On gaza’s jailers

On gaza’s jailers

Posted on April 14, 2009 by marcy/مارسي newman/نيومان

if we really want to be honest about why gaza is a prison and why palestinians are trapped inside then we must not only look at the primary culprit–the zionist entity–but also their partners in crime: egypt and the united states. we all know about the u.s., of course, because it supplies all the weapons to the israeli terrorists so that they may murder palestinians every day. but what of the egyptians. the egyptians who account for at least 1/4 of the jailers of gaza given their control over the rafah border. physicians for human rights and gisha published a report this week on the closure of rafah and the damage it does to palestinians in gaza which reads in part:

However, in the year between the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit (June 2006) and the Hamas takeover of the internal government in Gaza (June 2007), Israel kept Rafah Crossing closed 85% of the time; since June 2007, Rafah Crossing has been closed permanently, except for random and limited openings by Egypt, which meet only 3% of the needs of the residents of the Gaza Strip to enter and leave.
The closure of Rafah has severe implications for the residents of the Gaza Strip, including preventing access to health care services that are not available in Gaza, preventing access to opportunities for academic studies or employment abroad or in the West Bank, forcing long separations of family members on either side of the border, causing fatal damage to commerce and business, and creating a growing feeling among residents of the Gaza Strip that they are enclosed, isolated and trapped. The closure, of course, means a real inability to leave the Gaza Strip, even under circumstances of mortal danger.

of course, i do not agree with their assessment, that any palestinians are to blame for its closure. i reject any statement that blames the victim. and here we see the limits of so-called israeli human rights agencies. but i do think it is necessary for us to include egypt in the equation as they do. on monday two more palestinians died as a result of this closure because they were not allowed to leave for medical treatment:

Two Palestinian patients were reported dead on Monday in the Gaza strip due to the Israeli continued siege.
Both women needed treatment outside the coastal region but the Israeli military did not allow them to leave Gaza, local sources reported.
Doctors said that Somod Akkash, 17, and Fatma Al Shandi, 66, died on Monday midday In Gaza City hospital. They added that hundreds of patients are in critical conditions due to the Israeli 22 month long siege and not allowing patients to leave Gaza for treatment.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza announced that with those two patients dead today the number of patients due to the ongoing Israeli siege on the costal region has reached 320.

but they also could have left through rafah had egypt and their israeli terrorist partners allowed them to. and egypt and its israeli terrorist partners are not only responsible for keeping people trapped inside, of course.

they are responsible for denying palestinians the right to go home as well. of course the situation of laila el haddad last week, who egyptian authorities refused to allow out of the airport after 27 hours of detention there, is case in point. she is finally back in the u.s., amazingly enough, and wrote a long and eloquent blog entry entitled “i was born palestinian,” about it which i will quote in its entirety because i think it needs to be read by all:

