Three important articles on the situation in Egypt
Below please find three important articles on the situation in Egypt | 11.02.2011 18:08 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | World
“Washington is acutely conscious that what it confronts in Egypt is a social revolution. This has been driven home in the last few days as a strike wave has spread throughout the country, bringing into struggle virtually every section of the country’s working population, from textile workers, to bus drivers, hospital workers, actors, steelworkers, teachers, hospital workers, journalists, shipyard workers, peasants and countless others. Workers have occupied factories, blockaded major roads and fought pitched battles with riot police.
The greatest fear of the ruling elite in the United States and in every other country is that this mass uprising in Egypt will serve as a spark, radicalizing workers throughout the Middle East, Africa and beyond under conditions in which the profound and protracted crisis of world capitalism is creating mass discontent in every corner of the world.”
The greatest fear of the ruling elite in the United States and in every other country is that this mass uprising in Egypt will serve as a spark, radicalizing workers throughout the Middle East, Africa and beyond under conditions in which the profound and protracted crisis of world capitalism is creating mass discontent in every corner of the world.”
Below please find three important articles on the situation in Egypt. Sara
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Egyptian military tortured, “disappeared” thousands of demonstrators
By Tom Eley 11 February 2011
Since demonstrations and strikes erupted against the Mubarak regime on January 25, the Egyptian military has arrested, tortured and “disappeared” thousands, according to reports from the Guardian newspaper and human rights organizations.
The revelations explode the claim advanced by the Obama administration that Egypt’s army is a neutral arbiter in the crisis and can lead a “transition” to human rights and democracy. They also give the lie to the claim that the military can be relied upon to protect the population from the hated state security forces, an argument advanced by both Mohammed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood. The military has, in fact, assumed the brutal role of the police and security forces, which have, at least in part, dissolved in the face of the revolution.
According to Human Rights Watch, at least 302 Egyptians have been killed in the protests, the vast majority of these at the hands of the security forces, pro-government thugs and the military. Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Cairo who participated in the count, said that the ultimate number will likely be far higher.
The number of the disappeared—those arrested by the military with no record or official acknowledgement of their fate—runs into the hundreds, possibly thousands, Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, told the Guardian. Their “crimes” include carrying political leaflets, attending demonstrations, “or even the way they look,” the newspaper reports.
“Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew, to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not,” Bahgat said. “It’s unusual and to the best of our knowledge it’s also unprecedented for the army to be doing this.”
He continued, “Detentions either go completely unreported or they are unable to inform their family members or any lawyer of their detention so they are much more difficult to assist or look for. Those held by the military police are not receiving any due process either because they are unaccounted for and they are unable to inform anyone of their detention.”
One person who has vanished after being detained by the military near Tahrir Square is Kareem Amer, a blogger and opponent of the Mubarak regime who had only recently been released from a four-year prison sentence for criticizing the regime.
As is the usual practice for the police and security forces, the military is subjecting those arrested to torture. The Guardian spoke “to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation.” Among the documented forms of torture the newspaper uncovered is the use of electrical shocks on prisoners.
Human Rights Watch reported the military abuse of one anonymous activist who was stopped at a military checkpoint where a pro-democracy flier was found in his bag.
“They started beating me up in the street [with] their rubber batons and an electric Taser gun, shocking me,” the activist said. “Then they took me to Abdin police station. By the time I arrived, the soldiers and officers there had been informed that a ‘spy’ was coming, and so when I arrived they gave me a ‘welcome beating’ that lasted some 30 minutes.”
He was then forced to undress, at which point cables from an “electric shock machine” were attached to his body.
“He shocked me all over my body, leaving no place untouched. It wasn’t a real interrogation; he didn’t ask that many questions. He tortured me twice like this on Friday, and one more time on Saturday,” the man said.
The Guardian spoke with a 23-year-old man, Ashraf, who was detained by the military on Friday for attempting to bring medical supplies to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo. He described his ordeal in a makeshift prison at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square.
“I was on a sidestreet and a soldier stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him and he accused me of working for foreign enemies and other soldiers rushed over and they all started hitting me with their guns.
“They put me in a room. An officer came and asked me who was paying me to be against the government. When I said I wanted a better government he hit me across the head and I fell to the floor. Then soldiers started kicking me. One of them kept kicking me between my legs.
“They got a bayonet and threatened to rape me with it. Then they waved it between my legs. They said I could die there or I could disappear into prison and no one would ever know. The torture was painful but the idea of disappearing in a military prison was really frightening.”
Ashraf, who did not give his last name for fear of reprisals, said that he was beaten off and on for hours, before being placed in a room with about a dozen other men who had been badly tortured.
