An Israeli peacenik’s view of Egypt

Editor’s Note: Mr. Baskin is a Zionist Israeli, but he is a fairly decent person in spite of his adherence to Zionism. His nationalism is genuinely moderate rather than just a velvet glove for war-Zionism. He is  interested in peace. He is however, also saddled with certain Israeli handicaps. For example, he sees Hizbollah in Lebanon as merely an "Iranian proxy" rather than a people’s liberation movement that drove the Israeli proxies (South Lebanon Army) out, and closed down the now completely forgotten (in the West, anyway) Israeli concentration camp in Lebanon, El Khiam. We don’t make peace with friends, we make peace with enemies and if Baskin, by reason of his Zionist orientation, is an enemy, he is one with whom peace can be made. He deflates the American right wing view that Israelis are hated no matter what they do in the Middle East. Baskin shows that Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians is the deciding factor behind the animosity.

Encountering Peace: The view from Cairo

What’s needed is stronger bridges, not higher walls

By Gershon Baskin 

Jerusalem Post, Sept. 12, 2011

Since Friday I have been in Cairo. This great city is not unfamiliar to me – I’ve been here more than 20 times, although my last visit was five years ago. I came to Cairo to attend a small meeting of MECA – the Middle East Citizens Assembly. This small but important organization was founded by Walid Salem, a Palestinian peace and democracy activist from east Jerusalem who decided that for real democracy to take root in the Arab world, citizens needed to take responsibility, stop acting like subjects and become active participants. Walid succeeded in creating a network of democracy activists from all over the Middle East including Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, Palestine, Israel and more.

Walid has consistently demanded that Israelis be included at every meeting. I was privy to an email correspondence between Walid, other members of MECA and a new Libyan participant, in which the Libyan said he wouldn’t participate in any meeting that included Israelis. Walid and other Arab members told him directly that while it was certainly his right to boycott Israelis, MECA was a inclusive forum for all citizens of the Middle East, including Israelis. Six or seven Israelis had been scheduled to attend the Cairo meetings, but canceled due to the current political and security tensions. Being somewhat more familiar with traveling in the region, and knowing that I would be in Cairo with friends, I made up my mind to go as planned. I did decide, however, not to visit Tahrir Square, which has become a less than welcoming place for foreigners in general and Israelis in particular.

DESPITE HAVING a US passport, I always try to travel in the Arab world on my Israeli one, and this trip was no exception. I did, however, take some precautions. On the advice of some Israeli friends who work in security, I checked into the hotel on my US passport; a hotel clerk making a few dollars a day can easily be bribed by terrorist groups to provide information about Israeli guests. I also locked all of my Israeli documents in the room safe and carried only my US passport with me in my travels around Cairo. I only had to show it once, while visiting an open-air market behind the foreign ministry.

I was taking pictures and a young man stopped me and asked me who I was taking pictures for, adding that I required a permit. I told him in Arabic that I didn’t need a permit, that Egypt was a democracy now, but he insisted. I told him the pictures were for my private use, and showed him my US passport. He accepted my explanation, and then insisted I come with him to photograph some graffiti on the Foreign Ministry walls. With a big smile on his face, he proudly translated some of it: “death to Israel,” “cancel the peace treaty with Israel,” etc.

On Friday night, as the Israeli Embassy was under attack, I was sitting with an Egyptian friend in a coffee shop in Zamalek, where my hotel is. Zamalek is an island in the middle of the Nile where most of the embassies in Cairo are located. There a many foreigners in Zamalek and security is always on high alert. I heard shooting from the direction of Giza, where the Israeli embassy is located. I thought it was fireworks from a wedding celebration, such as I often hear from my home in Jerusalem. When I woke up the next morning, however, I learned of the horrible attack against the Israeli Embassy, and the failure of the Egyptian security forces to prevent it. My friends at the MECA meeting condemned the attack both publicly and in private, and also expressed their concern for my security and their solidarity, assuring me that they would protect me.

