Sisi Is Not Mubarak

al sisiOriginally published by the Jerusalem Post

The Egyptian court’s decision last Saturday to acquit former president Hosni Mubarak, his sons and associates of all remaining charges against them caused most commentators to proclaim that current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi has turned back the clock. Under his leadership, they say, Egypt has restored Mubarak’s authoritarian regime under a new dictator.

While this may be how things appear on the surface, the fact of the matter is that at least as far as Israel is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth.

During his 30-year rule, Mubarak always assessed that threats against Israel were unrelated to threats against Egypt. Due to this view, despite continuous complaints from Jerusalem, Mubarak enabled jihadists to take root in Sinai. He allowed Egypt to be used as the major path for terrorist personnel and armaments to enter Gaza. He took only minor, sporadic action against the smuggling tunnels connecting Gaza to Sinai.

By 2005, it became apparent that forces from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al-Qaida were operating in the Sinai and cooperating with one another.

Despite warnings from Israel, Mubarak took no effective action to break up the emerging alliance and convergence of forces.

It was due to Mubarak’s refusal to act that the Palestinians in Gaza were able to begin and massively expand their projectile war of mortars, rockets and missiles against Israel. From the first such attacks, carried out 14 years ago, the Palestinian projectile campaigns could never have happened without Egypt’s effective collaboration.

On countless occasions, Palestinian terrorist commanders were able to escape to Sinai and avoid arrest by Israeli forces, only to return to Gaza from Sinai and continue their operations.

Mubarak believed that Israel was his safety valve.

By facilitating jihadist operations against Israel from Egyptian territory, he assumed that he was securing Egypt from them. As he saw things, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran would be so satisfied with his cooperation in their jihad against the Jews that they would leave him alone.

It was only in 2009, when Egypt announced the unraveling of a terrorist ring in Sinai comprised of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hamas and Hezbollah operatives planning attacks against Israel and Egypt, and seeking the overthrow of the regime, that Mubarak began signaling he may have misjudged the situation. But even then, his actions against those forces were sporadic and half-hearted.

Hamas’s continued assaults against Israel in the years that followed, and the build-up of Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida forces in Sinai, were a clear sign that Mubarak was unwilling to contend with the unpleasant reality that the very forces attacking Israel were also seeking to overthrow his regime and destroy the Egyptian state.

In stark contrast, Sisi rose to power as those selfsame forces were poised to destroy the Egyptian state. The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power owed in part to the support it received from Hamas.

During the January 2011 rebellions against Mubarak, Hamas operatives played a key role in storming Egyptian prisons in Sinai and freeing Muslim Brotherhood leaders – including Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi – from prison. In 2012 and 2013, Hamas forces reportedly served as shock troops to quell protests against the Muslim Brotherhood regime. Those protests arose in opposition to Morsi’s moves to seize dictatorial powers Mubarak never dreamed of exercising, and his constitutional machinations aimed at transforming Egypt into an Islamic state and hub of a future global caliphate.

Sisi and his generals overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood with Saudi and UAE support in order to prevent Egypt from dissolving into a Sunni jihadist axis in which Hamas, al-Qaida and other jihadist movements were key players, and Iran and Hezbollah were allied forces.

Due to the events that propelled him to power, Sisi has adopted a strategic posture far different from Mubarak’s. As Sisi sees things, Sunni jihadist forces and their Iranian-led Shi’ite allies are existential threats to the Egyptian state even when their primary target is Israel. Sisi accepts that Israel’s fight against them directly impacts Egypt.

He recognized that when Israel is successful in defeating them, Egypt is more secure. When Israel is weak, the threat to Egypt rises.

Like Israel, Sisi acknowledges that the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is shared by Hamas, al-Qaida and all other significant Sunni jihadist groups renders all of these groups threats to Egypt. And because of this acknowledgment, Sisi has abandoned Mubarak’s policy of enabling their war against Israel.

Not only has he abandoned Mubarak’s policy of enabling them, Sisi has acted in alliance with Israel in combating them. This is nowhere more evident than in his actions against Hamas in Gaza.

