The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has a website,
and one of the features on that site has a blurb that introduces it as: “A
deeper dive into the day's most important stories”.
There was an important story on November 24, 2017, and
Jonathon Gatehouse was assigned to perform the famed “deep dive” into it. So
you ask, what was the result of Gatehouse's work? Well, it was nothing that
rises above the level of a circus monkey performing the routine it was trained
to play over and over.
His piece came under the title: “Egypt 's
deadly problem” and the subtitle: “Another deadly attack strikes Egypt 's Sinai
region.” Then came the first sentence that revealed the extent of the man's
ignorance pertaining to the subject he dived into. Here is that sentence: “The
attack followed an all-too-familiar pattern.” So you want to know, familiar
with what? this being the first time that a mosque was attacked in Egypt .
As far as churches are concerned, the writer mentions two
that were attacked on Palm Sunday; one in Tanta
and one in Alexandria .
But these are heavily populated urban areas where the pattern he describes
could not have been carried out. Here is his description of the pattern: “First
a bomb blast –– designed as much to scatter worshipers at the mosque as to
kill. Then came the four-by-fours filled with heavily armed masked men...”
In fact, the only urban area where such a pattern was
carried out with some success––but was attempted rarely––is Iraq . That's because
the country was destroyed twice and invaded once by America . As a result, it has been
in a state of civil war for more than a decade, lacking law and order. In this
sense, Iraq is different
from Syria that was not
invaded by America , and
different from Afghanistan
that was never in a state of civil war.
Despite these realities, Jonathon Gatehouse could not shed
his beastly training long enough to stop expressing the age old Jewish fantasy
of seeing Egypt go the way of Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan. Here is his
declaration on that score: “Egypt 's
internal struggles haven't received as much attention as the turmoil in places
like Syria , Iraq and Afghanistan .” To prove his point,
he mentions the Palm Sunday incident, the downing of a Russian jet over the
Sinai, and a couple of attacks conducted against the military – also in the
Sinai.
But realizing that this list is not much worse than the
attacks carried out by the same terrorists in Europe and America , the writer went out of his way to make
it look like Egypt is
nevertheless similar to Iraq ,
Syria or Afghanistan . In
trying to explain this point, he proved to be not just ignorant of the subject
he is discussing, but deficient in logic as well. Study the following passage
and you'll wonder how someone of this level of mediocrity was trusted to write
on that subject:
“One of the Sinai's deadliest groups, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis
(Supporters of Jerusalem), pledged its allegiance to ISIS .
But it's far from clear that radical Islamists are the only force behind the
violence in the province. Historical grievances are very much in play; most
specifically, the 81,000 hectares of prime agricultural land that was taken
from the Bedouin and given to wealthy Egyptian businessmen who built luxury
hotels and resorts on the Red Sea ”.
There is much to unpack in this passage. Having used the
early part of the article to make it sound like Egypt
was undergoing a civil war or the equivalent thereof, Gatehouse now admits that
the trouble in the Sinai Peninsula is caused by radical Islamists whose agenda
is to liberate Jerusalem (which they promised
they will do by toppling the Arab governments that refuse to fight Israel .) The
writer then threw the caveat of “it's far from clear” before mentioning the
evidence which turned out to be the thing that exposed him as totally clueless.
His evidence is this: “81,000 hectares of prime agricultural
land was taken from the Bedouin and given to Egyptian businessmen who built
luxury hotels and resorts on the Red Sea .”
First of all, an editor that sees the two terms “Bedouin” and “agricultural
land” in the same sentence, and does not throw the copy in garbage must be
fired along with the author of the piece. Second, a “military law” – as it is
called in Egypt
– applies to anyone that misuses agricultural land by using it for any purpose
other than agriculture. The fact is that nobody in Egypt builds hotels on agricultural
land and stays out of jail to enjoy it.
Also, the truth is that Bedouins are nomadic tribes who roam
the desert and do not farm it. The Sinai, like the two deserts flanking the
Valley of the Nile , has remained
underdeveloped since the beginning of time. When the industrialization of Egypt began in earnest after the completion of
the Aswan dam and hydroelectric station in the
1960s, some places in Egypt
began to develop faster than others.
For the first time, the country experienced what is known
everywhere in the world as regional disparity, and there has been some
expressions of discontent in those places in Egypt . Only now does the country
find itself in a position to develop all the regions at the same time and at
the same pace. One of the places where this is happening is the Sinai Desert
for which a pipeline––extended under the Suez Canal––brings Nile
water to it. So far 200,000 feddans (208,000 acres) of desert land in North Sinai have been irrigated and planted with crops by
the company that invested its money to realize the project.
Seeing agriculture and agribusiness develop in North Sinai
along the Mediterranean Sea, and seeing tourism develop in South Sinai along
the Red Sea , the Bedouins felt neglected. The
foreign terrorists tried to take advantage of that situation by inciting them
to rise against the government but had very little success. However, it is
believed that some Bedouins had information about the whereabouts of the
terrorists but were not prepared to share it with the military. They will most
certainly share it now, having seen what the terrorists are like.
Other than that, for the Bedouins to be fully accommodated
and made to share the goodness that's generated by the country's renaissance,
they will have to give up their nomadic way of life. Their children will have
to attend school and be trained to do the kind of work that's available on the Peninsula . This will take time, and the Bedouins know it.
They are a patient people and have reason to hope.