Egyptians afraid of Jew-cooties

Of course part of the entire 1979 Camp David agreements between Israel and Egypt was to begin establishing normal relations, but Egypt still collects billions a year from the US as its "peace dividend" while acting like any normal relationship with Israel is a horrendous crime.

YNet mentions:

Despite struggles, boycotts and threats, the acclaimed Israeli feature film “The Band's Visit” will finally be making it to Egypt this week.

The film was rejected by the Cairo International Film Festival, and later on the Egyptian Actors’ Guild threatened to boycott the Abu Dhabi Film Festival for accepting the film. This eventually resulted in the latter dropping the film in the last minute. Despite all that, a special screening of the film will be held in Cairo this coming Thursday.

After tallying the supporters versus the objectors, the Egyptian premiere of "The Band’s Visit" will be held Thursday at the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel’s auditorium, owned by no other than the billionaire Saudi Prince, Al-Walid bin Talal.

The film, depicting the Alexandria police band's visit to Israel’s remote southern town, was screened a few times in private homes in Egypt and won praise. Egyptian Culture Minister Faruq Hosni has even told Yedioth Ahronoth, “I saw the film and it’s excellent.”

However, despite his compliments, Hosni firmly objected to having "The Band’s Visit" or any other Israeli movie screened in Egypt, claiming that “it’s unadvisable to have the anti-peace opposers burn down our movie theaters because of an Israeli event.”

The Israeli Embassy sent out more than 200 invitations to businessmen, scholars and Egyptian intellectuals, but it remains to be seen who of the local invitees will muster up the courage to attend the screening and risk entering his name into the media’s “black lists.”

Sure enough, the Arabs are freaking, and an article in Palestine Today not only complains about the film being shown but also about some T-shirts that were found in a far northwest province that said the horrible words "Tel Aviv" in English, prompting 5 groups to condemn them.

Yes, all of Egypt may collapse if some people mention the name of an Israeli city without being threatened.