Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC
Dear Friends,
Another day, and contrary to my expectations, the Egyptian protest is not only not dwindling. It apparently is expanding, at least if today’s events are any sign of things to come. But before we come to that, there are doings in Israel too.
For instance, the Spanish Foreign Minister who is on a State visit was greeted by Jews in Hebron today with curses, calls of “anti-Semite,” and generally other nasty things. Since she did not appear to be under any threat of violence due to being surrounded by a thick wall of security people, I couldn’t have been more pleased. Why? Hopefully, her experience gave her some small intimation of what Palestinians have to put up with, the difference being that they are in constant danger, whereas she was not.
Another event today was that Palestinian children of At Tuwani were attacked by settlers on their way home from school—a fairly typical event. Fortunately, CPT and Dove members were there to watch over the youngsters. But had they not been?
As for the 7 items below,
Item 1 is of an event that you have heard of several times: the demolition of the Bedouin village El Araqib—a village in Israel, whose residents are Israeli citizens, but not ones with rights equal to those of Israeli citizens who are Jewish.
Item 2 relates that the courts have given Israel a month to end the hospital bed shortage. That is an impossible task to accomplish in a month—as it is not only beds but also rooms and staff that are needed. As I have often said in the past, Israeli governments have no money for health, education, or social welfare.
However, the government does have money for propaganda, as item 3 shows. A few days ago we learned that Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yvet Lieberman, was seeking PR companies in Europe to brighten Israel’s image (Norway’s 5 top PR firms refused). Now we learn in item 3 that the Israeli military is hiring and training ‘hackers!’ And this costs money, too—over a million dollars! Money that could have better been spent on hospital beds and staff. Rooms take time to build, but beds should be available within days. But don’t worry. The government will ignore the court’s order and find some sort of justification, as, for instance, no money, yet continue spending it on PR and on colonizing.
Item 4 is the BBC report about today’s doings in Egypt. I had difficulty deciding whether to send you this report or the NY Times one. I selected the BBC because it accompanies the text with videos. However, there is a link to the NYTimes one, in case you should want to read it.
The final 3 items are opinion pieces.
Item 5 is Thomas Friedman’s take of what is happening in Egypt. He is not usually one of my favorites, but in this piece he depicts well (apart from one snide remark about the Egyptian martyrs not having lost their lives in anti-Israel acts).
Item 6 is Gilbert Achcar’s in-depth analysis of the situation in Egypt, longish but well worth the read.
The final item is Gideon Spiro’s latest Red Rag column. It begins with his opinion on Egypt, then ends with his opinion on 2 additional matters: the first about the man who will not become the new Chief of Staff of the IOF, the 2nd about Barbara Streisand’s cousin not being allowed Israeli citizenship. In the latter, Spiro expands to talk about Israeli racism.
All the best, and may the Egyptian protesters see the fruits of their labors materialize!
Dorothy
1. Don’t say we did not know #250
On Monday, 31st January, 2011, representatives of the Israeli government, accompanied by a demolitions contractor and the police, arrived in El’Araqib. They pulled the residents out of their homes and demolished the village for the eleventh time. The rubble was put on trucks and carried away.
JNF bulldozers (D-9 Caterpillars) started to level the land to prepare for forest plantation.
When they had finished, the residents started rebuilding their huts.
The next day the same forces returned and demolished the village again.
The JNF bulldozers continued working until the rain forced them to stop.
That same day human rights activists demonstrated in front of JNF offices in Jerusalem. After most of the demonstrators had left, the police came and fined a protestor who was drumming during the demonstration, claiming that he had made too much noise.
Court gives state one month to end nationwide hospital bed shortage
The court convened to discuss a petition submitted by the Israel Medical Association about the shortage of hospital beds, which is putting patients in danger.
The High Court of Justice yesterday castigated the government for the shortage of hospital beds and instructed it to submit a plan for distributing new hospital beds within a month.
The court convened to discuss a petition submitted by the Israel Medical Association about the shortage of hospital beds, which is putting patients in danger.
The health and finance ministries have recently reached an agreement to add 960 beds to the country’s hospitals over the next six years, the state’s representatives told the court. However, they refused to say how these beds would be distributed among the hospitals.
The IMA fears the Health Ministry will add most of the beds to maternity wards, which are profitable due to payments from the National Insurance Institute, and to preemie wards. This will leave very few beds for intensive care units and internal medicine wards in the state’s 27 general hospitals.
The justices expressed concern over the hospitalization crisis. Justice Salim Joubran slammed the Health Ministry for not doing enough to solve the crisis and described the situation in the intensive care units as “disgraceful compared to the world.”