“Its not very comfortable in there is it?” said the stony faced official, cigarette smoke forming a haze around his gleaming oval head.
“Its OK. We’re fine” i replied wearily, delirious after being awake for a straight period of 30 hours.
“You could be in there for days you know. For weeks. Indefinitely. “So, tell me, you are taking a plane tomorrow morning to the US?”
****
It was our journey home that began with the standard packing frenzy: squeezing everything precious and dear and useful into two suitcases that would be our sustenance for the course of 3 months.
The trips to the outdoor recreation store- in preparation for what I anticipated to be a long and tortuous journey across Rafah Crossing to Gaza. The inspect repellent; the mosquito netting; the water purifier; the potty toppers for my kids ad the granola bars and portion sized peanut butter cups. This time, I wanted to be ready, I thought to myself-just in case I got stuck at the Crossing. The Crossing. My presumptuousness is like a dull hit to the back of my head now.
In addition to all the packing of suitcases, we were also packing up our house- my husband was finishing up his residency at Duke University and set to start a medical fellowship at Johns Hopkins in July. In the meantime, we were “closing shop”, putting our things in storage, selling the rest, and heading overseas: me to Gaza, he to Lebanon to visit his family; and eventually I was too meet him there (assuming i could get into Gaza, and the, assuming I could get out). Yassine is a third-generation Palestinian refugee from the village of Waarit al-Siris in nothern historic Palestine; he was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and holds a Laizze Passe for Palestinian refugees. Israel denies him return to his own home- or even to the home of his spouse in Gaza. So when we go overseas, we often go our separate ways; we cannot live legally, as a unit, as a family, in our own homes.
I hold a Palestinian Authority passport. It replaced the “temporary two-year Jordanian passport for Gaza residents” that we held until the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid ’90s, which itself replaced the Egyptian travel documents we held before that. A progression in a long line of stateless documentation.
It is a passport that allows no passage. A passport that denied me entry to my own home. This is its purpose: to mark me, brand me, so that I am easily identified and cast aside without questions; it is convenient for those giving the orders. It is a system for the collective identification of those with no identity.
***
We finished packing as much as we could of the house, leaving the rest to Yassine who was to leave a week after us, and drove 4 hours to Washington to spend a few day sat my brother’s house before we took off.
First, we headed to the the Egyptian embassy.
Last year, my parents were visiting us from Gaza City when Rafah was sealed hermetically. They attempted to fly back to Egypt to wait for the border to open- but were now allowed to board the plane in Washington. “Palestinians cannot fly to Egypt now without a visa, new rules” the airline personnel explained, “and no visas can be issued until Rafah is open” added the Egyptian embassy official. They were in a conundrum, aggravated by the fact that their US stay entry stamp had reach passed its six-month limit. Eventually, they got around the issue by obtaining an Egyptian tourist visa, made easier by their old age, which they used to wait in Egypt for one month until Rafah Crossing opened again.
I did not want to repeat their ordeal, so I called the embassy this time, which assured me the protocol had changed: now, it was only Palestinian men who were not allowed to fly to or enter Egypt. Women were, and would get their visa at the Egyptian port of destination. I was given a signed and dated letter (April 6, 2009) by the consul to take with me in case I encountered any problems: “The Consular Section of the Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt hereby confirms that women, who are residents of the Gaza Strip, and who hold passports issued by the Palestinian Authority are required to get their visa to enter Egypt at Egyptian ports and NOT at the various Egyptian consulates in the United States on their way to the Gaza Strip for the purpose of reaching their destination (i.e. Gaza Strip)” it read.
With letter and bags in hand, we took off, worried only about the possibility of entering Gaza- the thought of being able to enter Egypt never crossing my mind.
2 long-haul flights and one 7 hour transit later, we made it. I knew the routine by heart. Upon our arrival, I was quick to hit the bank to buy the $15 visa stamps for Yousuf and Noor’s American passports and exchange some dollars into Egyptian pounds. I figured it would help pass the time while the lines got shorter.
I then went and filled out my entry cards-an officer came and filled them out with me seeing my hands were full, a daypack on my back, Noor strapped to my chest in a carrier, Yousuf in my hand…
