Hossam el-Hamalawy
I’ve just finished watching the gruesome new video released an hour ago by Ansar Beit al-Maqdas. The video on YouTube went viral, but it was taken down after being reported by users. However, it’s already there on DailyMotion and other sites. The links are disseminated widely via Twitter, Islamist forums and Facebook, etc.
It’s ironic, how a small terrorist organization, using social media platforms available for free, can outtake a resourceful state in the propaganda war.
Sisi fears Gaza, for the same reason Mubarak did. It’s not because of the tunnels. The tunnels have always existed. They flourished only because of the Egyptian-Israeli siege. The arms do not flow into Egypt from Gaza; it’s the other way around. Not a single concrete proof was ever given by Sisi’s propagandists or the security services implicating Hamas in any ongoing terror attacks on Egyptian soil.
Rather, Sisi, like Mubarak before him, fears the Palestinians example. The Palestinians have always acted as a radicalizing factor for Egyptians. Dissent is contagious. There is a fine thread connecting the second Palestinian intifada, which erupted in 2000, with Tahrir Square in 2011.
The deputy head of the Egyptian Football Federation, Hassan Farid, regards Africans as “elephant jockeys and cannibals,” and Egypt’s most prominent sports news website doesn’t mind at all posting those racist statements without any sort of commentary.
Such anti-African racism is rampant in Egyptian media.
Today's @youm7 pic.twitter.com/iJfr1axKgh
— عمو حسام (@3arabawy) August 28, 2014