Inventing Non-Existing Facts About Egypt Has Become An Industry of The New York Times

In his op-ed column in New York Times of April 23, 2014, Thomas Friedman writes about Ukraine.  Being a word-smith, he says: "Indeed, Ukraine has some Tahrir Square disease.  The Kiev revolutionaries have been incredibly brave.  But, like in Egypt, they have not yet translated their aspirations for an inclusive, non-corrupt, pro-E.U. future."  A faulty comparison, and a conclusion about Egypt which reads the future about an Egyptian government which shall come into existence only several weeks from now.  How prescient!!

Add to these inventions of facts, which undermine the credibility of the motto of The New York Times, at least when it comes to the new Egypt -"All the News That's Fit to Print," is the paper's editorial page.  In the issue of April 25, 2014, the relevant editorial entry is titled: "A Questionable Decision on Egypt."

That item, being by the paper's editors reflecting its programmed bias towards the new Egypt, begins by: "American policy toward Egypt continued on its tortured, confusing path this week when the Obama administration resumed some aid to what has become an increasingly repressive State."

And in his reporting from Cairo, on the front page of the New York Times of April 25, David Kirkpatrick, was true to form.  His advocacy tarnishing the developments in Egypt is his mainstay.  The headline in that report is subtitled: "New Leaders Targeting Christians, Shiites and Atheists."  The third paragraph sums it all, as he asserts: "Prosecutors continue to jail Coptic Christians, Shiite Muslims and atheists on charges of contempt of religion."

Ironically, his last paragraph debunks his selective evidentiary statements, at least with regard to the Christians.  That paragraph, which must have escaped his blue pencil of redaction.  It reads: "But Yousef Sidhoum, the editor of a Coptic newspaper, said it was natural that church leaders felt both sympathy and gratitude for Mr. Sisi.  So do most Egyptians, Mr. Sidhoum said."

Thanks God, The New York Times, even with being nearly daily (April 23, 25, and 26) deflating revolutionary Egypt, cannot dictate to a sovereign State its course of development.  Yet such unrelenting ideological reporting by a paper of the status of the N.Y.T. has a provable effect on both the American and the Egyptian readers.  I say "provable effect" on the basis of what I receive by the way of comments and questions from my readers and interlocutors.  From the American side, I get questions such as "why did the Revolution miss its mark?"  And from the Egyptian side, the questions usually revolve around "Why are the Americans siding with the Muslim Brotherhood?"

Legitimate questions, based on a barrage of falsehoods, propagandized by boastful and self-promoting ads in The New York Times such as "Behind-the-scenes accounts of how our journalists capture the big stories of the day." (April 25, 2014; page A.21).

But here are the veritable "big stories of the day" that The New York Times does not consider them "Fit to Print":

• The Egyptian masses gave the Brotherhood its chance at the helm for one year (2012 to 2013).  To their amazement, they discovered that the Brotherhood had used the legal means of the ballot box to achieve the illegal means of excluding all stripes of public opinion which do not subscribe to their quest for a pan-Islamic Caliphate.

• The Revolution of June 30, 2013, far from being "a coup," was the only available avenue to get rid of an Islamist reign of terror.  That horrible experience had nothing to do with faith, any faith, nor with the historic tradition of a secular Egypt where Islamic Law and legislated law worked in harmony for the good of both the majority and all minorities.

• The support of the national armed forces, under El-Sisi, protected the mass movement of June 30, 2013.  Under Field Marshal Tantawi, those forces, being non-ideological, had also protected the January 25, 2011 Revolution which the Brotherhood saw fit to belatedly join.

• All governments in the world, and here Egypt is no exception, are backed by their armed forces for security purposes, provided that they do not take over from the elected representatives the reigns of governance.

• As in any revolution anywhere in the world, Egypt's two revolutions are a process.  It does take time to mature, and to solidify.  To prejudge this process as a failure is not and cannot be a rational judgement.  Such irrationality casts aspersions not on Tahrir, but on The New York Times as a propagator of non-content news.  Undoubtedly there have been errors committed in the course of Egypt's revolutions (January 25 and June 30).  Sadly such errors have been recently committed, not by the Armed Forces, but by a member of the judiciary.

• It was an unhinged judge who on April 28, 2014 at a court in El-Minya sentenced to death more than 680 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Mohamad Badie, the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide.  That heinous ruling was in connection with the killing of a single police officer during riots at that provincial capital in southern Egypt last summer.  

