January 25 is a bittersweet day for us Egyptians. Last year on January 25 thousands of courageous protesters were heading to Tahrir to start the Egyptian revolution. 18days and 890 victims later, Mubarak was stepping down and each of us was exploding with joy. One more month, and we were waiting in queues to vote as free egyptian citizen for the first time; tears of joy, pride, happinness. Alas; the military rule continued the repression, tried 12’000 Egyptians in military courts when Mubarak was granted a civilian trial, forces shot protesters and caused massacres, the most opaque elections ever took place. Our revolution was technically hijacked by the army.
The story would be over if the Egyptian people weren’t unsubmitted by nature. Revolution lost in popularity in Egypt; because it is exhausting, because life is hard, still it is alive in every one of us, only waiting for the right impulsion, the right firestarter. Maybe is January 25 2012 that firestarter? Revolution is a long road still in construction; it is not a highway, it is a mountain road and we encounter difficulties, but in the end, we’ll cross the mountain, we’ll get to see what is behind.
The Egyptian people is too great to be defeated when it stands like one man. We know it is only a matter of time. The day is coming where the victory will be complete. Until then, the revolution is a continuous state of mind.
Like Sheikh Imam told us: Eshee ya Masr (Wake Up Egypt)
I thought this kind of images belong to the past. To the hard times where our voices were shut. I thougth the day our people united and rose, we became too strong to be humiliated. Alas I was wrong. The events at Tahrir Square this week-end, where the SCAF beats and kills protestors prove that we still have to deal with tyranny in Egypt.
There is this video/pictures of a niqabi girl lying on the floor, surrounded by not less than 5 soldiers, her jilbab torn off revealing a white skin and a blue bra and beaten, again, and again. I can hardly imagime the terror, the pain, as well as the shame she must have felt at this moment. I wish I could take some of it to bear with her. Alas I can’t; all I can do is to tell her, I swear to God, she embodies the dignity and the pride of my country, of our great Egypt. She is the strentgh, she is the truth, she is the right fight. She is the only human being I see on this picture.
As an Egyptian living abroad, voting would have been one of the very few means my voice would have been significant for Egypt. Indeed, if I am not able to be physically on Tahrir square protesting for the future of my country, is there anything else than a voting ballot to have an influence? But alas, regarding to the events of the last weeks, I took the decision to boycott the Egyptian elections.
The main reason for me to boycott the elections is the growing brutality of the SCAF and the police with the Egyptian people, acting like the dictator they promised to protect us from. The transitory period should have lasted 6 months, but we are today 9months after Ferbruary 11th, and nothing changed in Egypt. There is no reform of justice, protestors are targeted with tear gas, if not with real bullets, some of them die.Freedom of speech has not improved in Egypt, where 12’000 people had to face military trials, sometimes only for emitting opinions. The regime didn’t downfall with Mubarak, it is continuing with the SCAF. If I went voting, I would feel like I am spitting on the bodies of the martyrs of Tahrir and Maspero, and all the others; indeed, it would be like approving the way the SCAF is running the country.
The other reason for me to boycott the elections is that the organization is very opaque, and we can’t be confident in it. The elections are not organized by an independant institute like were Tunisian elections and SCAF and Ministry of Interior that are today attacking the people in the streets are those who manage the process. We know nothing of the details of the monitoring and there is no independant observers. Everything is left to the random mood of the SCAF. Where is the difference with Mubarak-era elections? Why would we participate to such a mascarade?
The Armed Forces led by General Tantawi are all-powerful in Egypt and I don’t want to contribute with my voting ballot to chose their civilian puppets. Six months were more than enough for such a mighty institution to transfer the power to the people and organize fair and transparent elections. And they didn’t.
In conclusion I would just say that as a half-tunisian half-egyptian, I had the chance to vote last month for the Tunisian elections. My eyes still fill up with tears of joy thinking back of that day where Tunisian citizen could freely vote for their leaders, without any form of threat coming from the army or another institution. And even if I didn’t vote for Ennahda, the fact that they were elected by my fellow-citizens whom were given a free choice is enough for me. And that is no more no less what I wish for Egypt, my other country. Today I can be a proponent or an opponent in Tunisia. Sadly, I don’t think we can say the same about Egypt; boycotting the elections is my way of disapproving the hijack by the SCAF of the revolution made by the great people of Egypt.
