Netsiv’s Confession: “Even the Birds of Egypt Hate Israel” - And Here’s Why

THE HEADLINE THAT SPOKE THE TRUTH

The Words That Shook Tel Aviv

In the first week of April 2026, as the war with Iran entered its second month and American bombs continued to fall on Tehran, an Israeli intelligence platform published a report that its authors almost certainly intended as a warning to their own government. But the report - published on a platform called Netsiv, which is linked to Israeli intelligence circles - ended up doing something far more significant: it spoke the truth about Egypt.

“If you could make the birds of Egypt speak,” the report stated, “they would declare hostility to Israel.”

The platform, which is believed to have ties to Israeli military intelligence, was trying to understand why the Egyptian street remained so inflamed with hatred toward Israel - why, despite 47 years of official peace, despite the billions of dollars in American aid, despite the normalization agreements signed by Gulf states, the ordinary Egyptian citizen had never made peace with the occupation.

The answer Netsiv arrived at was devastating in its simplicity: the Egyptian people hate Israel because of what Israel has done. The report noted that in the last three years alone, Israel had destroyed the lives of two million people on Egypt’s borders, had tried to force them to flee into Egyptian territory, and had routinely violated the sovereignty of Arab nations. The Egyptian people, the platform concluded, are peaceful to the highest degree - and that is precisely why they are hostile to Israel’s “stupid extremism, blatant aggression, and the ruining of millions of lives.”

The report was published in Arabic - clearly intended to be read in Cairo. And it was quickly picked up by Egyptian media. The headline ran on the front page of Al‑Masry Al‑Youm, one of Egypt’s largest newspapers, on April 5, 2026.

This was not a Palestinian source. This was not an Iranian source. This was Israeli intelligence, speaking to its own people, trying to explain why 85 million Egyptians refuse to accept the occupation of Palestine as a fait accompli.

The Numbers That Cannot Be Spun

If Netsiv’s report was qualitative, the polling data released in the same period was quantitative - and it was devastating for those who believe that normalization can succeed.

In February 2026, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies released its annual Arab Opinion Index, a survey of 40,130 respondents across 15 Arab countries, including Egypt. The results showed that 87 percent of Arab citizens oppose recognition of Israel. Only six percent said they would accept it.

The numbers for Egypt were particularly striking. A Pew Research Center poll, cited by Haaretz, found that 54 percent of Egyptians want the 1979 peace treaty annulled, compared to only 36 percent who want to maintain it. More than half of all Egyptians would like to see the treaty torn up.

The reasons are not mysterious. The same polls show that 80 percent of respondents view the Palestinian cause as a collective Arab cause. The war in Gaza, which has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians since October 2023 - the majority of them women and children - has pushed the Palestinian issue back to the forefront of public debate across the Arab world. Even in countries that signed the Abraham Accords, support for normalization has collapsed. In Morocco, support fell from 20 percent in 2022–2023 to 6 percent in 2024–2025. In Sudan, it fell from as high as 23 percent to 7 percent.

The trend is clear. The more Israel bombs Gaza, the more it expands settlements, the more it threatens Al‑Aqsa, the more the Arab street turns against it. And in Egypt - the largest Arab country, the historical leader of the Arab world - the hostility is not fading. It is deepening.

A Direct Reply to the Netsiv Platform

To the analysts at Netsiv - the Israeli intelligence platform that recently wrote:
“If you could make the birds of Egypt speak, they would declare hostility to Israel.”

You are correct.

The birds of Egypt have been singing this song since 1948. They sang when our grandfathers fell in the mud of Palestine. They sang when the Nakba turned 750,000 people into refugees. They sang when Muhammad al‑Durrah was shot dead on live television - a boy my age, who would be 38 now, just like me.

You say “hostility.” We call it memory.

We remember the Egyptian soldiers killed by your snipers at the Rafah crossing last year. We remember the 17,000 children of Gaza who have been pulled from the rubble since October 2023. We remember the villages you erased and the parking lots you built on our ruins.

You wonder why the peace treaty never became a real peace. Because peace cannot be signed on paper while Al‑Aqsa is threatened, while Christian pilgrims are humiliated at checkpoints, while the keys of destroyed homes are passed from grandmother to granddaughter.

You call our television series “incitement.” We call them history.

