First of all I should thank Mr. Youssef Taha who translated the original speech of Gameela Ismail published in Tahrir newspaper from Arabic to English 1000 times for his effort and time.
Second of all I would like to thank Mrs. Gameela Ismail for representing millions of Egyptians and speaking on their behalf in front of US department of State secretary John Kerry
Third of all I would like you to spread this word of Mrs. Gameela Ismail, the member of Constitution Party all over the social media because this letter is actually represents what millions of Egyptians when it comes to Egyptian American relations.
Here is what Gameela told John Kerry from two weeks ago in Cairo.
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Mr Secretary of State,
After consideration, I have decided to accept the invitation, which I received in a personal capacity, to attend this meeting today. I do not represent the Constitution Party here because it has a chairman who should have been invited properly, something that had not happened. My address is aimed at your accompanying delegation of future makers. Part of it is for you.
Mr Kerry, you are here today with a large team of people who, according to reports, will be in charge of foreign policy in the future. I mean the future which we are paying a heavy price for today. This is why part of my speech is addressed to you, Mr Kerry, while the larger part is for your team.
You are presently in Egypt at a very complicated juncture, one in which we are living pain, hope, dreams, nightmares, revolution and tyranny all at the same time. Let me sum up to you what I would like you to see with us.
Egypt does not need new aid. Egypt needs to build a new relation on new foundations, not those laid since Nixon’s visit in 1974.
Our country is not a guinea pig. You supported a semi-military regime in the past. Now you are supporting a semi-theocratic regime so that each would play the role required of it. You supported Mubarak to the last breath. You stood in the way of a people’s dream to come out of the labyrinth of dictatorship. You can deal with our revolution as an “uprising” as you describe it in your statements. For us it is a “revolution” which is still in progress. Honourable people have paid the ultimate price to build a country in which we feel freedom, justice and dignity. We did not have a revolution to repaint the presidential palace or for the protocol official at your embassy to update his Egypt needs to build a new relation on new foundations, not those laid since Nixon’s visit in 1974.contacts book. Had Lincoln, whom your country celebrates, stopped at purchasing new clothes for the slaves and retained slavery America would not be proud today of its freedom or saying that its democracy makes it strong.
Mr Kerry, we, too, want to be a strong country. We have the foundations of our civilisation and organic strength that would help us realise these dreams. We are not in the middle of an “uprising”. We are in a continuing revolution to build a new relationship between the ruler and the people. It seems that your administration wants to tailor a democracy for us that is too small to fit our dreams. You appear to be looking at us as if we only deserve that democracy. You used to describe Mubarak and his regime as democratic, legitimate and democratically-elected. You are still describing the current regime with the same terms even though it is killing peaceful protesters, kidnapping and torturing young activists. This alone should put the regime’s legitimacy on the line if not demolish it completely.
This is a revolution that will teach the whole world as your President Obama once said. We want to teach the world. We want to be a model to follow. And we will be different from what you see in your Cairo embassy’s reports stating that we only deserve this little bit of democracy and that this little bit is enough, and that the current regime is democratically-elected, that you can do business with it and that the opposition in Egypt is difficult, addicted to opposition for the sake of opposition and that you cannot reach an understanding with it. But we believe that he whom you will meet tomorrow is the head of a regime which is killing us in the streets and squares.
You are free to describe our revolution as an “uprising” or think that you can deal with the revolution in Egypt as you did with the revolutions of Eastern Europe by sponsoring them. But we see our revolution differently. We, too, are free to describe what you are doing as supporting a regime which represses, persecutes, tortures, detains and even tortures protesters and that you have made alliances with forces that have vested interests in aborting this revolution. You are contributing to building the Egyptian version of Iran’s velayet-e faqih, and you probably could not care less if we were to become another Iran.
But this is our destiny and our children’s future. We do not want them to live in a country ruled by religious or military fascism. As I said before, you see us as a guinea pig. But this is our country, the land of our dreams, being wasted by those who wake us up every day to the nightmares of our children being run over by armoured vehicles and suffocated by the tear gas you send to your friends in Cairo.
You think as a superpower you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and a democractically-elected president out of a tyrannical pharaoh because he serves the role required of him. But, Mr Secretary, we no longer go to fancy-dress parties. We see it as a repressive regime, which you only support because it serves your interests. We reject that for a future in which we attain happiness. This is our message to you and to these future makers.