Last week the military allowed pro-Mubarak thugs, many of them plainclothes security forces, to attack demonstrators over the space of three days with Molotov cocktails, iron rods, vehicles, horses, and even guns. An unknown number were killed and scores were injured in these assaults.
Human rights organizations say that the military did not generally detain the pro-Mubarak fighters, and when they did they have not been subject to the same abuses as the demonstrators. Instead, they have been turned over to the police and security forces—very likely their employers.
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Israel staggered by Egypt protests, social tensions at home
By Jean Shaoul 11 February 2011
The right-wing Israeli government of Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has been staggered by the massive demonstrations and strike wave engulfing Egypt, its critical Arab ally in the region, and the simultaneous emergence of social opposition in Israel itself.
In recent weeks, there have been several demonstrations in Israel’s predominantly Arab towns in support of the Egypt protests, including a small one in Tel Aviv of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis. In addition, Israel’s newspapers have noted in passing expressions of public sympathy for the mass protests in Egypt calling for an end to the Mubarak regime.
Not so the Israeli government. In speech after speech, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has warned that should the Mubarak dictatorship fall, chaos will prevail. Though the Muslim Brotherhood do not have majority support and have made very clear their intention not to lead protests against Mubarak, Netanyahu constantly raises the spectre of the Islamic revolution in Iran: the Islamists, meaning the Muslim Brotherhood, will take control in Egypt, abrogate the 1978-9 peace deal at Camp David, and march on Israel. By implication, Netanyahu is suggesting that the fall of the Mubarak dictatorship is an event Israel might oppose by force.
The Israeli ruling class’s fear over the events in Egypt is two-fold. In the first place, Egypt—with its large economy, population of nearly 80 million, and control of the Suez Canal—is Israel’s key ally in the region. It has played the crucial role in strangling resistance to the dispossession of the Palestinians.
Equally as important, the conditions that led to the revolution in Egypt also prevail in Israel: youth unemployment and underemployment; spiraling prices; growing social polarization; and a corrupt and anti-democratic ruling elite personified by Netanyahu himself. Israel is a social powder keg, characterized by enormous social inequality and poverty, governed by a corrupt and reactionary kleptocracy.
These social contradictions recently came to the fore when Israel’s federation of labor unions, Histadrut, declared a labor dispute for public sector workers and some private sector workers. This gives it the legal right to declare a general strike in two weeks’ time. It is asking that Tel Aviv move quickly to raise the minimum wage, reverse prices on bread, cut water prices, end the tax on fuel, and move toward reducing the costs of housing prices. It is a desperate attempt to warn ruling circles that Israel’s working class is on the verge of revolt.
Histradrut’s suppression of strikes and worker protest have played the most important role in creating in Israel among the world’s highest levels of social inequality. The unions are signaling, however, that they are profoundly concerned that rising social discontent in Israel could explode.
Netanyahu rapidly announced that he was preparing measures to deal with these concerns. These included a cut in public transport costs of 10 percent, a $122 increase in the monthly minimum wage, and cancelled the recently-imposed gasoline tax that had raised gas prices to $8.50 per gallon.
A fear of the development of a united struggle against war and capitalist oppression by workers in both Egypt and Israel is driving Netanyahu’s policies.
While it prepares for war with Egypt, Israel is working directly with the Egyptian authorities to suppress the Egyptian masses. That it is working with Suleiman is no accident. He was the man Israel worked with to suppress the Palestinians, and is Tel Aviv’s choice to succeed Mubarak as president, as the US cables released by WikiLeaks show. The newspaper Ma’ariv, citing an official in Netanyahu’s office, has reported that the prime minister called Suleiman to propose Israeli intelligence personnel could undertake various specialist operations to bring an end to the demonstrations.
Last week, for the first time since the Camp David Accords outlawed troops in Sinai, Netanyahu agreed to let Egypt send 800 soldiers there. This followed the spread of unrest to El Arish and the Sinai Peninsula, where the Bedouin, who have for some time been waging a rebellion against the Mubarak regime, killed at least 12 police officers in armed clashes last weekend. Egyptian troops have since fought repeatedly with Bedouin forces, including a two-hour clash on Gaza’s border February 7.
Israel’s politicians and military chiefs are preparing for war in the event the Mubarak regime falls and is replaced by a government not to Tel Aviv’s liking. Netanyahu told parliament that Israel must be prepared for any outcome in Egypt, “by reinforcing the might of the State of Israel.” A defence official told the news site Ynet that a fundamental change of government in Egypt might lead to a “revolution in Israel’s security doctrine,” because the Camp David Accords was an important strategic asset, “which enables the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] to focus on other theatres.”