So yes, the birds of Egypt speak. They speak in the boycott of your dates. They speak in the 54% of Egyptians who want the 1979 treaty annulled. They speak in the funerals of soldiers you keep killing on the border.

And they will keep speaking until the last occupation soldier leaves the last inch of Palestine - and until the last American base is removed from Arab soil.

You asked if the birds could speak. They have been speaking all along. You just chose not to listen.

We are the owners. We are the inheritors. And we will not shut up.

- A son of Al‑Jafryia, Gharbiya, Egypt

The 47‑Year Cold Peace

The Egypt‑Israel peace treaty was signed in March 1979. It was a transaction, not a reconciliation. Egypt got the Sinai Peninsula back. Israel got peace on its southern border. The Palestinian cause was set aside.

But the Egyptian people never signed the treaty. Egyptian media, academia, religious institutions, and street culture remained firmly anti‑Israel. The peace treaty was a state‑level agreement, not a popular one. And as the years passed, the gap between the government’s policy and the people’s sentiment only widened.

The Netsiv report captured this perfectly. The Israeli platform noted that despite the peace agreement, Egyptian hatred for Israel remains as intense as it ever was. The report described the peace as nothing more than “peace on paper.” The Egyptian street is charged with hatred for America and Israel, the report concluded, and all of Egyptian society works against normalization.

This is the reality that the Netanyahu government and the Trump administration have chosen to ignore. They have assumed that normalization can be imposed from above - that if the Gulf states sign agreements, if the Egyptian government maintains the treaty, the people will eventually fall in line. They have been wrong. The Egyptian people have not fallen in line. They have not accepted the occupation. They have not forgotten Palestine.

From the Nile to Al‑Aqsa: What Egyptians Actually Believe

The Netsiv report noted that Egyptian media has produced 16 television series since 1980 that “reek of hostility and incitement against Israel.” From the Israeli perspective, these series are propaganda. From the Egyptian perspective, they are history.

One such series, broadcast during Ramadan 2025, depicted the 1948 Nakba from the perspective of Palestinian refugees. Another dramatized the 1967 defeat and the subsequent War of Attrition. Another told the story of the 1973 crossing of the Suez Canal - the moment when Egyptian soldiers finally reclaimed a strip of Sinai, proving that the Israeli military was not invincible.

These are not conspiracy theories. They are historical events, dramatized for a popular audience. And they reflect a deep, abiding belief that the occupation of Palestine is not permanent, that the land will eventually be returned, that the refugees will eventually go home.

The Netsiv report concluded that “the Egyptian people are the platform for media that produce what it claims is hate speech and conspiracy theories.” But what the platform calls “conspiracy theories” are, for Egyptians, lived realities. They are the stories their grandparents told them. They are the photographs on their walls. They are the keys to homes that no longer exist.

And they will not be forgotten.

The Farmer from Al‑Jafryia

I was born in a small village called Al‑Jafryia, in the Gharbiya governorate, near the city of Tanta. It is not a famous village. It does not appear in history books. It is the kind of place where the call to prayer echoes across fields of clover, where the seasons are marked by the harvest, where the Nile is the only clock that matters.

In Al‑Jafryia, we do not have television debates about the peace treaty. We have graves. We have uncles who never came home from the 1967 war. We have cousins who were wounded in 1973. We have children who have been raised on the story of Palestine - not as a political abstraction, but as a wound that will not heal.

When the Egyptian soldier was killed by Israeli fire at the Rafah crossing in May 2024, we felt it in Al‑Jafryia. When Israeli airstrikes killed civilians in Gaza, we felt it. When the children of Gaza were pulled from the rubble, we saw our own children in their faces.

This is not politics. This is blood.

And this is why the birds of Egypt, if they could speak, would declare hostility to Israel. Because the hostility is not manufactured. It is not the product of propaganda. It is the natural, inevitable response to 78 years of occupation, displacement, and massacre.

THE SEEDS OF FURY

1948: The Year the Wound Was Opened

The Nakba - the “catastrophe” - did not happen in a vacuum. It was planned, executed, and celebrated by the forces that would become the state of Israel. Between December 1947 and January 1949, over 530 Palestinian villages were systematically depopulated and destroyed. More than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled. Their homes were taken. Their land was seized. Their keys were kept - and are still kept - as proof that the dispossession was not voluntary.

