When I saw a picture on GoogleNews captioned, “Thousands protest against Mubarak,” I thought Tiananmen Square and Israel. Surprisingly, neither the massacre of Chinese dissidents nor the Jewish State was mentioned in the accompanying article. Since then, two news items appeared which talk about the Israeli connection. The first is from The Angry Arab News Service, the second is from The New York Times.
As’ad “The Angry Arab” AbuKhalil correctly states, “The Israeli strategy in the Middle East has been firmly set on the continuity of the Sadat-Mubarak dictatorship.” It is not often that someone can point to something written by AbuKhalil and call it an understatement, but this is my opportunity. The billions of dollars and more than three decades of effort that Israel and the US have invested in Egypt in order to buttress Israeli hegemony in the region are greater than we all can imagine.
Professor AbuKhalil’s claim that the US will stand firmly behind Mubarak if he begins a Tiananmen style assault, I do not believe to be correct, that is if by firmly “The Angry Arab” means publicly. A more likely scenario is that the US jettisons Mubarak and son, then looks for a substitute group to do their and Israel’s bidding.
Isabel Kershner of the NYTimes, who is known to readers of this site as an advocate as provocative as AbuKhalil, was the first I noticed in the mainstream media to raise the Israeli connection to the events in Egypt. I am sure she will not be the last.
Her article indicates how seriously the unrest in the region and especially in Egypt is being taken in Israel. The key statement: “noting that the opposition in Egypt includes Islamic fundamentalists, ‘for now, the effect is destabilizing.'” –Oded Eran, security specialist. As for Kershner’s implication that the Israelis are sitting passively by and waiting to see what happens in Cairo, as expressed by her anonymous Israeli official, is as fanciful as anything AbuKhalil ever wrote.
It is pretty obvious that Israelis are in a frenzy of activity on both the diplomatic and military level deciding what they can do to prop up the edifice they and US have built in Egypt over more than 30 years.
Mubarak is a monster, our monster. I can imagine Isabel Kershner relying on her readers’ short memory, actually calling him that in the near future (not the our monster part, of course). She may lament the excessive violence and repression of the Mubarak regime, but at the same time, I see her writing glowingly about the similarly repressive Egyptian government that the US and Israel have chosen to succeed it.
Update. Here is Haaretz quoting some unnamed Israeli cabinet minister saying that Mubarak should survive.
“His regime is well-rooted in the military and security apparatus,” the minister said. “They will have to exercise force, power in the street and do it. But they are strong enough according to my assessment to overcome it.”