Following Egypt’s defeats at the hands of Israel in the wars of 1967 and 1973, and the mass uprisings over the cost of food in 1977, President Anwar Sadat threw in his lot with Washington and signed a peace deal with Israel at Camp David in 1978 and 1979. Sadat’s signature signified the end of Egypt’s efforts to manoeuvre between Moscow and Washington, and of any semblance of independence from imperialism. It provoked the ire of Islamic forces who assassinated Sadat in 1981, paving the way for Mubarak, his vice president, to come to power and rule under Emergency Powers that have been continually renewed and expanded.
Sadat’s signature was the necessary down payment for US support for his ailing regime. It led to the end of the state of war, the recognition of the state of Israel and normalization of trade relations. One half of Israel’s gas supplies now come from Egypt, and Israel has the right of free passage through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Straits of Tiran. The pay-off has been $60 billion of American aid, second only to that given to Israel.
For Israel, the peace treaty with Egypt enabled the illegal incorporation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights into a “Greater Israel”. Starting with the Madrid Conference in 1991, the peace treaty also allowed Israel to slash its massive defence budget from 30 percent of GDP in the 1970s to 9 percent today, cut its armed forces in Sinai, reduce the maximum age of reservist duty, and focus on counter-insurgency, rather than the threat of an invasion by land and aerial forces.
No longer faced with a threat of war, Israel, which boasts of being the Middle East’s “only democracy”, has insisted that it was forced to work with brutal autocracies such as Mubarak’s because of the overarching threat to Israel from Muslim fundamentalism. Now that millions of people have come out onto the street to overturn their government, Israel’s ruling elite has been forced to reveal the falsity of its claims. In reality, Israel backs the Arab dictatorships because they help the Israeli state suppress the Arab and Israeli working masses.
As Amira Hass wrote in Ha’aretz about the impact of the events in Egypt on the Palestinians, “There is a miraculous moment in popular uprisings, when fear of the machinery of repression no longer deters people in their masses and that machinery begins to unravel into its component parts—who are also people. They stop obeying and begin thinking. Where is that moment for us?”
Hass continued, “Let us not delude ourselves. There will be no confusion here. Precise instructions, clear and immediate, will be given to the Israeli soldiers. The IDF of Operation Cast Lead will not give up its heritage. Even if it is a march of 200,000 unarmed civilians—the order will be to shoot.”
These are indeed the types of method that the Israeli state and its backers in Washington have become accustomed to using. However, the Israeli ruling class would fear the effect of responding to social opposition by the Israeli working class with similar brutal methods. This is why Netanyahu is trying to drive a wedge between Jewish and Arab workers, and prevent a unified struggle for their social and democratic demands against the war-mongering of the capitalist class.
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Mubarak’s speech: only revolution can oust regime
11 February 2011
With his speech on Thursday night, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak threw down the gauntlet to the mass protests and growing strike wave that have rocked his regime for nearly three weeks.
After widespread media reports that Mubarak would announce his resignation—and rumors that he had already fled the country—the Egyptian president appeared on national television to declare that he would “remain adamant to shoulder my responsibility, protecting the constitution and safeguarding the interests of Egyptians” until elections are held and his term expires next September.
His remarks, which included vague promises to pursue “national dialogue” and to repeal police state measures in the country’s constitution once “stability allows”, included an announcement that he was delegating some of his presidential duties to his hand-picked vice president, the longtime chief of the regime’s secret police, Omar Suleiman.
Suleiman, a key ally of the US Central Intelligence Agency, then delivered an even more ominous speech. He demanded that Egypt’s millions of demonstrators and strikers “go back home” and “go back to work.” He warned them to “join hands” with the regime, rather than risk “chaos.” And he urged them not to listen to those promoting “sedition.”
The reaction of the millions of demonstrators assembled in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, central Alexandria and in towns and cities across the country was one of stunned disbelief followed by uncontrollable rage. Crowds that had been singing and dancing in celebration of Mubarak’s anticipated downfall began waving their shoes in the air in a sign of hatred and contempt for the US-backed dictator. Thousands were reported to be marching from Tahrir Square to the national state television headquarters and the presidential palace, both ringed by barbed wire and heavy troop deployments. In Alexandria, the majority of demonstrators reportedly left the center of the city to march on the local army base.
With even more millions expected to take to the streets on Friday, the likelihood of a bloody confrontation between the Egyptian military and the masses in revolt is growing. If murderous repression is unleashed, the political and moral responsibility for the dead and wounded will lie squarely with the Obama administration in Washington.
The decision of Hosni Mubarak to hold on to the Egyptian presidency was not, as the shallow and duplicitous reporting of the American media would have it, a matter of one man’s obstinacy or “military pride.”
Rather, it was the outcome of intense discussions within both Egypt’s own ruling establishment of corrupt capitalists and military commanders and within the corridors of power in Washington and other imperialist capitals.
