The Arab Military Boot at Israel's Service!

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Do not be fooled by the hostility Arab generals display toward Israel — it is a fake hostility for local consumption, nothing more and nothing less, and, in most cases, is not meant to be applied on the ground — not because of Arab weakness, but because the generals who put on a show of hostility toward the enemy never truly intend to carry it out in the first place. Woe and ruin await anyone who tries to actually put that hostility into practice — he will meet with bitter punishment. It is nothing but a sedative pill for the masses, or a way to vent their struggle-energy into open air instead of actually preparing them for the true battle of liberation. There are plenty of signs for those with insight that this alleged decades-long enmity toward Israel is nothing more than a transparent charade — for if the generals’ regimes truly opposed the enemy, they would have treated their own peoples in an entirely different manner, and would not have kept them under heavy boots for decades, nor stripped them of every value of dignity, confrontation, defiance, and resistance. The tyrant generals have castrated our societies with their military boots, turning them into sheep pens, ewe stalls, and chicken coops, and there is no doubt our enemies are deeply grateful to our Arab soldiers for this priceless favor.

The Israeli writer Aluf Benn says: “Israel’s regional policy was built on arrangements and a balance of terror with the Arab dictator generals. Their authority was seen as a natural barrier protecting Israel from the wrath of the rabble in the Arab street.” Aluf warns the United States against attempting to “spread democracy without oversight.” Israel, then, stands wholeheartedly with military dictatorship over the Arab world. Israel’s leaders built their entire political, military, and economic strategy for dominating and controlling the region on supporting the dictatorial security-military option in our region, since it is the most effective and safest choice for Zionism, and the most capable of meeting its needs and securing calm and stability for it. It trades its corruption, brutality, and clinging to power for meeting Israeli demands — foremost among them reining in the street and putting it under the sole of the boot so that Israel can sleep soundly.

From here, Israel and the fascist military regimes share a common interest in keeping these peoples submissive and dispossessed. It is an alliance of alliances that these regimes fight tooth and nail to preserve their own survival — an equation and a gentleman’s agreement, however unspoken, between these regimes and Israel, whereby military despotism is traded for survival. The more these fascist military regimes indulge in repression and tyranny, the higher marks they receive in the evaluation of their political performance, and the greater the satisfaction of whoever runs this lopsided chess game — and thus a longer mandate to continue. One condition of this equation has been planting backwardness, producing poverty, Westernizing societies, weakening the capacity for resistance, undermining the foundations on which modern states are built, and spreading corruption as widely as possible, so that Israel would remain the sole strong power on the field. And that equation is now bearing fruit: Israel has become a “superpower” in this region, while those brutal military states and regimes have crumbled, becoming fragmented, weak, fragile factions and entities struggling to survive in the face of peoples whose patience has run out. Whatever Israel does, it will never be able to reward these regimes enough for this “great” achievement, which has now come within a hair’s breadth of collapse under the pressure of peoples who have finally begun breaking their chains.

It is foolish and naive for Arab liberals to believe that Israel or America prefers them over the generals. The very last thing Israel and the West want in our region is the spread of democracy or the encouragement of liberalism. Believe me, Israel will never work to topple any Arab general’s dictatorial regime unless it finds a replacement more tyrannical and more totalitarian still — democracy is a red line!

To clear the fog from the eyes of those dazzled by the old-new American and Israeli calls to democratize the region and free it from the yoke of totalitarianism and despotism, I would like only to recall what one Israeli politician once said. Asked about Israel’s role after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of its mission of confronting communism and the socialist tide in the Arab region, he answered in words that align precisely with those of the Israeli writer Aluf Benn cited above: “One of Israel’s most important tasks in the future is protecting military regimes from collapse” in the face of any popular revolutions or mass uprisings (the Syrian regime, for example). In other words, there is a blatant organic alliance between security dictatorship and Zionism in the Arab region. Do not be surprised! For the abiding concern of our “beloved” enemy is protecting our generals, our officers, our executioners, our corrupt, our torturers, and those who have squandered our wealth and dignity. And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. As the saying goes: “They said, ‘The camel climbed the palm tree.’ He said, ‘Here is the camel, and here is the palm tree’” — meaning, seeing is believing, no matter how absurd the claim.

