The statue of liberty and its egyptian origin !

It all started when Khedive Ismail, who was involved in the building of the Suez channel - made the decision that the Suez Channel had to have a large statue at its north entrance. He took contact with a French sculptor named Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, and the artist started the work on the statue, which should represent an Egyptian Farmer woman holding a torch in her hand to guide the seafarers safely to the gate of the channel.Frederic Auguste Bartholdi finished the model in time (not as Verdi who was a year late to the opening of the Suez Channel with his Opera Aida). Problem was that Khedive Ismail was mildly speaking a "big spender" - as Alan Moorehead states quite clearly in his book "The White Nile":"It was not only honest men like Baker and Gordon who were attracted to his service; a plague of speculators descended upon Egypt as well and the easily contrived to get rid of Ismail's money even faster than he borrowed it. In round figures the Egyptian national debt was £3,000,000 at Ismail's accession, and before long he managed to convert his into a deficit of £100,000,000 - and this at a time when the pound was worth two or three times what it is today."Add to above facts that Khedive Ismail also had political conflicts with France and England and did not get another loan to build the statue. The correspondence between Egypt and the artist show that when the Suez Channel was opened in 1869 the sculpture was still a model in the artist studio.When Bartholdi later was asked to design a sculpture to celebrate the American Declaration of Independence, to be ready in the year 1876 - funds was again a problem. So the statue made for Khedive Ismail was used, the torch changed hand and some other small alterations where made.The result is that it's an Egyptian farmer women who stand in New York as the symbol of Liberty. Another example of Egyptian reflections in US.

Source:http://www.egyptmyway.com/articles/holy_family_3.html

1,000+ Egyptian Military Officers Executed by Israeli Army in 1967

Washington Report readers know the story well. In 1967 on the fourth day of the Six Day War, the armed forces of Israel attacked the American intelligence ship USS Liberty for 90 minutes in international waters in broad daylight following several hours of close, low-level reconnaissance. Thirty-four men died, 171 were hurt, and the ship was so badly damaged that it had to be scrapped.
The government of Israel has lied about the circumstances ever since, telling a story markedly different from that told by American survivors. Congress has refused to question Israel's demonstrably false account, even though the State Department's own analysis finds the Israeli story to be untrue.
Yet the most pressing question remaining from that infamy is not whether the attack was deliberate. That was settled long ago for most reasonable people. The question is why Israel risked its cozy relationship with America by killing American seaman on the high seas.
Indeed, spokesmen for Israel use that question in Israel's defense. Why, they ask, would Israel risk alienating its American friends?
So why did Israel attack? Intelligence analysts and others have long supposed that Israel attacked to prevent the ship from reporting the impending invasion of the Golan Heights, then imminent despite cease fire pleas by the United States. Israel's defenders reject that explanation.
Recent reports in the Israeli and Egyptian press suggest another powerful possibility.
According to eyewitness accounts by Israeli officers and journalists, the Israeli Army - the army that claims to hold itself to a higher moral standard than other armies - executed as many as 1,000 Arab prisoners during the 1967 war.
Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that he witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on the morning of June 8, 1967, in the Sinai town of El Arish.
Bron reported that he saw about 150 Egyptian POWs being held at the El Arish airport where they were sitting on the ground, densely crowded together with their hands held on the back of their necks. Every few minutes, Bron writes, Israeli soldiers would escort an Egyptian POW from the group to a hearing conducted by two men in Israeli army uniforms. Then the man would be taken away, given a spade, and forced to dig his own grave.
"I watched as (one) man dug a hole for about 15 minutes," Bron wrote. "Afterwards, the (Israeli military) policeman told him to throw the shovel away, and then one of them leveled an Uzi at him and shot two short bursts, each of three or four bullets."
Bron says he witnessed about ten such executions, until the grave was filled. Then an Israeli Colonel threatened him with a revolver, forcing him to leave the area.