According to a report on Voice of Israel government-sponsored radio, Egypt has moved anti-aircraft missiles into the Sinai Peninsula.
The radio station's Arab affairs analyst, Eran Zinger, reported Saturday that Egypt has deployed both anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles near Israel’s border in the Egyptian Sinai, without Israel’s permission
Such equipment is prohibited in Sinai by the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. “Egypt is trying to change the situation in Sinai,” Zinger said.
If the report is true, the move is an overtly hostile one toward Israel and can only mean that Egypt is preparing for hostilities with the Jewish state. Ostensibly, Egyptian forces moved into Sinai only in order to crush terrorist activity there. However, the terrorists possess no aircraft. Therefore anti-aircraft missiles can only be intended against Israel's air force.In the prelude to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Egypt moved anti-aircraft missiles close to the Suez Canal, despite a commitment not to do so. Israel chose to ignore the move, and the result was catastrophic, when the missiles shot down numerous IAF jets after war broke out.
The Egyptians have meanwhile moved a battalion of 19 Egyptian M60A-3 tanks into the peninsula, using the Islamist attacks on Egyptian and Israeli military targets of Aug. 8 as their pretext for violating the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty’s military protocols. Fearing the tanks are there to stay, Israel has asked the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department in Washington to intervene with Cairo and get them withdrawn.
Cairo never requested or received Israel’s permission to bring the tanks over.Egyptians don’t say this outright, but are hinting that they are waiting for President Barack Obama to order the release of substantial aid funds before embarking on this counter-terror offensive or withdrawing their tanks from Sinai. They are very clear about the amounts that would satisfy them: A grant of half a billion dollars from the United States and a US guarantee for an International Monetary Fund loan of $4.6 billion.President Morsi is holding another move in abeyance pending the Obama administration’s response to his urgent financial needs. He has not yet replied to Tehran’s official invitation for him to represent Egypt at the non-aligned summit of Muslim nations taking place in the Iranian capital on Aug. 30. The inference is that if Washington meets Cairo’s economic aid requests, Morsi with refuse Iran’s invitation; but if it falls short, the Muslim Brotherhood will start a process of rapprochement with Iran, the first since Islamist revolutionaries seized control of Tehran in1979-80.
Last week, a leading Israeli media analyst suggested that Israel's government should be more concerned about Egypt's growing military deployment in the Sinai Peninsula, instead of focusing all its worries on Iran.
"The development that, more than any other, should set off warning bells in Jerusalem, is the unilateral action taken by the Egyptians in Sinai during the past few days," wrote Ha'aretz columnist Avi Issacharoff.
"While Israel is prattling itself to death on the Iranian issue, the decision makers here are choosing not to respond to the fact that Egypt is moving forces into Sinai, contrary to the terms of the peace agreement," Issacharoff continued.Egypt is deploying forces far beyond what Israel approved (the 1979 Camp David Accords put strict limits on the amount of forces Egypt can deploy in Sinai). According to some reports, in addition to a much larger than expected number of infantry, Egypt is also rolling armored forces into Sinai.Issacharoff called the deployment the "most extensive activity by the [Egyptian] army in Sinai since the Yom Kippur War 39 years ago." And that should be cause for concern.On top of all this, Egypt is now ruled by a group that maintains as one of its long-term goals the destruction of Israel. And just last week, the Muslim Brotherhood removed the former heads of Egypt's military and installed more compliant generals.
Anyone not seeing these developments as cause for concern has his or her head in the sand.
A Sky News Arabic correspondent in Cairo confirmed that protestors belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others. Likewise, Muslim Brotherhood supporters locked the doors of the media production facilities of 6-October [a major media outlet in Cairo], where they proceeded to attack several popular journalists.
The attacks and violence—both in front of Egypt's presidential palace and at major media facilities -- are well-documented. An August 9 report by El Balad, a widely read Egyptian website, gives more details:
Last Wednesday, August 8, "thousands of the Muslim Brotherhood's supporters" attacked 6-October's media facilities, beat Khaled Salah—chief editor of the privately owned and secular Youm 7 newspaper—prevented Yusif al-Hassani (an On TV broadcaster) from entering the building and generally "terrorized the employees." (...)
Broadly speaking, Israel is still perceived by much of the Western left and by the Islamists as being “white,” Western, and alien to the Middle East. In other words, Israelis are seen as brutal colonialist invaders. The whole story of the Zionist project is disconnected from Jewish history and the centuries’-old link between the people of Israel and its historic homeland. The Palestinians (with only the feeblest of Israeli hasbara responses) have, by contrast, been successfully cast in the role of “Jews,” downtrodden and ruthlessly abused by Nazi-like Israelis. A key part of this campaign has been the corrosive depiction of Israel as an “apartheid state.” This libel is endlessly repeated throughout North America and Western Europe — in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, as well as France, Germany and Great Britain. As a consequence, the anti-Israeli obsession has steadily seeped into the European chattering classes, the free professions, the churches, and nongovernmental organizations. It is especially virulent in academia and very much in tune with the postcolonial zeitgeist.
Another weapon in this global anti-Zionist transformation is the growing effort to “Nazify” Israel and thereby invert the Holocaust. The abuse of Holocaust memory as a political weapon against the Jewish state has indeed become increasingly rampant in recent years along with the popularity of antisemitic conspiracy theories. The soft version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which evokes the all-powerful “Zionist Lobby” and the alleged hidden control of “Jewish moneybags,” is in fact far more common than many people realize.It should be recalled that Mohammed Merah’s brutal slaughter of innocent Jewish children in France was carried out in the name of the global jihad and “avenging Palestine.” The muted response to such atrocities in liberal “progressive” Western opinion is a badge of shame for those whose self-proclaimed banner is that of human rights.
If Israel attacks Iran, the Israeli heartland could face retaliation from more than 10,000 missiles based in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, according to Uzi Rubin, the founder and first director of Israel’s Missile Defense Organization.Israel’s strategic circumstances have changed dramatically in the last two or three decades, Rubin said, from a time when the main threat came from other nation state’s tanks and airplanes. Recognizing that they could not compete with Israel in these areas, he said, governments in Iran and Syria and the non-state actors Hezbollah and Hamas have emphasized “indirect fire” from “standoff weapons” — rockets and missiles of ever increasing range, power and accuracy.Rubin said at least 13,000 such weapons are now in the hands of Israel’s adversaries that can reach Israel’s most populated areas, including 1,500 that “can hit greater Tel Aviv.”“In Israel, no place is safe,” he said. “Israel’s main assets can be taken out. This is the new reality.”
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