Why Israel doesn't want democracy in Egypt

It is often said, only partly in jest, that Israelis examine every event of world significance through the prism of "will this be good or bad for us?" Well, they hardly need the doom-laden headlines in the Israeli press to tell them the continuing crisis on the streets of Cairo is as bad as it gets.

In short, when Clinton – joined by Obama and David Cameron - calls on Mubarak to allow an "orderly transition" to democracy, it only sets alarm bills ringing in Israel.

You can read the whole of Philip Jacobson’s First Post piece on why the ‘democrats’ of Israel are not so keen on Egypt becoming more ‘democratic’, here.

Also, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports:

Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries over the weekend to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak to preserve stability in the region. Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the West's interest to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime.

Senior Israeli officials…. said that on Saturday night the Foreign Ministry issued a directive to around a dozen key embassies in the United States, Canada, China, Russia and several European countries. The ambassadors were told to stress to their host countries the importance of Egypt's stability. In a special cable, they were told to get this word out as soon as possible.

(HAT TIP: Luke at Media Lens.)

Ah, ‘stability’. I don’t recall Israel- and its neo-con/faux-left cheerleaders in the west being too keen to maintain the ‘stability’ of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq do you? Nor are they too keen to maintain the ’stability’ of the current Iranian regime.

The Israel-firsters want ‘stability‘ when it suits them, but when the regime in question isn‘t doing their bidding, they do all they can to destabilise it.

UPDATE: Quote of the Day from the staunchly Zionist US Vice-President Joe Biden on Hosni Mubarak.

"I would not refer to him as a dictator."

How hilarious.

The tyrannophile faux-left and Hosni Mubarak

And who did we hear this morning on radio? Tony Blair basically defending his
mate Mubarak.

writes our friend Olching in the comments section to our last post.

And there's more on Tony and Hosni from Mehdi Hasan over at the NS

Tony Blair, that other great neoconservative crusader for freedom and democracy in the Middle East, visited Egypt with his family on holiday on several occasions, had countless meetings with Mubarak, but never chastised him in the manner that he now chastises, say, the Iranians. Shamefully, Blair, while in office as prime minister of the United Kingdom, allowed Mubarak to pay for his family's luxury holiday at the Red Sea resort of Sham-el-Sheikh in December 2001. Was he worried, I wonder, about the freedom and human rights of political prisoners languishing in Egyptian prisons while he sunned himself in his holiday villa, as a guest of Mubarak's dictatorship?

The faux-left love to label the genuine left as ‘apologists for dictators’ ’Stalinists’ ‘or tyrannophiles’.

But when it comes to apologising for tyrants no one is more guilty than neocons and the faux-left.

PS The odds on any other faux-leftist/ neocon writing a piece condemning Tony Blair for his association with the brutal dictator Hosni Mubarak: 1,000,000-1.
　

Western hypocrisy over Egypt's protests

So President Obama calls on the Egyptian government AND anti-government protestors not to use violence.

Do you recall the US or its allies calling on Iranian anti-government demonstrators not to use violence back in 2009? No, neither do I. And do you recall the US President urging anti-government demonstrators not to use violence after the elections in Belarus in December? No, me neither.

Seven people have already been killed in the current protests in Egypt. Will the US and its EU allies be imposing sanctions on Egypt for its brutal clampdown on dissent- as they’ve done on Iran and Belarus?

And will neocon websites be posting pictures of those killed by the police- as they did with Neda Agha-Soltan after the Iranian protests? Will any of those killed this week become a ‘symbol of rebellion’ in the western media and blogosphere?

Don’t hold your breath.

PS The picture above (of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak with his mate, the former Israeli leader Ehud Olmert) will help explain why the neo-con websites/journalists/magazines/newspapers which have spent so much time attacking Iran's clampdown on dissent, won't be spending anywhere near as much time attacking the far more dictatorial Egyptian regime.

Why was MI6 involved in trying to smash Hamas?

MI6 is supposed to protect the British state and spy on and counter Britain’s enemies. But has Hamas ever threatened Britain, or is it ever likely to? Have we really got to the stage where Israel’s enemies automatically become ours? If Mossad, or the Palestine Authority‘s secret agents, or the CIA want to engage in anti-Hamas activity, it’s their concern. But not ours.