At the meeting, the well known professor and democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who had been jailed and tortured by Mubarak, gave a brilliant presentation about the Egyptian revolution and how Tahrir square, and many other squares around Egypt, had been transformed into “Parliaments of the People.” In my speech, which followed Prof. Ibrahim’s, I tried to express the deep concern felt by Israelis at what we saw going on around us in “the neighborhood.” The “Parliaments of the People,” I said, were beginning to look like “Parliaments of the mobs.”

Viewed through Israeli eyes, I said, the neighborhood looked quite disturbing. Lebanon is ruled by Hizbullah – an Iranian proxy, and Gaza is controlled by Hamas – an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The West Bank could easily fall into Hamas hands as well. Egypt could easily be taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. If the Syrian revolution is successful it, too, could be taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, as could Jordan, if the Hashemite regime is overthrown. In addition, from the Israeli perspective Turkey is on its way to becoming a radical Islamic state. A scary picture indeed.

THE NARGILA boy in the coffee shop in Zamalek asked me where I was from. “Falestin,” I said. “Very good,” he replied, “we love Palestine ... I will kill all of the Israelis for you!” I asked him why he hated Israelis so much. Did he know any Israelis, I asked? No, and he didn’t want to, he replied. He hated the Israelis, he said, because they killed Palestinians and took their land, and because now they were also killing Egyptians. I asked him what he would think if Israel ended the occupation and made peace with a Palestinian state. After a brief pause, he said, “If they make real peace and free the Palestinians and let them have a state, we will have nothing against Israel, ahalan w’sahalan (welcome).”


This young man, educated on the street, and by Al Jazeera, probably knows almost nothing about the conflict, but his views reflect those of millions of Arabs all over the region, and millions of Turks as well. People across this region are willing to accept an Israel that lives in peace with its Arab neighbors. Israel is hated in the Arab and Muslim world not, as many Israelis believe, simply because they deny our right to exist. If Israel would only understand that its relations with the Palestinians determine the level of its acceptance in the region perhaps we would be at a very different place today.

People in the MECA meeting said that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was still on the table and serves as the basis for Israel to be a welcome member throughout the region. All of the Egyptians that I have spoken with condemned the attack against the Israeli embassy. The story on the street and among the youth leaders of the revolution is that the leaders of the mobs that torched the Ministry of Interior, the headquarters of the el-Ghad party and the Israeli embassy have been identified as members of the hated former internal security forces. They say that these people are actively working to undermine the revolution and to show that post-Mubarak Egypt is a lawless society where all security has broken down. They hope to hijack the revolution and to bring back the old regime. My first impulse was to dismiss this claim as just another Arab conspiracy theory, but after talking to some serious analysts and experts I changed my mind. It seems there is a very real possibility that these attacks were in fact carried out by anti-revolutionary “agents provocateurs.”

From my admittedly non-scientific reading of the Cairo street “map,” the Egyptian masses do not support the attack against the Israeli embassy. They do not support warm peace with Israel or forms of normalization because in their view Israel has not implemented the second chapter of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of Camp David – ending the occupation, but they do understand and support the strategic importance of the peace for Egypt. Egyptians do not want to go to war against Israel.

I HAVE also been in Turkey more than 100 times, for joint Israeli-Arab meetings, mainly during the years of the second intifada when it was almost impossible to meet locally. I have met Turkish President Abdullah Gul and hosted him in Jerusalem when he was foreign minister. I know the current foreign minister Mr. Ahmet Davutoglu, from when he was an advisor to the party leader. We have remained in contact over the past years via email. The AKP in Turkey is not a radical Islamic party, nor are its leaders radical Muslims. The root cause of the free-fall of Israel/Turkey relations is the same as that of the Arab street’s hatred of Israel: the continuation and entrenching of the Israeli occupation, when there is a moderate – as understood by most of the world – Palestinian leadership willing to make peace with Israel.