For all the victims of the Massacre of Maspero: Rest in Peace. May God offer you an afterlife worth a million earthly lives. Ina lillah wa ina ileihi raje’oon.
For the murderers, whoever they are: Shame, eternal shame on you. May Allah put you one day in front of your horrible deeds.
I am a Muslim Egyptian and I will firmly stand against those who want to divide our people, against those who attack my brothers and sisters, wether they are Coptics or Muslims. We are one people and nobody will spread fitna among us.
I don’t remember that day; I wasn’t born. My mother remembers she was 8-months-and-something pregnant of me and my father remembers he was literally panicked the delivery could happen at any moment. I am their first child, it is as unexperienced parents-to-be they lived that particular October 6th 1981.
They lived far from their homelands, in Switzerland, and it is with this strange obsession specific to the expats they were following as much as they could what was happening in Tunisia (my mother’s country) and in Egypt (my father’s). In 2011, it is difficult to imagine what means ‘following news’ at a time when there was no Internet, no twitter, no mobile phones and hardly any landlines in our families back home, no satellite TV; in fact no TV at all at my parents’ place. A bit of radio, newspapers (in some places in Switzerland you could get a few arabic newspapers with 3days delay), and mostly news from other expats were coming back from travel, that heard something from somebody, that has a personnal story to tell. I don’t know by which of these means they knew the Egyptian dictator Anouar Al-Sadat was shot during the traditional military parade of October 6th.
All I know for being told the story thousands of times by my parents, is that my father rushed to buy a TV immediately when he heard the news of Sadat’s death. Years later, everytime I hear the name of the dictator I imagine a younger version of my father trying to get that new TV (that now would look like an antique) working and a younger version of my mother, pregnant on the couch trying to give suggestions on how to do. I was born 10 days after Sadat’s death, on October 16th. My father never forgets to mention that October 81 brought many changes in his life: a daughter and a TV.
The world remembers Sadat with nostalgy for his peace efforts with Israel, but Egyptians don’t. This hate of Egyptians for the dictator is nothing because of Israel, but because Sadat is the synonyme for corruption, poverty, jails, arbitrary detentions, torture, expensive bread. Sadly ironic to think that a man that was so injust was awarded with a Peace Nobel Prize.
My father migrated to Switzerland because his engineering studies, in the Sadat years Egypt, were not enough to find a job and grant a decent a living for him, his two parents and his 6 sisters. Hadn’t he migrated, he wouldn’t have met my mother and I would have never “been”. Sadat, “my” dictator in a way.
October 6th 2011, 30 years later, Egypt is trialing another dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Age of blood is over for our country and we will be firmly standing to avoid it to ba back.
One year ago, if told that Hosni Mubarak, his sons and the feared Minister of Interior Habib al-Adly were to face charges of corruption, murder conspiracy against unarmed protestors, any Egyptian would have bitterly laughed. We would have believed seeing one day the Nile getting dry or the desert getting green rather than this trial. This morning, when the trial of the ex-dictator opened, I first had this feeling of something truly unreal happening.
I couldn’t believe my eyes – I was watching the trial through the Egyptian TV live stream - seeing this weak old man lying in his bed, a man that once held a whole nation under state of emergency for three decades, that stole the country’s wealth and traded so many lives with his personnal power and his clan’s. He was dressed in white, like his two sons Alaa and Gamal. A stupid thought crossed my mind at this moment: “Not in blue?“. I was taking it from all the Egyptian movies where defendants in trials were always wearing blue suits.
The court first went about technicalities for ages, the lawyers were all talking at the same time, the mess was complete.One of the lawyers even asked to the court to proceed to a DNA test on Hosni Mubarak to prove it is the real Hosni Mubarak and not a lookalike, his theory being that the ‘real’ Mubarak was dead since 2004 and the ‘false’ Mubarak being an agent of the American-Zionist conspiracy. At this point I really thought the trial was going to be nothing more than a big joke.
From time to time, the camera was framing this cage where seven men were held, including Hosni Mubarak in his bed and Alaa Mubarak holding a Quran behind his back. Somehow, as a human being I could a bit feel sorry for the humiliating situation: a cage where a sick man was lying. But this feeling was very soon muted by that other voice in me “reminding” me that after all, a man who has ordered mass killings of peaceful protestors, caused the poverty, the misery, the sad destiny of so many men and women I’ll never see on a TV screen, this kind of man, if not ashamed of his records, is certainly beyond feeling ashamed just for a cage or a bed.
