Comments (0) [unable to retrieve full-text content]Dahr appeared on Al Jazeera’s Listening Post May 4, 2013, “Iraq: ‘Disciplining’ the Media.” We assess the country’s factionalised media as Nouri al-Maliki’s government shuts down 10 satellite TV stations. aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2013/05/20135410111714964.html Dahr’s interview begins at 2:09.
Dahr Jamail
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Moaz al-Khatib, the president of the main coalition of the Syrian opposition in exile, declared on Sunday that he was resigning, and complained bitterly about foreign powers that he said were withholding aid from the Syrian rebels while trying to control their every move.
The resignation of Mr. Khatib, who has pushed for talks between the Syrian government and its armed opponents, came five days after the coalition elected an interim prime minister, Ghassan Hitto, who rejects any such dialogue.
The announcement threw the Syrian Opposition Coalition into disarray. It underscored the challenges that the group still faced in establishing legitimacy and effective leadership, evn though it was recognized by dozens of countries four months ago as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
Adding to the confusion, the coalition’s media office said later on Sunday that Mr. Khatib had agreed to stay on, while a spokesman for Mr. Khatib said that he had not.
Mr. Khatib is a prominent imam who formerly preached at the revered Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the Syrian capital; he sided early on with the revolution against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. His departure from the leadership of the coalition could set back the opposition’s efforts to broaden its appeal and to reach a political resolution to the two-year-old conflict. Some in the coalition have criticized him for being willing to talk with some members of Mr. Assad’s government, while others saw him as a moderate, ideally suited to reach out to Damascus residents who support the government or who fear the rebels. Though he is outside the country, Mr. Khatib had begun to build respect among some fighters inside Syria.
Mr. Khatib said the Syrian government had ignored his overtures, and he assailed foreign nations that he did not name for placing too many conditions on aid to the rebels and for trying to manipulate events for their own interests.
“They support whomever is ready to obey, and the one who refuses has to face starvation and siege,” Mr. Khatib said in his statement. “We will not beg to satisfy anyone, and if there is a decision to execute us as Syrians, so let it be.”
It was not clear which of the opposition’s many frustrations Mr. Khatib, who is often cryptic in his public statements, was referring to: the reluctance of Western countries to deliver arms that they fear will fall into extremist’s hands, or meddling in the choice of an interim prime minister, or both.
A coalition member who is familiar with Mr. Khatib’s thinking and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss politically sensitive matters said that Mr. Khatib resigned because of interference from Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the Syrian uprising. The member said that Saudi Arabia threatened to cut off financing and divide the coalition if its favored candidate for prime minister, Assad Mustafa, was not chosen. That demand enraged coalition members, who responded by quickly choosing Mr. Hitto, who was backed by Qatar and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the member said.
Mustafa Sabagh, another member of the coalition, denied that the Saudis had interfered, and said that he believed that Mr. Khatib had resigned over Western countries’ conditions for supplying aid the uprising.
Mr. Khatib promised to keep working for the rebels’ cause outside official channels. “The door to freedom has opened and won’t close,” he said, “not just in the face of Syrians but in the face of all peoples.”
Another group of Syrian dissidents in exile, many of them Alawites — the same minority as Mr. Assad, his family and his inner circle — held a rare public gathering in Cairo to try to persuade more Alawites in Syria to abandon the government. One of the meeting’s aims was to dispel the widely held notion that Syrian Alawites, who make up roughly 13 percent of the Syrian population, all march in lock step with Mr. Assad.
Alawites at the conference said that the mainly Sunni opposition coalition had failed to reassure Alawites that they would be safe if Mr. Assad fell, and had done little to persuade Syria’s neighbors to shelter Alawites who decided to flee, several participants said.
Fears that the conflict in Syria would spill across borders widened Sunday when the Israeli military said that it had hit a Syrian military position. The strike came after two Israeli patrols came under fire from across the decades-old cease-fire line in the Golan Heights, the Israelis said, adding that the two patrols suffered no casualties.