An OECD survey of hospital beds places Israel almost last – ahead only of Mexico – with a ratio of 1.9 beds per 1,000 people.
Israel Medical Association chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman recently called on the government to add beds to intensive care units immediately, in keeping with a Health Ministry plan stipulating the need for 300 additional ICU beds by 2015. The number of these beds has decreased by 8 percent in the past decade.
“If a disaster occurs in Be’er Sheva, patients whose life is in danger will be moved out of intensive care to die in wards where they cannot be taken care of, to make room for disaster victims,” Moti Klein, Intensive Care Unit head in the Soroka Medical Center, said recently.
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3. Ynet,
February 08, 2011
[ Benayahu: Internet helped Arab uprisings Photo: Avi Moalem ]
IDF says enlisting hackers
Spokesman tells panel on internet ‘as strategic weapon’ army wants 120 ‘new media fighters’
IDF Spokesman Avi Benayahu said Tuesday that the army is currently in the process of enlisting “new media fighters”.
Benayahu told a panel on the subject of “the digital medium as strategic weapon” that the army was searching for “little hackers who were born and raised online”.
“We screen them with special care and train them to serve the state,” the spokesman told the panel, which was part of the Herzliya Conference.
He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally supporting the venture and that he had supplied a budget of NIS 6 million ($1.63 million) for the enlistment of 120 soldiers.
Benayahu said the internet had had a significant effect on recent uprisings in Arab nations such as Tunisia and Egypt. “We cannot but be impressed at how Western technology harms regimes at the other end of the spectrum, such as Iran, or at how one cell phone camera can harm a regime more than any intelligence agency’s operations,” he said.
Egypt, however, “still does not understand the power that is being given to the public, while slowly being taken away from its leader”.
The spokesman said he also plans to establish blogs for other spokesmen and commanders as a PR tool. “We are at this front and proceeding slowly,” he said, and recommended that the government appoint a “new media minister”.
“The army is too involved with internal public relations. The army must not fill a space left by the state – it should be taking care of this.”
Aliza, a lone soldier from the US, explained about the new unit at the IDF Spokesperson’s Office. “We began to work with new media during Operation Cast Lead. Bloggers are very important and very influential,” she said.
“This is about the democratization of information, and about the fact that you cannot stuff information down people’s throats but you can make it more palatable.”
Aliza said the office’s YouTube channel is currently its most successful venture. “Photos catch the eye and constitute visual proof that is better than words,” she said, adding that IDF footage from the flotilla raid became the most-watched videos online and affected “media reports in the world as well as online debates”.
However, Aliza admitted, “we are still learning and we have a long way to go”.
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4. “Meanwhile, leaked US diplomatic cables carried on the Wikileaks website have revealed that Mr Suleiman was named as Israel’s preferred candidate for the job after discussions with American officials in 2008.
As Egypt’s intelligence chief, he is said to have spoken daily to the Israeli government on issues surrounding the Hamas-run Gaza Strip via a secret ‘hotline’.“ [below]
[The above is sure evidence that Omar Suleiman is no more a promoter of democracy than is Hosni Mubarak! D.]
BBC Tuesday, February 2011 Last updated at 20:29 GMT
The BBC’s Jim Muir says Egyptians from all walks of life are present
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square for the latest protest calling for Hosni Mubarak’s government to step down.
Correspondents say it is the biggest demonstration since the protests began on 25 January.
It comes despite the government’s announcement of its plans for a peaceful transfer of power.
President Mubarak has said he will stay until elections in September.
In Tahrir Square, attempts by the army to check the identity cards of those joining the demonstration were abandoned because of the sheer weight of numbers.
Our correspondent says the message to the authorities is simple – there is huge support from all walks of Egyptian life for the protests, and the government’s concessions are not enough.
Wael Ghonim, a Google executive was detained and blindfolded by state security forces for 12 days, was feted by the crowds as he entered Tahrir Square.
At the scene
Yolande Knell
BBC News, Cairo
——————————————————————————–
The determination of people queuing to get into Tahrir Square in the late afternoon sun has not been dented by officials’ announcements of a series of concessions.
“We don’t care what they are promising. Our demand is the same: Mubarak must leave,” says Mariam defiantly.
A man standing behind her says the authorities have ignored the views of young people for too long. “I am 55 years old, I have tolerated this president for 30 years. This young generation is braver than mine. They have motivated us,” he insists.
Some demonstrators concede that plans to make constitutional changes – which the opposition has long called for – were a positive step. They say release of the Google executive and blogger, Wael Ghonim, was another boost. Now the hope is that more can be achieved by keeping up large numbers in the heart of Cairo.
He is credited with setting up the page on the Facebook social network that helped galvanise protesters.