The strongest moment of the trial was when the prosecutor read the charges against the defandants. He listed the facts, about the January 25th revolution protestors killings, but also about all the protestors killings since 2000, about the corruption of the regime, about the millions and billions of Egyptian Pounds, about the scandalous gas deal with Israel, about the legitim demands of the people wanting to live better, to live dignifully, met with guns, with torture. I found myself in tears hearing all our country went through because of this man, and I know many Egyptians like me were in tears too. But I was also in tears because I was proud: proud to be part of a country that at the end chose the right side. And thankful: thankful to God to have allowed me to live long enough to see this historical moment of a nation asking for justice. Thankful also to all the martyrs of the Revolution who gave their lives for this New Egypt to exist, this New Egypt where Egyptians say they don’t want anymore to be silent.
After the prosecutors intervention, Hosni Mubarak and his sons announced they were pleading non-guilty. Just hearing Mubarak saying to the president of the court “Efendim” (a honorific denomination in Arabic), was like a… delight. After all, he was now refering to the president of the court with the same denomination that any defendant or person present in the trial had: he was no more above all of us, he was no more above justice.
At the end of this first session of the Mubarak Trial I thought of course of the Arab Spring martyrs, let it be in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, but also to the Iraqis and the Yougoslavians: I remembered the mascarade of a trial they had for Saddam Hussein and also the incredible slowness of Slobodan Milosevic trial that could never even really start before he died. All this waste: its maybe once or twice in History of a country a tyrant is put in front of his deeds and below the justice; for example, in Egypt, we had Pharaoh swallowen by the Red Sea and we have now Mubarak crushed by the will of a whole people asking for its dignity. These very rare occasions act like a massive psychanalysis for the populations. And this opportunity was stolen from Iraqis and from Serbs and Bosniacs. ‘Justice’ can help ‘History’ to take such a ridiculous turn sometimes.
The Revolution was never finished on February 11th: Egypt is in a continuous revolutionary state since then. So many has to be done, and it is not the new constitution or the first trials of Mubarak ministers that will end this. Now Egyptians are facing a new challenge: the Supreme Council of Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF) that is ensuring the management of Egypt during this period of transition, is going too far beyond its duties. Arbitrary detention of activists, unability to secure the country, lack of concrete decisions for Egyptians standard of life. And many more. On May 27th, Egyptians are back in the streets, in Tahrir Square and on other squares all over the country, to ask to the SCAF to meet the duties the people entrusted them with.
Here are some of the demands of the Egyptians, like very well discribed here:
Setting up a minimum wage for workers in public sector as well as in private sector. Only a decent living for all can make of Egypt the land of free Egyptians.
End of military trials, back to civil justice, end of emergency law. The psychological and physical intimidation of activists must end. When protestors are arrested and “kindly” told that they are contributing in unstabilizing the country, they are not doing anything different than what was under the old regime.
Transparency in the affairs of the State. It is not a few trials of some personnalities that are going to end the whole systemic corruption. Concrete measures have to be taken to ensure a corruption-free and transparent state.
Getting back the police in the streets to secure the country. Police is extremely absent from the streets since the Revolution. The army arrests activists and brings them to military trial, but who arrests thiefs, rapists and thugs?
Dismantling the extremists groups. Like we saw with Embaba violent confrontation of Muslims and Christians, the SCAF puts very few effort to identify the extremists among the two communities. How can SCAF let a violent escalade happen in Embaba without intervening, and on the other side the same SCAF violently repress a protest in front of the Israeli Embassy where nobody’s life was ever threatened?
Compensation for victims and family of victims of the January 25th Revolution.
None of the Egyptians ignore that we are living a crucial and difficult phase of the revolutionnary process. We know and understand that the SCAF task is not only critical but also essential. The SCAF and the people must cooperate to achieve the goals of the Revolution, but Egyptians cannot let the SCAF take too much power. Egypt will never be a military dictatorship hidden behind a superficial democracy like Turkey, where one can vote but where one can be thrown 10 years in jail if one speaks in kurdish in the Parliament or mentions the Armenian genocide. And when the people sees Egypt’s SCAF taking the same kind of path that Turkey’s, they say NO.
After Jan25, May27 revolution is our new grant for freedom!
