One thing you can know for sure about the Egyptian people , they are peaceful so peaceful with their rulers that you may find them so passive under the worst kind of dictators since the pharaoh to the modern age ,you already don't need various examples to prove this ,you can see it crystal clear , yet on the other side those peaceful people turn in other times in to active monsters that defend fiercely their land
Through out our history since the Haksoos from 2000 B.C to the IDF from 30 years , all our invaders faced resistance from our great People who refused to be ruled by an external invader ,the resistance ranged from the passive Gandhi style to the secret French WWII resistance style to the Vietnamese resistance combat style
So don't be surprised if you find out that the Egyptian people resisted the invading forces of UK,France and Israel fiercely in 1956 that in the Arab world it considered as a role model , if you watch El-Manar TV accidentally ,the spokesTV of Hezbollah in Lebanon ,you can find them speaking about the great Egyptian people and their resistance in Port Said
Here I am not speaking about the army ,the Egyptian army with all the respect and pride I feel about it , but I am speaking about the resistance of my people . Most Internet sources written in English or any other language other than Arabic always ignore this resistance , sometimes totally , and sometimes they underestimate it . Just like the Britain's small war Website , you can find here and there in the personal testimonies of war 1956 veterans that there was some kind of Egyptian resistance yet it was not a powerful one in their eyes !! well I have to disagree with that may be because I am bias as they are bias too to their country and army , two evidences that prove the power of this resistance is that the Anglo and French armies couldn't advance more than Port Said to reach Ismalayia to have a full control on the Suez canal area as they wished ,no they were stuck in Port Said , number two the hidden British and French casualties numbers from dead and injured till now "Read this till the end "already I wrote a post about this point with more links but the problem that I found it would take a whole five pages in word :)"
I believe the resistance of Portsaid in Egypt was a great one , all the people joined it from all ages ,you will be surprised to find that teenagers not older than 18 years did great things , full of courage and the examples are many , Women also participated in the resistance from old women to young ladies to mothers to teenagers
Another thing I want to clarify something I see and feel it , that the Suez canal city people hated so much the inequity between the foreigners and them as Egyptians before the revolution ,they didn't hate the foreigners but they hated the treatment ,and this due to two facts the first one was the unfair treatment of the Universal company of the Suez canal already the French newspaper of "Liberation" used to attack the company which had a great position in France then for their bad treatment and low wages to the Egyptian employees and workers , the second one was the British army base in the canal and their careless and wild racist behavior ,you can hear from the elder of Port Said that it was common that if a British officer or a French person crushed with his car an Egyptian and killed him , he would get through it ,well it didn't change much now , rich Arabs from the gulf and rich kids from Egypt kill other Egyptians in all over the republic and nothing still happen in return
The resistance in Port Said was like the french resistance a secret one , a group effort from both the people and the Egyptian army
This secret resistance wasn't something new the people Port Said didn't know before , in fact they knew it very well since Mustafa Basha El-Nahas announced in 1951 in a powerful historical speech in the parliament that he made the treaty of 1936 for Egypt and on that day he canceled it for Egypt , since that moment the Egyptian resistance across the canal was born , in fact I remember that I saw some of the resistance flyers of "Johnny you are dead" and so on in some book in my grand father's library "May Allah bless his soul" from that period ,already my grand dad covered the battle of Ismalayia there "May be one day I will speak about it because it was a very unique experience"
For example many of the names of the resistance heroes , were already had a past experience in the patriotic work against invaders for example Late police major Mustafa Kamel El-Syad ,who is called the God father of the secret resistance ,Late Journalist Mustafa Shaardi ,late Hamad El-Alfi and other great people
And thus many of the people who joined the resistance in 1956 already had a great
already immediately after the announcing of the Nationalization of the 26th of July 1956 , the next day the city was taking its precautions because they knew very well whether the city people or the Egyptian leadership that France wouldn't leave the Canal go away as simple as that , same thing for the UK. The Egyptian regime then presented in the army formed with the city something called "The National Guards" , from what I understand they were a civilian force from the city people trained militarily under the army supervision and leadership , they formed from the young men and teenagers
On the 2nd of November 1956 the Egyptian army distributed 50,000 rifles to the resistance and the city people to be prepared to any expected invasion
Here we must understand something ,there were two kinds of resistance in Port Said , the organized Secret resistance which made very successful operations during the existence of the Anglo-French forces in the city after the invasion till their departure , and the public unorganized resistance , which didn't follow any authority or hierarchy , it came from people themselves , for example the resistance of the Port Said people during the invasion operation and individual operations from people themselves who participated in it and risked their lives for the sake of their land after the invasion
To know the difference or to explain it ,I will give a better example
On the 5th and 6th of November , the people of Port Said along with the Egyptian troops fought the paratroops coming down from above ,whether the British or the French until they succeeded in invading the city through bombing the resistance areas from the air fighters, the Anglo-French armies saw a bitter fighting from every where ,from buildings to trees to houses , in a way they didn't imagine it ,that they became crazy enough to bomb the houses and even to go in to the Abbasid Mosque in the city to search for the resistance members killing many women,children and elder and taking weapons from the police
Yet when the order to cease fire came on the 7th ,the city of Port Said saw the first organizing of the secret resistance
and next post you will know more about the secret resistance in Port Said ,Le Resistance I call it