“We will not abandon our demand and that is the departure of the regime,” Mr Ghonim told protesters in the square, to cheers and applause.
Referring to the protesters who have died in clashes with the security forces, he said: “I’m not a hero but those who were martyred are the heroes.”
This latest demonstration in Cairo, as the protests enter their third week, came as large crowds demonstrated in the second city, Alexandria, and other Egyptian towns and cities.
The protesters are continuing to call for Mr Mubarak to leave office immediately, and say they are sceptical about any transition managed by the government.
In his response to the protests, President Mubarak has set up a committee to propose constitutional changes, and another is being formed to carry the changes out.
“The real test of the revolution’s success or failure is whether it changes Egypt permanently – that does not mean changing the face at the top to preserve the system, it means democracy”
Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East editor
Egypt’s unfinished revolution
Vice-President Omar Suleiman, who announced the formation of the new committees, said he had briefed Mr Mubarak on recent talks with the opposition, and the president had welcomed the process of “dialogue” and “national reconciliation”.
“The president also underlined the importance of continuing [the process] and moving from guidelines to a clear map with a definite timetable” for a “peaceful and organised” transfer of power, he said.
Among the key expected changes are a relaxation of presidential eligibility rules, and the setting of a limit for presidential terms.
A third committee, expected to begin its work in the next few days, would investigate clashes between pro- and anti-Mubarak groups last week and refer its findings to the prosecutor-general, Mr Suleiman said.
He also said President Mubarak had issued directives to stop repressive measures against the opposition.
Meanwhile, US Vice-President Joe Biden urged Mr Suleiman to make an orderly transition of power in Egypt that is “prompt, meaningful, peaceful and legitimate”, the White House said.
During a telephone call, Mr Biden also urged the immediate lifting of Egypt’s emergency laws.
Fierce clashes
The BBC’s Yolande Knell reports that some of the protesters in Tahrir Square concede that plans to make constitutional changes – which the opposition has long called for – are a positive step, but others are sceptical about Mr Suleiman’s intentions.
Wael Ghonim (left) is credited with setting up a Facebook page that helped galvanise protesters “We don’t trust them any more,” Ahmed, one young Egyptian queuing to get into the square, told the BBC. “How can Suleiman guarantee there’ll be no more violence around the election after all the attacks we’ve seen on young people.”
A middle-aged protester, Mustafa, said: “We are asking why there is no committee for young people. He has to ask the young people what they want – this is all about the young people.”
The unrest over the last two weeks has seen fierce clashes with police, and pitched battles between protesters and Mubarak supporters.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers say they have confirmed the deaths of 297 people since 28 January, based on a count from seven hospitals in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. No comprehensive death toll has been given by the Egyptian government.
Some economic activity has resumed, but authorities have delayed reopening the stock exchange until Sunday. On Friday it was estimated that the paralysis resulting from the unrest had been costing the economy an average of $310m (£193m) a day.
The number of those on Tahrir Square has been swelling each day and dropping back overnight.
Meanwhile, leaked US diplomatic cables carried on the Wikileaks website have revealed that Mr Suleiman was named as Israel’s preferred candidate for the job after discussions with American officials in 2008.
As Egypt’s intelligence chief, he is said to have spoken daily to the Israeli government on issues surrounding the Hamas-run Gaza Strip via a secret “hotline”.
I’m in Tahrir Square, and of all the amazing things one sees here the one that strikes me most is a bearded man who is galloping up and down, literally screaming himself hoarse, saying: “I feel free! I feel free!” Gathered around him are Egyptians of all ages, including a woman so veiled that she has only a slit for her eyes, and they’re all holding up cellphones taking pictures and video of this man, determined to capture the moment in case it never comes again.
Aren’t we all? In 40 years of writing about the Middle East, I have never seen anything like what is happening in Tahrir Square. In a region where the truth and truth-tellers have so long been smothered under the crushing weight of oil, autocracy and religious obscurantism, suddenly the Arab world has a truly free space — a space that Egyptians themselves, not a foreign army, have liberated — and the truth is now gushing out of here like a torrent from a broken hydrant.
What one hears while strolling around are all the pent-up hopes, aspirations and frustrations of Egyptians for the last 50 years. I know the “realist” experts believe this will all be shut down soon. Maybe it will. But for one brief shining moment, forget the experts and just listen. You have not heard this before. It is the sound of a people so long kept voiceless, finally finding, testing and celebrating their own voices.
