By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY
As we noted last week, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s attempt to explain his anti-Semitic and anti-American televised rant to a group of visiting American senators was that his claim that Israelis were “the descendants of apes and pigs” was taken out of context. That was bad enough but as it turns out the first reports about the meeting fell far short of conveying just how offensive Morsi’s rationalization of hate was. As Josh Rogin reported yesterday at Foreign Policy’s blog The Cable, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware who was at the meeting said the Morsi implied that Jewish control of the media was the reason why he was being called to account for his hate speech.
This calls into question not just the continuing U.S. aid to the Muslim Brotherhood government headed by Morsi but the determination of the senatorial delegation, including its leader John McCain, to continue their support for the flow of more than a billion dollars in American taxpayer money to a hatemonger. The details of the meeting make it hard to understand how McCain could continue to justify such American support when the explanation for the Morsi rant is actually worse than the original anti-Semitic smears.
According to Coons:
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“He was attempting to explain himself … then he said, ‘Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably,’” Coons said.
The Cable asked Coons if Morsi specifically named the Jews as the forces that control the American media. Coons said all the senators believed the implication was obvious.
“He did not say [the Jews], but I watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I,” he said. “I thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion.”
“The meeting then took a very sharply negative turn for some time. It really threatened to cause the entire meeting to come apart so that we could not continue,” Coons said.
Multiple senators impressed upon Morsi that if he was saying the criticisms of his comments were due to the Jews in the media, that statement was potentially even more offensive than his original comments from 2010.
“[Morsi] did not say the Jewish community was making a big deal of this, but he said something [to the effect] that the only conclusion you could read was that he was implying it,” Coons said. “The conversation got so heated that eventually Senator McCain said to the group, ‘OK, we’ve pressed him as hard as we can while being in the boundaries of diplomacy,’” Coons said. “We then went on to discuss a whole range of other topics.”
This raises some serious questions about both U.S. policy and the priorities of those who took part in the meeting.
One has to wonder why it is that a week went by without any of those present at the meeting calling out Morsi for this latest outrage. Did those who kept quiet about this, including McCain, think that Morsi raising the issue of unnamed groups — an obvious reference to Jews — manipulating the media was immaterial to the question of whether U.S. aid to Egypt should continue? Or did they decide that it was unhelpful to their goal of maintaining the U.S. embrace of the Brotherhood for this story to get out sooner?
This revelation makes it imperative that all those present clarify their positions about a policy that requires American taxpayers to go on funding a government that is beginning to rival Iran as a source of anti-Semitic invective. Under Morsi, Egypt is neither a U.S. ally nor a friend. It is a tyrannical regime that has not only subverted the promise of the Arab Spring but also has the potential to be a major source of instability in the region.
If Morsi wants to keep his American money, he’s going to have to do better than to blame his problems on the Jews. And if the senators who attended this meeting and the administration that is determined to keep coddling the Brotherhood wish to justify their position, they are going to have to explain to the American people how giving billions to Morsi is compatible with our values or interests.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Interesting observation & anecdote.
I always found it curious that the leftish Western media — the same Western media that has long borne a near obsession with race — would always quietly overlook Sadat’s OWN racial heritage. There’s no way they could have remained unaware all that time, but Sadat was definitely part black (in fact, one helluva lot more black than the present occupant of the Oval Office).
As I recall, his mother, Sit Al-Berain, was the daughter of a freed Sudanese Nubian slave.
Sadat’s domestic political & military enemies were fond of calling him the “black ass.”
Link to Usenet comment thread is here.
@ Eric R.:
There has never been such an ‘alliance’ for it to BE ‘over.’
If there had been an alliance, it would’ve been accompanied by a formal Treaty — like the NATO Treaty.
This has never been the case, because the relationship has been a vassalage, and not an ‘alliance.’
@ ArnoldHarris:
I always like much of what Arnold Harris writes, but shouldn’t we all remember nobody can choose the genes that determine what he or she looks like? It’s true I’ve known only one Egyptian, but Allam was a friend when I lived in Alexandria, VA. I appreciated his warmth and good spirits and would never think of him as a monkey.
@ rongrand:
When fair is foul: and foul is fair
@ Sam Goldblatt:
The Israelis already know that the alliance with the USA is over. That is why Chinese ships paid a call in Haifa and China is building a Mediterranean to Red Sea railroad; it is why Putin visited and Gazprom is negotiating deals, and it is why India is now co-developing weapons with Israel.
No outrage because many in the West have the same feeling. It is that simple. The Islamic world and many in the West are truly Judeophobic. This is the proper use of the psychiatric concept of phobia contrary to the misuse of the term Islamphobia invented by Islamists who want to convince the West of their pathological state of mind. The world has everything to fear rationally from Islam and the Islamists.
