The Real Egyptian Revolution Will Not Be Brought to You by CNN
Written by: Daniel Greenfield
February 17, 2011“Do you know ALL English Speaking JOURNALISTS are YAHOOD?? (Jews)” – Egyptian Anti-Mubarak YouTube commenter
There are two Egyptian revolutions. The one marketed for Western consumption by Egyptian bloggers and the American media– and the real revolution. The rape of Lara Logan brought that second revolution out of the shadows for the first time. This was certainly not the first sexual assault arising out of the Jan 25 protests. It won’t be the last either. The Western educated Egyptians promoting the protests have always managed to sell the press on the story that all the violence, from the looting of the Egyptian museum, the attacks on reporters, the prison breaks and the mass rapes and robberies were all the work of pro-Mubarak forces. But when Logan was attacked, she was among a crowd celebrating the fall of Mubarak. These were the very people that she and her colleagues had come to Egypt to support.
Egypt
The actual Jan 25 revolution was wildly different from the one depicted in news reports. Behind the veil of English speaking Twitter feeds by young activists, is an angry and bigoted population which hated Mubarak not because he is a tyrant, but because he maintained ties to America and Israel, and refused to aggressively persecute Egypt’s Christians. Egypt is not looking for a Western style democracy. What the Arab street really wants is a tyranny that reflects its values.
Few of the gullible Western supporters who follow the revolution by Twitter, understand just how much the ordinary Egyptian taking part in the protests hates them. Behind all the English language signs produced for the foreign press and the articulate bloggers cultivated by the US and EU governments, is the angry mob who believes that Mubarak was a puppet of the CIA and the Mossad. And who believe the same thing about all the earnest CNN and CBS correspondents who came to be photographed against the background of a revolution. No matter how much the reporters propagandized their cause, the mob was certain that they were there to support Mubarak. That belief is part of the xenophobic identity of Egyptians, and so many others in the Muslim world. The only popular cause in the Muslim world is fought against the Americans– even when the Americans are on their side.
The cries of “Yahood, Yahood” or “Jew, Jew” reportedly shouted at CBS’s Logan while she was being sexually assaulted, reflect two things. Yahood is a common insult in the Middle East. American soldiers in Iraq are referred to as Yahood or Jews. (Some have drawn geopolitical inferences from this, but you only need to turn on South Park to see ‘Jew’ used as an insult in our own hemisphere.) The difference is that in the Muslim world, ‘Yahood’ is far more ubiquitous, and often accompanied by conspiracy theories and violent threats. The negative depiction of Jews is rooted in the Koran, making it ubiquitous through the Muslim world.
The other aspect of it however is the prevalence of conspiracy theories throughout the Arab Muslim world. In Egypt, Nazi propaganda merged with traditional Islamic beliefs to give rise to Islamofascist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood. While Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are given little credibility in civilized nations– they are still highly popular in the Muslim world. Conspiracy theories are the best refuge of failed societies, and the panoply of conspiracy theories in the Muslim world have one common element, the theme of a vast Anti-Muslim conspiracy involving the CIA and the Mossad which prevents them from succeeding.
Pundits like to claim that this is due to the special relationship between America and Israel– but then how does one also explain the ubiquity of “Yahood o Hunood” in Pakistan. “Yahood o Hunood”, which replaces the Mossad-CIA, with a vast Jewish-Hindu conspiracy against Pakistan. While Lt. General Jacob-Farj-Rafael Jacob, a Jewish-Indian, did play a key role in defeating Pakistan in 1971, there has been no extended alliance along the same lines. “Yahood o Hunood” like the taunts of “Yahood” at Lara Logan or US soldiers in Iraq arises from the xenophobia and bigotry of the Muslim world. That bigotry is fed by the Muslim need to blame their failures on a vast conspiracy against them by people who are their inferiors. The parallels to Nazi Germany are too obvious to even be worth going into.
We defeated the coward yahoodie egyptian police staff…we raped them….death to them all….Death to the cowards….The army protected them from total destruction!
Death to Mubarak party. Death to israel. Death to america. ALLAH AKBAR ALLAH AKBAR ALLAH AKBAR!!!Egyptian Forum Commenter
The real Egyptian revolution was mob violence against the targets of their conspiracy theories, rather than a movement toward democracy. Assaults on Western reporters are not an aberration, but the norm. As often as CNN cheers on the revolution, the average Egyptian will still call them Yahood and CIA. Because the average Egyptian is fueled by hate for outside forces, rather than a striving for progress and reform.
