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Contributing Editor
Editorial
Morsi's Maneuvers
Look skeptically at Egypt's wily president.
H
e brokered the Nov. 21 cease-fire
between Hamas and Israel, but
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is
no statesman. He became involved out of neces-
sity: to keep President Obama and Congress
happy and U.S. aid flowing. Morsi's true inten-
tions toward Israel are rooted in his longstanding
opposition to Zionism.
When addressing the West,
Egypt, led by the Muslim
Brotherhood and its Justice and
Freedom Party, acknowledges
t. c.
the 1979 peace treaty Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat
and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin signed
President
following the 1978 Camp
Morsi
David Accords hosted by U.S.
President Jimmy Carter. But
to ordinary Egyptians, the Brotherhood, led by
Morsi, vows to cancel the treaty.
That's a central theme of a thoughtful Dec. 10
essay distributed by Bar-Ilan University's Begin-
Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in
Ramat Gan, Israel.
"The Brotherhood sees Israel as
a strategic threat and has aggres-
sively lobbied Morsi to strengthen
the Egyptian military presence in
the Sinai!' writes Dr. Liad Porat, a
lecturer of Middle East history at
Haifa University. "While a military
conflict with Egypt is not likely in the
near future, the anti-Israel rhetoric
emanating from senior Brotherhood
leaders must be taken seriously."
That message rings crystal clear.
v g\
Danger Signs Lurk
Successive U.S. presidents have viewed Egypt as
a moderate secular player in a hardline Islamist
region. Israel certainly has enough to fear —
Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas, Iran-backed
Hezbollah and Syria, Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah All Khamenei and his nuclear arms-
minded cronies. Hamas has smuggled arms into
Gaza City through tunnels that lead from Egypt,
but at least Cairo during the Mubarak years didn't
goad Israel into war, given the Jewish state's supe-
rior military and technological advantage.
Amid a troubled economy, a controversial
new constitution institutionalizing Islamic law,
a stifling of dissent and a limiting of rights for
women and religious minorities, Egypt is now
a polarized "democracy:' Since its 2011 rise to
power when Hosni Mubarak was ousted after 30
years as president, the Brotherhood has pushed
an anti-Zionist drumbeat and asserted that
Egypt would respect only its treaties serving the
"national interest:' Fresh off winning Egypt's
November 2011 parliamentary elections, the
Brotherhood staged an anti-Israel rally, 5,000
strong, that vowed to "one day kill all Jews" — a
Koran quotation.
40
January 10 • 2013
JPi
The Brotherhood has
embraced an anti-Zionist
drumbeat while maintaining
that Egypt would respect
only its treaties that serve
the "national interest."
It's alarming the Brotherhood sees Egypt's
treaty with Israel as harmful to national security
and a threat to internal stability — and wants
to bring it to a national referendum. Dissolution
would jeopardize Egypt's $1.5-billion-a-year U.S.
subsidy.
No Political Checks
As the IN long has held, the Brotherhood and
its theocratic ambitions reflect the darker side
of Islamism, the radical form of
Islam that belittles infidels, all non-
believers. The Brotherhood — an
Islamist Sunni transnational move-
ment founded in Egypt in 1928 by
Hassan al-Banna, an imam and Sufi
schoolteacher — is the largest politi-
cal opposition organization in many
Arab states and a spur for Islamic
jihad (holy war).
Steve Emerson's Washington-based
Investigative Project on Terrorism
underscores that the Brotherhood
commands the same global supremacist objec-
tives as Al Qaida and the Taliban. Such groups
follow shariah, the moral code and religious law
of Islam. Muslims are obliged to wage jihad in
pursuit of a shariah-governed global Islamic state
known as "the Caliphate!' Most Muslims reject
the violent perversion of their faith, but enough
embrace it to causes shivers of concern.
As for the Sinai, the Brotherhood considers it
Egyptian and Islamic territory to be freed from
the treaty proclaiming it a demilitarized zone.
The Egyptian hope is to fully develop and defend
the Sinai, in turn helping secure Egypt's border
with Israel.
In recent months, Brotherhood Supreme
Leader Mohammed Badie called the envisioned
Palestinian state of "Palestine" and the Israeli
capital city of Jerusalem "holy Muslim land:' He
blessed any means used to liberate those lands.
Sorely lacking is a government check over
Morsi and the Brotherhood — a void that
endangers the Middle East. It could cause rip-
ples that take down the governments of Jordan
and other Muslim allies of the West. Don't
discount Egypt's main opposition coalition, the
National Salvation Front. It's an emerging force
to be reckoned with.
❑
High Time To Better
Control Use Of Guns
p
ublic outcry has soared amid the rising number of deadly
incidents triggered by mental illness colliding with gun
violence in America. The Dec.14 massacre at Sandy Hook
Elementary School, among the worst mass shootings ever, involved
a deranged gunman blasting his way inside, then murdering 20 first-
graders in two classrooms and six women before killing himself.
Earlier in the day, the
shooter, Adam Lanza, 20,
had shot to death his mother,
Nancy, 52, at her Newtown,
Conn., home. She was the
Example of a semi-automatic
legal owner of the semi-
Bushmaster .233 rifle
automatic Bushmaster .233
rifle used in the killing spree,
which tore into the already frayed fabric of our national con-
science. A firearms buff, she also owned the two 9mm pistols her
son carried in a military vest and the shotgun he left in his car.
America has lost too many loved ones to mindless pulls of the
trigger. Danger will always lurk where mental illness and guns col-
lide. Connecticut's gun control laws are among the nation's most
stringent, according to the nonprofit Brady Campaign to Prevent
Gun Violence; still, the assault-style used at Sandy Hook was legal.
But we shouldn't shrug our collective shoulders and say, "That's
the price of freedom."
The U.S. Constitution provides the right to keep and bear arms
and to form state militias to maintain security, but not to murder
people.
So while we grieve as a nation at the lives so senselessly gunned
down like clay disks in skeet shooting, let us strike up a national
discourse about not only better controlling how we sell and
regulate guns, but also how we identify mental health needs and
extend mental health services.
The tragedy just after the morning Pledge of Allegiance at
Sandy Hook served to point up there's no boundary to misusing
guns, especially when their users are mentally ill. Consider domes-
tic violence. According to Jewish Women's International (JWI),
three women every day are shot and killed by an abusive husband
or intimate acquaintance in the course of an argument. Firearms
access by an abuser increases the odds of a deadly confrontation.
Indeed, Americans must come together as citizens and as a
nation in pursuit of legislation that outlaws assault weapons and
high-capacity magazines, and strengthens and expands back-
ground checks for purchasers. Further, rightful gun owners must
commit to curtailing illegal access so a murderer in waiting, such
as Adam Lanza, can't just take another's guns.
On the larger question of striving to prevent the collision of
mental illness and gun violence, we as a nation must give families
the means to treat loved ones who harbor uncontrolled rage. JWI
has issued a clarion call for expanded resources for mental health
professionals and, most importantly, for appropriate mental health
policies to be available and adequately funded.
Following the Sandy Hook shootings, President Obama appointed
a commission led by Vice President Joe Biden to consider controls
on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines as well as the
broader questions of cultural attitudes and mental health treatment.
Top figures from the three major religious streams of Judaism –
Orthodox, Conservative and Reform – joined in a Dec. 21 interfaith
rally in Washington, D.C., for instituting greater controls to address
the crisis over guns.
Yes, guns are part of the American way. But let's regain control
over them. They aren't idols to be worshipped, but rather tools to
be regulated.
Let's make gun control that respects our Constitution a high pri-
ority of the 113th Congress, which convenes this week.
❑