12-09-17 Middle Eastern intrigues

1) Joseph Zernik, Human Rights Alert (NGO) wrote:

Bob,  one would be hard pressed to believe any news reports on such matters from any source.

I have not checked how Debka reported the events of August 2012 on the border of Gaza. Egypt, and Israel, but the story, as reported in Israel, Egypt and elsewhere is not credible.

One should keep in mind that the events of one week in August 2012, detailed below,  took place during critical period in the ongoing Egyptian power struggle, where Israel and the US have profound interests and anxieties, but minimal ways to influence the course of events, or to predict the outcomes of their own actions.

The English Wikipedia entry on the subject below reads as if written by the Netanyahu bureau:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Egyptian%E2%80%93Israeli_border_attack 

    

The APC used by the gunmen after being struck by the Israeli Air Force;

  

Muhammad Hussein Tantawi, former Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt with U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, 11 February 2012; Muhammad Mursi, 5th President of Egypt

Sequence of Events:

• June 30, 2012 - Muhammad Mursi was officially sworn in as the 5th President of Egypt. This marks the first time in Egypt's history that a civilian President has been elected, by the people; In the past, all of the other Presidents were either from the military, or had a military background. Effectively, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, headed by Tantawi, retained its power over the civilian leadership, through a recent change to the Constitution by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The election of Mursi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood raised serious anxiety in both Jerusalem and Washington, DC. 
• August 5, 2012 - On a night during the Ramadan month, when Muslim are commanded not to fight, at the end of the day's fast and during the ensuring dinner meal, a group of "International Quaida", based in Gaza, attacked their fellow Muslim Egyptian military during their Ramadan dinner, hijacked Egyptian military armored personnel carriers, and launched a raid toward the Israeli border.
• August 6, 2012 - According to Israeli media, the IDF had good advance information, and within minutes all APCs were destroyed by an air strike, just as they reached the Israeli Border.  Not one of the attackers survived to be interroganted.  
• The Israeli government immediately called upon the Egyptian government to restrain the Palestinians in Gaza, and  to regain control over the Sinai peninsula.
• August 7, 2012 - Egyptian military sources a day or two later claimed that Egyptian Intelligence was also informed in advance regarding the pending attack, but did not consider the information to be credible.  
• In response to the events, the Egyptian military had forces moved to Sinai in demonstration of power over the Palestinians and the bedouines.  The Egyptian military also blocked the underground tunnels from Egypt to Gaza, which were a main route of  both civilian and military supplies, given the blockade on the Israeli side. 
• The civilian President Mursi, on his part,  declared three days of mourning.
• Next came the question, who would represent the Egyptian government in the funerals of the soldiers.  Given the instability of the situation in both Egypt and Sinai, Mursi himself avoided the funerals, and he sent his Prime Minister Hisham Qandil instead. The Egyptian military failed to protect Prime Minister  Qandil, who was assaulted and attacked by angry mourners, who also vandalized his car. In addition, Qandil was pelted with shoes.
• August 12, 2012 - Egypt's President Muhammad Mursi dismisses Tantawi and other top military officers, and single-handed implements a new amendment to the Constitution,  placing the civilian Presidency above the  Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.  The first civilian ruler in Egypt in over half a century.
• In response, Israeli media quoted government officials, stating that now, that Tantawi was dismissed, there was nobody left for Israel to talk with in Cairo.

Conclusion: 

• Even nonexperts in Middle Eastern intrigues should find the Sequence of Events story incredible. 
• It should not be assumed that any party had events follow its plans... or that the beneficiaries were also the instigators...
• The Egyptians treat their Constitution more flexibly than Americans... they attempt to adjust the Constitution to changing reality. In contrast the US Constitution and reality have not met in quite a while...

Joseph Zernik, PhD

Human Rights Alert (NGO)
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P.S.
Introductory remarks

In recent centuries Egypt has been recognized as the leader of the Arab world for its size, central location, and the authority of AlAzhar in most of the Suni Muslim world. In the early 20th century it also became the seat of the secular University of Cairo, where Jurji Zeidan was amnog the founders of Pan Arabism.

The Egyptian Coup d'etat of 1952 ended the rule of King Farouk. The movement abolished the constitutional monarchy in Egypt and Sudan, established a republic, ended the British occupation of the country... the revolutionary government adopted a staunchly nationalist, anti-imperialist agenda, which came to be expressed chiefly through Arab nationalism and international non-alignment...

In 1956, the United States presented an ultimatum to the UK, France, and Israel to end their occupation of the Sinai peninsula and the Suez Canal in the aftermath of the Tripartite Aggression. 

The Egyptian military, which retained power over Egypt ever since the Coup of 1952, was later tightly alligned with the USSR, particularly during the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Since the signing of the Camp David Accords of 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, brokered by President Jimmy Carter, Egypt was closely aligned with the United States.

In retrosect, the only US policy in Egypt that had and still has any lasting value for the United States, is the Carter peace initiative.  Surely, the military-industrial complex did not appreciate his intervention in their back- yard.

2) On Monday, September 17, 2012, Bob Hurt wrote:

Why do US news outfits report storie like this one so lethargically?

Occasionally I feel so tired of US news half truths that I wander over to http://debka.com to get a more truthful version.  There I found today's top story.

