Jalal Talgreeb
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A candid and increasingly frustrated Arabic-language commentary by Khaled Hassan, a National Security & Foreign Policy Expert and Council Member of Israeli President’s Voice of the People Initiative, has been circulating in Egyptian political circles, and its message is as striking as it is revealing. Hassan — proud of his heritage, proud of his nation’s storied civilization — poses a deceptively simple question to the Egyptian government, its elites, and its people: What do Egyptians actually want?
It is a question that, when examined carefully, illuminates something far broader than Egyptian domestic confusion. It exposes a fault line running through the Arab world’s approach to regional politics — one that explains, more than almost anything else, why Israel continues to grow stronger, more diplomatically agile, and more secure, while its neighbors cycle through contradictions, economic hardship, and strategic irrelevance.
A Nation Talking Out of Both Sides of Its Mouth
Hassan documents a pattern of behavior that is almost surreal in its internal contradictions. As a major U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran was clearly imminent — one that virtually every analyst, including Hassan himself, believed would end the Islamic Republic’s regime — Egypt’s diplomatic apparatus was busy exchanging ambassadors with Tehran.
Let that sink in. While the world held its breath for what many described as a war of finality, Cairo was formalizing ties with a government whose fall was considered days or hours away. The Egyptian government was not preparing for the post-Iran regional order. It was not coordinating with Gulf allies who would soon come under Iranian threat. It was not positioning itself to benefit strategically from a historic power vacuum. It was, inexplicably, extending a diplomatic hand to a regime already on the edge of collapse.
The irony deepened almost immediately. When the war broke out, no senior Egyptian official rushed to the Gulf states to express solidarity. While Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was flying to Abu Dhabi and Jordan’s King Abdullah was visiting Gulf capitals, Egypt — which had long proclaimed that Gulf security was inseparable from Egyptian security — was conspicuously absent. The country that positioned itself as the Arab world’s backbone was sitting on the sidelines while history unfolded.
The Anti-Israel Obsession That Bleeds Egypt Dry
Perhaps the most damning observation Hassan makes concerns the Egyptian public and intellectual class’s single-minded fixation on Israel. He notes — with evident exasperation — that Egyptian commentators and ordinary citizens will support virtually any actor, no matter how damaging to Egypt’s own interests, so long as that actor is targeting Israel.
The example he gives is extraordinary: the Houthis. This Iranian-backed militia in Yemen threatened and effectively closed the Suez Canal — Egypt’s economic lifeline, the artery through which billions of dollars in revenue flow annually. The closure was a direct economic wound inflicted on Egypt. And yet, Egyptian public opinion largely stood behind the Houthis. Why? Because the Houthis were firing missiles at Israel.
This is not foreign policy. This is ideological self-harm dressed up as solidarity.
What Hassan is describing, without quite naming it, is the catastrophic cost of making hatred of Israel the organizing principle of a nation’s worldview. When “strike at Israel” becomes the supreme value — superseding national interest, economic survival, diplomatic coherence, and regional stability — a country loses its ability to think clearly about anything. Every decision gets filtered through a single question: does this hurt Israel? And if the answer is yes, no further analysis is needed.
Israel, meanwhile, operates on an entirely different logic.
Israel’s Strategic Clarity: A Study in Contrast
Hassan makes a pointed observation about Israel’s relationship with the United States. He notes that when Israel receives American support, Israelis say thank you. Their leadership praises the alliance. Their public acknowledges American friendship. Their diplomats reinforce the partnership at every opportunity. Israel does not curse its allies in public while asking for their money in private.
This is not a small thing. It reflects a fundamental national discipline — a clarity of vision about what Israel needs, who its friends are, and how alliances are maintained. Israel understands that strategic relationships are built on reciprocity, trust, and coherent messaging. It does not tell Washington it is an enemy on Tuesday and ask for emergency military aid on Wednesday.
Compare this to what Hassan describes in Egypt: a government formally requesting urgent financial assistance from the United States, while Egyptian intellectuals and media figures simultaneously declare that America is conspiring to destroy the Islamic world, that anyone sheltered by the Americans is naked and exposed, and that the American-Israeli alliance is the root of all Arab suffering. The government asks for money. The elites spit at the hand that would write the check. The public cheers the spitting.