• In a similar view of what may be described as "judicial revanchism" against the opponents of the present transitional government, another court in Cairo banned the activities of the April 6 movement, a liberal group which, in Tahrir on January 25, 2011, contributed to Mubarak's fall.

• In these two instances, The New York Times, in its issue of April 29 was correct in condemning the capital punishment, en masse, as "political execution," and the banning of that liberal movement as "a crackdown on dissent."  In fact the El-Minya crazed judge is now besieged by an investigation by the Judicial Inspection Department of the Justice Ministry.

• Yet, here again, the paper, with a broad brush, lays the blame on the entire post-Morsi government of which the judiciary is but one branch.  

• Without excusing such aberrations on the part of one Government branch which has been recently restored by the 2014 Constitution to its independence, that across the broad condemnation misses an essential fact: the post-Islamist Egyptian Government, which El-Sisi, in spite of his popularity, does not yet run, is ongoing through the teething errors of hit and miss.  Fairness in reporting is the bedrock of educating public opinion as regards the realities of the yet unfinished Arab Spring/the Egyptian sector.

• Egypt's present struggle against terrorism perpetrated by the Brotherhood International, directly or through proxies like Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis and Al-Qaeda, constitutes a  huge boost to the global war on terror.  

• Among other salutary effects, it forced Hamas, now declared a terrorist organization by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, into reconciling, at least for now, with the Palestinian National Authority.  

• It also propelled a meeting in late April between U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, and the Chief of Intelligence of Egypt, General Muhammad Farid Al-Tohamy in Washington, D.C.  The obvious purpose: to coordinate the measures relating to the war on terror between Egypt and the U.S.  This was followed by a meeting between Kerry and Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's able foreign minister.  

• Towards the same goals, President Obama has recently approved the release to Egypt of 10 Apache helicopters to bolster Egypt's warring on terrorism in Sinai, where as recently as yesterday, 2 security personnel were eliminated at the criminal hands of Sinai terrorists.

• As the U.S. s gradually turning inward, for the sake of better serving American development priorities, so is the case with Egypt.  Gone are the go-go years of Egypt's disastrous interventions in the affairs of other Arab States.  

• A simple reading of a statement made by El-Sisi on April 26, 2014, to a delegation representing sports in Egypt, reveals this trend -not one word about Arab issues outside Egypt.  That solitary emphasis on the age-old principle of "charity begins at home" is galvanizing not only Egyptian and other efforts, including Gulf States support.  It is leading the Davos economic organization to consider holding that prestigious conference in Egypt after the elections.

These are but some of the  news which this blogger sees as "fit to print."  The two Egyptian revolutions do not deserve the myopic view of The New York Times of being constantly seen only through the prism of "the glass is half empty."

• Such faulty judgments remind me somehow of the irrationality manifested by some top Republican senators in the U.S. Congress who are rooting for new wars.

But The New York Times is not the only voice of doom crying foul for every misstep which the Egyptian Revolution might take, even before these steps are taken.

In an article in the prestigious Foreign Affairs of May/June 2014, entitled "Near Eastern Promises," its two authors indulge in an imaginary hypothesis.  They fancifully claim the following:

"Although it is impossible to prove a hypothetical, had the United States been willing to come forth quickly with $5-$10 billion in additional aid for Egypt (on top of the roughly $1.5 billion that Egypt already receives annually), it probably would have bought Washington enormous leverage -perhaps enough to prevent the worst excesses of Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist president who came to power after the revolution, and thus forestall Morsi's overthrow by generals who seem determined to return Egypt to its pre-revolutionary torpor."(p. 100)

Are you guys for real?  So you think that throwing a bunch of $$ at The Muslim Brotherhood International would have placated it and saved Egypt form its internal confrontation with terrorism?

The Brotherhood, with continuous infusion of money from Qatar and its foreign franchises, not to mention Mr. Money Bags, a.k.a. (also known as) Khairat El-Shater, its Deputy Supreme Guide, has always been awash with money.  Its fatal deficiency has not been lack of funding -but lack of founding on Egyptian soil which it had regarded as a mere staging ground for pan-Islamism.

You seem to advocate to America and the world that an Islamist Egypt would have been more preferable to a secular Egypt led by El-Sisi.  Please, get your facts straight from the Egyptian multitudes.  That would be more lasting than inventing hypotheses which has no shelf life!!