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The video opens with bearded men traveling in a pickup truck, flying the black IS flag with its distinctive white calligraphy. The driver of the truck pulls up beside another car and honks for the other driver’s attention. The IS guy in the passenger seat leans out the window and asks him, in Hebrew with a comically exaggerated Arabic accent, “Hey bro, how do you get to Jerusalem?” The driver of the car shouts back (in Israeli Hebrew), “Take a left!” Then there’s the slogan, in red Hebrew letters emblazoned on a gray, bullet-marked background: “THE LEFT WILL SURRENDER TO TERROR.” One of the IS guys fires celebratory bullets skyward and the driver peels off, ostensibly in the direction of Jerusalem, as they all shout exultantly in Arabic, “Shukran, ya ward!” (“Thanks, bro!”). The camera pans briefly to the rear of the truck to focus on a popular Israeli bumper sticker that reads, “Anyone but Bibi.” The tagline: “It’s us, or them. Only the Likud. Only Netanyahu.” The snatch of Arabic rap lyrics is excerpted from a song by an Amman-based Palestinian group called Torabyeh: “I want to be buried in the same cemetery that my grandfather was buried in. And since my childhood I’ve been dreaming to be a soldier and as time passed I discovered who I want to belong to: Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah, Hamas or…Jabha …”

Netanyahu has for years been promoting his message about the threat to Israeli security posed by Islamic extremism, never missing an opportunity to list Hamas along with the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and even Fatah, mixing them all up so that the average Israeli Jew reflexively associates Arabs and Islam with terror. Like all accomplished populists, he understands the power of repeating a mendacious slogan, and he is an expert at exploiting popular fears and racism.

The popular Israeli narrative is so reactionary and confused these days, that if one were to walk the streets asking average citizens if there was a difference between Fatah and Al Qaeda, most people would be hard-pressed to answer coherently. Go ahead and try to explain to an Israeli audience that Hamas is a small offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, that it is basically a technocratic political party, that it is extremely unpopular in Gaza and that it has nothing to do with expansionist jihadism. Try telling people that if Israel would lift the siege on Gaza, disgruntled Palestinians in Gaza would probably kick Hamas out of power immediately. Just try. The best you can hope for is that you’d be told that you’re a traitor who should go live in Gaza.

Egyptian authorities have arrested a retired general after denying him permission to run in presidential elections in March. Sami Anan was the last challenger seen as a potential threat to President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, himself a former military chief, whose re-election is considered almost certain. The arrest of Anan, a former member of Egypt’s supreme military council for armed forces, appears to be a calculated move to push him out of the race. It followed a declaration by Scaf that accused him of election violations and said he would be “summoned for interrogation in front of specialised personnel”. “I hold the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi entirely responsible for his wellbeing,” said Dr Mahmoud Refaat, a spokesman for Anan’s campaign abroad. “Yesterday 30 members of campaign were also arrested as well as some of their family members. It’s not known where any of them are being held.”

Anan previously stated he wished to save Egypt from “wrong policies”, and was seen as a favourite to challenge Sisi on the campaign trail, even attracting support from members of the banned Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood. He later made the controversial choice to appoint the country’s former top auditor Hisham Geneina as one of his two running mates. Geneina was sentenced to a year in prison in 2016 after accusing the Egyptian government of rampant corruption costing the country billions of dollars.

interrogated on charges of running for election without prior approval from the military, forging documents stating that he had left the military and “inciting against the armed forces”.

Egypt’s parliamentary elections scheduled to  begin Oct. 18 are more political circus than a step on the path to democracy. It is intended to entertain, distract and recruit some new political performers, rather than decide — or even influence — the country’s future. It is nonetheless highly revealing about the intentions and the underlying nature of the political system emerging under President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. Sissi’s solo performance is remarkably similar to that of various Latin American presidents, described by the Argentinian scholar Guillermo O’Donnell in an influential 1994 Journal of Democracy article as “delegative democracy.”

