February 25, 2011
Dear Pastors:
On our last evening in Israel, Sgt. Major Itzik and Sgt. Major Yossi, of Givati Brigade, called wanting to have supper with us. So we had to make a hurried up trip to Ashdod to eat with them. The meal for my "unescorted Football Players" and I, cost over 2900 shekels, and at about 3.40 per $ I was out some change, but the LORD GOD OF THE HEBREWS WILL reward me even though "I had to pay" then. HE is the one who said in Luke 10, "Whatsoever thou spendest more, I will repay thee, when I come again."
As my unescorted football players sang in that restaurant, "God is sooo good. He answers prayer. He is coming again." I am just "fool enough" to believe that.
Harvey Douglen, the owner of the Ramada-Jerusalem (you ought stay there anytime you visit Jerusalem — just mention my name when booking your hotel, and book directly with Harvey) provided a nice suite for me, where at one time during the visit, we had 17 Jews in that room listening to this ole man blather! The suite has a Jacuzzi in it. It is deep. I was in such a hurry to shower before heading to that Ashdod meeting, I realized I was washing my hair "with my glasses on," and then, when stepping out of the tub, my right foot missed my bath mat, and that slick tile floor put me on my backside. My first thought was, "I ought to sue Harvey for this." Then, GOD told me, "Jimbo, you can’t sue a Jew." HE didn’t even have to quote Gen. 12:3 to me. I immediately thought of the curse of it!
But, the fall really hurt me. I may have broken a bone in my right wrist and one in my right leg. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’m just too old to fall like that. Or maybe, I am really a "sissy", and, as my wife would say, "When he was born, his big brothers didn’t want a sissy baby brother, and he has pretended for almost 71 years he is not a sissy, and so he got to believing it." Maybe I no longer believe I am not a sissy, and so really I am!
I feel like former professional football player, 295 lb Paul Blair has been blocking on me, and Reggie White, whose picture is up in the Ramada, has been tackling me, so, after going to bed at 10 pm and getting up at 1:30 am last night, I am hurting. It is now 5:50 am and I have already written a long letter.
I will tell you this, I haven’t laughed as much on any trip as I did this one. Those HAC fellers came with some questions about some JAV stories of my time there in Hammond, Indiana as an Associate Pastor to Jack Hyles, FBC, Hammond, and Executive VP of Hyles Anderson College, in which the renditions have made me as tall as that feller in Tulsa said, "I saw Jesus last night, and he was 918 feet tall," back yonder when I first came to OKC, Oral Roberts! Ole JAV ain’t 918 feet tall. But, I really got a bang out of correcting those stories and bringing me down to a fat 5' 8" in height.
Justin, one of our black, deaf, OBC boys made friends with a Jewish lady named Lori, on the plane going over. She was putting on a wedding for someone at the Hotel while we were there. The day and time came for the wedding, with Justin tapping my shoulder three times to get my attention, telling me, "It is time!" and so I sent Jason Engelman (whom I call "bird legs") with Justin to find Lori’s wedding.
Jason came back in a little bit and said "We found her. It is wild over there." I said, "Jason, don’t use the word "wild," just say unique. They are Jews." So, I took former NYC cop Morty Dzikansky, his wife Merlyn, and their 11 year old Zach, and their twin son and daughter and off we went to the wedding.
On arrival, there is this attractive, fortyish, Jewish lady, Lori, breaking our "no touch" OBC rule with her arm around Justin’s shoulder. He seemed to be enjoying all the attention. Fellers, that lady Lori’s smile is a lesson to all we Independent Baptist Pastors. She smiles as well as does Arieh Eldad’s wife. He is a member of the Knesset and lives in Kfar Adumim.
(The Deaf fellers with me pulled a "gotcha" on me the other day. They had someone come tell me Justin had swiped a real, live bullet from one of the IDF sites we had visited. So, my irascibleness boiled over immediately and I stormed down the hall to the connecting rooms where them deaf fellers were staying. I walked in, and gave Justin one of my "meanest looks," which the Bride of my youth doesn’t like for me to display, "Boilingly asking, Where in God’s dear name did you get that bullet?" He looks at me with his "scaredest look" put on his face, and then slowly holds up an 8 x 10 piece of paper with "GOTCHA" printed on it."
So, solemnly I said, "Fellers, you are going to begin to learn now why you should never "mess" with "a messer!")
(Brother Boykin is our Asst. Bus Director at WHBC. He had made for me a pen out of a 30.06 bullet. The pen has a plastic top. The bottom is the metal bullet. TSA found my two live bullets in my beret on arrival at TSA on the 13th. But, security here, Israeli security in Newark, in Tel Aviv, and again TSA in Newark on the way home never found the 30.06 pen bullet, which I found in my Givati Fleece jacket yesterday. TSA is really protecting us! Feel safe when you travel. A "feeling" is all you have!)
Well, lo and behold, while we are talking with Lori, up waltzes a New Jersey Jewish lady, who knows Merlyn. Morty and family go to meet that family. I went to meet the Ramada Rabi, who has a son named Immanuel (just think about that) who, when I met him, was a Paratrooper, and is now a boxer.
Immanuel, the ex-paratrooper, present boxer, came to our suite, for me to give him several of the Football Booklets I had prepared. He is a better Jew than Morty for he wouldn’t ride in the non-shabbat elevator up to our 8th floor. Morty would and did with me punch the floor number for our room.]
Well, in our suite, we wound up with a passel of Jews in there that evening. I gave them the "ole jav" rendition of present day events, which the lady from NJ’s dad held a different view than I. I said, "I hope you are right and I am wrong." Well, lo and behold, he was right, and ole JAV was wrong. It isn’t the first time.
One of our "unescorted football players" asked the question, "Dr. Vineyard, (making me feel important) How do you make all these contacts with Jews?" Morty’s wife, Merlyn, pops up and says, "I shall tell you. Preacher (Morty and her call me that) is an opportunist." (I do hope she meant it in the "good sense" and I hope I have enough sense to keep that opportunism in the good sense, for I know some, who are opportunist and do take advantage of all the people I know in Israel, for the "mooching opportunist’s" benefits and that of the moocher’s family.)
Katyusha rockets fell around Beersheva and in the Negev the other day. We had gotten out Dodge before they fell and were in no danger. The press and even some of our fellers call them GRAD rockets in error. Them "ain’t" (thats Texas talk) GRADS. Them are Katyushas. The UN settlement of the 2006 2nd Lebanon War ruled that the Palestinians could have no more KATYUSHAS. So they simply renamed them GRADS. But, call them what you may, they are still KATYUSHAS.
(I know a feller, a Preacher, who acts like he is tough. He could whip me in a heartbeat — if he could keep my hands from getting at his throat. He probably weighs close to 300 lbs. I have told him on several occasions, "I would like very much to see your reaction when a Katyusha fell nearby.")
One of my other "real laughs" on this trip was in our suite, I think, on the last day. I was giving the "unescorted football players" one of my many lectures. We were all serious. Now, get this picture. I am sitting at the end of a large football shaped table. Dr. Brian Korner is immediately to my left. Tony Beaudry, former Professional wrestler, 6'5", 250 lbs of bad due is to his left. Dr. Jeff Harris, former All State Kentucky Football Player, now Baptist Preacher in Elizabethown is to his left. Oscar, who is a Peruvian Christian now in a Baptist Church in Tulsa, and an American Airline Pilot, a Mexican American is to his left. Warren Garraway, retired New York State Engineer, called now as a Soul Winning Evangelist is to his left, and then our son John is on their left.
Dr. Bruce Engelman is at the other end of the table. On my right is David Sloan, and then some OBC fellers and some HAC fellers. Over at the other end of the suite is a "bar." And it’s a bar like you’d see in a BAR. Behind the bar is a feller who inadvertently puts his weight on the top shelf underneath the bar.
IT FALLS TO THE SHELF BENEATH IT WITH A LOUD BANG. I bet (if I was a gambler) that Bruce Engelman shot six inches up out of his chair. Just about everyone in the room jumped. I am not a jumper, and do not jump at such noises. If it's gonna kill you, you are just wasting energy to jump. BUT, I SURE DID LAUGH!
The Givati Brigade is having their "thing" for the 197 families of their KILLED IN ACTION soldiers June 23rd, 24th and 25th. THEY HAVE ASKED FOR OUR HELP AGAIN. I haven’t promised them anything. But, I am going to try to raise the $30,000 they’ve asked me to help with. If you could help with that, Checks should be made out to Yedidim of Israel and sent to 5517 NW 23rd St., OKC, Ok, 73127, with the memo stating "June Givati KIA thing."
The Givati Brigade gets all these families together and tries to help them "feel good" for three days in lieu of the sacrifice their families have made in having a son Killed in Action! Some of you fellers don’t like my doing that, but, that's OK, I am a giver and not a taker, and so I enjoy it, and I think my Heavenly Father is pleased with it. If HE AIN’T, it won’t be a "hair off your leg," but it shall be off mine.
Our son John stayed with our son Tom while in OKC. Tom took him to the Airport early this morning. I called him a while ago. He gave Boogie a USC Leather Jacket the other night at the "Boogie Banquet." Someone climbed my case about calling it the "Boogie Banquet" telling me I ought be more respectful of the Vice Prime Minister of all Israel. I retorted in my best "smart alec" way, "I was being respectful in "huggin him whilst he was a huggin me" the other night. He and some others call me Jimbo. I call him Boogie. When they feed me they can call it a "Jimbo Banquet." When I feed him I shall call it a "Boogie Banquet." Anyway, John’s words on the phone this morning was, "Be sure to tell Boogie I want a picture of him wearing that USC jacket." He wants to show it off (that's what my wife says I do) to some of his USC friends.
So, maybe, Anat, Boogie’s Chief of Staff, who reads my (Will Rogers type)"writ," will read these lines, take his picture, and email it to me. Ifn she don’t, I suppose I shall have to email John a Picture of he and Boogie holding the jacket. That will then have to suffice till I get down to Boogie’s Kibbutz to help out with him when he does his milking chores, at which time I shall say, "Hey Boogie, my buddy, could I persuade you to put that Jacket on Johnny gave you from USC and let me take your picture?"
Beit Kobi needs 150,000 shekels for operating expenses. Beit Kobi is a "Home away from Home for IDF soldiers" who have no home in Israel. If you could help with that, you can either send the money to me, or send it directly to Beit Kobi. You can google them up. I told Aviva I would go to work on that. Dr. Garry Way’s church has probably helped both Beit Kobi and Givati more than any other church in America. Maybe they will be able to help again. I sure hope so.
Well, it is now 7:00 am. I need go out and visit with the Bride of my youth, my Precious Dawga Jo!
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
More Updates from Israel
February 19, 2011
Dear Pastors:
From the beautiful Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, where all "future events" will end up with this city as the center-piece, I write on this beautiful Saturday morning looking out over the City of Zion.
At a wedding of a Jewish Bride and Jewish Groom, the Hebrews have a custom in which they use the passage of Scripture from Psalms 137, breaking a glass, and making "holy vows" not to forget Zion. I wish you could have been here yesterday to hear Meryl Dzikansky’s explanation of the "wedding ceremony." I thought as she was explaining, ole hell-deserving sinner Jim Vineyard is heading also to a Wedding Supper one of these days, which, from Scripture, I simply call the "Marriage Supper of the Lamb."
Ps. 137:1, "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4 How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."
For you dear ones which have helped to make this trip a reality, I just wish you could be here to hear these football players sing, "O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."
There is so much going on over here at this time, it is mind-boggling just trying to keep one’s mind in gear long enough to comprehend each and every thing. Events haven’t played out exactly as I would have had them to, but, I learned back there in July of 1967 when our second son Lorne Matthew, 3-1/2 years old, died during a simple tonsillectomy, I had to get my calendar fixed on God’s calendar.
As Omar, who we now call "Fast Freddy," (his time in the forty yard dash is 3.4 seconds – or, at least that's what he told me on the plane) and Jason, both found last fall as their dear mothers were escorted from this realm through the glories of heaven —GOD’S CALENDAR is the one we must "attune" our affections and attentions on!
NEWS FROM HERE:
The 25 generals now ruling Egypt believe the tide of international acclaim for the youthful, pro-democratic popular revolution that swept Hosni Mubarak out of office will also keep them in power for at least the next two years.
My intel sources in Washington and Cairo report exclusively that the supreme military council sent a message in no-nonsense terms to President Barack Obama and his administration Monday, Feb. 14 – their fourth day in power - laying out their six-point plan for the coming year and their expectations of Washington:
1. The military regime is committed to meeting Washington and the opposition's demands for a transition to democratic government. However, there should be no misunderstandings between Cairo and Washington: Before approaching that point, the military rulers need time to bring stability to Egypt and thoroughly study the steps necessary for reaching that objective.
2. A period of at least a year to two years - and perhaps more - is cited in the message.
Washington is advised to ignore last weekend's military bulletins promising a transition period of six months to a general election. There would be no election after six months, said the generals – or at any time before they feel the political and economic situation in the country is steady and a new constitution is formulated.
On this point, the Egyptian officers were brutally clear, say our sources. Without those pre-conditions, democracy would be of "no real value," they stressed, adding, "It would be complete madness to run for early elections… "
But, as I see it from here in Jerusalem, The generals will create a mechanism to keep them in control!
3. What would not be madness?
The officers explained elections cannot take place before the ruling National Democratic Party through which Mubarak ruled Egypt is overhauled and rebuilt from the bottom up. Friday, February 11, shortly before Mubarak's ouster became final, the military sacked the party secretary, Hossam Badrawi, just a few days after he was installed by Egypt's intelligence overlord, Gen. Omar Suleiman, who was then vice president.
The other generals want a military council consensus on this key appointment - not just one voice.
