NEIL MacFARQUHAR on Egypt

"“They were all beggars before the revolution,” said Mohamed Salah, an acerbic columnist for the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper, summarizing a common perception."    1) Notice that MacFarquhar identifies the mouthpiece of Prince Khalid bin Sultan bin Bribe as "pan-Arab newspaper. What does that mean, really?  And why hide its Saudi ownership? To lend credibility to the columnist cited? 2) Why not tell readers that his favorite source on Egypt, it seems, is none other than a former Bin Ladenite--LITERALLY--who recovered and became an advocate for Husni Mubarak--LITERALLY.  So Mr. Salah has been a peddler of all sorts of stuff from Egyptian mukhabarat in his column.  He once wrote the room number of Abu Abbas in Cairo, in case Israeli terrorists wanted to take a shot at him.  3) Notice that Mr. Salah, when talking to Mr. MacFarquhar (who once was so offended at my criticisms of him that he sent me an email of insults calling me "stupid Arab"--real mature stuff.  Can you imagine the uproar if he were to respond to the criticisms by a Jewish reader by calling him "stupid Jew"? Would he not been fired?), he does not share his views on Israel.  Here, Mr. Salah states that he believes that Israel should be erased off the map, but he never expressed those views when he was serving the Mubarak regime.  4) In his reference to the election in Tunisia, Mr. MacFarquhar is way off.  The liberal party of Mr. Marzuqi did not get 30% of the vote. It got around 9 %.  It is not my job to correct the articles on the Middle East in the lousy Zionist newspaper.