we then submitted our passports, things seemed to be going smoothly. Just then the officer explained he needed to run something by his superior. “You have a Palestinian passport; Rafah crossing is closed…”
“I promise it will just be 5 minutes” he assured me. But that’s all i needed to hear. I knew I was in for a long wait. It was at this point I yanked out my laptop and began to tweet and blog about my experience (full progression of tweets here courtesy Hootsbuddy). At first I thought it would simply help pass the time; it developed into a way to pool resources together that could help me; and ended as a public awareness campaign.
****
The faces were different each time. 3 or four different rooms and hallways to navigate down. They refused to give names and the answers they gave were always in the form of cryptic questions.
The first explained I would not be allowed entry into Egypt because Palestinians without permanent residency abroad are not allowed in; and besides- Rafah Crossing is closed he said (my response: so open it?). I was told I was to be deported to the UK first. “But I had no British visa” I explained. I was ordered to agree to get on the next flight. I refused-I didn’t come all this way to turn back.
I was escorted to the “extended transit terminal”. It was empty at first, save for a south Asian man in tightly buckled jeans and a small duffel bag that spent the good part of our time there there in a deep sleep. During the day the hall would fill up with locally deported passengers- from villages of cities across Egypt, and we would move our things to the upper waiting area.
Most of the time was spent in this waiting area with low level guards who knew nothing and could do nothing.
At different intervals, a frustrated Yousuf would approach them angrily about “why they wouldn’t let him go see his seedo and tete?” and why “they put cockroaches on the floor”. When we first arrived, he asked if these were the “yahood”, his only experiences with extended closure, delay, and denial of entry being at the hands of the Israeli soldiers and government. “No, but why don’t you ask them why they are are allowed through to sunbathe and we aren’t to our own homes?”
“Rabina kbeer” came the response, signifying impotence. God is great.
There was very little time I was given access to anyone who had any authority. I seemed to be called in whenever the new person on duty arrived, when they were scheduled for their thrice daily interrogation and intimidation, their shooting and crying.
Officers came and went as shifts began and ended. But our status was always the same. Our “problem”, our case, our issue was always the same. We remained, sitting on our chairs, with our papers and documents in hand, waiting, and no one the better.
Always waiting. For this is what the Palestinian does: we wait. For an answer to be given, for a question to be asked; for a marriage proposal to be made, for a divorce to be finalized; for a border to open, for a permit to be issued; for a war to end; for a war to begin; for a child to be born; for one to die a martyr; for retirement or a new job; for exile to a better place and for return to the only place that knows us; for our prisoners to come home; for our home to no longer be prisons; for our children to be free; for freedom from a time when we no longer have to wait.
We waited for the next shift as we were instructed by those who made their own instructions. Funny how when you need to pass the time, the time does not pass.
“You need to speak with whose in charge-and their shift starts at 10 am”. So we pass the night and wait until 10. “Well by the time they really get started its more like noon”. So we wait till noon. “Well the real work isn’t until the evening”. And we wait until evening. Then the cycle starts again.
Every now and then the numberless phone would ring requesting me, and a somber voice would ask if I changed my mind. I insisted all I wanted to do was go home; that it was not that complicated.
“But Gaza is a special case, we all know that” I was told.
Special, as in expendable, not human, not entitled to rights special, I thought.
Unfamiliar faces that acted as though though I was a long-lost friend kept popping in and out to see me. As though I were an amnesiac in a penitentiary. They all kept asking the same cryptic question “so you are getting on a plane soon, right?”
First, a gentleman from the Palestinian representative’s office that someone else whose name I was meant to recognize sent. ” It’ll all be resolved within the hour” he promised confidently, before going on to tell me about his son who worked with Motorola in Florida;
“Helping Israeli drones do their job?”
“That’s right!” he beamed.
An hour came and went, and suddenly the issue was “irresolvable”, and I was “a journalist up to trouble”.
***
Friends and family in Egypt, the US, and Gaza, worked around the clock with me, calling in any favors they had, anyone they knew, doing anything they could to get some answers and let me through. But the answer was always the same: Amn il Dawla (State Security and Intelligence) says no, and they are the ultimate authorities. No one goes past them.
