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A-Sisi, Arab Revolution, Arab Spring, Cairo Massacre, Democracy, Egypt, Egyptian Coup, Gaza, Hamas, Muhammad Morsi, Pinochet, Subcomandante Marcos, Wall Street Journal
Just as the thunder is duly followed by lightning, the massacre in Cairo this morning (Saturday, July 27) is the expected and natural result of the military coup that ousted the first democratically elected Egyptian president, Mohammad Morsi, on July 3.
The politicians that called upon the army to topple the government can’t say that they didn’t expect it, that they are not responsible.
It is not the people’s army that took control of Egypt, but the same rotten “DeepState” establishment that stood at the center of the corrupt dictatorship for decades. It is led by General A-Sisi that was involved in Human Rights violations against demonstrators at the first period after Mubarak’s fall. The new president is the same Mubarak era judge, Adly Mansour, which overturned the law that prevented senior leaders of the old regime from participating in the elections.
The bullets were directed at the heads and chests of the demonstrators, as the BBC correspondent, between others, reported from the scene of the massacre near Rabaa al-Adawia mosque. Those bullets were not directed only at the supporters of president Morsi, but at the heart of the Egyptian people. They were shot at the service of the same corrupt and impotent class that enslaved and robbed the Egyptian people for thousands of years. They came to stop the revolution from freeing the Egyptian people and to ensure the continuation of the rulers’ class privilege.
Western Complicity
The green light for the massacre was given by the Egyptian officers’ real bosses – their mentors in the US administration. The clearest signal was the refusal of Mr. Obama to call the coup a coup. They didn’t call for the immediate restoration of democracy but immediately continued their working relationship with the generals and their puppets as the legitimate government of Egypt. They didn’t even ask about the whereabouts of president Morsi that was kidnapped and held incommunicado in an unknown location.
Reading the BBC news about this morning’s events, I failed to find any mention of the word Massacre. Their correspondents on the ground reported about “pools of blood”, “bullet wounds… especially in the head” and shooting of automatic rounds. But the carefully worded item summarized it all as “clashes between the army and protesters”.
All told, A-Sisi is “Our man in Cairo”… Like Chile’s Pinochet, Argentina’s Videla, Indonesia’s Suharto, Congo’s Mobuto and most war criminals over the last century. It is no wonder that Wall Street Journal, a highly respected mouthpiece of Big Capital, called openly in an editorial on July 4 for A-Sisi to be Egypt’s Pinochet.
The Palestinian Litmus Test
For all those that might have lost their heads from the propaganda against the Muslim Brothers and the appearance of millions anti-Morsi demonstrators on the streets on June 30, the generals didn’t leave a minute for doubt where do they head.
Their very first step as they arrested the Egyptian president was to impose full siege of the Palestinian Gaza strip.
Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Mubarak regime took an active part in guarding Israel’s siege of the strip – the first chunk of Palestinian land to gain independence from the colonialist occupation. After Hamas, the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brothers, won the first semi-democratic Palestinian elections on January 2006, Israel, with Egyptian cooperation, tightened the siege to the verge of starving the population.
Over the last two years the Egyptian revolution brought relief and relative prosperity to Gaza’s embattled people. But during the last month the Egyptian army is waging a crazy campaign to destroy the tunnels that became Gaza’s life-lines and tighten the siege again.
Poetry
While politicians, like bloggers, pour a stream of words, long sentences that twist and complicate reality, Generals are like poets. With short words, which reveal emotion more than calculated sophistication, they scratch open the wounds in one’s sleeping soul.
So revealing was the declaration that President Morsi is now no more kidnapped but legally detained for interrogation on two criminal charges: Conspiring with Hamas and fleeing from Mubarak’s prison.
The first charge is a medal of honor for any Arab nationalist and for every freedom lover around the world – as Hamas is only defined as a “terrorist organization” for its resistance to Israel’s occupation.
The second charge can clearly be directed at any of the millions of Egyptians who broke the laws of the dictatorship and fought their way to freedom.
Defending Democracy
By resisting the military coup, the people that demonstrate today in Cairo and all over Egypt, putting their lives in danger, braving with their bare chests the army’s snipers, are now the first line of defense for the Arab Spring – the hope of 350 million Arabs (and many more people around the world) to leave in true democracy.
After the people awakened, after they felt the power of the mass movement and experienced the ability of the revolution to topple regimes, no new dictator will sit safely on his bayonets.
But first we should pay respects to the martyrs. It is the time for mourning, for Human Solidarity and for reflection on morality and truthfulness.
At this moment I remember the eternal words of Subcomandante Marcos, as quoted by Naomi Klein:
“Marcos, the quintessential anti-leader, insists that his black mask is a mirror, so that ‘Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10 p.m., a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains’. In other words, he is simply us: we are the leader we’ve been looking for.”
Today Free Haifa is a Muslim Brother in Cairo.
Posted by freehaifa | Filed under Egyptian Revolution