Egypt fought in 1948. Egyptian soldiers died trying to prevent the Nakba. But the armies of the Arab states were disorganized, poorly equipped, and betrayed by their own leadership. The Nakba happened. And the refugees who fled to Gaza - to the strip that Egypt administered until 1967 - became the living memory of what had been lost.

The refugees did not disappear. They had children. Their children had children. And in the camps of Gaza, in the neighborhoods of Cairo, in the villages of the Delta, the story of 1948 was passed down like an inheritance.

In Al‑Jafryia, there are no Palestinian refugees. But there are families who remember. There are old men who fought in 1948. There are photographs of destroyed villages, yellowed with age, pinned to walls. There is a collective memory that refuses to be erased.

1967: The Humiliation That Changed Everything

On June 5, 1967, the Israeli Air Force launched a preemptive strike against Egypt. Within hours, 304 of Egypt’s 419 combat aircraft were destroyed on the ground. Eleven Egyptian airbases were bombed. The Egyptian army, caught completely off guard, collapsed.

By the time the ceasefire was signed six days later, Israel had occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Egypt had lost over 10,000 soldiers - some estimates put the number as high as 15,000 killed. The entire Sinai Peninsula, six percent of Egypt’s total area, was lost.

The defeat was not just military. It was existential. Nasser, the voice of Arab dignity, appeared on television and announced his resignation. The people poured into the streets - not to celebrate, but to beg him to stay. He stayed. But the wound remained.

The years that followed were years of attrition. Egypt launched the War of Attrition in 1969 - not a war to retake Sinai, but a war to make the occupation unbearable. The canal cities - Port Said, Ismailia, Suez - were shelled relentlessly. Egyptian soldiers died in the mud of the canal, in the sand of the desert, in the skies over the Delta.

The Israeli platform Netsiv, in its 2026 report, did not mention 1967. But the Egyptian people have not forgotten. The destruction of the air force in a single morning. The loss of the Sinai. The thousands of soldiers who never came home. These are not abstract historical events. They are the names on monuments. They are the photographs in family albums. They are the tears that were shed.

1973: The Crossing That Restored Dignity

On October 6, 1973 - the tenth day of Ramadan, the day when Muslims remember the revelation of the Quran - the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal.

The crossing was not a miracle. It was the result of years of planning, of intelligence work, of engineering innovations. Egyptian engineers had studied the Bar‑Lev Line - the massive sand wall that Israel had built along the canal - and found its weakness: water. High‑pressure hoses, brought from Germany, were trained on the sand. In hours, the wall that was supposed to be impregnable was breached.

The Egyptian army crossed the canal in force. Israeli defenses crumbled. For the first time since 1948, Arab soldiers stood on land that had been taken from them. The flags of Egypt flew over the east bank of the Suez Canal, and the world - the world that had written off the Arab armies after 1967 - was forced to watch.

The war did not end in victory. The Egyptian army, having crossed the canal, stopped. The Israeli army, reinforced and rearmed, counterattacked. The Third Army was encircled. The ceasefire came not a moment too soon. But the crossing had changed something fundamental.

The October War was not a defeat. It was the end of the myth of Israeli invincibility. It was the proof that the armies of Egypt could fight. It was the foundation upon which the peace that followed would be built - not a peace of surrender, but a peace of mutual respect, of exhaustion, of the recognition that neither side could destroy the other.

In Al‑Jafryia, the veterans of 1973 are old now. Some have died. But those who remain still speak of the crossing. They speak of the moment they stepped onto the east bank of the canal. They speak of the sand, the heat, the noise. They speak of the friends they lost. And they speak of the dignity that was restored.

The Children of the Intifada

The First Intifada began in December 1987. It was not a military campaign. It was a mass uprising - a spontaneous eruption of a people who had nothing left to lose. Young men with slingshots faced soldiers with tanks. Women with olive branches faced soldiers with tear gas. Children with stones faced soldiers with bullets.

The images were broadcast across the world. And in Egypt, in Al‑Jafryia, in the villages of the Delta, they were watched with a mixture of pride and grief. Pride because the Palestinians were resisting. Grief because they were dying.

The Second Intifada began in September 2000. It was more violent than the first. Suicide bombings. Military incursions. The destruction of the Jenin refugee camp. And on September 30, 2000, the second day of the uprising, a 12‑year‑old boy named Muhammad al‑Durrah was killed in the Gaza Strip.

