"Jew Cooties" are here with a vengeance

An icon of the Egyptian tourism industry recently published his autobiography, titled “Elhami El-Zayat.. 50 Years in the World of Tourism.” 

The book was well reviewed, and El Zayat has been promoting it with speeches and seminars.

Until recently.

After he gave a speech to the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, people objected. The syndicate launched an investigation into how such a person was allowed to speak to the organization. A scandal is erupting over the invitation.

What, exactly, is the problem?

During the investigation, journalist Nour El-Hoda Zaki submitted a memorandum signed by 20 journalists, demanding that the head of the Journalists Syndicate and members of the Syndicate Council investigate what was stated during the seminar and the book, especially what it included in terms of references to Elhami El-Zayat’s upbringing in the Jewish quarter of Bab El-Louq, his participation in Jewish holidays and celebrations, his visits to Israel as a tourism expert, and his reception of Israelis in Egypt, considering that this violates the decisions of the successive general assemblies of the Journalists Syndicate regarding the prohibition of professional and union normalization.

Ah, he did his job by working with Israelis both for Egyptians to visit Israel and vice versa in the previous 50 years, which includes the peace treaty. That's the crime of "normalization."

But notice what else they are complaining about: he grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and treated his neighboring Jews like normal human beings. Egypt invokes its vanished Jewish community as proof of historical tolerance, while its present institutions treat warm memories of that community as evidence against the person remembering it.

Two decades ago, Meryl Yourish popularized the term "Jew Cooties," Jews being treated as a source of contamination. Anyone who shook hands with a Jew was automatically canceled in the Arab world.  Anti-normalization began by treating contact with Israelis as politically contaminating. But the El-Zayat controversy reveals how easily that category expands: Israelis become Zionists, Zionists become Jews who refuse to denounce Israel, and eventually even positive memories of Jewish neighbors become suspect.

It seems laughable when we see it in the Arab world, but Arab antisemitism is prologue to the West. Already Jews are being shut out of publishing houses; and articles about tourism to Israel or Israeli food or culture have all but disappeared in the media. Just as in Egypt, any association with Jews who do not call for Israel's destruction may cause one to be canceled, so anything that normalizes Israelis, Zionists or nearly all Jews is morally suspect and it isn't worth the headache to buck that trend.

There is a real contagious disease here, and it isn't Jew cooties. It is old fashioned hate of Jews. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)