Today is the 45th anniversary of six days war defeat , A defeat that we suffer from its consequences up till now and I am not speaking about the loss of Golan and East Jerusalem but I am speaking about how that defeat affected a whole generation that still suffers from its impact up till now and unfortunately this generation is leading the scene in Egypt.
I remember this when I see in the history of Khairat El Shater and Abdel Moneim Abu El Fotouh how the defeat made them turn in to Islamists as young students, I remember how the current governor of New Valley Army General Tarek El Mahdy said on Rotana Masreya once that the #Jan25 Revolution achieved the goals of the 1967 generation.
Unfortunately my little conversations with army officers online and offline show that they think that the defeat was only military related to bad choice of commanders that was erased by the 1973 war.
Now Army officers tell me that the army will not fall in to the same mistakes and the six days war will not happen again , well I am sure from military point of view it will not happen again insh Allah but what I care is the political decision more than anything. We are on the verge of the unknown and honestly You can not change the military mindset after 60 years so simply in two years nor you can expect old commanders who ages are all over 60 years old to think in the same as young revolutionaries.
I am afraid to say that the 1960s mindset is still among army officers and it is enough to see how they mobilize and promote for Ahmed Shafik online and offline just because he is a military man. Yes you will find them speaking about his platform which unfortunately I have not seen or read as other platforms in details.
Just one look to the Military secrets account on twitter , you will feel that Ahmed Said , the famous Radio host in 1960s is its admin . Today Military secrets account threatened Tahrir square protesters and accused the Muslim brotherhood indirectly of killing the protesters in a new version of 1954. Sadly enough all the old regime TV hosts and journalists are back doing in what they are doing best from kissing the regime’s ass deceiving the public to please the regime.
Once an officer in the air forces told me on twitter that he and his generation from officers will no salute or obey a civilian president as the commander of chief.
Despite you would rarely see an army officer speaking about himself as an officer or about the army before the revolution online whether on twitter and Facebook , you got tons of officers now bragging with their uniforms on twitter speaking about politics in a way that concerns you for real about the national security of this country.
The Six days war defeat in 1967 was the direct result of politics and the military rule as it came out from the book. You got got dictatorship , you got rivalry between Nasser and Amar and you got an army absence from any accountability or supervision.
Nasser kept Abdel Hakim Amar despite his failure in 1956 Suez war and Yemen War not to mention his ultimate fiasco in Syria and the UAR. In Democratic societies Amar would be kicked out his position but Nasser kept him because ironically he feared that Amar would lead a coup against him.
The six days war defeat would not have not occurred in that way or even happened at all if there were a parliament supervising that army as well the intelligence with big eyes holding their commandership accountable like any civilized nation.
The six days war defeat would not have not occurred if we had then a true constitution that organizes the relationship between the army and the state , the president and the government.
Idolizing Nasser as well the army brought that defeat ,isolating army from the correct political supervision claiming its treason is what brought that defeat. Claiming that only military knows the best interest of the country and anyone else to say something opposing their view then is a traitor or insane is what brought this defeat in Egypt.
We are all still paying for the price of that defeat up till now and I am afraid that history repeats itself , we are on the verge of 1954 and after 1954 came all our military and political defeats. I fear that we are heading to another 1967 in our own way where everybody will pay whether people or army or anyone who lives in this country.
I write this post and I know that I will find people who will accuse me of being hostile of the Egyptian army and its enemy , those people are well educated from considerably economically stable background claiming to be liberals where as their right categorization is : Right Wing nationalists !!
Asslamualaikum sister,
ReplyDeleteI found your post to be grounded in truth. The problem is that the truth is so often hard to swallow. As a Nasserist, I believe that Gamal Abdel Nasser was one of the greatest national servants that our country has ever produced. Even taking a dispassionate view, one can see that Nasser brought a huge amount of positive changes to the country, particularly when faced with the stark realities of the Cold War, when the granting of political freedoms in developing countries invariably resulted in Western or Soviet backed coups.
However, as you point out, his style of government meant that serious mistakes were inevitable - the most cataclysmic of all was permitting Amr to remain in charge of the military. As you point out, we are all still paying for that to this day. Nasser himself went to his grave with the regret burned into his heart.
I hope that we can find someone today who possesses Nasser's dedication but who combines it with truly accountable government. Personally, out of the current batch of candidates, Hamdeen is the only one that seems to fit the bill. Whether or not he will get a chance to show us whether democratic Nasserism can work is uncertain. InshaAllah, we shall see.
... and we are celebrating this smashing victory!
ReplyDeleteI want to tell you though: If more Egyptians would turn on their brains as you do in this post, they would understand that this war was avoidable. Huge Arab armies were preparing to wipe us out and hadn't we strike first ...
Egyptian propaganda still does not admit that defeat and if the US hadn't stopped us we would have wiped out the entire 3rd Army in 1973 too. So what now that we even have nukes?
We returned Sinai and we do not occupy any Egyptian territory. Let us live in peace and we will leave you alone. Attack us and suffer the worst consequences.
But what about the Palestinian land you occupy? The Palestinian people you have tried to wipe out?
DeleteThe Palestinians went to war against us and they lost. Now their land is ours and we will keep it.
DeleteBTW, most of the Palestinians get along very well with Israel. They even work in our factories and they hate al fattah and hamas. Unfortunately they are misled by terrorist and corrupt leaders.
We do not want to wipe them out. If they let us in peace so peace they shall have. If they attack us we will fight them until they stop.
