Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
In August of this year there was a wave of Western nations directly violating the Vienna Conventions by handing over Libyan embassies to the non-democratic, unaccountable al-Qaeda affiliated Libyan rebels and while this happened not a single Western government spoke out.
Now, in yet another blatantly hypocritical move, the United States is demanding that Egypt “honor their international obligations” by securing Israel’s embassy in Cairo.
If there weren’t enough examples of the United States government contradicting itself, here’s another shining instance of Washington’s rampant hypocrisy.
After sitting by while Britain and other powerful Western nations stole Libyan property and handed it over to a highly questionable group, the United States is now giving the false impression that our government gives any credence to international law.
In a White House statement on Friday, Obama expressed concern about the Egyptian protesters breaking in to the building in which the Israeli embassy in Cairo is housed while assuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that America is attempting to resolve the situation.
As a part of this push to resolve the conflict, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Egypt’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr and demanded that Egypt “meet its Vienna Convention obligations to protect diplomatic property,” Reuters reports via a senior State Department official.
Protesters are now facing off with lines of Egyptian police in riot gear, exchanging tear gas, rocks and the occasional firebomb.
According to Egyptian state news, before this more intense chaos began in Cairo, the Israeli ambassador to Egypt fled the country.
As a direct consequence of the demonstrations against Egyptian-Israeli relations and the military regime’s iron grip on the nation supposedly liberated by revolution months ago, Egypt’s Ministry of the Interior has reported that at least 450 protesters were injured.
The following is a video from the Associated Press of Egyptian protesters breaking into the building housing Israel’s embassy to Egypt in Cairo while a large crowd protests and cheers outside. There is also video of a vehicle on fire being put out by a group of individuals with what appears to be a fire hose.
According to AsiaOne, “at least two police vehicles were set alight” during the protests, so I believe that the image of the vehicle on fire in the above AP video is likely one of these police vehicles.
AsiaOne cites another witness who said that Egyptian police have used teargas and fired into the air in an attempt to break up the crowd of roughly 2,000 people who continue to demonstrate outside of the embassy.
Al Jazeera has also been reporting that the police forces, which have now been reinforced by military troops as well, have been using live fire ammunition to scare away protesters. They claim that shots are only being fired into the air while admitting that they have only one camera angle on the situation and have little to no information coming from within the protest itself.
They said that whenever they can actually get through to someone the sound is quickly drowned out by gunfire and sounds of running. Therefore, it is hard to tell if the military and riot police are just firing warning shots or actually shooting innocent civilian protesters as they have in the recent past.
We see the protesters tearing down what appears to be a flimsy security wall while riot police stand by on the sidelines, likely leading to Obama’s request that the Egyptian government protect the Israeli embassy from demonstrators in Cairo.
According to a White House statement, the United States is exploring all of the ways they can assist in resolving this situation without any more violence. Then again, they have praised the Egyptian revolution as if it was a success when it is clearly anything but.
This leads one to speculate that the White House’s idea of support might be assisting in increasingly brutal crackdowns on protesters which have already left hundreds wounded.
This speculation seems more likely to be true when one considers that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak “asked [Leon Panetta and Dennis Ross] to protect the embassy from demonstrators” according to the Financial Times.
The people of Egypt clearly are not happy with how the current military junta is treating them and how they have been handling the Israeli murder of Egyptian security forces on the Israeli-Egyptian border just weeks ago.
If they continue to crackdown on protesters and ignore the demands of the people, the discontent will only grow. Furthermore, if the United States chooses to side with Israel on this issue (which is almost guaranteed, in my opinion) we can expect popular Egyptian sentiment to turn against us as well.
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