Happy Martyr Day to all Egyptians. Today is our National Martyr Day which commemorate the martyrdom of General Abdel Moneim Riyad on the Egyptian front on 9 March 1969. This day we will should pay respect to all our martyrs who died and killed for the sake of this nation and its people throughout history.
Tahrir newspaper’s header included today a beautiful graphic showing the pictures of late General Abdel Moneim Riyad and martyrs from January 25th Revolution “Mina Daniel and late Sheikh Emad Effat”.
This is my first post in 2011 . It is my first post after the Jan25th Revolution in Egypt , it is my first post after ousting Hosni Mubarak , the same man who ignored for 30 years the rights of our Egyptian POWs.
I wanted to write here during the revolution to show to the whole world how the former ousted president had no friend in the world except the same man who killed our POWs in 1967 : Binyamin Ben Eliezer !! During the climax of the revolution last February almost all the leaders of the world did not talk to Mubarak and he did not dare to call them except Ben Eliezer !!
Old buddies !!
It is enough that his last call before stepping down was to Ben Eliezer !! Some will not like what I will say but how come Mubarak was an officer in the Egyptian army and headed our air forces once upon time !! Ben Eliezer killed our unarmed Egyptian POWs in 1967 and he does not deny it for God sake yet they seemed to be close friends to the level that Mubarak spoke to Ben Eliezer for 20 minutes in his last international call as a president !!
Anyhow Ben Eliezer can feel very sad for Mubarak but he has to be worried now because the Egyptian POWs case seemed to be revived again by the Egyptian revolution.
Despite we are busy in our revolution that has not finished yet , we have forgotten the rights of our fallen soldiers , Ben Eliezer should be very worried.
There is a new book that was published in Cairo from days ago about the Egyptian POWs , the name of the book “The crime of murdering the Egyptian POWs”
The book’s author is researcher Abdel Razek Said Soliman and its introduction is written by Dr. Ibrahim El-Bahrawy who mentions in his introduction the “Fortunes of a fool” novel . The book which is an actually a study depends on the Israeli literature and how it showed incidents of war crimes against out Egyptian POWs.
The book also show examples of the Israeli literature that covered the 6th of October war.
This rare video shows you how the Israeli injured POWs were treated in Egyptian Captivity in 1973, this video shows you a group of Israeli POWs from IAF at Maadi military hospital.
Egypt’s first lady then Jihan Sadat refused to visit at first the Israeli injured POWs at Maadi hospital when she had visited the hospital , but the officials there convinced her to pay a visit the Israeli POWs because we treat our POWs in a better way.
Our Egyptian POWs were killed in cold blood in 1973 just like in 1967 and in 1956.
Al Jazeera channel official website made a report about the Palestinian detainee , Mansour Mowqda who is currently jailed in Israel for murder an Israeli Veteran officer.
The story of Mansour started in early 2002 where he worked at a farmer that was owned by a veteran IDF officer , that officer one day bragged in front of Mansour on how he killed Egyptian POWs in Yom Kippur October war 1973, yes in Yom Kippur war.
Mansour told his family that the officer was speaking proudly on how the Egyptian soldiers were put under the tanks’ track to be squashed then later were buried in mass graves. He even told him that he killed the Egyptian officer who was in charge of those soldiers with three gun shots then how he urinated over his body. Mansour could not keep his anger and killed that veteran officer/ war criminal.
Of course he was arrested later after being shot by dumdum bullets and was sentenced a life prison term. His injury went from bad to worse to worst as his lower part of his body is completely paralyzed.He had multiple major surgeries and he needs huge medical care and attention.
The ministry of detainees affairs in the Palestinian authority’s lawyers failed in getting health parole for him yet managed to reduce his sentence from life sentence to 30 years !!
Still Mansour is being mistreated despite his illness and his disability in the prison and its hospital which are like a living hell. He does not receive the proper medical attention or care he should get. The Palestinian detainees who do not suffer from health problems already are suffering from the ill treatment in the Israeli prisons so you can imagine how people like Mansour suffer.
Mansour on his wheel chair
Mansour killed one person , a war criminal and he paid a very big price for it ; a price that I am afraid that war criminal did not pay when he killed our POWs in very cold blood.
Mansour should get a health parole , already I do not know what price he will pay more than what he is paying.
Now moving to the real war criminal here who was that veteran IDF officer , well I am not surprised at his claims in fact it is well known fact the IDF used to execute our Egyptian POWs using tanks’ tracks to save bullets and time !! That disgusting Nazi technique was used in 1967 widely across Sinai especially in Al Arish whose people remember that fearful scene of tanks moving over human beings and how that scene was directed by Ariel Sharon !! They had done it in 1967 and so I would not be surprised that they used it in 1973.
I want to help Mansour but I feel that I am helpless , all what I can do is to write this post.
“Le guerre des six jours il ya 40 ans” or “40 years on the six days war” is an essay written by Chitour Chems in 2007 in the 40 anniversary of the war that changed the Middle East forever. The essay discusses the six days war and its implications up till now showing new historical revelations that the Israelis knew in advance that Nasser did not want to go unlike what they claimed and have been claiming up till now despite the confessions of the Israeli decision makers then.
Despite it is a heavy historical political essay still it contains very interesting details about the massacres against our POWs in 1967 which I will quote here the translation due to its importance.
