It would not have been possible for the Israeli ruckus in Lebanon to continue for more than two weeks without direct American support, if not indirect incitement. This might be apparent from the United States’ rejection of international consensus on the necessity of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbullah’s combatants. Because Israel is stronger – by air, land and sea – and because it has not distinguished between Hezbullah combatants and civilians, it has caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries, and has driven more than a million Lebanese from their villages and cities.

Such were the scenes that billions of the world’s citizens watched in televised news reports, scenes that sparked vociferous demonstrations protesting what is happening in Lebanon across the western world – from London, Paris, Rome and Berlin to Washington D.C., Montreal and Tokyo. I personally participated in the London demonstration on June 22nd, which lasted four hours. We began our march from the banks of the River Thames, passed the buildings of Parliament in Westminster, and finished on the famous grounds of Hyde Park. Here, members of the House of Commons and members of the general public delivered speeches in solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian people and criticism of the American president, George Bush, and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

It was clear from the chants and signs that the focus was on George Bush, with a gesture here and there to Tony Blair. Meanwhile, fingers were rarely pointed at Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, despite the fact that he was the one who declared war and ordered the raids by air, land and sea – raids that George Bush himself described as having scorched and trampled the earth, or rubbed in the mud after it rained for a few minutes during the demonstration. Then I heard a protestor call for the downfall of “the Ugly American.” Other protestors echoed this call with a thunderous cry, “Down with the ugly American!”

Standing in Hyde Park in the company of thousands of Arabs and English and under the protection of the British police, a memory came back to me. Twenty-four years and two weeks ago, in June of 1982, we left the courtyard of Al-Azhar University after Friday prayers in a protest criticizing the Israeli destruction of South Lebanon. We had not advanced even fifty meters before Egyptian state security forces descended from three sides and violently beat us with their clubs.

They were without pity or compassion for the older men among the demonstrators, and I remember that among those on the ground that day were the late Fathy Radwan and (the engineer) Ibrahim Shoukry. I was at that time the youngest and most able-bodied, so I helped them onto their feet and pleaded with the state security forces to stop harming these men who were old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers. I pushed the two elderly men into the nearest open door opening onto Al-Azhar Square, protecting them from the mercilessness of security forces that did not understand anything other than how to carry out orders.

I remember the shop owner who gave us refuge with him; I think he was a tailor or a laundry man. He hurried to bring two chairs for the old men to sit on and two cups of ice water for them, as it was a hot day and they were dripping with sweat. No sooner had they gathered themselves when one of them, Mr. Fathy Radwan, burst into tears. There is nothing sadder than the sight of an old man in tears. In the beginning I thought it was because his injuries – the result of the beating or falling on the ground – required an ambulance or at least a doctor, but the man turned away, insisting that his body was fine.

It was the intensity of his spiritual pain that made him cry. I still remember his words, which continued to ring in my ears as if I had just heard them as I wrote these lines. Fathy Radwan said, “If you went through the eighty years of my life, I spent the first half in the era of the English occupation and the era of the monarchy. I spent the second half of my life in the age of Abd al-Nasser and Sadat. And this is the first year of the era of Mubarak. I went to dozens of protests during those successive eras but I was never humiliated and disgraced as I was today. Why? If we were demonstrating against Mubarak I might understand … but we were demonstrating against Israel, which was killing two Arab peoples in Lebanon. Among twenty Arab governments, the largest of them

here in Egypt, not one came to their aid. The security forces showed the courage of lions only against mere defenseless citizens, even if they were old men like Ibrahim Shoukry and myself. Even the soldiers of the English occupation against whom I frequently demonstrated, calling for their downfall as we youths pelted them with stones, did not treat us with this sort of cruelty and ugliness. This is what makes me cry, my son.”

I was glad to meet the two old men, and I took their phone numbers with the promise of keeping in touch regarding what was happening in the Lebanon, particularly, and the Arab world in general. Then we dispersed, each going his own way.

The next Sunday, we were surprised by the staging of two massive demonstrations. The first took place in Tel Aviv, in which half a million Israelis protested their government’s invasion of peaceful neighboring Lebanon.

