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Fitzgerald: Buying peace from Egypt?

Jul 1, 2006 2:05 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

“The U.S. supports Egypt with weapons and soldiers, so our government is paralyzed and unable to do anything” — from this story

The idea that it is money that is buying Egypt’s “peace” is false. The reasons for Egypt’s “peacefulness” are clear from history. In May 1948 the Arabs attacked the nascent state of Israel: 600,000 Jews with no arms. The rifles they had were given them by the British during the war because the British knew that the Jews of Palestine would help fight the Germans (and they did — volunteering for the most dangerous, suicidal missions in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt). But those rifles were taken back by the British after the war. The Arabs certainly thought they would win. They learned a lesson.

That lesson, which was to avoid all-out assault, was then over time unlearned. In May 1967 Nasser showed that he believed that this time the assault would be successful. The Arab fiasco that followed kept the peace, for a while — until 1973. The defeat of 1967 stopped, for a long period, not only Egypt but the rest of the Arab countries from attacking Israel. It made them realize that they would have to be more patient, try to wear Israel down with an economic, diplomatic, and every other kind of siege, but not with an all-out military assault. A lesson was learned — but that lesson was not “we must never attack Israel again.” Rather, it was “we must not attack Israel until we have sufficiently weakened it so as to have a chance of success.” By 1973, Sadat and the Syrians thought they had a reasonable chance of success if they launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur. And they were right. They almost pulled it off.

And in that case, Israel pulled things out only after a few days and heavy losses, but that it did pull things out, that it could, without the Nixon-Kissinger saving of Egypt’s Third Army from complete destruction by Sharon, taught Sadat a lesson. The lesson was to use wiles and smiles to win what could not be won by war, and that is exactly what he did in offering that “peace” that consisted of Israel handing over tangible assets, the Sinai, and Egypt promising merely to refrain from hostile acts and to encourage friendly relations — which, of course, the Egyptian government had no intention of doing, and never did.

Egypt has done nothing to deserve its $60 billion. It has consistently shown obvious malevolence toward Israel, not merely in its television programming (a multi-part series based on “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is not exactly fulfilling the solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords), but in the thousands of rifles and explosives and other materiel smuggled for years, with the Egyptians being perfectly aware of it, through tunnels dug from Egyptian-controlled Sinai right into Gaza, and in the refusal to allow Egyptians to travel to Israel, Mubarak’s refusal to meet with his Israeli counterpart in Israel, and in so many other ways. All this shows that Egypt has failed to live up to its quite modest promises under those Accords.

Egypt in 2004 was the third largest spender on foreign arms, after China and India. Why did Egypt buy $7.5 billion in arms? Why does Egypt continue, if its people are so impoverished, to spend billions on arms?

Why are we supporting a corrupt and vicious regime, one that has locked up Ayman Nour, that closes blogs and arrests the bloggers, that permits assaults on Copts, that protects the Sudan from any effective intervention in Darfur? What has that $60 billion bought us? Has it bought Egypt’s honoring the Camp David duties? Has it changed Egypt’s attitude toward Israel, official and unofficial, in the press and in the population? Suppose back in 1979 the Egyptians really had decided to end hostile propaganda and to try to encourage friendly relations toward Israel, as it was supposed to, as it was required to, and had done that for the past 27 years?

And what about the fact that Egyptians are among the most anti-American people in the entire Middle East– far more so than the Iranians, who get nothing from us? In fact, only in Jordan, the other big recipient of American aid, is the hatred of Americans more widespread.

A lesson here, perhaps? Since Arab states are all despotisms (save for Iraq, but in Iraq the returns are not yet in, the government not yet settled), anyone who gives aid to that government will be contributing to that despotism. And besides, Muslims do not react as non-Muslims do to American aid. They are not grateful for it. They expect it. They demand it. They are outraged if the Infidels even so much as hint at cutting it. And it is for that reason alone, that all aid to malevolent Egypt should not be cut, but eliminated entirely.

It is important for Infidels and Muslims alike that all examples of the Jizyah be ended. Important to establish a healthy relationship, one that does not inadvertently mimic, even re-establish, the 1350-year-old Jizyah paid by dhimmis, non-Muslims subjugated to Muslim rule. It is important for Muslims to earn their own living, and not, in Dar al-Harb or Dar al-Islam, to be allowed to soak the Infidels. Not by exploiting, as in the countries of Western Europe, all conceivable benefits offered by the state, and then some. Not in the Muslim countries themselves, by managing either to impose a disguised Jizyah on non-Muslims, as happens in Malaysia, or by extracting from non-Muslim taxpayers in Infidel lands foreign aid which is merely a different kind of disguised Jizyah.

The very idea that it is money that is buying Egypt’s “peace” is not only false, but raises a different question. If the only way that we can buy “peace” from Egypt, and prevent it from attacking Israel by bribing it, what does that tell us about Egypt? Anything? Nothing? What does that say about Egypt as a “peaceful” country, as a country that honors its treaty commitments?

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