Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s attitude toward Israel is under
scrutiny after two videos exposing his anti-Semitic past have
resurfaced.
The
New York Times reports
that, since his campaign for president following the revolution that
overthrew Hosni Mubarak, Morsi has worked hard to gain the approval of
President Obama by affirming the 1978 Egypt-Israel peace agreement.
However, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi also made comments in
early 2010 that include anti-Semitic slurs and a call to “nurse our
children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews. According to the
Times:
As the chief of the Brotherhood’s political arm before
becoming president, Mr. Morsi was one of the group’s most outspoken
critics of Zionists and Israel. He sometimes referred to Zionists as
“Draculas” or “vampires,” using demonizing language historically
associated with anti-Semitism. Although he explicitly denigrates Jews in
the recently exposed videos, Mr. Morsi and other political and
Brotherhood leaders typically restrict their inflammatory comments to
the more ambiguous category of “Zionists.”
The anti-Semitic statements that have come to light this month both
date back to 2010, when anti-Israeli sentiment was running high after a
three-week conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza the previous year.
In the video
footage … Mr. Morsi addressed a rally in his hometown in the Nile Delta
to denounce the Israeli blockade of Gaza. “We must never forget,
brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for
them: for Zionists, for Jews,” Mr. Morsi declared. Egyptian children
“must feed on hatred; hatred must continue,” he said. “The hatred must
go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.”
