Did you hear? Seven dead, Mr. President. Your Administration generated Arab Spring, Mr. President. This is the icon for the carnage that is on your head, Mr. President.
According to the Reuters & AP, Gunmen crossed into Israel Thursday from the Egyptian desert. They launched a series of attacks in southern Israel, killing seven people, wounding 25 and threatening to destabilize the volatile border region that includes the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula. This is the deadliest attack against Israel since 2008.
It is clear the gunmen were Hamas/Al Qaeda, so the Egyptians have not yet attacked Israel. Not yet.
We have had 22 posts at the Trumpet since the Obama generated “Arab Spring people’s demand for democracy” in Cairo January 25, 2011. The first post here was January 30 where we were more than skeptical about the “surge of the people for democracy.” At that time we did not know the American government was actually an organizing force for the uprising in Tahrir Square, Cairo. We did know America’s biggest social media/browser businesses would be implicated.
My prediction January 30, of a coming disaster that would have global implications, turned out to be too conservative. Operatives in the United States State Department began secretly laying the groundwork for a civilian uprising in Egypt after the Election of Obama but, incredibly before his inauguration.
There is an organization, The Alliance of Youth Movements, founded to train young revolutionaries the effective use of Social Media. A cofounder of AYM is Jared Cohen, a member of the Board of Directors of Google and an advisor to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. 2008 Outgoing Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice may also be implicated because of the December, 2008 secret activity.
The very public United States of America Department of State involvement in the 2009 Alliance of Youth Movements is shocking. Equally as shocking is the list of co-sponsors.
Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual will open the Alliance of Youth Movement’s second annual summit in Mexico City on October 14, 2009. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Facebook, Hi5, Google, MySpace, Gen Next, Howcast Media, MTV, PepsiCo, Mobile Behavior, Univisión, Interactive Media, Inc., Causecast.org, WordPress.com, Edelman, and YouTube, the event will convene individuals, government officials, academics, and private and public sector leaders from around the world October 14-16, 2009, to explore ways to advance grassroots movements seeking positive social change through 21st century technology and tools.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton first announced this summit in March 2009 during her digital town hall on the campus of Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. The Secretary is committed to connecting and empowering these young community leaders.
Participants in the summit will discuss a variety of practical topics, including politics, resisting violence, and technology; sustainability and long-term planning; and the use of viral video in social movements. The sessions will be streamed live during the conference through participated h news sources and other Web sites.
To learn more about how to get involved in the 2009 Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in Mexico City, or to watch it live, visit http://youthmovements.howcast.com/
We don’t know how many “young Egyptians” participated in the summit and discussed a variety of practical topics, including politics, resisting violence, and technology; sustainability and long-term planning; and the use of viral video in social movements.
We do know Google’s top man in the Middle East is Wael Ghonim, stationed in Dubai. Ghonim is an Egyptian national. Ghonim created a Facebook system through which he generated the 400,000 Egyptian “democracy demonstrator’s” January 25, in Cairo.
With this in mind, President Obama’s statement, Feburay 11, 2011 (in this New York Times report) in reaction to the Mubarak resignation becomes even more revealing in retrospect. Be sure to read it all:
President Obama heaped praise on the peaceful protesters who deposed Hosni Mubarak on Friday, declaring, “Egypt will never be the same,” even as his national security team acknowledged that the swift uprising would almost certainly upend American strategy in the Middle East.
Standing in the foyer of the White House, where just a week before he had started to press Mr. Mubarak for immediate reforms without calling for his resignation, Mr. Obama described the Egyptian uprising as a model of nonviolence and moral force “that bent the arc of history.” While comparing the 18-day protests to Gandhi’s peaceful resistance to British rule, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the student protests that brought down a dictator in Indonesia, he also set out a series of benchmarks that he said he expected the Egyptian military to follow, warning that “nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.”
“That means protecting the rights of Egypt’s citizens, lifting the emergency law, revising the Constitution and other laws to make this change irreversible, and laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free,” he said. “Above all, this transition must bring all of Egypt’s voices to the table.”
Mr. Obama’s tone was optimistic, and he promised the crowd in Cairo’s Tahrir Square — which was listening to his brief broadcast live via Egyptian state television — continued American support for Egypt. That support, however, is likely to take new forms: Administration officials agreed that the $250 million in economic aid was a pittance compared with the $1.3 billion in annual military aid, and the White House and the State Department were already discussing setting aside new funds to bolster the rise of secular political parties. Under Egypt’s current Constitution, alternatives to Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party are all but banned.
In his remarks, Mr. Obama promised “whatever assistance is necessary” to pursue a “credible transition to a democracy.”
But as he spoke, White House officials were assessing the longer-term impact of street revolutions that have deposed two dictators in less than a month, starting with the ouster of Tunisia’s leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Middle East leaders from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Yemen have moved to pre-empt similar uprisings.
In Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which depended heavily on Mr. Mubarak, officials were blistering in their criticism of Washington, arguing that the United States abandoned a long-time ally without first building in guarantees that Egypt’s revolution could not be hijacked by religious extremists.
In his final press briefing at the White House on Friday, Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, told reporters, “I think it’s important that the next government of Egypt, as we’ve said in here many times, recognize the accords that have been signed with the government of Israel.” But other officials have acknowledged privately that if Egypt turns into a noisy democracy that includes the Muslim Brotherhood, there will undoubtedly be political debate in Egypt about whether the 1979 peace accord with Israel should remain in force.
“We don’t think that there is any real chance the Egyptian military would have any interest in seeing the peace accord walked back,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides said this week. “But it’s a warning we must issue.”
The Saudis, like Mr. Mubarak himself, portrayed the uprising as the creation of “foreign powers,” which was widely interpreted as code words for Washington and other Western powers.
“We are astonished however at what we see as interference in the internal affairs of Egypt by some countries,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said Thursday, as Mr. Mubarak was still clinging to power. In an unusually direct shot at the White House, he said, “We are shocked to see that there are countries pre-empting even the will of the Egyptian people,” never addressing the fact that the protests in Egypt seemed both widespread and homegrown.
But, back to the attacks launched on Israel from Egypt. It is instructive to recall the words of Egypt’s new Muslim boss, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, concerning Israel when he address the throng at Tahrir Square after prayer, Friday, February 18, 2011.
“Al-Qaradawi asked the Egyptian army to open wide the Rafah crossing and to pray for the re-conquest of Jerusalem by the Muslims, so that he and the Muslims could pray in security at Al-Aqsa Mosque. This part of his sermon was cheered and applauded by the crowd….”
Of course, the Rafah crossing was opened within weeks of Mubarak’s departure.
Lastly, it is telling that this MEMRI translation of an Egyptian video, showing children “prosecuting” Mubarak, was released August 18, 2011. It turned out to be the same day as the deadly attacks on Israel from Egypt.
One of the children (prosecutors) charges,
“You are Israel’s best friend. Israel was the country most saddened by your fall and your trial, because you were helping them to kill the Palestinians and to occupy their lands.”
Go ahead and watch it.