While President Bush was throwing money into a recession in Washington, unprecedented Islamist demonstrations were erupting across Egypt, almost unreported in our media. As I was beginning to explain in my Saturday column, it is not generally appreciated that Hamas, which controls Gaza, is of Egyptian descent.
And by the brilliant stroke of blowing down the wall at the Egyptian border, they have now invaded Egypt proper.
Among the slogans being shouted in Egypt's streets: “Arm us, train us, send us to Gaza!”
The rhetorical target is Israel. The actual target is the “moderate” Egyptian government, and the response to these rallies, from the authorities, and from Egypt's formerly-articulate “middle class,” is panic.
In Egypt as elsewhere, to say that “the great majority of Muslims are peaceful, unaggressive people, just trying to get on with their lives” is to utter something deeply fatuous. The great majority of Germans were likewise, in the 1930s.
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