The footage is seared into the memory of every Egyptian who saw it. Muhammad and his father, Jamal, crouch behind a concrete cylinder. The boy is crying. The father is waving desperately, shouting “Don’t shoot.” Then a burst of gunfire. Dust. The boy slumps, mortally wounded.

I was 12 years old when Muhammad was killed. I watched the footage on Egyptian television. I saw a boy my own age die. And I understood, in that moment, that the occupation was not a distant political issue. It was a matter of life and death.

Muhammad al‑Durrah would be 38 years old today - the same age as me. He would have had children. He would have had a life. Instead, he is a photograph. A memory. A symbol.

And the children of Gaza who have been killed since October 2023 - more than 17,000 of them - are his legacy. Their faces are on our screens every night. Their names are in our prayers. Their blood is on the ground.

The Egyptian people have not forgotten Muhammad al‑Durrah. They have not forgotten the children of Gaza. And they will not forget.

The Soldiers Who Keep Dying

The Egyptian soldier killed by Israeli fire at the Rafah crossing in May 2024 was not the first. He will not be the last.

On May 27, 2024, Israeli and Egyptian forces exchanged fire near the Rafah border crossing, resulting in the death of an Egyptian soldier. Another Egyptian soldier reportedly died from wounds sustained in the same clash. On June 3, 2025, an Egyptian policeman crossed the border into Israeli‑occupied territory and killed two Israeli soldiers before being shot dead himself. The Israeli military fired its commander over the incident. The Egyptian government protested. The families of the dead Egyptian soldiers mourned.

These are not isolated incidents. They are the fabric of the occupation. Egyptian soldiers die on the border, and their families are told that they died for their country. But the question that haunts every Egyptian family is: why are Egyptian soldiers still dying on a border that was supposed to be at peace?

The answer is simple: because the peace is a lie. Because Israel does not respect Egyptian sovereignty. Because the occupation does not stop at the border of Palestine. Because Egyptian soldiers are killed by Israeli fire, and the world does nothing.

In Al‑Jafryia, we do not have a monument to the soldiers who have died on the border. We have their photographs. We have their medals. We have their memories. And we have the certainty that more will die - unless the occupation ends.

THE BLOOD THAT WILL NOT DRY

The Children of Gaza

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israeli territory, killing approximately 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 240 hostages. It was a massacre. It was condemned across the Arab world - including, officially, by the Egyptian government.

But the response from Israel was disproportionate beyond any measure of proportionality. The war that followed has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children. Hospitals have been bombed. Schools have been destroyed. Universities have been leveled. The entire population of Gaza - over two million people - has been displaced, some multiple times.

The Egyptian people have watched this slaughter on their screens every night for two and a half years. They have seen the bodies of children pulled from the rubble. They have seen mothers weeping over the bodies of their infants. They have seen hospitals collapsing, doctors amputating limbs without anesthesia, families starving because aid is blocked at the border.

And they have been unable to do anything.

The Egyptian government has been constrained. It cannot open the border fully without risking the permanent displacement of Palestinians - something Egypt opposes as a betrayal of the right of return. It cannot break the peace treaty without losing American aid and facing possible war. It cannot act.

So the Egyptian people act in the only ways they can. They boycott. They donate. They pray. And they hate.

In February 2026, during Ramadan, Egyptians launched a boycott campaign targeting Israeli‑linked products, particularly dates. The campaign was part of a larger pattern of boycott activism fueled by the war in Gaza. Social media users aggressively targeted anything perceived as linked to Israel. The message was clear: we will not normalize. We will not accept. We will not forget.

The boycott is not just about dates. It is about dignity. It is about the refusal to accept that the occupation is permanent. It is about the belief that the children of Gaza deserve justice.

The Third Holiest Site

For Muslims, Al‑Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam. It was the first qibla - the direction of prayer - before Mecca. It is the site of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey. It has been a place of worship for centuries.

For Christians, Jerusalem is the city of the Resurrection. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried, is one of the holiest sites in Christianity. For Coptic Christians in Egypt - the largest Christian community in the Middle East - pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a sacred tradition. They call it “al‑Mukaddas” - derived from “al‑Quds,” the Arabic name for Jerusalem. It is a pilgrimage to the holy places, to the sites where Christ walked, to the city that is sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths.