After seizing power in July 2013, Sisi immediately ordered the Egyptian military to take action to secure the border between Gaza and Sinai. To this end, for the first time, Egypt took effective, continuous steps to block the smuggling of arms and people between the two areas. These steps had a profound impact on Hamas’s regime. Hamas went to war against Israel this past summer in a bid to force Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza in support of the Hamas regime and its jihadist allies.

Hamas was certain that footage of suffering in Gaza would force Egypt to oppose Israel, and so open its border with Gaza. It would also lead to US-led pressure on Israel that would make Israel succumb to Hamas’s demands.

Against all expectations, and previous precedents of Egyptian behavior under both Mubarak and Morsi, Sisi supported Israel against Hamas. Moreover, he brought both Saudi Arabia and the UAE into the unofficial alliance with Israel. The bloc he formed was powerful enough to surmount US pressure to end the war by bowing to Hamas’s demands and opening Gaza’s borders with Egypt and Israel.

Since the cease-fire came into force three months ago, Sisi has continued to seal the border. As a consequence, he has denied Hamas the ability to rebuild Gaza’s terror infrastructure. In its reduced state, Hamas is less able to facilitate the operations of its jihadist brethren in Sinai that are primarily involved in waging an insurgency against the Egyptian state.

To be sure, the most significant strategic development in recent years is the US’s strategic realignment under President Barack Obama. Under Obama the US has switched sides, supporting Iran and its allies, satellites and assets, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, against America’s Sunni allies and Israel.

But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE , is also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the war against Israel is a war against it.

Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this basic, obvious reality.

As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower jihadist forces against Israel.

Sisi became the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his intellectual journey.

And this reassessment has had a profound impact on regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture specifically.

From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.

The government must take every possible action, in economic and military spheres, to ensure that Sisi benefits from his actions.

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  • Bamaguje

    With regards to nuclear Iran, Obama also suffers from the same delusion that afflicted Mubarak.
    He thinks Iran’s nuclear weapons program is only a threat to Israel, and he couldn’t care less about the Jewish state.
    Iran however considers Israel the “little satan”, while America is the “great satan.”
    In other words, America is the ultimate target of Iran’s “death to America” tyrannical Mullahs. And Obama is allowing them build nuclear weapons… while pretending to negotiate.

    • Mary T. Amado

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      h­­­a­­­v­­­­­­e
      -> RE­A­D H­E­R­E W­H­A­T I D­O <-

  • http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/ Jason P

    I’ve read that Sisi is taking control of religious and educational institutions. For example, he has a central authority the reviews or specifies the content of Friday sermons so that the exact same sermon is read in every mosque. This is to insure that pro-jihadi ideology isn’t preached. Mubarak, I gather, was content to leave education and religion in the hands of the Brotherhood as long as he kept control of the military. When the Brotherhood was voted into power, it was clear that they captured the minds of a broad section of the population.

    I would think that Israel has to do something similar in Gaza. It must undue Sharon’s mistake by absorbing Gaza and it must instituted a de-Nazification program.

  • kiwi41

    Whilst 100% in agreement with this article, I have some difficulty understanding why an Egyptian who converted to Christianity is being imprisoned in Egypt now.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/christian-convert-illegally-imprisoned-and-tortured-begins-hunger-strike/

    Any explanations from the Front Page contributors ?

    • billobillo54

      Because Islam is the dominant political philosophy in Egypt and in every nation where Islam is the majority religion. So, even though strict and intense compliance and reliance on Islamic law and practice as the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated in Egypt has been rejected, Christianity is hated, vilified, suppressed, threatened EVERYWHERE Islam is.

      • kiwi41

        If I remember correctly though , the Coptic Christians had a reasonable level of security during Mubarak’s reign.

        It was only when the moreslime brotherhood started their overthrow campaign ( assisted by the BPOS in the WH ) that they were on the extermination list .

        • billobillo54

          The reasonable level of security is a relative statement. By western standards they were treated as third class citizens even under Mubarak. This status declined dramatically under the Mursi MB government. The fact is no Islamic dominated nation practices equality under law. This is anathema and antithetical to political Islam.

          • kiwi41

            You’re right. It’s just that I had never even heard of Copts until the MB’s moreslime POS started burning churches and murdering them.