We watched on our television sets, as did others around the world, as this demonstration traversed Tel Aviv under the protection of the Israeli police, who stopped traffic so it could cross major streets. In my first phone call with Mr. Fathy Radwan, he immediately asked me whether I had seen pictures of these demonstrations. I said yes. Then he asked me if I had seen the Algerian demonstration, which took place in the evening that same day. I had not. The old man said jokingly:

“Half your life has slipped by…It was a demonstration of millions, how puny was the Tel Aviv demonstration in comparison…” I was caught up in naïve joy. “This is fantastic. Finally an Arab regime permitted the masses to express their solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian people.” The old man said to me scornfully: “Why are you always so trusting? The Algerian demonstration was not against Israel or America…it was against Belgium, or more specifically against the Belgian referees in the match that Algeria lost during the (1982) World Cup!”

The summer of 1982 was an unending chain of tragedies and sorrows, in addition to the destruction of southern Lebanon and the forced withdrawal of PLO fighters from their bases of operation along the border and the region of Al-Arqoub from which they launched their attacks on northern Israel. This last event followed them in all their other locations, including the Lebanese capital of Beirut. Their positions were bombarded them from the air and sea, then they were blockaded, and then demolished over a period of 88 days straight.

Now the Lebanese, or at least those with the loudest voices among them, felt that their embrace of the PLO throughout the past fifteen years had brought upon Lebanon revenge attacks by Israel, culminating in the destruction and blockade of Beirut.

The PLO began to feel that the capabilities of the Sunni Arab powers had become constrained. At the same time, the United States refused all appeals for a ceasefire unless Lebanon complied by demanding that Palestinian combatants leave its lands, or that the PLO surrendered and withdrew from Lebanon. President Ronald Reagan worked to organize ships and transport for moving PLO combatants to other Arab states – Tunisia, South Yemen, Algeria and Sudan – that agreed to host them temporarily. The departure of the freedom fighters, sailing on steamships from Beirut and heralding a new Arab defeat, was just as significant as the first Palestinian exodus in 1948, the defeat of 1967 and the exodus from Amman – also known as “Black September” – in 1970.

This Palestinian exodus was not the last tragedy of the sorrowful summer. During the days of the departure of the armed combatants from Palestinian camps in the southern suburbs of Beirut, there were two camps, Sabra and Shatilla, which were surrounded by the colluding parties of the Israeli forces that had effectively taken over Beirut and the Maronite militias of the right-wing Phalange Party. They committed a horrific massacre of the defenseless inhabitants in which the number of victims exceeded thousands of women, children and elderly. The slogan of the massacre was: “Not for foreigners…for the expulsion of foreigners…and the extermination of foreigners.”

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defense Minister, was the engineer of the destruction, the inspiration for the Phalange Party, and the one who watched over this massacre. It was planned that the massacre be carried out with guns, and in complete secrecy. However, the leftist Israeli media investigated and published details of what happened in Sabra and Shatilla. Israeli public opinion was outraged. International public opinion was outraged. The Israeli Knesset was compelled to form a committee of inquiry to examine what happened, and the committee subsequently demanded that Ariel Sharon be removed from his post and banned from public office for a minimum of ten years.

Throughout the series of events that took place in 1986, Reagan remained a patron and supporter of Israel, providing money, weapons and diplomatic protection. America used its veto power in the Security Council numerous times: firstly, in order to prevent a ceasefire resolution at the beginning of the invasion; secondly, to prevent a condemnation of the invasion;

thirdly, to prevent issuing a resolution calling for the withdrawal of invading forces; and lastly, to prevent a resolution condemning Israel for its role in the massacres at Shaba and Shatilla. This even after the Israeli committee of inquiry for this matter condemned Ariel Sharon for his role as a co-conspirator.

So in 1982 we wrote a series of articles, published by Al-Ahram and Al-Gomhurriya, under the title “The Ugly American” as a clear signal to President Reagan. Therefore, when I saw the demonstrators in London carried signs bearing the picture of President Bush, over the phrase, “The Ugly American,” I suddenly recalled everything that had happened in the previous 24 years. Bush has managed to imitate Reagan in everything – encouraging, watching over and supporting Israel with money, weapons and smart bombs guided by laser beams.

Just as Reagan protected Israel in 1982 from Security Council resolutions until it realized its objective of uprooting the Palestinian resistance from Lebanon, Bush does the same in hopes of realizing similar goals. He uprooted Hezbullah’s Lebanese combatants from Israel’s neighboring south and stripped them of the weapons of the resistance. How today resembles yesterday! Yet what brings together two scenarios separated by a quarter-century also draws them apart. As the German philosopher Hegel said: “History does not repeat itself. If it does, be warned, because it repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce.” Now the tragedy is: who is uglier than the Ugly American?