Israel’s new defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, warned in a statement that “any violation of Israeli sovereignty and fire from the Syrian side will be answered with the silencing of the source of fire,” and added, “The Syrian regime is responsible for every breach of sovereignty. We will not allow the Syrian Army or any other groups to violate Israel’s sovereignty in any way.”
The Israelis did not say whether the Syrian position that was hit — a machine gun emplacement — belonged to Syrian government forces or to rebels.
By Anne Barnard and Hala Droubi
New York Times
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Cairo.
Iraqi News
| 
leader, opposition, Post, quits, Syrian
By John Lee.
Iraqi military sources say they have closed the Rabia border crossing with Syria until further notice as Syrian rebels seized the other side of the frontier post from the Syrian army.
Reuters reports that the Iraqi army fired warning shots into the air late on Friday as Syrian insurgents fought government forces in the Syrian town of Yaarabiya and eventually seized the border post.
Military sources said blast walls now blocked off the border crossing and employees had been evacuated, but the situation was described as calm
(Source: Reuters)
(Reuters) — Iraq shut a border crossing with Syria on Sunday after rebels battling to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seized the other side of the frontier post from his army, Iraqi military sources said.
The Iraqi army fired warning shots into the air late on Friday as Syrian insurgents fought government forces in the Syrian town of Yaarabiya and eventually seized the border post.
The fighting so close to Iraq illustrates how Syria’s near-two-year conflict could spill over its borders, dragging in neighboring countries and further destabilizing the region.
“Iraqi authorities were ordered to shut off Rabia border crossing until further notice because of the Syrian government’s lack of control over the other side of the post,” police said.
Syria’s insurgents are predominantly Sunni Muslim and are supported by mainly Sunni regional powers such as Turkey and Gulf Arab countries, while Assad belongs to the minority Alawite sect and is backed by Shi’ite Iran.
The conflict has put pressure on the already precarious sectarian and ethnic balance in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi’ite Muslim, says his government has a policy of non-interference in Syria, even though his interests are aligned with those of Iran.
Military sources said blast walls now blocked off the border crossing and employees had been evacuated, though both sides of the crossing were calm and there was no sign of Syrian troops or the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces across the border.
More than 20 Syrian soldiers who fled the fighting into Iraq have been handed over to military intelligence and sent to Baghdad, a military official said.
Reporting by Sufyan al-Mashhadani in Mosul; Writing by Isabel Coles.
Cross-posted from the Arabist.
The Washington Post, among “several” other unnamed news outlets, has reportedly known of a US airstrip in Saudi Arabia that, aside from the apparent distinction of being the first new US base opened on Saudi soil since the 2003 troop withdrawals, was the airstrip that participated in the 2011 raid(s) that killed Anwar al-Awlaki.
According to the Post, it and those outlets have sat on the information for a year at the administration’s request for fear it would jeopardize the base’s security and the secrecy of US combat operations in Yemen, which are also supported by the Saudi Air Force. It is also notable that the US has set up this while still retaining its heaviest aerial assets (which are reserved for contingencies against the Islamic Republic of Iran) in the region in Qatar, so this is solely an anti-AQAP program that’s been set up.
One of the outlets — not the Post — was going to break the self-observed gag order on the basing details, so the details have begun to emerge, which for presumptive CIA Director John Brennan is hardly pleasant news since his Senate confirmation hearings have begun and there is much talk of him throwing a wet towel on the campaign. However, as Matt Appuzo points out, this is not the first we’ve heard of this base. “In addition to Seychelles and Ethiopia, the senior U.S. military official said the United States got permission to fly armed drones from Djibouti, and confirmed the construction of a new airstrip in Saudi Arabia” was what Fox News reported in 2011, citing a Washington Post report on the expansion of drone efforts worldwide, though the remarks quoted above came from Fox’s own source.