Egyptian activists are apologizing to Lara Logan on Twitter, and assuring everyone that this does not represent Egypt. But there are far more Egyptians who harass women, than use Twitter to promote democracy. The assault on Logan represents Egypt far better than Jan 25 hashtags.
Sexual violence is also a routine part of Egyptian mob scenes. In 2006, a crowd celebrating Eid Al-Fitr began assaulting every woman in sight. In 2009 alone, the UK foreign office reported handling nearly 30 cases of sexual assault against British nationals. Under Islamic mores, non-Muslim women are treated are treated as whores. That may be why according to a 2008 study, only 68 percent of Egyptian women complained of being harassed on a daily basis, while 98 percent of foreign women did. When a group of jubilant enthusiasts of democracy found themselves near a Western female reporter without police supervision, what followed was absolutely horrible and terribly inevitable. It is what 98 percent of foreign women in Egypt risk encountering every day.
These are the powerful forces brewing under the surface of a culture where women are held to be inferiors and non-Muslims are distrusted and hated. What the Jan 25th revolution really showed was the deep undercurrent of violence in Egypt, and the impossibility of keeping order without force.
Like the Weimar Republic, any liberal government will be forced to put aside its principles and rely on authoritarian means to keep order. That means turning either to the police, the military or the Muslim Brotherhood as the only forces capable of maintaining order. The police are hated, a permanent military deployment in Cairo will mean a junta and the Muslim Brotherhood will be happy enough to police neighborhood after neighborhood, and eventually the whole country. Democracy lovers are cheering on the promise of a liberal Egypt. But there will be no liberal Egypt. Only a state of temporary chaos broken by spurts of violence, as was the case in Germany between the wars, and Russia between the revolutions, ending finally in an absolute tyranny. Either that of the military or the Muslim Brotherhood.
Learning about the Jan 25th revolution from Egyptian Twitter activists is like learning about the future of Weimar Germany from literary magazines. Forget all the Jan 25 badges and enthusiastic revolutionary rhetoric. The reality is a narrow wedge of activists claiming credit for a much wider range of public anger, and pretending to be able to turn it off with their policy proposals. It’s a shameless scam that will collapse with the collapse of the first liberal government. And the same neo-conservative pundits and journalists will look on baffled, not understanding what went wrong. What went wrong is that Egypt is not England or America. It is an unstable Muslim country with a booming population, which wants low prices, social services and the repression of women and infidels under an Islamic system. They will support anyone who can give these things to them, and bring down anyone who doesn’t. That is your Egyptian democracy.
Liberals and their media damned America for the rapes, robberies and the looting of Iraq antiquities after the fall of Saddam. But exactly the same thing happened in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak– robberies, rapes and the looting of Egyptian antiquities. And the media has taken no responsibility for their participation in the overthrow of a regime. The media which loves to harp on the WMD issue, heavily pushed claims that Mubarak had stolen 70 billion dollars from the Egyptian people and was the richest man in the world. A week later those estimates are down to only a few billion. And that billion will of course never be found, because “sources say” that the money has been moved secretly out of the country. Which makes it conveniently untraceable. And the media will never have to apologize for spreading a lie.
Egypt is the liberal’s Iraq. Except that the regime they overthrew was pro-Western, not genocidal and did not gas children. After having spent 7 years condemning the Bush administration, they orchestrated a far more senseless wave of regime change that opens the door for the Calphate to rule the region.
ElBaradei and his little megaphone have already faded into the past. The Muslim Brotherhood has its own political party now. And key liberal players like Ayman Nour are already pandering to them. If the Muslim Brotherhood can form an alliance with aspiring businessmen, the way Turkey’s AKP Islamists did, then it will be well on its way to taking power. If it can also bring the military and the nationalists on board, the way the Nazis did, then it will have absolute power. But the military’s strategy may be to encourage the chaos, and feed the violence, until America and other revolution have no choice but to ask them to step in. That is the final question. Which totalitarian force will Egyptians choose to order their affairs? The army or the brotherhood.
There are people who lost their lives fightuing for their rights in their own country but a foreign journalist who should know of the danger she is getting herself into are making headlines because she was fondle. If women want to take on jobs that put herself at risk she should learn to grow a spine. As they say if you cant stand the heat then get out of the kitchen.
Sam, your comment is shameful and shows a lot of ignorance. It was the fault of Lara Logan that she is a female reporter performing her job with an expertise that exceeds that of other male reporter instead it was the fault of these crazy maniac egyptian young men who are shameless and backward, seeing nothing in a waman except her genitals.Shame on you and on the young men who have such narrow, indecent and backward islamic mindset that permits them to commit all these atrocities without feeling any guilt or remorse.