But the occupation has made pilgrimage difficult. Israeli checkpoints. Settler violence. The constant threat of closure. And the growing movement among Israeli extremists to destroy Al‑Aqsa and build the Third Temple on its ruins.

The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, were presented to the world as a peace agreement. But for many Egyptians, they were something else: a betrayal. The normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel, without any concession on Jerusalem, without any halt to settlement expansion, without any recognition of Palestinian rights - this was not peace. It was surrender.

In Al‑Jafryia, the mosque and the church are across the street from each other. Muslims and Christians in Egypt have lived together for centuries. They have fought together, mourned together, prayed together. And they are united in their rejection of the occupation. When Netanyahu threatens Al‑Aqsa, he threatens not just the Muslims of Egypt, but the Christians as well. When Israeli extremists speak of destroying the Dome of the Rock, they are speaking of destroying a site that is sacred to all who believe in the sanctity of Jerusalem.

The Egyptian Christians who go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem do so knowing that they are walking in the footsteps of centuries of believers. They call it “al‑Mukaddas” - the holy place. And they return to Egypt with stories of the occupation. Of the soldiers who stop them at checkpoints. Of the settlers who spit at them. Of the fear that has been sown in the city that should be open to all.

They return angry. And they share their anger with their Muslim neighbors.

The Parking Lots on Our Ruins

One of the most painful details of the Nakba is not just that the villages were destroyed, but that they were replaced. On the ruins of Palestinian homes, Israeli parks, forests, and parking lots were built. The destruction was not random. It was designed to erase the memory of the people who had lived there.

The destroyed villages are not just on maps. They are in the memories of the refugees who fled them. They are in the names of the families who still carry the keys to their former homes. They are in the photographs that hang on the walls of refugee camps across the Middle East.

The Egyptian people have seen these photographs. They have heard the stories. And they have drawn a conclusion: the occupation will not stop. It will not rest until every Palestinian has been expelled, every mosque has been destroyed, every trace of Palestinian existence has been erased.

The parking lots on the ruins of Palestinian villages are not just Israeli. They are American. The American administration has supported Israel since 1948 with money, weapons, and diplomatic cover. The billions of dollars in military aid, the vetoes at the UN Security Council, the refusal to hold Israel accountable for war crimes - all of it has enabled the occupation to continue.

The Trump administration, in particular, has been a willing partner in this project. The move of the American embassy to Jerusalem. The recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The brokering of the Abraham Accords without any Palestinian input. The billions of dollars in military aid. The support for the war on Gaza. The threats to “return Iran to the Stone Age.”

The American administration, like the German regime of the 1940s, has enabled genocide. And the Egyptian people have not forgotten. They will not forget. And in the first opportunity, they will demand that the American military bases on Arab soil be closed, that the American weapons stop flowing, that the American support for the occupation end.

The New Nazi Regime

The comparison is not made lightly. But it is made.

The German regime of the 1940s industrialized the murder of six million Jews. The American regime of the 2020s has enabled the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians. The weapons are American. The diplomatic cover is American. The money is American.

The American administration across the years - Democratic and Republican alike - has supported the occupation since 1948. They have vetoed UN resolutions condemning settlement expansion. They have blocked international investigations into war crimes. They have provided the F‑16s that bomb Gaza, the bulldozers that demolish homes, the tear gas that chokes children.

In Al‑Jafryia, we do not have a nuanced view of American foreign policy. We have the bodies of children. We have the photographs of destroyed homes. We have the keys to villages that no longer exist.

The American administration that supports Israel today will, like Germany in the 1940s, be judged by history. And the judgment will not be kind.

The Boycott That Will Not Stop

The boycott movement in Egypt is not new. But since October 2023, it has intensified. Egyptians have boycotted American fast‑food chains accused of supporting Israel. They have boycotted Israeli dates, Israeli produce, Israeli cosmetics. They have pressured Egyptian companies to cut ties with Israeli partners.

The boycott is not about economics. It is about dignity. It is about the refusal to accept that the occupation is permanent. It is about the belief that every pound not spent on Israeli products is a pound that cannot be used to fund the killing of Palestinian children.

