Truth and lies in Egypt

CAIRO, Egypt—Back when television cartoons were a bigger part of my life, there was a program called G.I. Joe. Joe and co. were a bunch of tough military men whose primary objective in life was to save the world from the evil Team Cobra. Who was good and was bad? There was never any question. Team Cobra was out for world domination and Joe was the “real American hero,” as the theme song went. Accordingly, at the end of every episode there was a public service announcement on safety—how to call an ambulance or how to avoid drinking poison. “And knowing,” the G.I. Joe team member would say at the end the show, “is half the battle.”

Well, I’ve been thinking these days: Egypt, where the media is sometimes state-controlled and conspiracy theories abound, could use a “G.I. Mohammed” to draw a neat line between true and false. Because a lot of the time in Egypt you just aren’t sure whose opinion or version you should believe. An example of this moral and factual mistiness made its way into the Egyptian press in a bizarre way this week. Simply put, the story involves Egypt, Israel, six detained Egyptians and an alleged murder-tank robbery-bank robbery-Robin Hood scheme.

From what I can gather from multiple Egyptian and Israeli news sources, six Egyptian men were arrested by Israeli border forces on the Israeli side of the Egyptian-Israeli border. Five of the six studied together at Cairo College of Technology. The sixth was an acquaintance. They were carrying the following: 14 knives, an air gun, dark clothes, walkie-talkies and maps of Israel. The six were arrested Aug. 25, and the Israeli Beersheba District Court handed down its indictment Sept. 12. The group appears to be independent of any larger terrorist organizations.

I should note that while the story has been on both the Associated Press and Reuters’ wire services, no major U.S. papers have covered the story, as far as I can tell.

But there’s more to this story: According to the Israeli charge sheet, the group’s plan was to slip through the border, kill some Israeli soldiers, commandeer a tank, use the tank to rob a bank and take the money and hostages back to Egypt to help fund the Palestinian cause. In addition, according to interviews given with Al-Ahram, a semi-official Egyptian newspaper, the parents of the men were under the impression that their sons were spending the week on vacation in the Sinai.

And it gets even foggier:

• The 18-day gap between arrest and indictment and lack of news regarding the case is partially explained by an Israeli gag order, a Sept. 18 AP story says.

• In Al-Ahram, one father said this about his son Mustafa: “He even used to consider attempts to sneak into Israel to carry out suicide bombings futile,” and Mustafa “never focused on anything other than his studies and working in the summer to help with expenses.”

I, for one, have no idea.

It’s no secret that there is a lot of the illegal traffic along the 320 kilometer border between Israel and Egypt, mostly drugs and prostitutes. But if it was a serious operation, why not use the terrorist tunnels from Egypt into Gaza that you regularly see the Israel Defense Forces bulldozing for? Maybe we are just seeing the public face of a story that is really about spy swapping, as speculated in Al-Ahram.

If it a stupid fantasy, then I want to know why these students are more worried about killing Israeli soldiers and robbing banks than final exams or chasing girls? Maybe this incident is a glimpse into the feelings and frustrations of the up-and-coming generation in Egypt. I don’t know what a degree from Cairo College of Technology is worth, but I do know I’ve met lots of taxi drivers in Cairo who claim to have college and graduate degrees.

Maybe we should just listen to Mustafa, who Al-Ahram said sent a letter to his parents urging his parents “not to believe ‘anything they had read about the case in the papers.’”

This all leaves me wondering one thing: Where’s G.I. Joe when you need him?

Jesse Shuger-Colvin is a Trinity junior.