4. The Egyptian generals went on to warn President Obama that without an orderly, controlled transition to a stable government "anything could happen in Egypt, including events whose outcome no one can imagine."On this point, the generals were sending Washington a double message, sources say:
In the first place, they do not see the High Army Council role as technical - merely to oversee the writing of a new constitution, set the scene for a democratic election and then retire, leaving the rival political parties to vie for votes and the winners to run the country.
On no account, will the military rulers let this process go forward before they have put a strong political mechanism in place to guarantee the army's continued control over governance.
Never! say the Egyptian military to US on Muslim Brotherhood in government!
In the second place, the generals, like Mubarak and his predecessors, strongly object to raising the highly-organized Muslim Brotherhood to a role in government, thereby drawing the lines of the first major rift between the military junta in Cairo and the Obama administration in Washington.
Egypt's military rulers made this point very forcefully in their first message to the US, our Cairo sources report, because they were shocked and exasperated by the testimony given by James Clapper, Director of US National Intelligence to the House Intelligence Committee last Thursday, February 10, in response to a question about the Brothers from Rep. Sue Myrick, a Republican from North Carolina.
"The term Muslim Brotherhood … is an umbrella term for a variety of movements," Clapper said. "… in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera… In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally."
And ole JAV states unequivocally, "What an out of tune sap-sucker the ‘obamessiah’s’ Director of US National Intelligence is!"
This followed an article published in the Washington Post on February 3, under the headline "US Reexamining its Relationship with Muslim Brotherhood Opposition Group."
Clapper Thursday, Feb. 17, partly corrected his first briefing, admitting there was a wider range of opinion within the Brotherhood than he had represented - especially on the merits of preserving peace with Israel.
The WP article quoted Emile Nakhleh, a former CIA official who directed the agency's program for analyzing political Islam, who said: "If we are truly going to engage with the 99 percent of Muslims who do not support terrorism or violence, then we've got to engage indigenous groups, including Islamic political parties."
Although the Brotherhood is Egypt's best-organized opposition group, with an active charitable arm that dispenses social services nationwide, Nakhleh said it would not necessarily win a majority of votes in an open election. "They would be a hefty minority," he said, predicting that it would receive support from about 25 to 30 percent of the Egyptian population.
But, the question is, "Does the Brotherhood sees its chance to break into government?"
Egypt's generals inferred from what they were hearing that the Obama administration had departed from traditional US opposition to a role in government for the Muslim Brotherhood and decided to push for one in the post-Mubarak era.
Remember now, the Generals have just watched our "obamessiah" through Mubarak under the bus!
The army chiefs felt it important, therefore, to make Washington understand from the very outset that co-opting the Brotherhood to a future administration in Cairo was totally unacceptable to them.
Meanwhile, Brotherhood tacticians were encouraged by the signals from Washington.
Mohammed Mursi, a member of the group's political bureau, announced Tuesday, Feb. 15: "The Muslim Brotherhood believes in the freedom to form parties and is therefore determined to have its own political party."
This reversed their assertions in the course of the Egyptian uprising that they would neither put up a candidate for the presidency nor stand for election as a party. Under Mubarak they were banned but broadly tolerated.
Not any more: Mursi explained that the old constitution barred the establishment of any parties unless sanctioned by the ruling National Democratic Party. The regime which made those rules is gone.
5. Regarding the way Washington handled itself during the uprising, the generals wrote in their message: "In order to avoid such mistakes as happened during the last month, we propose" an American-Egyptian mechanism for coordinating future steps. Now, because of American "Flip-Flopping" Egypt's generals face must face US with good will and caution!
My Intel sources say that one of the highest-ranking officers of the High Army Council commented in a private conversation with fellow officers this week: "We don't want President Obama to keep breathing down our necks as he did in the past month. We also need to avoid falling into the mistakes he made - and will continue to make."
6. Even before this mechanism is in place, the generals made a gesture of good faith and willingness to cooperate with Washington – for as long as they are backed by the US: They duly notified the Obama administration of plans to keep two Mubarak-appointees in place - Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdi – while replacing at least half of the cabinet, including Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Abul-Gheit.
A new information minister would also be appointed to deal with the Egyptian media.
And so, the Ishamelites continue to "stir the pot" all over the Mid-East. I am told by my ex-Military friends here in Israel, folks who retired with high rank from the IDF, THAT the IDF has had to busy themselves greatly this past week "preparing rapid response teams" to expected "Cairo-style" West Bank demonstrations, which, in my opinion, will have the collective support of the idiots as clapper in the Obama administration.
The American government continues to send the wrong message to Israel’s enemies.
Washington should be saying right now that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
In a worrying move this week, the US, through its Ambassador to the UN Susan E. Rice, reportedly informed Arab governments and the Palestinians that it would support a statement by the president of the UN Security Council censuring Israel for "settlement activity."
The US reportedly agreed to back a statement that "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, which is a serious obstacle to the peace process." According to news reports, the US also agreed to consider supporting a UN Security Council visit to the Middle East, the first since 1979, and to commit to supporting strong language criticizing Israel’s settlement policies in a future statement by the Middle East Quartet.
The Palestinians, however, were unwilling to budge on their demand that settlements be labeled "illegal" in a Security Council resolution, and are pushing to have the council vote on Friday. Barring a compromise, the Obama administration must now contemplate the prospect of using its veto power in the council for the first time. But even if the Palestinian resolution is vetoed by the US in the end, damage has already been done.
THERE ARE those who would play down the importance of Rice’s reported offer. It is no secret that the US views settlements as an obstacle to peace. The Obama administration even attempted, unsuccessfully, to introduce a complete building freeze in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem as a condition for the renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians last year. Furthermore, a statement by the president of the Security Council is a declarative act that would have no substantive impact on Israeli policy.
Besides, if the US vetoes the Palestinian-pushed Security Council resolution as expected, that would be more than it did during the Carter administration. In March 1979, the UN Security Council passed resolution 446, stating that "the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East." The US abstained in that vote.
Yet the reported US willingness to diverge from what Israel regards as its interests and to cave in partially to Palestinian demands to censure Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East, contrasts sharply with its stated willingness to "engage" with, rather than punish, its enemies.
Just last month, for instance, the US appointed a new ambassador to Syria, a country that backs both terrorist insurgents killing American troops in Iraq, and Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible, among other outrages, for the deaths of 241 American soldiers in Lebanon in October 1983.
Washington should be saying right now that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
THE MESSAGE that Washington should be sending out right now is that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
I want to thank, once again, all of you who supported this trip, and I want to ask each of you to pray that these HYLES ANDERSON FELLAS will get the remaining "almost $5000" in to me "machen schnell" from what they still owe on the trip for Tuesday evening I shall have to have those monies in hand.
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Dear Pastors:
From the beautiful Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, where all "future events" will end up with this city as the center-piece, I write on this beautiful Saturday morning looking out over the City of Zion.
At a wedding of a Jewish Bride and Jewish Groom, the Hebrews have a custom in which they use the passage of Scripture from Psalms 137, breaking a glass, and making "holy vows" not to forget Zion. I wish you could have been here yesterday to hear Meryl Dzikansky’s explanation of the "wedding ceremony." I thought as she was explaining, ole hell-deserving sinner Jim Vineyard is heading also to a Wedding Supper one of these days, which, from Scripture, I simply call the "Marriage Supper of the Lamb."
Ps. 137:1, "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4 How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."
For you dear ones which have helped to make this trip a reality, I just wish you could be here to hear these football players sing, "O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."
There is so much going on over here at this time, it is mind-boggling just trying to keep one’s mind in gear long enough to comprehend each and every thing. Events haven’t played out exactly as I would have had them to, but, I learned back there in July of 1967 when our second son Lorne Matthew, 3-1/2 years old, died during a simple tonsillectomy, I had to get my calendar fixed on God’s calendar.
As Omar, who we now call "Fast Freddy," (his time in the forty yard dash is 3.4 seconds – or, at least that's what he told me on the plane) and Jason, both found last fall as their dear mothers were escorted from this realm through the glories of heaven —GOD’S CALENDAR is the one we must "attune" our affections and attentions on!
NEWS FROM HERE:
The 25 generals now ruling Egypt believe the tide of international acclaim for the youthful, pro-democratic popular revolution that swept Hosni Mubarak out of office will also keep them in power for at least the next two years.
My intel sources in Washington and Cairo report exclusively that the supreme military council sent a message in no-nonsense terms to President Barack Obama and his administration Monday, Feb. 14 – their fourth day in power - laying out their six-point plan for the coming year and their expectations of Washington:
1. The military regime is committed to meeting Washington and the opposition's demands for a transition to democratic government. However, there should be no misunderstandings between Cairo and Washington: Before approaching that point, the military rulers need time to bring stability to Egypt and thoroughly study the steps necessary for reaching that objective.
2. A period of at least a year to two years - and perhaps more - is cited in the message.
Washington is advised to ignore last weekend's military bulletins promising a transition period of six months to a general election. There would be no election after six months, said the generals – or at any time before they feel the political and economic situation in the country is steady and a new constitution is formulated.
On this point, the Egyptian officers were brutally clear, say our sources. Without those pre-conditions, democracy would be of "no real value," they stressed, adding, "It would be complete madness to run for early elections… "
But, as I see it from here in Jerusalem, The generals will create a mechanism to keep them in control!
3. What would not be madness?
The officers explained elections cannot take place before the ruling National Democratic Party through which Mubarak ruled Egypt is overhauled and rebuilt from the bottom up. Friday, February 11, shortly before Mubarak's ouster became final, the military sacked the party secretary, Hossam Badrawi, just a few days after he was installed by Egypt's intelligence overlord, Gen. Omar Suleiman, who was then vice president.
The other generals want a military council consensus on this key appointment - not just one voice.
4. The Egyptian generals went on to warn President Obama that without an orderly, controlled transition to a stable government "anything could happen in Egypt, including events whose outcome no one can imagine."On this point, the generals were sending Washington a double message, sources say:
In the first place, they do not see the High Army Council role as technical - merely to oversee the writing of a new constitution, set the scene for a democratic election and then retire, leaving the rival political parties to vie for votes and the winners to run the country.
On no account, will the military rulers let this process go forward before they have put a strong political mechanism in place to guarantee the army's continued control over governance.
Never! say the Egyptian military to US on Muslim Brotherhood in government!
In the second place, the generals, like Mubarak and his predecessors, strongly object to raising the highly-organized Muslim Brotherhood to a role in government, thereby drawing the lines of the first major rift between the military junta in Cairo and the Obama administration in Washington.
Egypt's military rulers made this point very forcefully in their first message to the US, our Cairo sources report, because they were shocked and exasperated by the testimony given by James Clapper, Director of US National Intelligence to the House Intelligence Committee last Thursday, February 10, in response to a question about the Brothers from Rep. Sue Myrick, a Republican from North Carolina.
"The term Muslim Brotherhood … is an umbrella term for a variety of movements," Clapper said. "… in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera… In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally."
And ole JAV states unequivocally, "What an out of tune sap-sucker the ‘obamessiah’s’ Director of US National Intelligence is!"
This followed an article published in the Washington Post on February 3, under the headline "US Reexamining its Relationship with Muslim Brotherhood Opposition Group."
Clapper Thursday, Feb. 17, partly corrected his first briefing, admitting there was a wider range of opinion within the Brotherhood than he had represented - especially on the merits of preserving peace with Israel.
The WP article quoted Emile Nakhleh, a former CIA official who directed the agency's program for analyzing political Islam, who said: "If we are truly going to engage with the 99 percent of Muslims who do not support terrorism or violence, then we've got to engage indigenous groups, including Islamic political parties."
Although the Brotherhood is Egypt's best-organized opposition group, with an active charitable arm that dispenses social services nationwide, Nakhleh said it would not necessarily win a majority of votes in an open election. "They would be a hefty minority," he said, predicting that it would receive support from about 25 to 30 percent of the Egyptian population.
But, the question is, "Does the Brotherhood sees its chance to break into government?"
Egypt's generals inferred from what they were hearing that the Obama administration had departed from traditional US opposition to a role in government for the Muslim Brotherhood and decided to push for one in the post-Mubarak era.
Remember now, the Generals have just watched our "obamessiah" through Mubarak under the bus!
The army chiefs felt it important, therefore, to make Washington understand from the very outset that co-opting the Brotherhood to a future administration in Cairo was totally unacceptable to them.
Meanwhile, Brotherhood tacticians were encouraged by the signals from Washington.
Mohammed Mursi, a member of the group's political bureau, announced Tuesday, Feb. 15: "The Muslim Brotherhood believes in the freedom to form parties and is therefore determined to have its own political party."
This reversed their assertions in the course of the Egyptian uprising that they would neither put up a candidate for the presidency nor stand for election as a party. Under Mubarak they were banned but broadly tolerated.
Not any more: Mursi explained that the old constitution barred the establishment of any parties unless sanctioned by the ruling National Democratic Party. The regime which made those rules is gone.
5. Regarding the way Washington handled itself during the uprising, the generals wrote in their message: "In order to avoid such mistakes as happened during the last month, we propose" an American-Egyptian mechanism for coordinating future steps. Now, because of American "Flip-Flopping" Egypt's generals face must face US with good will and caution!
My Intel sources say that one of the highest-ranking officers of the High Army Council commented in a private conversation with fellow officers this week: "We don't want President Obama to keep breathing down our necks as he did in the past month. We also need to avoid falling into the mistakes he made - and will continue to make."
6. Even before this mechanism is in place, the generals made a gesture of good faith and willingness to cooperate with Washington – for as long as they are backed by the US: They duly notified the Obama administration of plans to keep two Mubarak-appointees in place - Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdi – while replacing at least half of the cabinet, including Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Abul-Gheit.
A new information minister would also be appointed to deal with the Egyptian media.
