President Mohamed Mursi said everything that needed to be said, after masked gunmen killed Egyptian soldiers while having their iftar in Sinai, and visited the site of the massacre along with military commanders and security officials. What is needed now is to match this with actions. The Muslim Brotherhood's website and some Palestinian Islamist factions accused the Mossad of being behind the massacre. But I say: I wish it were so. The Israeli intelligence does not need such adventures, because the Arabs and Muslims already have enemies within, enemies who are devoid of religious values and humanity, and who provide gratuitous services to the enemies every day. We have seen how extremist fundamentalist groups kill Muslims, with tourists sometimes, in Egypt, and how they commit crimes, from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia. Today, these groups are infiltrating Syria to commit crimes there, tarnishing the reputation of a popular uprising that is far removed from the terrorism of these extremists. The recent massacre was truly appalling, and I say nearly unprecedented in its barbarism. How can a man kill another while breaking his fast, and then claim to be a normal human being? We have to learn and quickly, the names of the assailants, and their identities and affiliations, and those responsible for the crime must be punished as they deserve to be, whether they are the perpetrators, planners or instigators with their deluded and misleading beliefs. This is only half of what is needed to be done. But the other half is also important, if not more so: I hope that the Muslim Brotherhood, who are in power in Egypt today, will lead a campaign in Egypt and the entire Islamic world, to eliminate this rogue group and destroy its terrorist ideology. When Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, his goal was to reform and elevate the status of Muslims, and he paid the price for this from his own blood, when he was assassinated in 1949. Throughout their religious and political history, the Brotherhood was persecuted, and its leaders were killed, imprisoned or banished from their countries. The terrorism against the Muslim Brotherhood led to terrorism in response, by groups that mostly had roots in the Brotherhood, before splintering away to engage in terror. The criminal terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri is a clear example of this, and al-Qaeda has killed many more Muslims than “Jews and Crusaders", whom the group was supposedly founded to fight. In my last meeting with Major General Omar Suleiman in Cairo, a month before he died, I heard him reiterate a well-known fact, which is that the terrorist groups had all come out from under the mantle of the Muslim Brotherhood. He said that the Muslim Brotherhood now claims to be moderate, while seemingly oblivious to the fact that Islamic Jihad, al-Jamaa al-Islamiya and al-Takfir wal Hijra all had their roots in the Brotherhood, before going on to terrorize Egyptians – in the well-known attacks and clashes throughout the nineties. The Muslim Brotherhood has a golden opportunity today to rebut this accusation and lead the efforts to defeat the terrorists once and for all. Indeed, they are in power and they have the popularity to do so, and a clear religious argument that can expose the falsehood of the ideology of the terrorists, who murder Muslims, and are not deterred even by the fasting month of Ramadan. The Muslim Brotherhood is capable of doing this, and I call on President Mursi to follow his good words with deeds, and say to him that if does, then he will be able to defeat Israeli terrorism as well, along with the other terrorists. After the massacre in Sinai, the terrorists Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak rushed to claim that the attack was a “wakeup call" that they hoped would push Israel and Egypt to step up their security cooperation against the terrorists, especially in Sinai. But they are dreaming. No terrorism in the world will push the current Egyptian administration closer to Israel, and no security cooperation against terrorism is possible with a terrorist state that occupies Muslim lands, and violates the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque every day. The Muslim Brotherhood administration in Egypt faces significant challenges, including the legacy of the former regime and some problems that are the making of the revolution. Solving economic problems is also a difficult chore, if not an impossible one, so we hope that the administration will succeed where its foes want it to fail, for the sake of all Egyptians. Confronting extremist fundamentalist terrorism is an easier task than mending the economy, and only the Muslim Brotherhood can achieve it, because their religious argument is the valid one, and also because they are the most experienced people when it comes to the secrets of the terrorists, their ideologies and their methods. We want President Mohamed Mursi and the Egyptian government to succeed in defeating the terrorists' ideology and uproot them, because it would be a success for us all. [email protected]