  • billobillo54

    I’m happy for the Egyptian, Saudi, UAE, and Israeli alliance. Peace is good. However, as a Christian, who supports Israel, I’m very concerned for the plight of Christians in the Arab world. I do not expect Israelis who are desperately contending for their own survival among a literal sea of antagonism and threats and who have been abused for centuries in the Name of Christ to take up the fight for Christians, but someone has to. Until Christians are free and safe to practice and preach our faith in JESUS AS THE ONLY MESSIAH FOR THE WORLD without fear and the reality of being persecuted and abused I will not remain silent.

    • Dallasyaherd

      The Christian issue, what is least discussed is the biggest one, everyone obsesses over the one partittion plan of one sixth of southern Ottoman Syria district renamed palestine mandate, after it was already partitioned to invent a country named after the Jordan river on ancient Israel then renamed Petra, is obsessed upon like nothing in human history, in an unprecedented persecution of a minority, the Jews, but what is never discussed is the equally valid plan (created by the same elitists who invented the so called palestine partition plan, loved like the words of the highest god by every powerful media oraganization and government on earth for no rational reason whatsoever, to destroy Israel forever, but earlier) when they divied up the Ottoman Ayelet of Syria was to create of Mount Lebanon on the north west corner, of Syria, as a Christian State in the the Middle East, as the remnants of the ethnically cleansed, ethnic Christians of Byzantium, by the Turkish Caliphate’s conquest, they still made up the majority of that corner of Ottoman Syria, (no one ever gets the truth about this) however there was an ethnic cleansing there in classic Islamic/Catholic cenosring of its wrongs no one in the media discusses it or they twist it (most of the Armenian Genocide, which really was a genocide of Greek Christians from Ottoman Syria, took place in eastern Ottoman Eyelet Syria, but did not reach Mount Lebanon so that not all of northern Ottoman Syria would be Muslim conquest country by the League of Nations only its capital and largest district the north western corner, or Mount Lebanon was designated Christian State) but since Iran took over the modern state of Lebanon, like the quiet remnants of the Zoroastrians and Jews of Persia (those 2 ethnicities were made completely extinct in every British created Arab or ethnic Beduin colonizer country, all 21 of them), Lebanon was quietly emptying its Christians and no one knows this it seems, Lebanon was 95% ethnic Christian 150 years ago, today when the statisticians demographers are very rarely not lying for Islam, it is 28% Christian much worse than Egypt if you know the history, and the tendency of Muslims, and historians to censor every bad thing Muslim Arabs do. I say ethnic Christians because they in fact though called Arabs are not Arabs and never were. The vast majority of the ancient Middle East was not Arab. While southern Ottoman Syria as the support for Ali Pasha shows, had an Egyptian and Jewish presence since the time of Salladin conquests (Salladin himself from Kurdistan) and defeat of the crusaders pushing them north also colonialists.

      • billobillo54

        Thanks for the info. God bless you. A couple of thoughts from a Protestant Evangelical perspective:
        1. The Church needs to recognize that the “body” of antichrist is Islam and the antichrist is going to be a Middle East Muslim. This is a clear teaching of Scripture. Protestants are in error when they accuse the Roman Church and/or the Pope of being antichrist. They are also in error when interpreting the antichrist as being a gay, secular European. In Daniel 11 the Scriptures proclaim that “the people who know their God will do great exploits” (i.e. against the antichrist since that is the clear context). Thus, Protestants who are interested in prophecy are being misinformed and therefore blind to the clear and present danger of Islam.
        2. Roman Catholics mostly ignore and even mock any interest in the subject of prophecy. The Pope when making these errant assertions that “true Islam is non violent” may assuage and modify the anger of some Muslims against vulnerable, Middle East Christians, but he is also weakening the resolve of Western Christians to oppose Islam and therefore making us more vulnerable to ending up as dhimmis.

        • Dallasyaherd

          Thank you for the paragraph advice, I write quickly from memory, and sometimes make spelling mistakes and slight factual mistakes, but i’m always pretty close, I write on the go.

