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Who Will Arrest the Israeli Ambassador?

فبراير 3rd, 2010 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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Who Will Arrest the Israeli Ambassador?
By Alaa Al-Aswany
February 2, 2010
 
In the early hours of the morning of November 17, 2004, Egyptian conscript Amer Abu Bakr Amer was on night guard duty in the Egyptian town of Rafah. With him were two colleagues – Ali Sobhi el-Naggar and Mohamed Abdel Fattah. It was very cold and the time passed slowly. What were the three soldiers talking about? Were they tired and hungry and looking forward to the end of their guard duty so they could have a hot meal and go to bed for a deep sleep? They were in their early 20s, so were they dreaming about finishing their term of military service, starting their lives, getting married and having families? Was one of them talking enthusiastically to his colleagues about the fiancee that he loved? We don’t know the answers but what we do know is that about three o’clock in the morning they noticed an Israeli Merkava tank advancing towards them. The Israeli tank continued to approach until it was twenty metres from the Egyptian soldiers, then suddenly fired a tank round, followed by heavy gunfire which ripped into the bodies of Ali Sobhi el-Naggar and Mohamed Abdel Fattah, killing them instantly. Amer Abu Bakr was seriously wounded and later died in hospital. So three young Egyptians performing their military service were martyred — men who had committed no crime or offence, had never harmed anyone or done anything to upset the Israelis. But the Israeli army killed them in cold blood and in such a brutal manner that it was difficult to recognize their features when they were buried. What did the Egyptian government do when it heard of the massacre? It submitted a strong protest to Israel and described the killing as irresponsible behaviour (What a feeble expression!). Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, quickly contacted President Mubarak and apologized for the incident. How perverse and feeble the word ‘apologize’ looks in this context! People usually apologize when they are late for appointments or tread on their neighbour’s toes unintentionally in the crowded metro, but when three innocent people are killed in this brutal fashion then to make do with an apology is in itself an insult, indicating extreme contempt for the dignity of the victims and for the value of human life. The Israeli authorities promised to carry out an urgent inquiry into the crime but six full years later Israel has not announced the results of the inquiry and maybe it did not carry one out in the first place. Unfortunately the Egyptian government has completely forgotten the three soldiers who were killed and in the meantime dozens of meetings have taken place between Egyptian and Israeli officials, without a single Egyptian official asking for the results of the investigation into those who killed the Egyptian soldiers. But the family of Amer Abu Bakr Amer filed a lawsuit against the Israeli ambassador in Cairo, in his capacity as the representative of the Israeli government. The case went back and forth in the Egypti

المزيد


Can President Obama Protect the Copts?

يناير 30th, 2010 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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Can President Obama Protect the Copts?
By Alaa Al-Aswany
January 26, 2010
 
The U.S. government’s Commission on International Religious Freedom is visiting Egypt this week. The commission consists of nine members, all of them figures prominent in the defence of freedoms. The U.S. president chooses three members, congressional leaders from the ruling party choose two members and leaders from the other party choose the remaining four. The mandate of this commission is to monitor freedom of religion, thought and belief, as stipulated in the U.N. Human Rights Charter. It does not impose sanctions on countries which violate public freedoms but it does issue recommendations which are supposed to be taken into account in formulating U.S. foreign policy. According to newspaper reports, the visit of the freedoms commission to Cairo had been fixed earlier but it takes on special importance now, in the aftermath of the horrendous Naga Hammadi massacre in which six innocent Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed at random as they were coming out of church on Christmas Eve. In fact the commission’s visit at this time raises more than one issue:
Firstly, any investigation or inquiry by an official commission from another country is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the country where the inquiry takes place. Egypt, at least officially, is not a U.S. state or colony, so the commission cannot grant itself the authority to investigate in Egypt. We wonder what would happen if the Egyptian parliament set up a commission to investigate the war crimes which U.S. troops commit in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Would the U.S. administration agree to receive the Egyptian commission and allow it to carry out its inquiry? Unfortunately the answer is obvious. The sad thing is that the Egyptian government plays the national sovereignty card selectively and tendentiously. When Egyptians call for independent international election observers so that elections are not rigged in the usual manner, the Egyptian government forcefully rejects the idea on the grounds of national sovereignty. When the Egyptian government joins Israel in besieging one and half million human beings in Gaza and the people under siege try to cross into Egypt to save their lives by buying their basic needs, the Egyptian government prevents them, again on the grounds of national sovereignty, and orders troops to open fire on them. Then Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit shouts out: “If any Palestinian crosses the border, I’ll break his leg.” But in the case of the members of the U.S. freedoms commission, who are now touring Egypt freely from north to south and making inquiries into Egyptian affairs, neither Aboul Gheit nor anyone else can say a single word objecting to their presence.
Secondly, the purported objectives of this commission are admirable and noble but, as always happens in U.S. foreign policy, there is a vast gap between the mission statement and its implementation. The president of the commission, Felice Gaer, is one of the biggest and most prominent supporters of Israel in the United States and has a long history of defending Zionism, to the extent that she has accused international organizations including the United Nations of pursuing unjust and biased policies against Israel. I really cannot understand how Ms Gaer can reconcile her defence of human rights with her defence of Israeli policies. What