“We got a message from Tunis,” Hosam Khalaf, a 50-year-old engineer stopped me to say. “And the message was: Don’t burn yourself up; burn up the fear that is inside you. That is what happened here. This was a society in fear, and the fear has been burned.” Khalaf added that he came here with his wife and daughter for one reason: “When we meet God, we will at least be able to say: ‘We tried to do something.’ ”
This is not a religious event here, and the Muslim Brotherhood is not running the show. This is an Egyptian event. That is its strength and its weakness — no one is in charge and everyone in the society is here. You see secular girls in fashionable dress sitting with veiled women. You see parents pushing their babies wearing “Mubarak must leave” signs. You see students in jeans and peasants in robes. What unites all of them is a fierce desire to gain control of their future.
“This is the first time in my life I get to say what I think in public,” said Remon Shenoda, a software engineer. “And what is common here is that everyone wants to say something.”
Indeed, there is a powerful sense of theft here, that this regime and its cronies not only stole wealth, but they stole something so much more precious: the future of an entire generation of Egyptians, whom they refused to empower or offer any inspiring vision worthy of this great civilization.
“All Egyptian people believe that their country is a great country with very deep roots in history, but the Mubarak regime broke our dignity in the Arab world and in the whole world,” said Mohamed Serag, a professor at Cairo University. By the way, everyone here wants to give you their name and make sure you spell it right. Yes, the fear is gone.
Referring to Egypt’s backward public education system that depends so much on repetition, one young girl was wearing a sign urging Mubarak to leave quickly. It said: “Make it short. This is history, and we will have to memorize it at school.”
Grievances abound. An elderly woman in a veil is shouting that she has three daughters who graduated from the college of commerce and none of them can find jobs. There are signs everywhere asking about Mubarak, a former Air Force chief. Questions such as: “Hey Mr. Pilot, where did you get that $17 billion?”
You almost never hear the word “Israel,” and the pictures of “martyrs” plastered around the square are something rarely seen in the Arab world — Egyptians who died fighting for their own freedom not against Israel.
When you enter the square now, one row of volunteers checks your ID, another frisks you for weapons and then you walk through a long gauntlet of men clapping and singing an Egyptian welcome song.
I confess, as I walked through, my head had a wrestling match going on inside. My brain was telling me: “Sober up — remember, this is not a neighborhood with happy endings. Only bad guys win here.” And my eyes were telling me: “Just watch and take notes. This is something totally new.”
And the this is a titanic struggle and negotiation between the tired but still powerful, top-down 1952 Egyptian Army-led revolution and a vibrant, new, but chaotic, 2011, people-led revolution from the bottom-up — which has no guns but enormous legitimacy. I hope the Tahrir Square protesters can get organized enough to negotiate a new constitution with the army. There will be setbacks. But whatever happens, they have changed Egypt.
After we walked from Tahrir Square across the Nile bridge, Professor Mamoun Fandy remarked to me that there is an old Egyptian poem that says: “ ‘The Nile can bend and turn, but what is impossible is that it would ever dry up.’ The same is true of the river of freedom that is loose here now. Maybe you can bend it for a while, or turn it, but it is not going to dry up.”
To help explain the thrilling developments in Egypt, Farooq Sulehria interviewed leading Arab scholar-activist Gilbert Achcar on February 4.
Do you think that Mubarak’s pledge on February 1st not to contest the next election represented a victory for the movement, or was it just a trick to calm down the masses as on the very next day demonstrators in Al-Tahrir Square were brutally attacked by pro-Mubarak forces?
The Egyptian popular anti-regime uprising reached a first peak on February 1st, prodding Mubarak to announce concessions in the evening. It was an acknowledgement of the force of the popular protest and a clear retreat on the autocrat’s part, coming on top of the announcement of the government’s willingness to negotiate with the opposition. These were significant concessions indeed coming from such an authoritarian regime, and a testimony to the importance of the popular mobilisation. Mubarak even pledged to speed up ongoing judicial actions against fraud perpetrated during the previous parliamentary elections.
He made it clear, however, that he was not willing to go beyond that. With the army firmly on his side, he was trying to appease the mass movement, as well as the Western powers that were urging him to reform the political system. Short of resignation, he granted some of the key demands that the Egyptian protest movement had formulated initially, when it launched its campaign on January 25. However, the movement has radicalized since that day to a point where anything short of Mubarak’s resignation won’t be enough to satisfy it, with many in the movement even demanding that he gets tried in court.
Moreover, all the regime’s key institutions are now denounced by the movement as illegitimate––the executive as well as the legislative, i.e. the parliament. As a result, part of the opposition is demanding that the head of the constitutional court be appointed as interim president, to preside over the election of a constituent assembly. Others even want a national committee of opposition forces to supervise the transition. Of course, these demands constitute a radical democratic perspective. In order to impose such a thorough change, the mass movement would need to break or destabilise the regime’s backbone, that is the Egyptian army.
