The Egyptians endured more totalitarianism from Nasser than from Mubarak, and when they overthrew Mubarak they accused him most loudly not of being a thief, but of being an agent of Israel and America. P.S. I hope I'm wrong

gul was dumbfounded in teheran wishing to speak to the people while ahmadinejad's prevented him from mixing with the crowd. The hypcrisy of the illegal kameinei regime cheering egyptians while killing their own people was right in the face of gul. As far as turkey is concerned, their recent demands for compensation will get nothing. Erdogan funded and encouraged the marmora's radical group and he can demand an apology all he wants. All he will get is the israeli finger. Relations with turkey will not be the same until erdogan is replaced.

"So the Egyptian revolution, hardly violent at all, is willing to sustain and dignify Islam but not succumb to its preachers and principles." This statement is ridiculous. At least 300 people were killed and thousands were injured many sustaining life-long injuries. The violence was perpetrated by the state's goons in uniform. The Egyptian military has also killed quite a few people and tortured hundreds. So for Mordechai, these deaths and injuries don't count. This whole bogey of Islamic extremism is a monumental political fraud. This writer has neither a historical awareness nor is aware of the the social context within which extremism thrives. In fact it is the USA is the main instigator of Islamic extremism. After all it was the Carter administration under that great genius Brzezinski (in partnership with the medieval regimes in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) that incubated, funded and trained Islamic extremists. So Mordechai, get some education yourself. BTW, there is no hatred between Arab and Persian masses. You probably wish for it be so. The enmity and hatred between the recently overthrown dictator Mubarak and his henchmen on one hand and the putrid regime in Tehran on the other does not constitute a proof of the hatred between the two.peoples.

Still, one is always wary as Hell with events in the ME, so all are obliged to step back, and act as events unfold there. I personally have little faith in the Arab masses to proceed wisely, but hey, politics is always the art of the possible.

I hope and pray that Dr. Nisim is right. The truth, however, is that the only real Egyptian alternative to the current regime is Islamist, The Islamists are more popular and better organized than the reformers. In the Middle East as a whole, the reform forces are dwarfed by the forces of radical Islam.

Actually, quite true; also, Persians and Arabs indeed do not much like each other, and Sunni and Shi'a Muslims are at loggerheads. But rest assured that they have a huge common enemy known as the Zionist state, and they will temporarily set aside their differences to put down, once and for all, this greater abomination. Your pitiful attempt to pit Sunni against Shi'a will not work here!

and it is a Sunni regime. It didn't take a majority of Bolsheviks to hijack the Russian revolution. Totalitarian factions always take advantage of the chaos of change in order to impose their ideology on whole systems.

What should not come as a surprise will be the infiltration of Muslim Brotherhood candidates into the fabric of coming Egyptian governments and quite possibly an eventual complete take over of the government. Israel must be prepared for this eventuality or there will be no Israel.

Whilte reading the article I was thinking that Dr. Nisan may end up with another surprise in Egypt in not too ditstant future. Lo and behold, his own last paragraph answered the whole article. Surprise, Surprise.

It is worth reminding the readers of this article that at a time when Shi'ite Iran was predominantly Sunni, the Sunni Egypt was Shi'ite for two centuries under Fatimid dynasty in Egypt. Only after Crusaders and Salahuddin Ayubi did Egypt become Sunni.

There is no enmity forever, Iran and Egypt could become allies much faster than you can expect Mr. Nisan. Egypt finds itself isolated and weakened not because of Iran but because of the ousted regime's alliances with the enemies of Egypt, In other words, DON'T CONFUSE YOUR GOALS WITH YOUR DREAMS.

Your pitiful attempt to pit Sunni against Shi'a will not work here! Your a funny guy! Nobody needs to make an attempt to pit Sunni against Shia when it comes so naturally to them. They just don't know any different. It's the way they are. As to the greater abomination you speak of, it isn't the Zionist state as you put it, it's Islam.

in Egypt. with intellectuals..., who seek liberal atmosphere...? Really? Egyptian intellectual elite led hate compaign against Israel for decades, banning any connection even with our left elite. As far as your wishful thinking projection about futute of Egyptian Muslim Brothers, I advise everybody, including you, just to google an America Thinker on this subject. Have a nice day, dear author.

you guys are living in the 1900s

that Egypt is one dictatorship behind Iran. Iran had secular dictatorship and Iran currently has religious dictatorship and I think Iran is ripe for democracy. Egypt had never suffered under religious dictatorship yet. If they are smart they will learn from others and will skip this evolutionary step. Anyway, as I see it, currently in Egypt it could go either one of three ways - secular/military dictatorship (most likely), religious dictatorship (less likely), democracy (least likely).

Professor Nisan, Wishful thinking is not a good substitute for cold, critical analysis. You can do better.

He can no more predict the future than the rest of us mere mortals. I hope he is correct in his guesses, but given the percentages, he is probably wrong. In almost every case in modern history, when there was an uprising of this sort, because of economic conditions, usually a radical group took over with a reign of terror and suppression - France, Russia, and Iran are examples.

There is no secular group with a driving political power & popular leader to influence the future of the country towards democracy. The Sunnis of Egypt may dislike & fear the current growing influence of the Shiites of Iran, but the upmanship propaganda of Tehran will lead Cairo to increase its hostility towards Israel, the one distracting target likely to please the populace. And the Muslim Brotherhood, the only organized & powerful group besides the army will grow more dominant on the souls & bodies of the Egyptians who will be indoctrinated to believe that the Brotherhood was right from the begining. Once some formely repressed freedoms are accorded to everyone in Egypt can one trust that what happened to the Copts over time will less likely to reoccur?So far no Muslim country has succeeded to become democratic even through democratic elections (Gaza, Lebanon, Irak, ...). Either the lack of education or the enforced religion based narrow education has prevented & still do prevents the expression of free opinions which is one of the fundamental requirements of democracy. Deep rooted societal culture can't be changed quickly & regressions from outlier conditions to past ones can & do happen as shown in Turkey, Gaza, Irak, Afghanistan, Iran.

graczek ! Why in Iraq the sunis kill the shiia,and the shiia kill the sunis ?,and why in pakistan the suni kill the shiia ?,why aren't you going down there and give them a piece of your mind ?.

Only the Khartume Mitsraim (the Egyptian magicians know what faith awaits Egypt after Mubarak.

The two, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Shiite Twelvers (i.e., Mahdi nuts) have the same objective: the destruction of Israel and, if possible, America as well...which, for all practical purposes, Obama pursues as well. Notice that Bashir Assad's Sunni-Arab Syria goes well along with Ahmadinejad's Iran, as al-Qaeda does too. Hatred of Israel and the genuine America (i.e., not Obama's) is beyond and above any difference among Persians and Arabs, or Shiites and Sunnis.

There you go, trying to whitewash Islamist terrorism, and blaming America, as leftists and Islamists do. Only an ostrich cannot see the reality of Islamist terrorism. America helped the mujahedin to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, that some of them turned into a threat to America later in the form of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, is something different. America helped Stalin's Soviet Union enormously to fight Nazi Germany. But America cannot be blamed by all the mayhem that the Soviets and their allies caused through the world until the spectacularly monumental collapse of the entire Soviet Bloc

i agree absolutely with the opinion, but if you've been around the mid east places, people really don't clamor so much of democracy as it is foreign to them; just notice the iranians, from one dictator to another worse one, and they are still stucked to it?