The U.S.-Israeli Spy

Before we close this file, it is important that we stop and examine some significant aspects of the case of Ilan Grapel, a spy who was exchanged for several Egyptian prisoners on Oct. 27 of this year. All of these are political aspects, separate from the discussion about the number of the prisoners, the kind of crimes they had committed and comparisons of the deal with the swap of Palestinian prisoners.

The first aspect is that Grapel was indeed spying on Egypt. That Israel accepted the exchange testifies to the failure of the Zionist campaign of denial and condemnation that emanated from Israel after his arrest. They mocked Egypt and its security service and accused it of searching for delusive triumphs. They said that they captured innocent tourists and fabricated false spy stories.

The second aspect is that Grapel was a U.S.-Israeli spy. He is a real embodiment of the true nature of relations between America and Israel on one side and Egypt on the other, which hasn't changed since the aggression of 1967, despite internal, territorial and international changes.

U.S. and Israeli diplomatic delegations had been visiting him frequently in prison before he was handed over, but some analysts went further, assuming that the main reason Egypt accepted the deal was American pressure applied for weeks by U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who is said to have threatened to discontinue U.S. military aid to Egypt unless Grapel was released. Some went even further, saying that he was an American spy.

The third aspect is America's and Israel's destructive role in striking at the revolution and attempting to bring it to a miscarriage. One of the charges against Grapel, according to an investigation by security service spies, is his confession that he burned down the police department and general facilities, actions impossible to realize without orders from his chiefs in the Mossad and the CIA. Good Egyptian people realized the gross cheating and dishonesty of U.S. foreign policy — America claimed to support the Egyptian revolution and the creation of a democratic system — as well as the deceitfulness of Israeli claims of adherence and willingness to continue its peace with Egypt. Their peace is poisonous.

They peddle lies in the media while being in a diplomatic meeting. After that, they lunge at us with every possible tactic, enabling many suspicious events after the revolution to burst out suddenly and without warning.

The fourth aspect is certain and very old. There are only two kinds of spies in Egypt: American and Zionist. Egypt, as far as I remember, has never in its history witnessed spies of other nationalities. We do not hear about Libyan or Syrian spies; nor do we hear of spies from Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Palestine — not even from Turkey, India, China, Russia, Brazil or Africa. That assures us for the thousandth time that we have no permanent enemies other than the Americans and Zionists. They never have and never will stop doing it. If relations were good and equal as they say, they would have stopped spying after the peace agreement of 1979, but they insist on it and continue doing it.

In Egypt, there are, as we know, over 1,000 U.S. diplomats. They help the U.S. spying services remain active. In addition to that, there are hundreds of other civil organizations — for example, American aid and economic companies, research centers and organization for human rights.

I imagine that what we will have learned from the Grapel story is to keep and intensify all that is American: aid, supportive loans, training, financing, discussions, delegations, interventions, dialogues, coordination, cooperation, conferences, transactions … and so on, always assuming bad faith until there is the opposite. But not all assumptions are wrong.