Sunday, July 07, 2013

Silently counting our blessings

Mohammed Morsi's claim that he led a true democratic regime and that his ouster was illegitimate doesn't hold muster.
The Muslim Brotherhood was no more legitimate than Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak was overthrown in a revolution that eventually brought Morsi to power. But what goes around comes around, and Morsi has now met the same fate as Mubarak.
The ink is not yet dry on the declaration of a new government in Egypt and almost no one knows how to pronounce the interim president's name. The U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. were quick to demand that the Egyptian military return power to civilian hands. That is the definite goal, and there is certainly no other path. But what is vital now is to distance the Muslim Brotherhood from the corridors of power in Egypt, as the Muslim Brotherhood poses the real threat to democracy both in Egypt and across the Middle East.
There has never been a truly democratic regime in Egypt. A majority of the Egyptian people may honestly support Gamal Abdel Nasser in retrospect, but he died in 1970. Violence has been part of all of the unrest in Egypt in recent years, so why are people so alarmed now? And why doesn't the U.S. understand that President Barack Obama significantly undermined Egypt's political stability with the speech on Islam he delivered in Cairo in 2009? The U.S. should let responsible entities in Egypt (namely, the military, liberals and moderate religious figures) bring the situation in Egypt back to normal.
Time must be given to the new regime -- the current interim military one and the democratic one after elections are held -- to implement a plan to restore the Egyptian economy. In another year or two, demonstrators will again fill Tahrir Square and another false prophet will step forward with promises to produce food and jobs out of thin air.
Israel will be watching developments in Egypt in the near future. Israel must remain passive and silently cheer on anything that weakens religious radicals, whether they be Sunnis in Egypt or Shiites in Iran. In this respect, what happened in Egypt this week was very positive.
There is also a chance that the interim government in Egypt will step up the fight against Islamic terrorist groups located in the Sinai Peninsula. However, it is too early to tell whether this will take place.
Israel is maintaining its right to remain silent regarding the situation in Egypt, but the revolution that took place this week certainly was a blessing for Israel. If the revolution spreads and brings down the Muslim Brotherhood in other countries in the region, it will be a double blessing.

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