Last Friday, the sitting president of Egypt – the world’s 15th most populous nation — was exposed for calling Jews “apes and pigs.” And he did it in a TV interview (in Arabic) in 2010, less than two years before he took office.Read the whole thing.
Mohamed Morsi’s bizarre Apes-and-Pigs rant hit the Jerusalem Post’s homepage that same day (again, last Friday), as its lead story. Specifically, a prestigious U.S. organization named the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — chaired by Oliver “Buck” Revell, a former deputy head of the FBI in charge of counter-terrorism – released it widely to the global media and posted it on YouTube.
I studied the Pigs-and-Apes story’s journey and trajectory through America over the past week with Sue Radlauer, the Director of Research Services here at Forbes. We gave it seven days to see if any of the so-called “mainstream media” — a pejorative phrase that too-often obscures more than it reveals — bestowed the hate speech even a few sentences of back-page ink. Nothing.
This is, of course, only one tiny example of how the daily incitement in Arabic media gets ignored by the mainstream media - the major newspapers, networks and wire services.
Here are a few of the anti-semitic articles and actions in the Arab and Iranian media I've reported on in only the past month:
Egyptians upset that constitution gives Jews rights
Iraq News Agency spouting pure anti-semitism
Whoops! PressTV forgot to replace "Jews" with "Zionists"
Run of the mill anti-semitism in Saudi Arabia media
MB member: Jews are thieves, Americans are cows
Some anti-semitism from a "moderate" Palestinian "peace activist"
Tunisian cleric calls Jews apes and prays for their genocide
Houthi logo says "Damn the Jews"
Egyptian sheikh says secularists are even worse than Jews
Today's anti-semitism on Iranian PressTV
Are we starting to see a pattern here? The people who claim that Arabs and Muslims are merely "anti-Zionist" are ignorant - or purposefully lying. Anti-semitism can be seen every day in Arabic-language media.
Obviously, the Morsi story is bigger than these, but any of them rates more than a mention in a blog. And the more general issue of Arab anti-semitism is being disgracefully downplayed.
(h/t Ian)