Do you mean that the Egyptian army is backing Mubarak?
Egypt––even more than comparable countries such as Pakistan or Turkey––is in essence a military dictatorship with a civilian façade that is itself stuffed with men originating in the military. The problem is that most of the Egyptian opposition, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood, have been sowing illusions about the army and its purported “neutrality,” if not “benevolence.” They have been depicting the army as an honest broker, while the truth is that the army as an institution is not “neutral” at all. If it has not been used yet to repress the movement, it is only because Mubarak and the general staff did not see it appropriate to resort to such a move, probably because they fear that the soldiers would be reluctant to carry out a repression. That is why the regime resorted instead to orchestrating counter-demonstrations and attacks by thugs on the protest movement. The regime tried to set up a semblance of civil strife, showing Egypt as torn apart between two camps, thus creating a justification for the army’s intervention as the “arbiter” of the situation.
If the regime managed to mobilise a significant counter-movement and provoke clashes on a larger scale, the army could step in, saying: “Game over, everybody must go home now,” while promising that the pledges made by Mubarak would be implemented. Like many observers, I feared these last two days that this stratagem might succeed in weakening the protest movement, but the huge mobilization of today’s “day of departure” is reassuring. The army will need to make further and more significant concessions to the popular uprising.
When you talk of the opposition, what forces does it include? Of course, we hear about the Muslim Brotherhood and El Baradei. Are there are other players too like left wing forces, trade unions, etc?
The Egyptian opposition includes a vast array of forces. There are parties like the Wafd, which are legal parties and constitute what may be called the liberal opposition. Then there is a grey zone occupied by the Muslim Brotherhood. It does not have a legal status but is tolerated by the regime. Its whole structure is visible; it is not an underground force. The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly, and by far, the largest force in the opposition. When Mubarak’s regime, under US pressure, granted some space to the opposition in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood––running as “independents”––managed to get 88 MPs, i.e. 20 percent of the parliamentary seats, despite all obstacles. In the last elections held last November and December, after the Mubarak regime had decided to close down the limited space that it had opened in 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood almost vanished from parliament, losing all its seats but one.
Among the forces on the left, the largest is the Tagammu party, which enjoys a legal status and has 5 MPs. It refers to the Nasserite legacy. Communists have been prominent within its ranks. It is basically a reformist left party, which is not considered a threat to the regime. On the contrary, it has been quite compliant with it on several occasions. There are also leftwing Nasserite and radical left groups in Egypt––small but vibrant, and very much involved in the mass movement.
Then there are “civil society” movements, like Kefaya, a coalition of activists from various opposition forces initiated in solidarity with the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. It opposed the invasion of Iraq later on, and became famous afterwards as a democratic campaign movement against Mubarak’s regime. From 2006 to 2009, Egypt saw the unfolding of a wave of industrial actions, including a few impressively massive workers strikes. There are no independent workers unions in Egypt, with one or two very recent exceptions born as a result of the social radicalisation. The bulk of the working class does not have the benefit of autonomous representation and organization. An attempt at convening a general strike on April 6, 2008 in solidarity with the workers led to the creation of the April 6 Youth Movement. Associations like this one and Kefaya are campaign-focused groups, not political parties, and they include people of different political affiliations along with unaffiliated activists.
When Mohamed El Baradei returned to Egypt in 2009 after his third term at the head of the IAEA, his personal prestige enhanced by the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, a liberal and left coalition gathered around him, with the Muslim Brotherhood adopting a lukewarm reserved position. Many in the opposition saw El Baradei as a powerful candidate enjoying international reputation and connections, and constituting therefore a credible presidential candidate against Mubarak or his son. El Baradei thus became a rallying figure for a large section of the opposition, regrouping political forces as well as personalities. They formed the National Association for Change.
This whole array of forces is very much involved in the present uprising. However, the overwhelming majority of the people on the streets are without any sort of political affiliation. It is a huge mass outpouring of resentment at living under a despotic regime, fed by worsening economic conditions, as prices of basic necessities, like food, fuel, and electricity, have been sharply on the rise amid staggering joblessness. This is the case not only in Egypt but in most of the region as well, and that is why the fire of revolt that started in Tunisia spread so quickly to many Arab countries.
Is El Baradei genuinely popular, or is he in some way the Mir-Hossein Mousavi of the Egyptian movement, trying to change some faces while preserving the regime?
I would disagree with this characterisation of Mousavi in the first place. To be sure, Mir-Hossein Mousavi did not want to “change the regime” if one mean by that a social revolution. But there was definitely a clash between authoritarian social forces, spearheaded by the Pasdaran and represented by Ahmedinejad, and others coalesced around a liberal reformist perspective represented by Mousavi. It was indeed a clash about the kind of “regime” in the sense of the pattern of political rule.
