Egypt - cable from the revolution

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Bliss was it that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven ... Wordsworth

My friend Louis in Alexandria sent this email five days ago:

9:32 PM Louis: No SMS
No twitter
No Facebook
9:33 PM Using live rounds in suez please spread

Last night the Egyptian Army said it would not fire on the "great people of Egypt" This is a turning point and surely marks the triumph of the people's uprising. I wanted to find a famous quote from Shelley or Byron on the French Revolution but found this wise one:

Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Then I found the one I wanted, from Wordsworth - "Bliss was it in this dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven." No revolution is the same and the hopes of the French revolution were in some sense lost in the bloody Terror and the rise of Napoleon. Then again, as Chao En Lai said in 1976 when asked about the significance of the French Revolution, "It is too early to tell". Apparently in China today they have blocked online searches for Egypt as they try to stop news of the revolution reaching its citizens. Of course this will not work. Perhaps the occupation of the central square raises memories of Tiananmen Square 21 years ago. Then the soldiers did shoot.
It appears Israel is afraid too - they have for long painted themselves as a democracy in a sea of Arab tyranny. But what happens when the Arabs stand up and seize freedom for themselves? After all, the Gazans elected Hamas, and Lebanon voted for Hizbollah. Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said he was concerned that Egypt could end up with a regime as radical as that of Iran. "Our real fear is of a situation that could develop … and which has already developed in several countries, including Iran itself: repressive regimes of radical Islam," he told reporters after meeting Germany's Angela Merkel. Does he really mean that Israel cannot accept the right of its neignbours to freely choose a government to represent them - in other words, democracy?