Letter from Cairo: I spy with my ‘big’ eye

These are a few excerpts of the sensational headlines of Egypt’s official and independent newspapers and which reminded me of those Egyptian films that depict the intelligence war between Egypt and Israel and naturally end with the Mossad being crushed at the hands of some Egyptian intelligence officer and in several cases it is a woman and specifically the type who has to wear bikinis and perform a semi-striptease in order to save her country from the hands of the Zionist enemy … giving the box office a boost does not, after all, contradict the patriotic principles that the films are supposed to propagate among the teenager audience who, of course, see the movie for patriotic reasons. Well, that was just the indirect, maybe quite boring, way of asking a more straightforward question: What is that all about?

I am not going to pretend that I am familiar with the espionage business—nobody should, I assume, and that’s the whole point—but from the few things I read, I understood that spying is mainly divided in two parts: one is the military and two all other things (society, economy… etc.). This is in terms of what an intelligence agency of a given country is interested in knowing about another given country.

As for the chronological development, I would think intelligence, like anything else, went through two phases: one is the old days and by this I mean the time when the world consisted of closed cubicles where the resident of one cubicle would need tremendous effort to break into the neighboring cubicle let alone take the time to watch what’s happening inside it. Two is the new days where the world has turned into what seems to me like a public bath not only in the sense that there are so many people in same place who have very easy access to one another, but also because those people are placed in the situation in which they are their most exposed state; the towel wrapped around you can fall any moment and then all the other bathers will have a blast staring at your naked body.

Let me give you a concrete example. In the 1960s, part of the spy’s job was to sit in coffee houses and mingle with the people to listen to their grievances, which usually revolved around economic matters and how they linked their financial situation to the performance of the government. This spy would then write a report that might contain notes on the rising prices of sugar or the scarcity of fuel or cite a couple of jokes that poke fun at the president. Those seemingly trivial points were for the spying country extremely crucial as they gauged the general mood in the spied-on country and consequently acquainted the former with the main weak points through which it could attack, not necessarily in the military sense, the latter.

Nowadays, this very same spy—if he should still be called as such— who in the past had to board a plane and sometimes stay for years in the country on which he was spying can enjoy a cup of coffee on the cozy couch in his living room and check Facebook or watch a couple of videos on YouTube and in less than an hour would have a report ready on how the people of this country feel and what they’re planning to do including even toppling the whole regime like what happened in the January 25 Revolution and which was all over the virtual world several days before it took place.

Let me tell you a little incident that can help make things clear. When the protests started in Syria, an Egyptian man was arrested by the Syrian authorities on spying charges. The proof they had was that he took pictures of one of the protests that was taking place at the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus and that he was going to send them to Israel which was in dire need for information about the situation in Syria. I guess the absurdity of the story speaks for itself and therefore no further analysis is required on my part.

Now, back to the Ilan Chaim Grapel, the man arrested in Egypt and accused of spying for Israel and destabilizing national security in post-revolution Egypt. According to press reports, Grapel’s laptop contained pictures of the protests staged after the ouster of the regime and which called for the trial of the former president and speeding up political reforms…etc. and of sectarian clashes that took place in several parts of Cairo. Pictures were also taken of him in those same places in which, according to Egyptian authorities, he was present in order to mar the relationship between the people and the army as well as incite Muslim-Christian hatred. Investigations also revealed that he collected information about the Muslim Brotherhood, the Copts, and the youths involved in staging the January 25 Revolution.

For me, and I might be naïve or stupid, all the pictures and information the man had supposedly sent to the Mossad are not of any strategic significance and do not require sending a spy to stay in Egypt for months in order to obtain them, and I don’t think this man managed to have access to something absolutely classified since what has been announced so far is that he basically talked to people in the places where he was photographed.

I also don’t find it logical that this man took part in igniting tensions between the people and the army or Muslims and Christians because those tensions are not fabricated and there are numerous reasons why they exist and why they escalate at certain times. I don’t think it is this man who instigated the army into performing virginity tests on female activists or beating up protestors in front of the Israeli embassy or not being firm enough with Islamist fanatics and I don’t think he instigated the people into being furious at those actions. It was definitely not this man who made the Salafis burn churches or who organized the sit-in Copts staged in response.

I am not claiming that Israel has no interest in spying on Egypt or that what happens in Cairo does not have its repercussions in Tel Aviv a few minutes later or that Israel was not shaken to the bone by the fall of the Egyptian regime, which had been its closest ally in the region. I am just unable to believe that the Mossad is as naïve as to send a man, who is almost posing in all the pictures taken of him, to report on incidents that you can find in Wikipedia or that the Egyptian authorities are as naïve as to fall for a scenario that is even less plausible than the movie called “48 Hours in Israel” or the other one called “A Mission in Tel Aviv” and in which espionage seemed liked a much more complicated process. What, then, is the deal with this X-man?

The first thing that comes to mind is that we’re not getting the entire picture and that the reports on Grapel in the media are what the authorities want to disclose at the moment and that there is much more to it than what meets the eye. In this case, I guess it would have been much better had the entire matter not been unraveled now until all details can be made public or until it becomes clear that not announcing it at all is for the best.

Yet the story as presented now does not make it news material at all, especially that Israelis do not come to Egypt via the Gaza tunnels so there is nothing really fishy about an Israeli citizen taking pictures in Cairo or even talking to people about the future of the country.

The other possible option is that the whole mystery is a sheer act of provocation that aims at causing a fuss over an issue that holds no substance. If we assume that this man is sent by the Mossad, it is definitely not to gather information available to every single internet user, but possibly to make an appearance and show everyone he’s there because I don’t see how an Israeli spy who pretends to be a Western journalist would visit a synagogue and the Jewish quarter in Alexandria—very undercover indeed. Grapel might have come to Egypt in order to be seen, watched, and arrested so that the message will be clear: Big Zion is watching you! Israel might have wanted to make a statement that Mubarak or no Mubarak, Egypt can still be infiltrated and Israel will still guard interests in the region no matter what kind of government comes to power. It is like someone sending you an email from your own email account to show off his hacking skills and to warn you that changing the password will not guarantee your protection.

All this might just be a summer afternoon rambling that would later prove absolutely groundless like I would prove absolutely out of my mind. Yet, these are the times of far-fetched speculations and wild guesses and this is what keeps us going now. Otherwise, we are bound to go mad with all the strange things happening almost on daily basis and for which we have no explanation but what our humble imagination allows. I, for one, want to stay sane.