Another betrayal...

Submitted by J.S. (Canada), Nov 22, 2006 at 17:38

As I recall, back in 2002, Colin Powell was supposed to arrange to have the billions of dollars in future U.S. aid monies going to Egypt tied to reforms (that is, the U.S. monies were to have strings attached -- the monies were given contingent upon Egypt enacting economic, democratic, and educational reforms. The program was called the Middle East Partnership Initiative or MEPI -- this initiative was one of the results of 9/11..The Bush administration decided it was no longer appropriate to simply hand over cash to despots.) Of course, Egypt under Mubarek has never bothered reforming, but that has not stopped the flow of U.S. cash and military weaponry.

Karsh in his text, "Islamic Imperialism", notes that Egypt today is one of the world's most virulently antisemitic nations. Karsh writes: "Peace, according to the great 17-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, is not merely the absence of war but rather a state of mind: a disposition to benevolence, confidence, and justice. From the birth of the Jewish national movement, that disposition has remained conspicuously absent from the minds of Arab and Palestinian leaders. Even Anwar Sadat, the man who went farther than any other Middle Eastern leader in accepting the existence of a sovereign Jewish State, could tell his foreign minister during the Camp David Summit of September 1978, a few days before concluding his historic agreement with Prime Minister Begin, that 'we are dealing with the lowest and meanest of enemies...'" (p. 183).

So, nearly 30 years later (after the signing of the peace treaty) are Arab minds any closer to understanding the concept of peace? I don't think so. Neither I guess does Nonie Darwish (see her recent book, "Now They Call Me Infidel.") I don't know what it will take to get the Arab world to renounce violence. But until that occurs (a change in the hearts/minds of Arabs), any talk of "peace" or signing yet more pieces of paper with these cut-throats is to me -- suicidal.

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