The Crime has a National Character

Commenting on what he called President Ahmadinejad’s challenge of the existence of the Zionist state, Auzi Benzman wrote, on 14 December 2005, in the Haarez Daily Newspaper, “One of the reasons why Sadat acquiesced to Menachem Begen’s swindlings was the intransigent picture given of the Likud’s chief and the group of ministers surrounding him, including former chiefs of staff of the army and prominent generals including Moshe Dayan, Ezra Weitzman, and Ariel Sharon.
According to the writer’s analysis, each of these had a reputation of being a courageous and aggressive leader who, during his military and security service, .had taught Arabs a lesson. Begen himself was reputed for his stern character, persistence in his opinions, his belief that Arabs only understood the language of force(!!). Thus the intransigent picture of the Begen Government that had had its effect on Sadat’s mind  played a role in Sadat’s decision to go to occupied Jerusalem and sign the Camp David Accord. In addition, according to that writer, the 40-year old, well-established picture of the nuclear-armed Zionist state had given the impression that the latter was a giant that ought to be avoided. That was the writer’s point of departure in supporting the tendency toward confronting and not underestimating the Iranian leadership, facing up to it on the international scene and taking the appropriate practical action, from his point of view, i.e. promptly finding a solution to the dispute with the Palestinians and Syrians. This is because affording the Iranians the opportunity to change the balance of nuclear power would affect the position of the Zionist state in relation to neighboring countries. He added that Israel, once liberated from the burden of occupation, can challenge Iran’s intentions to exterminate it.
While reading those lines, the picture that came up to my mind was that of Arab generals and their contradictory actions. Over more than thirty years, each one of them represented a hope for the continued protection of borders and entry points and liberating the occupied Arab lands. What really happened was disappointment because those people have overturned themselves and their roles. Whereas we witness the continued militarization of the Zionist political establishment, Arab political and military establishments are being neutralized and isolated and the role of the military ones is being changed from that of defending the national territory to that of serving the U.S., Western and Zionist military effort and acting as a support for the internal security forces and the police. This has changed the military doctrine, which has prompted Arab generals to fight the national resistance as an act of fighting terrorism, as required by Western-Zionist military doctrines.
Those generals have developed the performance of their armies, aligning it to that of internal security forces. Where those armies carry out a military role it is usually undertaken under the command of foreign armies and forces, particularly U.S. and British ones, which, under one pretext or another, have come back to reoccupy the region.
This has been facilitated by the adoption of an isolationist ideology as a frame of reference for most Arab regimes, which are tribal, sectarian and despotic, and which have in turn restricted national or Arab security to the political boundaries of the particular country. Thus the task of an Arab army is now how to confront another Arab army. An example is offered by the scene at the common borders with Palestine, the aim being  to isolate it completely from its Arab and Islamic vital field.
Contradictory attitudes of Arab generals have come to my mind, particularly those generals who had contributed to and led liberation and resistance wars, including the war of attrition (1967-1973 between Egypt and the Zionist entity) and the 1973 war. Some of them have capitulated and some others have preferred seclusion or safety. Now, the Arab general is the contrary of the Zionist genera, the former being hostage to despotism, corruption and dependency whereas the latter holds the reins of an artificial state having as the only factor for its stability the fact that it is a barracks run by settling and alien generals who have achieved victories and success that turned them into politicians who lead political parties and direct blocs the purpose of which is to serve the Zionist settlement project. Since the latter have chosen the Western liberal system, this has given the settlement project a deceiving democratic mask to be compared with the surrounding Arab regimes’ despotism. It has thus been given the right to life, support and help at the expense of Arabs. The despotism of Arab regimes surrounding that entity has extended its life and made its existence a prerequisite for their own existence.
Let’s take as an example the Egyptian military establishment with its long history, from the pre-Ibrahim Pasha era, passing by Ahmad Orabi, Mahmoud Sami el-Baroudy, Aziz el-Masry, Ahamd Abdel-Aziz, Mohamed Naguib, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, to Abdel-Moneim Riadh, Mohamed Fawzi, Saad el-Din el-Shazli and Abdel-Ghani el-Gamasy, to cite but a few of the names in a long list of heroes, noble men and martyrs. This list includes generals of the type of Anwar el-Sadat and Hosny Mubarak. The former, depicted as “the hero of war and peace”, went in a state of capitulation to the Zionist entity and ended up signing a treaty that has thrown the country into a predicament and given the Zionist interest the precedence over the national and Arab interest. His successor, who is described as the “hero of the first air strike”, has offered the whole of Egypt with all it contains to the Americans and Zionists. If the first air strike was not just a performance of a function required by his job, as described by Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in his dialogues on Al-Jazeera T.V. Channel,  but rather a heroic action, as some tend to claim, this would be the utmost contradiction. The carrying out of duties of a job is a mechanical implementation of a task, whereas the heroic act is a bold performance that is full of initiative and sacrifice. The former is done by any employee or mercenary while the latter is performed by free, great and magnanimous people. This is in fact the difference between the performance of de facto generals and hero generals.
