was right on that point.

Symbollically, he will give the Friday prayer sermon to be held in Tahrir Square, the center of the revolutionary movement. The massing of hundreds of thousands of people in the square to hear Islamic services and a sermon by a radical Islamist is not the kind of thing that's been going on under the 60-year-old military regime that was recently overthrown.

The context is also the thanking of Qaradawi for his support of the revolution, an implication that he is somehow its spiritual father.

Qaradawi, though some in the West view him as a moderate, supports the straight Islamist line: anti-American, anti-Western, wipe Israel off the map, foment Jihad, stone homosexuals, in short the works.

One of Qaradawi's initiatives has been urging Muslims to settle in the West, of which he said, “that powerful West, which has come to rule the world, should not be left to the influence of the Jews alone.” He contends that the three major threats Muslims face are Zionism, internal integration, and globalization. To survive, he argues, Muslims must fight the Zionists, Crusaders, idolators, and Communists.

Make no mistake, Qaradawi is not some fossilized Islamic ideologue. ...He is subtle enough to sell himself as a moderate to those who don't understand the implications of his words or look beneath the surface of his presentation.

...It is Qaradawi, not bin Ladin, who is the most dangerous revolutionary Islamist in the world and he is about to unleash the full force of his power [of] persuasion on Egypt...

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: ...to be, or not to be?

A hopeful analysis from The National Review Online, February 16, 2011, by Duncan Currie:

Democratization will be a messy and turbulent process...

What is the best possible outcome in Egypt? Short term, the ideal scenario is a nonviolent, military-brokered transition led by a reformist government that will spearhead major constitutional changes, uphold the rule of law, nurture liberal institutions, promote democratic pluralism, safeguard basic freedoms, and maintain the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

But when exactly should the country hold fresh elections? That’s where things get trickier.

...Without adequate institutional and cultural underpinnings, democracy can rapidly deteriorate into soft (or rigid) authoritarianism. We should not be idealistically dismissive of the profound challenges of moving from dictatorship to representative government. Holding a free election tomorrow would not transform Egypt into New Zealand. The process of liberalization will unfold over many years, with plenty of setbacks along the way.

Had Hosni Mubarak been a different sort of autocrat — one who allowed for greater political and socioeconomic development — Egypt would be better positioned to make the leap toward democratic rule. Alas, the octogenarian despot chose to brutalize and imprison secular human-rights activists rather than let them foster civil society. This repression, along with a bevy of social and religious factors, helped the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (EMB) — a Sunni Islamist group founded in 1928 — become the country’s biggest opposition movement.

Now we are confronting the same fears that Cairo shrewdly manipulated for decades. What if the Egyptian uprising triggers a chaotic chain reaction? What if the EMB seizes control? Won’t it turn Egypt into an Islamic theocracy and launch hostile actions against Israel? Won’t it disrupt trade flows — including oil traffic — through the strategically vital Suez Canal? ...These are the concerns that traditionally insulated Mubarak from serious U.S. pressure to reform.

...Here’s the discomfiting but inescapable reality: EMB members represent a sizable constituency, and they will exert substantial influence during the post-Mubarak transition. Neither the 83-year-old organization nor its grassroots followers can be airbrushed from the Egyptian political landscape.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is an important player in Egypt, and it is going to remain an important player,” says Marina Ottaway, a Middle East specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP). Yet Ottaway is quick to add that the EMB lacks both the popularity and the charismatic leadership necessary to establish an Iranian-style religious state. As anthropologist and regional expert Scott Atran has emphasized, the group does not command anything close to “mass support.” Its current prominence is largely a result of persistent government efforts to bludgeon the secular and liberal opposition.

CEIP vice president Thomas Carothers believes there is ample reason to hope that Egypt might follow the path, not of Iran, but of Indonesia — the most populous Muslim country on earth — which began its successful democratic transition in 1998. Writing in the online version of The New Republic, Carothers argues that “Egypt is not ripe for a radical Islamist revolution.” Islam scholar Reuel Marc Gerecht — a former CIA officer and author of an upcoming book on Middle East democracy — agrees: “What we are likely to see in Egypt,” he predicts in the New York Times, “is not a repeat of Iran, where fundamentalists took undisputed power, but a repeat of Iraq, where Sunni religious parties did well initially but started to fade, divide and evolve as the powerful Sunni preference for laymen of no particular religious distinction comes to the foreground.”