Later a second Palestinian representative came to see me.
“So you are not going on that second flight are you?”
“What are you talking about? Why does everyone speak to me in question form?”
“Answer the question”
“No, I came here to go to Gaza, not to return to the US”
“Ok that’s all I needed to know; there is a convoy of injured Palestinian with security clearance heading to the border with some space; we are trying to get you on there with them; 15 minutes and it’ll all be resolved, we just need clearance, its all over” he assured me.
Yousuf smashed another cockroach.
****
We were taken down a new hallway. A new room. A new face. The man behind the desk explained how he was losing sleep over my case, how I had the while airport working on it, ho he had a son Yousuf’s age; and then offered me an apple and a bottle of water and told me istaraya7i, to rest, a command I would hear again and again over the course of the 36 hours.
Is this man for real??? an apple and a bottle of water? I thought to myself, my eyes nearly popping out of my face.
“I don’t want your food. I don’t want to rest. I don’t want your sympathy. I JUST WANT TO GO HOME. To my country. To my parents. IS THAT TOO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?” I screamed, breaking my level-headed calm of the past 20 hours.
“Please don’t yell, just calm down, calm down, everyone outside will think I am treating you badly, c’mon, and besides its ‘ayb (disgraceful) not to accept the apple from me”.
“‘Ayb?? What’s ‘AYB is you denying my entry to my own home! And why should I be calm? This situation doesn’t call for calm; it makes no sense and neither should I!”
“C’mon lady don’t have a breakdown in front of your kids please. You know I have a kid your son’s age and its breaking my heart to do this, to see him in these conditions, to put him in the conditions, so please take the plane.”
“So don’t see me in these conditions! There’s a simple solution you know. LET ME GO HOME. Its not asking a lot is it?”
“Hey now look lady” he said, stiffening suddenly into bad cop, his helpless grimace disappeared.
“Rules are rules, you need a visa to get in here like any other country, can you go to Jordan without a visa?’
“Don’t play the rules game with me. I HAD APPROVAL FROM YOUR EMBASSY, FROM YOUR CONSUL GENERAL, to cross into Egypt and go to Gaza; and besides how else am I supposed to get into Gaza???” I shouted, frantically waving the stamped and signed document in front of him as though it were a magic wand.
So sue him. Amn il Dawla supercedes the foreign ministry’s orders, he must have outdated protocol.”
“The letter was dated April 6, that is 2 days ago, how outdated could it be?? Look- if I could parachute into Gaza I would, trust me. With all do respect to your country, I’m not here to sight-see. Do you have a parachute for me? If I could sail there I would do that too, but last I check Israel was ramming and turning those boats back. Do you have another suggestions?
“What is it you want lady- do you want to just live in the airport? is that it? Because we have no problems letting you live here, really. We can set up a shelter for you. And no one will ever ask about you or know you exist. In any case you don’t have permanent residency abroad so our government policies say we can’t let a Palestinian who does not have permanent residency abroad”
“I have a US Visa- its expired but my extension of status document is valid until the end of June. and besides- what kind of illogical law is that? you aren’t allowing me back home if I don’t have permanent residency abroad?”
“I don’t read English please translate..”
“You see it says here that my status is valid until June 30, 2009″
“Good, so then we CAN deport you back to the US” he said, picking up the phone and giving a quick order for the Palestinian convoy of injured Palestinians heading to the Crossing to go on without me, my only hope of returning home dissipating before my eyes at the hands of a barely literate manipulative enforcer.
“You just said if i have permanent residency abroad I can go home, now you say I can’t, which is it??”
“I’m sorry you are refusing to go on the plane. Take her away please.”
We were ushered back to the extended waiting area, back to our roach ridden premises that had become our home, along with a newly arrived Luxembourgian and French couple and their two children who had failed to produce their passports and were being sent back home. Here I was, about to be deported away from home, over prepared, with my documents and signed papers, from consulates and universities and governments; and they, used to traveling passport-free the EU, being sent back home because they had only an ID card.
***
It wasn’t long before a new guard came to us, and request we follow him “to a more isolated room”. “It will be better for you- more private. All the African flights are arriving now with all their diseases, you don’t want to be here for that! It’ll get overcrowded and awful in here.”