Mohamed El Baradei is a genuine liberal who wishes his country to move from the present dictatorship to a liberal democratic regime, with free elections and political freedoms. If such a vast array of political forces is willing to cooperate with him, it is because they see in him the most credible liberal alternative to the existing regime, a man who does not command an organised constituency of his own, and is therefore an appropriate figurehead for a democratic change.
Going back to your analogy, you can’t compare him with Mousavi who was a member of the Iranian regime, one of the men who led the 1979 Islamic revolution. Mousavi had his own followers in Iran, before he emerged as the leader of the 2009 mass protest movement. In Egypt, El Baradei cannot play, and does not pretend to play a similar role. He is supported by a vast array of forces, but none of them see him as its leader.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s initial reserved attitude towards El Baradei is partly related to the fact that he does not have a religious bent and is too secular for their taste. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood had cultivated an ambiguous relationship with the regime over the years. Had they fully backed El Baradei, they would have narrowed their margin of negotiation with the Mubarak regime, with which they have been bargaining for quite a long time. The regime conceded a lot to them in the socio-cultural sphere, increasing Islamic censorship in the cultural field being but one example. That was the easiest thing the regime could do to appease the Brotherhood. As a result, Egypt made huge steps backward from the secularisation that was consolidated under Gamal Abdul-Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal is to secure a democratic change that would grant them the possibility to take part in free elections, both parliamentary and presidential. The model they aspire to reproduce in Egypt is that of Turkey, where the democratisation process was controlled by the military with the army remaining a key pillar of the political system. This process nonetheless created a space which allowed the AKP, an Islamic conservative party, to win elections. They are not bent on overthrowing the state, hence their courting of the military and their care to avoid any gesture that could antagonize the army. They adhere to a strategy of gradual conquest of power: they are gradualists, not radicals.
The Western media are hinting at the fact that democracy in the Middle East would lead to an Islamic fundamentalist takeover. We have seen the triumphal return of Rached Ghannouchi to Tunisia after long years in exile. The Muslim Brotherhood is likely to win fair elections in Egypt. What is your comment on that?
I would turn the whole question around. I would say that it is the lack of democracy that led religious fundamentalist forces to occupy such a space. Repression and the lack of political freedoms reduced considerably the possibility for left-wing, working-class and feminist movements to develop in an environment of worsening social injustice and economic degradation. In such conditions, the easiest venue for the expression of mass protest turns out to be the one that uses the most readily and openly available channels. That’s how the opposition got dominated by forces adhering to religious ideologies and programmes.
We aspire to a society where such forces are free to defend their views, but in an open and democratic ideological competition between all political currents. In order for Middle Eastern societies to get back on the track of political secularisation, back to the popular critical distrust of the political exploitation of religion that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s, they need to acquire the kind of political education that can be achieved only through a long-term practise of democracy.
Having said this, the role of religious parties is different in different countries. True, Rached Ghannouchi has been welcomed by a few thousand people on his arrival at Tunis airport. But his Nahda movement has much less influence in Tunisia than the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Of course, this is in part because Al-Nahda suffered from harsh repression since the 1990s. But it is also because the Tunisian society is less prone than the Egyptian to religious fundamentalist ideas, due to its higher degree of Westernisation and education, and the country’s history.
But there is no doubt that Islamic parties have become the major forces in the opposition to existing regimes over the whole region. It will take a protracted democratic experience to change the direction of winds from that which has been prevailing for more than three decades. The alternative is the Algerian scenario where an electoral process was blocked by the army by way of a military coup in 1992, leading to a devastating civil war for which Algeria is still paying the price.
The amazing surge of democratic aspirations among Arab peoples of these last few weeks is very encouraging indeed. Neither in Tunisia, nor in Egypt or anywhere else, were popular protests waged for religious programs, or even led principally by religious forces. These are democratic movements, displaying a strong longing for democracy. Polls have been showing for many years that democracy as a value is rated very highly in Middle Eastern countries, contrary to common “Orientalist” prejudices about the cultural “incompatibility” of Muslim countries with democracy. The ongoing events prove one more time that any population deprived of freedom will eventually stand up for democracy, whatever “cultural sphere” it belongs to.
Whoever runs and wins future free elections in the Middle East will have to face a society where the demand for democracy has become very strong indeed. It will be quite difficult for any party––whatever its programme––to hijack these aspirations. I am not saying that it will be impossible. But one major outcome of the ongoing events is that popular aspirations to democracy have been hugely boosted. They create ideal conditions for the left to rebuild itself as an alternative.