And so, the Ishamelites continue to "stir the pot" all over the Mid-East. I am told by my ex-Military friends here in Israel, folks who retired with high rank from the IDF, THAT the IDF has had to busy themselves greatly this past week "preparing rapid response teams" to expected "Cairo-style" West Bank demonstrations, which, in my opinion, will have the collective support of the idiots as clapper in the Obama administration.
The American government continues to send the wrong message to Israel’s enemies.
Washington should be saying right now that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
In a worrying move this week, the US, through its Ambassador to the UN Susan E. Rice, reportedly informed Arab governments and the Palestinians that it would support a statement by the president of the UN Security Council censuring Israel for "settlement activity."
The US reportedly agreed to back a statement that "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, which is a serious obstacle to the peace process." According to news reports, the US also agreed to consider supporting a UN Security Council visit to the Middle East, the first since 1979, and to commit to supporting strong language criticizing Israel’s settlement policies in a future statement by the Middle East Quartet.
The Palestinians, however, were unwilling to budge on their demand that settlements be labeled "illegal" in a Security Council resolution, and are pushing to have the council vote on Friday. Barring a compromise, the Obama administration must now contemplate the prospect of using its veto power in the council for the first time. But even if the Palestinian resolution is vetoed by the US in the end, damage has already been done.
THERE ARE those who would play down the importance of Rice’s reported offer. It is no secret that the US views settlements as an obstacle to peace. The Obama administration even attempted, unsuccessfully, to introduce a complete building freeze in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem as a condition for the renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians last year. Furthermore, a statement by the president of the Security Council is a declarative act that would have no substantive impact on Israeli policy.
Besides, if the US vetoes the Palestinian-pushed Security Council resolution as expected, that would be more than it did during the Carter administration. In March 1979, the UN Security Council passed resolution 446, stating that "the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East." The US abstained in that vote.
Yet the reported US willingness to diverge from what Israel regards as its interests and to cave in partially to Palestinian demands to censure Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East, contrasts sharply with its stated willingness to "engage" with, rather than punish, its enemies.
Just last month, for instance, the US appointed a new ambassador to Syria, a country that backs both terrorist insurgents killing American troops in Iraq, and Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible, among other outrages, for the deaths of 241 American soldiers in Lebanon in October 1983.
Washington should be saying right now that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
THE MESSAGE that Washington should be sending out right now is that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
I want to thank, once again, all of you who supported this trip, and I want to ask each of you to pray that these HYLES ANDERSON FELLAS will get the remaining "almost $5000" in to me "machen schnell" from what they still owe on the trip for Tuesday evening I shall have to have those monies in hand.
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Friday, February 11, 2011
Psalm 137 Song
February 11,2011
Dear Preachers,
Linked here are the words to Psalm 137 along with the music; a David Sloan rendition. I have also linked a music file of him singing it.
Just highlight, copy, and paste the links into your web browser.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hehfNB2Iz_CJTqcyKj3XCTp3mHefeNSMSR10PoPbSa8/edit?hl=en#
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B3BUxSSt69J_ZTAyNGQ3OGUtMTc4Ny00OTI5LWI2NDctMTkyYjZkMDgwZTIx&hl=en
JIM VINEYARD
Dear Preachers,
Linked here are the words to Psalm 137 along with the music; a David Sloan rendition. I have also linked a music file of him singing it.
Just highlight, copy, and paste the links into your web browser.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hehfNB2Iz_CJTqcyKj3XCTp3mHefeNSMSR10PoPbSa8/edit?hl=en#
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B3BUxSSt69J_ZTAyNGQ3OGUtMTc4Ny00OTI5LWI2NDctMTkyYjZkMDgwZTIx&hl=en
JIM VINEYARD
Letter to Preachers
February 11, 2011
Dear Pastors:
Pain woke this (almost 71) year ole codger, the Poor Boy From the Panhandle of God’s Texas, whom the LORD has been far better to than he deserves at 2:39 am this morning. I laid there praying until 3:15 am, but was unable to go to sleep, so, in anticipation of the telephone call which I am to receive this afternoon at 1:00 pm Oklahoma time from Retired Israeli Major General Shimon Erem (see www.IsraeliChristianNexus.com) concerning Egypt and its present situation, I arose, and so here I am writing a few lines to you.
You Baptist Preachers, bless your lazy hearts — quit complaining about the length of these emails, and read them as my hundreds of Jewish friends do, which I hear from that I am teaching them things even they do not know. Look Fellas, I am your friend, not your enemy. Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth? (Gal. 4:16)
If you believe the Scriptures, then, as Tom, our son and Pastor, preached Wednesday night, out of Daniel chapters 2 & 7, all these events happening point to the soon coming of the HEBREW MESSIAH. (HE was born of a Jewish woman you do know and is the center point of all future events, along with the city of Jerusalem.) Therefore, my heart thirsts and hungers after "knowledge" about the "tie in" of all these present day events.
Zec. 12:3, "And in that day (the day of the COMING OF MESSIAH) will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it."
Shimon Erem hosted Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon in California this past December, where we became acquainted with this dear, almost 89, year old Jew. Shimon and Vice President Omar Suleiman speak on the phone at least once a week and have done so for many, many years. If Shimon can arrange me an appointment with Mr. Suleiman sometime during Feb. 14-22, I am going down into Egypt to meet personally with Major General Erem’s friend. You never know, I might find a way of help those "faithful Christians" in Egypt, who live constantly under the threat of Ishmaelite "throat slitters."
Egypt's leading dissident Mohamed ElBaradei has warned that his country was about to "explode" and urged the army to take the side of the people after President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians protested in the heart of Cairo late yesterday, hoping to hear Mubarak say he will step down but instead learning that he had delegated presidential power to Vice President Omar Suleiman.
They vowed to launch their most spectacular protest yet in the Egyptian capital today to demand the immediate departure of Mubarak who delegated his powers to Suleiman but stopped short of resigning.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has not had a vice-president since he took office in 1981, appointed his intelligence chief and confidant Omar Suleiman to the post on Saturday, the official news agency said.
Vice-president is the post that Mubarak occupied before he was promoted to the presidency following the assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat.
Here are five facts about Omar Suleiman:
* He has been the director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Services (EGIS) since 1993, a role in which he has played a prominent public role in diplomacy, including in Egypt's relations with Israel and with key aid donor the United States.
* He was born on July 2, 1936 in Qena, in southern Egypt. He later enrolled in Egypt's premier Military Academy in 1954, after which he received additional military training in the then Soviet Union at Moscow's Frunze Military Academy.
* He also studied political science at Cairo University and Ain Shams University. In 1992 he headed the General Operations Authority in the Armed Forces and then became the director of the military intelligence unit before taking over EGIS. (It is probably in this role that he became acquainted with General Shimon Erem, who has been on a "first name basis" with all of Israel’s Prime Ministers, since its formation back in 1948.)
* Suleiman took part in the war in Yemen in 1962 and the 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel.
* As Egypt's intelligence chief, Suleiman was in charge of the country's most important political security files, and was the mastermind behind the fragmentation of Islamist groups who led the uprising against the state in the 1990s.
Egypt's two-week uprising gathered heat, violence and breadth late Tuesday Feb. 8 just hours after it looked like subsiding. The flames spread through Egypt's major cities and ignited the entire country – from the Western Desert oases near the Libyan border all the way to El Arish in northern Sinai. The big industrial cities including Mahalla-el-Kebir and Helouan, centers of Egypt's military and steel complexes, were also caught up for the first time.
As the demonstrations went into their third week they took on a different character: signs of political organization surfaced amid the spontaneous popular outbreaks and "revolutionary committees" sprang up to give them direction.
Wednesday and Thursday, Feb 9-10, the "revolutionary committees" and strikes spread like wildfire calling for the state-appointed managements of work places to be sacked and paralyzing entire sections of the economy.
Violence overlaid the street protests after 17,000 dangerous convicts broke out of prison (some of them organized by the Interior Ministry's security forces) and peppered the crowds.
Slogans became more brutal, calling for Mubarak to be hanged, his "criminal family" - including the president's wife Susan and sons Gemal and Alla - to be arrested and their property confiscated, and all of them tried for the crimes committed in 30 years in power.
However sympathetic to the sufferings of the Egyptian people, trained observers monitoring the first two weeks of the riots have told the intel-sources I read, that they cannot be sure the revolt was the purely spontaneous expression of popular outrage, because the two fundamental elements characterizing a genuine revolution are missing: surprise and randomness.
Eight players presently stir the Egyptian cauldron!
The public staging was impeccable. The scenes appearing on TV screens worldwide were artfully conceived and directed, whether by Mubarak's men, a branch of his regime - security forces, undercover intelligence units or the armed forces, or by the United States. It is important to remember that even when such disorders are orchestrated and erupt at the same moment, they may be engineered by different hands and develop their own dynamic, from place to place.
In general, the demonstrations in the big cities, Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Ismailia, Mansoura and Tanta (Egypt's fifth largest city and the biggest in the Delta region) differ from one another.
Eight players are pulling the strings; each has his own agenda and may be trying to influence or counterbalance unlooked-for occurrences in the course of the street action.
My intel-source names those players:
- The Barack Obama administration;
- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his circle;
- The Egyptian Army headed by Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Sami al-Anan;
- Egyptian General Intelligence headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman;
- Egypt's domestic security forces, now headed by new Egyptian Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy (which includes the muhabarat, the central security administration of the Interior Ministry and the Egyptian police);
- The ruling National Democratic Party. Under its new General Secretary, Hossam Badrawi, the NDP is the only political entity remaining organized and potent in the face of the riots and demonstrations;
- The ten or so mainstream opposition parties and factions like the April 6 Youth Movement headed by Ahmed Saleh which sprang up for the protest movement;
- The Muslim Brotherhood.
US dilemma: How to reconcile an army takeover with democracy? (JAV -What Obama and Hillary are going to learn, is, that, "their fiats" are going to install democracies in Muslim countries.)
Hosni Mubarak was viewed in Washington as a transient Egyptian figure since mid-2008 - by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Since the street riots began on Jan. 25, Washington has assigned the same transiency to Vice President Omar Suleiman, expecting him to eventually hand the reins of government over to a new regime.
(I enjoyed former UN Ambassador Bolton’s interview earlier this week! When asked about Obama’s views on Egypt, he laughed, and spoke to the "many" Obama takes, depending, ole JAV thinks, on what day of the week it is, and whose speech writer’s lines are on his teleprompter.)
US sources report that while endeavoring to contain the rampant crisis in Egypt, Washington is not clear on what kind of regime it wants to see in Cairo. US spokesmen talk fervently about free elections for the Egyptian people to vote for a democratic government and parliament. But behind the closed doors of meeting-rooms and the National Security Council's situation room, the name of the Egyptian chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Sami al-Anan keeps on cropping up as the man designated to be Egypt's next ruler.
The question now is how to reconcile the rise of a military ruler with the democratic process and do so in a way that is approved by the Egyptian street?
Washington has two main schools of thought on this subject:
1. The Turkish model in reverse:
A Muslim-slanted democracy dominated by a partnership between Muslim Brotherhood moderates and amenable liberal or left-wing civilians, is one. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, former director of the Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, is mentioned as a useful figure for getting this set-up underway.
It is obvious to the Americans that the army chief Lt. Gen al-Anan will never lend himself to an Ankara-style administration whose leader Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan managed to bounce the generals out of every position of influence in the country. They are therefore thinking in terms of running Gen. Al-Anan for president in charge of Egypt's foreign and security affairs and leaving domestic matters to an elected civilian government coalition.
Mubarak's fall has left his regime standing!
The Egyptian chief of staff was sounded out on this plan in his secret talks in Washington in the third week of January, hours before the first protesters took to the streets of Cairo. Middle East sources report that he indicated he did not object to free democratic elections in Egypt or the introduction of a free press and a civilian government with the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood - on one condition, that the army be personified in the next Egyptian president and preserve its pivotal role in the conduct of Egyptian national security.
2. The Moroccan model:
Whereas the Turkish model-in-reverse dominated administration thinking in the first week of demonstrations, Obama's strategists began looking at Morocco in the second, when the Mubarak regime failed to collapse as anticipated by US intelligence agencies, especially the CIA.
In Rabat, all the institutions of a democratic state are present – political parties, parliament, elections, but the king is all-powerful and he exercises power through his control of the army and the secret services.
But both solutions faced the same difficulty. While Mubarak and his family have been irreparably damaged, his political machine and regime remain intact. Positions of power have not collapsed or been abandoned by panicky office-holders.
Therefore, Mubarak's downfall has not left a void for Washington to fill with a democratic regime and so achieve its main goal.
Worse, the other parties vying for power in Cairo have taken note of the regime's survival and their leaders are scrambling for footholds to fulfill their ambitions – a trend which is placing additional obstacles in America's path.
Yes, to a military coup. But who would lead it?
To break out of the standoff among the parties seeking to determine who takes over in Cairo, US administration and Egyptian power brokers were able Wednesday, Feb. 10 to agree on at least one point: The only way out of the smoldering mess into which Egypt is sinking fast is for the army to move in and take charge of government.
But while spokesmen in both capitals were openly talking about a coup as realistic option, they were quickly bogged down by a fresh quandary: Who will lead the coup?
Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, aged 76, is ailing and as detested in Egypt as much as Mubarak. Chief of Staff Gen. Al-Anan? Washington favors him but he does not have a revolutionary temperament and governing a country of 82 million would likely be well beyond his capabilities.
The new Vice President, Omar Suleiman, who is also a general? He certainly has the experience, strength and strong nerves for the job. However the first two, Tantawi and Al-Anan, can't stand him and would not accept him as the overall ruler of Egypt.
The longer everyone dithers, the more likely, say my intelligence sources, that an unknown army officer will take matters in his own hands and surprise both Washington and the powerhouses in Cairo.
As to a guess at his identity, those sources are sure only that he will either come from the Egyptian 2nd or 9th Divisions stationed in the capital or the Republican Guard, because no officer serving outside Cairo would command the following for executing a putsch.
