What the Media Does Not Want You To Know
By Raymond Ibrahim, HUDSON NY
Western media coverage of the recent massacre of Coptic Christians in Cairo, Egypt—in which the military killed dozens of Christians and injured some 300—was, as discussed earlier, deplorable. It merely repeated the false propaganda of the complicit state-run media, without checking facts. Since then, further proofs of the lies and brutality surrounding the massacre have emerged; they are compiled in the following report which consists of documented facts and videos from Arabic sources—many of which have not appeared in the Western media.
This report documents: 1) the activities of the Supreme Military Council of Egypt and its de facto ruler; 2) the lies and duplicitous tactics of both the Military Council and its media mouthpiece, Egyptian TV; and 3) the anti-Christian sentiment pervading all aspects of this incident.
The Egyptian Military
Armored vehicles intentionally chased after and ran over protesters, killing and mutilating many:
- Here is perhaps the clearest video; it shows a high-speed armored vehicle willfully plowing over unsuspecting Christian demonstrators.
- This video shows another armored vehicle chasing protesters, and a soldier opening fire into the fleeing crowds.
- This video shows high-speed armored cars running amok in the middle of the crowds, including chasing protesters on the curb, as well as soldiers beating protesters.
- A new report by Magdi Khalil asserts that the day before the planned march, a “death squad” of snipers hid atop buildings and shot at protesters.
- As for eyewitness testimonies attesting to the brutality of the massacre, they are many, and include Muslims.
The Tactics of the Military Council ( or “War is Deceit“)
Notwithstanding crushing evidence, after the incident Egypt’s Military Council held a news conference wherein senior official, Mahmoud Hegazy, spun lie after lie: he stated that the military would “never, never” run over civilians; that the very idea was “impossible, impossible!” and “Shame on those who accuse the Egyptian military of such things!… Never has our military run over a single person, not even when combating the Enemy [Israel].”
Hegazy portrayed the Christian protesters as the aggressors, attacking and killing “honorable” soldiers. To prove his point, he showed an image of a protester on top of a stalled armored vehicle, throwing a rock at the soldier inside, and a video of a military vehicle—that he claimed had been hijacked by a protester—driving wildly into the crowd.
What Hegazy failed to disclose, however, is that the “hijacked” vehicle running amok, and the one stalled and attacked by a protester, were one and the same vehicle: Al Dalil revealed that both vehicles had the same identification number. In other words, when the vehicle in which a soldier was chasing and running over protesters finally stalled, the protesters then attacked it. Egypt’s leaders willfully manipulated the footage to exonerate themselves and portray the Copts as violent aggressors.
Several eye-witnesses, including Muslims, further stated that, to hide the “evidence,” they saw soldiers hurling the mutilated bodies of those run over into the nearby Nile River. Likewise, among the slain, a dead Muslim soldier, whom the military said was killed by protesters, was actually killed by friendly-fire—although there are indications that he may have died elsewhere, and his corpse thrown among the dead for show.
As Copts have long suspected, the “thugs” (al-baltagiyya) who always appear in protests attacking Christians seem to be men whom the military uses to create an excuse to open fire and exercise brutality: Muslim eyewitnesses say they saw the thugs coming with State Security: Al Dalil showed a video clip of a soldier exposed dressed as a civilian, interspersed among Coptic protesters, and another video showing the thugs cooperating with the military.
This video might offer the greatest proof: Days before the massacre, when Copts were protesting the destruction of their latest church, around 20 Egyptian soldiers and security personnel captured a protester and mercilessly beat him (while calling him an “infidel,” to put the beating in context). Mixed among the military (camouflage uniforms) and security (black uniforms) is what appears to be a plainclothes civilian, who proceeds to stab the Christian protestor in the head with a knife several times; the victim later received 20 stitches. The plainclothesman is most likely a member of the military or security, dressed as a civilian for stealth purposes, otherwise he would not have been able to move among them so casually.
The Role of the Egyptian State Media (or “War is Deceit“)
“Egyptian TV”—demonstrating, unsurprisingly, that state-run media always serve dictatorial regimes—merely propagated the lies of the Military Council.
Even as armored vehicles were mowing down Christian protesters, Egyptian TV broadcast footage of reporters saying, “Help, the Copts are killing our heroic, patriotic soldiers and burning Qurans!” One segment on Egyptian TV had an outraged reporter condemning Christians—”as if they were the Israeli enemy”—for killing “our noble protectors [soldiers], who never once fired a single shot.” As a result, many Muslims took to the streets brutally attacking Christians and their property.
Egyptian TV also lied by saying three soldiers died at the hands of Copts; officials at the TV station later confessed to making it up. That, however, did not stop a barrage of op-eds in Egypt blaming the Christians for their own massacre.
Due to Egyptian TV’s misinformation, several Egyptian reporters unequivocally condemned it. Anchorwoman Dina Rasmi said: “I am ashamed that I work at this despicable TV channel… Egyptian TV was effectively calling for civil war between Muslims and Christians… Egyptian TV has proven that it is a slave to those who rule.” Another news anchor, Mahmoud Yousif, announced that he “washes his hands of what Egyptian TV is broadcasting.”
