Egypt - our enemy's enemy
By LARRY DERFNER
QUOTE
To the Israeli street, the whole peace with Cairo means nothing
From the reaction of the Israeli "street," you would never know that the al-Qaida attacks in Sinai were aimed not only at Israel but at Egypt as well.
Instead, between the grumblings of all the salt-of-the-earth Israelis and the goadings of the popular media, you would think that all of Egypt - from President Hosni Mubarak down to the last Egyptian peasant - was in on the bombings and took great pleasure from them.
It never dawned on people here that this was an attack on Egyptian soil, on a major Egyptian hotel and other Egyptian tourist sites, that nine Egyptians were killed. Somehow Israelis didn't register what every minimally knowledgeable person in the world knows - that this was only the latest in a very long, bloody line of Islamic terrorist attacks on Egyptian targets.
The word was that the Egyptians wanted the Jews to bleed to death. They wanted to torment us. Why else wouldn't they let our people come in, take over, and save the day?
The most telling comment I heard on this subject came from an Israeli security expert on TV who asked the rhetorical question: "If the victims hadn't been Israeli, would the Egyptian bureaucracy have operated any smoother?"
But go tell Israeli chauvinists and the opinion-makers who push their buttons about Arab or Third World bureaucracy. They didn't want to hear it.
The one genuinely despicable thing that did happen in Sinai after the bombings - the looting of corpses and hotel rooms - was blamed on Egypt as a whole, not on a handful of Egyptian scavengers as it should have been.
Thankfully, official Israel, at least at the top, acted with wisdom and decency during this ordeal. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was positively enlightened, thanking Egypt for its cooperation and telling some of his more rabid cabinet ministers to stop creating bad blood.
The Foreign Ministry called the level of cooperation with Egypt "unprecedented," noting that Israel wouldn't have acted so quickly either if it had been asked to let Egyptian soldiers onto its territory after a major terrorist attack. Mossad chief Meir Dagan said the Egyptians showed good intentions throughout.
From the reaction of the Israeli "street," you would never know that the al-Qaida attacks in Sinai were aimed not only at Israel but at Egypt as well.
Instead, between the grumblings of all the salt-of-the-earth Israelis and the goadings of the popular media, you would think that all of Egypt - from President Hosni Mubarak down to the last Egyptian peasant - was in on the bombings and took great pleasure from them.
It never dawned on people here that this was an attack on Egyptian soil, on a major Egyptian hotel and other Egyptian tourist sites, that nine Egyptians were killed. Somehow Israelis didn't register what every minimally knowledgeable person in the world knows - that this was only the latest in a very long, bloody line of Islamic terrorist attacks on Egyptian targets.
The word was that the Egyptians wanted the Jews to bleed to death. They wanted to torment us. Why else wouldn't they let our people come in, take over, and save the day?
The most telling comment I heard on this subject came from an Israeli security expert on TV who asked the rhetorical question: "If the victims hadn't been Israeli, would the Egyptian bureaucracy have operated any smoother?"
But go tell Israeli chauvinists and the opinion-makers who push their buttons about Arab or Third World bureaucracy. They didn't want to hear it.
The one genuinely despicable thing that did happen in Sinai after the bombings - the looting of corpses and hotel rooms - was blamed on Egypt as a whole, not on a handful of Egyptian scavengers as it should have been.
Thankfully, official Israel, at least at the top, acted with wisdom and decency during this ordeal. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was positively enlightened, thanking Egypt for its cooperation and telling some of his more rabid cabinet ministers to stop creating bad blood.
The Foreign Ministry called the level of cooperation with Egypt "unprecedented," noting that Israel wouldn't have acted so quickly either if it had been asked to let Egyptian soldiers onto its territory after a major terrorist attack. Mossad chief Meir Dagan said the Egyptians showed good intentions throughout.
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