Hosni Mubarak: There will be no exit without dignity!
Buoyed by the sustainability of his regime under crippling pressure, President Mubarak is determined to hold on until the army, politicians and Washington find a way for him to step down in conditions that satisfy his sense of "personal and national dignity."
He wants to be assured that he does not go down in Egyptian and world history as a corrupt dictator, but a national hero. Until he is satisfied, he will hold fast to his refusal to transfer power.
The constitution is on his side. Every new law and executive action requires a presidential seal to make it legal and so he cannot legally be removed from the presidency against his will. The only way to depose him is by force of a military coup d'etat, or by assassination as Anwar Sadat was back in the Reagan times.
For now, the army chiefs, including Chief of Staff Al-Anan, are refusing to dishonor Egypt's former Air Force Commander and acclaimed national Hero of the "Ramadan War" (the 1973 Yom Kippur War) by bundling him out of the palace.
Omar Suleiman: My read on him is that he is getting ready for national elections, and propping up security!
(All that could be happening because of Retired Major General Shimon Erem from Californa. You really should Google up Shimon Erem and see how he reaches out to Christians! This call I’m getting at 1:00 pm today was all voluntary on his part. Maybe he sees something in this ole preacher-warrior that you Baptist Preachers are missing. And, to be sure, I am taking that to my heart, and not my head! Just a nobody, a simple man from Texas!)
The 74-year old former overlord of Egyptian intelligence and newly-appointed Vice President has no intention, say Cairo sources, of serving anyone as an interim figure or keeping the presidential seat warm for Gen. Al-Anan or any other contender. Suleiman believes the prediction Mubarak aired on Feb. 3 that if the regime collapses, the country will slide into chaos. He has therefore rolled up his sleeves and is doing his best to preserve and buttress government, focusing on two initial steps.
First, he is reorganizing Egypt's security forces with the help of the new Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy.
In Suleiman's view, the Mahabharata security service emerged unscathed and with untarnished image from the popular disorders. The only force which incurred popular loathing was the Interior Ministry's Security Service and its thugs. It is now subject to a major overhaul.
Second, the other important step undertaken by the vice president was to get his close and highly efficient crony Hossam Badrawi chosen to take over the office of ruling NDP secretary general from the leadership which resigned (including Gemal Mubarak) in one of the regime's gestures to placate the protesters.
Badrawi has lost no time in clearing Mubarak loyalists and old-timers out of the party machine, going from branch to branch to install young leaders and prepare the grass roots for the forthcoming elections to the Shura Council (the upper house of the Egyptian parliament) and the presidency.
Suleiman wants the ruling party to be fully prepared for when polling days come around and better organized than any of its rivals, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Neither of these activities suits Washington's plans for Egypt - hence the public bickering Tuesday, Feb. 8, between US spokesmen and Omar Suleiman.
White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in his daily briefing. "Yesterday, I think Vice President Suleiman made some particularly unhelpful comments about Egypt not being ready for a democracy, about not seeing a lift of the emergency law."
Gibbs went on to say: "I don't think that, in any way, squares with what those seeking greater opportunity and freedom think is a timetable for progress."
Gibbs added that any change that takes place in Egypt "has to be tangible" and "has to be real and it has to be immediate and irreversible."
The Opposition: Marginalized?
As the protest movement entered its third week, the opposition parties remained on the sidelines of the political processes and power struggles conducted between the Americans, Omar Suleiman and the army.
The leaders of the 10 parties are deeply divided, aware that the major leagues are trying to manipulate them as pawns.
Their leaders are trying to carve out an influential niche for an independent role – chiefly by controlling the demonstrations. But the street is responding to powers other than theirs.
The Muslim Brotherhood: Mostly passive!!!!!!
The Brotherhood has confounded all the grim forecasts of its menacing potential and effective organization. Except for scattered local demonstrations, it has remained the largest passive political power in Egypt, refusing to take part in the rowdy riots and political infighting.
This is not the place to analyze this fascinating phenomenon. It is a fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has chosen to sit out the most decisive moment in the last 60 years of Egyptian political history and await developments.
Was this a calculated decision? Or might the Brotherhood have taken note that the most active elements of the protest movement were young and non-religious and that its chances of taking over government in Cairo through the ballot box are negligible.
Egypt's current upheaval saw no Muslim leaders in the forefront of the action. Rather than influencing events, the Brotherhood was carried by the tide.
Late Breaking News: Late Thursday, Feb. 11, pressure built up on the army to stage a coup d'etat and remove Hosni Mubarak that same night. Suspense mounted in Tahrir Square and Washington, where US sources assured the media that Mubarak was only hours away from stepping down. But as the hours slipped by, authoritative denials proliferated from Cairo along with an announcement that the president would address the nation shortly. Mubarak again announced he would not step down until his term ends in September. He only lifted the emergency laws pending the restoration of order in the streets.
The Egyptian standoff is therefore is back to square one: Mubarak still holds the last word – not the army, Tahrir Square or Washington.
And so, my preacher friend, there you are, with events as this ole preacher-warrior sees them at 4:42 am this Friday morning. I hope all this was beneficial to you! We need be praying for the PEACE OF JERUSALEM! (PSALMS 122)
And pray for this "Football Trip" I am taking to Israel this coming Sunday, the 13th. Trying to help IDF soldiers to learn lessons from their "athletic endeavors" will save lives in combat! And, if you are a blessing to the Jews, God will bless you.
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Dear Pastors:
Pain woke this (almost 71) year ole codger, the Poor Boy From the Panhandle of God’s Texas, whom the LORD has been far better to than he deserves at 2:39 am this morning. I laid there praying until 3:15 am, but was unable to go to sleep, so, in anticipation of the telephone call which I am to receive this afternoon at 1:00 pm Oklahoma time from Retired Israeli Major General Shimon Erem (see www.IsraeliChristianNexus.com) concerning Egypt and its present situation, I arose, and so here I am writing a few lines to you.
You Baptist Preachers, bless your lazy hearts — quit complaining about the length of these emails, and read them as my hundreds of Jewish friends do, which I hear from that I am teaching them things even they do not know. Look Fellas, I am your friend, not your enemy. Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth? (Gal. 4:16)
If you believe the Scriptures, then, as Tom, our son and Pastor, preached Wednesday night, out of Daniel chapters 2 & 7, all these events happening point to the soon coming of the HEBREW MESSIAH. (HE was born of a Jewish woman you do know and is the center point of all future events, along with the city of Jerusalem.) Therefore, my heart thirsts and hungers after "knowledge" about the "tie in" of all these present day events.
Zec. 12:3, "And in that day (the day of the COMING OF MESSIAH) will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it."
Shimon Erem hosted Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon in California this past December, where we became acquainted with this dear, almost 89, year old Jew. Shimon and Vice President Omar Suleiman speak on the phone at least once a week and have done so for many, many years. If Shimon can arrange me an appointment with Mr. Suleiman sometime during Feb. 14-22, I am going down into Egypt to meet personally with Major General Erem’s friend. You never know, I might find a way of help those "faithful Christians" in Egypt, who live constantly under the threat of Ishmaelite "throat slitters."
Egypt's leading dissident Mohamed ElBaradei has warned that his country was about to "explode" and urged the army to take the side of the people after President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians protested in the heart of Cairo late yesterday, hoping to hear Mubarak say he will step down but instead learning that he had delegated presidential power to Vice President Omar Suleiman.
They vowed to launch their most spectacular protest yet in the Egyptian capital today to demand the immediate departure of Mubarak who delegated his powers to Suleiman but stopped short of resigning.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has not had a vice-president since he took office in 1981, appointed his intelligence chief and confidant Omar Suleiman to the post on Saturday, the official news agency said.
Vice-president is the post that Mubarak occupied before he was promoted to the presidency following the assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat.
Here are five facts about Omar Suleiman:
* He has been the director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Services (EGIS) since 1993, a role in which he has played a prominent public role in diplomacy, including in Egypt's relations with Israel and with key aid donor the United States.
* He was born on July 2, 1936 in Qena, in southern Egypt. He later enrolled in Egypt's premier Military Academy in 1954, after which he received additional military training in the then Soviet Union at Moscow's Frunze Military Academy.
* He also studied political science at Cairo University and Ain Shams University. In 1992 he headed the General Operations Authority in the Armed Forces and then became the director of the military intelligence unit before taking over EGIS. (It is probably in this role that he became acquainted with General Shimon Erem, who has been on a "first name basis" with all of Israel’s Prime Ministers, since its formation back in 1948.)
* Suleiman took part in the war in Yemen in 1962 and the 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel.
* As Egypt's intelligence chief, Suleiman was in charge of the country's most important political security files, and was the mastermind behind the fragmentation of Islamist groups who led the uprising against the state in the 1990s.
Egypt's two-week uprising gathered heat, violence and breadth late Tuesday Feb. 8 just hours after it looked like subsiding. The flames spread through Egypt's major cities and ignited the entire country – from the Western Desert oases near the Libyan border all the way to El Arish in northern Sinai. The big industrial cities including Mahalla-el-Kebir and Helouan, centers of Egypt's military and steel complexes, were also caught up for the first time.
As the demonstrations went into their third week they took on a different character: signs of political organization surfaced amid the spontaneous popular outbreaks and "revolutionary committees" sprang up to give them direction.
Wednesday and Thursday, Feb 9-10, the "revolutionary committees" and strikes spread like wildfire calling for the state-appointed managements of work places to be sacked and paralyzing entire sections of the economy.
Violence overlaid the street protests after 17,000 dangerous convicts broke out of prison (some of them organized by the Interior Ministry's security forces) and peppered the crowds.
Slogans became more brutal, calling for Mubarak to be hanged, his "criminal family" - including the president's wife Susan and sons Gemal and Alla - to be arrested and their property confiscated, and all of them tried for the crimes committed in 30 years in power.
However sympathetic to the sufferings of the Egyptian people, trained observers monitoring the first two weeks of the riots have told the intel-sources I read, that they cannot be sure the revolt was the purely spontaneous expression of popular outrage, because the two fundamental elements characterizing a genuine revolution are missing: surprise and randomness.
Eight players presently stir the Egyptian cauldron!
The public staging was impeccable. The scenes appearing on TV screens worldwide were artfully conceived and directed, whether by Mubarak's men, a branch of his regime - security forces, undercover intelligence units or the armed forces, or by the United States. It is important to remember that even when such disorders are orchestrated and erupt at the same moment, they may be engineered by different hands and develop their own dynamic, from place to place.
In general, the demonstrations in the big cities, Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Ismailia, Mansoura and Tanta (Egypt's fifth largest city and the biggest in the Delta region) differ from one another.
Eight players are pulling the strings; each has his own agenda and may be trying to influence or counterbalance unlooked-for occurrences in the course of the street action.
My intel-source names those players:
- The Barack Obama administration;
- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his circle;
- The Egyptian Army headed by Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Sami al-Anan;
- Egyptian General Intelligence headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman;
- Egypt's domestic security forces, now headed by new Egyptian Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy (which includes the muhabarat, the central security administration of the Interior Ministry and the Egyptian police);
- The ruling National Democratic Party. Under its new General Secretary, Hossam Badrawi, the NDP is the only political entity remaining organized and potent in the face of the riots and demonstrations;
- The ten or so mainstream opposition parties and factions like the April 6 Youth Movement headed by Ahmed Saleh which sprang up for the protest movement;
- The Muslim Brotherhood.
US dilemma: How to reconcile an army takeover with democracy? (JAV -What Obama and Hillary are going to learn, is, that, "their fiats" are going to install democracies in Muslim countries.)
Hosni Mubarak was viewed in Washington as a transient Egyptian figure since mid-2008 - by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Since the street riots began on Jan. 25, Washington has assigned the same transiency to Vice President Omar Suleiman, expecting him to eventually hand the reins of government over to a new regime.
(I enjoyed former UN Ambassador Bolton’s interview earlier this week! When asked about Obama’s views on Egypt, he laughed, and spoke to the "many" Obama takes, depending, ole JAV thinks, on what day of the week it is, and whose speech writer’s lines are on his teleprompter.)
US sources report that while endeavoring to contain the rampant crisis in Egypt, Washington is not clear on what kind of regime it wants to see in Cairo. US spokesmen talk fervently about free elections for the Egyptian people to vote for a democratic government and parliament. But behind the closed doors of meeting-rooms and the National Security Council's situation room, the name of the Egyptian chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Sami al-Anan keeps on cropping up as the man designated to be Egypt's next ruler.
The question now is how to reconcile the rise of a military ruler with the democratic process and do so in a way that is approved by the Egyptian street?
Washington has two main schools of thought on this subject:
1. The Turkish model in reverse:
A Muslim-slanted democracy dominated by a partnership between Muslim Brotherhood moderates and amenable liberal or left-wing civilians, is one. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, former director of the Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, is mentioned as a useful figure for getting this set-up underway.
It is obvious to the Americans that the army chief Lt. Gen al-Anan will never lend himself to an Ankara-style administration whose leader Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan managed to bounce the generals out of every position of influence in the country. They are therefore thinking in terms of running Gen. Al-Anan for president in charge of Egypt's foreign and security affairs and leaving domestic matters to an elected civilian government coalition.
Mubarak's fall has left his regime standing!
The Egyptian chief of staff was sounded out on this plan in his secret talks in Washington in the third week of January, hours before the first protesters took to the streets of Cairo. Middle East sources report that he indicated he did not object to free democratic elections in Egypt or the introduction of a free press and a civilian government with the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood - on one condition, that the army be personified in the next Egyptian president and preserve its pivotal role in the conduct of Egyptian national security.
2. The Moroccan model:
Whereas the Turkish model-in-reverse dominated administration thinking in the first week of demonstrations, Obama's strategists began looking at Morocco in the second, when the Mubarak regime failed to collapse as anticipated by US intelligence agencies, especially the CIA.