Gilbert Achcar, who grew up in Lebanon, is professor of development studies and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2010.
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7. Red Rag column
By: Gideon Spiro
4 February 2011 (English translation 7 Feb. 2011)
Tsunami in Egypt
The political-social volcano that has erupted in Egypt surprised all the experts and alleged experts, in academia, the media and the military intelligence bodies. On the first day of the demonstrations nearly all of them were still predicting that Mubarak’s regime was stable and strong, that the army was with him, the police and the intelligence services were with him, and they would be able to crush the popular uprising. In the following days, as the uprising gathered momentum and the number of demonstrators kept growing, the experts, with and without quotation marks, were forced to eat crow. The impressive, moving and nonviolent million-person demonstration broke all the stereotypes about Arabs in general and Egyptians in particular.
I have never presumed to call myself an “expert in Arab affairs”, but as a person with a humanist outlook who respects human rights and social justice, it was always clear to me that tyrannical regimes are destined to crumble. I cannot anticipate dates, but the processes are clear.
The demands of the demonstrators are an ABC for all who desire a reasonable decent democracy: against oppression and police state, corruption, and the sale of public assets so that people close to the regime can enrich themselves; for democratic elections without fraud, for employment, housing and social justice. As these lines are being written it is impossible to know how the uprising will end. Mubarak is trying to by means of his violent thugs to sow fear among the demonstrators. Maybe he will buy a few more months in power, but it can be assumed with a fair degree of certainty that Egypt will not go back to being the way it was under Mubarak’s dictatorial regime.
If the demands of the demonstrators are met, we will witness the birth of a new Middle East in which Israel will not be “the only democracy in the Middle East” as the fraudulent slogan goes (for a state of Occupation and apartheid cannot be a democracy); Egypt will have the honour of being the first democracy in the Middle East, and we must hope that it will be the beginning of a process that will encompass additional Arab states.
The idea that Egypt might become a democracy fills the leaders of Israel and the victims of their brainwashing with dread and fear. Israel has gotten used to dealing with a dictator, without all the democratic “bullshit” – or as the late Prime Minister Rabin put it in his time: “without the High Court of Justice and without Betselem.” [1]
A democratic Egypt will be likely to demand that Israel fulfill the terms of the Camp David accord, which is, according to the original formulation, “A Framework for Peace in the Middle East” and was signed in September 1978. On the issue of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, Israel committed itself “to recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements.” That commitment has been brazenly disregarded.
Governments of Israel scorned that clause, the meaning of which is clear: the end of the Occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories that have been occupied since June 1967 (except for the Golan Heights) and the evacuation of the settlements. Mubarak was a convenient party to the agreement, because he did not firmly demand that Israel fulfill its part. A democratic Egypt, that respects human rights, will probably tell Israel: if you do not fulfill the Palestinian part of the Framework Agreement that was and still is the basis for the peace treaty that was signed in March 1979, we will consider ourselves to be released from our commitments.
What is happening in Egypt has implications for Israel too not only on the level of the peace treaty. The huge gap between a small corrupt wealthy class and masses subject to miserable poverty constitutes fertile soil for an uprising. Israel is privatizing itself to death. Its economy is controlled by a few families, its middle class is being constantly eroded, the CEO of a public bank earns a million shekels a month while a cleaning lady does not even get the minimum wage, which itself does not suffice for a dignified life. Those huge gaps will at the end of the day bring about a popular uprising here as well.
The nonviolent uprising in Egypt is also an instructive lesson for the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. There is no doubt that at the end of the day the regime of Occupation and apartheid in the Occupied Territories will crumble and be defeated. But the Palestinians can speed up the process with an Egyptian-style nonviolent struggle.
A pincer movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian demonstrators, 100 thousand from the Bethlehem area, a hundred thousand from the Hebron area, a hundred thousand from the Nablus area, a hundred thousand from the Ramallah area and a hundred thousand from Jerusalem, who would march towards the settlements, sit on the apartheid highways and not let the vehicles of the Israeli Occupation army pass, who would be joined by Israeli peace activists, would excite the world’s imagination and shorten the life of the Occupation. The Israeli Occupation army will be defeated; the question is, will it respond with a bloodbath before collapsing? Much depends on the reactions of those who are called “friends of Israel”, starting with the USA, but also including Germany and the other states of the European community.