المزيد


Why Are We Falling Behind as the World Progresses?

يناير 19th, 2010 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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Why Are We Falling Behind as the World Progresses?
By Alaa Al-Aswany
January 19, 2010
 
A few months ago the scientist Ahmed Zewail was appointed scientific adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, and when Dr Zewail went to meet President Obama the White House officials gave him an entry pass stating his name and his position, but he noticed that at the bottom of the pass they had written the word ‘temporary’. Surprised at this, the scientist went to a senior White House official and asked: “Why have they written the word ‘temporary’ on my pass?”. The official smiled and said: “Dr Zewail, you’re working as an adviser to President Obama, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“President Obama himself is temporary,” the official said.
When Dr Zewail told me of this incident, I thought it is significant in several ways. The U.S. president, like the president in any democratic country, holds office for four years, extendable to eight if he is re-elected, after which he cannot remain in office a single day longer. The president obtained office because the people chose him of their own free will, and he is liable to strict oversight in everything related to himself and his family. Because he owes his office to the public and is liable to oversight by the people, he does his best to fulfil the promises on the basis of which the electors voted for him. This necessarily impels him to seek out the most competent people in the country to benefit from them in serving the people. That’s what happens in democratic countries, whereas we in Egypt have a president who holds on to power until his inevitable end overtakes him — a practice which definitely has serious repercussions, whoever the president may be and however good his intentions.
Firstly, the president in Egypt does not take office through the choice of the voters but through the power of the security agencies and their ability to suppress opponents, so he does not attach much weight to public opinion, knowing that his survival in office does not depend on people liking him but rather of the ability of the security agencies to protect him from any rebellion or coup. The security agencies in Egypt are the authority that has the decisive say in every sphere and in every detail, starting with the appointment of the mayor in the smallest village to the appointment of deans of faculties and university presidents, even allowing political parties to be formed, granting licences to publish newspapers and satellite channels, to appointing and dismissing ministers. So many competent people have been candidates for ministerial office but were immediately disqualified when the security agencies objected to them. And so many incompetent people have been elevated to senior positions thanks to support from the security agencies. Among the countries of the world Egypt is in a uniquely abnormal situation: the state spends nearly 9 billion pounds a year on the Interior Ministry, twice the budget of the Health Ministry (which is less than 5 billion pounds a year). In other words the Egyptian regime spends

المزيد


Who Killed the Egyptians on their Feast Day?

يناير 14th, 2010 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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Who Killed the Egyptians on their Feast Day?
By Alaa Al-Aswany
January 12, 2010
 