In Rabat, all the institutions of a democratic state are present – political parties, parliament, elections, but the king is all-powerful and he exercises power through his control of the army and the secret services.
But both solutions faced the same difficulty. While Mubarak and his family have been irreparably damaged, his political machine and regime remain intact. Positions of power have not collapsed or been abandoned by panicky office-holders.
Therefore, Mubarak's downfall has not left a void for Washington to fill with a democratic regime and so achieve its main goal.
Worse, the other parties vying for power in Cairo have taken note of the regime's survival and their leaders are scrambling for footholds to fulfill their ambitions – a trend which is placing additional obstacles in America's path.
Yes, to a military coup. But who would lead it?
To break out of the standoff among the parties seeking to determine who takes over in Cairo, US administration and Egyptian power brokers were able Wednesday, Feb. 10 to agree on at least one point: The only way out of the smoldering mess into which Egypt is sinking fast is for the army to move in and take charge of government.
But while spokesmen in both capitals were openly talking about a coup as realistic option, they were quickly bogged down by a fresh quandary: Who will lead the coup?
Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, aged 76, is ailing and as detested in Egypt as much as Mubarak. Chief of Staff Gen. Al-Anan? Washington favors him but he does not have a revolutionary temperament and governing a country of 82 million would likely be well beyond his capabilities.
The new Vice President, Omar Suleiman, who is also a general? He certainly has the experience, strength and strong nerves for the job. However the first two, Tantawi and Al-Anan, can't stand him and would not accept him as the overall ruler of Egypt.
The longer everyone dithers, the more likely, say my intelligence sources, that an unknown army officer will take matters in his own hands and surprise both Washington and the powerhouses in Cairo.
As to a guess at his identity, those sources are sure only that he will either come from the Egyptian 2nd or 9th Divisions stationed in the capital or the Republican Guard, because no officer serving outside Cairo would command the following for executing a putsch.
Hosni Mubarak: There will be no exit without dignity!
Buoyed by the sustainability of his regime under crippling pressure, President Mubarak is determined to hold on until the army, politicians and Washington find a way for him to step down in conditions that satisfy his sense of "personal and national dignity."
He wants to be assured that he does not go down in Egyptian and world history as a corrupt dictator, but a national hero. Until he is satisfied, he will hold fast to his refusal to transfer power.
The constitution is on his side. Every new law and executive action requires a presidential seal to make it legal and so he cannot legally be removed from the presidency against his will. The only way to depose him is by force of a military coup d'etat, or by assassination as Anwar Sadat was back in the Reagan times.
For now, the army chiefs, including Chief of Staff Al-Anan, are refusing to dishonor Egypt's former Air Force Commander and acclaimed national Hero of the "Ramadan War" (the 1973 Yom Kippur War) by bundling him out of the palace.
Omar Suleiman: My read on him is that he is getting ready for national elections, and propping up security!
(All that could be happening because of Retired Major General Shimon Erem from Californa. You really should Google up Shimon Erem and see how he reaches out to Christians! This call I’m getting at 1:00 pm today was all voluntary on his part. Maybe he sees something in this ole preacher-warrior that you Baptist Preachers are missing. And, to be sure, I am taking that to my heart, and not my head! Just a nobody, a simple man from Texas!)
The 74-year old former overlord of Egyptian intelligence and newly-appointed Vice President has no intention, say Cairo sources, of serving anyone as an interim figure or keeping the presidential seat warm for Gen. Al-Anan or any other contender. Suleiman believes the prediction Mubarak aired on Feb. 3 that if the regime collapses, the country will slide into chaos. He has therefore rolled up his sleeves and is doing his best to preserve and buttress government, focusing on two initial steps.
First, he is reorganizing Egypt's security forces with the help of the new Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy.
In Suleiman's view, the Mahabharata security service emerged unscathed and with untarnished image from the popular disorders. The only force which incurred popular loathing was the Interior Ministry's Security Service and its thugs. It is now subject to a major overhaul.
Second, the other important step undertaken by the vice president was to get his close and highly efficient crony Hossam Badrawi chosen to take over the office of ruling NDP secretary general from the leadership which resigned (including Gemal Mubarak) in one of the regime's gestures to placate the protesters.
Badrawi has lost no time in clearing Mubarak loyalists and old-timers out of the party machine, going from branch to branch to install young leaders and prepare the grass roots for the forthcoming elections to the Shura Council (the upper house of the Egyptian parliament) and the presidency.
Suleiman wants the ruling party to be fully prepared for when polling days come around and better organized than any of its rivals, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Neither of these activities suits Washington's plans for Egypt - hence the public bickering Tuesday, Feb. 8, between US spokesmen and Omar Suleiman.
White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in his daily briefing. "Yesterday, I think Vice President Suleiman made some particularly unhelpful comments about Egypt not being ready for a democracy, about not seeing a lift of the emergency law."
Gibbs went on to say: "I don't think that, in any way, squares with what those seeking greater opportunity and freedom think is a timetable for progress."
Gibbs added that any change that takes place in Egypt "has to be tangible" and "has to be real and it has to be immediate and irreversible."
The Opposition: Marginalized?
As the protest movement entered its third week, the opposition parties remained on the sidelines of the political processes and power struggles conducted between the Americans, Omar Suleiman and the army.
The leaders of the 10 parties are deeply divided, aware that the major leagues are trying to manipulate them as pawns.
Their leaders are trying to carve out an influential niche for an independent role – chiefly by controlling the demonstrations. But the street is responding to powers other than theirs.
The Muslim Brotherhood: Mostly passive!!!!!!
The Brotherhood has confounded all the grim forecasts of its menacing potential and effective organization. Except for scattered local demonstrations, it has remained the largest passive political power in Egypt, refusing to take part in the rowdy riots and political infighting.
This is not the place to analyze this fascinating phenomenon. It is a fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has chosen to sit out the most decisive moment in the last 60 years of Egyptian political history and await developments.
Was this a calculated decision? Or might the Brotherhood have taken note that the most active elements of the protest movement were young and non-religious and that its chances of taking over government in Cairo through the ballot box are negligible.
Egypt's current upheaval saw no Muslim leaders in the forefront of the action. Rather than influencing events, the Brotherhood was carried by the tide.
Late Breaking News: Late Thursday, Feb. 11, pressure built up on the army to stage a coup d'etat and remove Hosni Mubarak that same night. Suspense mounted in Tahrir Square and Washington, where US sources assured the media that Mubarak was only hours away from stepping down. But as the hours slipped by, authoritative denials proliferated from Cairo along with an announcement that the president would address the nation shortly. Mubarak again announced he would not step down until his term ends in September. He only lifted the emergency laws pending the restoration of order in the streets.
The Egyptian standoff is therefore is back to square one: Mubarak still holds the last word – not the army, Tahrir Square or Washington.
And so, my preacher friend, there you are, with events as this ole preacher-warrior sees them at 4:42 am this Friday morning. I hope all this was beneficial to you! We need be praying for the PEACE OF JERUSALEM! (PSALMS 122)
And pray for this "Football Trip" I am taking to Israel this coming Sunday, the 13th. Trying to help IDF soldiers to learn lessons from their "athletic endeavors" will save lives in combat! And, if you are a blessing to the Jews, God will bless you.
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Copy of Letter to President Obama
February 10, 2011
Dear President Obama:
In just a few days I am taking a group of former American Football Players to Israel to show the IDF troops what American Football can teach you to stay alive in Combat.
During your interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Mr. President, I would give you “particularly low grades” in the exchange with O’Reilly regarding the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
O’Reilly said, “But you don’t want the Muslim Brotherhood...” You, Sir, with all due respect, could have said, “No!” However, you said, “What I want is a representative government in Egypt.” And then Sir, you went on, but with no clarification of “a representative government” as if the Muslim Brotherhood should be in future Egyptian Governments.
Sir, CNN, and other news outlets, which have all given you a pass on the issue “whether you, as President, are a Christian or a Muslim?” and how you tried to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as benign.
Your actions Sir, with all due respect, and your handling of the “Egyptian question”, risk the country of Egypt of falling under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Founded Sir, in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood came as a response to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey ending the caliphate, the Islamic system of government, and westernizing the country of Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood is now the oldest Islamic Terrorist Organization in the world.
And, Sir, again, with all due respect, I am sure “you know that,” but what is obvious also, to this almost 71 year old preacher is, is you don’t give a rip about it.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s beef against Attatuck? He gave women the right to vote, the right to work, and the right to dress in western attire, and the right to an education.
Since then, Mr. President, with all due respect, it might interest you to know that the Muslim Brotherhood has created 70 offshoot Islamic organizations across the world, including Al-Qaeda and Hamas.
Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atta, all Sir, were notable members of the infamous Muslim Brotherhood.
Last August Sir, an ABC News story, with a poll, found the number of Americans who believe you are a Muslim “is growing.”
Regardless of whether you believe Sir, with all due respect, in the ONE TRUE GOD, JEHOVAH GOD, or the false god “allah,” doesn’t really matter to me. We’ve got you for one term, and that is it.
However, your remarks send the wrong message.
My I-phone has Associated Press on it, and they’ve just announced the Vice President is taking over in Egypt.
In the Interview with O’Reilly, Sir, with all due respect, regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, you just should have given a simple “no” answer, but I guess your “tele-prompter” didn’t have that on it, and you just read what was written!
It is my prayer Sir, every day, that come November 2012, you will find yourself to have followed the lead of George H.W. Bush by being a ONE TERMER!
Have a Good Day. I’m not, for I didn’t take my medicine this morning!!!!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Dear President Obama:
In just a few days I am taking a group of former American Football Players to Israel to show the IDF troops what American Football can teach you to stay alive in Combat.
During your interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Mr. President, I would give you “particularly low grades” in the exchange with O’Reilly regarding the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
O’Reilly said, “But you don’t want the Muslim Brotherhood...” You, Sir, with all due respect, could have said, “No!” However, you said, “What I want is a representative government in Egypt.” And then Sir, you went on, but with no clarification of “a representative government” as if the Muslim Brotherhood should be in future Egyptian Governments.
Sir, CNN, and other news outlets, which have all given you a pass on the issue “whether you, as President, are a Christian or a Muslim?” and how you tried to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as benign.
Your actions Sir, with all due respect, and your handling of the “Egyptian question”, risk the country of Egypt of falling under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Founded Sir, in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood came as a response to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey ending the caliphate, the Islamic system of government, and westernizing the country of Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood is now the oldest Islamic Terrorist Organization in the world.
And, Sir, again, with all due respect, I am sure “you know that,” but what is obvious also, to this almost 71 year old preacher is, is you don’t give a rip about it.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s beef against Attatuck? He gave women the right to vote, the right to work, and the right to dress in western attire, and the right to an education.
Since then, Mr. President, with all due respect, it might interest you to know that the Muslim Brotherhood has created 70 offshoot Islamic organizations across the world, including Al-Qaeda and Hamas.
Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atta, all Sir, were notable members of the infamous Muslim Brotherhood.
Last August Sir, an ABC News story, with a poll, found the number of Americans who believe you are a Muslim “is growing.”
Regardless of whether you believe Sir, with all due respect, in the ONE TRUE GOD, JEHOVAH GOD, or the false god “allah,” doesn’t really matter to me. We’ve got you for one term, and that is it.
However, your remarks send the wrong message.
My I-phone has Associated Press on it, and they’ve just announced the Vice President is taking over in Egypt.
In the Interview with O’Reilly, Sir, with all due respect, regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, you just should have given a simple “no” answer, but I guess your “tele-prompter” didn’t have that on it, and you just read what was written!
It is my prayer Sir, every day, that come November 2012, you will find yourself to have followed the lead of George H.W. Bush by being a ONE TERMER!
Have a Good Day. I’m not, for I didn’t take my medicine this morning!!!!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Letter to Pastors
February 4, 2011
Dear Preachers:
(THIS WILL BE A TAD LENGTHY, BUT YOU DON’T WON’T TO MISS THIS NEWS ABOUT EGYPT!)
From "not-usually-snowy" Oklahoma, this ole man writes you this Friday. Out here where the Bride of my youth and I live, we have gotten what would appear to be 8 to 10 inches of snow. From Tuesday to today, the LORD has allowed me to pull approximately forty people out of the snow and give each of them a GOSPEL TRACT, a testimony, and just in general, to be a "Good Samaritan." I chuckled last evening as Tom told the people of WHBC that his father didn’t know when to go out and when to stay in. In the "sense" of "winter" Tom is more like his mother than his dad. She really got after me that first day when I went out in the blizzard conditions. Such is life!
Our booklets for our football trip came in today. The IDF officers and soldiers are going to really love these booklets which we will leave with them. As of this moment I figure I am about $9,300.00 shy of getting all the money raised which we will need for this trip just from my perspective and not counting what the fellas still have to come up with.
It would appear, from my correspondence with the Hotel in Jerusalem, and in talking with Dr. Sharp, that his group probably will have to stay with the Lt. Colonel they are entertaining on Monday, February 21st, and my fellas and the Jews will dine with and listen to Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon. That’s a shame; but since they’ve already paid for supper at their Hotel that’s probably how it's going to have be this time around. Jewish Hotel owners are not too much on letting you come for coffee when everyone else has to pay for a meal!
Now, for Middle East News:
HEADLINE: Egypt May Be Heading for Civil War!
Mubarak is Energized for Battle by Obama's Bid to Oust Him! [Isn’t that a blessing, our "muslim" is trying to ‘oust’ the Egyptian Muslim!]
In the seething, unpredictable and fast-moving chain of events in Egypt, Middle East Sources has pinned down four more or less hard facts that are important to note:
1. Mubarak is determined to stay.
The embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is working to survive even if Barack Obama makes good on his threat to cut off aid to Egypt unless its ruler quits.