Involved is the classic debate that besets every reactionary regime confronted with a revolutionary challenge from below. Some insist that at least nominal concessions must be made to defuse the revolutionary threat. And others counter that to make such concessions will only strengthen the revolution and hasten the downfall of the regime.
There are reports from Cairo that the military command, which Thursday convened its “supreme council”—a body that had met previously only during the wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973—was beset by just such divisions. It was Mubarak’s absence from the meeting that convinced many that his departure was already secured.
In his speech, Mubarak made an absurd attempt to appeal to nationalist sentiments by vowing not to bow to “foreign diktats”, by which he meant orders from Washington. However, the reality is that the Obama administration had in the previous days made it clear that it had accepted the Egyptian president remaining in office, while placing its full support behind the country’s chief torturer, Suleiman, as the organizer of an “orderly democratic transition.” It stressed that it was focusing on “process” rather than “personalities.” In other words, what Mubarak and Suleiman announced on Thursday was precisely what the Obama White House had promoted.
Whatever differences exist between the Obama administration and the dictatorship in Cairo are of an entirely tactical character. Within the US administration—as within the Egyptian regime itself—there are no doubt divisions as to whether salvaging the regime can best be accomplished with or without Mubarak, through a direct assumption of power by the military or by some intermediate means.
Israel, Washington’s principal client state, was even more categorical. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom announced that any democratic opening was impermissible, because it would strengthen “radical elements.”
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama held private discussions with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi and other Persian Gulf potentates, all of whom urged the US to back Mubarak against the Egyptian masses. The fear, both from the semi-feudal monarchs and Washington itself, is that if an uprising succeeds in overthrowing the Egyptian dictator, these other US-backed regimes may fall as well.
Speaking hours before Mubarak’s speech, Obama declared in relation to Egypt, “What is absolutely clear is that we are witnessing history unfold.” He added, “Going forward, we want ... all Egyptians to know that America will continue to do everything that we can to support an orderly and genuine transition to democracy.”
The events of the last two and a half weeks have thoroughly discredited the Obama administration. It has been exposed before millions of Egyptians and to masses of people throughout the region and around the world as a criminal henchman of the Mubarak dictatorship. Its hypocritical rhetoric about “democracy” is nothing more than a means of playing for time. Its real intention, underlying the weasel words “orderly and genuine transition”, is to find a means of salvaging the US-backed military dictatorship in Egypt and defeating the uprising of the masses.
Having relied on Mubarak and his cohorts for more than three decades, it does not have a ready-made replacement. Time is needed to groom such figures, while working to divide the mass base of the popular movement against the regime, appealing to the more politically backward layers and the better-off sections of the middle classes, attempting to turn them against the workers and the oppressed.
Washington is acutely conscious that what it confronts in Egypt is a social revolution. This has been driven home in the last few days as a strike wave has spread throughout the country, bringing into struggle virtually every section of the country’s working population, from textile workers, to bus drivers, hospital workers, actors, steelworkers, teachers, hospital workers, journalists, shipyard workers, peasants and countless others. Workers have occupied factories, blockaded major roads and fought pitched battles with riot police.
The greatest fear of the ruling elite in the United States and in every other country is that this mass uprising in Egypt will serve as a spark, radicalizing workers throughout the Middle East, Africa and beyond under conditions in which the profound and protracted crisis of world capitalism is creating mass discontent in every corner of the world.
For the Egyptian workers and youth who have come into struggle against the US-backed dictatorship, the past two weeks have compressed immense political experiences and development of consciousness in a very brief period. Events have served to dash general democratic illusions as well as the belief that the military could serve as the champion of freedom. It is becoming ever more apparent that the only way forward lies in the revolutionary destruction of the regime.
The demands of millions of Egyptians for democratic rights, jobs and decent living standards are incompatible not merely with the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, but with the entire system of capitalist ownership and imperialist domination that are responsible for the country’s grinding oppression and stark social inequality.
The burning question posed to the Egyptian revolution is the building of a mass movement of the working class, rallying behind it all the layers of the rural poor and oppressed, to lay the foundations for a popular insurrection. Only such a movement can confront the power of the military, the base of the regime, and break the masses of conscript soldiers from the discipline of a wealthy and corrupt command.
What is required above all is the emergence of a new revolutionary leadership based upon the socialist internationalist perspective of uniting the struggles of the Egyptian working class with those of workers throughout the Middle East and around the world. This means building an Egyptian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
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Find details to aid in more publishing below. Again, please spread widely. General Joe
“Washington is acutely conscious that what it confronts in Egypt is a social revolution. This has been driven home in the last few days as a strike wave has spread throughout the country, bringing into struggle virtually every section of the country’s working population, from textile workers, to bus drivers, hospital workers, actors, steelworkers, teachers, hospital workers, journalists, shipyard workers, peasants and countless others. Workers have occupied factories, blockaded major roads and fought pitched battles with riot police.
