Nikdy nehovor Nefertiti/Never say Nefertiti
Článok pre slovenských čitateľov dostupný tu/Article for Slovak readers available here: Blog N: Nikdy nehovor Nefertiti — Denník N
And for English-speaking readers, we provide a translation here:
In the 1920s and 1930s, a nationalist anti-colonial political movement of a people desiring self-determination and freedom from British and Arab Islamic influence culminated in the Middle East. This ethno-territorial movement appealed to its national continuity from ancient royal history to the modern era. The central figure of the movement was Dr. T. H., who also worked for a time in France and became famous not only as a fighter for national liberation and a great intellectual of his time, but also as a prolific writer and journalist…
If you, dear readers, happened to think I was writing about Dr. Theodor Herzl and political Zionism (which followed on from proto-Zionism) – although absolutely everything above would be perfectly in agreement – I must disappoint you, because this time my attention turns elsewhere…
…to the influential Egyptian writer named TAHA HUSSEIN (1889 – 1973), a representative of the Arab Enlightenment (so-called Nahda), the modernist movement in the Arab world and also PHARAONISM (Egyptian nationalism), which (in a very simplified view) could be called the Egyptian equivalent of Jewish Zionism (although Taha Hussein himself – if we can believe the reports in the book by journalist Helmy Alnamnam – accused the colonial powers of creating the Jewish problem in Palestine and after 1948 questioned Israel as a state that could ever seek peace, even though the opposite turned out to be true: Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979). The Palestinian Arabs, however, did not bother him much, because he considered the Arabs (as well as the British) to be a foreign element not only in Egypt but throughout the Middle East. He was more or less apathetic towards their struggle against the Jews returning to the region of Palestine.
The essential fact, however, is that Zionism was not and is not an isolated decolonization movement fighting against Arab and Islamic occupation. Similar movements of indigenous peoples in the region of North Africa and the Middle East, although significantly less successful, include, in addition to (now extinct) pharaonism, Berberism, Kabylism, Algerianism, Amazighism, Moroccan Riffianism, Coptic nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, etc.
Just as Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV.) – the husband of Queen Nefertiti – attempted to replace Egyptian polytheism with monotheism, and the name of the queen was erased from all records and her images were devalued, so too did the Arab Muslims from the 7th century CE try to eliminate all traces of the indigenous peoples in North Africa, Egypt, and Jewish Palestine, to exterminate them, colonize them, subjugate them, and assimilate them. Unfortunately, they succeeded in most of the nations. And in exactly the same way, radical Islam is now pushing its way into the Western democratic world.
However, the hard-pressed and tenacious people of Israel (the Jewish people) refused to accept the fate of Nefertiti. It is better to be hated by everyone and to exist proudly than to be remembered as beautiful, humanistic, friendly, but to disappear from the annals of history and from the face of the earth. Or as the brilliant and misunderstood Rabbi MEIR KAHANE, z"l, said:
"I prefer a powerful and proud Jewish state, which is hated by the whole world, to Auschwitz, which is loved by everyone [enemies of the people of Israel]."
I. THE LAST REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ARAB ENLIGHTENMENT
Taha Hussein is also called the Last Nahdawi or the Dean of Egyptian Literature. Although he was blind since the age of two, he is the author of more than 60 books and 1300 articles. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature twenty-one times.
He studied religion and Arabic literature at the oldest Egyptian university, al-Azhar. He also spent some time in the French city of Montpellier, where he attended courses in literature, history, French and Latin at the university there. He then continued his studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he received his doctorate in 1917. Suzanne Bresseau (1895–1989) read to him (so that he could study), and later became his wife, although they came from completely different worlds, backgrounds…
In 1918, Saad Zaghloul, the leader of the Egyptian nationalists, met with Arab delegates at Versailles, where he argued that the problem of Egypt was Egyptian and not Arab. At that time, Egyptians generally did not identify themselves as Arabs! Hussein, who was a supporter of Egyptian nationalism, he returned to Egypt in 1919 and fully sympathized with the anti-British sentiments during the Egyptian revolution of the same year. For example, the British burdened the Egyptian population with forced labor in the construction of roads and waterworks, restricted imports into Egypt, etc.
On January 28, 1922, Egypt's independence was declared. Two years later, Zaghloul, now as Prime Minister of Egypt, had all the treasures found in Tutankhamun's tomb taken away by the British archaeological team led by Howard Carter, arguing that the treasures belonged to Egypt. He opened Tutankhamun's tomb to the Egyptian public and made Tutankhamun a symbol of Egyptian nationalism.
The next three decades were marked by a power struggle between the royal court, the nationalist Wafd party (supported by the Copts – ethno-religious Christian descendants of the ancient Egyptians) and still the British Consulate General. Hussein became a leading member of Egypt's secular Liberal Constitutional Party and continued to work in the university environment, where he devoted himself to academic research. He attempted to connect Egyptian culture with its Western counterpart, and had the ambition to explore Egypt's intellectual heritage without fear of Islamic religious and cultural taboos. He called the Quran a biased source of history. He openly criticized Islam, pan-Arabism, Arab colonialism and Islamic fundamentalism. His works were even banned, edited, and he lost his place at Cairo University (1931).
