Having lived in Australia for more than eight years, I learned the very common axiom: “No worries, mate.” Things could be falling apart, but the positive Aussie spirit would always say, “No worries, mate.”
This attitude came to my mind as I watched the Egyptian army and police stand by day after day, watching as the Israeli Embassy in Cairo was surrounded and attacked by an unruly mob.
A few weeks ago, a young man scaled the Israeli Embassy high-rise in Cairo and brought down the Israeli flag. He immediately became a hero on many of the Arab satellite news networks and they were all clamoring to interview him.
This, of course, signaled more radical young people to go further than taking down the Israeli flag. Their subsequent demonstration led them to destroy the wall in front of the Embassy and they then ransacked the Embassy’s offices.
The police and the army made a half-hearted effort to disperse the crowd, but only after a half-hearted appeal from the Obama administration to Egyptian officials to protect the Israeli diplomats.
In an eleventh hour intervention, Israeli Embassy personnel were extracted and smuggled out to a waiting military plane and were safely returned to Israel.
It is a well-known secret that since President Mubarak was ousted in February, Egypt has become a bastion for Hamas. Indeed, the center of Hamas’ power shifted from Damascus to Cairo on that day. Having had a clandestine—and sometimes not so clandestine—alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood for years, Hamas operatives and leadership immediately began to move into the Egyptian heartland. Sinai has now become a center of operation for several Islamic groups from al-Qaida to Jamaat-e-Islami. Now that the Gaza/Sinai border has become very porous, Hamas is calling the shots inside Egypt.
Many Egyptian pundits have warned that mixing Hamas’ terror intentions with Wahhabi funding will mean the end of the Camp David agreement and the cold peace that has symbolized the relationship between Israel and Egypt for the last 29 years.
With an American administration openly and publically repudiating its only faithful ally in the Middle East, namely Israel, the militant groups are now emboldened to attack Israel on every side.
This is the time for all of Israel’s supporters in the United States, particularly Jewish-Americans, to reassess their blind and unquestioning support of the current administration.
Dr. Michael Youssef‘s expertise on the Islamic culture and the Middle East in today’s post-modern world is actively sought by hundreds of thousands of followers around the globe. With a Ph.D. from Emory University in social anthropology, his Egyptian heritage gives him particular insight into the cultural and religious entanglements of international affairs. It is estimated that over 10 million viewers/listeners around the world are tuned in every week through an international Christian media ministry founded by Youssef, www.leadingtheway.org. It broadcasts via radio and television to over 200 countries and in over 20 languages. Follow Youssef, a common sense intellectual and renowned author of 24 books, on twitter @michaelayoussef and through his news blog, www.michaelyoussef.com.