Our sources report that to win the biggest battle of his political life - and save his family and fortune – the Egyptian president, a warhorse of thirty years, is willing not only to throw Egypt into bloody mayhem but also to sacrifice his private capital.
It is important to bear in mind that Mubarak's private fortune is valued on the international markets at $15-20 billion.
Middle East sources in Cairo report signs that he has begun spreading about large sums of cash from moneys relayed by his sons, who left Egypt at the outset of the disorders and are managing his financial empire from London and Geneva. [It has been reported that they fled with 30 bags of Gold.]
With enough cash in hand, more than any opposition faction can lay its hands on, he appeared stronger rather than weaker after a ten-day protest campaign to oust him.
Despite his broadcast pledge Saturday night, Jan. 29, not to seek another term in office, to transfer power peacefully in the last months of his presidency up until September and to die in Egypt, Mubarak appears more determined than ever to fight to the last whatever it takes.
HEADLINE: Mubarak musters his military resources!
Our Cairo sources have learned that Mubarak may have installed in the Abdeen presidential palace, under the protection of the Republican Guard, a private military command for orchestrating operations to keep him and his allies on top of the uprising against him.
There are also reports that the RG commander, Maj. Gen. Samy Dyab, has placed himself directly under President Mubarak's command and no longer heeds orders from the defense ministry or the Egyptian general staff.
If matters come to a head, Mubarak will have at his disposal the Republican Guard and its heavily armored division, which is probably the best organized, most effective and best trained unit in the Egyptian Army.
2. The national army may be switching sides.
On Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 2, the Egyptian army, which for nine days sat on the fence, appeared to have abandoned its neutrality.
Military checkpoints let 50,000 Mubarak loyalists, thugs of the Al Baltaqiya (literally Fist Companies), pass through without inspection and swarm into Tahrir Square, armed with automatic rifles, knives, swords, axes and Molotov cocktails.
Some rode in on camels and horses and trampled the anti-Mubarak protesters still gathered in the square.
Thursday morning, Feb. 3, the army began making arrests. They appeared to be only rounding up protesters, who had by then dragged iron barriers and placed them around the square, and not touching the Mubarak supporters barricaded in tall buildings overlooking the square.
Therefore, Vice President Omar Suleiman's statement that he was suspending his offer of a dialogue with opposition leaders until the protesters went home played more to the interest of the pro-Mubarak faction than its opponents.
If the protesters scatter and return to their normal lives, it will be hard to get them back on the street, whereas the pro-Mubarak legions are organized as paramilitary militias and can afford to stay on standby for further orders.
HEADLINE: A ruling triumvirate is emerging!
3. A rising star?
Gen. Omar Suleiman, former Intelligence Minister and Mubarak's new Vice President, was clearly gaining stature Thursday. The reasons for this are still unclear. The face Cairo turned to Washington was of a solidly united Egyptian military controlled by three officers, Suleiman, Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and Chief of Staff Gen. Sami Enan.
As these lines are being written, no reliable source in Washington or Cairo could say for certain whether the trio was a triumvirate working together or three separate entities in competition, each with his own agenda.
The fog over the power structure behind, alongside or against Mubarak persuaded the White House Wednesday night to post copies to multiple addresses of President Obama's ultimatum to Egyptian army chiefs to remove Mubarak in the coming hours or else forfeit US aid to Egypt:
Special envoy Ambassador Frank G. Wisner and the US Ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, delivered the message to Egyptian generals; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton picked up the phone to Omar Suleiman, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates communicated with Field Marshal Tantawi, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen phoned Sami Enan.
Loyalties at the second officer level from the top were even harder to determine. No one could tell, for example, where Egyptian Air Force commander Air Marshal (the equivalent of Lieutenant General) Reda Mahmoud Hafez Mohamed, stood at any given moment. Sunday, January 30, two Air Force F-16 fighter jets buzzed the opposition demonstrators shouting anti-Mubarak slogans in Tahrir Square.
But as the days went by without a resolution of the crisis, no military or intelligence source could swear to the Air Force chief's commitment to the president or to the orders coming down from the top three officers who appear to be running the show.
HEADLINE: Washington's campaign against Mubarak is stuttering!
4. The Obama campaign hits a hump.
President Obama's drive to remove the autocratic Mubarak from the Egyptian presidency in favor of a transitional military regime that will call new, free and democratic elections and institute reforms has run into a major obstacle.
It went swimmingly in the first days – from Jan. 25 to Feb. 1.
World leaders were giving the media their unreserved opinion that the Mubarak era in Egypt was over.
But then, Wednesday, Feb. 2 the tide turned. Mubarak exhibited surprising symptoms of recovery and proved he was able to muster forces ruthless enough to fight and throw back the forces ranged against him.
INTEL sources in Cairo say Friday and Saturday, Feb. 4-5 will be the critical days for determining whether the Egyptian president can sustain this momentum and hold out in Abdeed palace.
If he lasts beyond the weekend – and the army stays neutral – his chances of overturning Obama's objective will be greatly enhanced. It must be said, however, that at the age of 82 and in poor health, the Egyptian president may drop unexpectedly by the wayside.
Still, following this setback, our Washington sources report that since Wednesday, the Obama administration looks like reluctantly getting ready to settle for half a loaf, namely, accepting the reality of a presumed military triumvirate ruling in Cairo without the opposition parties, so long as Mubarak goes.
But even that partial feat is no longer a done deal. By Thursday night, Feb. 3, the casualties were mounting and the nightmare of widespread civil violence country loomed ever closer.
It was not the first time a US administration wanted to see the back of an Egyptian ruler – and one, moreover, willing to fight Islamist extremism and treat Israel as a strategic partner.
It happened exactly 30 years ago - and was probably instrumental in bringing the current bad guy Hosni Mubarak to power.
In April 1981, seven months before his assassination, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat arrived in Washington and asked President Ronald Reagan for an evening of his time to view movies secretly filmed by Egyptian military intelligence. Reagan gave his consent, which he was later to regret.
The films had caught Egyptian army and intelligence officers plotting Sadat's assassination. The US president made no comment on what he had seen. But after it was over, White House officials confided to members of the Egyptian president's party that in their view, Sadat was obsessed with a fear of assassination and greatly exaggerated his peril.
On September 20, 1981, when he still had 17 days to live, Sadat was given a second batch of Egyptian intelligence films showing the conspirators' plans were maturing fast.
The Egyptian president said nothing. He was thought at the time to have fatalistically resigned himself to dying.
The plotters were easily identified by their uniforms and insignia and were recorded planning to blow up the train scheduled to carry Sadat from Cairo to Mansoura on Sept. 26. Yet he did not order the conspirators' arrest, nor did he cancel the trip. All he did upon boarding the train was to ask for a new railway crew.
Plans for regime change begun a year before Sadat murder!
The former crew was to have acted for the plotters by slowing the train down halfway between the two cities. A bomb on the tracks was to explode and gunmen shoot a rocket-propelled grenade into the president's car.
Unaware of this, the replacement crew kept the train going at high speed past the ambush point.
Sadat survived the first plan to kill him – but not for long.
Ten days later, on October 6, 1981, the assassins' bullets reached him while he was watching a military parade in Cairo. An unnamed Egyptian officer turned a chair upside down over his body as a target marker.
The Egyptian military committee which went into action straight after the assassination assured the smooth transition of power to Vice President Hosni Mubarak.
A year later, in October 1982, the senior Egyptian journalist Anis Mansour, editor of the 'October' weekly and Sadat's friend and confidant (whose articles were widely read in the West and the Arab world as reliable pointers to Sadat's intentions), wrote that this military committee had been working for a whole year before the president was murdered, in regular consultation with Vice President Mubarak and in step with Washington.
Therefore, 30 years after that Egyptian upheaval and its aftermath, Mubarak should not have been surprised to find himself in the same position as his predecessor in 1991 – with one important difference: Sadat was removed from office by assassins' bullets, he, Mubarak, was meant to survive an operation connived with Washington to drum him out on the back of "spontaneous" protest demonstrations.
Washington's plans to remove Mubarak date back three years!
Middle East sources report that for four years, Mubarak was in on the plan hatched between Washington, Egyptian army elements and Egyptian opposition groups. It was first put on the White House table in the fall of 2007, towards the end of the third year of President George W. Bush's second term.
The Egyptian ruler had good foreknowledge of its main features and told his associates on more than one occasion that they encompassed the steps for his overthrow and the nature of the regime to replace his. Mubarak viewed President Barack Obama's public demand early on in the current protest campaign for his regime to grant more freedom and institute democratic reforms as a coded signal for encouraging the conspirators.
A US intelligence report dated Sept. 10, 2007 which came into Mubarak's hands revealed Washington's objectives for the post-Mubarak era.
The document outlined the steps the US would promote for engendering democracy in Egypt against Mubarak's will. It showed Washington working for substantial changes in Egyptian society through the very circles which last week rode the popular wave to bring about Mubarak's downfall:
This is how the 2007 US intelligence report phrased it:
"Our fundamental reform goal in Egypt remains democratic transformation, including the expansion of political freedom and democratic pluralism, respect for human rights and a stable, democratic and legitimate transition to the post-Mubarak era… President Mubarak is deeply skeptical of the US role in democracy promotion. Nonetheless, USG programs are helping to establish democratic institutions and strengthen individual voices for change in Egypt...
Due to ongoing GOE interference with US democracy and human rights assistance programs, the Deputies Committee decided on April 10 to proceed with offshore programming as appropriate…"
The US and Egyptian opposition groups set early 2011 as target date!
The document went on to describe the activity of American bodies within the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood; American funding for Egyptian organizations dedicated to fighting corruption; and American steps for electoral reform, the strengthening of civil society, civic education, human rights, women's rights, community development, independent media and transparency.
A year later, in 2008, the Bush administration began inviting Egyptian opposition figures to Washington to discuss the preparations for toppling Mubarak with officials of the National Security Council.
According to a top-secret document compiled in late 2008 to sum up their meetings, the two sides agreed they would be ready to go in early 2011:
"X (on the Egyptian side) claimed that several opposition forces - including the Wafd, Nasserite, Karama and Tagammu parties and the Muslim Brotherhood, Kifaya, and the Revolutionary Socialist movement – have agreed to support an unwritten plan for the transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections.
"According to X, the opposition is interested in receiving support from the army and the police for a transitional government prior to the 2011 elections."
This document is highly significant, say ME sources, because it revealed for the first time that the schemers seeking to remove Mubarak from the presidency had collaborated with Egyptian military and police elites in the course of 2010.
Regime change drive carried over from Bush to Obama!
The conspiracy and its discovery by Mubarak engendered a deep chill in relations between the Bush administration and his regime. Those ties went into deep freeze in January 2009 when President Obama entered the white House and instructed US intelligence agencies to open up contacts with army factions seeking regime change in Cairo.
From late 2009, Mubarak stopped traveling to Washington and has barely exchanged a word with President Obama in writing or by phone. The Egyptian ruler could not afford to forfeit US aid, which is close to $2 billion per annum, or forego Egyptian-US military ties which give his army access to advanced technologies. He therefore allowed high-ranking Egyptian army officers to stay in touch with their American counterparts and visit Washington.
Each time one of those officers returned from a trip, he would be privately quizzed by Mubarak about whom he met and the nature of American queries. None of those officers forewarned him of the US-Egyptian military-intelligence conspiracy brewing to topple him. All the same, our sources report that although extremely ill in the last two years, Mubarak picked up clues to the plot coming his way.
At his private meetings in the past year with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Saudi King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mubarak sometimes jokingly advised them to make their next appointments with him through Washington because he was not sure how long he'd be around.
He never explained whether he was referring to his failing health or his falling standing with Obama, about whose Middle East policies he was harshly critical.
Mubarak was wont to denigrate the entire gamut of Obama administration policies on Iran and its nuclear program, the Persian Gulf states, Syria and its president, Lebanon and the Palestinians as a series of catastrophes that could only drag the Middle East into armed conflicts and bloodshed.
A nest of US agents in the Egyptian war room?
In the way the uprising unfolded on Jan. 25 and from updates he received from security, intelligence and the army chiefs, Mubarak found confirmation of his suspicion that a military faction in close cahoots with Washington was functioning clandestinely in the Egyptian general staff war room. He, if anyone, would have recognized this situation from the one prevailing in the Sadat era.
Mubarak cited to the few confidants he still trusted at least seven more clues to the cards stacked against him:
1. No single local Egyptian group or faction has the skills or funds for orchestrating and bankrolling popular demonstrations on the countrywide scale seen in the last week. Therefore a foreign hand was at work.
2. There was evidence that the demonstrations were not spontaneous as depicted by the Arab and international media. Each rally suppressed by Egyptian security forces was replaced with several more springing up fully organized at several points nearby.
3. An unseen hand raised and lowered the flames in a tactic designed to frustrate effective riot control by Egyptian security and police forces. Someone was directing the masses in this game of cat and mouse.
4. World media coverage, particularly by the television networks - whose broadcasts the regime could not black out like the Internet and cellular phone networks - fitted the protest organizers' logistical requirements like a glove. This time, we witnessed a television revolution, in Mubarak's view - not an Internet revolution.
The army chiefs were away in Washington at the decisive moment!
5. Aside from fairly tardy coverage of events in Alexandria, Western correspondents focused their pens, mikes and cameras for the most part on central Cairo, although riots raged in at least 15 other Egyptian cities in the Delta region. There, the violence and brutality were far greater than in the capital, leaving hundreds of dead in their wake. In Mubarak's opinion, the Americans used the media to show the world a sanitized, idealized version of a non-violent popular uprising they were openly supporting.
6. For the first five days of the protests, the US president deliberately avoided talking to Mubarak. He only put in a phone call after the Egyptian president's first speech Friday, Jan. 28, in which he announced the appointment of Gen. Omar Suleiman as Vice President and a willingness to enact constitutional reforms.
