The pyramids still excite the imagination of people all over the world, and generate fans who obsess over them day after day! Many, especially in the USA, believe there are space creatures who came from Mars and built the Pyramids. This is not scientific at all. The theories even feature in a show broadcast and produced by America s History channel, titled “Ancient Aliens.” Many citizens from the US and other countries send me emails (as anyone is able to through my website). They accuse me of blurring all the facts I discover which, in their point of view, show that the Egyptians are not the builders of the pyramids! They mistakenly believe that under the Sphinx are evidences of Atlantis! All these lies raise many false ideas about the pyramids, and the associated real facts and tales.

Some of us are still dealing with the issue of “terrorism targeting Egypt” as if it were in a battle with the targeting of the Copts. The reality tells that the Copts have been targeted more with extremist incitement speech than others, and they have been subjected more to terrorist attacks than other civilian groups in the society. The situation of targeting Copts does not change due to the terrorist attack that targeted a mosque in Rawda village (North Sinai) and killed 310 martyrs, the highest number of martyrs in the history of terrorist operations in Egypt. As the Islamic State did not declare responsibility for this incident as it does for attacks against Copts, it is more likely that those who carried out this operation are stray terrorist elements who came from outside the border.

In these times of so much civil strife, internecine wars, and racial and political intolerance, it is good to remember an episode involving Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand. It shows the power of words to console the grieving, and to bring closure to a painful history. Usually, in April, Turks, as well as people from Australia and New Zealand gather in north western Turkey to render homage to their ancestors, brave young soldiers, who lost their lives on the fields of Çanakkale, in what is known as the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I.

When a language dies, its death is final. The rapid extinction of languages has serious repercussions for human history. It results in the impoverishment of our cultural heritage and the loss of a large amount of information that represents an essential part of humanity s unwritten archives. Any language in its gramma

When the world came to its closest point of nuclear annihilation in October 1962, the leaders of the two superpowers, the US and the former Soviet Union, realised that steps had to be taken to eradicate the threat of igniting a nuclear Armageddon by either of them. Despite averting the threat in 1962 after the 13 days of the Cuban Missiles Crisis which had seen the Russians placing nuclear missiles in Cuba only 40km from American shores, the nuclear arms race did not stop there but continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s until US president Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987 that banned the deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles from the European theatre by the US and the former Soviet Union.

The “Trump era” has posed special challenges for Arab Americans not only in foreign and domestic policy, but also in confronting the hostile political culture the president has nurtured. As a result, we ve been busy, especially in this election season; forced to work on many fronts, all at the same time. Not since the 1980s have we seen so many Republican campaigns using anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bigotry against Democratic opponents, with most instances tied to charges that the Democrat has received financial support from questionable sources (from the Arab sounding names on their donors lists); is supported by individuals who are opponents of Israel or supporters of the BDS movement; are themselves linked by family ties to Palestinian terrorism; or are just not sufficiently supportive of Israel or Trump s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Saudi Arabia is facing an unprecedented crisis where both its international image and reputation are greatly tested. It has found itself in the centre of an international storm with serious implications in terms of the Middle East and a possible regional realignment that would benefit its main competitor Turkey and its archenemy Iran.

The horrific killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in Turkey has sparked an unprecedented wave of condemnation of Saudi Arabia and its security apparatus. The latter has caused a major upheaval in Saudi Arabia s international relations and one that it will take years to rectify. Even with Saudi King Salman announcing measures to investigate the incident on 20 October when Khashoggi was killed, the damage has already been done.

The October 1973 War went down in history as the first Egyptian military victory over the Israeli entity. Its documented events were the product of an Egyptian military undertaking that enthralled the world. The excellence of Egyptian commanders was evidenced at every phase, from preparation for the war to its unconventional and, indeed, unparallelled execution. It is little wonder that it is studied in most international military academies, particularly in light of the element of surprise that caught the enemy off guard and stunned the governments that supported it at the time and continue to do so today.

The Seven Pillars of Egyptian Identity, a book by the late Coptic intellectual Milad Hanna, will be a main reference at the World Youth Forum held in Sharm El-Sheikh from 3 to 6 November. The organisers want to study the main characteristics of Egyptian identity, because of its effective role in many civilisations. The book by Hanna stresses the importance of the unity of society and its “seven pillars”.

