Egyptian protesters have stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo, destroying a part of the wall surrounding the Israeli embassy building.
Egyptian protesters stormed the Israeli embassy premises and tore down the flag from the building for the second time in less than a month.
According to medical sources, three people were killed and more than 1,000 people, including 300 policemen, were injured in what seems to be the worst outburst of Egyptian people's anger against Israel.
Press TV has interviewed with Ralph Schoenman, Author of “Hidden History of Zionism” to get his opinion on this issue.
Press TV: First of all how do you explain the sudden burst of anti-Israeli sentiments on the streets of Cairo?
Schoenman: Well the masses of people associate the attacks by the Israeli state which killed Egyptian soldiers and police recently as not only a provocation but an expression of the collaboration with the Israeli state by the military under [former Egyptian ruler Hosni] Mubarak for four decades and it enrages people as in a front to their self determination until their solidarity with the Palestinian people. And it is important to understand that thousands of people are involved in this protest and they cheered the demolition of the wall and they chanted for the ouster of the Israeli ambassador .
Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets around this question they converged in Tahrir square and they combined their call for breaking relations with Israel and the remove of the Israeli ambassador with the demands at CNN reports for "correcting the path of the revolution" and they specified according to CNN the following demands: the removal of ruling party members from banks, schools, universities and government institutions. The protest demanded the abolishment of the military tribunals. The establishment of minimum wages and maximum wages for officials. Commission for Egyptians to vote abroad in upcoming election, the demand for the announcement of date for these elections, a call for removal of the former ruling party members from the banks, schools, universities and government institutions.
This expression of generalized rage at the collaboration of the military that moved Egypt today, with the Israelis and with the suppression of the Egyptian masses is concretizing around this struggle unfolding now, as you described it so well, in the wall surrounding the Israeli embassy. It symbolizes everything that the Egyptian people are rising up against.
Press TV: Is this going to transpire into anything concrete and significant? Is the ruling council going to hear the demands of the people here and actually review its deal with the Israeli government?
Schoenman: The answer to that question is that the ruling order is not significantly different from what it was during the era of Mubarak and that the people increasingly understand the fact that the revolutionary demands that they have expressed will not and cannot be implemented with the old guard military defending the same oligarchy that has controlled the economic and political life of Egypt against the will of the people over this long period of time.
The struggle will advance. It is concretizing around economic demands which include the call for strike and workers to form organizations that would take control of the economy. It is important to understand that both the BBC and the CNN reports about this protest around the Israeli embassy and the wall and the demands for the removal of the ambassador are joint to social and economic demands that challenge the continued rule of this oligarchy and the Egyptian military that sustains their control.
Press TV: What do you see as happening right now? We do know that the Israeli ambassador to Cairo is waiting for a plane to leave Egypt. What kind of reaction do you expect coming from the Israeli side to what has been going on in Cairo right now?
Schoenman: I expect the Israelis and the United States to put pressure on the military to crackdown on the population to renew arbitrary arrests in this appearances and the repression that has characterized their rule over these four decades. That is the only language which designs a state and the imperial masters understand and it is the role that the Egyptian military and oligarchy has played as part of what we call a country-serving regime. There is no mechanism of reconciliation that diametrically opposes objectives that concerns social justice and the aspirations of the people and their empowerment to control the fate of their country. All these have to be resolved by the removal of those who stand in the way of self determination, sovereignty, and the aspiration of the people not only of Egypt but of the region at large.
Press TV: This would be resolved if only the momentum here is kept on. We have already gotten reports of one protester who has died because of suffocation due to tear gas. We have already heard gunshots near the area of the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Do you think that the military council might just suppress this burst of anti Israeli sentiment?
Schoenman: Well they are continually engaging in forms of repression. The people are being disappeared. The old secret police are now being unleashed across Egypt not only in Cairo, but in Suez, in Alexandria and in other locations .It is a struggle between the aspirations of the mass of the people, as you indicated, and the entrenched oligarchy which lies upon the military to maintain the status quo.
Israel's defense minister said he ordered a joint inquiry to be held together with the Egyptian army. What an extra ordinary display of arrogance that the defense minister of the Zionist state is ordering an inquiry to be held in conjunction with the Egyptian army. That would only confirm what the protesters have been declaring that the military is an adjunct of the Israeli state and a servant of the imperialism and does not reflect the interest of Egypt or the aspiration of its populations.
Press TV: US President Barrack Obama on Friday called on Egypt to protect Israel's embassy from the demonstrators in Cairo. He expressed rather great concern over the incident. The US did come out in support of the revolution. But looking at the turn it is taking now do you see more US support coming towards for the protesters on the streets of Cairo?