In 1923 a committee was formed to draw up the first Egyptian constitution, but the Wafd (the majority party at the time) announced it would boycott the committee because it was set up by appointment rather than through free elections. The committee nonetheless included some of the best minds in Egypt and witnessed an elevated political and intellectual debate about the articles proposed for the Egyptian constitution. Some voices vociferously demanded proportional representation for the Copts, in the sense that Copts would always have a certain percentage of the seats in parliament and on local councils. The proposal soon become a major national issue. Those who favoured proportional representation wanted fair treatment for the Copts and hoped to avert the possibility of British intervention in Egypt on the pretext of protecting the minorities. Those who opposed it refused to view the Copts as a religious minority rather than as Egyptian citizens who should be judged solely on merit. The surprising thing is that most of those who opposed proportional representation were Copts. Besides Dr Taha Hussein, a Muslim, the opponents included the thinker Salama Mousa, Professor Aziz Merhom, who collected the signatures of 5,000 Copts opposed to the proposal, Father Boutrus Abdel Malik, the chairman of the church’s General Congregational Council, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church and many other Copts.
In the end the proposal was defeated and the Copts decisively left their mark on the modern history of Egypt by refusing to accept sectarian privileges under any guise. I recalled that battle when I was reading about the horrific Naga Hammadi massacre in which six Copts were shot dead as they were coming out of church at Coptic Christmas. The question is: why, 90 years ago, did the Copts refuse to accept any sectarian privileges and why are they now being massacred on Christmas Day at church doors? In my opinion these are some of the reasons for the crisis:
Firstly, Egyptian history shows that sectarian strife spreads during times of national frustration. At the beginning of the 20th century Egyptians went through a phase of despair because of the British occupation and this soon turned into a shameful bout of sectarian conflict (British fingers meddled, as usual), which reached its peak between 1908 and 1911. But as soon as the 1919 uprising happened, everyone united behind it. In fact some Copts, such as Father Sergius, had been advocates of conflict and at the time of the uprising they converted to become the fiercest defenders of national unity. There is plenty of frustration, repression, poverty and injustice in Egypt now, and all these factors push Egyptians towards sectarian hostility, just as they push them towards violence, crime and sexual harassment.
Secondly, in 1923, when the Copts rejected sectarian privileges, in spite of the British occupation, Egypt was fighting to set up a democratic state based on citizenship. There was a tolerant Egyptian reading of Islam, the foundations of which were laid by the reformist imam Mohamed Abduh (1849-1905), who was able to liberate the minds of Egyptians from superstition and extremism. Egypt witnessed a true renaissance in all spheres of activity, such as education for women, theatre, cinema, and literature. But since the end of the 1970s, Egypt has come to know another understanding of Islam – the extreme Wahabi salafist ideology which Egyptian jurists have termed ‘the law of the Bedouin’. Several factors contributed to the spread of the Wahabi ideology, primarily the rise in oil prices after the 1973 war, which gave salafist organizations unprecedented financial resources which they used to propagate their ideas in Egypt and the rest of the world. Then millions of Egyptians moved to work in the Gulf states and came back years later steeped in Wahabi ideas. This ideology also spread under the

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Alla Al Aswani et le mur d’acier

يناير 6th, 2010 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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Alla Al Aswani et le mur d’acier
 
نقلا عن مدونة الآستاذ / جلال الغربي أستاذ الأدب الفرنسي بالجامعة التونسيةhttp://jalelelgharbipoesie.blogspot.com/2010/01/alla-al-aswani-et-le-mur-dacier.html
 
 
Voici l’article publié par Alaa Al Aswani sur le mur d’acier que l’Egypte est en train d’ériger sur sa frontière avec la bande de Gaza. Il est à regretter que Al Aswani ne développe pas le titre de son article qui insinue que cette construction est le prix que Moubarak doit payer pour pouvoir assurer la succession à son fils Jamel.
Phrase intercalée
Gaza paiera-t-elle le prix de la succession ?
Alaa Al Aswani
 
Après que le journal israélien Haaretz a publié l’information et que l’administration américaine l’a reconnue, le gouvernement égyptien vient de confirmer qu’il est en train de construire un mur en acier le long de la frontière avec Gaza afin de condamner les tunnels utilisés par les Palestiniens dans la contrebande des produits alimentaires et des médicaments. Et ce dans le contexte du blocus asphyxiant imposé par Israël depuis deux ans, blocus auquel l’Egypte a participé en fermant le passage de Rafah devant les Palestiniens. Nous aurions ici quelques remarques à formuler :
1) L’objectif du blocus de Gaza, tel que défini par Israël, est de venir à bout de la résistance palestinienne et d’affamer les habitants de Gaza afin de les mettre à genoux et de leur faire accepter les conditions israéliennes d’un règlement final qui leur ferait perdre à jamais leurs droits. Mais la résistance mythique des Palestiniens a poussé Israël à commettre des massacres sauvages dans lesquels il a employé des armes interdites par la législation internationale, armes dont furent victimes plus de mille quatre cents Palestiniens composés, au moins pour la moitié, de femmes et d’enfants. Malgré les massacres et le blocus, les Palestiniens ne se sont pas rendus, ils ont continué à lutter courageusement ce qui a poussé Israël à imaginer le moyen de les étrangler définitivement. Il est certain que le mur d’acier souterrain est essentiellement une idée israélienne. Le gouvernement égyptien a hésité à la mettre en œuvre puis il a consenti dernièrement et a commencé à le mettre en place ce mur fabriqué et financé par les Américains. L’objectif de ce mur est littéralement de tuer les Palestiniens parce qu’il anéantit l’ultime moyen qu’ils ont pour obtenir des produits alimentaires

