Message from an Egyptian-American

Early yesterday morning I received a message on my mobile from a certain eminent Egyptian-American individual, who gave me this advice: “My friend, America’s stance is horrible. I keep saying that the media and Egyptians are talking to themselves and not reaching the American people and the West. The Brotherhood is in constant contact with the Western media and the U.S. government, and the Egyptian government is asleep at the wheel. There has to be a major campaign using photos and videos to inform the U.S. government and Congress. The sit-ins that were broken up in Rabiyya Adawiyya and Nahda Squares would never last more than two days in the U.S. or any Western country. Egyptians aren’t very good with public relations and don’t understand how important PR is […] Baradei is useless; he doesn’t grasp what his responsibilities are in the extenuating circumstances his country is now going through. The Egyptian government has to use what happened with the churches that were burned by the Brotherhood. It has to expose that inhuman scene of what happened to the police officers from the Kerdasa station; no human conscience would accept what happened to those officers who were murdered while doing their jobs and whose corpses were then maimed.”

Thus ended a message with many meanings. Even if the media had adequately covered the battle internally, so that the Egyptian people were aware of the number of crimes committed by the terrorist group, the question would still remain over the reasons why what was going on inside the sit-ins did not receive as much coverage abroad. So what is the role of the State Information Service in this?

The message brought up an important point: Would a Western country ever allow an armed sit-in to continue in its capital for more than two days, and would it remain silent over attacks on places of worship? Would it stay quiet when police officers were being killed and their corpses defiled? Such questions completely negate the Brotherhood’s justifications and their claims of victimhood.