Among the horrors that Israel was guilty, the film “Shaked Spirit” released by the Israeli state television was shock. It shows the massacres of Egyptian soldiers and officers, it opens the war crimes file committed by Israel despite the liquidation of 250 solider could be considered quite simple in comparison to those Egyptians and Palestinians, and even Israeli historians themselves’ testimonies that the number of prisoners were Killed in the capture was 10,000. Indeed, the number of prisoners would be killed in the capture of 10,000. In His book “The unit Shaked,” Professor Uri Milistein Gives details and counts of war crimes, Even Has A photo of Ben Eliezer with the caption: “Liquidation after the war.” In his book “The unit Shaked,” Professor Uri Milistein counts and gives details of war crimes, even has a photo of Ben Eliezer with the caption: “Liquidation after the war.”
Among the testimonies of this book include:“I saw a man digging a hole for about 15 minutes. Then, Israeli soldiers Asked Him to throw the shovel. Then one of them with an Uzi sub-machine gun killed him.” Israeli Historian Gabby Born, in Yediot Aharonot ” We were close enough to see the town mosque with the naked eye. On the morning of June 8, 1967, in Sinai, in the City of Arish, Israeli forces Have Systematically Executed more Than 1000 Egyptian POWs. The Israelis Asked prisoners to dig their own grave Before Then finish them off. “ James Ennes, Former American serviceman from the USS Liberty, the American spy ship Was bombed in 1967. Fouad Riyadh former judge at the international criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia called for the formation of an Investigation committee to investigate the Israeli crimes Against Egyptian soldiers: These crimes are quite identical to those Committed in Bosnia.
These testimonies are not strange to us , in fact we mentioned some of them before in our website here , the question now is when these testimonies will be recognized , when these testimonies will be taken seriously whether locally or internationally
At first I thought it had to do with the instabilities happening in the last couple of months at North of Sinai so I asked Wael Mamdouh and he told me that there was nothing new to add which is true to be realistic , the update should come from the public opinion.
Amidst all the problems and crises Egypt is suffering from now , it seems that the POWs case is lost but not for too long because if anything I learned from this case is that it refuses to be forgotten.
Despite the differences between USS liberty and Gaza flotilla yet both ships were attacked in international waters , Americans were killed by IDF on both of them and one of the flotilla passengers was from the original passengers of USS Liberty.
Joe Meadors was on the board of Sfendoi Ship that was captured in the flotilla and he shared with the world his experience in his second encounter with the IDF.
Why is USS liberty interesting to our POWs Case ??
Well some crew members of the USS liberty believes that the IDF may have thought that the ship had intercepted communications between the Israelis speaking about a massacre for our POWs in Al Arish citadel to be specific.
Many Egyptians know that President Hosni Mubarak had a cameo in an old black and white Egyptian film in 1950s but most Egyptians ignore the fact that President Mubarak was captured as a POW in a war. Contrary to what you may think he was not captured as a POW in our wars 1956 and 1967 , President Mubarak was captured in the Sand war between Morocco and Algeria in 1963.
During that war Egypt was supporting Algeria against Morocco politically and militarily , it is not clear up till now the participation of Mubarak and whether he was transferring weapons or he was leading a squad of Egyptian and Algerian pilots , probably the later story is the correct one as it is supported by the Moroccans themselves. Lieutenant Hosni Mubarak and his group were captured in Moroccan Aïn Chouatèr area .
As soon as notorious general Mohamed Oufkir knew about the capture of Egyptian and Algerian pilots , he ordered their immediate transfer to Marrakech for interrogation otherwise he would cut off the head of his officers !! God only knows what those young men had seen on the hand of that man. In the same year King Hassan exchanged our POWs in president Nasser’s presence at the African summit in Bamako.
There is no clear reason why this has not been mentioned in our official media or in Mubarak’s official biography despite the facts the Moroccans do not hide it and we have good relations with them and President Sadat who preceded President Mubarak was in jail in twice for two grave charges and he did not hide at all. Some people claimed that this incident did not find its way to the Egyptian public because the regime loves to hide the Nasserite regime mistakes which is untrue because during the Sadat’s era we knew much more grave mistakes and sins the Nasser regime had committed against the Egyptian and Arabic public.
The capture period is very hard for any solider and God only knows what Mubarak and his follow Egyptian pilots had seen on the hands of General Oufkir till their return back to Cairo so it is natural that that experience had left its remarks on Mubarak and re-shaped even on a little scale part of his personality. President Mubarak as a human knows very well what it means to become a POW and and how it feels to fear on your life and your constant wonder on whether you will return home or not ; this is why it is shocking to know how the Mubarak regime is treating our 1956 and 1967 POWs file.
In 1995 after the shameful confessions of IDF commanders of committing war crimes against our POWs in 1956 Suez War and what followed it affecting our mutual relations then , French Libération continued to cover the matter internationally revealing things we did not know about then back in Egypt for some reason. In August 1995 the French newspaper published a small newspaper based on an interview with an Israeli official , Elie Dayan who was the Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs with an unnamed Egyptian newspaper that Israel was ready to pay compensation to families of the 900 Egyptian prisoners massacred by Israeli soldiers during the wars of 1956 and 1967 and that those acts did not represent the Hebrew State…etc.
I do not recall that interview but I believe the French newspaper could have quoted Al Ahram newspaper. It is very important statement for sure and I do not have to bet that in the original interview Dayan said the following : “Israel is ready to pay compensation for the 900 Egyptian prisoners if they were proven to be murdered by the IDF” because after few days we found in the same newspaper a small news saying that Shimon Perez , the new Prime minister then promised to open an investigation in to the matter in order to calm down the Egyptian angry public then despite the Israel’s Attorney General back then “Michael Ben-Yair” had ruled that there was no basis for prosecuting soldiers for wars crimes or offenses as he had described it in 1956 and 1967 war because of a 20 years limitation on homicide charges !! The attorney general did not considered the crimes against our POWs as war crimes !!