Considering how contentious US basing in the Kingdom was when it began in the 1990s (and, we thought, largely came to an end in the 2000s except for the two military training/modernization programs run for the Saudi military and National Guard), one really has to marvel at how this White House earned the accolade of “transparency” in its first term with actions such as these. It’s worth noting that while detailed explanations — but not material evidence or witnesses — have been offered for targeting him as an active AQAP member, there have been no such specifics with regards to the death of his 16-year old son, Abdulrahman, who was killed in an operation against another target few days later — though unlike his father, he had not been deliberately targeted (the operation was targeting an Egyptian national). Bad parenting has even been offered as an explanation — well, justification — by one official for the son’s death once it became clear he was a minor and therefore not subject to the “signature strikes” that treat all adult males in the targeted areas as militant until proven innocent. (NB: Brennan convinced Obama to maintain this policy and have the CIA “tighten its targeting standards,” according to the Daily Beast.)
But if we are talking in terms of leaks, then yes, this has been a very “Sunshine Week” for the Administration. Since I’m on the subject of drones — though as Gregory D. Johnson points out drones are not the only weapons the US deploys in the Yemeni and Pakistani highlands — there have been some important new stories out about the US’s national counterterrorism strategy here in the Middle East:
1. The black sites legacy of the Bush Administration detailed in a new OSI report, though as OSI itself notes, “it appears that the Obama administration did not end extraordinary rendition,” though it has been much-scaled back. Both Eli Lake and Jeremy Scahill have been to Somalia in the past two years to report on these alleged CIA black sites and the local prisons that feed into them. However, it is clear that the administration has shied away from the sites in favor of drone operations.
2. Not a leak, but Micah Zenko’s discussion of outgoing SecDef Leon Panetta’s recent remarks on drones is still illuminating into the debate that goes on at these levels.
3. A leaked white paper released by NBC’s Michael Isikoff — perhaps from a White House source not happy with John Brennan (finally) moving (back) to the CIA in Obama’s second term? — that providers more detail on the speeches given by Brennan and others about the criteria for putting people, including US citizens, in the sights. Again, this isn’t the official policy document, but as a white paper signed off on by lawyers within the Administration, it is as good as we are going to get bar the Times or the Post releasing audiotape of a “Terror Tuesday” briefing. Glenn Greenwald details the implications in greater detail here.
Iraqi News
| About, Administration's, Arabia, Base, drone, Keeps, Post, Saudi, Secret, Washington
‘Washington Post’ prints false narrative of how Gaza escalation started
By: Alex Kane on: 17.11.2012 [16:03 ] (38 reads)
by Alex Kane on November 15, 2012 21
You know the drill by now: an escalation occurs in the Gaza Strip that is automatically blamed on Palestinian fighters. The New York Times does it, as the Electronic Intifada’s Maureen Murphy points out, and now the Washington Post prints a story with a similar narrative.
Here’s how the Post reports on how the bombardment in Gaza started:
The latest round of fighting began Saturday, when militants from a non-Hamas faction fired an antitank missile at an Israeli jeep traveling along the Israel-Gaza border, injuring four Israeli soldiers. Israel responded with shelling and firing that Gaza medical officials said killed at least four people, including two children, and wounded about two dozen others. Militants then fired about 130 rockets and mortar rounds at population centers of southern Israel over several days. After mediation from Egypt, the flare-up appeared to have waned by Tuesday.
But that’s now how “the latest round of fighting began.” The Institute for Middle East Understanding published an excellent timeline that shows how the fighting actually began:
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8
Following a two-week lull in violence, Israeli soldiers invade Gaza. In the resulting exchange of gunfire with Palestinian fighters, a 12-year-old boy is killed by an Israeli bullet while he plays soccer.