Notwithstanding the fact that we are not solely responsible for the lack of peace, we have clearly not done enough to strive for real peace. The current events in Cairo and Ankara should be our wake-up call. Most of our leaders will respond by calling for higher walls, when what we really need are stronger bridges. An Israel reaching out to the Palestinians and willing to make peace with them – not an imaginary peace with a Palestinian state floating in the air, but one based on the 1967 borders – will find a welcoming neighborhood in Benghazi, Baghdad, Beirut, Amman, Cairo, Ankara, Ramallah and even in Gaza. (End quote; emphasis supplied).

Gershon Baskin is the founder and co-director of IPCRI, the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, he hosts a weekly radio show in Hebrew on All for Peace radio, and a voluntary columnist for The Jerusalem Post.

Gershon Baskin, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 9321, Jerusalem 91092
Cellphone: +972-(0)52-238-1715
gershonbaskin@gmail.com

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Muslim Sheik praises Christian Copts for helping overthrow Mubarak

CAIRO, EGYPT — Sheik Qaradawi, a popular television cleric whose program reaches an audience of tens of millions worldwide, addressed a rapt audience of more than a million Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square to celebrate the uprising and honor those who died...(The Egyptian Health Ministry has said at least 365 people died in the uprising)...

“Don’t fight history,” he urged his listeners in Egypt and across the Arab world, where his remarks were televised. “You can’t delay the day when it starts. The Arab world has changed.” He spoke as the authorities in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were waging violent crackdowns on uprisings inspired in part by the Egyptian revolution.

The sermon was the first public address here by Sheik Qaradawi, 84, since he fled Egypt for Qatar in 1961. An intellectual inspiration to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Sheik Qaradawi was jailed in Egypt three times for his ties to the group and spent most of his life abroad. His prominence exemplifies the peril and potential for the West as Egypt opens up. While he condemned the 9/11 attacks, he has supported suicide bombers against Israel and attacks on American forces in Iraq.

On Friday, he struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching. He began his sermon by saying that he was discarding the customary opening “Oh Muslims,” in favor of “Oh Muslims and Copts,” referring to Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. He praised Muslims and Christians for standing together in Egypt’s revolution and even lauded the Coptic Christian “martyrs” who once fought the Romans and Byzantines. “I invite you to bow down in prayer together,” he said.

He urged the military officers governing Egypt to deliver on their promises of turning over power to “a civil government” founded on principles of pluralism, democracy and freedom. And he called on the army to immediately release all political prisoners and rid the cabinet of its dominance by officials of the old Mubarak government.


“We demand from the Egyptian Army to free us from the government that was appointed by Mubarak,” Sheik Qaradawi declared. “We want a new government without any of these faces whom people can no longer stand.” And he urged the young people who led the uprising to continue their revolution. “Protect it,” he said. “Don’t you dare let anyone steal it from you.”

As the uprising here intensified in recent weeks, Sheik Qaradawi had used his platform to urge Egyptians to rise up against Mr. Mubarak. The sheik’s son, son, Abdul-Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is an Egyptian poet who supported the revolution, and, though Sheik Qaradawi is considered a religious traditionalist, three of his daughters hold doctoral degrees, including one in nuclear physics. Scholars who have studied his work say Sheik Qaradawi has long argued that Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy.

But he has made exceptions for violence against Israel or the American forces in Iraq. “You call it violence; I call it resistance,” said Prof. Emad Shahin of the University of Notre Dame, an Egyptian scholar who has studied Sheik Qaradawi’s work and was in Tahrir Square for his speech Friday. “He is enormously influential,” Mr. Shahin added. “His presence in the square today cemented the resolve of the demonstrators to insist on their demands from the government.”

...Wael Lotfi el-Said, 39, stated that the protestors in Tahrir Square “were prepared to return every Friday “if necessary” to ensure that the Egyptian military kept its commitment to hand over the government to a civilian democracy as quickly as possible. Many said they worried that the military had not yet clearly ended the so-called emergency law allowing detention without charges or trial. Nor has the military yet incorporated any civilian input into the interim government.

