This is not the time to criticize Egypt. Here is why.

Intensifying, sudden criticism of Egypt as "equally responsible" for the Gaza genocide is not only grossly inaccurate and dangerous - the timing of the outrage is hardly a coincidence.

This morning I did a radio show with host Frank Sterling on KPFA, Pacifica listener-sponsored radio in the San Francisco Bay Area (I’ll post it when it’s out). This was a homecoming of sorts, because when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley, I listened to KPFA pretty much every day. Almost everyone did. I remember the programs in the same way I remember that specific chill in the Bay Area air that wafted through the tall trees. A soothing coolness, a sense of relaxation. Aaaah….the 90’s…..

Times have certainly changed.

The show was about Gaza and its effect on the rest of the Arab world. I focused on Egypt. The other speaker was Dr. Aisha Jumaan, President of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. I knew Dr. Jumaan in Seattle and it was really a pleasure to see her again and be able to have this discussion, though I already follow her avidly on Facebook. She described the devastation in Yemen, mentioning that Yemen had been bombed Every. Single. Day. for eight years straight. I urge you to step back and reflect on this - I certainly needed a minute to process.

Frank asked me to elaborate on my position that protesting Egypt at this time is playing into the hands of the Greater Israel Project, and that therefore it should not be done. I wanted to reiterate my position in writing, since a lot of people ask me to explain why I feel this way.

First, a bit of history. In 1948 and 1967, Egypt fought wars in support of Palestinian liberation from Zionist encroachment (1948) and Israeli expansionism (1967). I am intentionally characterizing these wars as Egyptians at the time might have. I also find this a useful exercise since in the west we tend to get only the Israeli narrative on these wars. Egypt (along with Syria and Jordan) lost territory during the 1967 war - in Egypt’s case, the Sinai Peninsula. (Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria lost the Golan Heights - when I say, “lost,” I mean those territories came under Israeli occupation. The UN then passed Resolution 242 requiring Israel to give back those territories in exchange for peace. The Arab countries signed on to this. Israel has been in violation of this resolution to this day. But I digress.)

The defeat of Arab armies after the 1967 war (known in the west as the Six Day War) is called al-Naksa in the Arabic-speaking world, “the great catastrophe.” I don’t think I could possibly overstate how devastating this defeat was for the entire Arab world. It made Arab socialists turn into Islamists, and Islamists harden their positions, and led to all manner of ennui and grief. There is a lot more I can say about this very important moment (I wrote a 200 something page MA Thesis on it, as a matter of fact), but I will skip now to 1973, known in the west as the “Yom Kippur War,” a war that Egypt launched against Israel to reclaim the Sinai. That war ended in the Camp David Peace Accords, signed in 1978, by Anwar Sadat (Egypt) Menachem Begin (Israel) and Jimmy Carter (United States). Since then, Egypt and Israel have had a quite stable peace agreement for fifty years. It is often characterized as a “cold peace,” which I find accurate. I mention this to distinguish Egypt’s peace deal from that of other Arab countries at the outset, and to distinguish Egypt’s peace deal with Israel from the Abraham Accords of late, an agreement between Israel and mainly Gulf States (and Morocco) which exchanges normalization with Israel for security and economic deals with the signatories. Note that the countries that signed that accord 1) have not fought wars with Israel, so it is not a “peace deal” and 2) did not condition the just resolution of the Palestine question on signing that agreement. The Gulf State that has not signed is Saudi Arabia; they have said they will not sign until there is a Palestinian state. This situation holds today. I give this history to try to impress upon you the importance of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and the sacrifice of blood and treasure Egypt expended to retain its sovereignty over it.

Skip to the horror that is today. All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, there is an unmistakably coordinated campaign to vilify Egypt, put pressure on Egypt to open the Rafah crossing, and, incredibly, blame Egypt for the Gaza genocide. The latter accusation has reached heights so absurd that Israelis and Palestinians living inside Israel, flying Israeli flags, protested in front of the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv demanding that Egypt end the genocide! The ostensible purpose of the rally was to chastise Egypt for not opening the Rafah crossing. This is a bit odd, since the Rafah crossing on the Gaza side is controlled by Israel, and it is Israel that will not let in the trucks, not Egypt that will not send them. In other words, to put it plainly, Egypt is quite simply not preventing aid from traveling over that border. If you want that state of affairs to change, it follows that you would protest Israel and only Israel, the party that is blocking the border.

So we are left to ask what the protesting is really for. A hint can be found in Netanyahu’s criticism of Egypt, whereby he decries the humanitarian situation in Gaza and urges Egypt to open its borders and let two million Palestinians come into Sinai. Occams’ razor would dictate that if Netanyahu were concerned for those civilians, the quickest move to make would be to personally stop bombing them, maiming them, and destroying every single building in the enclave, but of course his humanitarian concern only extends to scolding Egypt. Let’s break down why Netanyahu wants Egypt to open its borders to Gazans:

– It would empty Gaza of its residents, which would result in the immediate settlement of the enclave with Jewish settlers, the loss of Gaza, and quite possibly the final defeat of the Palestinian struggle.

– It would effectively rob Egypt of its sovereignty over the Sinai peninsula, with two million refugees there, some of whom will resume military operations against Israel from Egypt.

– In that scenario Israel will have casus belli to attack Egypt until it is weakened, carved up, and ultimately destroyed.

Note that Egypt is the strongest standing army in the Arab world.

Note that the peace with Israel has always been cold.

I know that there are economic agreements. I know that Egypt has tilted toward the American sphere (see the above history.) Those are choices. Those are not the same thing as “American puppet” and “Zionist stooge.” They are choices made out of self-preservation. They may not be the right choices. We may not agree with them. But given the set of circumstances in the region, I think there were and are very limited options.

This is why my position is that there has to be no less than a shift in the entire world order for the region to actually be free. My conviction that this is the case has only grown over the years, and frankly, after watching Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, I am personally of the opinion that 100% of all activist efforts at all times should be used toward combatting US-Israeli hegemony in the region, and 0% should be used on the Arab states themselves. I am speaking here about regional foreign policy. I am NOT saying these regimes are not to be held responsible for their domestic oppressiveness. However on this point, we do need to keep in mind that things can, in fact, get even worse, and I am of the firm opinion that if Egypt and the current Egyptian government is tampered with in this current moment of genocide it will be the Egyptian people who will pay the heaviest price.

On the topic of domestic repression, people often ask, “well then why did the regime block international activists from marching toward Sinai? On that topic, I recommend this article and this podcast which critiques the strategy of those transnational activists. For my part, I take what might seem like an uncompromising position, but to be honest, after watching Syria, I’ll take all of the lumps - my position is that there should be no activism and no agitation of any kind, symbolic or otherwise, that threatens the sovereignty of Egypt in any way. Again, this is NOT to say that I approve of how the government handled it, though it certainly could be worse that being turned away and told to go home.

Destabilizing Arab governments (and yes, it destabilizes Egypt to play into the false narrative that it is not letting in aid and is a villain to blame for the Gaza genocide) does not and will not help the Palestinians, and it will harm Egypt. The parties responsible for the plight of the Palestinians are the US and Israel (which I put in one block), and the European countries that support and give Israel cover. That’s it. We need to stay focused.

I’ll end by saying that maybe there are some parties in the Arab world that feel they would benefit from the splintering and weakening of the Egyptian state — Islamist groups and jihadists — whether Egyptian, Palestinian, or otherwise. But that’s for another article.

The Rafah Crossing on the Egyptian side