Anwar Sadat and Peace for Palestine

'Egypt Silences the Voice of Iran'
by Marwa Rakha

On July 24th, Maggie Michael reported:
Egyptian authorities shut down the Cairo office of an Iranian TV network, a
security official said Thursday, as the two nations spar over a film that
justifies the killing of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by Islamic
militants.
Blogger Dina Ayoub in her post Egypt
vs Iran takes us back to the
time when President Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel:

All the Arab countries refused, and severed ties with Egypt, calling him a traitor and
what not. Sadat had also offered the Palestinians to establish a peace treaty
with Israel, in which Palestine would get a
large amount of land (compared to what they have now). But they were stubborn
and adamant about not negotiating then, just as they remain. So, some Iranian
military moron decided to kill Sadat, and so he fired at him in a public
ceremony commemorating the 6th of October war - the war which put Egypt on the
track to negotiate with Israel, retrieve the whole of its land which Israel had
invaded - Sinai, and build a stable relationship with it.

In defence of the late president, Dina Ayoub, who currently resides in Canada, says:
Unlike most of the other Arab leaders, Sadat didn't put his arrogance above the
best interest of the country (at least not that particular time! hehe), and he
did the reasonable thing. And the Arab countries could have all formed a much
better position than they have now had they supported him. But his position was
fairly weakened by their lack of support, yet he managed to establish peace
with Israel and reserve Egypt's rights as best he could, granted, many many
restrictions remain on Sinai- but... it still belongs to Egypt, which is a lot
more than we can say for several other regions nearby.

Going back to the incident of shutting down the Iranian TV station - Al-Alam TV
- Dina says that the station produced:

a movie deemed offensive by the Egyptian Government, and it is causing some
serious escalations. The movie is named "Assassination of a Pharaoh".
I haven't seen it, but I would really love to, just so I know how they really
think and so I can have a real and objective opinion about the movie.

Dina warns gullible readers and explains the connotations of the word
"Pharaoh" in our culture saying:

To those who do not know how a "pharaoh" is regarded in the Arab
world, it might seem that this title means no disrespect. But it's ridden with
an intricate implication. Pharaohs are known for their arrogance, stubbornness,
their slave driving, their unfairness, their unyielding power, and most
importantly, their just final fall - getting what they deserved (a miserable
death). The reason for this, is the story of the prophet Moses who pleaded with
the Pharaoh endlessly, and was persecuted severely, then at the end the sea
split into halves allowing Moses and his people (Jews) to cross, but when the
arrogant pharaoh was mid way, the sea returned to normal, and he drowned. At
his final moment, he realized Moses was right all along, but it was too late.
Then his body was thrown ashore, for everybody to see the fall of the great
pharaoh. In our culture, when we speak of history, the pharaohs did great
things and had a very strong and thriving civilization. But when you call some
 one a pharaoh, it is not a good thing. It's an insult. Actually, we have
something we say "malak metfar3an keda leh" - roughly translated
into, 'why are you acting so arrogantly', where the word for arrogant is
derived from 'Pharaonic'.

Once again Dina endorses the late president's peace treaty saying:

It's not like Egypt agrees with everything Israel does anyway, we still protest
a lot about their actions against Palestine and disagree with probably all
their politics, but just because one visionary (albeit not a saint) stopped to
think, and decided not to walk the path of the rest of the Arab leaders,
doesn't mean he deserved to die. But just closing your mind and deciding not to
acknowledge that a force exists is like burying the head in the sand: you may
not see what's around you, but that doesn't change the fact that it's there -
and it sure as hell doesn't change what effect this force will have on you. So,
in my opinion, refusing to acknowledge Israel is just plain stupid: it's
there, deal with it.

Had Sadat not taken this step, it's quite likely Sinai would have ended up as
war torn and destitute as many places in Palestine.
And that would be such a shame, because it's a very beautiful &
majestic place, and not to mention a great source of revenue for Egypt as a
tourist attraction.

Although the idea of the movie did upset Dina, she still does not agree with
how the Egyptian government dealt with the situation:

Now, while I find the idea behind making a movie that portrays this murderer as
anything but a murderer (and this goes for any other murderer), and the fact
that they have a street honoring this so-called man offensive &
insulting too, I don't think that shutting down their station is a good idea.
Mostly, because I believe in freedom of speech. If that's the way they feel
about this, then so be it. Shutting down their station in Cairo isn't going to make them change their
minds, nor is it going to make the world a better place. On the contrary, we're
actually committing the same crime they are: intolerance. They were and remain
to be intolerant towards Sadat's views, and co-existing with Israel. And now
we do the same by refusing to tolerate their views. So we bury our heads in the
sand as well, and refuse to hear what they think.

But to me, it's no surprise Egypt
acts this way. The Prince of Egypt (a cartoon movie) was banned from Egypt because
it portrayed that it wasn't the Egyptians who built the pyramids. But I really
don't see how banning it helps. Actually, I think it's backwards to ban
opposing views from your own country, because all that means is that we are
ignorant to what the rest of the world thinks of us, and can thus never take a
positive step to change our image. So we live on, thinking that everybody in
the world knows that the Egyptians built the pyramids, and unaware that some
people out there believe otherwise.

You may view the latest post at

https://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/07/29/egypt-silences-the-voice-of-iran/