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The Importance of Being Human

يناير 5th, 2010 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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The Importance of Being Human
By Alaa Al-Aswany
January 5, 2010
 
Imagine you’re a Westerner from Sweden, France or the United States. Would you rather spend Christmas and New Year at home or would you like to spend it lying on the tarmac in the streets of Cairo? The first option is the natural choice because every human being likes to spend the holidays in comfort and respected amongst his family. But the second option is what 1,400 peace-loving foreign activists from 42 different countries around the world chose to do. They came to Egypt to declare their full solidarity with the Palestinians under blockade in Gaza, bringing them all the food and medicine they could carry. At first the Egyptian authorities agreed to let the activists in but when they arrived in Cairo the authorities suddenly decided to stop them going to Gaza. When they protested the government tried to distract them by offering them free tourist trips, but they turned them down and insisted on sending the food and medicine to the Palestinians. At that point the Egyptian police attacked them, dragged them along the ground and beat them brutally. These unfortunate events are significant in more than one way:
Firstly, these foreign activists are intellectuals, writers, artists and professionals. Each one of them enjoys a dignified life in his or her own country, and some of them have reached old age, a stage of life where they need to rest. But they all share an active humanitarian conscience which makes them refuse to stand watching the intentional starvation of a million and a half Palestinians in Gaza, after a tight Israeli blockade which has lasted more than two years and after a massacre in which Israel used internationally prohibited weapons which led to the killing of 1,400 people, most of them civilians. These chivalrous people who came from their countries to defend the rights of our people in Palestine are merely a sample of those in the West who love peace and justice. They are the people who demonstrate against racism, the brutality of capitalism, globalization policies and the destruction of the environment by big industrial companies. They are the ones who came out in their millions to protest against the U.S. attack on Iraq. Even if they have not yet succeeded in influencing the decision-makers in their governments, they are part of a broad movement which is growing in strength and popularity day by day.
Secondly, the lesson which these activists teach is that our primary duty is to defend the oppressed anywhere and that our sense of being part of humanity takes precedence over any other affiliation. The question here is: “Do any of us feel themselves to be primarily Muslim, Christian or Arab, or do they consider themselves to be humans before anything else?” The true answer is not contradictory, because all religions aim to defend the major human values: justice, truth and freedom, but the moment we consider ourselves superior to others on grounds of religion or race we quickly descend into hatred and chauvinism. In the same week that these foreigners arrived bringing aid for the children of Gaza extremists in Egypt made several deplorable appeals warning Egyptian Muslims not to join their Christian compatriots in Christmas celebrations. This illustrates two incompatible views of the world – one tolerant, defending the rights of all humanity without discrimination, the other extremist, hating and despising those who are different and refusing to recognize their rights. Most of those foreign activists were Christians, with some Jews, but they were strongly opposed to Israel’s criminal policies. An 85-year-old woman in a wheelchair by the name of Hedy Epstein was among them – a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. In spite of her old age and her deteriorating health she insisted on herself carrying food

المزيد


Should Gaza Pay the Price for Hereditary Succession in Egypt?