At the end of 2010, with the events of Sidi Bouzid, I felt something had changed in Tunisia, but it took me a few days to me like to most of us to realize that it was more than a local revolt. A Revolution. I remember the tears of joy on January 14 and the pride I felt to be Tunisian, and I remember thinking Tunisians changed Arab History forever. At that time I wished so strongly that it could happen to my other country, Egypt, but I was afraid to be too optimistic: when you walk in Tunisia streets, you are afraid of the police, secret services and a powerful extended presidential family, but when you are in Egypt, you fear an Intelligence agency almost at level of Mossad and an army potentially stronger than Saddam Hussein’s, all in hand of one strong olligarchy. But they did it: a wave of millions of people, on Tahrir Square and everywhere else in Egypt made it, they made the Revolution. And since there is no limit to my optimism. There is an empirical statement that basically says: what happens in Egypt, ends happening in the rest of the Arab World.
I dreamt about two things: first, that the Revolutions spread, second that it’ll breaks enough of Israel’s self-confidence and arrogance to force them to accept a Palestinian State. Both of hopes are “in progress”. Everywhere in the Arab World we are seeing Revolutions, and though it seems sometimes difficult, we know and hope, it’ll end coming. Change Square in Yemen, Pearl Square in Bahrain, inspirations of Tahrir Square (in fact, they are inspirations of simultaneous Egyptian Tahrir Square and Tunisian Qasba events, that took place after January 14 and was for real the second revolution in Tunisia in less than one month).
But once again, things went beyond my hopes: Tunisia and Egypt are inspiring more than the Arab World. An Eritrean Revolution is in preparation and a facebook event annouces a start for the movement in May 28 in Asmara. And now a “Tahrir Square model of revolt” is taking place in Spain. In Puerta del Sol, youth is gathering every day after 7pm or so, for protesting: unemployement, injustice, lack of means, like in Tahrir square and Qasba the crowds were gathering every day to protest through the simple act of civil desobediance consisting in sleeping on the ground of the place, just because it challenges curfews and non-authorizations to protest. They are in revolt actually against a whole European political and economical system that broke their country. Almost half of young people in Spain are unemployed. Yet they don’t call for “toppling the regime” like Arabs (“Al Chaa’b yorid isqat an-nizam“), for they have the chance we didn’t have to be able to change their regimes with free elections, but their demands are so similar to Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions that it is clear that they are part of the same wave of freedom. In fact, Europeans do not live in autocratic states, but the fact that European politics totally escapes the direct control of people makes European citizens almost as powerless as were Tunisians under Ben Ali or Egyptians under Mubarak.
This wave of change begins to sweep Europe and represents the only serious effect to oppose the rise of populist right wing in Europe. With this new wind of freedom, Europeans stand to say their problem is not immigration, but the unsocial policies of the econimical Europe, the big capitalist machine crushing nations in their lost battle against debt. Belt-tightening policies when the banks are back to profit, bonus and risky markets?
And after Spain, don’t we see it coming? Portugal, Greece, Italy,… And one day, isn’t it going to reach the core of politcal economical Europe: France and Germany? Tahrir Squares will blossom all over Europe. Tunisia and Egypt, you changed Arab History, you also might have changed the World History.
The communication with the Arab and/or Muslim World looks like being a conundrum for the Western World. The way George W. Bush adressed some issues related to the Arabs/Muslims is maybe the perfect example on what to not say to them. Obama speeches were always clean of the obvious mistakes of his predecessors and this 2011 speech on the Middle-East was even cleaner. The 2009 Cairo speech was actually so brillantly written that it really raised hopes in the Middle-East for a change. But alas, from 2009 to 2011, these high expectations were disappointed, not only because of Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also because of the attitude towards the Arab dictators facing street protests: the support to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt came too late, only when it was clear to the US that they can dump their dear allies (Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi,…) because they were already almost toppled.
Thus, it is in this mindframe of scepticism that most of us, Arabs, listened to this Middle-East Speech. We kind of all had our “checklist”: some were waiting how Obama will mention Bahrain, some others how is he to address about Israel and Palestine, etc. None of us was really waiting for anything interesting and special to be said, most of us were just looking for a renewed confirmation of a new form of the good old hypocrisy: same old routine, only covered with more elegant words than his predecessors would have used.