So what on earth was MI6 doing drawing up 'secret plans for a wideranging clampdown on Hamas’, as revealed by the Guardian.
　
And guess how this all began?

Alistair Crooke, a former MI6 officer who also worked for the EU in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said the British documents reflected a 2003 decision by Tony Blair to tie UK and EU security policy in the West Bank and Gaza to a US-led "counter-insurgency surge" against Hamas – which backfired when the Islamists won the Palestinian elections in 2006.

In today's paper Seumas Milne writes:

As we also now know, British intelligence and government officials have been at the heart of the western effort to turn the PA into an Iraqi-style counter-insurgency operation against Hamas and other groups that continue to maintain the option of armed resistance to occupation. Shielded from political accountability at home, how exactly does British covert support for detention without trial of Palestinians by other Palestinians promote the cause of peace and security in the Middle East, or anywhere else?

Yet another question for Middle East 'Peace Envoy' Mr Tony Blair, who, not content with all the bloodshed he has caused, is now doing all he can to propagandise for a war with Iran.

The attempted murder of the NHS

So don’t believe what you are being told. This is not about reducing bureaucracy or tackling the deficit. This Bill represents a paradigm shift in the way that health care is delivered in this country. It is born from ideology, not necessity. Managers will not be reduced – rather, they will be employed by private companies that lease out their services.

The proposed reforms signal an end to the NHS as we know it. It will not be reformed, it will be murdered. What Lansley’s Bill achieves is the atomising of the NHS. It will be spliced and diced into bite-sized portions to be thrown down the gullet of the corporate sector.

You can read the whole of Max Pemberton’s Daily Telegraph article on why the government’s Health Bill, if passed, means the end of the NHS, here.

The government has no electoral mandate to destroy the NHS and we cannot allow their 'reforms' to pass into law.

If you feel strongly about saving the NHS, make sure you sign the NHS Support Federation’s national online petition. And write to your MP to ask them to vote against the government’s bill when it has its second reading next Monday.

Let's defeat the neoliberal fanatics, who want to unleash 'market forces' into every aspect of our lives.

Breaking News: At least 35 killed in terrorist attack on Moscow's Domodedovo airport

We don’t know for sure who planned this outrage- but we do know one thing: that they are totally depraved.

The Conservatives? More like the Destructives

This column of mine appears in today's Morning Star.

The only thing the Tories and their millionaire friends are trying to ‘conserve’ is their wealth says Neil Clark.


In the classic 1935 Hitchcock film The Thirty-Nine Steps there is a memorable scene when the hero Richard Hannay tells a man who he thinks is an ally that the evil criminal he is after has part of a finger missing.



To Hannay's horror the man raises his hand and says: "Are you sure it's not this finger, Mr Hannay?"


In the same way that Hannay mistakenly took an enemy to be his ally, so too did the millions of Britons who voted Conservative in last year's national and local elections.


Up and down the country, people trooped off to put an X next to the name of the Conservative candidate in the belief that the party was on their side.


Sick of new Labour, many genuinely believed the PR spiel that Dave's Conservatives were no longer the "nasty party" and that they really cared about communities and "hard-working families."


They believed that Cameron, far from being a hard-core Thatcherite, was actually a nice, moderate "one-nation" Tory in the Harold Macmillan mould.


Now, though, they are waking up to a brutal truth - that as bad as the Labour government was, the Tories and their Lib Dem coalition allies are actually 10 times worse.


Up and down the country, uber-Thatcherite Tories are launching an assault on many of the things that traditional Conservative voters hold dear.


Royal Mail, in state hands since 1516, is to be privatised.


The NHS faces the biggest upheaval in its history, one which will pave the way for the takeover of hospitals and doctors' surgeries by multinational corporations.


Hundreds of public libraries face closure. Our publicly owned forests, including historic ones like Sherwood Forest, are to be sold.


The official name of Cameron's party is the "Conservative Party." But it should really be called the "Destructive Party."


The only thing Cameron and his multimillionaire chums want to "conserve" is their wealth and the rule of international finance capital. Everything else can be destroyed.