ديسمبر 31st, 2009 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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Should Gaza Pay the Price for Hereditary Succession in Egypt?
By Alaa Al-Aswany
December 29, 2009
 
After the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published the news and the U.S. administration confirmed it, the Egyptian government has finally admitted it is building a steel wall under ground along the border with Gaza to close down the tunnels which the Palestinians use to smuggle food and medicine. The smuggling is in response to the crippling blockade which Israel has imposed for more than two years and to which Egypt has contributed by closing the Rafah border crossing to Palestinians. We have several observations to make:
Firstly, the aim of the blockade, as announced by Israel, is to wipe out the Palestinian resistance and starve the people of Gaza until they submit to Israel and accept Israel’s conditions for a final peace settlement in which the Palestinians would lose their rights for ever. But the legendary resistance of the Palestinians drove Israel to commit a brutal massacre in which it used weapons which are prohibited internationally and in which more than 1,400 people lost their lives, at least half of them women and children. In spite of the massacre and the blockade the Palestinians have not capitulated but have continued to resist valiantly, driving Israel to think of a way to strangle them once and for all. It has been established that the underground steel wall is basically an Israeli idea which the Egyptian government was reluctant to implement. But Egypt then agreed and began to build the wall, which is being constructed with American finance and under American supervision. The purpose of the wall is to kill the Palestinians literally, because it will eliminate their last chance to obtain food.
Secondly, by closing the Rafah crossing, preventing Arab and international relief convoys from reaching Gaza and then by building the steel wall to starve the Palestinians, the Egyptian government is regrettably committing heinous crimes against our brothers as Arabs and as fellow humans. Arab solidarity and Egypt’s duty towards the Muslims and Christians in Palestine are no longer considerations which count for anything for Egyptian officials, who openly ridicule them. But the Egyptian regime, in its enthusiasm to please Israel, has not taken into account that it is tarnishing its own reputation throughout the world. The Gaza massacre a year ago has already destroyed what remains of Israel’s international reputation and the voices of condemnation have grown louder in Western countries to an unprecedented extent. In October former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went to make a speech at the University of Chicago and found himself surrounded by hostile chants by students shouting in his face: “Butcher of Gaza, child-killer”, and several Western judges have issued warrants against Israeli leaders to answer charges of committing war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon. That has happened in Belgium, Norway, Spain and recently in Britain, where the British police were about to arrest former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, had she not escaped at the last minute. It is true that most of these warrants were withdrawn because of massive Zionist pressure on the Western governments, but they clearly demonstrate an international mood of condemnation towards Israel which never existed in the past. The Egyptian regime, by building this wall, is not only risking its popularity in Egypt and the Arab world, which is already at rock-bottom, but is staining it reputation worldwide.
Thirdly, all the excuses which the regime presents to justify building the wall would not convince a small child. They say that Egypt is free to build the wall as long as it is inside Egyptian territory, overlooking the fact that the freedom of any state, by custom, logic and international law, is not absolute but restricted by the rights of others, and Egypt cannot be instrumental in starving one and a half million human beings who live next door, and then claim it is free to

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When will we learn from the people?

ديسمبر 23rd, 2009 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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When will we learn from the people?
By Alaa Al-Aswany
December 22, 2009
 
This is an incident I witnessed myself a few years ago. I was walking in downtown Cairo and stopped to buy some newspapers from the woman who sells them there. I found the newspapers and books spread out on the pavement as usual but the woman wasn’t there. I thought she must have gone off on some errand and would come back so I stood around waiting for her. But I soon noticed a sign placed on top of the newspapers, written in large crooked letters. The woman said in the sign that the police had arrested her unfairly at the instigation of the owner of the shoe shop nearby and that she supported her orphaned children with the money she made selling newspapers. She asked customers to take whatever newspapers they wanted and put the money in a cardboard box with a slot cut in the top, placed on top of the newspapers. I took a newspaper and put the money in the slot, and then I had the idea of watching what other customers would do. I moved away and observed what happened for a full half-hour. Several customers came along, looked surprised, hesitated a moment, then took the papers they wanted and put the money in the slot. One person behaved differently: after taking a newspaper he opened the box, took out some of the money, put a large banknote inside and then closed the box, in other words he used the money in the box to make change for his banknote. Later I thought about what happened. These were ordinary Egyptians who suddenly found themselves unmonitored. Any one of them could have taken for free as many newspapers and magazines as he wanted, or even taken the cash from the box, but they all behaved honestly and made sure they paid the woman in full. I also thought that these same passers-by, despite behaving honourably in the case of the woman selling newspapers, might behave quite differently in other situations. If, for example, they could avoid paying their taxes, they would not hesitate for a moment. What is it that made the same people honest with the newspaper woman and then find devious ways of evading taxes? The reason is that in the first case they faced a real and just cause: a woman struggling to bring up orphans and unjustly arrested by the police. But the state’s taxes they see as a specious cause because they know how corrupt the government is and that in Egypt it is the poor who pay their taxes in full while the rich and powerful usually resort to big accounting firms which help them evade taxes by legal means. They also know that taxes are rarely spent on services for the people. Those simple passers-by make up a sample of the great bulk of the Egyptian people. Members of the ruling National Democratic Party, people affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, political activists and members of all political parties put together account for no more than five million Egyptians at the very most. That means there are 75 million Egyptians who make up the silent majority in Egypt, completely withdrawn from political life. The reasons for this withdrawal are threefold, in my opinion:
Firstly, Egyptians do not trust anything the regime does or says. In fact, they read official statements in the sense opposite to the sense intended. For example, if the Ministry of Health announces that a certain disease is