This strengthened Mubarak's conviction that the disturbances in Egypt were being directed by a US intelligence command operating alongside the White House.
His certainty was further bolstered by the condescending, hectoring tone of Obama's terse comments on television about the situation in Egypt.
7. Mubarak and his allies have no doubt at all that it was not blind chance that caused the protest riots to erupt when the chief of staff of Egypt's armed forces, Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan and other general staff members were in Washington as guests of the Pentagon and the US army.
Only four days into the uprising, on Friday, Jan. 28, did the Egyptian generals start wending their way to the airport to fly home. Someone made sure that when the decisive call came for the army to defend the regime its top commanders would not be there to heed it.
HEADLINE: Israel Responds to VP Suleiman's Request for Military-Intelligence Aid!
From mid-week, Israel has been feeding intelligence to Egypt's Vice President Gen. Omar Suleiman, who officiated until last Friday Jan. 28, as Intelligence Minister, and was a close ally of the government in Jerusalem.
This service has been coordinated with the Obama administration, Washington sources report.
Telephone wires have been buzzing between Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and between Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.
The situation is so fluid that it is hard to say where Egypt is heading next. But meanwhile,
Washington has given Israel the nod to meet Suleiman's requests - although it is far from clear whether this assistance props up the Mubarak regime or promotes the vice president's prospects of succeeding him – with Washington's backing.
This would suggest that the Obama administration is wavering between two courses.
On the one hand, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are publicly demanding the orderly transition of power in Cairo at once and reforms to meet the people's demands.
On the other, Washington has approved military intelligence aid from Israel to Cairo, which could help President Hosni Mubarak and the army focus on putting down the popular upheaval convulsing Egypt.
Israel also looks to own security interests!
The extent to which Israeli aid is helping Mubarak stay in power, and letting the army chiefs hold the balance between him and the masses, is hard to gauge in this constantly twisting and turning crisis. According to ME military sources, the fact that Israel has not intervened directly in the conflict may have indirectly given both Mubarak and the military chiefs a leg up - even though their interests and objectives are widely divergent.
Up until now, ten days into the standoff between the street and the regime, Israeli security-intelligence assistance has been advanced in three stages, some of which additionally address the Jewish state's own security concerns:
1. Jan 25-26
: On the first two days of the uprising, Israel responded to Gen. Suleiman's urgent request to lay on aerial intelligence from the main hubs of unrest in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Ismailia and other Delta locales such as Damanhour, Tanta, Mansoura and Kafr el-Sheikh. He also asked for coverage of the protesters' movements to and from Cairo and between the various cities.
During those 48 hours, Egyptian liaison officers took up position at the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv, which suddenly become the most heavily guarded building in Israel, after they were flown in by special plane. They were fed a constant stream of updates from Israeli surveillance aircraft hovering over the riot-ridden areas of Egypt. Those aircraft had landed secretly at Egyptian air bases with their identifying marks blanked out.
As a quid pro quo, Israel asked for the Egyptian vice president's permission for surveillance flights over Sinai to monitor the spread of Egyptian unrest into the peninsula and up to its borders with Israel and the Gaza Strip. After consulting Mubarak, he agreed.
Securing Suez Canal passage at both ends!
2. Jan. 26-27
: On the third and fourth days, the protest gained momentum and street battles spread to the cities on the Suez Canal banks – especially Suez and Ismailia, where rioters not only took over a number of neighborhoods but in the case of Suez, the entire city.
The fall of this main canal port of 750,000 inhabitants to the protesters alarmed Washington and Jerusalem.
They feared the army, its hands full with sending reinforcements to deal with the disturbances in Cairo and still greater violence in Alexandria and the Delta cities, would be short of the strength needed to recover control of Suez.
Leaving this key port under the control of the rioters would send shipping and maritime insurance costs sky high and play havoc with the world economy.
Israel's navy stepped into the breach by deploying missile ships and special raider forces the length of the Suez Canal to safeguard passing ships – a step synchronized with the US Navy and Air Force. The Sixth Fleet deployed the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and its Strike Force at the Mediterranean exit of the Suez Canal.
The Israeli Navy was also entrusted with halting the passage of weapons and fighters from Egypt to Sinai and vice-versa. Our military sources report Israel diverted one of its military spy satellites from other parts of the Middle East to the Suez Canal area.
Bottling Hamas up in Gaza away from aiding Muslim Brotherhood!
3. Feb. 1: On the fifth day of the crisis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak headed a special meeting of the Israeli security-political cabinet, with the participation of IDF and intelligence chiefs.
They met in the war room of the Southern Command, whose province includes the Gaza and Sinai fronts, after Israel had allowed Egyptian troops to enter Sinai for the first time since it was demilitarized under the 1979 peace treaty.
Two battalions of Egyptian Special Forces numbering about 1,000 troops had taken up position in the divided town of Rafah on the Egyptian-Gaza border and further south, at Sharm El-Sheik, not far from the point where the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal converge.
At the same time, Israel strengthened the units guarding the Israel-Egyptian border from the Mediterranean in the North to Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba in the south with tank and armored infantry brigades.
Egyptian-Israeli military and intelligence cooperation since the upheavals began in the Country of the Nile has two objectives: To draw a defensive line against Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda elements infiltrating Suez Canal cities while they are beleaguered by militant Egyptian protesters who occasionally seize control of city neighborhoods.
The other goal is to keep the armed men of the Hamas military wing, the Ezzedin al Qassam Brigades, from breaching the border from Gaza to Sinai, cutting west across the peninsula and, with the help of friendly smugglers, reaching the western bank of the Suez Canal and the Delta, to fight alongside the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
In view, my brethren, of these events, it would seem to this ole man that THE HEBREW MESSIAH, my LORD AND SAVIOUR’s coming is certainly drawing nigh. One cannot read the book of Daniel, keeping one eye on events in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and Gaza, without saying CERTAINLY HIS COMING MUST BE NIGH!
PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM, PSALMS 122:6!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
P.S. I don’t think I took my medicine yet today!
Dear Preachers:
(THIS WILL BE A TAD LENGTHY, BUT YOU DON’T WON’T TO MISS THIS NEWS ABOUT EGYPT!)
From "not-usually-snowy" Oklahoma, this ole man writes you this Friday. Out here where the Bride of my youth and I live, we have gotten what would appear to be 8 to 10 inches of snow. From Tuesday to today, the LORD has allowed me to pull approximately forty people out of the snow and give each of them a GOSPEL TRACT, a testimony, and just in general, to be a "Good Samaritan." I chuckled last evening as Tom told the people of WHBC that his father didn’t know when to go out and when to stay in. In the "sense" of "winter" Tom is more like his mother than his dad. She really got after me that first day when I went out in the blizzard conditions. Such is life!
Our booklets for our football trip came in today. The IDF officers and soldiers are going to really love these booklets which we will leave with them. As of this moment I figure I am about $9,300.00 shy of getting all the money raised which we will need for this trip just from my perspective and not counting what the fellas still have to come up with.
It would appear, from my correspondence with the Hotel in Jerusalem, and in talking with Dr. Sharp, that his group probably will have to stay with the Lt. Colonel they are entertaining on Monday, February 21st, and my fellas and the Jews will dine with and listen to Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon. That’s a shame; but since they’ve already paid for supper at their Hotel that’s probably how it's going to have be this time around. Jewish Hotel owners are not too much on letting you come for coffee when everyone else has to pay for a meal!
Now, for Middle East News:
HEADLINE: Egypt May Be Heading for Civil War!
Mubarak is Energized for Battle by Obama's Bid to Oust Him! [Isn’t that a blessing, our "muslim" is trying to ‘oust’ the Egyptian Muslim!]
In the seething, unpredictable and fast-moving chain of events in Egypt, Middle East Sources has pinned down four more or less hard facts that are important to note:
1. Mubarak is determined to stay.
The embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is working to survive even if Barack Obama makes good on his threat to cut off aid to Egypt unless its ruler quits.
Our sources report that to win the biggest battle of his political life - and save his family and fortune – the Egyptian president, a warhorse of thirty years, is willing not only to throw Egypt into bloody mayhem but also to sacrifice his private capital.
It is important to bear in mind that Mubarak's private fortune is valued on the international markets at $15-20 billion.
Middle East sources in Cairo report signs that he has begun spreading about large sums of cash from moneys relayed by his sons, who left Egypt at the outset of the disorders and are managing his financial empire from London and Geneva. [It has been reported that they fled with 30 bags of Gold.]
With enough cash in hand, more than any opposition faction can lay its hands on, he appeared stronger rather than weaker after a ten-day protest campaign to oust him.
Despite his broadcast pledge Saturday night, Jan. 29, not to seek another term in office, to transfer power peacefully in the last months of his presidency up until September and to die in Egypt, Mubarak appears more determined than ever to fight to the last whatever it takes.
HEADLINE: Mubarak musters his military resources!
Our Cairo sources have learned that Mubarak may have installed in the Abdeen presidential palace, under the protection of the Republican Guard, a private military command for orchestrating operations to keep him and his allies on top of the uprising against him.
There are also reports that the RG commander, Maj. Gen. Samy Dyab, has placed himself directly under President Mubarak's command and no longer heeds orders from the defense ministry or the Egyptian general staff.
If matters come to a head, Mubarak will have at his disposal the Republican Guard and its heavily armored division, which is probably the best organized, most effective and best trained unit in the Egyptian Army.
2. The national army may be switching sides.
On Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 2, the Egyptian army, which for nine days sat on the fence, appeared to have abandoned its neutrality.
Military checkpoints let 50,000 Mubarak loyalists, thugs of the Al Baltaqiya (literally Fist Companies), pass through without inspection and swarm into Tahrir Square, armed with automatic rifles, knives, swords, axes and Molotov cocktails.
Some rode in on camels and horses and trampled the anti-Mubarak protesters still gathered in the square.
Thursday morning, Feb. 3, the army began making arrests. They appeared to be only rounding up protesters, who had by then dragged iron barriers and placed them around the square, and not touching the Mubarak supporters barricaded in tall buildings overlooking the square.
Therefore, Vice President Omar Suleiman's statement that he was suspending his offer of a dialogue with opposition leaders until the protesters went home played more to the interest of the pro-Mubarak faction than its opponents.
If the protesters scatter and return to their normal lives, it will be hard to get them back on the street, whereas the pro-Mubarak legions are organized as paramilitary militias and can afford to stay on standby for further orders.
HEADLINE: A ruling triumvirate is emerging!
3. A rising star?
Gen. Omar Suleiman, former Intelligence Minister and Mubarak's new Vice President, was clearly gaining stature Thursday. The reasons for this are still unclear. The face Cairo turned to Washington was of a solidly united Egyptian military controlled by three officers, Suleiman, Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and Chief of Staff Gen. Sami Enan.
As these lines are being written, no reliable source in Washington or Cairo could say for certain whether the trio was a triumvirate working together or three separate entities in competition, each with his own agenda.
The fog over the power structure behind, alongside or against Mubarak persuaded the White House Wednesday night to post copies to multiple addresses of President Obama's ultimatum to Egyptian army chiefs to remove Mubarak in the coming hours or else forfeit US aid to Egypt:
Special envoy Ambassador Frank G. Wisner and the US Ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, delivered the message to Egyptian generals; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton picked up the phone to Omar Suleiman, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates communicated with Field Marshal Tantawi, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen phoned Sami Enan.
Loyalties at the second officer level from the top were even harder to determine. No one could tell, for example, where Egyptian Air Force commander Air Marshal (the equivalent of Lieutenant General) Reda Mahmoud Hafez Mohamed, stood at any given moment. Sunday, January 30, two Air Force F-16 fighter jets buzzed the opposition demonstrators shouting anti-Mubarak slogans in Tahrir Square.
But as the days went by without a resolution of the crisis, no military or intelligence source could swear to the Air Force chief's commitment to the president or to the orders coming down from the top three officers who appear to be running the show.
HEADLINE: Washington's campaign against Mubarak is stuttering!
4. The Obama campaign hits a hump.
President Obama's drive to remove the autocratic Mubarak from the Egyptian presidency in favor of a transitional military regime that will call new, free and democratic elections and institute reforms has run into a major obstacle.
It went swimmingly in the first days – from Jan. 25 to Feb. 1.
World leaders were giving the media their unreserved opinion that the Mubarak era in Egypt was over.
But then, Wednesday, Feb. 2 the tide turned. Mubarak exhibited surprising symptoms of recovery and proved he was able to muster forces ruthless enough to fight and throw back the forces ranged against him.
INTEL sources in Cairo say Friday and Saturday, Feb. 4-5 will be the critical days for determining whether the Egyptian president can sustain this momentum and hold out in Abdeed palace.
If he lasts beyond the weekend – and the army stays neutral – his chances of overturning Obama's objective will be greatly enhanced. It must be said, however, that at the age of 82 and in poor health, the Egyptian president may drop unexpectedly by the wayside.
Still, following this setback, our Washington sources report that since Wednesday, the Obama administration looks like reluctantly getting ready to settle for half a loaf, namely, accepting the reality of a presumed military triumvirate ruling in Cairo without the opposition parties, so long as Mubarak goes.
But even that partial feat is no longer a done deal. By Thursday night, Feb. 3, the casualties were mounting and the nightmare of widespread civil violence country loomed ever closer.
It was not the first time a US administration wanted to see the back of an Egyptian ruler – and one, moreover, willing to fight Islamist extremism and treat Israel as a strategic partner.
It happened exactly 30 years ago - and was probably instrumental in bringing the current bad guy Hosni Mubarak to power.
In April 1981, seven months before his assassination, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat arrived in Washington and asked President Ronald Reagan for an evening of his time to view movies secretly filmed by Egyptian military intelligence. Reagan gave his consent, which he was later to regret.
