At one point, leading Brotherhood member Mohammed el-Beltagy took the microphone and shouted: “we will repeat it over and over, Israel is our enemy.” Others echoed the call, and one organizer whipped up the crowd in a chant urging the army to launch a war against Israel to “liberate Palestine … from the sons of monkeys and pigs.”
Since the revolt that deposed longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood — known for its anti-Israeli and anti-Western rhetoric — has largely avoided showing enmity to the West or its former foe on its eastern border.
Morsi himself has repeatedly stressed commitment to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, and won U.S. praise by brokering a cease-fire between Palestinian Hamas militants and the Jewish state just months after he assumed his post.
But both the Islamist president and his group have had a hard time melding their longtime anti-Jewish stance with new responsibilities since coming to power.
Earlier this year, Brotherhood heavyweight Essam el-Erian created a stir after calling on Egyptian Jews who fled the country to return, in what many saw as a sort of outreach to Israel. Shortly after the remarks however, an Egyptian TV program revealed older comments by Morsi, in which he described Jews as “bloodsuckers” and “pigs.”
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