The government of Israel and its “experts” on Arab affairs in the media are scaring the public with terrible scenarios of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt. I do not disregard the possibility. It is indeed possible, and if it happens, it will probably mean that the Egyptian people will go from the frying pan into the fire, as occurred in Iran. Indeed, it does sometimes happen that democratic elections produce undemocratic results. That is what happened in the last elections in Israel. That is no reason to defend the Mubarak dictatorship. Based on events so far, it is by no means clear that the Muslim Brotherhood will come to power in the event of free elections.
Land thief
General Yoav Galant, who was supposed to be Israel’s next military Chief of Staff, was disqualified because it was discovered that he had annexed to the castle that he had built in Moshav Amikam parcels of land that did not belong to him. He was also accused of making false affidavits to administrative and judicial authorities. In other words, Galant was found to be a liar and a land thief. There is a certain irony in this whole affair, because it concerns the appropriation of a few dozen dunams, which is small change compared to the large-scale land plunder that the State and the army carry out in the Occupied Territories. There they rob hundreds of thousands of dunams from the Palestinians for the benefit of the settlements and army and police bases. The number of fake papers that the army creates in that campaign of theft could fill several encyclopaedias.
It would have been appropriate to disqualify Galant because of the war crimes over which he presided as the head of the IDF Southern Command in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2009-January 2010. Of course, that did not happen, because in the Israeli Occupation State, a land thief and war criminal is a fitting person to command the army. In that regard there is no cause for “worry”; whoever replaces Galant will also be involved in war crimes and violations of human rights. All the “degenerals” who serve in the army today are graduates of the Occupation system. There is no general who has not passed through the crucible of the Occupied Territories at a certain stage in his career. Before they know how to wage war they know how to abuse an occupied civilian population. The Israeli army today is a combination of an Occupation police and a colonial army, and as such will disintegrate in the long run. When real democracy prevails in Israel they will be brought to justice.
Another story about “Israeli democracy”
The newspaper Haaretz published (3 February 2011) a report that the State of Israel has barred the immigration of Dale Streisand because he is suspected of believing in Jesus.
The case received publicity because Dale Streisand is a cousin of the famous actress Barbra Streisand. Dale Streisand is a “Kosher Jew” according to the religious laws in Israel – that is, he is the son of a Jewish mother and according to the Law of Return is entitled to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen the moment he lands.
He requested to make “’aliyah” [2] – which is what the immigration of Jews to Israel is called. The Jewish Agency and the Israeli Interior Ministry decided to check his kosherness – not only according to Jewish religious law, but also as regards his overall outlook – before approving him. So they checked out his Facebook page, and there they discovered a terrible thing: a link to a Christian website. In light of that they announced to him that his immigration to Israel would not be approved. Dale tried to explain to the Israeli authorities that he did not know how that link got on his Facebook page, and that he does not believe in Jesus.
In order to prove that, he went to the other extreme of Jewish religious nationalism. He set up a new personal profile on Facebook on the background of an Israeli flag and indicated that his new friends were a rabbi from Chabad, a messianic Jewish sect that believes that its deceased leader is the “King Messiah”, and the settlers’ Internet radio and television channel, Arutz Sheva. But that did not help him, because the terrible suspicion that he believes in Jesus has stuck. It reminds me of the phenomenon of the Germans during the Nazi regime who were suspected of having Jewish roots and spared no efforts to deny it, including by means of joining the most extreme wing of the Nazi Party, saying in effect, “our German-ness is beyond any doubt, and the proof is that we loathe Jews more than anybody.”
What do we learn from this story? First of all, we learn about the fear that the Israeli Jewish Establishment has for those who believe in a different religious approach. He might, God forbid, poison the pure souls of our children. In Israel it has been forgotten that Jews suffered for generations from exclusion that was expressed in fear of the different Other.
This brings us back to the question that has troubled Israel more than once, and it has even gone to the Supreme Court: can a person be both a Jew and a believer in Jesus at the same time? The Supreme Court has ruled that such a Jew cannot enjoy the rights conferred by the Law of Return. As a secular person, I of course recognize the right of every person to define his or her own religious faith as he or she wants, and to believe in any religious admixture that he or she sees fit. That recognition is not shared in Israel, and so groups of messianic Jews who believe in Jesus are isolated, threatened and sometimes murdered by Jewish religious extremists in Israel. And that again raises the question: is a Jewish and democratic state possible?
Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent
Translator’s notes
1. Rabin notoriously used that phrase to defend the Oslo Accord on the grounds that it would permit the suppression of Palestinian resistance to be effectively contracted out to the Palestinian Authority, which would relieve Israel of the inconvenience of having to deal with objections that were occasionally raised by the Israeli justice system (“the High Court of Justice”) and Israeli human rights organizations (“Betselem”) when Israeli soldiers and police did it directly.
2. The Hebrew word “’Aliyah” literally means “ascent”.
Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent
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