As a christian nation we prayed for egypt as it is inherent in our nature to do so. Truth be told, ” WHAT IF” there were a merging of countries…ie middle east with Us. We do not condone killing our children to save face or stoning our daughters because we feel she has an interest in someone other than the man we chose for her. We do not force 8 yr old rape victims {wives} into sexually abusive marriages. We have overcome discrimination of female gender , for the most part, We do not force our women to dress according to their laws, covering all parts of body which promotes male egotism and loathing of women in their own country, not pride. I knew when I was praying for these people {in the back of my mind} they are Absolutely to be feared, as it seems they have no sense of respect for human dignity or human life! Cnn’s propoganda along with all media should be very careful what they promote as it may come back to bite them.
Please, stop bashing the Egyptian revolution, you and all of the world must know, the revolution was about Egyptians inner affairs like poverty,The absence of social justice, Injustice,
Oppression, it is not about US or Isreal, Egyptians deserve better life.
Dear Ashraf, you and I know full well that this so-called revolution is nothing more than muslim brotherhood’s way of ascending to power in Egypt by using ringing slogans like fighting poverty and corruption. What happened in Egypt is that now the country of 7000 years of history has come to an end as a civilized nation.
Following the sequence of conversations only demonstrate the level of ignorance and complete inability to comprehend the reality.
I don’t see how you relate between muslims and the abuse of women “wether sexual or physicological” while all the pornograhic business in the west (US & Europe) “The civilzed modern world” is developed and maintained by those countries! Such a business that is mainly running on the physical and physicological abuse of Women!
I don’t really have the numbers of how many women,children get rapped in the US and Europe on daily basis, but i am quite sure that those figures actaully means something!! I would say a true reflection of your civilization! I am sure that we suffer from the same syndroms in the arab countries but we definetly don’t share the same disease! Our’s was always poverty, social gaps,..etc! I wonder what is your’s?!
Lara Logan was not raped though. She was sexually assaulted, as in probably groped.
As if this is going to make it any better.
I’m sorry — so rape and sexual assault is something which only happens in Muslim countries? I understand a woman is raped every minute in the USA. In Christian Africa it is daily life for women, I’ve seen horror stories of 15-year-old girls being gang-raped in a public parking lot outside their high school in North America and everyone watching, in fact filming and putting it on the internet where it gets thousands of hits – not from Muslims but American Christians. Whatever happened to Ms. Logan in Egypt is horrific but in no means exclusive to Islamic countries. And yet this is the only lesson you decide to learn from Egypt’s revolution? Women face these dangers no matter where they are in the world. I have worked all over the Middle East, Africa and North America and I have felt equally as unsafe in all of those locations. Rape and the exploitation of women is not a Muslim crime, it is a universal one.
It may be a universal problem, that does not mean the severity is the same everywhere. I wonder how many non Muslim countries have the same 98% rate for sexual harassment complaints of foreign women and 68% for the locals.
a true useful idiot. wow. such delusion. i am really impressed at the woman in the usa that is raped every minute. do you have a video? i would like to see that. those rapes in christian africa…….you are concealing the fact that while the victims are christians, the perpetrators tend to be muslim.
horror stories(plural) about 15 year old girls(plural) being publicly raped in north america? you are intentionally vague on the location. is that to make it more difficult to disprove your wild story? how bout some details with your lies? if you have worked all over the world and feel equally unsafe, you are a fool, like logan. or a liar.
Dear female reporter , it is one thing to be raped by a criminal than to be raped by those who raise the slogans of fighting corruption and tyranny.What kind of corruption are they going to fight if they themselves are corrupted,or what kind of tyranny are they going to overthrow if they act tyrannically against a reporter who came to report their jubilation on their supposed victory. Second it is indeed shameful when you don’t how much the quran had debased women by giving the status half that of men and even considered her nothing but the field that should be tilled by her man, then we find someone totally ignorant of islam coming stupidly to defend such a shameful act. You should be ashamed of yourself for such.an ignorant comment
Dear Hany, i am terrified to ask who gave you the noation of possessing any kind of information regarding Islam or Quaraan!
Women were 1st honored in the history of man kind by Islam in the Quaraan.
I suggest that you go through Quarran in Soura “women” and try to understand how GOD orders all muslims to treat “Women”! 30 Pages in the holly Quaraan to educate men on how to treat women! Dignety,respect, honor, mercy,love,…etc are among other words in holly Quaraan on how muslims should treat women!
