First of all I truly apologize for not updating this website as it should , there is no excuse I can find to justify my neglect to this important website and its noble cause especially that there were very relevant and important news in the past months.
Well after this is not the first apology I will declare in this post because I have to apology to all our POWs in our wars with Israel especially in 1967 in specific those who were killed by Shaked in a cold blood. I have to apology to all our POWs and their families , in fact all of us should apologize to our POWs because this is the least thing we could do when our elected president Hosni Mubarak congratulated BenElizer on his 75 birthday instead of suing him in front of the ICC !!
Mubarak and the Shakid War Criminal
I could not and can’t believe such horrible news !! What made it worse is that we had waited the Egyptian presidency to deny this news but it did not which means the Israelis did not lie and Mubarak did actually congratulate this war criminal !!
The only denial Egypt has issued was regarding that joint solar energry project rumor , Mubarak regime has denied this news depsite I feel that there was an Israeli offer but the Mubarak regime had to reject due to the public anger , wel already import gas to Israel by the cheapest price ever when we have a butane gas crisis !!
I have got nothing to say except I apologize to our POWs
Yesterday the world celebrated the Armistices day aka the remembrance day in several countries around the world like the UK and the States. Also in the Middle East Lebanese party and militia Hezbollah celebrated and remembered its men who were killed in action in the wars against the Israeli occupation to South Lebanon.
On this day I remember all the Egyptians who were killed and were captured during the 1956 Suez War especially in Port Said ; the great city which was nearly destroyed in the Anglo-French attack.
During the times of wars it is a normal thing that the news and the photos coming from the war zone is filtered , media is very powerful double edged weapon in time of war that can affect the people’s spirit whether positively or negatively , if you search in our modern history you will find out that during the times of war even the biggest democracies in the world had to censor and filter the news and photos coming from the war zone especially those issued by the enemy.
For that particular reason I am not surprised or shocked that the Nasser regime did not publish the photos the Israelis released to the wire services from humiliating shots to our Egyptian POWs during the captivity.There are many photos in this website Egyptians have not seen for decades , they only heard about their details and circumstance from the 1967 veterans who survived that shocking defeat , for sure the veterans accounts were even much horrible than those photos.
I have never stopped to search for new material from photos and accounts to add to the website and fortunately through our Egyptian groups in facebook I found couple of photos that led to huge patch of photos that have never been published to public in Egypt. I found the photos in Magnum Photo agency . Most of these photos were taken by Israeli photographers who accompanied the IDF during the war like for instance Micha Bar Am
Micha Bar Am on the Suez Canal in 1967
The photos I found are very sad and can be provocative to any Egyptian , you do not have to live during that era to feel how sad to see such moments , seriously I understand why the Egyptian regime then had decided not to publish these photos. (( Of course I am totally against the decision of the regime then to lie on the public in the first hours of the defeat))
I must warn the Egyptian visitors that some of the shots are really shocking
The remaings of an Egyptian officerThe underwear parade Passing by Blindfolded POWsHands Up
This was just the tip of the ice-berg, already from the photos you find violations to international laws and human rights treaties and agreements.
In 1967 just like Micha Bar Am was in the Israeli side we had our legendary Akhbar Al Youm Photographer Ahmed Youssef was in the Egyptian side ,he shot two set of films while the withdrawal from Gaza and Al Arish yet he hided his camera bag well before his capture in the desert by the IDF , he swore to my grandfather who was his friend and co-journalist in Akher Saa that he hided them well in some kind of boxes that would preserve them from the desert and time. The man till his death wanted so much to get back and retrieve those films because what he shot was a real evidence of war crimes against Egyptian POWs. I wish one day seriously that someone would find Ahmed Youssef’s camera.
BY the way I was very careful in my search for these lost photos because I found some photos that did not belong to the six days war and belong to other wars and other countries ; this was very sad because we do not need this.
Also if you want to save the photos or post them in your website , you are most welcome but please mention the Egyptianpows.net
The world should know what happened back then , we can get back the rights of these men if we want by law.
Naksa was the term the Nasserite Regime used to describe the Six days war defeat to lessen its effect.
Naksa means in Arabic “Set-back” ,the word “Defeat” was not used then.
Today is the memorial of the Naksa , our own definition of the six days war. Today from 42 years ago a human tragedy has started in Sinai where innocent people were killed brutality against international and even human laws and moral.
Today fro 42 years ago the agony of the Egyptians POWs has started and up till now it has not finished yet.
It will finish when those who killed those innocent men are punished just like the international laws say so Egyptian POWs in 1967
On the 5th of March 2008, the Administrative court in Cairo issued a historical ruling oblighing the Egyptian foreign ministry to investigate the allegations that the Israeli Defense Forces “IDF” had killed Egyptian POWs in 1956 and 1967.
The court ordered the Egyptian foreign ministry to prepare a list with the names and numbers of the POWs killed by the IDF.The importance of that rule is that it is an official obligation on the Foreign
The importance of that rule is that it is an official obligation on the Foreign ministry.
The ministry should open an immediate investigation in this important case.This court order comes as the end of a very long lawsuit filed against the Egyptian government by the families of the POWs and ex-POWs
The lawyer who filed the Suit is Wahid El-Oksori , the head of Egyptian Arab socialist Party and a veteran officer.
This is very important court order, it does not recognize the crimes but it orders the Foreign ministry to investigate the allegations,it opens the door officially
Still, I doubt that the Foreign ministry will obey the court’s order and it will not be the first time nor the first ministry or governmental authority that will ignore a court’s order. By the way about the list with names and numbers of the POWs, they can be easily done with the records of the reported missing officers and Soldiers from 1956 and 1967 from the Egyptian army archives.