Schoenman: The United States rulers have never supported the revolutionary aspiration of the Egyptian people. They used every mechanism and every means of repression and of pressure to maintain Mubarak in office. When he was removed they attempted to put [Omar] Suleiman in his place, who had been in conjunction with the Israeli and Mossad over a space of four decades and in charge with torture apparatus when he was removed, they maintained the oligarchy of Egyptian officer class and that had been the support of Mubarak for period of time in question. This war is to maintain the old order by one means or another and to lay claim to the aspirations of the people even as they are organized to subject the people to more repression and to crush their resistance. That is the only role imperialism can play and these issues become ever more clear with passing days.
Press TV: The path that the ruling military council takes over here with regards to these anti- Israeli protests is sort of reflective of how successful the revolution has been over all in this of handling of remissness of Hosni Mubarak's regime. Now considering that it does not listen to the popular demand on the streets of Cairo, where is this headed considering that presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for the end of 20/11?
Schoenman: Well we keep in mind that as we often discussed on Press TV, in Egypt something like fraction of a percent controlled the entire economic crisis of the country, the great mass of the people are living on less than two dollars a day. Those realities have not altered with the removal of Mubarak and the military's role is to maintain the oligarch rule and the pro-imperialist and collaborationist politics with the Zionist state are the characteristics of the Egyptian military's politics today will not be altered without their removal and the population is increasingly aware of this, angered by the fact that the status quo has not been fundamentally changed. There has been a cosmetic change with Mubarak's removal but the structure of power has not been altered and with every day that passes the military resorts to more repression as the anger of the population puts itself within mobilization of this kind and particularly because the Israeli embassy and the Zionist state are a lightening rod for resistance, given the nature of Zionism and its long standing subjugation of the Arab masses and crushing of the aspiration of the Palestinian people.
The role of the military in maintaining the status quo, the role of Obama and of American rulers in supporting the military and insisting upon the military, maintaining that status quo will further radicalize the Egyptian people and push them to look for means of struggle including those of a general strike and other forms of resistance which will also begin to appeal to the rank and file soldiers who are exploited and hungry as their brothers and sisters who they are being ordered to repress.
Press TV: What does this signify for the Palestinians? We do know that the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition in the UN is coming up shortly. Also Gaza remains under siege both from the Israeli side and the Egyptian side. So what does this mean for the Palestinians seeing the Israeli embassy being attacked by protesters in Egypt?
Schoenman: It has enormous significance for the Palestinian people. It has enormous significance for the one million people who have been mobilizing amongst the settler population itself, against the policies of the Zionist state. The Egyptian uprising has inspired emboldened and given a license and encouragement to struggle that would never before had seen itself within the Israeli state.
The Palestinian people will be armed in the unwillingness to accept the politics of the Palestinian Authority which are basically run by the CIA and financed by the Israeli state. The demand for the recognition of a little state let in a poor corner of the West Bank as a part of the United Nations would do nothing to advance the aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Those cannot be separated from the struggle for the de-Zionation of the state and for a Palestinian society which rights do not depend on religious affiliation or ethnic origin and which Zionism is a thing of the past. Zionism is like Apartheid State in South Africa. You cannot reconcile the Apartheid State of South Africa with the aspirations of South African masses and the role of the South African state was to support every reactionary, repressive, and imperial regime in the continent.
That is the role of the Zionist state. That is the role of the Egyptian military. These are classed questions. There are questions that have to be resolved through struggle. No more could the Shah be tolerated in Iran and could Mubarak and the military oligarchy tolerated in Egypt. It is the same kind of issue. The struggle of the population must be concretized and the removal of this oligarchy from power and in the transformation of these nations from subject nations under imperial controls, and Israeli domination to sovereign states that are truly representing the needs and aspirations of their populations.
Press TV: And where do you see this is headed considering within the context of the peace deal between Israel and Egypt specifically the way Israel chooses to respond and the ruling Junta as you said is not really looking out for the interest of its people.
Schoenman: Well of course everybody in Egypt is well aware that this is so-called peace deal between Egyptian hierarchy and the Zionist state is not peace but capitulation not recognition of the aspiration of Palestinian people but lending the power of the Egyptian state to stability and the endurance of the Zionists in Israel.
So this peace treaty is everything but peace. It is in fact the opposite of peace because it guarantees permanent war. Because in imperialism and Zionism are in perpetual conflict in attempts to subjugate the surrounding neighbors. The people are not willing to accept a peace treaty that puts Egypt under the direction of the Mossad and the Egyptian people under the dictate of imperialism as well as Zionism military plans of the future. No, there is no peace agreement that in any way recognizes those representing peace for the people. It represents on the contrary, the stabilization of their oppression and that is the opposite of peace. Peace has to do with justice. Peace has to do with general aspirations being acknowledged for people with their rights on it, with their popular control represented by the state institutions that they command nothing short of that would allow peace in the region. There will only be permanent wars as long as Zionism and the subject regimes of imperialism maintain their control.
AHK/SZH/JR
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
No comments:
Post a Comment