Finally, we would like to ask you to do “nothing” for us. We ask you to stop doing anything in our country and to stop supporting tyranny and fascism. Please let us continue our revolution and realise our dreams, which will not stop at your modest vision of us and of our future.
Gameela Ismail
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| Gameela Ismail |
Third of all I would like you to spread this word of Mrs. Gameela Ismail, the member of Constitution Party all over the social media because this letter is actually represents what millions of Egyptians when it comes to Egyptian American relations.
Here is what Gameela told John Kerry from two weeks ago in Cairo.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mr Secretary of State,
After consideration, I have decided to accept the invitation, which I received in a personal capacity, to attend this meeting today. I do not represent the Constitution Party here because it has a chairman who should have been invited properly, something that had not happened. My address is aimed at your accompanying delegation of future makers. Part of it is for you.
Mr Kerry, you are here today with a large team of people who, according to reports, will be in charge of foreign policy in the future. I mean the future which we are paying a heavy price for today. This is why part of my speech is addressed to you, Mr Kerry, while the larger part is for your team.
You are presently in Egypt at a very complicated juncture, one in which we are living pain, hope, dreams, nightmares, revolution and tyranny all at the same time. Let me sum up to you what I would like you to see with us.
Egypt does not need new aid. Egypt needs to build a new relation on new foundations, not those laid since Nixon’s visit in 1974.
Our country is not a guinea pig. You supported a semi-military regime in the past. Now you are supporting a semi-theocratic regime so that each would play the role required of it. You supported Mubarak to the last breath. You stood in the way of a people’s dream to come out of the labyrinth of dictatorship. You can deal with our revolution as an “uprising” as you describe it in your statements. For us it is a “revolution” which is still in progress. Honourable people have paid the ultimate price to build a country in which we feel freedom, justice and dignity. We did not have a revolution to repaint the presidential palace or for the protocol official at your embassy to update his Egypt needs to build a new relation on new foundations, not those laid since Nixon’s visit in 1974.contacts book. Had Lincoln, whom your country celebrates, stopped at purchasing new clothes for the slaves and retained slavery America would not be proud today of its freedom or saying that its democracy makes it strong.
Mr Kerry, we, too, want to be a strong country. We have the foundations of our civilisation and organic strength that would help us realise these dreams. We are not in the middle of an “uprising”. We are in a continuing revolution to build a new relationship between the ruler and the people. It seems that your administration wants to tailor a democracy for us that is too small to fit our dreams. You appear to be looking at us as if we only deserve that democracy. You used to describe Mubarak and his regime as democratic, legitimate and democratically-elected. You are still describing the current regime with the same terms even though it is killing peaceful protesters, kidnapping and torturing young activists. This alone should put the regime’s legitimacy on the line if not demolish it completely.
This is a revolution that will teach the whole world as your President Obama once said. We want to teach the world. We want to be a model to follow. And we will be different from what you see in your Cairo embassy’s reports stating that we only deserve this little bit of democracy and that this little bit is enough, and that the current regime is democratically-elected, that you can do business with it and that the opposition in Egypt is difficult, addicted to opposition for the sake of opposition and that you cannot reach an understanding with it. But we believe that he whom you will meet tomorrow is the head of a regime which is killing us in the streets and squares.
You are free to describe our revolution as an “uprising” or think that you can deal with the revolution in Egypt as you did with the revolutions of Eastern Europe by sponsoring them. But we see our revolution differently. We, too, are free to describe what you are doing as supporting a regime which represses, persecutes, tortures, detains and even tortures protesters and that you have made alliances with forces that have vested interests in aborting this revolution. You are contributing to building the Egyptian version of Iran’s velayet-e faqih, and you probably could not care less if we were to become another Iran.
But this is our destiny and our children’s future. We do not want them to live in a country ruled by religious or military fascism. As I said before, you see us as a guinea pig. But this is our country, the land of our dreams, being wasted by those who wake us up every day to the nightmares of our children being run over by armoured vehicles and suffocated by the tear gas you send to your friends in Cairo.
You think as a superpower you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and a democractically-elected president out of a tyrannical pharaoh because he serves the role required of him. But, Mr Secretary, we no longer go to fancy-dress parties. We see it as a repressive regime, which you only support because it serves your interests. We reject that for a future in which we attain happiness. This is our message to you and to these future makers.
Finally, we would like to ask you to do “nothing” for us. We ask you to stop doing anything in our country and to stop supporting tyranny and fascism. Please let us continue our revolution and realise our dreams, which will not stop at your modest vision of us and of our future.
Gameela Ismail
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