Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
Many people will likely scoff at the sight of the headline of this article, and I would too if I was not consuming news from around the world around the clock.
Unfortunately for the people of Egypt, Israel has indeed been busted for spying in their nation, running complex large-scale operations to import hair care products that cause infertility and, to make matters worse, Israel just slaughtered Egyptian police in a cross-border raid.
According to a monitoring force stationed in the Sinai Peninsula in accordance with the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Israel violated the treaty by entering sovereign Egyptian territory and firing on security forces.
The Multinational Force and Observer, or MFO, reported two violations committed by Israel, according to the Egyptian state news agency MENA.
According to a MENA report published on Saturday, the report showed that the deaths of Egyptian security personnel were violations due to Israeli forces entering Egyptian territory and then firing upon Egyptians and others on Egypt’s side of the border.
Israel has claimed that they were pursuing militants involved in the recent cross-border attack in Israel, but the Multinational Force and Observer report did not say if there were grounds for Israel’s claims.
It has been reported that a total of eight Israelis were killed in a series of attacks near the Egypt-Israel border near the Eilat resort by the Red Sea.
These attacks were supposedly carried out by militants who used the Sinai Peninsula to cross over into Israel. Israel has yet to prove any of these claims.
Interestingly, the Israeli news agency Haaretz is reporting today that the “Israel-Egypt” crisis has apparently eased after “intense diplomatic efforts,” which included the United States.
Egyptians demanded an apology from Israel for their murder of at least three Egyptian security personnel, and even threatened to remove the Egyptian ambassador from Israel.
Israel was seeking to utilize this diplomatic crisis to “turn over a new leaf with the Egyptian government” according to senior Foreign Ministry officials, which would help resolve the “deteriorating security situation in Sinai.”
However, Israel has not accepted any responsibility for the killing of Egyptians in sovereign Egyptian territory, a total violation of the 1979 peace treaty.
Israel has not even supplied a formal apology for their actions. The office of Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak issued a statement which said, “Israel regrets the death of the Egyptian policemen during the attack on the Israeli-Egyptian border.”
Since an apology would imply responsibility, it is apparently out of the realm of possibility for Israel to own up to their actions, as per usual.
There is supposedly going to be a military investigation of the incident first, after which there will be an inquiry conducted along with the Egyptian Army.
It might just be me but this seems a little bit suspicious and far from fair.
This would be like having a suspected murderer conduct his own murder investigation, after which the police are allowed to be involved.
If there was any concrete evidence available in the preliminary investigation it would almost certainly be gone by the time the second inquiry is conducted.
The statements coming from Israeli officials in regards to the killing of the Egyptian policemen completely skirt the blame, clearly in an attempt to declare the Israeli Defense Forces innocent without a single shred of evidence to support their claim.
A senior official at the Israeli Defense Ministry, Amos Gilad, told Israel Radio that, “No one in Israel wants to harm Egyptian soldiers and policemen. No soldier consciously aims at Egyptian soldiers and police.”
This statement from Gilad is in the realm of the absurd, given the fact that even Israeli construction crews have no problem running over young women with bulldozers, crushing them to death.
If you’re in the way of Israeli interests, you can expect the worst to come your way; and they have proven this to be the case time and time again.
Therefore, Gilad’s attempt to make us believe that the IDF troops operate with a conscience and would never even aim at Egyptian soldiers and police is an insult to our intelligence.
A brief glance at the events of Operation Cast Lead and the Israeli attack on the humanitarian aid ship the Mavi Marmara, during which nine were executed, will show you that Israeli soldiers are more than happy to slaughter anyone without hesitation.
While Barak refused to acknowledge any possibility of Israeli culpability, the IDF said that their troops fired “toward the sources of the fire” but had not aimed at Egyptian security forces.
The IDF was much more forthcoming than Barak and Gilad in not ruling out the possibility that Egyptian soldiers were hit by IDF gunfire because terrorists allegedly fired from positions “near those of the Egyptian army”.
However, the IDF was quick to put some of the blame on the terrorists themselves by saying that soldiers were injured by a suicide bomber. They also claimed that terrorists also had rigged explosives on Egypt’s side of the border that could have been responsible for the deaths.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has already declared that the diplomatic crisis is a thing of the past and all is well again.
Then again, the recent cases of Israeli spying and the scheme involving the importation and distribution of an Israeli hair care product known to cause infertility cast some doubt on this claim.
Recently an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram Daily published that an Israeli man named Ofir Harrari was accused of spying for Israel while being involved in “a complicated scheme intended to harm Egyptian reproduction abilities”.
Israel’s YNetNews points out that Al-Ahram is “Egypt’s official state paper,” while also mentioning that these allegations of espionage on behalf of the Mossad come at “a sensitive time when Israel is trying to understand where Egypt’s new temporary regime is headed.”
They also claim that both Egypt and Israel have “estimated” that the accusations come from “a wish to appease Egyptian demonstrators protesting against the close relations that existed between Jerusalem and Cairo in the pre-uprising days.”
Clearly public sentiment is not on Israel’s side and the Israeli “apology” (which was far short of an apology by any rational metric) for the killing of Egyptian soldiers is not going to cut it when it comes to the people of Egypt.
The “diplomatic” crisis might be over, but the military dictatorship currently in power in Egypt after the complete failure of a revolution does not speak for the whole of the Egyptian people.
Ofir Harrari was identified as a Mossad agent by the Egyptian public prosecutor’s office after an investigation which also revealed that a Jordanian telecom engineer Ibrahim abu-Zaid was involved in the plot as well.
According to the public prosecutor’s office’s investigation, Harrari ordered abu-Zaid to establish a company in Egypt which only imported a unisex Israeli hair product which causes infertility in order to “completely destroy Egyptian reproduction abilities”.
In addition, the investigation turned up that the Mossad supposedly told abu-Zaid to establish communications companies in both Libya and Sudan so Israel could monitor their communications.
Even if these allegations are not true, there is a clear negative popular opinion of Israel and the recent murder of Egyptian soldiers on sovereign Egyptian territory are not going to help the situation.
The claims from Jerusalem that the crisis is behind us due to diplomatic efforts do not change the reality on the ground and it is quite clear that the military dictatorship does not represent the people of Egypt so their claims are completely worthless.
Hopefully the Israeli government can scrape together the decency to actually apologize for their actions and take responsibility for the deaths, instead of passing off the blame and playing the victim as they all too often do.
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