          I wrote Ali Pasha, for clarification I obviously meant the Egyptian Ali M. Pasha, who stabbed his Ottoman superiors in the back, and created Modern Islamic Egypt, in the filthy lying “history” books, just to make it seem Egypt (all “arab” countries do this same bs, seem more old than its actual creation in the 20th Century, And the world without exception goes along.) the Ali Pash who in multiple wars with his former government took over Ottoman Syria for 20 years until the British and French world policemen gave it back to the Ottomans, though Pasha had connections to the previous world policemen the Portuguese and Spanish who were waning at that time in the early 19 Century, however did supply Mohamad Ali Pashi with weapons and ships.

        • Dallasyaherd

          I was not being anti-Catholic in my statement about Catholocism censoring misdeeds more than anyone else in history other than Muslims, the nature of the beast (no antichrist inuendo intended, unfortunately I am the rare secular conservative so will never make such innuendo) is to censor when you have that much power, it is not a choice, if you have religious power over many you will censor, problem is liberal and athiest “geniuses” have become tools of censorship in this age, and obsess on the Jews an ancient trick, that enhances the truly powerful’s ability to censor wrongs, and again they do it naturally and with the support of millions by the nature of the beast.

          If I ruled the world; Catholicism would have endless respect, because it produces fine, humble and kind human beings. Which to me is all that matters. As does Judaism and English culture.

      • Bamaguje

        Learn to use paragraphs. It makes your post more readable.

    • Bert

      There are about two billion Christians in the world who must know that Muslims in the Middle east are steadily erasing the presence of Christians. It would help greatly if there was more effort by the world’s Christians to save the Christians in the Middle East. Israel has its hands full just surviving but it is still the only safe place in the area for Christians.

      • billobillo54

        Bert: I will go even further than your insightful comment. The Christians are at fault and are in some instances are even sinning for their neglect of the plight of the Middle East Christians. If an equal percentage of Christians as compared to percentage of “radical Muslims” in the world stood up for the Christians of the Middle East western governments would have a different attitude. Yet, in the U.S., an open Islamophile and anti-Israeli, Obama, won 60% of the Roman Catholic vote and 30% of the Evangelical vote in the 2008 election.

  • georgejochnowitz

    As dictators go, Mubarak was relatively harmless. Why was he so hated? It probably was because he and his wife had fought against FGM (female genital mutilation).

    • kiwi41

      Mubarak, The Shah, even Khadaffi and Saddam were the type of persons needed to keep control of these moreslime savages.

      Some of them needed a little prodding to keep them inline, they were ALL vastly superior to whatever a$$wipes the libtard democracy campaigners “replaced” them with.

      Thus we have the current fustercluck in the middle east and world wide terrorism, aided and abbeted by the libtards ! Such progress…….

    • 2wotvet

      Because there is no such thing as a “relatively harmless” dictator.

    • UCSPanther

      The Jihadis also didn’t like Mubarak because he wasn’t all gung-ho to pick a fight with Israel like Gamal Nasser was.

      Allegedly, Anwar Sadat’s refusal to make further war on Israel after the Yom Kippur War was one of the motives in his subsequent assasination…

  • 2wotvet

    Wrong. Sisi is the worst thing possible for Israel. Thanks to his violent suppression of all opposition (including liberal and democratic), the Egyptian people will be driven to the most vicious and violent group in the Middle East as means of overthrowing him, which means ISIS. Already a militant group in Sinai has pledged its allegiance to ISIS. Sisi is setting Egypt up for violent unrest and possibly civil war, one that Israel will be caught up in and suffer greatly from.

  • hrwolfe

    Now if only they would give the Coptic’s some relief things just might get rosy.

  • cree

    Perhaps the only half-way rational Muslims on the planet are of the Egyptian military. Sisi is rational enough to recognize Israel’s legitimate defense of its right to exist because Israel does exist; and to deny against that instead of embracing it to both’s advantage would be “doing stupid stuff.”

    But would agree with a comment below: Sisi is a marked man.

  • Reuven

    This is an excellent article, Caroline.

  • SoCalMike

    The Republicans should be shouting this from the roof tops but all you hear is crickets.
    I admit I vote for stupid outfoxed cowards because they scare me less than dangerous brainwashed government-worshipping religious zealots.

  • nelly2004

    Everyone knows that Obama has switched sides in the war on terror except the American people!!! This is why he should be impeached and I don’t understand why for political reasons the Republicans are not going to do it. Don’t they realize that they would get more support from the people if they did the right thing?