The Egyptian government has not officially endorsed the boycott. But it has not stopped it either. And the boycott continues, spreading from social media to the streets, from the streets to the markets, from the markets to the factories.

In Ramadan 2026, the boycott of Israeli‑linked dates was particularly intense. Social media users published lists of products to avoid. Shopkeepers who continued to sell Israeli dates were shamed. The message was clear: normalization is not acceptable. The occupation is not acceptable. And we will not stop until it ends.

THE RETURN

The Owners of the Land

The Netsiv report concluded that the Egyptian street is “charged with hatred for America and Israel.” But hatred is not the right word. Hatred suggests something irrational, something born of ignorance, something that can be cured with education.

What Egyptians feel is not hatred. It is certainty. Certainty that the land of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. Certainty that the occupation is illegal. Certainty that the children of Gaza deserve justice.

The Egyptian people have been fighting for Palestine since 1948. They have fought alongside every Arab nation. They have sent their soldiers to die in Sinai, in Gaza, in the West Bank. They have hosted refugees. They have donated money. They have prayed.

And they have not stopped. They will not stop. Because they are the owners of the land - not in the sense of ownership, but in the sense of stewardship. They are the inheritors of a tradition that sees Palestine not as a piece of real estate to be traded, but as a sacred trust to be protected.

The Quran says: “وَإِنَّ جُنْدَنَا لَهُمُ الْغَالِبُونَ” - “And indeed, Our soldiers will be the victorious” (Quran 37:173). The Egyptian people believe this. They believe that the occupation will end. They believe that the refugees will return. They believe that the children of Gaza will live.

This is not a political belief. It is a religious belief. It is a belief in justice. It is a belief in the promise of God.

The First Opportunity

The Egyptian people are waiting. They are waiting for the first opportunity to kick the occupation out of the region. They are waiting for the moment when the American administration is weakened, when the Israeli government is divided, when the international community finally acts.

They are not waiting passively. They are organizing. They are educating. They are boycotting. They are preparing.

The first opportunity will come. It may not come this year. It may not come next year. But it will come. And when it comes, the Egyptian people will act. They will demand that the American bases be closed. They will demand that the peace treaty be annulled. They will demand that the occupation end.

The Netsiv report did not mention this. But the Egyptian people know it. And they are ready.

The Children Who Will Return

Muhammad al‑Durrah was killed in 2000. He would be 38 years old today. He would have had children. He would have had a life.

The children of Gaza who have been killed since October 2023 will not have that chance. They will not grow up. They will not have children. They will not live.

But their memory will not die. The Egyptian people will remember them. They will name their children after them. They will tell their stories. They will keep their photographs.

And when the occupation ends, when the refugees return, when the children of Gaza are finally safe, the Egyptian people will say: we remembered. We did not forget. We did not stop.

The Birds of Egypt

The Netsiv report said that if you could make the birds of Egypt speak, they would declare hostility to Israel. The platform intended this as a warning to its own government. But it was also a prophecy.

The birds of Egypt do speak. They speak every time an Egyptian child learns the story of Palestine. They speak every time an Egyptian family boycotts Israeli products. They speak every time an Egyptian soldier stands guard on the border, ready to die for his country.

The birds of Egypt will not be silenced. They will not be bribed. They will not be normalized.

And when the occupation finally ends, when the last Israeli soldier leaves the last Palestinian village, the birds of Egypt will sing. They will sing of the children who returned. They will sing of the homes that were rebuilt. They will sing of the justice that was finally done.

A Final Word

I was born in Al‑Jafryia, a small village in the Delta. I grew up hearing the stories of 1948, 1967, 1973. I watched Muhammad al‑Durrah die on television when I was 12 years old. I have watched the children of Gaza die every night for two and a half years.

I am not a politician. I am not a soldier. I am not a journalist. I am a son of the Nile, a man who loves his country, a man who cannot forget.

The birds of Egypt speak for me. They speak for every Egyptian who has lost a son, a father, a brother in the wars with Israel. They speak for every Egyptian who has wept for the children of Gaza. They speak for every Egyptian who refuses to accept that the occupation is permanent.

We are the owners. We are the inheritors. We are not a bunch of gangs who came, killed people, women, children, elderly people, and built parking lots on their ruins. We are the people who have been here for millennia. We are the people who will be here when the occupation ends.

And the occupation will end.

The birds of Egypt have spoken.