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The Chameleons Attack ElBaradei

ديسمبر 16th, 2009 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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The Chameleons Attack ElBaradei
By Alaa El Aswany
 
The story began in an ordinary way. A dog in the street attacked a passer-by and bit his finger. The
man shouted out in pain and people gathered around him. A policeman happened to be passing,
looked into the incident and decided he should arrest the owner of the dog and charge him with
leaving his dog loose without a muzzle and putting people’s lives at risk. The policeman asked
whose dog it was and one of the bystanders said it belonged to the general, the governor of the city.
The policeman looked embarrassed and his attitude quickly changed diametrically. Instead of
talking about arresting the dog’s owner, the policeman turned to the injured victim and started to tell
him off aloud. “Listen,” he said, “it’s a gentle creature, very docile and well-behaved. It’s you who
provoked it. It’s you who blew smoke in its friendly face, which forced the poor dog to bite your
finger in self-defence. I’m going to arrest you on a charge of provoking the dog.” That’s the gist of a
wonderful story called A Chameleon by the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), and
the message of the story is that some people, for the sake of their narrow little interests, change their
colour like chameleons and without embarrassment switch their position from one extreme to the
other. I remembered this story while following the savage campaign which the regime’s scribes have
been waging in recent days against Dr Mohamed ElBaradei. For years this man has been the object
of official honours, so much so that the Egyptian state awarded him the Nile Medal, the highest
decoration in the country. At that time the regime’s scribes vied to recount his virtues and
accomplishments (all of them real), but as soon as Egyptians spoke out and called on ElBaradei to
stand for the presidency, the scribes, like the policeman in Chekhov’s story, switched to the opposite
extreme. They heaped curses on ElBaradei’s head, and tried to minimize his importance and tarnish
his reputation. Leaving aside their professional and moral degradation, there are several reasons
why the regime’s scribes are so terrified of Mohamed ElBaradei:
Firstly, it’s now hard for Egyptians to find a better presidential candidate than Dr Mohamed
ElBaradei, who is highly educated (a doctorate in international law from New York University) and
has more international and political experience than President Mubarak had when he become
president. He has widespread international connections and enjoys respect throughout the world. He
has won several major international prizes, besides the Nobel Peace Prize. More important than all
that is the fact that in his great success ElBaradei has not depended on connections or relatives. He
has proved himself by his hard work, his talent and his dedication. That makes him a real model for
millions of young people in Egypt.
Secondly, in all situations ElBaradei has shown that he says what he believes and does what he
says. He stood alone against tremendous pressure from the United States and in 2003 issued a report
in which he told the U.N. Security Council that the International Atomic Energy Agency, which he
headed, had found no trace of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, thereby removing the cover of
legitimacy from the U.S. attack on Iraq. He brought up another outrage by the United States when
he asked what had become of 377 tonnes of explosives which disappeared from Iraq after the U.S.
occupation. After that he took the same honest and courageous position against war on Iran. All this
made the United States strongly oppose renominating him for his post in 2005. As for Israel, it
accuses him of loyalty to Arab and Islamic states.
Thirdly, after ElBaradei reached the pinnacle of professional achievement, he could have gone
into a comfortable retirement and lived with honour and esteem in Egypt or abroad. He could have
flattered President Mubarak with a few words, as many others do. The regime would then adore
him, embrace him and maybe give him a senior position in government. But ElBaradei showed that
his love for his country and his commitment to his principles were greater than any personal
considerations or interests. I have heard from witnesses how ElBaradei met senior officials of the

