For my Masters Degree in history from Rutgers University, New Jersey, in 1954, I chose the history of Nazi Germany as my field. I was fortunate to have chosen Rutgers over Princeton. The former endowed my studies; the latter withheld any financial assistance to a new comer from abroad. My good luck at Rutgers also led me to a mentor, Professor Eyck, a great historian, and a German refugee whose faith was Judaism. Eyck advised me to focus on Goebbels. Why? "Propaganda is an instrument of war, and Goebbels perfected the big lie technique: "keep on repeating the lie, and in a short time people would believe it."
The similarities between the Muslim Brotherhood, especially after the ouster of Morsi in July 2013, and Goebbels, in the use of the big lie technique are unmistakable. How do I provide uncontroverted evidence on that? As a defense attorney and a professor of law, I have to build my case on solid proof. This blog does not propagandize and is not paid for. These are two factors leading publishers in America to desire publishing its 110 issues in a book which I shall entitle: "The Transformation of Egypt Through Revolution: 2011-2013."
Example (A) : El-Belthagy of the Brotherhood to Al-Jazeera, Monday, August 26, 2013: "The use by the transitional Government of Hazem El-Beblawi of 'war on terror' is a mere pretext to suppress the Brotherhood, to make the coup justifiable to the outside world, and to deceive the public in Egypt."
Evidence on That "Big Lie": Let the record show that: (a) the Government after 6 weeks from the beginning of the Brotherhood's sit-ins from July 3 until their removals on August 14, did not, even once, use that term; (b) even after the discovery, through the removals, that the sit-ins were armed little emirates at Rabaa and Al-Nahda, the Government restricted its use of that term to the military confrontations in Sinai; (c) the open support by the Brotherhood, declared and given to the Sinai insurrectionists, who were coopted by Hamas and other Jihadis, enhanced the Government's response through decapitating the Brotherhood without outlawing it so far; (d) the decapitation of the Brotherhood's leadership, including the recent detention of the fugitive El-Belthagy, resulted also from the Brotherhood's repeated rebuffs of the Government's entreaties to them to join El-Beblawi Cabinet.
Example (B): The so-called "National Coalition for Supporting Legitimacy and Rejecting the Coup" has issued on August 27 to all "honest Egyptians to refuse participation in the Committee of Fifty for constitutional amendments. That National Coalition claims that: the "coup" aims at subverting the popular will; the Constitution of December 2012 was approved by 64% of the voters; the prospective amendments are intended to bring back the Mubarak regime.
Evidence on That "Big Lie": I was on the ground in Egypt during the two stages of the plebiscite on the Constitution in December 2012. My investigations resulted in 120 pages of hand-written notes on that seminal event. My notes reveal the following: (a) at the Constituent Assembly, the secularists, including the liberals and the Copts, (nearly 30% of the membership), despairing of the high-handed ways of the Islamist majority, withdrew; (b) taking advantage of that withdrawal, the Islamists wrote into the draft Constitution their own version of the contentious articles; (c) fearful of the disbanding by the Supreme Constitutional Court of that flawed assemblage, Morsi declared that that draft would be immediately voted upon; (d) ignoring the popular calls for either a broad national debate or the reconstitution of the Constituent Assembly, the Morsi plans for a two-stage plebiscite went ahead in December; (e) the pleas for resolution of that constitutional impasse was summed up by Dr. El-Baradei's near tearful appeal to the Islamists in his famous TV lament "Take Pity on Egypt;" (f) only 22% of the electorate of 53 million voters took part in the plebiscite with the unverifiable result declared on December 31, 2012 by the triumphalist call by Morsi: "Egypt now has a Constitution;" (g) amending the Islamist constitution through the Committee of Fifty has to do with the legitimation of the popular will through elections within a few months for a House of Representatives to consider those amendments; (h) these amendments have nothing to do with the re-introduction of the Mubarak regime. That regime is still on trial, as Egypt gears up to putting Morsi also on trial for alleged crimes committed at the gates of his Presidential Palace (Al-Iltihadiyah).
Example (C): Again to El-Belthagy who declared to the correspondent of "Al-Anadoul" (of Turkey) on late August: "The massacre of 25 security officers in Sinai on August 19 was perpetrated by the Egyptian army. The Egyptian authorities are lying in attributing that heinous crime to unknown armed criminals in Rafah, north of Sinai. The coup leaders killed those recruits to divert attention from their problems as an illegitimate government."
Evidence on That "Big Lie": In criminal litigation, which I practice, there is a principle that implicitly tells the Court: "The Thing speaks for itself." In Latin, it is expressed in 3 words: "Res (the thing) Ipsa (for itself) Loquitor (speaks). It is a rule of evidence, which fully rebuts the Brotherhood's big lie cited-above. This is because the negligence (i.e. the crime) of the alleged wrong-doer may be inferred (legally found) from the mere fact that the accident happened. In this instance, even Master Goebbels would not have gone as far as his presumptive heir, El-Beltagy. This is especially so, bearing in mind that: (a) the Brotherhood had repeatedly manifested its affinity with terrorism in Sinai. The Brotherhood has conditioned the ending of the Sinai terror on the reinstatement of Morsi as President; (b) the Egyptian armed forces are a conscripted military institution with a tradition of cohesiveness going back to 1810. Under the system of compulsory draft, members of those forces identify with Egypt as a national entity. Members of the police/central security forces see in their counterparts in the armed forces their kith and ken; (c) that explains the utter failure of the Brotherhood's calls on the recruits and officers in the armed forces and the police to defect and flee their barracks; (d) there is no way that the army, which in Sinai depends on the police, as its strategic manpower depth, to shoot itself in the foot by killing its own auxiliaries.