I haven’t read the whole BiBle but i am sure it has some descriptions on how men should treat women! Yet when civilized countries like US chooses to make pornography a legal trade “where they take sexual advantage of women and use them as a commodity to make money” we should not point finger to the Bible or christianity as a religion being the reason for that!
I would rather say that there are bad christians who don’t follow GOD’s words in the bible and use women in such a savage way to make money!
Only humans tend to relate their differences to religions! While facts remain unchanged, humans are different because they are humans and not because they have different religions!
Daniel Greenfield is correct. The best we can hope for is military dictatorship in Egypt, to delay the inevitable Iranian-style revolution.
Wow. Those of you who seem to be caught up in the finer points of defining “rape” seem to miss the whole point of this article. But while we’re on that topic, are you really saying that the statistical fact of 98 percent of foreign women reporting sexual harassment on a DAILY basis is typical of non-Muslim nations? Do you have ANY FACTS to support this assertion? Or the fact that 68 percent of Egyptian women report similar daily harassment? I defy you to produce similar statistics for any non-Muslim country.
This is at the heart of the issue – the masses of Egypt (and Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia, etc.) are largely uneducated, except in a “religious” doctrine that treats women and non-Muslims as inferior, and is using this revolution as an opportunity to spread that doctrine into their political framework. It will be no surprise to me when Egypt becomes another Islamo-fascist theocracy e.g. Iran.
Wow…just, wow. The thing that really saddens me, is not a single one of you has any clue just how racist you are. You act as if the oppression of women within muslim countries is somehow inherent within their culture. As if they’re simply born with the wife-beating gene. These conditions have materialized after centuries of theocratic rule. And you know what? The United States is partially to blame for that. We have ousted democratic governments in countries like Iran in order to put in place regimes who would give us preferable oil policies. Don’t believe me? I don’t care. If you’re not allergic to being wrong, then go to this website and learn something.
http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/
How can you act as if America doesn’t have a patriarchial history? We have developed over time, and at this point live in a less oppressive society. Women are still exploited, raped, abused, mistreated, underpaid, so on and so forth. It only got better, however, when women fought tooth and nail for equal rights. Here’s an idea, how about we stop the xenophobic bull****, get out of the middle east, and let them take care of their own problems. They don’t need or want our “help”.
Bottom line people, educate yourselves. All this hate is way past old.
No, I’m not saying they are “born” oppressors, but these attitudes are built into the Koran (read it), and most poor Muslims are educated in nothing EXCEPT the Koran, plus the rantings of their imams.
Of course women are exploited and mis-treated in other parts of the world, but nothing near what is happening today in the Islamic world.
And spare us the comparisons to America 200 years ago – much has changed since then, and even then the founding fathers did not require women to wear burkas!
For a real woman’s perspective on how women are treated in Islam, check out:
http://www.theahafoundation.org/
It’s amazing that this article is the ONLY article that quotes what was being said to Lara Logan while she was being assaulted.
It’s amazing that there is no mention of this on any other reliable news source.
*rolling eyes at the amount of b.s. written here*
What’s even sadder is the sheer number of ignorant sheep who will believe the nonsense you have written.
This is why I never believe the “mainstream” media
I am sorry for Logan but this article is very accurate about the nature of the majority of Egyptians. The poor wil take the first “helping” hand and that’s what Muslim Brotherhood is betting on. It was clear to me the day one of the revolution. Why did it take so long – this is the first article of its kind – to come up to the light? If there are some enlightebed educated young people who truly want change and don’t hate west they will be crushed so better shut up about it. I truly hope that Obeyme won’t be so stupiu to keep funding Egypt. Because that will mean funding our ACTIVE FIGHTING ENEMY = Muslim Brotherhood.
Kate, you say that “These conditions have materialized after centuries of theocratic rule. And you know what? The United States is partially to blame for that. We have ousted democratic governments in countries like Iran in order to put in place regimes who would give us preferable oil policies.”
These conditions were there long before the U.S. came along, before America was even discovered. So why blame us? As for Iran, the British asked us to do that. Blame them rather than us.
Actually, the sad thing is not the presence of American imperialism in the Middle East, but the withdrawal of Western cultural imperialism, as a result of leftist squeamishness about “imposing our values on other cultures.” Have you seen the series of photos showing women in Egypt over the last fifty years? Fifty years ago most of the women there were not wearing headscarves, and now most of them are forced to wear them.
I blame you, Kate, you and your cruddy friends.
