Live reports and images that are floating around the Internet from Egypt, passed on by Al Jazeera and various citizen media sources, leave no doubt that the Egyptian uprising is about everyday people fighting for their basic human freedoms and ousting Mubarak's brutal regime.
Only pessimists, haters, fearmongers and special interest groups are going around claiming otherwise.
Don't believe the hype!
To connect to ongoing instant up-to-date information coming from Egypt, follow Egyptian columnist Mona Eltahawy - @monaeltahawy on Twitter and/or Facebook.
Mona says: "For years, successive Arab dictators have tried to keep discontent at bay by distracting people with the Israeli-Arab conflict."
Meanwhile, the uprisings are curing the Arab world of an opiate, the obsession with Israel. For years, successive Arab dictators have tried to keep discontent at bay by distracting people with the Israeli-Arab conflict. Israel's bombardment of Gaza in 2009 increased global sympathy for Palestinians. Mubarak faced the issue of both guarding the border of Gaza, helping Israel enforce its siege, and continuing to use the conflict as a distraction. Enough with dictators hijacking sympathy for Palestinians and enough with putting our lives on hold for that conflict.
And yes, Israel does have a legitimate reason to fear an Islamist takeover in Egypt, but so does the majority of the people in the International community. Bottom line, the truth cannot be denied or swept under a rug.
Democracy now!
Power to the people!
Mubarak be gone!
One of the axioms repeated ad nauseum over the years by pundits around the world is that Arab despair breeds the radicalism that breeds the terrorism, and that the source of that despair is the Palestinian issue. Take that issue away and there will be far less despair, and thus far less terrorism. Hogwash.
True, there is hopelessness in the Arab world – but the source is not the Arab masses concern about the Palestinians; the source is the Arab masses concern about their own lives, their own unemployment and their own lack of freedoms. Fix that and you get stability; ignore that, and you get revolution.