Shortly afterwards, Palestinian fighters blow up a tunnel along the Gaza-Israel frontier, injuring one Israeli soldier.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10
An anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian fighters wounds four Israeli soldiers driving in a jeep along the Israel-Gaza boundary.
An Israeli artillery shell lands in a soccer field in Gaza killing two children, aged 16 and 17. Later, an Israeli tank fires a shell at a tent where mourners are gathered for a funeral, killing two more civilians, and wounding more than two dozen others.
As you can see, the escalation began when Israel killed a 12-year-old boy. The rockets and missiles fired in response were what the Gaza-based militant group Popular Resistance Committees called a “revenge invoice.”
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/washington-post-prints-false-narrative-of-how-gaza-escalation-started.html
War In Iraq
| Escalation, False, Gaza, Narrative, Post, Prints, Started, Washington
Will have an audio up for you all Wed morning, On the road.
Breitling
l Please any Questions: send to breitlingcurrency@gmail.com I will get to your questions as soon as possible by personal e-mail, blog post or audio “If you Knew you could not fail, what would you try today?” Phillippians 4:13
FSA attacks Lebanon Army post near border with Syria
By: The Daily Star on: 23.09.2012 [05:52 ] (33 reads)
The Daily Star
A general view of the village of Arsal, Monday, Sept. 17, 2012. (The Daily Star/Nidal Solh)
BEIRUT/BAALBEK: Members of the Free Syrian Army attacked a Lebanese Army post Friday night near the northern border with Syria, the Army said in a statement Saturday.
No causalities were reported.
“For the second time in under a week, a unit from the Free Syrian Army consisting of a large number of gunmen entered Lebanese territory overnight via the outskirts of Arsal, where it attacked one of the Lebanese Army’s posts,” the statement said.
Following the incident, Army reinforcements were dispatched to the area, while soldiers began pursuing the assailants who escaped toward the mountains as well as some border towns, according to the statement.
“The Army’s leadership affirms that it will not allow any party to use Lebanese territory to implicate Lebanon in ongoing events in neighboring countries,” the Army said.
Residents in Arsal, located 10 kilometers from the border with Syria, told The Daily Star that earlier Friday the Army caught an unspecified number of members of the Syrian rebel group, but released them hours later due to pressure by the town’s notables
Tensions have been running high on the 550-kilometer-long Syria-Lebanon border since the uprising began against President Bashar Assad’s government in mid-March of last year.
Syria has repeatedly claimed that rebel groups are operating in Lebanon’s border towns, and have asked authorities to crack down and prevent the smuggling of arms and gunmen.
Earlier this year, Lebanon’s Cabinet asked the Army to deploy heavily along the border and take all necessary measures to prevent smuggling. The government’s decision in July came after Syrian shelling killed two Lebanese in the northern Wadi Khaled border region and in light of repeated Syrian incursions into Lebanese territories.
In its statement Saturday, the Army reiterated his determination to protect Lebanese territory, adding that it would respond with force to any violation regardless of the party behind it. -With additional reporting by Rakan al-Faqih
Read more: http://dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2012/Sep-22/188895-fsa-attacks-lebanon-army-near-border-with-syria.ashx#ixzz27GlQ7948
(The Daily Star
Lebanon News
http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
The United States seems to devote less energy to developing a constructive solution to what’s been called the Iran nuclear standoff than it does to convincing Israel it will attack Iran if push (however imagined) comes to shove. At the New York Times, David Sanger and Eric Schmitt wrote on Monday (Sept. 3):
“One other proposal circulating in Washington, advocated by some former senior national security officials, is a ‘clandestine’ military strike, akin to the one Israel launched against Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007. It took weeks for it to become clear that site had been hit by Israeli jets, and perhaps because the strike was never officially acknowledged by Israel, and because its success was so embarrassing to Syria, there was no retaliation.”
