Aib Ya Abu al Ghait

Aib Ya Abu al Ghait

Instead of taking a firm stand against Israel’s Nazi-like criminality in Gaza and other Zionist covert efforts to destabilize and weaken Egypt, the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al Ghait reportedly lashed out at the Palestinians recently, vowing that Egypt would “break the legs of those who would cross the borders again.”

These harsh remarks, to say the very least, are unacceptable and shouldn’t have been uttered by the foreign minister of the largest and most powerful Arab country. We simply shouldn’t be talking to each other or about each other in this way. Have we gone mad?

Moreover, the timing of these remarks which are music to Zionist ears, makes them utterly detestable and injurious to the feelings of millions of Arabs and Muslim and their friends around the world who don’t want to see Israeli-Arab contradictions morphed into inter-Arab contradictions.

To begin with, it is an established fact that the thoroughly-tormented and thoroughly-starved 1.5 million Gazans don’t and won’t pose any conceivable threat to the territorial integrity of Egypt, with its 75 million people, nor to Egyptian national security. The real threat comes from Israel, and Israel alone, whose leaders don’t stop threatening Egypt.

Gazans, like all Palestinians, love the Egyptian people. We are one people sharing the same past, present and future. Our pain is one, our hope is one, and our destiny is one. And Egypt’s security is our security, and Palestinian freedom and wellbeing should always be an utmost Egyptian national interest. Indeed, the presence of 1.5 million Arabs at Sinai’s eastern tip is an important strategic asset for Egypt, which ought to be constantly enhanced.

These are axiomatic facts that many Arabs (who don’t live in the American era) still take for granted.

However, the ill-conceived statements by the foreign minister of Egypt, which coincided with a virulent anti-Palestinian campaign in some quarters of the Egyptian media, are making us doubt what we always thought were unquestionable truisms pertaining to the Arab and Muslim umma (nation).

Egypt is not a banana republic and it should never ever accept the status of an American-Israeli puppet state.

Hence, the words and acts of Egyptian officials must never be designed to please and appease the strategic enemies of Egypt and the Arab-Muslim world. True, Egypt does receive around $2 billion dollars from the United States per year. But this is very much at the expense of vital Egyptian national interests.

Indeed, through this annual aid, the Israeli-controlled American government has been holding Egypt by the throat, robbing the biggest Arab country of its free will to develop its industry and economy.

In fact, one wouldn’t cross into the realm of the unknown by arguing that had it not been for this scandalous American blackmail, Egypt would have become the South Korea of the Arab world. Well, if Iran could do it, why can’t Egypt?

The poisonous bribe has actually seriously debilitated Egypt’s ability to survive as a viable country. It has also undermined Egypt’s national security by preventing the country from developing a strategic deterrent against a relentlessly bellicose Israel that is drifting menacingly toward a nationalistic-religious fascism that bears all the hallmarks of 1938-Germany.

It is lamentable that Egypt is willingly accepting to castrate itself for the sake of an annual handout of $2 billion which Egypt effectively pays off in terms of its national dignity, sovereignty and independence.

Egypt is not poor. Egypt has a huge inventory of brainpower which if utilized properly can make wonders. But in order to do that, Egypt needs democracy, an indispensable prerequisite that can transform Egypt’s huge potentials into tangible economic achievements…

I know that Egyptians resent any Arab interference in their internal affairs. And I really respect this natural concern.

But we are brothers, and we love Egypt, we love it so much that we can’t keep silent when Egypt is made to (or duped to) walk on a track that is detrimental to its interests and wellbeing.

“Aib Ya Abu al-Ghait”!!! Shame on you! Don’t you utter these words again, because the people whose legs you would break are your brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. Do good people treat their family in such a manner? Does the big brother break the legs of his younger brothers? Besides, you know who the real bone-broker is.!!

I am saying this because your words were so hurtful, so painful and so sad. Didn’t the Arab poet say “The oppression of relatives is more painful than the blow of a sharp sword!”

We Palestinians are not going to relate to your unfortunate remarks with vindictiveness and malice. Because your wound is our wound and your sorrow is our sorrow. And we both know quite well that Israel is the only beneficiary from an Egyptian-Palestinian misunderstanding.

But, my most dear brother, we must never forget who the real enemy is. It is Israel, our existential enemy, not these impoverished and penned-in Gazans who were forced to break into Egypt to buy flour and food to keep their children alive as President Mubarak himself testified.


Is this too difficult or too complicated for you to understand?