Incidentally, in 1929, the Arab Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt – declared in 1964 in Moscow as the first "Palestinian"… Arafat later lied that he was born in Jerusalem (the KGB, for which he worked, destroyed his Cairo birth certificate), which was refuted by biographers Christophe Boltanski and Jihan El-Tahri.
Hussein described Pharaonism as deeply rooted in the spirit of the Egyptians. He also declared the following: An Egyptian is a Pharaoh and not an Arab. Egypt must not be asked to deny its Pharaonism, because that would mean: Egypt, destroy your Sphinx and your pyramids, forget who you are! Do not ask Egypt for more than it can offer. And, breaking with Dickens's never say never from the novel The Pickwick Papers, he declared:
Egypt will never become part of any Arab unity!
This is exactly how the Jewish Zionist movement in the Palestinian (Israeli) homeland of the Jewish people invoked its ancient pre-Arab historical and cultural heritage. The rights of indigenous peoples are inalienable, inalienable and eternal.
Briefly stated, pharaonism was an ideology that correctly claimed that Egypt was part of a non-Arab Mediterranean civilization; that Coptic and other pre-Islamic Egyptian culture was derived from pre-Christian ancient Egyptian culture; and that Egyptians were not ethnic Arabs but descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt; that Egyptian identity then represented the unity of Egyptians regardless of ethnicity or religion. This ideology found its supporters on both the Christian and Muslim sides.
At that time, Egyptian Prime Minister Isma'il Sidqi (in office from 1930 to 1933 and then from February to December 1946), of the nationalist Wafd party (founded in 1919), maintained close economic relations with a number of Jewish Zionist companies in British Mandate Palestine. (Sidqi later favored the 1947 UN partition proposal and opposed sending Egyptian troops against Israel in 1948.) The Egyptian Jewish community flourished (it numbered 80,000 by 1948; today there are barely 100 Jews in Egypt!—this is called Arab ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population!). The number of Jews in the 1920s and 1930s was part of the government, there were many Jewish artists, journalists, businessmen in the country... Hussein himself was in 1927 a consultant for a dissertation for an Egyptian Jewish student, Israel Wolfenson, who was dealing with the history of Jews on the Arabian Peninsula.
II. ISLAMO-LEFTISM
After the rise of Nazism in Europe and the outbreak of World War II, Hussein urged the Egyptian government to reject neutrality and fight the Nazis.
To Hussein's dismay, the decline of Egyptian nationalism (which had appealed only to middle-class Egyptians) was also contributed to by the founding of the fascist Young Egypt Society (1933), which demanded not only the complete withdrawal of the British from Egypt, but also the unification of Egypt and Sudan and the creation of an empire headed by Egypt stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
The Young Egypt Society eventually abandoned pharaonism altogether and became exactly what Taha Hussein had criticized for years – an Islamic fundamentalist party! Later, this fascist-Islamic party metamorphosed into the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and was finally renamed the National Islamic Party. The founder's brother joined the communist party of Haditu (Democratic Movement for National Liberation).
Here again we see how past and present anti-Zionist anti-Jewish Islamo-Marxism are closely connected, which is reflected in the intersectional ultra-left today. Its incitement against the people and state of Israel, which is hidden behind seemingly noble efforts: "pro-Palestinian" activism, eco-activism, the fight for human rights, feminism, LGBT+ activism…
In 1943, Hussein lectured at the Jewish school in Alexandria about Jews and their real influence on Arabic literature, which provoked criticism, since the Arab Islamic majority in Egypt (colonized since the 7th century CE by non-native Arabs, the spreaders of Islam) spoke out in support of the Arab resistance against the Zionists (i.e. Jews who returned to their historical homeland, joined the Jewish communities that remained stable in the country, and together fought for their right to self-determination).
The Muslim Brotherhood al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (which was founded in Egypt in 1928 and committed an attack on Egyptian Jews that same year) condemned pharaonism (considering it a celebration of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance) and spoke out strongly against Jewish influence in Egypt, and was completely hostile to Zionism in the Palestinian region. However, it also acted, for example, in Yemen, where in 1928 it forced poor Jewish orphans to convert to Islam and then sold them into slavery. It also played a role in the boycott of Jews in 1938, the attempted bombing of three synagogues in Cairo (1939), and the anti-Jewish massacre in 1942 in the Nile Delta. All of this is clear and convincing historical evidence that the ancient hatred of Islamists (including today's Palestinian te..0.ists) towards the Jewish people has nothing to do with the modern state of Israel...
The Muslim Brotherhood was offended by the opposition of many pharaonists to Islam and their deference to great pharaohs such as Akhenaten (18th Dynasty; reigned c. 1351–1334 BCE), Ramses II the Great (19th Dynasty; reigned c. 13th century BCE) and Tutankhamun (11th pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty; reigned c. 1333–1323 BCE). They tried in every way to break the resistance, to dismantle the pharaonic movement and to reshape the Egyptians in their own image.