Yeah, as if Iran, unlike Syria, won’t officially acknowledge an attack by Israel and be too embarrassed to retaliate. That’s wishful thinking a la the Neocon mind. More important, it’s sad day when a major power such as the United States is reduced to appeasing — yes, appeasing — a smaller state such as Israel. Especially when Israel is not only dependent on it for defense aid, but for assistance in the event it attacks Iran. Of course, Israeli supporters’ disproportionate influence on American elected officials precludes the United States informing Israel it will be left to hang out and dry if it attacks Iran. Or, in a sane world, should that come to pass, that the United States will sharply reduce its defense aid to Israel.
The United States though continues to overlook the sophistry of not only Israel’s, but its own policy, toward Iran. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are present in Iran every day of the years and sometimes show up for inspections with only two-hours notice. Israel, on the other hand, has never publicly acknowledged its nuclear-weapons program. In other words, it never signed the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, as Iran did, and thus isn’t subject to inspections.
The unstated assumption on the West’s part is that Israel doesn’t pose a nuclear threat because it’s “rational.” But what demonstrates irrationality more than threatening to attack Iran, a state with an accredited nuclear-energy program replete with invasive inspections?
I’m usually loath to praise the Washington Post, which has drifted rightward since the Woodward and Bernstein years when conservatives famously called it “Pravda on the Potomac.” But on August 31, its ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, actually dared to invoke the specter of Israel’s nuclear-weapons program in a piece titled What about Israel’s nuclear weapons?
Readers periodically ask me some variation on this question: “Why does the press follow every jot and tittle of Iran’s nuclear program, but we never see any stories about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability?”
It’s a fair question. Going back 10 years into Post archives, I could not find any in-depth reporting on Israeli nuclear capabilities, although national security writer Walter Pincus has touched on it many times in his articles and columns.
He reminds us of Israel’s preposterous
… official position, as reiterated by Aaron Sagui, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy here, is that “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Israel supports a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction following the attainment of peace.”
After reviewing reasons why Israel’s nuclear-weapons program isn’t reported, Pexton writes (emphasis added):
I don’t think many people fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. If I were a child of the Holocaust, I, too, would want such a deterrent to annihilation. But that doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t write about how Israel’s doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation. Just because a story is hard to do doesn’t mean The Post, and the U.S. press more generally, shouldn’t do it.
Despite the presumptuousness of what’s italicized, Pexton acquitted himself admirably. The second time in a week, in fact, on the subject of Iran and Israel that the Washington Post did so. Nuclear activist Alice Slater wrote about the 2012 session of The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which is now under the chairmanship of Iran.
Significantly, an Associated Press story in the Washington Post headlined, “Iran opens nonaligned summit with calls for nuclear arms ban”, reported that “Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi opened the gathering by noting commitment to a previous goal from the nonaligned group. … ‘We believe that the timetable for ultimate removal of nuclear weapons by 2025, which was proposed by NAM, will only be realized if we follow it up decisively,’ he told delegates.”
By contrast (emphasis added)
… the New York Times, which has been beating the drums for war with Iran, just as it played a disgraceful role in the deceptive reporting during the lead-up to the Iraq War, never mentioned Iran’s proposal for nuclear abolition. The Times carried the bland headline on its front page, “At Summit Meeting, Iran Has a Message for the World”, and then went on to state, “the message is clear. As Iran plays host to the biggest international conference …it wants to tell its side of the long standoff with the Western powers which are increasingly convinced that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons”, without ever reporting Iran’s offer to support the NAM proposal for the abolition of nuclear weapons by 2025.
Note the condescending tone of what’s italicized. This is consistent with Times reporting on Iran’s nuclear-energy program in general — as if anybody with any sense knows that Iran seeks to develop nuclear weapons, that Israel’s desire to attack Iran is justified if a little overzealous, and that, again, Israel, unlike Iran, is too rational to ever use its nuclear weapons for anything more than deterrence. (Though, of course, in February, New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote about a Times article that stated: “the IAEA moved much closer with this report toward stating absolutely that Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb. Yet the fact that the agency has stopped short of such a finding remains significant. Readers complaining about the Jan. 5 article believe The Times should avoid closing the gap with a shorthand phrase that says the IAEA thinks Iran’s program ‘has a military objective.’ I think the readers are correct on this.” Pexton, too, expressed similar sentiments in the Washington Post in December of 2011.)