Given the the well-wishes that preceded my last interrogation about the “uncomfortableness” I may endure, I somehow had a feeling where we were headed.
We were asked to bring all our luggage and escorted down a different hallway; this time we were asked to leave everything behind, and to give up our cameras, laptops, and mobile phones. We took our seats in the front of a tiny filthy room, where 17 other men (and one Indonesian woman was sleeping on the floor in the back, occasionally shouting out in the middle of her interrupted sleep) of varying nationalities were already waiting.
A brute man-, illiterate by his own admission, took charge of each of files, spontaneously blurting out vulgarities and ordering anyone who so much as whispered to shut the hell up or get sent to real prison; the room was referred to as “7abs”, or a cell; I can probably best describe it as the detention or holding room. a heady man with a protruding belly that seems at odds with his otherwise lanky body was the door guard.
Officer #1 divided up the room into regions: the 5 or so south Asians who were there for whatever reason-expired paperwork, illegal documentation- were referred to as “Pakistan” when their attention was needed; The snoozing, sleep-talking woman in the back was “Indonesia”; and the impeccably dressed Guinean businessman, fully decked in a sharp black suit and blue lined tie, was “Kenya” (despite his persistence please to the contrary). There was a group of Egyptian peasants with forged, fake, or wrongly filed Id cards and passports: a 54 year old man whose ID said he was born in 1990; another who left his ID in his village 5 hours away, and so on.
By this point, I had not slept in 27 hours, 40 if one were to count the plane ride. My patience and my energy were wearing thing. My children were filthy and tired and confused; Noor was crying. I tried to set her cot up, but a cell within a cell did not seem to her liking and she resisted, much as I did.
We took the opportunity to chat when officer #1 was away. “”So what did you do?” asked Kenya, the Guinean.
“I was born Palestinian” I replied. “Everyone in here is being deported back home for one reason or another right? I bet I am the only one being deported away from home; the only one denied entry to my home.”
Officer #1 returned, this time he asked me to come with him “with or without your kids”. I brought them along, not knowing what was next.
There was two steely-eyed men on either end of a relatively well-furnished room, once again inquiring about my “comfort” and ordering-in the form of a question- whether I was taking a flight that morning to the US.
Noor began making a fuss, bellowing at the top of her lungs and swatting anyone that approached her.
“She is stubborn. She takes after her mother I see” said the man.
Soon we were escorted back to the waiting area. I knew there was nothing more I could do. We waited for several more hours until my children exhausted themselves and fell asleep. I bathed them in the filthy bathroom sinks with freezing tap water and hand soap and arranged their quarters on the steel chairs of the waiting room, buzzing with what seemed like a thousand gnats. Thank God for the mosquito netting.
Eventually, dawn broke, and we were escorted by two guards to the ticket counter, our $2500 flights rerouted, and put on a plane back to Washington.
I noted on one of my tweets that I would be shocked if my children’s immune system survived this jolt. It didn’t.
My daughter vomited the whole flight to London as I slipped in and out of delirium, mumbling half Arabic half English phrases to the flustered but helpful Englishman sitting next to us. I thank him wherever he is for looking after us.
Whatever she had, Yousuf an eye caught in the coming days-along with an ear and throat infection.
Eventually, we reached Dulles Airport. I walked confidently to the booth when it was my turn.
What was I going to say? How do I explain this? The man took one look at my expired visa, and my departure stamps.
“How long have you been gone?”
“36 hours” I replied bluntly.
“Yes, I see that. Do you want to explain?”
“Sure. Egypt forbade me from returning to Gaza”.
“I don’t understand- they denied you entry to your own home?”
“I don’t either, and if I did, I wouldn’t be here.”
With that, I was given a a stamp and allowed back inside.
Now that we are warm; clothes; showered, rested and recovered from whatever awful virus we picked up in the bowels of Cairo airport, I keep thinking to myself: what more could I have done?
“The quintessential Palestinian experience,” historian Rashid Khalidi has written, “takes place at a border, an airport, a checkpoint: in short, at any one of those many modern barriers where identities are checked and verified.”
In this place, adds Robyn Creswell, “connection” turns out to be only another word for separation or quarantine: the loop of airports never ends, like Borges’s famous library. The cruelty of the Palestinian situation is that these purgatories are in no way extraordinary but rather the backdrop of daily existence.”

