LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: EGYPT'S 'COLD PEACE' WITH ISRAEL
By Arlynn Nellhaus

A senior UN official excuses Palestinian anti-Semitic schoolbooks, saying that it is unreasonable to expect Palestinians to praise their "occupiers," according to a Reuters report.

Peter Hansen, Senior Commissioner of UNWRA, the UN's relief agency, said that normalization would come between the Palestinians and Israelis as soon as peace takes root.

He added that it would be like the relationship that developed between Israel and Egypt since signing a peace treaty in 1979.

Say what? Hansen thinks that's a good relationship? Ah, those proverbial rose-colored glasses. Let's look at it.

First of all, what does the Egyptian press say about Israel?

Nothing good. And that isn't just since Intifada II broke out almost a year ago. Nor is there anything flattering to the United States.

After Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Egypt in April, the government subsidized newspaper, Al Akhbar, included racial innuendoes about Powell and said that he was "even more stupid" than his predecessor, Madeline Albright. It claimed he had "the mind of a bird."

And that's a comment about one of the highest officials in the country that gives Egypt its second largest financial support and wiped away a $7 billion debt after the Gulf War.

Last December, the Egyptian press called for, not only the boycotting of Israeli products, but American products, too. Included in a list was Pepsi, whose initials, the Egyptian press claims, stand for "Pay Every Penny to Save Israel."

What's especially funny is that Pepsi isn't looked on with favor in Israel, for during the height of the previous Arab boycott, Pepsi stayed out of Israel to keep its Arab accounts. To Israelis, everything goes better with Coke.

The Egyptian papers make the usual laughable claims that Israel sends young girls to Egypt to spread AIDS or that it sells candy that either is poisoned or full of aphrodisiacs.

Even more off-the-wall charges have come from "Al-Ahrma," Egypt's leading paper, which ran a full page article by columnist Adel Hamooda entitled, "Jewish Matzah made from Arab Blood."

"Al-Akhbar" followed suit with an article claiming that "The Talmud, the second holiest book for the Jews, determines that matzahs not only must be kneaded with blood from a non-Jew," but the preference is for the blood of youths after raping them

Can the writers actually believe this stuff? Don't they gag writing it? That they don't is a scary indication of their mental state.

About rape, incidentally, Palestinians, especially, taunted Israeli soldiers after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 claiming that they weren't "real men." Why? Because Israelis didn't rape. That's what "real men" do, according to Arabs.

The editor of the weekly "Al-Maydan," Issam Al-Ghazi, recommends a more militant approach to Israel with the use of unconventional weapons. He calls for biological and chemical weapons – "the atomic bomb of the poor," he called them.

Al-Ghazi says that Palestinians could obtain such weapons at minimal cost. They could buy mice carrying the "Super Plague" virus with a Visa card at the Maryland Center for Virology or from Russian laboratories. He says the mice, as well as infected mosquitoes, could be released all over Israel.

So does Al-Ghazi think Israeli Arabs would be immune? Or doesn't he care?

In the London based daily Al-Hayat , Dr. Wahid Abd Al-Magid, the editor of Al-Ahram's "Arab Strategic Report" yearbook, writes that the way to end the Arab-Israeli conflict is through changing the demographic balance within Israel

He calls on Israel's Arab population to stop Jewish immigration to Israel and support spiriting Palestinians inside of the Green live. This way the Palestinian population would overtake the Jewish, so eventually there would be one Palestinian state.

Dr. Al-Magid talks of the future UN Durban Conference Against Racism and says that "Today, there are Arab efforts to launch a campaign against Israel in the UN International Conference (in Durban). This should be the beginning of a continuous action and not a seasonal action that will end with the conference."

So we may not have heard the last of the Durban Derby to see who could run farther spreading hate.

But these are sophisticated approaches compared to one suggested by "Al-Akhbar" in August. The daily simply calls on Palestinians to kill Israelis wherever they could be found.

The writer called the suicide bombing in Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant that killed 15, including leaving a girl with her parents and siblings dead, "a ray of hope and a life-saver."

The writer of an op-ed piece in the Egyptian government daily, "Al-Ahram," said, "I cannot hide my happiness about the martyrdom operation that took place in Jerusalem."