Example (D): In "Freedom and Justice," issue of Sunday, August 25, another Brotherhood writer, Shaheen Fawzi, tries his hand at the big lie technique. In that Brotherhood daily, he proclaims the following: First he calls General El-Sisi, the Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister: "The Vanquished, God Willing" (Al-Halek Bi Amr-illah). Then he asserts that: "What is happening in Egypt today cannot but be attributed to Zionist and U.S. hands... The secular petro-States have called on their friends in Europe and the U.S. to support the armed forces of Camp David (meaning the Egyptian military) in their aggression against the Muslim Brotherhood."
Evidence on That "Big Lie": (a) in its first foreign policy proclamation, the Morsi regime had affirmed Egypt's respect for all international treaties already entered into by all previous Egyptian governments. By clear implication, those included the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979; (b) Israel could not have influenced the more than 30 million Egyptians to demonstrate against the Morsi regime; (c) the European Union dispatched Ms. Ashston, whose portfolio is EU foreign policy, to Cairo more than once to broker a compromise between the Egyptian transitional Government and the Islamists to no avail; (d) not to be undone, the U.S. (former Ambassador to Cairo, Patterson; Secretary of State Kerry; and Senators McCain and Graham) tried repeatedly to bridge that gap, but their efforts collapsed; and (e) the U.S., in a show of displeasure at the ouster of Morsi delayed the delivery of 4 F-16 combat aircraft to the Egyptian military, cancelled the already scheduled joint military exercises, and placed the annual financial aid to Egypt under review. From the above, it seems that the Brotherhood, unaccustomed to the art of loyalty, is unable to distinguish between friend and foe, except on the basis of acceptance by everyone of its bidding.
In this regard, I have not touched upon what Shaheen Fawzi outrageously claims in the same "Freedom and Justice" article. For he goes on to say: "The Egyptian military intelligence still throws itself at the lap of the Zionists; fighting the Palestinian resistance in Gaza and elsewhere, and abetting the Israeli operation in Gaza called "Hot Lead" in December 2008. Even a habitual hashish smoker could not have been carried away in his hallucinations to the extent of that fantasy.
A Final Example (E): The Mufti of the Brotherhood, Abdel-Rahman Al-Bar issues a fatwa (a non-binding interpretation of a rule in Islamic Law). He calls those millions of Egyptians, who came out in public squares on June 30 to have Morsi ousted, "infidels" (non-believers). As to those who call for his reinstatement, they are "true believers as they support their legitimate ruler."
Evidence on That "Big Lie": (a) the issuance of fatwas has, since August 2011, been made the exclusive domain of Al-Azhar; (b) in the application of Islamic jurisprudence, a subject which I teach at Fordham University School of Law, New York City, I find Al-Bar to be engaged in a big lie wrapped within his so-called Fatwa. To begin with, Islam does not condone calling others infidels because it provides for a direct spiritual relation between every human and God. In addition, the Quran calls on Muslims to remove an unjust ruler. Moreover, the so-called Mufti Al-Bar is an interested party who, under any legal system, should have recused himself; (c) Abdel-Rahman Al-Bar is a fugitive from justice for his role in attacking the Azbakiyah Police Precinct; (d) the Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood Muhammad Badi; who is now under detention, had preceded his Mufti by declaring it open season on the killing of Egyptian army and security personnel for being "infidels who do not deserve to live." His reason: Those forces have refused to defect in support of the Brotherhood's exhortations.
The Brotherhood disciples of Goebbels are failing their departed Nazi master. Through his office as Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels was convinced that he was serving the cause of Nazi Germany, reprehensible as that cause had been. Yet the Goebbels Class of 2013 made up of Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen and publicists feel, like the rest of their movement, no affinity to Egypt. Their Supreme Guide, in fealty to pan-Islamism, had uttered the offensive statement "To Hell with Egypt!!" (TOZZ FI MASSR!!)
So, if there is no loyalty to Egypt, one should at least expect from the Brotherhood fidelity to the Quran. Within its nearly 6400 Quaranic verses, the sin of lying is prohibited in 282 verses. In one such verse, the Quran admonishes: "So hearken not to those who deny the truth." (Chapter Al-Qalam, verse #8).
This is not to mention the numerous sayings of the Prophet Muhammad against lying, nor the ethos of Islam where it defines faith in the following terms: "Religion is the wise counsel." The big lie technique cannot, under any circumstance be characterized as "a wise counsel." Moreover, Islamic jurisprudence is anchored in "whatever is good for society" (Ma Yanfaul Nas). Using all of these religious parameters as a measure, the Muslim Brotherhood Goebbels Class of 2013 has failed to make its case.
Most of the time, they do not live in the world of facts. The Arabic proverb is "Truth Saves." Lies, whether big or small, perish, leaving their creators, the imposters, naked and on the run.
By the end of this month, my novel in Arabic, which originally appeared in Cairo in 1948, will appear again. It deals with the same issue: the manipulation of faith for the purpose of gaining power. The reader shall find in that novel similarities with today's Goebbels practices by the Brotherhood. Its title is "Dajjal Fi Qariah" (An Imposter in the Village), which is presently being republished by Aalam Al-Kotub (The World of Books, Cairo, September 2013). Our village of today is Egypt where the end for today's imposters shall not be different from the end of the Dajjal (Imposter) in that novel.
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