Our glorious Arab prisons have overflowed with genuine strugglers and advocates of democracy and liberation, purely to please the enemy, and so do not dream of achieving true democracy or liberating the land until you free yourselves from the yoke of the military boot and despotism and bury them for good, for they are Israel’s greatest protector and guarantor. You may recall that Antar ibn Shaddad did not become a hero until he freed himself from his enslavement — when his father asked him to fight, he uttered his famous saying: “A slave does not charge into battle, father,” to which his father replied: “Charge, for you are free” — and so he went forth to fight legendarily. In other words, “Only the free can liberate it.” God forbid our tyrant generals should ever be free, except in tormenting peoples and homelands and turning them into easy prey in the mouths of enemies and the covetous.

Syrians of every persuasion now know with certainty that the Syrian regime will not fall until Israel lifts its cover from it. The Assad family has forced the Syrian people to their knees for five decades so that Israel could sleep soundly — indeed, they turned Syria into a swamp of corruption and corrupting influence, the greatest service to the Israeli enemy. And when the people rose up against the regime, Israel, which controls the American decision, gave the green light for Syria to be turned into ruin, and Bashar al-Assad will keep burning Syria on Israel’s behalf as long as there remains a flicker of life left in Syria and its people. And when he has finished his task, Israel will toss him into the trash bin, just as it and America have tossed aside every one of their tyrant-general agents before him.

Gaza and the False Egyptian Accusations

by Dr. Essam Shawer

For more than seven years Gaza has been under siege, with the Rafah crossing nearly completely closed and the blockade tightened through the destruction of the tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt. And despite all that, not a single act of aggression has ever been carried out against our Egyptian brothers, and it has never once been proven that the Palestinian resistance was involved in any acts of violence in Egypt, neither in the Sinai governorate nor in any other Egyptian governorate. The falseness of all the accusations directed at the Palestinian resistance, and specifically the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, has been exposed, and the absurdity of the accusations and their proponents has become plain, as martyrs and long-held prisoners in occupation jails have been accused of participating in operations against the Egyptian army.

Stirring strife between the Egyptian and Palestinian peoples, and attacking the Palestinian resistance and its symbols, no longer arouse anyone’s enthusiasm in Egypt. No one, in Egypt or beyond, is fooled any longer by what corrupt Egyptian media and its figures — such as Ahmed Moussa, Lamees El-Hadidi, Amr Adib, or Tawfiq Okasha — put forward. Even Reham Saeed, who tried more than once to outbid others in exploiting the Gaza issue, failed miserably, just like the rest of the gang of liars.

We do not rejoice when Egyptian blood is shed and Egyptian soldiers and army commanders are killed, because the sole beneficiary of that bloodshed is the Israeli enemy, and we grieve over it because it is a loss for the Egyptian people, and because our only enemy is the Israeli occupier — Egyptian, Palestinian, and Arab blood alike is better spent in sacrifice for Palestine, Jerusalem, and the dignity of the Islamic nation.

The insistence of some corrupt Egyptian media figures on distorting the Palestinian resistance and slandering its symbols will not shake our relationship with the great Egyptian people, and will not frighten the smallest child in Gaza, let alone the leaders of the resistance. But at the same time, these figures must not be allowed to slander Gaza and its people, and they must be pursued legally. If the Egyptian regime does not take action against them, then the Palestinian Authority must defend Gaza and the Palestinian resistance, and here I call on Palestine’s ambassador to Egypt to intervene to stop this farce, and I call on those who make pilgrimage to Cairo to say a word in support of their own people and family in Gaza, instead of falling in line with the Okasha crowd’s campaign of defamation and incitement against us, appearing on Egyptian media as false witnesses who stab their own people in the back and sell out their cause.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الحذاء العسكري العربي في خدمة إسرائيل!” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.