He wrote that "the masses in Lebanon, Jordan, and Gaza went out to the streets in cries of joy and shots in the air, and that some gave out candies to passers-by on the street, accompanied by the women's howls of joy whose echo remained in the sky all night long."

And this is the good relationship the UN's Hansen sees?

There's more from the Egyptian press. While Egyptian President Husni Mubarak was in the United States in early April, the government daily Al-Akhbar temporarily stopped running articles defending Hitler.

But with Mubarak safely at home again, the newspaper ran an article by a Moslem cleric from Al-Azhar University, entitled, "In Defense of Hitler" which claims the worst thing the Germans did during World War II was to leave some mines in western Egypt.

Of course, in the Egyptian press, the Holocaust never happened.

So much for what Egyptians are reading in their press. I thank the Middle East Media Research Institute of Washington, D.C., for the translations.

When asked about the virulently anti-Semitic, Israel-demonizing Egyptian press, Mubarak acts innocent and claims that he has no control over the press. But any Egyptian journalist who writes anything remotely considered anti-government risks a quick trip to jail.

In the meantime, Israelis who have gone into business in Egypt have had their business summarily shut down, and they have been expelled. Yet, these businesses aid this over-populated land of 20 percent unemployment.

Israel's Delta Textiles, which might have made your socks and underwear, opened plants in both Egypt and Jordan employing thousands. It earns hard currency for Egypt.

According to Zvi Mazel, the retiring Israeli ambassador to Egypt, there could be 20 Deltas in Egypt. But Egyptians would rather scorn joint ventures with Israel than help themselves.

And Israelis have sat in Egyptian prisons on trumped up reasons. One currently there is the Israeli Druze, Azzam Azzam. He was sent to prison in 1997 for 15 years on the evidence of -- and you'll wonder what old-time movie this came out of -- disappearing ink on underwear.

His Egyptian lawyer defied the Cairo Bar Association by representing Azzam. For his efforts, he endured a punch in the nose by the opposing lawyer and was faced with disciplinary action by the CBA.

But Mubarak insisted that Egyptian justice is exemplary. Exemplary of what, he didn't note.

When Mubarak was asked about a presidential pardon for Azzam, he answered, "What am I supposed to tell the Egyptian people?" In other words, the street runs Egypt, and don't look to Mubarak for leadership.

Egyptian professional societies regularly boycott meetings with Israelis. Egyptian professionals who come to Israel for advanced learning have a difficult time back home. Israelis even are banned from the Cairo Book Fair.

Yet Israeli officials scurry to meetings with Mubarak, who likes to pretend that he is "an honest broker." After being Egypt's president for 19 years, he has never visited Israel, except for Yitzhak Rabin's funeral.

And the UN's Hansen thinks that's a good relationship?

During the weeks of Camp David II when Pres. Bill Clinton was pushing and pushing for an agreement between Yasser Arafat and Israel's Ehud Barak, Clinton called on Mubarak to urge Arafat to leave the issue of Jerusalem for a later date and reach an agreement on other issues.

Instead, Mubarak flew to Saudi Arabia and joined the Saudis in urging Arafat to make no further concessions.

Since Intifada II broke out, Mubarak constantly criticizes Israel, but says not a word to Arafat about stopping the violence.

Mubarak recalled his ambassador to Israel with the first Palestinian violence. Egypt is busy with a military buildup and constantly runs war games near the Sinai. The country is trying to get long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea.

Egypt poses as a great American friend for the benefit of that Congressional outlay of $2 billion annually, while at the same time encouraging anti-American demonstrations and boycotts of American products.

Some 10 years ago, seven Israelis, including several children, holidaying in the Sinai, came over a sand dune and were gunned down by an Egyptian soldier.

One entire family was wiped out, except for a son who had remained at home. Some of the victims could have survived if the Egyptians had allowed an Israeli doctor at the site to stop the blood flow.

The soldier who murdered these Israelis was called by the Egyptian press, "a hero."

And the UN's Hansen admires this relationship?

Arlynn Nellhaus is a former Denver Post reporter now based in Jerusalem, and the author of Into the Heart of Jerusalem, and a freqent contributor to The Idler.