Israel’s strategic culture does not permit this kind of incoherence. The Israeli government, military establishment, and public largely speak from the same page on the country’s core alliances and interests. Debate is vigorous — Israel is a raucous democracy — but on the fundamental question of whether America is an ally worth cultivating, there is no meaningful dissent in the halls of power. This unity of strategic purpose has allowed Israel to build one of the most formidable military forces on earth, attract massive foreign investment, develop a high-technology economy that punches far above its demographic weight, and maintain the trust of the world’s most powerful nation across decades and changing administrations.
What Incoherence Costs
Hassan asks a question that every Egyptian policymaker and commentator should be forced to answer: Will cursing bring you money?
It is a brutal, simple, unanswerable question. Egypt is facing rolling blackouts. Shops, cinemas, and cafes are being forced to close at 9 PM — a measure which Hassan rightly calls unprecedented, a wartime footing in a country not officially at war. The economy is under severe pressure. The country needs allies, investment, and diplomatic support.
And yet the intellectual and political class doubles down on anti-American, anti-Israel rhetoric that alienates precisely the partners Egypt needs most. The Gulf states, already strained by Egypt’s flirtation with Iran, are not rushing to write checks. America’s taxpayers, whose contributions fund significant aid to Cairo, are being told by Egyptian voices that their country is evil, conspiratorial, and destructive. Why, Hassan wonders with barely concealed frustration, would anyone give money to a country whose own public figures call them enemies?
Israel faces no such self-inflicted wounds. Its alliances are productive because they are maintained with coherence and gratitude. Its strategic partnerships deliver results because Israel is a reliable, predictable partner. And when Israel needs support — in war, in diplomacy, at the United Nations — those partnerships deliver.
A Region at a Crossroads
The deeper lesson of this Arabic commentary is about the cost of ideology untethered from interest. For decades, anti-Israel sentiment has functioned as a political currency in the Arab world — a way to deflect from domestic failures, unite fractious publics, and claim moral legitimacy without having to do the hard work of governance, economic development, or strategic planning. Hating Israel was easy. Building a modern, prosperous, diplomatically coherent state was hard.
Israel made the harder choice. Starting from a position of existential vulnerability — surrounded by hostile neighbors, with no natural resources, absorbing waves of refugees from around the world — Israel chose the path of institution-building, alliance-cultivation, technological investment, and strategic clarity. The results speak for themselves: a GDP per capita that dwarfs its neighbors, a military that its adversaries fear and respect, and a diplomatic footprint that extends from Washington to New Delhi to Nairobi.
Hassan does not mention Israel admiringly — his critique is directed inward, at Egypt’s confusion. But the contrast he inadvertently draws is damning. Egypt has history, has culture, has a population of over 100 million people, has the Suez Canal, has the Arab world’s most storied intellectual tradition. And yet it cannot answer the most basic strategic question: what do we want?
Israel answers that question every day, clearly and consistently. It wants security. It wants prosperity. It wants recognized, durable relationships with reliable allies. And it pursues those goals with a coherence that has made it, against all odds, one of the region’s most enduring and capable states.
The Question Egypt Must Answer
Hassan ends his video with a plea: Tell us what you want. Just tell us clearly what you want.
It is a plea directed at Egypt’s government, its intellectuals, and its people. But it is also, unwittingly, a tribute to what happens when a country does know what it wants — and pursues it with discipline, clarity, and strategic intelligence.
Israel knows what it wants. And that, more than any single military capability or diplomatic maneuver, is the foundation of its strength.
**This essay draws on themes raised in a widely circulated Arabic-language political commentary by an Khaled Hassan, a National Security & Foreign Policy Expert and Council Member of Israeli President’s Voice of the People Initiative, reflecting on Egyptian foreign policy contradictions in the context of the regional conflict involving Iran.
Jalal Tagreeb is an East Jordanian freelance researcher and translator who works in the United Kingdom and abroad, specializing in Islamic Studies and History. Formerly rooted in conservative Sunni Islam, he was once an active Muslim apologist who frequently debated secularists. Following a series of decisive intellectual defeats, he undertook a profound re-evaluation of his beliefs, ultimately culminating in his public renunciation of Islam.
He now focuses on analyzing cultural and ideological contrasts between the West and the Middle East. Through his writings and translations, he aims to foster meaningful dialogue, encourage critical engagement with Islamic tradition, and promote intellectual honesty. His writings, debates, and a selection of his previously refuted Islamic arguments can be found here: Jalal Tagreeb, Author at The Freethinker.
He can be contacted at servantjiff@gmail.com.
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