The egyptian collaboration with the zionist enemy is why many egyptian people refuse to normalize with israeli terrorists of any stripe in spite of its government’s normalizing policies. for instance, egyptians oppose a concert of israeli conductor daniel barenboim:

The concert, Barenboim’s first in Egypt, has ruffled feathers in intellectual circles, with music critic Amgad Mustafa describing the visit as “sneaky normalisation” with Israel.
But Egypt’s culture minister was quick to defend Barenboim’s visit.
“This conductor has attacked Israeli policies and there has even been a request to have him stripped of his citizenship,” Faruq Hosni told AFP.
The minister has himself said he opposed cultural normalisation with the Jewish State despite a 1979 peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

Inviting barenboim also violates the cultural boycott campaign of israel. that boycott campaign is necessary in order to help fight for the liberation of palestine especially given the severe economic problems that the israeli-egyptian imprisonment of palestinians of gaza are suffering as sherine tadros reported for al jazeera:



but the collaboration between israeli terrorists and the egyptian government is even worse than this. or at least it is getting worse in the past week. the level of collaboration with the zionist enemy has reached new heights. now the egyptian police are murdering bedouins as ramattan news reported:

Egyptian police shot and killed a Bedouin in north Sinai on Saturday and seized munitions concealed in his truck believed to be destined for Gaza, Egyptian security official said.
“A Bedouin was shot and killed during an exchange of fire between police and armed men in north Sinai,” the official said.
Police in El-Arish ordered a truck to stop to be searched, but the driver tried to speed away only to crash into a police van.
Four Bedouin jumped out in attempt to get away on foot and one of them died in the shootout that ensued, the official added.

and it gets worse. now the egyptians are collaborating with israeli terrorists to completely sever gaza’s only lifeline to the outside world–where it gets everything from textbooks to toothpaste:

Egyptian sources reported that Egyptian security forces located and destroyed six tunnels along the border with the Gaza Strip.
The sources added that the tunnels were used for smuggling goods and other essentials to the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians have been living under strict siege for more than two years.
Sounds of explosions were heard across the border as the security forces wired the entrances of the tunnels detonating them.
The tunnels are located near the neighborhoods of Al Barazil and Al Salam, east of the Palestinian city of Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
Egypt recently escalated its campaign against the tunnels entering into Gaza. Israel and Egypt say that the

and it gets even worse: now it is public that mossad, israel’s terrorist version of america’s cia, cooperates with the egyptian mukhabarat:

Lines separating warring camps in the region are becoming increasingly clearer as news emerged Monday that foreign intelligence services - including Israel’s Mossad - provided Egyptian authorities with intelligence that contributed to the uncovering of a Hezbollah-run terrorist ring and led to the arrest of dozens of suspects.
Meanwhile, Egyptian sources upped the tone of the charges against Hezbollah Monday by claiming that the aim of the underground activity was not limited to plans for terrorist attacks against tourist areas frequented by foreigners, but also against targets in the Suez canal.
Foreign intelligence services, including the Mossad and the CIA, contributed information to Egypt that led to the uncovering of the Hezbollah terror cell in that country, Philippe Vasset, editor of Intelligence Online told Haaretz.

and it gets far worse. is it really possible that the country that gave us gamal abdel nasser and his vision of arab unity and nationalism could stoop to this level so as to so identify with the white man, with the colonist, with the real terrorists so as to turn against his arab kin? is that really what the divide and rule of american-israeli terrorism has brought us to in this region? given the following report it would seem so:

