A Middle Eastern Greek Tragedy : Yasmin Nassim

The story itself in summary without any details , without any character background is a a tragedy and when you go deeper and deeper in it you will find yourself in front of an original classic Greek Tragedy ; A Middle Eastern Greek tragedy or even better an Egyptian Greek tragedy. I admit that I thought twice in publishing it , in fact this is the reason why I am late in publishing this tragedy of course besides the Egyptian-Algerian current crisis.
You may know that there is a huge debate in Egypt regarding the Egyptians currently working and living in Israel especially those who married Israeli women and have children who bear the opposite citizenship of Egypt and Israel.
It is a huge debate with lots of unanswered questions regarding the loyalty of those men and their families , the fate of those children and how the Egyptian law would deal with them not to mention how the society can treat them. It is a dilemma especially that the number of Egyptians in Israel is increasing not decreasing thanks to the economic conditions. It is not about Judaism , Muslim man can marry a Jewish woman but it is about the Israeli passport , the same tragedy Egyptian men face when they marry women from Arab 48 community.
Earlier this month Al Masry Al Youm shocked the whole Arab nation not only Egypt when it reported that there was a Bat Mitzvah of an Israeli Egyptian girl in Sinai attended by her Muslim Egyptian father and his family in his resort near Taba. When I said that it shocked the whole Arab nation I meant really these words because as soon as  it hit the internet most Arab news websites copied the news and started to comment on it. The report was taken from a Haartez’s report  about  12 years old Yasmin ; the half Egyptian Muslim-half Israeli Jewish girl who speaks Arabic with her dad and Hebrew with her mother ; lives in Ramat HaSharon in Israel and spends the summer vacation in her dad’s resort in Taba and her granddad’s farm in Cairo. Without going in to details and knowing the name of that Muslim father who celebrated his daughter Bat Mitzvah , the news was very provoking in the first place but when you know that Yasmin’s complete name is Yasmin Hisham Mohamed Nassim ; it will turn in to a Greek tragedy.
Hisham Nassim , the father is known to be an adventurer businessman who owns two resorts in Sinai and in Western desert. Egyptians only knew about him when he suddenly crossed the great sand sea and we got a new hero in the Guinness Book of records ; of course the Egyptian media cheered especially when they realized that he is the son of Mohamed Nassim ; it was enough for the journalists to stop at this and not to dig more to find a big skeleton in his closet. Being the son of Mohamed Nassim was enough I think and honestly I can’t deny that I was not happy when I read the news and I even thought of writing a post about him in order to speak about his dad but what you know !!


You may ask who is or was Mohamed Nassim and I will tell you in brief that Mohamed Nassim was from the truly founding fathers of the general intelligence service since 1954 , he was a legend in the Egyptian intelligence by all measures and he was a real pain in the ass for the Mossad by all accounts and among his successful operations :

• Supervising Refaat Al-Gamal
• Saving Abdel Hamid Sarraj in Syria
• Arresting Israel Spy Baruch Zaki in Yemen
• The Pilgrim operation

Nassim was “le coeur de lion” as he was called in the GIS or Nadim “le coeur de lion” as he was known or rather immortalized in our national memory thanks to Rafaat Al-Hagan Series. The man had done a lot to this country and one paragraph will not be fair to him.
Honestly it did not take too much time for Egyptians to know on which Hisham Nassim Haartez was speaking about especially Al Masry Al Youm mentioned his name and the name of his resort; you do not have to guess  how it became a real Greek tragedy.
After few days from silence Hisham decided to face the issue ; the Israelis won’t twist his arm in Egypt and so we found him speaking about the matter publicly for the first time in a whole page with these headlines in Al Masry Al Youm :

Yasmin is a Muslim like her father and his grandfather.
My marriage from an Israeli woman is the mistake of my life I am paying for up till now