Acceptance of the Morsi govt. is just the tip of the iceberg for the Obama administration. Bilateral talks with Iran will commence before September, and disengagemen8 with Israel has already begun. Obama has been consulting with Jimmy Carter and now with a weakened Netanyahu will stop talking with him completely and will leave that to Chuck Hagel who delights in his contempt for Jews and their grievances as the Jewish community of Omaha can well attest.
@ ArnoldHarris:
I think before that, the day will come when Israeli nukes must obliterate Cairo, Alexandria and Aswan, washing millions of dead Egyptians out to sea to pollute the Mediterranean.
It’s not something Israel wants to do, but she will be left with no choice by Morsi and the rest of the Nazi savages of the Brotherhood.
Being outraged by anything a Muslim leader says is like being outraged at Satan. It’s hard to maintain outrage at something that hasn’t changed for centuries.
@ ArnoldHarris:
I sure hope to live to see this day…
@ ArnoldHarris:
I would say that is an insult to monkeys.
Most of the Israelis I met during two years studying in Israel regarded all Egyptians as “kofim”, which, I was told, means dark little monkeys. Looking at individual faces among the crowds of them in frenzied excitement on Tahrir Square, they look nothing like the ostensibly-noble Arabs of the desert; but only like African monkeys.
So that is how I shall ever regard them. On the other hand, Egyptians have a fixation on trying to prove their whiteness. I recall a couple of decades ago when a Hollywood motion picture was produced about the life of Anwar Sadat. The Egyptian press waxed angry as all hell that Lew Gossett Jr, an African-American actor of note, was chosen to play Sadat, who, as a matter of fact, was blacker than the American actor to played him in the film story.
So Morsi, representing the leadership class of his shit-pot of society that has known little other than degradation for some 3000 years, seems to have a fixation on tagging members of other nations with what truthfully describes modern Egypt.
Anyway, all of this is good for Israel. Jews in general, and the hofjuden who always seem to float to the top in control of the leadership of our Jewish nation, always seem to be looking for ways to kiss the asses of our enemies in their eternal hope for a peace that shall never and can never be achieved. So I think that revealing this Morsi as not only a religious enemy but also as a creature who despises us on racial grounds as well, will cause even the Jewish big shots to treat Morsi and all Eqypt as permanent enemies of Israel and the Jewish nation.
The day surely shall come when Israel for the fifth time must send an army across the Sinai to attack the kofim in force. This next time must be the occasion when the State of Israel annexes the Sinai Peninsula, begins large scale Jewish settlement there, and tells both Washington and the world at large that this time there will never be any Jewish retreats from the 25,000 square miles of that territory.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Let us not kid ourselves.
There will never be ANY outrage for the musloid’s hate. If ANYTHING to show how civilized and enlightened and oh so ready to see matters from the others’ perspective, the murderer will continue to be aided and abetted while the victim is vilified and with a righteous shrug comment that well she had it coming to her…she ASKED for it etc…
Read more about this civilizational suicide
Did anyone doubt that Morsi or any replacement for Mubarak would be anything other than a Jew hater and hater of the West? It is in the DNA of Arab and Muslim countries and people. The sooner we realize that Islam is not our friend the sooner we can stop pretending that “dialogue,” “talks,” “agreements,” or any interaction with Muslim states have any currency. All that keeps them at bay is a strong military deterrence and for them to know that we will use all the necessary force to prevent their conquest. Right now countries like Egypt are sinking into debt and hunger. Morsi has more that his own fantasies of killing Jews to keep him busy. However, what really ought to be of concern to Israel and the world is the way Obama is arming these pariah states only because they share his Islamic connections and ideology (and military firms push for sales). The liberal mainstream press, acting for the Obamites, is doing all in its power to whitewash, divert our attention from, minimize the bad exposure to, and humanize an inhumane Islamism sweeping that continent.
Morsi is the making of another Hitler similar to Ahmadinejad, and they have a friend in the WH, Ovomit.
Their friend feels the need to supply this MB leader sophisticated planes and tanks, for what???
Is Egypt being attacked by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, hell no. Then what is this arsenal for, to attack Israel our only true friend and trusted ally in the ME?? This smells to high heaven.
The stench coming from the WH is unbearable.
@ Eric R.:
The list of nazi regimesis very long.
The only difference, is that this musloid is honest and overtly tells it to your face and does not camouflage with hypocritical ‘unshakeable alliance’ we’ve got your back, we know what’s good for you and similar forms of revolting bs
Morsi’s hate is not condemned by the left for a very simple reason. They share it.
As for Jews controlling the media, this has been a staple of European thought for decades, both on the left and right.
What Israel should now do is publicly state that there will be NO TALKS with Egypt due to its Nazi regime.