Anti-Christian Hate
Although it should be clear that anti-Christian sentiment fueled this latest Muslim slaughter of Christian minorities, a few specifics follow:
- Soldiers screamed “Allahu Akbar!”[“Allah is Greater!,” the Islamist war cry], and cursed “Infidels!” as they approached and attacked the protesters—which of course is not so out of the ordinary when one considers that, even in olden times and in movies, the Egyptian military was called the Jihadiyya [the organization that wages holy war].
- A video of a soldier boasting that he shot a Christian in the chest is greeted by the crowd around him with “Allahu Akbar!”
- After the incident, Dr. Hind Hanafi, president of the University of Cairo, recommended separating the wounded Christians from the wounded Muslims admitted into the hospital, thereby institutionalizing religious discrimination, even in hospitals.
Conclusion
A massacre at this level never occurred during the thirty-year reign of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, and yet Mubarak is being charged with “crimes against Egyptians.” What about the Military Council? It has committed greater crimes—even though it has been in charge for less than a year. Saddam Hussein was condemned by the international community for using chemicals on his own people; where are the international community, the media, and the so-called human rights groups when it comes to a government running over its own civilians with tanks and having “death squads” of snipers shooting at them?
Finally, if this report testifies to crimes against humanity, consider what it says about diplomacy: If Egyptian leadership lies and deceives to suppress its own “infidel” citizens—whose “crime” was to object to the continual destruction of their churches—how credible can it be to the outside “infidels,” Israel and the U.S.?
Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
The only way to fix the US is to boot this clueless anti-Semitic moron out – or better yet – impeach him and replace him for the remaining few months with an even bigger moron, Joe Biden. Then a new administration in 2011 can begin the painful task of rebuilding America which Obama and the Democrats have corrupted and destroyed, first by social engineering through enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, then taking the resulting crisis and turning it in a financial catastrophe, aided and abetted by a dishonesty mainstream media and the Soros funded anarchist organizations like Daily Kos, Move On, Media Matters, etc.
President Obama’s fondness for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a glaring warning to all who support him. Historically Mr. Obama and the U.S. State Department have been sympathetic to governments that persecute Christians in their Islamic nations, e.g., Egypt, Syria, Lebanon. The Arab Spring had more than one consequence for the minorities that inhabit the “liberated” lands. The promise of freedom was swamped by a flood of Islamic fundamentalism after the prior administration had been discarded. Sharia is promoted, and “dhimmis” are condemned and cast out after being brutalized and massacred. Dhimmi property is confiscated or destroyed, and the country is “cleansed” of non-Muslims (e.g., Saudi Arabia).
This isn’t a pattern characteristic only of Muslims. All dictators follow it. Hitler, Stalin and Pol-Pot (the Cambodian genocide) of recent memory are but a few. The U.S. is now in another stage of the “American Spring,” the “Occupy” phase. Staged chaos and anarchism instigate an inevitable backlash of restrictive laws and actions to stop the unrest. The population accepts the loss of individual freedoms for the sake of security. The blueprint for a takeover of western civilization is clear. It’s coming to your neighborhood soon. You can follow the ostriches and hide your heads in the sand, or fight it. Your choice.
Why is anyone surprised? The Islamic radicals in every Muslim majority country try to ethnically cleanse the place. Their real or nominal democracies like Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kosovo are less so, their Islamic dictatorships much more so. In Egypt, time will tell where in the spectrum they end up.
The biggest supporters of Israel are American Christians, including Catholics and Orthodox, even more than American Jews.
Egypt was a run by an oppressive dictatorial tyranny. These, by definition, are unstable. Now it is transitioning to something different. We don’t know yet what that will look like eventually. People who fight for freedom and democracy do not typically choose another tyranny to replace a previous one. Time will tell. If the Muslim Brotherhood gains political control of Egypt and runs it like an oppressive dictatorship, they will eventually meet the same fate as the previous one.
It is curious when people who live in freedom and democracy themselves oppose freedom and democracy for others just because it may benefit them or provide temporary “stability”. Dictatorships are usually unstable in the long run.
Most people in those countries have never met a Jew. You can’t hate someone you’ve never met. When they hit their thumb with a hammer, I wonder if they call “Jew!” My experience, is that people cry “Jesus!” at times like these. Could that be the Jew that everyone’s mad at?
Apparently they hate the Jews more than they care about the survival of their own. What else accounts for their backing of the creation of another islamic terror state?
I see that the Catholic and Orthodox countries of the world all voted against Israel in the recent UN vote to admit the PA terrorists as full members of UNESCO. Included in that number were Greece and Cyprus, Eastern Orthodox and very religious countries who are supposedly Israel’s allies against Turkey.
The Catholics and Orthodox have no sympathy whatever for the Jewish people. Why should I have sympathy for the Copts? Even the atheist Swedes and Czechs sided with Israel.