Voters delegate their authority to the president, who rules unconstrained by a balance of institutional powers

Small surprise that in the face of these profound constraints on the election and on the parliament to emerge from them, the forces contesting for seats have dissolved into political incoherence, precisely the outcome those constraints were designed to achieve

“My patience with politics has limits,” said Hemiti sometime in April, not long after this former leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia was promoted to Vice President just days after the dismissal of Omar al-Bashir. Despite his reputation as a marauder and war criminal, Hemeti has since imposed himself as the undisputed face of the TMC without even being a member of the regular army—a coup de force in the eyes of most Sudanese.

alongside General Abdel Fatah Burhan, the President of the TMC, Hemeti has been a key promoter of the Sudanese contingent’s involvement in the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen

He started as a cattle merchant and guard of commercial convoys traveling across the west of Sudan, Chad, and east Libya. In 2010 he started dabbling in politics, establishing himself as an alternative to the former strong-man of the Darfur war, his distant cousin, Moussa Hilal. Hilal, a former advisor to al-Bashir, a chief of the Janjaweed—the infamous quasi-official militia—and the head of the border guard was ostracized following an internal purge, and captured by Hemetti himself in November 2017.

Egyptian authorities have forced a Guardian journalist to leave the country after she reported on a scientific study that said Egypt was likely to have many more coronavirus cases than have been officially confirmed.

She cited a study accepted for publication in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, which had analysed flight records, traveller data and infection rates to estimate that Egypt could have had 19,310 coronavirus cases by early March, with the lower end of the range about 6,000 cases. The Egyptian government’s official count at the time period covered by the data was that three people were infected.

On 17 March, Michaelson’s press accreditation was revoked. The Guardian offered the Egyptian authorities the chance to write a letter for publication rebutting its report or the Canadian study, but received no response to the offer.

In May 2010, despite American blandishments, Mubarak renewed the state of emergency that he’d ruled under ever since the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat. His ruling party rigged elections for the upper house of parliament while shutting down attempts by domestic civic groups to monitor the vote. In June, Egyptian security services dragged a young man, Khaled Said, out of an internet cafe in Alexandria and beat him to death on the street. His murder became a cause célèbre for young Egyptians, sparking a Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said” that turned into a locus for organizing what became the 2011 Egyptian uprising.

The ruling party took 473 of 508 elected seats, while the opposition presence went from over 100 seats to 31. At a meeting the following month, when an Egyptian visitor described the humiliating spectacle of the sham elections and the rising anger among Egyptians in response, Secretary Clinton listened and then noted that Mubarak was creating exactly the situation he was most concerned about. The protests began about six weeks later, and 18 days after that, Mubarak had resigned.

Looking back from today’s brutally repressive Egyptian regime led by President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, the ousted Mubarak’s 30-year reign seems gentler and sepia-tinged with unrealized possibility.

A collision between two trains killed at least 32 people and injured 108 in the southern Egyptian province of Sohag on Friday

Egypt’s public prosecutor has launched an investigation into the crash, while the prime minister has offered roughly $6,300 to the families of the deceased and just over $2,500 for those injured.

immediately brought scrutiny to Egypt’s rail system, one of the oldest in the world and largest in the region. Construction on the first railway line in Egypt, between Alexandria and Kafr Eassa, began in 1851.

The family of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the British Egyptian political prisoner on a hunger and water strike in prison, was informed by Egyptian officials Thursday that he has undergone “a medical intervention with the knowledge of a judicial authority,” they said.

The United States is a close ally of Egypt and provides more than $1 billion in military aid to the country each year, but has repeatedly criticized its human rights record. Abdel Fattah’s family has made repeated public appeals to the White House to intervene in the case.

Abdel Fattah, who is 40 and a once-prominent activist in the 2011 revolution, has been in and out of prison for the past decade on charges human rights groups decry as attempts to silence dissent. He was sentenced to five years in prison last year after he was found guilty of “spreading false news undermining national security.”

In public speeches, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has repeatedly scolded families for having more than two children, calling the population crisis a national security issue that has hindered progress on development goals.

More than one billion people already live in Africa. By 2050, the populations of at least 26 African countries are expected to double.

rising temperatures increasingly threaten the country’s food and water supplies

To blame the crisis solely on the war in Ukraine would be “barely true,” said Egyptian political economist Wael Gamal. Years of borrowing and investment in megaprojects made Egypt especially vulnerable, he said. Those projects have been championed by President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, who took power in a military coup in 2013 and has made infrastructure development a hallmark of his presidency.

Until recently, Ramadan said, he could buy a ton of rice for around 8,000 Egyptian pounds. Now, he said, it costs 18,000 pounds. The cost of his pasta supply has jumped by 6,000 pounds. Even the plastic containers and bags they use to package the meals are pricier than before.

Egypt’s economic troubles, Gamal said, become “deeper every time they go to the IMF and take more loans and cover older loans with new loans.”