Indeed, the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam will militate against the imposition of a clerical regime in Cairo. Egyptian society has not produced a Khomeini-like figure, nor should we expect it to, given the nature of Sunni doctrine and tradition. Despite being “the mother ship of Sunni fundamentalism,” Gerecht notes, the EMB “has always had a tense relationship with Al Azhar, the great Sunni seminary of Cairo.” When Americans imagine the “Egyptian Muslim Brothers,” they may picture a bunch of bearded clergymen delivering fanatical sermons. Yet as Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul observes, the group boasts “an overwhelmingly lay leadership of professionals with modern educations — engineers, doctors, lawyers, academics and teachers.”

What is the Muslim Brotherhood?

From CBN News, Tuesday, February 15, 2011:

Walid Shoebat, who was once a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has authored many books about Islam and the Middle East, including his most recent, God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy, and the Bible.

Shoebat was born in Bethlehem to a Palestinian family and was once a PLO terrorist. Now, as a Christian, he works tireless to educate people about the realities of the radical Islamic agenda.

Shoebat appeared on The 700 Club, Monday, Feb. 14, to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood, recent events in Egypt, and how the upheaval will affect Christians living in the region. Click play to watch.

Many foreign policy experts believe that the radical organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood will gain great influence with a change of government in Egypt.
This secretive group has had many Western observers uneasy for years. The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt, with the goal of spreading Islamic sharia law worldwide and uniting all Muslim nations into one Islamic super-state.
Before Osama bin Laden formed al Qaeda, he belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. So did his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The terror group Hamas also identifies itself as the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch.
Why is there such a draw to the Brotherhood? the group's official motto may tell the story. It reads:

Allah is our objective.
The prophet is our leader.
Qur'an is our law.
Jihad is our way.
Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

The Brotherhood was eventually banned in Egypt, but for the past several decades has worked behind the scenes to the point where it's now considered the most influential Islamist organization in the world, with chapters in more than 100 countries.
The group's immediate goal is an Islamic state in Egypt and an end to that country's peace treaty with Israel.
What is the danger if the United States and other nations do not understand what the Muslim Brotherhood is all about?

Collective suicide of the West?

From: The Australian February 15, 2011, by Melanie Phillips*:

THE future of Egypt following the departure of president Hosni Mubarak remains opaque.
No one can currently predict whether it will end up as a democracy with free elections, a military dictatorship, or an Islamic theocratic tyranny.

... the most frightening thing of all  ...[is] the way in which the West has sanitised the Muslim Brothers and even, in the case of the Obama administration, actually tried to push them into power.

When it wasn't flip-flopping over whether Mubarak should stay or go, the White House first said it wouldn't mind if the Muslim Brothers became part of the Egyptian government.

Then it urged the inclusion of "important non-secular actors" - code for the Muslim Brothers - in a "more democratic" Egypt. And then it was revealed that its proposal for the immediate transfer of power called for the transitional government to include the brotherhood.

What madness was this? The Muslim Brothers' goal is to Islamise the world. They are religious fascists. While certainly there are millions of Muslims around the world who do want to live under democracy, the Brothers are totally against any secular rule at all and stand for an extinction of human rights. They are fanatical Jew-haters. In the 1930s they were effectively created as a political force by the Nazi Party, with which they formulated a final solution for Palestine by ridding it of its Jews, an agenda continued today by their offshoot, Hamas.

Today, they are no less the mortal enemies of the free world. Their leaders have declared war on America, gloating that the US is "experiencing the beginning of its end and is heading towards its demise", and that "resistance is the only solution".

They support al-Qa'ida terrorism "against the Americans and the Zionists". They declared that after Mubarak they would dissolve the peace treaty with Israel.

They support Hezbollah, make overtures to Iran, and openly employ a strategy of simulating moderation to gain power though democratic means in order to destroy democracy.

If Egypt is eventually taken over by the brotherhood, Jordan will be next, and both will turn into Iran/Gaza in a matter of a few years. Oh, and the Brothers are also busy Islamising Britain and America. Yet on both sides of the pond, significant elements of the political and defence establishment have decided that the Muslim Brothers are basically peace-loving, sensible, pragmatic chaps who are useful allies against the men of violence.

...Has there ever been a civilisation more bent on collective suicide than the contemporary West?

*Melanie Phillips is the author of The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power, published by Encounter

"Egypt isn't moving toward democracy, it's moved into martial law and where it goes is now subject to debate."

From Reuters, 12 Feb, by Samia Nakhoul and Andrew Hammond* 2011:

...Behind the celebrations, there was a note of caution over how far the armed forces under Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's veteran defense minister, were ready to permit democracy, especially since the hitherto banned Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is one of the best organized movements.

"This is just the end of the beginning," said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Egypt isn't moving toward democracy, it's moved into martial law and where it goes is now subject to debate."

U.S. officials familiar with the Egyptian military say Tantawi, 75, has long seemed resistant to change.