The greatest fear of the ruling elite in the United States and in every other country is that this mass uprising in Egypt will serve as a spark, radicalizing workers throughout the Middle East, Africa and beyond under conditions in which the profound and protracted crisis of world capitalism is creating mass discontent in every corner of the world.”
Mubarak’s speech: only revolution can oust regime
Bill Van Auken and General Joe
Again, please spread widely.
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Egyptian military tortured, “disappeared” thousands of demonstrators
By Tom Eley 11 February 2011
Since demonstrations and strikes erupted against the Mubarak regime on January 25, the Egyptian military has arrested, tortured and “disappeared” thousands, according to reports from the Guardian newspaper and human rights organizations.
The revelations explode the claim advanced by the Obama administration that Egypt’s army is a neutral arbiter in the crisis and can lead a “transition” to human rights and democracy. They also give the lie to the claim that the military can be relied upon to protect the population from the hated state security forces, an argument advanced by both Mohammed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood. The military has, in fact, assumed the brutal role of the police and security forces, which have, at least in part, dissolved in the face of the revolution.
According to Human Rights Watch, at least 302 Egyptians have been killed in the protests, the vast majority of these at the hands of the security forces, pro-government thugs and the military. Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Cairo who participated in the count, said that the ultimate number will likely be far higher.
The number of the disappeared—those arrested by the military with no record or official acknowledgement of their fate—runs into the hundreds, possibly thousands, Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, told the Guardian. Their “crimes” include carrying political leaflets, attending demonstrations, “or even the way they look,” the newspaper reports.
“Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew, to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not,” Bahgat said. “It’s unusual and to the best of our knowledge it’s also unprecedented for the army to be doing this.”
He continued, “Detentions either go completely unreported or they are unable to inform their family members or any lawyer of their detention so they are much more difficult to assist or look for. Those held by the military police are not receiving any due process either because they are unaccounted for and they are unable to inform anyone of their detention.”
One person who has vanished after being detained by the military near Tahrir Square is Kareem Amer, a blogger and opponent of the Mubarak regime who had only recently been released from a four-year prison sentence for criticizing the regime.
As is the usual practice for the police and security forces, the military is subjecting those arrested to torture. The Guardian spoke “to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation.” Among the documented forms of torture the newspaper uncovered is the use of electrical shocks on prisoners.
Human Rights Watch reported the military abuse of one anonymous activist who was stopped at a military checkpoint where a pro-democracy flier was found in his bag.
“They started beating me up in the street [with] their rubber batons and an electric Taser gun, shocking me,” the activist said. “Then they took me to Abdin police station. By the time I arrived, the soldiers and officers there had been informed that a ‘spy’ was coming, and so when I arrived they gave me a ‘welcome beating’ that lasted some 30 minutes.”
He was then forced to undress, at which point cables from an “electric shock machine” were attached to his body.
“He shocked me all over my body, leaving no place untouched. It wasn’t a real interrogation; he didn’t ask that many questions. He tortured me twice like this on Friday, and one more time on Saturday,” the man said.
The Guardian spoke with a 23-year-old man, Ashraf, who was detained by the military on Friday for attempting to bring medical supplies to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo. He described his ordeal in a makeshift prison at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square.
“I was on a sidestreet and a soldier stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him and he accused me of working for foreign enemies and other soldiers rushed over and they all started hitting me with their guns.
“They put me in a room. An officer came and asked me who was paying me to be against the government. When I said I wanted a better government he hit me across the head and I fell to the floor. Then soldiers started kicking me. One of them kept kicking me between my legs.
“They got a bayonet and threatened to rape me with it. Then they waved it between my legs. They said I could die there or I could disappear into prison and no one would ever know. The torture was painful but the idea of disappearing in a military prison was really frightening.”
Ashraf, who did not give his last name for fear of reprisals, said that he was beaten off and on for hours, before being placed in a room with about a dozen other men who had been badly tortured.
Last week the military allowed pro-Mubarak thugs, many of them plainclothes security forces, to attack demonstrators over the space of three days with Molotov cocktails, iron rods, vehicles, horses, and even guns. An unknown number were killed and scores were injured in these assaults.
Human rights organizations say that the military did not generally detain the pro-Mubarak fighters, and when they did they have not been subject to the same abuses as the demonstrators. Instead, they have been turned over to the police and security forces—very likely their employers.
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Israel staggered by Egypt protests, social tensions at home
By Jean Shaoul 11 February 2011
The right-wing Israeli government of Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has been staggered by the massive demonstrations and strike wave engulfing Egypt, its critical Arab ally in the region, and the simultaneous emergence of social opposition in Israel itself.