The films had caught Egyptian army and intelligence officers plotting Sadat's assassination. The US president made no comment on what he had seen. But after it was over, White House officials confided to members of the Egyptian president's party that in their view, Sadat was obsessed with a fear of assassination and greatly exaggerated his peril.
On September 20, 1981, when he still had 17 days to live, Sadat was given a second batch of Egyptian intelligence films showing the conspirators' plans were maturing fast.
The Egyptian president said nothing. He was thought at the time to have fatalistically resigned himself to dying.
The plotters were easily identified by their uniforms and insignia and were recorded planning to blow up the train scheduled to carry Sadat from Cairo to Mansoura on Sept. 26. Yet he did not order the conspirators' arrest, nor did he cancel the trip. All he did upon boarding the train was to ask for a new railway crew.
Plans for regime change begun a year before Sadat murder!
The former crew was to have acted for the plotters by slowing the train down halfway between the two cities. A bomb on the tracks was to explode and gunmen shoot a rocket-propelled grenade into the president's car.
Unaware of this, the replacement crew kept the train going at high speed past the ambush point.
Sadat survived the first plan to kill him – but not for long.
Ten days later, on October 6, 1981, the assassins' bullets reached him while he was watching a military parade in Cairo. An unnamed Egyptian officer turned a chair upside down over his body as a target marker.
The Egyptian military committee which went into action straight after the assassination assured the smooth transition of power to Vice President Hosni Mubarak.
A year later, in October 1982, the senior Egyptian journalist Anis Mansour, editor of the 'October' weekly and Sadat's friend and confidant (whose articles were widely read in the West and the Arab world as reliable pointers to Sadat's intentions), wrote that this military committee had been working for a whole year before the president was murdered, in regular consultation with Vice President Mubarak and in step with Washington.
Therefore, 30 years after that Egyptian upheaval and its aftermath, Mubarak should not have been surprised to find himself in the same position as his predecessor in 1991 – with one important difference: Sadat was removed from office by assassins' bullets, he, Mubarak, was meant to survive an operation connived with Washington to drum him out on the back of "spontaneous" protest demonstrations.
Washington's plans to remove Mubarak date back three years!
Middle East sources report that for four years, Mubarak was in on the plan hatched between Washington, Egyptian army elements and Egyptian opposition groups. It was first put on the White House table in the fall of 2007, towards the end of the third year of President George W. Bush's second term.
The Egyptian ruler had good foreknowledge of its main features and told his associates on more than one occasion that they encompassed the steps for his overthrow and the nature of the regime to replace his. Mubarak viewed President Barack Obama's public demand early on in the current protest campaign for his regime to grant more freedom and institute democratic reforms as a coded signal for encouraging the conspirators.
A US intelligence report dated Sept. 10, 2007 which came into Mubarak's hands revealed Washington's objectives for the post-Mubarak era.
The document outlined the steps the US would promote for engendering democracy in Egypt against Mubarak's will. It showed Washington working for substantial changes in Egyptian society through the very circles which last week rode the popular wave to bring about Mubarak's downfall:
This is how the 2007 US intelligence report phrased it:
"Our fundamental reform goal in Egypt remains democratic transformation, including the expansion of political freedom and democratic pluralism, respect for human rights and a stable, democratic and legitimate transition to the post-Mubarak era… President Mubarak is deeply skeptical of the US role in democracy promotion. Nonetheless, USG programs are helping to establish democratic institutions and strengthen individual voices for change in Egypt...
Due to ongoing GOE interference with US democracy and human rights assistance programs, the Deputies Committee decided on April 10 to proceed with offshore programming as appropriate…"
The US and Egyptian opposition groups set early 2011 as target date!
The document went on to describe the activity of American bodies within the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood; American funding for Egyptian organizations dedicated to fighting corruption; and American steps for electoral reform, the strengthening of civil society, civic education, human rights, women's rights, community development, independent media and transparency.
A year later, in 2008, the Bush administration began inviting Egyptian opposition figures to Washington to discuss the preparations for toppling Mubarak with officials of the National Security Council.
According to a top-secret document compiled in late 2008 to sum up their meetings, the two sides agreed they would be ready to go in early 2011:
"X (on the Egyptian side) claimed that several opposition forces - including the Wafd, Nasserite, Karama and Tagammu parties and the Muslim Brotherhood, Kifaya, and the Revolutionary Socialist movement – have agreed to support an unwritten plan for the transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections.
"According to X, the opposition is interested in receiving support from the army and the police for a transitional government prior to the 2011 elections."
This document is highly significant, say ME sources, because it revealed for the first time that the schemers seeking to remove Mubarak from the presidency had collaborated with Egyptian military and police elites in the course of 2010.
Regime change drive carried over from Bush to Obama!
The conspiracy and its discovery by Mubarak engendered a deep chill in relations between the Bush administration and his regime. Those ties went into deep freeze in January 2009 when President Obama entered the white House and instructed US intelligence agencies to open up contacts with army factions seeking regime change in Cairo.
From late 2009, Mubarak stopped traveling to Washington and has barely exchanged a word with President Obama in writing or by phone. The Egyptian ruler could not afford to forfeit US aid, which is close to $2 billion per annum, or forego Egyptian-US military ties which give his army access to advanced technologies. He therefore allowed high-ranking Egyptian army officers to stay in touch with their American counterparts and visit Washington.
Each time one of those officers returned from a trip, he would be privately quizzed by Mubarak about whom he met and the nature of American queries. None of those officers forewarned him of the US-Egyptian military-intelligence conspiracy brewing to topple him. All the same, our sources report that although extremely ill in the last two years, Mubarak picked up clues to the plot coming his way.
At his private meetings in the past year with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Saudi King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mubarak sometimes jokingly advised them to make their next appointments with him through Washington because he was not sure how long he'd be around.
He never explained whether he was referring to his failing health or his falling standing with Obama, about whose Middle East policies he was harshly critical.
Mubarak was wont to denigrate the entire gamut of Obama administration policies on Iran and its nuclear program, the Persian Gulf states, Syria and its president, Lebanon and the Palestinians as a series of catastrophes that could only drag the Middle East into armed conflicts and bloodshed.
A nest of US agents in the Egyptian war room?
In the way the uprising unfolded on Jan. 25 and from updates he received from security, intelligence and the army chiefs, Mubarak found confirmation of his suspicion that a military faction in close cahoots with Washington was functioning clandestinely in the Egyptian general staff war room. He, if anyone, would have recognized this situation from the one prevailing in the Sadat era.
Mubarak cited to the few confidants he still trusted at least seven more clues to the cards stacked against him:
1. No single local Egyptian group or faction has the skills or funds for orchestrating and bankrolling popular demonstrations on the countrywide scale seen in the last week. Therefore a foreign hand was at work.
2. There was evidence that the demonstrations were not spontaneous as depicted by the Arab and international media. Each rally suppressed by Egyptian security forces was replaced with several more springing up fully organized at several points nearby.
3. An unseen hand raised and lowered the flames in a tactic designed to frustrate effective riot control by Egyptian security and police forces. Someone was directing the masses in this game of cat and mouse.
4. World media coverage, particularly by the television networks - whose broadcasts the regime could not black out like the Internet and cellular phone networks - fitted the protest organizers' logistical requirements like a glove. This time, we witnessed a television revolution, in Mubarak's view - not an Internet revolution.
The army chiefs were away in Washington at the decisive moment!
5. Aside from fairly tardy coverage of events in Alexandria, Western correspondents focused their pens, mikes and cameras for the most part on central Cairo, although riots raged in at least 15 other Egyptian cities in the Delta region. There, the violence and brutality were far greater than in the capital, leaving hundreds of dead in their wake. In Mubarak's opinion, the Americans used the media to show the world a sanitized, idealized version of a non-violent popular uprising they were openly supporting.
6. For the first five days of the protests, the US president deliberately avoided talking to Mubarak. He only put in a phone call after the Egyptian president's first speech Friday, Jan. 28, in which he announced the appointment of Gen. Omar Suleiman as Vice President and a willingness to enact constitutional reforms.
This strengthened Mubarak's conviction that the disturbances in Egypt were being directed by a US intelligence command operating alongside the White House.
His certainty was further bolstered by the condescending, hectoring tone of Obama's terse comments on television about the situation in Egypt.
7. Mubarak and his allies have no doubt at all that it was not blind chance that caused the protest riots to erupt when the chief of staff of Egypt's armed forces, Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan and other general staff members were in Washington as guests of the Pentagon and the US army.
Only four days into the uprising, on Friday, Jan. 28, did the Egyptian generals start wending their way to the airport to fly home. Someone made sure that when the decisive call came for the army to defend the regime its top commanders would not be there to heed it.
HEADLINE: Israel Responds to VP Suleiman's Request for Military-Intelligence Aid!
From mid-week, Israel has been feeding intelligence to Egypt's Vice President Gen. Omar Suleiman, who officiated until last Friday Jan. 28, as Intelligence Minister, and was a close ally of the government in Jerusalem.
This service has been coordinated with the Obama administration, Washington sources report.
Telephone wires have been buzzing between Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and between Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.
The situation is so fluid that it is hard to say where Egypt is heading next. But meanwhile,
Washington has given Israel the nod to meet Suleiman's requests - although it is far from clear whether this assistance props up the Mubarak regime or promotes the vice president's prospects of succeeding him – with Washington's backing.
This would suggest that the Obama administration is wavering between two courses.
On the one hand, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are publicly demanding the orderly transition of power in Cairo at once and reforms to meet the people's demands.
On the other, Washington has approved military intelligence aid from Israel to Cairo, which could help President Hosni Mubarak and the army focus on putting down the popular upheaval convulsing Egypt.
Israel also looks to own security interests!
The extent to which Israeli aid is helping Mubarak stay in power, and letting the army chiefs hold the balance between him and the masses, is hard to gauge in this constantly twisting and turning crisis. According to ME military sources, the fact that Israel has not intervened directly in the conflict may have indirectly given both Mubarak and the military chiefs a leg up - even though their interests and objectives are widely divergent.
Up until now, ten days into the standoff between the street and the regime, Israeli security-intelligence assistance has been advanced in three stages, some of which additionally address the Jewish state's own security concerns:
1. Jan 25-26
: On the first two days of the uprising, Israel responded to Gen. Suleiman's urgent request to lay on aerial intelligence from the main hubs of unrest in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Ismailia and other Delta locales such as Damanhour, Tanta, Mansoura and Kafr el-Sheikh. He also asked for coverage of the protesters' movements to and from Cairo and between the various cities.
During those 48 hours, Egyptian liaison officers took up position at the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv, which suddenly become the most heavily guarded building in Israel, after they were flown in by special plane. They were fed a constant stream of updates from Israeli surveillance aircraft hovering over the riot-ridden areas of Egypt. Those aircraft had landed secretly at Egyptian air bases with their identifying marks blanked out.
As a quid pro quo, Israel asked for the Egyptian vice president's permission for surveillance flights over Sinai to monitor the spread of Egyptian unrest into the peninsula and up to its borders with Israel and the Gaza Strip. After consulting Mubarak, he agreed.
Securing Suez Canal passage at both ends!
2. Jan. 26-27
: On the third and fourth days, the protest gained momentum and street battles spread to the cities on the Suez Canal banks – especially Suez and Ismailia, where rioters not only took over a number of neighborhoods but in the case of Suez, the entire city.
The fall of this main canal port of 750,000 inhabitants to the protesters alarmed Washington and Jerusalem.
They feared the army, its hands full with sending reinforcements to deal with the disturbances in Cairo and still greater violence in Alexandria and the Delta cities, would be short of the strength needed to recover control of Suez.
Leaving this key port under the control of the rioters would send shipping and maritime insurance costs sky high and play havoc with the world economy.
Israel's navy stepped into the breach by deploying missile ships and special raider forces the length of the Suez Canal to safeguard passing ships – a step synchronized with the US Navy and Air Force. The Sixth Fleet deployed the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and its Strike Force at the Mediterranean exit of the Suez Canal.
The Israeli Navy was also entrusted with halting the passage of weapons and fighters from Egypt to Sinai and vice-versa. Our military sources report Israel diverted one of its military spy satellites from other parts of the Middle East to the Suez Canal area.
Bottling Hamas up in Gaza away from aiding Muslim Brotherhood!
3. Feb. 1: On the fifth day of the crisis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak headed a special meeting of the Israeli security-political cabinet, with the participation of IDF and intelligence chiefs.
They met in the war room of the Southern Command, whose province includes the Gaza and Sinai fronts, after Israel had allowed Egyptian troops to enter Sinai for the first time since it was demilitarized under the 1979 peace treaty.
Two battalions of Egyptian Special Forces numbering about 1,000 troops had taken up position in the divided town of Rafah on the Egyptian-Gaza border and further south, at Sharm El-Sheik, not far from the point where the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal converge.
At the same time, Israel strengthened the units guarding the Israel-Egyptian border from the Mediterranean in the North to Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba in the south with tank and armored infantry brigades.
Egyptian-Israeli military and intelligence cooperation since the upheavals began in the Country of the Nile has two objectives: To draw a defensive line against Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda elements infiltrating Suez Canal cities while they are beleaguered by militant Egyptian protesters who occasionally seize control of city neighborhoods.
The other goal is to keep the armed men of the Hamas military wing, the Ezzedin al Qassam Brigades, from breaching the border from Gaza to Sinai, cutting west across the peninsula and, with the help of friendly smugglers, reaching the western bank of the Suez Canal and the Delta, to fight alongside the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
In view, my brethren, of these events, it would seem to this ole man that THE HEBREW MESSIAH, my LORD AND SAVIOUR’s coming is certainly drawing nigh. One cannot read the book of Daniel, keeping one eye on events in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and Gaza, without saying CERTAINLY HIS COMING MUST BE NIGH!
PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM, PSALMS 122:6!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
P.S. I don’t think I took my medicine yet today!
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