Something similar is happening in Europe today. A recent example comes from the Zuckmayer-Schule in Berlin-Neukölln: non-Muslim children there were invited to a Muslim iftar (breaking of the fast) with mandatory attendance, under threat of having their classes cancelled for that day! This is precisely Islamic radicalism, fundamentalism, cultural colonization, the Islamization of European civilization.
Europe, wake up and tear off the noose of the crescent moon from your neck!
III. POST BELLUM
After World War II, a severe economic crisis broke out in the country, which was also exacerbated by Egypt's defeat in the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Two years later, Taha Hussein became Minister of Education. He transformed many Islamic schools, where only the Koran was taught, into standard secular elementary schools. Discontent and corruption continued to grow in the country, until the uprising of the Free Officers (Muhammad Najib and Gamal Abd al-Nasser) and the establishment of the republic in 1953.
The pharaonic movement had completely faded by that time, failed to resonate with the majority of Egyptians, and was replaced by pan-Arabism and Islamism...
Modern Egyptians, as produced by Arab colonialism, have been mistakenly considered Arabs incapable of preserving the heritage of ancient Egypt. The sad result is that modern Egyptians will never inherit ancient Egypt and its past glory, intellectually or politically… Arab nationalism has become, so to speak, more politically beneficial, more convenient.
If the Pharaonic movement were still in existence today, it would be a political threat to Arab-Islamic dominance and Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes.
All the more one should be grateful to Kadosh Baruch hu and the entire Zionist movement that in Eretz Yisra'el (the Land of Israel, historical Palestine) the rights of the indigenous people were defended and on the ruins of the ancient Israelite kingdoms, Bar Kochba's Jewish state (132–135 CE) and the Jerusalem Jewish autonomy (existing in 614–638 CE under the leadership of Nehemiah ben Hushiel and Benjamin of Tiberias) the democratic state of ISRAEL was built with a predominance of the autochthonous ethno-religious Jewish population.
And the descendant of the Arab occupiers can choose – either peaceful coexistence with the Jewish people or continuation of the militant bloody Soviet-Arab lying game of "Palestinianism", until his final destruction…
AM YISRA'EL HAI!
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References:
[1] (Taha Hussein vo filme Egyptský spisovateľ: Slúžil sionizmu bez toho, aby si to uvedomoval?) Journal of Palestine Studies č. 74-75 – 2008 – https://www.palestine-studies.org/ar/node/37519
[2] The National Library of Israel – The Last Nahdawi (zhrnutie obsahu knihy A. Hussama) – https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH997009950472605171/
[3] Taha Hussein – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taha_Hussein
[4] "Publishing" the Gospel, Reading the Nahda: Protestant Print Culture in Late Ottoman Syria (D. F. Womack, April 2019) – https://academic.oup.com/…/chapter-abstract/289480801…
[5] Pharaonism – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaonism
[6] The History of Racism in Egyptology and its Impact on Pharaonic Nationalism (Undergraduate Journal of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto, č. XIII, 2021) – https://issuu.com/…/nmc_undergraduate…/s/12217758
[7] Egyptian nationalism – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_nationalism
[8] History of Muslim-Jewish Conflicts: From the 7th Century to Today (JP Grumberg, June 30, 2022) – https://sephardicu.com/…/history-of-muslim-jewish…/
[9] Kopti (Encylopedia Beliana) – https://beliana.sav.sk/heslo/kopti[
10] The Egyptian Sugar Company (UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004) – https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view…
[11] Helmy Alnamnam defends literary icon from charges of Zionist sympathies (A. Z. Osman, November 11, 2010) – https://www.egyptindependent.com/helmy-alnamnam-defends…/
[12] List of pharaohs of ancient Egypt – https://www.britannica.com/…/list-of-pharaohs-of…
[13] Définitions de « amazighisme » –https://www.lalanguefrancaise.com/…/definition/amazighisme
[14] In Libya, the Amazighs fight for their rights, but risk getting caught in the country's ongoing and bloody conflict (September 12, 2019) – https://fanack.com/…/libya-amazighs-fight-for-their…/
[15] "Nefer Say Nefer" – Was Nefertiti Buried in the Valley of the Queens? (J. Perrin, March 3, 2023) – https://www.ancient-origins.net/…/nefertiti-burial-0018007
[16] How Nefertiti put a curse on British archaeologist (A. Browne, P. Schemm, August 22, 2003) –https://www.thetimes.com/…/how-nefertiti-put-a-curse-on…
[17] Povinný ramadán v Zuckmayerově škole v Neuköllnu "bude pravděpodobně nezákonný" – https://www.bz-berlin.de/…/neu…/ramadan-schule-neukoelln
[18] The Construction of "Native" Jews in Late Mandate Palestine: An Ongoing Nahda as a Political Project (A. Derri, June 8, 2021) – The Construction of "Native" Jews in Late Mandate Palestine: An Ongoing Nahda as a Political Project | International Journal of Middle East Studies | Cambridge Core