What I was personnally interested in was in fact the difference between the Cairo speech of 2009 and this speech of 2011 on Middle-East, not in terms of the content itself, but in terms of the form, the strategy of communication. Although the latter was pronounced from the White House, it is quite obvious that it was prepared with the intention to address to the Arab World. The decision to not hold this speech in front of an Arab audiance in an Arab country proves there is a hesitation to face directly Arabs, as there is no certainty on the welcoming it would have had (after all Clinton was boycotted in Egypt by youth and hooted by Tunisians to the point she had to cancell her speach in Tunis). As the changes go in the North African and Middle Eastern region, the”West” adapts its communication.They are totally aware the Arab revolutions were the occasion of multiple failures in communication and decisions, and that this caused a great damage on the trust the Arab and Muslim World have on them. Not only they want to restore that trust (surprisingly they seem to think that regaining it needs only to adapt the way of speaking, instead of admitting it needs a complete change of policy, what will apparently never happen), but also they are in high need of understanding the new Arab references.
The main differences between the two speeches are:
The Storytelling: in Obama 2009 speech, there were very few of the “storytelling” US rethoric is normally full of (emphazing arguments with an example of a person’s life story), besides the very brief mention to his own story linking him to Africa, while in the 2011 Speech, many mentions were done: Rosa Parks, Muhammad Bouazizi, Wael Ghonim (indirectly, by mentionning his position at Google), some Israeli father whose son was killed by Hamas starting a peace NGO. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions certainly made realize to Obama, Clinton and their team how important will be now the ordinary people of the Arab World. Instead of talking about elites, refering to great places or figures of History, the ‘normal’ people (including women) that achieved great things with almost nothing were mentioned. The storytelling, that ensured Ronald Reagan with a great popularity in his country as a president and was so to say the standard of communication of George W. Bush (and Nicolas Sarkozy), is a very classical technique to reach the very general audiances: (over)simplifying in talking with images instead of building a consistant chain of arguments.
Erasing American references: only with the “told stories” one can see that they refer all but one (Rosa Parks) to Arabs. But the shift goes beyond this. In 2009 speech, there was a point about stressing on the fact that Islam was part of American History, about the fight for civic rights of African Americans, about the Cold War, etc, while in 2011 speech the direct references to American History are completely erased (except for the reference to the American Revolution where Patriots refused to pay taxes to a king). Even the cited locations were chosen to fit to the Arab perspective (Cairo, Benghazi, Sanaa). In two words, we are moving here from speeches where we talk about “American values to export” to speeches where we talk about “universal values”, that happen to be shared by America as well as by other parts of the world, worth fighting for, although America didn’t create these values. US want to give a more “modest” image of themselves, they don’t anymore commit the mistake to pretend they are bringing democracy/peace/hope as global leader (although Hillary Clinton in the few words preceding Obama speech expressed her views about the need of an American strong “leadership”). On the contrary they emphazise on the fact that these values are wanted and activelly won by the Arabs themselves. Americans want now to endorse the more “neutral” role (in surface only of course) of those who will just propose help (economical, G20, technological, etc) and let free the Arabs to decide if they want that help or not (of course it is just a very hypocrit way of presenting things).
Avoiding religious references: of course, 2009 was technically a speech to the Muslim World, while 2011 is a speech on the Middle-East, but no one will deny how much entangled are Middle-East and Islam. 2009 was not only refering to Al-Azhar, the Quran or Obama’s own Christianity, it was also speaking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of Jews and Shoah, Muslims and Christians. In the 2011 speech, he prefered to talk Israel-Palestine in terms of frontiers, security and official mutual recognition, Bahrain in terms of Iranian strategic political interest, and Arab revolutions in general in mentionning freedom, economy, technology, information. The only explicit references were made were the “region that was the birthplace of three world religions” and the Muslim/Copt violence in Egypt and the offered solution to take the Iraqi “multi-ethnic multi-sectarian democracy” as an example (what a strange idea by the way to take this as an example). In erasing the reference to religion and particularely to Islam, it is quite clear that the United States want to enter in a new phase of their relation with Arabs where they can close the Islamism/extremism/Al-Qaeda chapter. In a way, by saying that Al-Qaeda was against democracy, that it lost its revelancy in the region, that more has been done in six months of civil unrest than in decades by terrorists, but also by not referring to the recent choice of a new head for Al-Qaeda and denying the Ossama Ben Laden’s posthume message praising Arab revolutions, US call for having the right to “move to something else”: US wants to make known that they want to make politics, business (a lot of business in fact), partnerships; they don’t want anymore to be seen as the oppressor of Muslims around the World. As if there was any chance that Arabs could forget the military support of Israel anyway (clearly mentionned in the 2011 speech).