To the Zionist above:
ReplyDeleteStop blackmailing other nations with nuclear bombs. Egypt cannot accept the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Israel can only prove its dedication to peace by ending its illegal occupation of Palestine, accepting the secular state & ending the racism against non-Jews.
Israel is not blackmailing anyone. I just said we have nukes and I say if attacked we will not hesitate to defend us by all means.
DeleteIf Egypt meddles with our affairs it will bear the consequences. We did not ask them to do so.
Palestine wrote:
Delete"Egypt cannot accept the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Israel can only prove its dedication to peace by ending its illegal occupation of Palestine, accepting the secular state & ending the racism against non-Jews."
Answer: Israel is a secular state, the religious law is not above the secular state law, and the religious parties don't present a candidate for the prime minister role. For all its 64 years history Israel never had a religious person as a prime minister. Actually, in most cases the religious parties wont even agree to a government minister position (because the government ministers are considered responsible for many violations of the religious law), although the religious parties definitely have significant political power.
In terms of laws, the only law that discriminates between jewish and non-jewish in Israel is the immigration law, because Israel was founded as a refuge to the jewish people.
Since no "right wing nationalist" has cared to comment so far (I'm assuming Shafik supporters) I'd venture to express my welcome to their generally loud presence these days. Nevertheless, they represent part of a vibrant Egyptian mosaic from the far left anarchist to far right Salafi. Name any prez elex in history with five, yes FIVE vote-getters gathering more than 10% each. Here is your solid guarantee that 67 disaster will never happen again EVER.
ReplyDeleteTo the Israeli: you mention that Palestinians "work in your factories" -- maybe that's because you've bombed theirs, and you built "your" factories on land stolen from them. In fact, everything "Israel" has or is, was stolen at gunpoint.
ReplyDeleteThe Palestinians did not "go to war" against you, it is you who invaded THEIR land, and ethnically cleansed it through terrorism, to build your racist state.
According to your Nazi logic, "peace" is defined as a free license for your Master Race to steal and massacre and ethnically cleanse and invade neighboring countries. You are criminals who claim "rights" for your own Master Race that you deny to others -- they have only the "right" to shut up and die in silence, as you enjoy your stolen loot, right?
No way. You are on the wrong side of history, of morality, of humanity itself, and increasingly you are talking only to yourselves and to a world that rightly views you with disgust and loathing.
Your enemies are not Fateh and Hamas, your enemies are not just the Palestinian people, nor just the Arab people, but every decent human being on the face of the earth. This is why you are becoming more and more hated, more and more isolated, and forced to rely more and more on threats and violence to survive.
This alone should guarantee that time is running out for your racist little colony.
Sooner than you think, it will land on the garbage pile of history, along with its fellow Nazi and Apartheid states, to great rejoicing and celebration around the world.
Though, like your predecessors, you are incapable of understanding how or why, with every threat, with every home demolition, with every massacre and assassination, you bring yourselves closer to that day.
So much hate and bitterness...
DeleteIn 1947 the UN decided the split the land between the Arabs and the Jewish people in Palestine. Till that time this small (27000 square km) territory was part of the Ottoman empire for 400 years before the British took it in 1917.
The neighboring Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon) immediately sent their armies and encouraged the Arabs in the land to go to war to destroy the small Jewish state that was born that time. We all know the disastrous Palestinian outcome from this war that was initiated by the Arabs to destroy Israel and kill all the Jewish people there. Israel survived and absorbed immediately following the war 650,000 jewish refugees from the Arab countries around it.
Are you still giving the Palestinians the same advise? With friends like you, who needs enemies? People like you are the worst enemy of the Palestinians. You want them to die and suffer for your fantasies. The Palestinians definitely deserve to live freely in their own state and land, but the way to achieve it is to look at reality with open eyes instead of throwing blindly 1947/1967 hate slogans, reality is much more complex than that.
In 1947, neither the British occupiers nor the UN had any legal or moral right to give away the land and properties of the Palestinian people to Zionist colonists.
DeleteStill, that same UN has confirmed and reconfirmed the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and properties stolen at gunpoint from them by the Zionist invaders. It also affirms that all forms of apartheid are illegal, and that Israel's actions constitute a form of apartheid:
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/05/un-committee-israeli-system-tantamount-to-apartheid.html
Unfortunately, Israel has always enjoyed the support of hypocritical foreign powers who have a long and bloody history of preying upon our region and our people.
In 1947, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon were all countries still under foreign occupation or struggling to emerge from decades or centuries of foreign rule, and had no independent armies. They tried to respond to the desperate cries for help of the Palestinians, but were outgunned and outnumbered by the Western-equipped and trained Zionist invaders.
Today, the Zionist entity only continues to exist because it is armed, financed and given impunity by Western powers that themselves are guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity. "Israel" is an alien and hostile entity that survives exclusively by using foreign weapons and foreign money and foreign colonists to rob and oppress and kill the native people of Palestine and surrounding countries.
I don't give the Palestinians "advise". Along with most of humanity, I am in solidarity with their struggle for justice and respect for their human and legal rights.
It is the Zionists, not us, who want the Palestinians to suffer and die for their fantasies. In fact, they claim the "right" to do just that, and insist that the world stay blind and deaf and dumb while they commit their atrocities.
The Palestinian people have called for a global campaign to Boycott, Divest and impose Sanctions against the racist regime that is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide against them, and, in the absence of any other way to enforce international law, it is our duty as human beings to isolate the racist apartheid state in every way possible.
Whether as individuals, organizations, or nations, it is our right, our responsibility and our privilege to do everything within our power to answer their call.