And many complained that the military had kept most of the cabinet ministers put in place during the last days of Mr. Mubarak’s rule. Mohamed el-Beltagui, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who played a leading role in the square during the protests, pointed at Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, a retired general and businessman appointed by Hosni Mubarak. “Can we stop the protests when the government of Ahmed Shafiq is still there?” Mr. Beltagui asked. “No, no, no,” the crowd answered.

There were signs that the demonstrators had not forgotten their disappointment with what seemed to be American support for Mr. Mubarak until the end of the revolt. Though the demonstrators had returned to remove most of the graffiti around the square, one billboard remained inscribed with a message in English: “USA Admin — we will get democracy with our will. Play your games with the tyrant.”

—David D. Kirkpatrick, NY Times online, Feb. 18, 2011 (emphasis supplied)

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ADL discovers Nazi nation in the Middle East and it’s not “Israel”

Paranoia and libel abound in the following article from the "Jerusalem Post." Here is their definition of murderous anti-semitism: "...lethal anti-Semitism — a second Holocaust targeting the Jewish state."

This is the language of hysteria calculated to provoke the assassination of the Iranian head of state and a US or Israeli air force bombing holocaust against Iran, in the name of preventing the alleged imminent Iranian threat of a holocaust against "Israel."

This is madhouse logic. It reduces complex geo-politics, revisionist homicidal gas chamber skepticism and legitimate outrage at the bloody racism of the Israeli government, to the lowest common propaganda denominator, "Jihad and Jew hate." How about an alarm over “Judaism and Arab hate,” which has engendered the mass murder of tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian Arabs?

The execution gas chambers of Auschwitz are supernatural relics of the religion of Holocaustianity. They cannot withstand doubting-Thomas scientific investigation (see http://tinyurl.com/6xshlyf); therefore, any informed skepticism concerning these sacred totems must be criminalized, and debased into jargon intended for consumption by the dumbed-down American masses: Muslim Iran, which overthrew the Fascist Shah, becomes a Nazi nation, and jihad against the slaughter of the Palestinians constitutes "Jew hate."

The Zionists are the most nostalgic segment of all those who are stuck in the past. They are forever endeavoring to renamimate World War II and append the Allied narrative about the "Good War" to Middle East geopolitics in the 21st century. This reflects the abysmal poverty of their argument. They have nothing more to say in defense of rabbinic racism and Israeli apartheid than to chant schoolyard singsong equating the Iranians with the Nazis. Self-reflection is not an Israeli strong suit. Their megalomania prevents them from seeing the contours of the Third Reich in their own Talmudic backyard.

Jeffrey Goldberg is quoted toward the end of the "Jerusalem Post" article. He's the zero-credibility "Israel expert" who helped engineer the US invasion of Iraq by promoting the preposterous hoax that Saddam Hussein was implicated in the 9/11 terror attacks. Last autumn he sunk so low as to libel the recently deceased Roman Catholic scholar and writer Joseph Sobran as a "Nazi."

The ADL and the Jerusalem Post are peddling hallucination, but I'll bet you dollars-to-doughnuts that their delusions will be parroted throughout Right wing talk radio and the pulpits of Judeo-Churchianity.

--Michael Hoffman

(Hoffman's latest book is "Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not," forthcoming in July, if funds allow. A chapter from the book appears in the no. 55 issue of "Revisionist History Newsletter").

ADL LAUDS GERMAN SCHOLAR FOR STUDY ON ANTI-SEMITISM

By Benjamin Weinthal | Jerusalem Post | Feb. 14, 2011 

The Hamburg researcher shows link between anti-Semitism of Nazis and today’s Iranian regime

BERLIN – Dr. Matthias Küntzel, a Hamburg-based author and political scientist who is currently a research associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was honored last week by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League for his work exposing the interplay between Nazi ideology and modern Iranian anti-Semitism.