The Egyptian press on Sunday slammed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a war criminal who should be put on trial after he admitted that his militants in Cairo were helping Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Nasrallah said on Friday that a man Cairo is holding on suspicion of planning attacks is a member of his Lebanese Shiite fundamentalist group and was providing logistical help to Hamas, but denied seeking to destabilise Egypt.
“A criminal who knows no mercy” cried the blood-red headline in the state-owned Al-Gomhuria which reserved the whole of its front page for an editorial bashing Nasrallah, repeatedly referring to him as “Sheikh Monkey.”
“Sheikh Monkey, we will not allow you to belittle our judicial symbols, for you are a highway robber, a pure criminal who has killed his own people but we will not allow you to threaten the peace and security of Egypt,” editor Mohammed Ali Ibrahim wrote.
“You and your gang are terrorists and soon… the public prosecutor will issue details of an investigation into your terrorist organisation,” he said.
Al-Ahram newspaper, which is also state-owned, said Nasrallah’s admission that Hezbollah is operating in Egypt provided grounds for prosecution.
“The admission by (Nasrallah) of sending agents into Egypt… puts him at the forefront of accusations and requires dealing with him under Egyptian law, or international law and issuing an (Interpol) red notice for his arrest,” said editorial writer Ahmed Mussa.
“Egypt must start proceedings to try him in an international court. He has admitted to the crime. He must be handed to the Lebanese government as a war criminal,” Karam Gabr, editor of the pro-regime Rose Al-Yussef, told Egyptian television.
Egypt is holding 49 people with alleged links to Hezbollah accused of plotting “hostile operations” in Egypt, among them Sami Shihab, a Lebanese citizen.
In his speech on Friday, Nasrallah confirmed that Shihab was a member of Hezbollah and was working to help Hamas against Israel.
“If helping the Palestinians is a crime, I officially admit to my crime.”
Hezbollah, which is backed by Egypt’s regional rivals Iran and Syria, is a vocal supporter of Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, and has lashed out at Egypt for closing its border crossing with the Palestinian enclave.
An Israeli cabinet minister said on Sunday that Nasrallah deserved to die.
“Nasrallah deserves death and I hope that those who know what to do with him will act and give him what he deserves,” said Transport Minister Yisrael Katz.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in Lebanon in 2006 which ended with Israel failing to achieve any of its aims.

this is what brainwashing looks like. that egyptian officials can be so duped by the west and their terrorist partners that they turn against the only leader in the region who is working to support palestinian resistance. if it were up to the mubarak regime, clearly palestinians would rot in hell. i saw a very disturbing episode of “inside story” with kamal santamaria on al jazeera the other night. i refuse to post it because santamaria hosted an egyptian on it who is allied with zionist terorrists and that information was not disclosed. though one comment made by this khalil al-anani made it quite clear: he actually said with a straight face that “no one is a better friend to the palestinians than egypt.” i kid you not. re-read laila’s blog entry above–which is notable because she published it not because this is not something that happens to palestinians every day. because it does. and she is clear about that. but in any case you can go to pulse media if you want to watch it. here is their assessment of the show:

The Egyptian government and the state media is frothing at the mouth over the revelation that Hizbullah had been trying to assist the besieged Gazans across the border which Egypt polices on Israel’s behalf. As usual, they were quick to resort to sectarian incitement invoking the inevitable ‘Persian’ plot. However, most Sunnis (here I would include myself) have nothing but admiration for Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the resistance, and nothing but contempt for the Egyptian collaborationist government.
For those who don’t know the Egyptian panelist Khalil al-Anani is a ‘visiting fellow’ at the Israel lobby’s key propaganda institution the Saban Center for Middle East Policy (run by Martin Indyk, and underwritten by Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban).

oh, and if egypt is looking to reform itself you should look to lebanon for a lesson in how to behave with collaborators (though how would this work in egypt: could we imprison and interrogate the entire mubarak collaborating regime?):

The Lebanese internal security services stated on Tuesday that it had arrested a retired security officer, from Ramish town in southern Lebanon, on suspicion that he had acted as a spy spy for Israel for more than ten years.
The man arrested was identified as Adeeb A. Initial reports revealed that the man admitted to holding regular meetings with Israeli handlers in Europe, and that he confessed to collaborating with different Israeli intelligence departments for more than 10 years.
The Al Akhbar Lebanese newspaper said that, three months ago, Lebanese security had been monitoring the communications of a group of suspects who were thought to be collaborating with Israel by giving Israeli security information on activities in the north and east of Beirut, and in southern Lebanon.
Adeeb was detained and interrogated last Saturday. His wife, also believed to be a collaborator, was later arrested and interrogated, revealing new information.

and for those of you who missed hassan nasrallah’s amazing speech the other night and want reminding of what arab unity could look like if done in the name of resistance, justice, and helping to liberate palestine here is his captivating, powerful, mesmerizing speech in full (thanks tam tam!) :


this is what has got egypt all in a dither. this is what should make us all mobilize together.