If you are a cunning old scoundrel like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, you can indeed have it both ways. You can collect a billion and a half dollars in U.S. Foreign Aid and convince the Obama administration that you are integral to brokering a Middle East peace agreement at the same time your state-controlled press practices blatant anti-Semitism.
While Hosni Mubarak does whatever diplomatic dances he figures will keep the cash coming in and perhaps even rehab his reputation as a dictator of the highest order, Egypt’s largest newspapers serve up the kind of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic content one would reasonably figure had vanished decades ago.
Au contraire.
“President Mubarak’s government continues to engage in business as usual when it comes to blatant expressions of anti-Semitism in the media, which seep into Egyptian society,” says Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Examples… more than 50 cartoons which grovel in stale stereotypes and even throw in the holocaust and a few swastikas for good measure.
These are not lunatic fringe publications, but major Egyptian dailies such as Al-Ahram, Al-Gumhuriyya and Akhbar Al-Yawm.
Freedom of the press is a myth in Mubarak’s Egypt. But so are most freedoms.
The so-called “Emergency Laws” put in place by the Mubarak regime following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 assure Egypt’s high ranking on every list of countries where human rights are under assault or absent.
