Israel Matzav

Change?

In Egypt, conspiracy theories blaming Jews and Israel continue to be part of the public discourse.

Conspiracy theories have been a part of Egypt's political discourse since the days of populist President Gamal Abdul Nasser, who toppled the Egyptian monarchy almost 60 years ago and was the first in a line of dictators that ended with Mubarak.

"There always has to be a foreign threat," Henry said. "In Nasser's day, imperialism was the bogeyman. Today imperialism has been replaced with Israel. It's a way of uniting a fragmented society."

In the years before Mubarak was ousted last February, international conspiracies led by Jews or by Israel were regularly employed by government officials and echoed in the media.

When Culture Minister Farouq Husni lost his bid for head of the United Nations Agency for Culture and Education (UNESCO) in 2009, he blamed a Jewish plot "cooked up in New York" for his failure. Some outrageous theories have become the laughing-stock of Western media. In December 2010, for instance, the governor of South Sinai blamed the Israeli Mossad spy agency for a spate of shark attacks in the resort town of Sharm Al-Sheikh.

In the early days of unrest in Egypt, an anonymous figure, cited as a former journalist, went on the pro-Mubarak Al-Mehwar television station to accuse Israel of backing the demonstrators in a bid to throw Egypt into disarray. She claimed to have been trained by Jews in the US to destabilize the government.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent anti-Semitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination, is only one example of many books espousing Jewish and Israeli conspiracies to be found in bookstalls on Cairo's streets.

Experts detect subtle changes in the way conspiracy theories are used and perpetuated. Although Israel and often the US continued to be blamed for the country’s problems, Egyptians are more preoccupied these days with internal politics, Marina Ottaway, an expert on Arab politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank, told The Media Line.

"Old habits die hard," she said, referring to the use of conspiracies even today. "However, neither Israel nor the United States figures prominently in what is happening in Egypt. They are not motivating the actions of the participants."

Another change from the Mubarak-era conspiracies is that Egypt’s press is far less beholden to the government. SCAF has attempted to forge direct contact with Egyptians through Facebook. With 1.2 million "fans," SCAF's Facebook page features official statements commending the courage of the protesters and offering public opinion polls on issues of policy.

Henry of AUC says the conspiracy theories are being generated by Egypt's sensationalistic media, not because the government necessarily favors them. "They [the media] want to score a few points with society," he said. "There are no ethics whatsoever about what is said."

And for all these years we have been told that the Arabs really don't hate us and that it is only the dictatorships that needed to use us as a scapegoat to maintain power. Apparently, Arab 'democracy' isn't a whole lot better.

What could go wrong?

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Egyptian Revolution, Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Hosni Mubarak

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:19 PM