After 16 days of denial, Saudi authorities released an official statement that said the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had died in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in a botched interrogation 2 October. On that fateful day, he went into his country’s consulate to get a certificate to the effect that he was divorced. He needed it to marry his Turkish fiancé, according to news reports. His family back in Saudi Arabia denied that he had a fiancé.

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy to the presidency and set the tone of his priorities. The elimination of illegal immigration to the United States, mainly from refugees fleeing from poverty and violence in Mexico and Central America was one. He didn t say at the time that his policies included separating children from their parents, some of whom might never meet again. Immigrants come to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America try to escape abject poverty and food insecurity in their own countries. In Mexico, 2016 data reveal that 52.3% of children over 11 years old live under the poverty line, and 9.7% live in extreme poverty. Among indigenous children, the figures are more startling. Near 80% of them live under the poverty line, and 18.9% show symptoms of chronic malnutrition, a reflection of their unhealthy quality of life.

The term “national security” is often bandied about in different ways and at all levels of society in countries the world over. When we want to focus people s attention on a subject, we call it “a matter of national security,” for example. We might also use the phrase for totally opposite purposes. When we say, “that s a national security issue, and it should not be discussed,” we mean we want to avoid the issue and evade responsibility for it.

Are you a digital citizen? I ask the question of the reader. Have you ever asked yourself what the word digitalisation really means? What is the relationship between digitalising society and development? Why is the state so keen to promote this concept? First, to clarify the concept of digitalisation, this simply means the process of transforming traditional methods into new ones entrusted to electronic systems.

My attention was caught by an article by Ashraf Abdel-Shafi that appeared in Al-Ahram s Friday supplement commemorating the great Arab playwright Tawfik Al-Hakim and urging the establishment of a museum to pay tribute to him. Abdel-Shafi s article, which comes more than 30 years after Al-Hakim s death, compels us to take our hat off to the “alley” in which we live and which, as the great novelist Naguib Mahfouz said, is plagued with forgetfulness.

One of the principles we learned in the study of international relations and which we, in turn, would teach to our students, was the need to distinguish between the essential, crucial issue and the “noise” that is so often created by incidental events, the rhetoric that political leaders use when dealing with domestic political circumstances, or other such phenomena that distract people from the major issues and preoccupy them. For example, at the beginning of this decade, following the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring and the attendant upheavals that threw regional and international relations into turmoil, there emerged three sources of threat to regional security in the Middle East.

It is not an easy thing to take away someone s innocence and childhood, especially if it is taken from those who cannot defend it because of their weakness and by those who are supposed to be the source of their strength, in other words their parents. Depriving a person of his basic rights is a great injustice, and all the more so when it is committed against a child.

Just three years ago, in September 2015, all United Nations Member States approved the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The eradication of hunger and all forms of malnutrition (Sustainable Development Goal number 2) was defined by world leaders as a cardinal objective of the Agenda, a sine qua non condition for a safer, fairer and more peaceful world. Paradoxically, global hunger has only grown since then. According to the latest estimates, the number of undernourished people in the world increased in 2017, for the third consecutive year. Last year, 821 million people suffered from hunger (11 percent of the world population - one in nine people on the planet), most of them family and subsistence farmers living in poor rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

It is to the vibrant cultural scene of cosmopolitan Alexandria, home to a melting pot of nationalities and ethnicities and to the poets, writers, architects, merchants and industrialists who found inspiration and opportunity in this fascinating city, that Egyptian cinema owes its beginnings. By the mid-1920s, Alexandria had become a filmmaking hub, attracting artists and entrepreneurs from all backgrounds. To this day, Alexandria, the city where I grew up and of which I have my fondest memories, remains the city where the magic began.

Some colleagues who recently went to Europe were appalled by what they heard from various officials there. “They still do not understand the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are still unaware of our predicament,” these colleagues said. I discussed the issue with them, and many preferred an explanation emphasising European bad faith.