In recent weeks, there have been several demonstrations in Israel’s predominantly Arab towns in support of the Egypt protests, including a small one in Tel Aviv of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis. In addition, Israel’s newspapers have noted in passing expressions of public sympathy for the mass protests in Egypt calling for an end to the Mubarak regime.
Not so the Israeli government. In speech after speech, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has warned that should the Mubarak dictatorship fall, chaos will prevail. Though the Muslim Brotherhood do not have majority support and have made very clear their intention not to lead protests against Mubarak, Netanyahu constantly raises the spectre of the Islamic revolution in Iran: the Islamists, meaning the Muslim Brotherhood, will take control in Egypt, abrogate the 1978-9 peace deal at Camp David, and march on Israel. By implication, Netanyahu is suggesting that the fall of the Mubarak dictatorship is an event Israel might oppose by force.
The Israeli ruling class’s fear over the events in Egypt is two-fold. In the first place, Egypt—with its large economy, population of nearly 80 million, and control of the Suez Canal—is Israel’s key ally in the region. It has played the crucial role in strangling resistance to the dispossession of the Palestinians.
Equally as important, the conditions that led to the revolution in Egypt also prevail in Israel: youth unemployment and underemployment; spiraling prices; growing social polarization; and a corrupt and anti-democratic ruling elite personified by Netanyahu himself. Israel is a social powder keg, characterized by enormous social inequality and poverty, governed by a corrupt and reactionary kleptocracy.
These social contradictions recently came to the fore when Israel’s federation of labor unions, Histadrut, declared a labor dispute for public sector workers and some private sector workers. This gives it the legal right to declare a general strike in two weeks’ time. It is asking that Tel Aviv move quickly to raise the minimum wage, reverse prices on bread, cut water prices, end the tax on fuel, and move toward reducing the costs of housing prices. It is a desperate attempt to warn ruling circles that Israel’s working class is on the verge of revolt.
Histradrut’s suppression of strikes and worker protest have played the most important role in creating in Israel among the world’s highest levels of social inequality. The unions are signaling, however, that they are profoundly concerned that rising social discontent in Israel could explode.
Netanyahu rapidly announced that he was preparing measures to deal with these concerns. These included a cut in public transport costs of 10 percent, a $122 increase in the monthly minimum wage, and cancelled the recently-imposed gasoline tax that had raised gas prices to $8.50 per gallon.
A fear of the development of a united struggle against war and capitalist oppression by workers in both Egypt and Israel is driving Netanyahu’s policies.
While it prepares for war with Egypt, Israel is working directly with the Egyptian authorities to suppress the Egyptian masses. That it is working with Suleiman is no accident. He was the man Israel worked with to suppress the Palestinians, and is Tel Aviv’s choice to succeed Mubarak as president, as the US cables released by WikiLeaks show. The newspaper Ma’ariv, citing an official in Netanyahu’s office, has reported that the prime minister called Suleiman to propose Israeli intelligence personnel could undertake various specialist operations to bring an end to the demonstrations.
Last week, for the first time since the Camp David Accords outlawed troops in Sinai, Netanyahu agreed to let Egypt send 800 soldiers there. This followed the spread of unrest to El Arish and the Sinai Peninsula, where the Bedouin, who have for some time been waging a rebellion against the Mubarak regime, killed at least 12 police officers in armed clashes last weekend. Egyptian troops have since fought repeatedly with Bedouin forces, including a two-hour clash on Gaza’s border February 7.
Israel’s politicians and military chiefs are preparing for war in the event the Mubarak regime falls and is replaced by a government not to Tel Aviv’s liking. Netanyahu told parliament that Israel must be prepared for any outcome in Egypt, “by reinforcing the might of the State of Israel.” A defence official told the news site Ynet that a fundamental change of government in Egypt might lead to a “revolution in Israel’s security doctrine,” because the Camp David Accords was an important strategic asset, “which enables the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] to focus on other theatres.”
Following Egypt’s defeats at the hands of Israel in the wars of 1967 and 1973, and the mass uprisings over the cost of food in 1977, President Anwar Sadat threw in his lot with Washington and signed a peace deal with Israel at Camp David in 1978 and 1979. Sadat’s signature signified the end of Egypt’s efforts to manoeuvre between Moscow and Washington, and of any semblance of independence from imperialism. It provoked the ire of Islamic forces who assassinated Sadat in 1981, paving the way for Mubarak, his vice president, to come to power and rule under Emergency Powers that have been continually renewed and expanded.
Sadat’s signature was the necessary down payment for US support for his ailing regime. It led to the end of the state of war, the recognition of the state of Israel and normalization of trade relations. One half of Israel’s gas supplies now come from Egypt, and Israel has the right of free passage through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Straits of Tiran. The pay-off has been $60 billion of American aid, second only to that given to Israel.