Suleiman, a 74-year-old former spy chief, annoyed some this week by questioning whether Egyptians were ready for democracy.

Al Arabiya television said the army would soon dismiss the cabinet and suspend parliament. The head of the Constitutional Court would join the leadership with the military council.

The best deterrent to any attempt to maintain military rule could be the street power of protesters who showed Mubarak they could render Egypt ungovernable without their consent.

But as continued turmoil in Tunisia shows a month after the overthrow of the strongman there inspired young Egyptians to act, any government will face huge social and economic problems.

*Reporting by Samia Nakhoul, Edmund Blair, Marwa Awad, Yasmine Saleh, Dina Zayed, Shaimaa Fayed, Alexander Dziadosz, Sherine El Madany, Patrick Werr, Alistair Lyon, Tom Perry, Andrew Hammond, Jonathan Wright, Peter Millership and Alison Williams in Cairo and Christian Lowe in Algiers; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Louise Ireland.

The greatest enemies of Egyptian democracy are amongst it's protestors

From an op-ed by Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism:

...not just Israelis -- are concerned that Egypt’s revolution could be commandeered by radicals...

...Do the Egyptians demonstrating in Tahrir Square appreciate how threatening the Muslim Brotherhood is to the freedom they hope to win?

...I make no brief for Mubarak whose goal has been to create a pharaonic dynasty, not leave a democratic legacy. But I couldn’t help but recall that exactly 32 years ago, I was in Iran covering an upheaval very similar to the one now taking place in Egypt. And I knew young people ....smart, educated in America and Europe, secular, liberal and excited about the fall of the Shah and the prospect of a new, free, democratic and prosperous Iran.  They firmly believed that the Ayatollah Khomeini not only tolerated them -- he valued them. After all, the revolution succeeded because, for the first time, the radical clerics had been joined by students, merchants, socialists, communists and other groups.

Before long, Khomeini and his followers had all the levers of power in their hands. My friends were sent to the gallows and the prisons or – if they were lucky – managed to flee into exile.

No, it doesn’t have to be that way in Egypt. It helps that the Muslim Brotherhood apparently has no charismatic leader, no Egyptian Khomeini. But it’s also true, as Omar Suleiman, now Egypt’s vice president, told FBI Director Robert Mueller five years ago (according to WikiLeaks disclosures), that the Muslim Brotherhood has spawned “11 different Islamist extremist organizations, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad …” which today is a dominant faction of al-Qaeda.

So the question now is what can be done to help those who sincerely want a free, democratic and prosperous Egypt, and what can be done to prevent anti-democratic forces from hijacking whatever democratic processes may be put in place

• as the Khomeinists did in Iran in 1979,
• as Hamas did in Gaza in 2006 and
• as Hezbollah is doing in Lebanon right now

with little resistance from the U.S. or Europe or, needless to say, the U.N.

If the Muslim Brotherhood is made to compete in a war of ideas, there is a decent chance  it will lose. It’s one thing for the Brothers to proclaim: “Islam is the solution!” It’s another for them to explain why it’s okay if their policies scare off tourists and investors, lead to wars Egypt may not win, while deepening poverty and decreasing freedom for the vast majority of Egyptians.

Of course, Iran’s rulers, Hezbollah and Hamas do not rely on op-eds and television debates to advance their arguments. They murder those who disagree with them.

Stalin mused: “Death solves all problems -- no man, no problem.” The Muslim Brotherhood goes further. Just last year, its “Supreme Guide,” Muhammad Badi', gave a sermon in which he said it was his hope and plan to raise “a jihadi generation that pursues death, just as the enemies pursue life." As a campaign slogan, that may not be as catchy as “Hope and Change.” As a campaign strategy, it conveys distinct advantages.

And just this week, Kamal al-Halbavi, a senior member of the Brotherhood told the BBC that he hoped Egypt soon would have a government “like the Iranian government, and a good president like Mr. Ahmadinejad…”

Americans don’t have enormous leverage to influence events on the ground in Egypt -- but neither are Americans without leverage. Surely, we can and should identify those who are sincerely fighting for freedom and democracy and support them. This would begin to level the playing field. Apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood invariably talk about the organization’s wonderful “social programs,” its provision of food and medicine to the poor. Where do you think the money for all that comes from? Bake sales?

It is in Egypt’s national interest -- and America’s, and, yes, Israel’s -- that Egyptians such as Dina Guirguis achieve their dream: opening a space for freedom and democracy in the heart of the Arab and Muslim Middle East. We do them no favor by not telling them this hard truth: Their most determined opponents are on the barricades with them.

Egypt - it's not the fall, it's the landing....