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Sun, March 20, 2011 | The Rubin Report | By Barry Rubin

Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei is led to safety as hundreds of Islamists hurled stones and shoes at him as he went to cast his ballot in Cairo in a referendum. (AFP/Mahmud Hams)

ElBaradei Stoned and Shoed: The Truth in Egypt Starts Coming Out

I want to call your attention to the event, discussed in this article, in which hundreds of Brotherhood supporters attacked presidential candidate Muhammad ElBaradei and prevented him from voting against the referendum that they supported.

Reportedly, security forces stood by and did nothing. As I’ve warned, the pro-Islamist views of many officers are now also becoming apparent. Christians report that those killed during a peaceful demonstration on behalf of a church destroyed by the army were shot by soldiers.

This latest scene is a fitting symbol of reality as compared to the fantasies of so much of the Western political leaders, mass media, and “experts.” Picture ElBaradei greatly outnumbered by insult-screaming Islamists. They attack him, he runs away.

At this point — to show how bad the situation is in practice — Amr Moussa, veteran radical Arab nationalist, Israel-baiter, and anti-American is quickly becoming the best one can hope for in terms of the new regime.

The only thing surprising to me is that the Islamists have been emboldened so fast. I thought they would be cautious a while longer in their pretense at being moderate and pro-democracy. But revolutionary Islamists quickly become arrogant when people make concessions to them and they conclude that they are strong and victorious.

After all, they believe that they are 100 percent right and everything they say is divinely ordained. So why should they tolerate anything else? After all, in their eyes their rivals aren’t just disagreeing with them but defying God, not to mention being a lackies of athiestic/Crusader/Zionist imperialism. And that’s what they called ElBaradei.

For ElBaradei the turnaround happened almost overnight. He was the Brotherhood’s front man but broke with them over the referendum. And now they want to break him.

So is the mass media going to start saying: Hey, we were wrong! These people are strong, organized, and radical? Or, rather, is the Obama Administration going to sink deeper into the al-Qaida bad; all other Islamists good mantra? To put it another way, are they willing to lose face for exaggerating the power of Facebook?