For Israel, the peace treaty with Egypt enabled the illegal incorporation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights into a “Greater Israel”. Starting with the Madrid Conference in 1991, the peace treaty also allowed Israel to slash its massive defence budget from 30 percent of GDP in the 1970s to 9 percent today, cut its armed forces in Sinai, reduce the maximum age of reservist duty, and focus on counter-insurgency, rather than the threat of an invasion by land and aerial forces.
No longer faced with a threat of war, Israel, which boasts of being the Middle East’s “only democracy”, has insisted that it was forced to work with brutal autocracies such as Mubarak’s because of the overarching threat to Israel from Muslim fundamentalism. Now that millions of people have come out onto the street to overturn their government, Israel’s ruling elite has been forced to reveal the falsity of its claims. In reality, Israel backs the Arab dictatorships because they help the Israeli state suppress the Arab and Israeli working masses.
As Amira Hass wrote in Ha’aretz about the impact of the events in Egypt on the Palestinians, “There is a miraculous moment in popular uprisings, when fear of the machinery of repression no longer deters people in their masses and that machinery begins to unravel into its component parts—who are also people. They stop obeying and begin thinking. Where is that moment for us?”
Hass continued, “Let us not delude ourselves. There will be no confusion here. Precise instructions, clear and immediate, will be given to the Israeli soldiers. The IDF of Operation Cast Lead will not give up its heritage. Even if it is a march of 200,000 unarmed civilians—the order will be to shoot.”
These are indeed the types of method that the Israeli state and its backers in Washington have become accustomed to using. However, the Israeli ruling class would fear the effect of responding to social opposition by the Israeli working class with similar brutal methods. This is why Netanyahu is trying to drive a wedge between Jewish and Arab workers, and prevent a unified struggle for their social and democratic demands against the war-mongering of the capitalist class.
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Mubarak’s speech: only revolution can oust regime
11 February 2011
With his speech on Thursday night, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak threw down the gauntlet to the mass protests and growing strike wave that have rocked his regime for nearly three weeks.
After widespread media reports that Mubarak would announce his resignation—and rumors that he had already fled the country—the Egyptian president appeared on national television to declare that he would “remain adamant to shoulder my responsibility, protecting the constitution and safeguarding the interests of Egyptians” until elections are held and his term expires next September.
His remarks, which included vague promises to pursue “national dialogue” and to repeal police state measures in the country’s constitution once “stability allows”, included an announcement that he was delegating some of his presidential duties to his hand-picked vice president, the longtime chief of the regime’s secret police, Omar Suleiman.
Suleiman, a key ally of the US Central Intelligence Agency, then delivered an even more ominous speech. He demanded that Egypt’s millions of demonstrators and strikers “go back home” and “go back to work.” He warned them to “join hands” with the regime, rather than risk “chaos.” And he urged them not to listen to those promoting “sedition.”
The reaction of the millions of demonstrators assembled in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, central Alexandria and in towns and cities across the country was one of stunned disbelief followed by uncontrollable rage. Crowds that had been singing and dancing in celebration of Mubarak’s anticipated downfall began waving their shoes in the air in a sign of hatred and contempt for the US-backed dictator. Thousands were reported to be marching from Tahrir Square to the national state television headquarters and the presidential palace, both ringed by barbed wire and heavy troop deployments. In Alexandria, the majority of demonstrators reportedly left the center of the city to march on the local army base.
With even more millions expected to take to the streets on Friday, the likelihood of a bloody confrontation between the Egyptian military and the masses in revolt is growing. If murderous repression is unleashed, the political and moral responsibility for the dead and wounded will lie squarely with the Obama administration in Washington.
The decision of Hosni Mubarak to hold on to the Egyptian presidency was not, as the shallow and duplicitous reporting of the American media would have it, a matter of one man’s obstinacy or “military pride.”
Rather, it was the outcome of intense discussions within both Egypt’s own ruling establishment of corrupt capitalists and military commanders and within the corridors of power in Washington and other imperialist capitals.
Involved is the classic debate that besets every reactionary regime confronted with a revolutionary challenge from below. Some insist that at least nominal concessions must be made to defuse the revolutionary threat. And others counter that to make such concessions will only strengthen the revolution and hasten the downfall of the regime.
There are reports from Cairo that the military command, which Thursday convened its “supreme council”—a body that had met previously only during the wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973—was beset by just such divisions. It was Mubarak’s absence from the meeting that convinced many that his departure was already secured.