Maybe — facetiousness alert! — the United States should call Israel’s bluff: we’ll bomb Iran for you if you make your nuclear-weapons program public, sign the NPT, and open your program to IAEA inspections.
Iraqi News
| Breaks, Iran, Israel, lockstep', Post, Washington
Because my article “Calls to Destroy Egypt’s Great Pyramids Begin” went viral on the Internet–read nearly 400,000 times on FrontPage Magazine alone where it first appeared–as expected, the infamous “hoax” charge has been made to lull the West back to sleep.
According to Daily News Egypt’s “Another hoax: cleric calls on President Morsy to destroy Giza Pyramids,” the calls from the Bahraini cleric I cited “urging President Mohamed Morsy to destroy the Giza Pyramids were issued from a parody Twitter account online, the Daily News Egypt has learned.”
That’s all–that’s the “proof” that this story is a “hoax”: Daily News Egypt (DNE) “has learned” that someone was “impersonating” the Bahraini cleric, whom I quoted. Unlike my article, DNE offers no evidence, no links, no proof to back its story: “Just believe us–you’ll feel better,” seems to be the message.
Some questions: If, as DNE suggests, this was a hoax to scare people over the rising influence of Egypt’s Islamists, why did the hoax perpetrators choose a cleric from Bahrain, a small, foreign nation–why not parody an Egyptian cleric, which obviously would’ve made for a much more effective “hoax”?
More importantly, why does DNE not address the other sources I had cited–including Egypt’s very own Salafi party, which is on record calling for the elimination of Egypt’s pyramids? Even Elaph, “one of the most influential websites in the Arab world,” documents that both the Bahraini cleric and Egypt’s Salafis are calling for the Pyramids’ destruction.
Needless to say, DNE’s hoax charge was quickly disseminated by others, who added their own “logic.” For example, after quoting DNE as evidence, one Kate Durham, writing in Egypt Today focuses on portraying me as having an “agenda” (which, of course, I do: safeguarding the Pyramids).
Likewise, after quoting the DNE report, RT’s “Holy hoax: Radical Islamists call on Egypt to destroy pyramids” offered a revisionist history that truly resembles a “hoax,” arguing that “demolishing the pyramids was prohibited during the 7th century–so the structures remained untouched.”
Really? This almost suggests that the Arabian marauders, who invaded Egypt in the 7th century, pillaging and destroying, were “respectful” of the “cultural significance” of the Pyramids–perhaps designating them as “tourist attractions”? What about 8th century Caliph Ma’mun, who–as this comprehensive English-language fatwa dedicated to explaining the Islamic obligation of destroying pagan monuments, including the Pyramids, puts it–”wanted to destroy the Pyramids in Egypt and he gathered workers but he could not do it”?
What about 12th century Bin Yusif, Saladin’s son and ruler of Egypt? He attempted to destroy the Pyramids, and had an army of laborers work day and night to dismantle Menkaure’s Pyramid, only to quit after eight months, realizing the futility of the task, though his vandals did manage to leave a large vertical gash in the Pyramid’s north face (see here). What about Egypt’s Mamlukes who, with the advent of gun powder, used the “pagan” Sphinx for target practice, effacing its nose?
After citing the DNE report, Huffington Post’s Llewelyn Morgan offers his assurances: “Let’s be crystal-clear about this right here. The answer to the question in my title ["Are the Pyramids Next?"] is a mile-high, neon ‘NO’. The pyramids of Giza are under no threat whatsoever, and neither is any of the rest of Egypt’s glorious archaeological record.”