I was amazed to find that French media coverage of the life of the legend of French chanson, Charles Aznavour, who passed away 1 October, mentioned nothing on his frequent visits to Egypt. Reports spoke at length of his worldwide tours: to the US, Japan, all European countries, as well as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But Egypt was left out, although he visited it at least three times. The first time was in 1952, before he made his ascent as one of the most celebrated singers in France. He was accompanying the French Umm Kalthoum, Edith Piaf, for whom he was a songwriter. Piaf performed a single concert, in that visit, at the American University in Cairo s Ewart Hall. Aznavour s last visit to Egypt was in 2008. On that occasion, I invited him and his family to stay at my small farm in Dahshour, amidst the palm groves in that idyllic rural area near the foot of the eternal Dahshour Pyramids and remote from all the to-do of hotels, the theatre and formal parties. The French artist s connection with the Arab world and its artists remained uninterrupted between that first and last visit. He was infatuated with Umm Kalthoum whose music, he told me, he first heard during a visit to Morocco. He was a friend of Farid Al-Atrash and he met Fairouz and her husband, Assi Rahbani, during a visit to Lebanon. He related to me the occasion of his visit to their home in Bikfaya. By the time Aznavour came to Cairo in 2008, aged 84, he had become as much a symbol of France as Umm Kalthoum was a symbol of Egypt and Louis Armstrong (who also visited Egypt) was an American symbol. His concert at the Cairo Opera House thrilled and enchanted audiences and, the following day, he expressed how much this pleased him as we strolled beneath the winter sun amidst the Dahshour palm groves. He began to take pictures of Sneferu s pyramid, which is unlike any of the other Egyptian pyramids. “At my age, this camera is my memory which doesn t forget anything,” he said. In response to his question about Sneferu, I said that he was the father of Khufu, the first to build a true pyramid after the phase of stepped pyramids in the Old Kingdom. Khufu used his father s “Red Pyramid” as a model for the Great Pyramid of Giza. “I know the son, of course. But not the father,” Aznavour said, adding: “Which shows you how young I am!” Some may not know that Aznavour had a difficult time at the outset of career when he was ridiculed for his short stature, unattractiveness, and that gravelly quivering voice that grated on ears familiar with the then popular silky vocal style of French crooners such as Jean Sablon and Tino Rossi. Aznavour, the son of Armenian immigrants from Georgia in the Soviet Union and originally named Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian, told me that he was so pained by the attacks against him in his early career that he decided to leave France. He chose Canada as the place of his voluntary exile and spent the next five years honing his talents and simultaneously expanding his intellectual horizons through reading. When he returned to Paris, Edith Piaf was the first to notice his unique musical and poetic gifts. She performed some songs that he wrote for her which, in turn, drew attention to him. He then began to sing his own compositions. But it was La Mamma, which he wrote in the early 1960s, that catapulted him to the front ranks of French vocalists, after which he quickly acquired worldwide fame. In addition to the warmth and emotive impact of his unparalleled voice, he enthralled audiences with the originality of his music, which drew on many classical music techniques, and the lyricism of his lyrics, which are works of poetry in their own right. During his visit here, he gave me an anthology of short stories that had authored and that had appeared in France a few months earlier. As he presented me with that gift, he said, “I write literature like you. Are you going to try to sing like me?” Like any great artist, Aznavour had a patriotic side which led him to support the cause of the people whose ethnicity he shares, the Armenians. He admitted to me that he knew very little about Armenia before 1963 when he visited it for the first time during a concert tour in the Soviet Union. However, it was not until the catastrophic earthquake in 1988 that he began to emotionally identify with Armenia. The devastating quake with its epicentre at Spitak killed at least 50,000 people and left another half a million homeless. “The earthquake awakened in me the memory of the massacre of Armenians by the Turks, so I established the Aznavour for Armenia charity to help Armenians in the Soviet Union. My greatest joy was in 1991 when Armenia became independent from the Soviet Union, which was something that I had never imagined would happen in my lifetime.” At the time when Aznavour died at the beginning of this month, he had been booked to perform in Yerevan some days later. If the French press ignored Aznavour s visits to Egypt, and his last visit in particular which, he told me, he would remember for the rest of his life, his connection to this part of the world was more extensive and deeper. He performed in the Jarash festival in Jordan and gave several concerts in Beirut. During his stay at my farm in Dahshour, I discovered another link between Aznavour and the Arab world. Some members of his family had accompanied him on that visit, including his son, Nicolas, and his wife about whom I learned that one of her parents was from Morocco and the other from Tahiti. Also, his daughter, Katia, is married to an Algerian, Rashid. But the French press had little time for such details.