How you've fallen

Watching Hosni Mubarak being wheeled into court on a stretcher, to face charges of crimes against his nation, I mumbled the words of the prophet Isaiah: "How you have fallen Hillel Ben-Shachar - [Hillel son of the dawn] from heaven, Oh morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!"

It beggars belief. For thirty years he was the modern Pharaoh who ruled all, and whom no man dared challenge. Recall his words to Yasser Arafat, "Sign it, you son of a dog!"

Mubarak, in a kingly act, almost managed to pass on the ruler's staff to his son. But his world has come crashing down in one fell swoop.

To historians, he has left a long trail of "what ifs."

What if he had ordered his army to open fire on the protesters in Tahrir Square, like Bashar Assad has done over the past months? What if he had accepted Saudi Arabia's invitation for political asylum, the way that he, as Egypt's Vice President, granted asylum to the Shah of Iran until his dying day? And this question which nobody would ask seriously: What if he had accepted Benjamin [Fuad] Ben Eliezer's offer of political asylum in Eilat? Everybody of course knows that there is nothing substantial in this damaging patter from Israel.

Let's not be confused. The military junta which now wields power in the Land of the Nile, and which does not know which way to navigate, would be more than happy to see Mubarak leave the country, or depart this world, and spare it the legal process with all its attendant complications. For there are new discontents arising in Egypt. But still Mubarak lives, and refuses to give his enemies the pleasure of his dying. We may never know why he refused the Saudis' offer. I assume its because he was aware of the historic significance, and felt it better to die than to linger in exile. At his age and with his medical condition, it's better to go down in the gallows than to be remembered as someone who ran away.

Everyone has lost: The situation in Egypt is deteriorating rapidly, and she is once again no longer calling the shots in the Middle East. Her centrality in the Arab League has been tempered. Egypt's current leader, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Higher Military Council, has already indicated that he's had enough and is eager to retire. Even Israel, which views the long-term anarchy taking hold in Egypt with growing concern, is also worried about the immediate damage of having her name thrown into Mubarak's trial in relation to the price of the gas that's pumped through the pipeline, when that pipeline isn't blown up that is. Even the U.S., which turned its back on its long-time ally, came out of the revolution in Tahrir Square as the loser.

I watched Mubarak and pondered the unbearable lightness of those who, with such joy, termed it the "Arab Spring." It's not Spring. It's a heat wave.

טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו