The Experts Got It Wrong

We have experienced plenty of arrogance and a failure to understand Egypt  over the past 10 days on the part of experts and commentators, both in Israel and abroad, who terminated Mubarak and his regime with their very words. The Obama Administration joined this assessment, until it realized its mistake.

The moment it became clear that Egypt’s immense defense establishment – millions of soldiers, police officers and security personnel – is standing by Mubarak and his officers, the matter was decided. The moment government institutions in Cairo were kept in the army’s hands, it didn’t matter how many protestors gathered at Tahrir Square, because this is how Egypt is ruled: From the radio and television building, from the Interior Ministry, from the government palaces, and from the Central Bank.

Egypt doesn’t like disorder. It is a vast civilization, which for 5,000 years now had been ruled as a formidable power pyramid; its domestic genetic code stresses “social order” and revulsion in the face of anarchy, and at the end of the day the regime managed to regain its legitimacy. With a great degree of accuracy, the regime portrayed itself as the obstacle in the face of chaos, Hezbollah or al-Qaeda terror, or violent political Islam.

Machiavelli wrote that there is nothing scarier than an impassioned crowd without a leader, but also noted that there is nothing weaker. And indeed, the masses who gathered at the squares had no leader. Baradei is a Western joke, as he knows nobody in Egypt and mostly in its corridors of power. He lived in Europe for most of his life.

The other candidates are insignificant as well. Preacher Yusuf Qaradawi lives far away in exile and the only leadership that remains is the almost primitive incitement of al-Jazeera; many people in the Middle East already understand that this is no news channel, but rather, a propaganda tool on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood and its regional proxies. Al-Jazeera is already watched with reservations in the Mideast.

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