Adopting Arabic rethoric: the only concession done to arabic language in 2009 speech was the opening “Salam Aleikom“. In 2011, there is a will to “speak the way Arabs speak”. Some linguistic specifities of the Arabic language are adopted. For example, the repetition of terms, very classic in arabic, but avoided as much as possible in english is clear in a sentence like “Square by square, town by town, country by country” (unfortunately for Obama, his advisors do not seem to have noticed the similarity that each Arab will notice with Gaddafi murderous speech “Zenga zenga, bit bit, dar dar“, meaning “street by street, house by house, room by room“). Another flagrant example is the sentence (actually the answer to the non-asked question) where he says: “Bin Laden was no martyr“, the word martyr being extremely often used not only in Islamic lexical field, but also in general Arab’s (for example, the people killed on Tahrir Square, regardless of their religion, are referred as martyrs by Egyptians), while it is totally absent from previous American official speeches. Adapting arabic rethoric is a way of looking “more familiar”, or “more comprehensive”.
I see the 2011 speech on the Middle-East as being a “grammatical contortion”: US diplomacy makes moves that are unnatural to them, not because they are taking a new orientation with us, Arabs, but because they think that if they want to continue to pursue the goals they always pursued in the region (oil, Israel and capitalism), they just have to make it a bit more subtly. With this Obama speech we officially entered in the era where the United States understand Arabs are not just parameters to adjust and fine tune, but a whole part of the world with 400 million people with real personal expectations and real intention to be sovereign. Let’s be clear: that’s only plastic surgery. If there was any real consideration to Arab aspirations, a word would have been adressed to the aspirations of the people living in the most repressive country of the region governed by a medieval feodal system, Saudi Arabia, and more firm positions would have been taken to condemn what happens in Syria and Bahrain.
Mimmicking our way of building sentences and arguments and using our own references is not enough and will never be; in fact it is even almost a bad idea from an American perspective for it makes it even easier for us to detect where exactly there is hypocrisy,emptiness or offense. It is as if President Obama tried to cook for us a couscous or any other Arab dish and really thought we won’t be able to make the difference with our own cooking. The thing is, sadly for Americans and luckily for Arabs, very, very few of us were fooled by this new way of addressing us.
Nakba is the arabic word for “catastrophe”. For Palestinians, it refers to the events that took place in 1948 resulting in the creation of Israel, causing the destruction of 418 towns and villages, the ethnical cleansing in cities like Haifa and the deportation of more than 700’000 Palestinian refugees. Backed by western forces, the Nakba is a large-scale tragedy commited to escape the guiltiness of another large-scale tragedy.
Every May 15th, the Palestinians commemorate the Nakba. Since the context of the Arab revolutions, this year’s commemoration sounded different: unlike the 62 last times, today there was hope for a better future. The Facebook event called “Third Intifada” appointed to coincide with the Nakba commemoration gathered 500’000 people before to be censored. A march from Cairo to Rafah, a breakthrough the Golan and a massive protest in South Lebanon, a wave of Egyptians, Syrians, Jordan, Lebanese, all together with the Palestinians stood like one man and surrounded Israel. Israel was no more a country but a besieged city, behind walls, behind heavy weaponery, behind fear. Al Jazeera broadcasted live images of the crowds clashing with the Israeli Army. And there were the first shohada (martyrs) of the Nakba commemoration/third Intifada.
Clashes and Israeli borders, clashes in front of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo; the Arabs made clear they will not be silent anymore. Is it the beginning of the Second Nakba, not the Palestinian Nakba, but the Israeli one? Is it for real the beginning of the end for Israel? Israel still has a chance to save itself from the 63 years contained anger of hundreds of millions of Arabs: building peace, based upon fairness. Stop colonizing, stop occupying, stop the blocus, allow the return of the Palestinian refugees, recognize a Palestinian State, accept the borders of 67. Israeli still have the opportunity and capacity to avoid living their own Nakba. Too bad this opportunity was denied to Palestinians in 1948, when the Western World through the UN simply took the decision to erase from the map a country called Palestine and put another one at its place called Israel.