The Al Quaida attacks against the US and its allies in the so called war on terror have heated up recently, apparently catching the US military and civilian leaders off-guard like the Tet Offensive in the VIetNam War 46 years ago.  Factions from the US to Israel have split loyalties.  Stories abound about how bad the US has become by helping Israel with high tech development projects (Israelis created Intel's Pentium microprocessor there 20 years ago and scads more since) and military preparedness, and how badly Israelis treat Palestinian Arabs.  But millions of influential liberal Jews in the US push the US government to give ever more help.  Israel has the sympathy of Christians world wide because of their spiritual connection to Jesus Christ, a Jew with whom they feel brotherhood if not fatherhood.  They think "Jesus is a Jew, I love and believe in Jesus, so I'm a Jew too."  And of course, Jesus experienced human birth in Israel, 5 miles south of Jerusalem.  So, no one should feel surprise that most Americans support efforts of the US to help Israel.

Besides, Israel and the US have common enemies:  Islam.  No, I did not mean "Islamic Terrorists."  I meant Islam itself.  For it motivates Al Quaeda, Hesbollah, Hamas, and most other terrorists activities today.  It constitutes a secular political system that condones abuse of women, chopping off of hands and necks for minor offenses, boiling people in oil, and worst of all, "Holy Jihad," that struggle (against injustice) which resulted in destruction of the World Trade Center and numerous other buildings related to American interests.  Never mind that many Americans believe that the 9-11 event was orchestrated by the US Government itself, possibly in concert with the government of Israel, including the detonating of explosive charges their operatives planted to make WTC Building numbers 1, 2, and 7  fall into their footprints.

Uh-oh.  "We has found the enemy, and he is us," as Pogo would say.  The US Government has given aid and comfort to the very enemy it publicly says it wants gone, and that boils down to, excuse me, TREASON.  Remember the US giving arms to Afghan rebels while the USSR ran around Afghanistan blowing things up and snatching the poppy crop for its opium?  Those rebels formed soldiers of the Taliban, with Al Quaeda at its helm then as now.  Remember the recent US financing and participation in the  overthrow of the dictators of Egypt and Libya?  Whose army provided soldiers to effect that overthrow?  AL Quaeda?  Remember the ongoing strife in Syria?  Who fights the government forces there?  Al Quaeda, but our news organs fail to tell us that.  Remember the embassy attacks days ago?  Who engineered and executed them?  Al Quaeda, all because of unconscionably lax US security.

I have begun to wonder whether America's closet Muslim / Islamic president actually heads up Al Quaeda.  If so, that might explain why our government and news media tend to give stories like the one below short shrift.

Al Qaeda-led Salafis hit three Egyptian Sinai bases, down Egyptian chopper

DEBKAfile Special Report September 16, 2012, 6:04 PM (GMT+02:00)

Tags:  Al Qaeda   Salafis   Sinai Bedouin   Egypt   MFO   US 

Al Qaeda-led Bedouin fighters in Sinai

Salafi Bedouin and al Qaeda bands Sunday, Sept 16, expanded their Sinai offensive to three Egyptian bases along a 70-kilometer front three days after they raided the US-led Multinational Force base south of El Arish in northern Sinai and hoisted the black Islamist flag. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that at dawn, a small group managed to creep up to the northern Sinai Egyptian command center in al Arish and plant a large bomb against its walls. Because of the total Egyptian blackout on the episode, there is no information on casualties or damage.

The explosion was followed by a horde of heavily armed gunmen firing rocket grenades and heavy machine guns swooping on the center and seizing the rooftops of surrounding buildings to pin down the Egyptian commanders inside the compound. By the end of the day, the Salafi-al Qaeda gangs were in control of El Arish, the key town of northern Sinai.
At a distance of 40 kilometers, a fierce battle erupted at another site, Sheikh Zuwaid, 3 kilometers from the MFO’s northern base which was attacked Friday. The raiders captured the local school and took dozens of children hostage. Using them as human shields, the terrorists advanced on the local police station shooting anti-tank rockets, rocket grenades, automatic weapons and fire bombs.
To repel this attack, the Egyptian army deployed combat helicopters which struck the invaders with missiles and heavy machine guns. One chopper was reported shot down. Due to the Egyptian news blackout, there is no word on the fate of the children, the helicopter crew or whether it was downed by an anti-air rocket or machine gun fire,

The Salafi-al Qaeda terrorists next turned to the Egyptian special forces base at Rafah abutting the Gaza Strip and just across the Israeli border. This is the same base which Salafi Bedouin and al Qaeda gunmen attacked on Aug. 5 killing 16 Egyptian troops and crashing through the frontier barrier into Israel.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the broad al Qaeda-led offensive Sunday marks a major and dangerous escalation in the Islamist terrorist coalition’s war plans for Sinai. It carried four messages:
1.  It is a military force to be reckoned: The jihadi terrorists first displayed their military prowess on Aug. 5, when they took on two armies at once. Sunday, they attacked three military targets along a 70-kilometer front, a feat which even the Afghan Taliban has not mastered.
2.  This feat puts the Sinai Army of Islam at the forefront of the violent Islamist protest against the United States sweeping across the Middle East and Asia over a film mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Because it is beyond the horizon of international attention and the Western media, Washington, Cairo and Jerusalem have been able to keep its true impact under wraps.
3.  More than 1,000 MFO peacemakers including hundreds of American officers have been under Salafi-Al Qaeda-Bedouin siege for three days since their Al Ghora base was raided Friday. They have a fleet of helicopters and small reconnaissance aircraft with American crews,  but they don’t dare take off because it is feared that al Qaeda gunmen will shoot them down with FIM-92 Stinger anti-air missiles smuggled into Sinai from Libya.

4. The IDF high command is tensed now for the jihadis to again turn their guns and rockets on Israel.

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