You missed the entire point of my argument. What a surprise. First of all, concerning Iran, I stated that the U.S. was partially to blame for what took place. The British certainly played a role as well. But we didn’t even so much as hesitate to position ourselves as an instrumental player in the coup, and thus helped to usher in the Islamic fundamentalism we now despise. Ironic, eh?
As far as the rights of women are concerned, I will be the first to say that the current state of sexual discrimination in the middle east is an absolute atrocity. At no point did I make light of that. I was simply commenting on how societal change actually takes place. Looking to the current situation, there are many reports from female activists that the revolution is having a very positive effect on women. Within the protest movement, they are being treated with respect and moving into positions of leadership. This is one article detailing this phenomena:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/02/world/la-fg-egypt-women-20110203
The only reason I drew the comparison to Western culture was to illustrate how progressive change takes place. It happens over time through ardent, committed protest. Rights were not handed to the women in this country because men woke up one day and thought “Wow…I guess we’re being oppressive.” It was not a natural byproduct of living in a Christian society. (By the way, if you think the bible isn’t full of vile platitudes towards women, you obviously haven’t read it). The struggle continues to this day and will likely never cease to be relevant. As an aside, it is inaccurate to compare modern-day Egypt to America 200 years ago. It is more similar to our culture circa the 1950s-1970s; rampant sexual harassment, few women in positions of power, little credence given to the female voice.”
My main point is that we cannot expect to impose democracy and human rights on non-receptive, independent nations. Whether or not it should happen is a moot point. It simply will not work. There is evidence, particularly in Afghanistan, that we’ve actually made things worse. But that’s a different story…
“Rampant” sexual harassment of American women in the 1950s – 70s… really?? On the same scale as occurs in Egypt today?
Again, today 95% of Egyptian women report DAILY harassment by males, including being groped in the street, on buses, etc. I’m old enough to remember that nothing of the kind was happening in the U.S. back then. Yes, there was a some amount of sexual harassment in the workplace, and workplace discrimination, but we continued to evolve beyond most of that as a society. Muslim societies have not.
Just because you were alive during the 1960s, doesn’t mean you understand what it was like from the perspective of a woman. There is not a lot of data from that period, mostly because women had no recourse of action and a majority felt all they could do was ignore it. What we do have, however, shows that sexual harassment and discrimination affected nearly all women on a very consistent basis. I have no difficulty believing that based on what I experience in present time. Men will talk over me, make offensive and sexually charged comments, hit on me at inappropriate times, and yes, men have put their hands on me. And this is in the supposedly highly-evolved United States. I apologize that it’s difficult for me to consider what happens in this country to be inconsequential because it’s worse in the Middle East. That’s like justifying murder by comparing it to genocide.
I will say this one more time-the conditions in the United States did.not.happen.naturally. People had to fight for it. End of story. To claim that Egypt is somehow deficient in their treatment of women because of race or religion completely ignores the impact of repressive rule within a society. People cannot progress when they are kept in chains. To believe that the current backward situation in the Middle East happened within a vacuum shows total ignorance to documented and verifiable United States foreign policy.
You do understand that South Park is satire?
I am deeply saddened that this is being published in even a semi legitimate publication like eurasia review. The racism and fear borders on the hysterical. Not to mention that until Lara Logan herself comes forward with the details of her assault, none of you, nor I, nor Daniel Greenfield (who can’t even spell “Caliphate” correctly) has a right to proclaim a single solitary fact about what happened to her. Let alone draw conclusions about the entirety of Egyptian society based on it. And fyi re: rape of American women, please see the following: http://www.rainn.org/statistics. I could make some pretty interesting generalizations from these.
Please note: I have travelled extensively in the middle east. My entire family is Egyptian. My friends were in Tahrir. I am an Egyptian woman who will tell you right now, that life there is HARD, and yes the men can be difficult, but we are trying to make the country great again and it has nothing, NOTHING to do with the factors this chap has articulated above. Contrary to this racist screed, there is a LARGE middle class in Egypt. Filled with eloquent, industrious people who want real democratic change and not theocracy. Sunni Islam doesn’t even HAVE an ayatollah structure like Shia Islam does. The rest of this “so-called” analysis is so off base as to render it nearly laughable. I would refute each point thoroughly, one by one, but I would be wasting my breath.
I will only say that screed like this demonstrate a near preposterous level of ignorance. It is hurtful and offensive to me personally, and to all of the Egyptians who want to look to the “free” West for models of governmen. You divide us where you could help the people of the world find unity. And that is the saddest thing of all.