Dina Ezzat hears it loud and clear: commentators tell Arab leaders they have left the Lebanese and Palestinians at the mercy of Israel They must have felt very isolated, and may be even embarrassed -- if they still have any shame -- those writers and commentators who tried hard to promote the alleged wisdom advocated by some Arab official quarters against the legitimate right of Arab peoples under long and humiliating Israeli occupation to resist or to try, within the bounds of international law, to free thousands of prisoners who have for many years been held in Israeli prisons. However, any reader of the Egyptian press this week must have sensed the shaky argument of those few columnists who argued, upon the wish of some Arab leaders, the miscalculation of the operations conducted by Hamas in Palestine, and Hizbullah in Lebanon, to capture three Israeli soldiers to demand the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails. Readers must have also felt that the commentators stood in humiliating loneliness due to the overwhelming support and sympathy voiced across the Egyptian press, of all colours, for Hamas and Hizbullah, not to mention the sharp criticism that has forced some Arab capitals to drop their earlier criticism of the resistance movements and to dare speak out against the Israeli aggression and US support thereto. Indeed, the anger has been loud. Commentators did not hesitate to explicitly criticise Arab leaders for being too weak to respond to Israel and the US or, as Diaa Rashwan said in plain Arabic in the independent daily Al-Masri Al-Yom on Monday, for promoting Israeli hatred against Hamas and Hizbullah. "What Arab leaders and their regimes fail to realise is the huge scope of change that will befall this region [whether they like it or not] as a result of the Israeli aggression and indeed as a result of the miserable failure of Arab leaders to live up to the huge challenges facing this region," columnist Magdi Mehanna wrote in the independent Al-Masri Al-Yom on Monday. And Al-Ahram 's top columnist Salama Ahmed Salama argued in his every-other-day column on Sunday: "The brutal Israeli aggression on Lebanon, the air, land and maritime siege it has imposed on this country and the attacks against Lebanon's infrastructure goes way beyond being a mere reaction to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers." Titled "Kneeling down before Israel", Salama's column stressed that no matter what they do or say, "history will never forgive Arab governments for deliberately compromising Arab rights." Some banner headlines were very vocal. On Sunday Al-Arabi, the Sunday Nasserist weekly, blatantly announced, "the scandal of Arab rulers". Also on Sunday, the independent Sawt Al-Umma screamed in a front-page headline: "Israel praises Arab pressure exercised on Hizbullah". And on the same day, political science professor and commentator Hassan Nafaa, writing in Al-Masri Al-Yom on Sunday, said, "examples of the violation of the nation's honour have been too many to count." During the course of the week, the tone of Arab rulers and their entourage in the political and press corps changed. The headlines of the early days in the week announcing "new attacks on Israel and Lebanon" were slightly amended to refer to the simple fact that it was Israel that was launching the attacks. The volume of the drama was then accentuated. "Lebanon is burning... Gaza is bleeding... And Damascus is waiting in line", was the headline of a story printed on the Middle East affairs page of the newly published Tuesday weekly, Al-Watani Al-Yom, the mouthpiece of the ruling National Democratic Party. Official US statements on regional developments (extremely pro-Israel and anti-Arab) received more criticism. Some were timidly offered in the semi-official press; much was abundantly available in the press of the opposition, right and left. "The US once asked itself the question: 'Why do they hate us...' Those who have followed the events of the past few days, the US using the veto in the UN Security Council to protect the Israeli aggression against Lebanon and Palestine, must have found an answer to the question, at least concerning the Arab peoples," wrote Mohamed Shordi in Monday's Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the liberal Wafd Party. And even commentators who had no better job than to echo the words of their rulers, found good and safe material to voice fake sympathy with the Palestinians and Lebanese under attack, in the failure of Arab foreign ministers, in Cairo on Tuesday, to provide strong support for the Arab peoples. "The meeting of Arab foreign ministers adopted three resolutions that offer nothing new. I do not think that Israel would give much attention to such resolutions," wrote Ibrahim Se'da on Monday in his daily column in Al-Akhbar. As the week progressed, anger rose higher and higher. The Egyptian press, sometimes through words and many times through photos, reflected the public's frustration with the Israeli aggression and the weak official Arab reaction.