In his speech, Mubarak made an absurd attempt to appeal to nationalist sentiments by vowing not to bow to “foreign diktats”, by which he meant orders from Washington. However, the reality is that the Obama administration had in the previous days made it clear that it had accepted the Egyptian president remaining in office, while placing its full support behind the country’s chief torturer, Suleiman, as the organizer of an “orderly democratic transition.” It stressed that it was focusing on “process” rather than “personalities.” In other words, what Mubarak and Suleiman announced on Thursday was precisely what the Obama White House had promoted.
Whatever differences exist between the Obama administration and the dictatorship in Cairo are of an entirely tactical character. Within the US administration—as within the Egyptian regime itself—there are no doubt divisions as to whether salvaging the regime can best be accomplished with or without Mubarak, through a direct assumption of power by the military or by some intermediate means.
Israel, Washington’s principal client state, was even more categorical. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom announced that any democratic opening was impermissible, because it would strengthen “radical elements.”
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama held private discussions with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi and other Persian Gulf potentates, all of whom urged the US to back Mubarak against the Egyptian masses. The fear, both from the semi-feudal monarchs and Washington itself, is that if an uprising succeeds in overthrowing the Egyptian dictator, these other US-backed regimes may fall as well.
Speaking hours before Mubarak’s speech, Obama declared in relation to Egypt, “What is absolutely clear is that we are witnessing history unfold.” He added, “Going forward, we want ... all Egyptians to know that America will continue to do everything that we can to support an orderly and genuine transition to democracy.”
The events of the last two and a half weeks have thoroughly discredited the Obama administration. It has been exposed before millions of Egyptians and to masses of people throughout the region and around the world as a criminal henchman of the Mubarak dictatorship. Its hypocritical rhetoric about “democracy” is nothing more than a means of playing for time. Its real intention, underlying the weasel words “orderly and genuine transition”, is to find a means of salvaging the US-backed military dictatorship in Egypt and defeating the uprising of the masses.
Having relied on Mubarak and his cohorts for more than three decades, it does not have a ready-made replacement. Time is needed to groom such figures, while working to divide the mass base of the popular movement against the regime, appealing to the more politically backward layers and the better-off sections of the middle classes, attempting to turn them against the workers and the oppressed.
Washington is acutely conscious that what it confronts in Egypt is a social revolution. This has been driven home in the last few days as a strike wave has spread throughout the country, bringing into struggle virtually every section of the country’s working population, from textile workers, to bus drivers, hospital workers, actors, steelworkers, teachers, hospital workers, journalists, shipyard workers, peasants and countless others. Workers have occupied factories, blockaded major roads and fought pitched battles with riot police.
The greatest fear of the ruling elite in the United States and in every other country is that this mass uprising in Egypt will serve as a spark, radicalizing workers throughout the Middle East, Africa and beyond under conditions in which the profound and protracted crisis of world capitalism is creating mass discontent in every corner of the world.
For the Egyptian workers and youth who have come into struggle against the US-backed dictatorship, the past two weeks have compressed immense political experiences and development of consciousness in a very brief period. Events have served to dash general democratic illusions as well as the belief that the military could serve as the champion of freedom. It is becoming ever more apparent that the only way forward lies in the revolutionary destruction of the regime.
The demands of millions of Egyptians for democratic rights, jobs and decent living standards are incompatible not merely with the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, but with the entire system of capitalist ownership and imperialist domination that are responsible for the country’s grinding oppression and stark social inequality.
The burning question posed to the Egyptian revolution is the building of a mass movement of the working class, rallying behind it all the layers of the rural poor and oppressed, to lay the foundations for a popular insurrection. Only such a movement can confront the power of the military, the base of the regime, and break the masses of conscript soldiers from the discipline of a wealthy and corrupt command.
What is required above all is the emergence of a new revolutionary leadership based upon the socialist internationalist perspective of uniting the struggles of the Egyptian working class with those of workers throughout the Middle East and around the world. This means building an Egyptian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
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Find details to aid in more publishing below. Again, please spread widely. General Joe
“Washington is acutely conscious that what it confronts in Egypt is a social revolution. This has been driven home in the last few days as a strike wave has spread throughout the country, bringing into struggle virtually every section of the country’s working population, from textile workers, to bus drivers, hospital workers, actors, steelworkers, teachers, hospital workers, journalists, shipyard workers, peasants and countless others. Workers have occupied factories, blockaded major roads and fought pitched battles with riot police.
The greatest fear of the ruling elite in the United States and in every other country is that this mass uprising in Egypt will serve as a spark, radicalizing workers throughout the Middle East, Africa and beyond under conditions in which the profound and protracted crisis of world capitalism is creating mass discontent in every corner of the world.”
Mubarak’s speech: only revolution can oust regime
Bill Van Auken and General Joe
Again, please spread widely.
Below please find three important articles on the situation in Egypt