Free­dom and Jus­tice Party news­pa­per: “Israel Announces the War on Gaza”

UPDATE (11/16/12): Pres­i­dent of the Free­dom and Jus­tice Party Sa’ad Katatni presided over a press con­fer­ence today in Cairo, where he gave a state­ment on behalf of a coali­tion of Egypt’s polit­i­cal par­ties on events in Gaza. The coalition’s state­ment con­demned Israel’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against Hamas and denounced the “scan­dalous Amer­i­can and West­ern sup­port for the ter­ror­ist Zion­ist entity, which is a rapist of the indige­nous Pales­tin­ian rights.” Fur­ther­more, the coali­tion demanded “Arab and Mus­lim gov­ern­ments … to take steps to pun­ish the Zion­ist entity,” and called on the  “Arab League to with­draw the Arab Ini­tia­tive, which no longer exists due to Zion­ist insolence…”

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In response to Israel’s tar­geted mil­i­tary action today to pro­tect Israelis from renewed rocket fire from Gaza, senior lead­ers and mem­bers of Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its polit­i­cal party, the Free­dom and Jus­tice Party (FJP), have made a series of state­ments denounc­ing Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens. For example:

For Israel, the Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion meant that “they could not prac­tice their daily hobby of killing our peo­ple in Pales­tine. They are in a sit­u­a­tion of severe anger and they think that their hands are no longer cuffed; but they are delu­sional.” - Moham­mad Saif al-Dawla, aide to Egypt­ian pres­i­dent Mohamed Morsi

Israel is “turn­ing the tables and renew­ing the war on ter­ror again and [caus­ing] instability…regional intel­li­gence agen­cies assist­ing the Entity in order to divert atten­tion from the crimes com­mit­ted in Syria.  - Essam El Erian, Vice Pres­i­dent of the Free­dom and Jus­tice Party and senior Mus­lim Broth­er­hood member

“The Zion­ist entity is exer­cis­ing the usual crime and bloodshed…Egypt should with­draw the ambas­sador and freeze rela­tions, open cross­ings, and pro­tect and sup­port the resis­tance.” -State­ments made by Sobhi Saleh, senior Broth­er­hood and FJP mem­ber, accord­ing to FJP’s website

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood also pub­lished an offi­cial state­ment, which read in part:

Today there was “a dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion of the Zion­ist army, which has been built on killing and ter­ror­ism since its first day…”

“This crim­i­nal aggres­sion [by Israel] is a real change that threat­ens the con­tin­u­ing sta­bil­ity of the region; this is hap­pen­ing under the pro­tec­tion of the United States of Amer­ica, which sup­ports it [Israel] in all it does and main­tains a hos­tile posi­tion towards Pales­tin­ian attempts to acquire inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion for a state. In addi­tion, the silence of the West­ern states and their posi­tion as an audi­ence is encour­ag­ing this Entity’s bul­ly­ing and aggression.”

“The Pales­tin­ian Author­ity must can­cel its secu­rity coor­di­na­tion with the Zion­ist occupation’s army, immediately.”

“It is impor­tant [for the Arab states] to com­mu­ni­cate with non-aligned coun­tries and African coun­tries to adopt deci­sive res­o­lu­tions; we don’t envi­sion any­thing less than cut­ting diplo­matic and trade rela­tions with this usurp­ing entity. The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment must be the first to do this, so it can become an exam­ple for Arabs and Mus­lims who main­tain rela­tions with this entity.”

In addi­tion to these remarks, the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment, which has been engaged in a bloody civil war against its civil­ians for over a year, con­demned Israel’s “atroc­i­ties” in Gaza and called on the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to “pres­sure Israel to stop the sin­ful aggres­sion on our peo­ple in the defi­ant Gaza Strip.”

Tags: egypt, essam el erian, freedom and justice party, hamas, Israel, mohamed morsi, muslim brotherhood, sobhi saleh, syria