Thursday, January 24, 2013

Morsi Explains Anti-Semitic Remarks by Saying Jews Control Media. By Walter Russell Mead.

Morsi Explains Anti-Semitic Remarks by Saying Jews Control Media. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, January 24, 2013.

Exclusive: Morsy implies Jews control the American media. By Josh Rogin. Foreign Policy, January 23, 2013.

Morsi: Jewish-controlled media distorted my “apes and pigs” remark. By Raphael Ahren. The Times of Israel, January 24, 2013.

Mohamed Morsi Is a Scandal Bigger Than Benghazi. By David Goldman (Spengler). PJ Media, January 16, 2013.

The Blind Sheik and Our Mute President. By Michelle Malkin. Real Clear Politics, January 9, 2013.

More posts on Morsi Anti-Semitic remarks here, here, here, and here.

Mead:

The reality is that insane anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are the mother’s milk of political analysis in Egypt and in much of the rest of the Middle East. The emotional, visceral reaction against what is seen as Israel’s shaming, alien presence in the Arab world has fused with ugly and backward western anti-Semitism to create a turbo-charged fear and hatred of Jewish influence and Jewish power. A political and religious culture which cannot help but see the survival of a Jewish state in the region as a badge of humiliation and failure takes comfort in exaggerated ideas about Jewish power.

President Morsi didn’t think he was saying anything weird in claiming a Jewish conspiracy runs the American media. In the world in which he lives, this is like saying that the sun rises in the east. It is a cliche, not a smear.

Israeli policies can exacerbate the problem, but it is Israel’s existence not its excesses that are the heart of the problem. The Arab world will never prosper, and real peace in the Middle East will never come, until the mental disorder represented by anti-Semitism heals. That won’t happen soon—and until it does, a huge cultural gulf is going to keep Arabs and Americans apart.