The Egyptian media wasted no time after the bloody attacks in Paris to criticize the “war on terrorism” declared by President Francois Hollande in his first speech to his people on November 14.
The Egyptian media started bombing France with a variety of verbal weapons ranging from misleading and irrelevant information to sheer gloating: “We had told you before, but you did not listen to President Sisi.”
The Egyptian media wasted no time after the bloody attacks in Paris to criticize the “war on terrorism” declared by President Francois Hollande in his first speech to his people on November 14.
The Egyptian media started bombing France with a variety of verbal weapons ranging from misleading and irrelevant information to sheer gloating: “We had told you before, but you did not listen to President Sisi.”
Meanwhile, one of the most important investigative journalism websites in France and the world, Mediapart published an open letter by renowned historian David Van Reybrouck entitled: ‘Mr. President, you have fallen into the trap,’ after Holland declared war on Daesh (ISIS). It also published a statement by former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin saying, “Recognizing that we are in a war is a trap because a war can only be between two states.”
The day after the attacks, Al-Ahram, one of the most influential newspapers in Egypt (which often reflects the unofficial stance of the Egyptian ruler), ran an op-ed that rubbed more salt into the wound: “… to prove once again that [terrorism’s] fingers will reach everywhere in the world and no one will survive as long as some fail to contribute to the combat against terrorism or otherwise try to exploit it in political agendas, forgetting that the magic will turn against the magician,” the editor wrote.
Al-Akhbar, Egypt’s second most influential newspaper, focused on the “mutual threat” facing the two countries: terrorism. Its editor underlines the same dualism: President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi comforting his French counterpart while the latter answering back that both countries must work together to defeat terrorism.
On Page 3, we read an article by Editor-in-chief Yasser Rizk who is close to the armed forces and well-known for leaking parts of an interview he reportedly had with then Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. “I’d like to remind the western leaders,” writes Riszk “not only of what the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had warned against during his talks with them, in their capitals or in Cairo, but also of his public statements in their countries about the threat that would move from the Middle East to Europe and to America once it is time for the foreign ISIS militants to go back home.”
Privately owned Elwatan newspaper produced an unprecedented comparison between the Egyptian and French presidents: “The speech of the French President Francois Hollande following the tragic events in Paris the day before yesterday delivered, almost word by word, the same messages, the same passion in speaking to his people, the same menacing tone to the enemies, as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did in previous incidents and crises.”
The quotes taken from news agencies by the Egyptian newspapers were the most balanced. Yet, Al-Ahram did not take advantage of its correspondent in Paris to produce an exclusive piece. Instead, it provided a poll which was reprinted by the biggest private newspapers in Egypt, Al-Akhbar and Al-Masry Alyoum.
The poll, conducted among former army and intelligence officers, looked more convincing in Al-Akhbar than in Al-Masry Alyoum. In the latter, the interviewees adopted the conspiracy theory, and the same happened in Al-Ahram’s analysis, which reads: “Thoughts summon thoughts and some most flagrant questions here come to the surface: Who, initially, fabricated al-Qaeda, ISIS, Beit el-Maqdes and others, at the mere mention of whom shudder the bravest hearts? Who provided them with arms, intelligence and planning? What are the hidden objectives of their venerable intelligence bodies and think tanks?”
The intentionally, or ignorantly missing information from the quotes of the French emergency law, which has been applied only four times in France, appeared clearly in an article by columnist Mohamed Amin in Al-Masry Alyoum. “The state of emergency and army deployment in the streets, banning demonstrations, expanding the scope of reasonable suspicion, arrest without a warrant, and the establishment of military trials…” says Amin. “Strikingly, nobody objects. They did not raise a ‘Bataclan’ sign as was the case with the ‘Rabia’ sign!” In an unprecedented act for a conservative paper like Al-Masry Alyoum, Amin used an abusive term when describing those who did not criticize the French emergency measures.
In two of her tweets, anchor of talk show ‘Here the Capital,’ Lamis Elhadidy followed the same rhetoric. In her first tweet two hours after the Paris attacks, she tried to show her sense of humor, but fierce criticim forced her to explain in a second tweet, less than one hour later, that she was not disrespecting the victims. She was rather reminding everyone of the British and Russian attitudes following the Russian plane crash over Sinai, and their demands that Egyptian airports should be subjected to international security committees.
However, it seems that Elhadidy, in her euphoria that everybody now is a victim of terrorism, had forgotten that, unlike Russia, France has not closed its airports and, unlike Russia and the United Kingdom, has not evacuated its citizens.
Dr. Ibrahim Negm, Advisor to the Grand Mufti of Egypt did not make comparisons between the Egyptian and French cases, yet he advised the Europeans to learn from the Egyptian experience in combating terrorism. However, when talking about such an experience, Advisor Negm should have remembered the opinion of Egypt’s most influential religious institution, which described ISIS as “believers” committing the acts of non-Muslims and rejecting to label them as infidels.