The introduction of the article made me feel that I was going to read a PR Q&A interview !! Of course Hisham denied the claims of Haartez saying that his daughter is a Muslim and there was no Bat Mitzvah in his resort. He said that his mother did not attend anything as she is so sick “I can imagine why”. He kept saying that Yasmine is a proud Egyptian and he is married to her mom coz it is halal ; he did not say why he left them in Israel and of course the journalist did not ask him. In the end he warned Egyptian youth from marry foreign women especially Israeli women !! Honestly he was contradicting himself in the interview in a terrible way.
Hisham Nassim claims that he wants her to live in Egypt and to complete her education in Cairo , I do not know why he did not do this from 12 years and please do not tell it would have been hard for him , after all Cairo is not Ramat HaSharon and his Israeli wife could have lived in Cairo with no trouble at all especially that in his long interview in Al Masry he said that she is facing trouble from time to time along his daughter who is proud to be Egyptian in Israel !! This is what logic says if Hisham is scared on his daughter. International schools do exist in Egypt from a very long time too.
I do not know if Hisham has told Yasmin about how great her grandfather was and how he fought her mother’s country all his life long !!?? Has he told her all that yet !!?? This young lady will be shocked ,truly shocked if she knows about the battles her granddad fought against her mother’s country where she is being raised.
I know about Yasmin for more than a year thanks to Adel Hammouda who did not give names or places , just that one of Nassim’s relatives has an Israeli love child . Hammouda is the only journalist wrote a biography about Mohamed Nassim and this is why I believed him. Unfortunately I thought of Hisham’s brother Fouad and do not ask me why !!?? Hammouda had written that shocking dirty little secret in his op-ed about Essam El-Attar and Noni Darwish and I still have it. I do not know why he did not mention his name !!??
Hammoda did not speak of marriage built on peace and hopes for a better future of the Middle East John Lennon would be proud of but rather a fling that made Nassim suffer from several strokes leading to his death in 1999 unlike to what Hisham claims that his late father went ballistic then he understood the matter !!
Hammoda spoke about the matter again this month but this time he spoke meanly about his professional life.
I think Hisham Nassim is suffering from that Noni Darwish syndrome in his own way !! I am not a shrink but I think judging from his so-called desert adventures he wants to rebel against his own dad and his legacy by creating his even if it were built over the ruins of his father legacy . I know I speak strange but I am trying to understand the matter and I can’t !! I remember in all Nassim televised interviews and they were very few that he used to repeat over and over that Israel is our real strategic enemy which we should beware of in time of peace more than in time of war. This shows that the man did not change his views after peace and treatment unlike for instance Hussein Salem then he son goes and fools around with an Israeli woman !!?? I do not get it.
I feel very sorry for Yasmin whom I do not know if she read her father’s whole page interview where he said that marrying her mother and having her was the mistake of his life for which he deserves to be hit with a shoe and he even warns Egyptian youth of marrying Israeli women.
I feel very sorry for her Egyptian stepmother whom I can’t imagine or understand how she deals with this whole drama , for sure she is a great woman as Hisham Nassim has described her , a truly strong Egyptian woman.
I feel very sorry for Yasmin’s Egyptian siblings whom surely are thanking God for the H1N1 outbreak in the schools and universities.
I feel very very very sorry for Mrs.Sharifa Nassim , I met this lovely lady twice and I saw by own eyes how patriot she is.
I do not feel sorry for Hisham Nassim. In fact a little PR advice appearing on TV and speaking about shallow adventures and refusing to speak about Yasmin will not make the Egyptian people forget especially your second shallow achievement came right after the interview. You should not blame the media , you are the one who decided to speak.
Hats off to Mona El-Shazely who slammed him in front of millions and next day he appeared on Al Mehewer channel speaking about the cheap media ; dear do not speak about  cheap !! Hisham Nassim is from the most selfish persons from what I can see. He did not care for his father , he did not care for his Egyptian wife or even his Israeli wife “whom he regrets knowing her” and most importantly his daughter.
I hope from God that Yasmin comes and lives in Egypt, I hope in the future she will not suffer. I hope that Hisham stops appearing in the media for a while because he will remind  the people with what he had done, they will not buy his desert adventure.
It is a tragedy but I think what Nassim had done to this country is much greater and stronger to be shaken from something like that.
It is a sad thing because I always to speak about Nassim as one of our great Egyptian faces in separate post and… why we always fail in keeping our legacy !!??

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