The culture and character of Egypt’s General do not allow him to get to know military models, Egyptian and otherwise, who moved to the realm of politics, driven by their sense of duty and not lured by wealth. The latter have taken account of the dangers facing their countries; none of them has neutralized his army or left it prey to relaxation or allowed it to serve the designs of its enemy. While Egypt’s General is burdening the army and the people with unbearable tasks, forcing them to safeguard the security of the Zionist state, using them as a human buffer wall, stationing the border guards corps on the border with Palestine, on the pretext of preventing the infiltration of weapons or fighters. He supplemented this by turning Egypt into a big concentration camp guarded by generals of another type, who stand ready inside the camps of the Central Security Forces and the offices of the State Security Department.
Egypt’s General has entered the world of politics at the expense of Egypt’s security and the dignity of its people. He has fallen in the Zionist campaign in the West that aims at making people averse to everything that is military, heroic and nationalist in our countries, so much so that cohorts of the “parallel president” have justified his inheritance of his father’s post as a transfer of power from its military phase to its civilian phase. Of course that claim is full of falsehoods and deception. All of that is aimed at maintaining the military barracks called Israel as the only holder of military power who is able to act in the region: its generals turn into politicians and then to prophets, carrying out the Lord’s will in a Torah-type conflict between Goliath and David. A conflict that finds its translation in the modern Zionist literature about the situation between Jews and Arabs.  Let’s move now to the case of generals from the West. Let’s take the example of the most prominent one among them: Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle’s political history has a military basis: his good true nature was revealed after a resounding defeat. He built an honourable record through his leadership of the resistance to the Nazi occupation of his country, his confrontation with other generals who were no less capable than him from the point of view of fighting functions but he had a bigger stature than them on the nationalist level. He had an inspiring spirit that restored confidence to his people’s ability to make victory. The other employee generals capitulated when the Nazi troops entered Paris: they were under the command of an efficient general from the First World War called General Petain, of the same category of Sadat and Mubarak. Once he felt that the balance of power tilted in favour of the Algerian resistance movement (mujahideen), De Gaulle, the politician who had a touch of megalomania, decided to put an end to the French settlement of Algeria after 130 years of presence there. Following the 1967 war setback for the Arabs, he adopted an attitude of denying the supply of weapons to the party that had initiated the aggression. More important still, despite his electoral success, he put his controversial program to a referendum. When  he obtained only 54% of the votes, he left power although the subject of controversy was not his person but rather his program. Nevertheless, he insisted on his resignation.
By contrast, the author of the first air strike can see that dangers are surrounding his country from all sides but still he continues to weaken and neutralize the armed forces. One of the most dangerous aspects of that weakening is neglecting the armed industries, the seed of which was sown by Mohamed Ali and replanted by Gamal Abdel-Nasser.  An aspect that many people are not aware of is that military industries are the basis for the development of civilian industries in all corners of the world. If Egypt’s General just asked his son, the parallel president, who keeps abreast of developments through information media, he would discover that the Internet is a product of the U.S. military establishment during the period of planning for the nuclear confrontation. The Internet was then an invention hidden in deep tunnels under the ground so as to make communications between the components of the United States possible during and after the nuclear war. Maybe one of his assistants would tell him that a reason for the development of Zionist-Indian and Zionist-Chinese relations is the progress of the Zionist military industries.  Unfortunately, the page when cooperation among India, Egypt and Yugoslavia in the 1960s resulted in the production of a warplane was turned over a long time ago.
Egypt’s General has taken over himself the task of weakening its civilian and industrial capability in return for some deals the only benefit of which is the amounts of commission that they bring about. These amounts are in the hundreds of millions and find their way to the pockets of those who have abandoned the defense of the national territory and placed their soldiers under the mercy of enemy strategies. It seems that there are Arab generals of the same type. They are revealed by the schemes designed to absorb the oil revenue surplus. Whoever has followed up the dispatches of news agencies about the Saudi-British deal to replace the Eurofighter Typhoon planes for the tornadoes, would see the beginning of the implementation of that scheme resulting in running the arms industry machines. Another sign is the media incitement to wage a new war. That was evident in the recent decisions of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which have regarded the potential danger of Iranian nuclear capabilities, something that hasn’t materialized yet, as bigger than the danger of the Zionist state’s nuclear arsenal, although the latter’s heads are ready to be launched against Arab and Islamic targets, including ones in the Gulf region, as well as targets inside Iran’s territory.