On August 22, several hundred Egyptians and Egyptian-Americans hit the streets of Washington DC to show their support for General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and the regime that overthrew the elected President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup on July 3.
After surrounding the offices of the Washington Post to demand that the paper cover the attacks on Coptic churches (the paper has covered the subject extensively), the demonstrators converged at the Egyptian embassy. There, the rally took on a festive atmosphere, with about 100 demonstrators singing along to nationalistic songs, hailing Sisi as their hero, and chanting against the "terrorist" Muslim Brotherhood and the man simultaneously funding them and receiving their millions: Barack Obama.
Under the heavy influence of ultra-nationalist Egyptian media outlets like CBC and OnTV, which recently rebroadcast a long Fox News segment featuring the right-wing militarist Ralph Peters railing against the Muslim Brotherhood, the demonstrators rattled off a series of conspiracy theories recycled from right-wing American Islamophobes.Blumenthal is a real and courageous journalist. His most recent book is called, "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel." Watch his interviews on The Real News about his views, his new book on Israel and Palestine, and the coup in Egypt: "Max Blumenthal: Something Snapped when Israel Attacked Gaza" -- "US Foreign Policy: Moral Hazards and Absolute Evil" -- "Israel, Anti-Semitism, and Negotiations Without End" -- "Why are Egyptian Liberals Celebrating a Massacre?"
Most of the comments on the YouTube video below are disparaging. Here are three of them:
"The idiocy in here is astounding. If I closed my eyes, I wouldn't know if those were Egyptians talking or Israelis."
"These people sound like pamela geller disciples."
"What a bunch of lunatics?? Are these the seculars in Egypt. I think a sane mb is better than a insane secular."Many of the people commenting on the video are grossly uniformed about events in Egypt, the reasons for the coup, and the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. They don't realize that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood transgressed against Egypt's nationalist, and patriotic identity by bringing religion into politics and declaring Jihad against Syria, a historic neighbour that is currently under attack by thousands of fanatical, USraeli-armed foreign killers.
Syria is being punished because of its independent and defiant stance towards the United States and Israel, so the Muslim Brotherhood was on the wrong side of history by declaring Jihad against a heroic Arabic state.
Facts are facts. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were after power, not democracy. The vast majority of the Egyptian people would much rather have the military in control than live under an overreaching Muslim Brotherhood gang that has no spiritual bond to the current country, and state.
Had Morsi remained in power, the Egyptian military would've been dragged into the war in Syria. What the Muslim Brotherhood was doing was far from "sane." It wasn't serving the national interests of Egypt or the collective interests of Arabs and Muslims.
The Muslim Brotherhood does not believe in the sovereignty of nation states or in helping the poor with large-scale social welfare programs, it is a transnational Islamist organization that seeks to rule the people of Egypt with state terror, totalitarian rhetoric, and the manipulation of religion.
The Egyptian military is far from an ideal ruler, it has done many horrible things such as letting mobs and terrorists attack Coptic churches across the country. But at least it refused to co-sign the destruction of Syria and chose not to go along with USrael's immoral imperialist strategy of raising sectarian strife across the region by backing killers in Al-Qaeda, and xenophobic Jihadist groups against Shiites, Christians, Kurds, and other minorities.
Some of the signs that were held up in the pro-Sisi protests in the video below clearly reflect ignorance. One of them says, "Obama, Whom do you think did 9/11?" implying that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind it, which is totally bogus. But another poster hits the nail on the head: "We don't negotiate with Terrorists. . .We Finance Them - with a photo of President Obama at the bottom."
There is no question that the Obama administration has supported the Jihadist terrorists and diabolical killers in Syria with funding, weapons, and training, and anyone who denies that fact is either ignorant or is flat out lying.
Obviously, there aren't any policy wonks at this pro-Sisi political protest, so what do you expect these people to say and believe? Their country is going through a severe political and social crisis. They don't have all the facts and information, but their collective gut is in the right place. They intuitively know that a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship is the worst thing that could happen to Egypt.
Title: What pro-military Egyptians think of Obama, the Brotherhood. Source: Max Blumenthal. Date Published: August 22, 2013.