“In his writing on the anti- Semitism of the Iranian regime, which he terms the ‘stepchild of German National Socialism,’ Dr. Küntzel lays bare the genocidal intent of those who are striving for nuclear weapons,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, said while presenting the ADL Paul Ehrlich-Gunther K. Schwerin Human Rights Award to Küntzel at the ADL executive committee meeting in Palm Beach, Florida.

“He makes clear that the link between the anti-Semitism of the Nazis and of the Iranian regime is not just an analogy,” Foxman said.

“Matthias Küntzel has a long and distinguished record in speaking out against anti-Semitism and warning his readers in his native Germany and elsewhere about the dangers posed by this age-old virus that has no known cure. His work has been sorely underappreciated in this country. With this recognition, we hope to acknowledge his ongoing efforts and also let the American public know of the implications of this disturbing trend,” Foxman said.

Küntzel, speaking at the ceremony in Florida, said, “Today’s events in Tunisia and Egypt mark a watershed in the development of the Middle East. And it is precisely at such a time – a time of new beginnings – that it becomes more important than ever to publicly raise the issues of the roots and potential consequences of anti-Semitism in the Middle East.”

“Islamist movements – especially the Muslim Brotherhood – are a headline issue right now. I do of course strongly support the people’s fight in Tunisia and Egypt for freedom of opinion and freedom of assembly. But I am at the same time concerned about the tendency of Western governments and media to downplay the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. While anti-Semitism from the far Right occasions justified outrage in the USA and elsewhere, the very same anti-Semitism is again and again downplayed and minimized when expressed by Muslims,” he said.

Küntzel continued, “Many are inclined to excuse these diatribes as a side effect of the Middle East conflict, and blame Israel for the anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Others – such as the London-based Prof. Gilbert Achcar [at the School of Oriental and African Studies] – even try to excuse the denial of the Holocaust.

To quote Prof. Achcar: “‘Are all forms of Holocaust denial the same? Should such denial when it comes from oppressors, not be distinguished from denial in the mouths of the oppressed, as the racism of ruling whites is distinguished from that of subjugated blacks?’”

Küntzel is an external research associate at the Vidal Sassoon Centre for The Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University.

He teaches political science at a technical college in Hamburg and co-founded the German chapter of Scholars For Peace in the Middle East.

He has focused his recent academic work, including "Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11," on contemporary genocidal anti-Semitism in Iran, and Europe’s, particularly Germany’s, response to threats from the Islamic Republic to obliterate Israel.

Küntzel argues that Iran is the first country since Nazi Germany to make lethal anti-Semitism — a second Holocaust targeting the Jewish state – a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

Küntzel, an impassioned essayist and author of groundbreaking books on modern anti-Semitism, has over the years sharply criticized the Merkel administration and the Bundestag for failing to take a tough posture against genocidal Iranian anti- Semitism and Germany’s 4 billion euro annual trade relationship with the Islamic Republic.

“Germany wants a special relationship with both Israel and Iran. And that’s impossible. Germany can’t have it both ways,” he told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Writing in The New York Times Book Review on "Jihad and Jew Hatred," Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine and Israel expert, said, “The German scholar Matthias Küntzel... takes anti-Semitism, and in particular its most potent current strain, Muslim anti-Semitism, very seriously indeed. His bracing, even startling, book, "Jihad and Jew-Hatred" (translated by Colin Meade), reminds us that it is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if these idiotic ideas are broadly, and fervently, believed.”

According to Goldberg, “Küntzel makes a bold and consequential argument: The dissemination of European models of anti-Semitism among Muslims was not haphazard, but an actual project of the Nazi Party, meant to turn Muslims against Jews and Zionism... Küntzel is right to state that we are witnessing a terrible explosion of anti-Jewish hatred in the Middle East, and he is right to be shocked.”

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