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The Art of Pleasing the President

ديسمبر 1st, 2009 كتبها علاء الأسوانى نشر في , translated articles, 

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The Art of Pleasing the President
By Alaa Al-Aswany
December 1, 2009
 
I wouldn’t have believed it happened unless I had seen it myself on a tape recorded by the Mehwar channel during the recent conference of the National Democratic Party. Mrs Suzanne Mubarak arrived in the hall surrounded by bodyguards, and ministers and officials rushed to greet her. The minister of manpower, Aisha Abdel Hady, then approached her and started to follow her. The minister was speaking about a subject which did not seem to interest Suzanne Mubarak but she kept listening to the minister with a polite smile on her face. Then suddenly, in front of everyone, including the photographers and the television cameras, Aisha Abdel Hady bent down towards Suzanne Mubarak’s hand and started to kiss it. The scene looked very strange. For a man to kiss a woman’s hand is a French custom which is not widespread in Egypt. Egyptians might kiss the hand of their mother or father to express deep respect but apart from that, kissing hands in our country is considered to be incompatible with one’s dignity and self-respect. In 1950 the Wafd Party had been out of power for some years and when the party was asked to form the new government Wafd leader Mustafa el-Nahhas met King Farouk. El-Nahhas leant down to kiss his hand – a scandal which followed Mustafa el-Nahhas until his death. What would impel a government minister to bend down and kiss someone’s hand? The truth is that Aisha Abdel Hady never dreamed that she would become a minister – for the simple fact that she never completed her basic education, in other words she failed to graduate from preparatory school but managed to become a minister in a country which has tens of thousands of people with doctorates. Aisha Abdel Hady understands that she was not appointed minister because of her competence or her capacity to do the job, but only because the president and his family approve of her, and in order to retain the presidential approval she is fully prepared to do anything, including kissing the hands of the president, his wife and his sons. The question is: can we expect Aisha Abdel Hady to defend the dignity and rights of Egyptians as she should in her role as minister of manpower? The answer is absolutely not. Thousands of Egyptians who work in the Arab Gulf states are robbed of their dues by their sponsors, are mistreated and humiliated, and are often detained and flogged unjustly. They wait for the government of their country to defend their rights but Aisha Abdel Hady, who kisses hands, does nothing for them. On the contrary, two years ago Aisha Abdel Hady announced she had made an agreement with the Saudi authorities to provide thousands of Egyptian maids to work in Saudi homes. This extraordinary deal shocked Egyptians, firstly because Egypt has hundreds of thousands of highly qualified people who are more eligible to obtain contracts to work in the Gulf, secondly because sending Egyptian women to work as maids is incompatible with the most basic rules of national dignity and puts them at risk of being humiliated or sexually abused, thirdly because many Egyptian women have intermediate or advanced qualifications but under pressure of poverty and unemployment are forced to agree to work as maids, and fourthly because the Saudi authorities, who are strict in all religious matters and require that women are accompanied by a close male relative when they go to the country on pilgrimage or umra, did the opposite this time and asked for the Egyptian maids to go to Saudi Arabia unaccompanied. Aisha Abdel Hady defended the deal she made for the maids, saying there was nothing shameful about domestic service and advising her opponents to abandon their meaningless sensitivities. I remember that one Egyptian intellectual, Dr Ayman Yahya, decided at the time to respond to the minister in a practical and inventive way. He placed an advertisement on the front page of al-Karama newspaper reading: “Wanted: a Saudi livein maid for a wealthy Egyptian family. Attractive salary.” He left his telephone number for people to call and over several weeks he received a barrage of curses and insults from dozens of Saudis who thought the advertisement was insulting to their country. Under pressure of public opinion Aisha Abdel Hady was forced to back down on sending the maids to Saudi Arabia, but she came back and announced last month that she had reached a new agreement to send Egyptian maids to Kuwait this time. I don’t know why some officials in the Gulf insist on bringing maids from Egypt instead of Egyptian doctors, engineers and other qualified Egyptian professionals of the kind who can take credit for the progress which the Gulf has

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