He then portrays me as “scaremongering” and “offer[ing] a deeply misleading account of what has been happening in Timbuktu,” because I had written, “Currently, in what the International Criminal Court is describing as a possible ‘war crime,’ Islamic fanatics are destroying the ancient heritage of the city of Timbuktu in Mali–all to Islam’s triumphant war cry, ‘Allahu Akbar!’” Morgan explains:
To read that that you’d think that the only Muslims involved in events at Timbuktu were the ones doing the vandalism. But of course it was Islamic buildings that they were attacking. Ansar al-Din, the al-Qaeda-affiliated zealots in northern Mali, consider the traditional Sufi practices of Timbuktu to be heretical.
This is strange logic, indeed. Because the Salafis of Mali consider Sufi buildings insufficiently Islamic–as all Salafis, Wahhabis, and “radicals” do–according to Morgan, that is proof positive that the Pyramids, which are purely pagan, are “under no threat whatsoever” from Egypt’s Salafis.
If Morgan’s point is that, by destroying Sufi Muslim shrines, the “al-Qaeda-affiliated zealots” are not practicing “true Islam”–that’s still neither here nor there. All Salafis–whether in Mali or in Egypt, whether “al-Qaeda affiliated” or not–reject Sufism as a heresy and pagan Pyramids as worse; and in Egypt, the Salafis are now out of the prisons and sitting in Parliament.
All of these apologists are unaware that the Koran portrays pre-Islamic Egypt’s Pharaoh as the quintessential infidel, with the result that the Pyramids, the handiwork of Pharaoh, have always been seen by the pious as an affront to the total victory of Islam in Egypt–hence why any number of Muslim leaders through the centuries tried to lay low those defiant symbols of Egypt’s pre-Islamic past; hence why such calls are again become vocal.
Indeed, here’s the latest bit of evidence: just published in El-Balad, on July 17, “Egypt’s Justice and Development for Human Rights warned against the ongoing incitements from a large number of men of the Islamic religion to destroy the Pyramids and other Pharaonic antiquities, deeming them pagan symbols of pre-Islamic Egypt…. these calls have greatly increased after the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Dr. Muhammad Morsi.”
These calls are not a joke–nor a “hoax”: the same mentality that sought to destroy the Pyramids in the past, is the same mentality that is gaining mastery over Egypt in the present–with the exception that, if destroying the Pyramids was an impossible task then, it is realizable now, a wonderful feather in the turban of any aspiring “champion of Islam”–a feat that none of the greatest caliphs and sultans could accomplish, try as they might.
Accordingly, those who understand that the Great Pyramids belong to all mankind, not just Egyptians–and I say this as a Copt, the closest living descendants of Pharaonic Egypt–must safeguard their preservation, and not abandon them to Islamic zealots.
Still, the “leftist” mentality remains oblivious, as if to say, so what if Islamic doctrine and history is replete with the destruction of pre-Islamic monuments from one end of the Islamic world to the other, including several attempts against the Pyramids? So what if, at this very moment, Muslim fanatics are destroying artifacts in the name of Islam? So what if Egypt’s Salafis are on record calling for the destruction of the Pyramids? Not to worry, the Huffington Post et al. say it’s just a “hoax.” Nothing to see here, folks; go right back to sleep.
Incidentally, these media outlets and their writers are the same ones who, when the day comes and the Pyramids are attacked–just like when the Twin Towers were attacked on 9/11–will wring their hands and shake their heads, wondering, “Who knew?” “How?” “Why?” Then, because they still cannot comprehend Islam’s teachings and history, they will, as ever, cite “grievance” or “poverty” or “political oppression” as the real reasons behind this latest atrocity, calling for more Western engagement and head-sticking in the sand. And so the vicious cycle of Islamic intolerance followed by Western appeasement will continue, ad nauseam.
By Raymond Ibrahim
Frontpage Magazine
