Egypte, UNESCO en het verbranden van Israëlische boeken

 

De Egyptische minister Farouk Hosni is kandidaat voor de hoogste positie in de United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, maar heeft onlangs voor boekverbranding van Israëlische boeken gepleit. Er valt dus wat uit te leggen. Maar het kan nog erger:

 

This story has now been picked up in France, which backs Mr. Hosni's candidacy for the Unesco post, which comes open next year. The Paris daily Libération cited a Simon Wiesenthal Center report that the Egyptian minister had "personally" invited the "Islamo-Communist Holocaust denier" (in Libération's words) Roger Garaudy to appear on Egyptian television.

 

Dit klinkt extreem, maar Sadat, Nasser en talloze andere Egyptenaren waren openlijke nazi sympathisanten ten tijde van, en kort na, de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Sinds de vrede met Israël en de jaarlijke miljardensteun van de VS doet men wat meer zijn best dergelijke sympathieën te verbergen.

 

Hieronder twee online commentaren.

 

Ratna

--------------

Spinning Egyptian incitement

 

http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/06/spinning-egyptian-incitement.html

Contradictions between what is needed for the home market and what is needed to please international opinion can keep Arab world spinmeisters busy. A case in point is Egypt, the recipient of $2 Billion in US aid and a supposed peace partner with Israel. Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosni is nominated by France for a UN job. (See Talk Like an Egyptian). But oops! - he happened to say in a parliamentary debate (for internal consumption) that he would burn Israeli books. Even in France they think that is a bit extreme these days. Chirac is no longer in power.

 

While transmitting peace light and liberalism abroad, Egypt, like other Arab regimes, has a different program for the home audience. Textbooks villify Jews. Media broadcast anti-Semitic materials that perpetuate the blood libel and the myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Egyptian government control journals publish slander and polemics about the evils of Israel and the United States, not hesitating to bite the hand that feeds them, and to bite hard. Imam's regularly call for Jihad against Israel, and oppose "terror" unless it involves killing Jews.

 

Not surprisingly, this double dealing sometimes gets government figures in trouble, as explained below. Minister Hosni will try to brush off the whole incident in which he advocated book burning for Israeli publications. It is a "misunderstanding" you see. He is twisting and squirming, but just gets deeper into his own lies. It is not his fault alone, for he represents an entire system. 

 

One remark might be due to a misunderstanding. But every issue of Al Ahram, and all the Egyptian legislation against Christians and persecution of Christians, and all the incitement in educational materials and media - can all these be a "misunderstanding?"

 

Ami Isseroff  

 

================

 

Talk Like an Egyptian

 

June 21, 2008

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121400293735693309.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

 

Like the Saudi royals, the House of Mubarak tries to keep both its Islamists and the West happy. It's not easy to have it both ways. Just ask Farouk Hosni.

Egypt's culture minister finds himself in a revealingly knotty predicament. In early May, responding to a question in Parliament from a member of the Muslim Brotherhood about cultural ties with Israel, he said: "I'd burn Israeli books myself if I found any in libraries in Egypt." The opposition MP, Mohsen Radi, was satisfied with the minister's response.

The statement was unremarkable in a country where media and politics are full of anti-Israel venom. But Mr. Hosni also happens to be a leading candidate for the top job at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco. His remark drew an official protest from Israel, among others. Declining to comment on Mr. Hosni's observation, a spokeswoman for the Paris-based agency told the New York Sun, "Unesco does not condone book burning of any sort." That's good to know.

With a plum U.N. job slipping out of his reach, Mr. Hosni backtracked. He said the "book burning" remark was merely "a hyperbole – a popular expression to prove something does not exist." The minister, who is close to President Hosni Mubarak and his wife and considered a liberal by local standards, went further the following day. He told Agence France-Presse that it is "a big mistake that Israeli books have not yet been translated (into Arabic). I have officially asked for it to be done. If people protest, I don't give a damn."

So, three decades after the Camp David accords, would Mr. Hosni support the opening of so far nonexistent cultural ties with Israel? What about a museum of Jewish antiquity and culture in Cairo? The Egyptian went into reverse again. Impossible, Mr. Hosni said, as long as "there are bloody attacks every day against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza strip."

This story has now been picked up in France, which backs Mr. Hosni's candidacy for the Unesco post, which comes open next year. The Paris daily Libération cited a Simon Wiesenthal Center report that the Egyptian minister had "personally" invited the "Islamo-Communist Holocaust denier" (in Libération's words) Roger Garaudy to appear on Egyptian television.

Back in damage-control mode, Mr. Hosni gave an interview to the Tel Aviv newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week, saying he "wouldn't be against going to Israel." He was in Paris this week to smooth things over. "This is a terrible polemic, but things will be clarified."

Meantime, in Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood MP got wind of Mr. Hosni's comments abroad and demanded that he appear before Parliament to explain himself. The suggestion that Egypt's culture minister visit the Jewish state "was humiliating to the Egyptian people," said Mr. Radi.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal