EgyptEgypt’s president Morsi used blatantly anti-Semitic language in 2010 speech, TV interview

President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt used blatantly anti-Semitic language in a speech and in a TV interview – both in 2010, when he was a top official of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. The speech and the TV interview were video-taped, and just came to light.

The New York Times reports that the first video shows a speech Morsi gave at a rally in his hometown in the Nile Delta. The speech was given after the end of Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 Iron Cast operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. At the end of the operation, Israel tightened even more the maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip.

“We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews,” Morsi declared. Egyptian children “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue,” he said. “The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.”

“The land of Palestine will not be freed except through resistance,” he said, praising the militant group Hamas as an extension of the Brotherhood.

“Who is our enemy? The Zionists. Who occupies our land? The Zionists. Who hates us? The Zionists. Who destroys our lands? The Zionists,” Morsi added, lashing out at “America, France and Europe” as “Zionist” supporters.

“And the last of them is that Obama,” Morsi said. He called Obamaa liar who promised the Arab world “empty meaningless words.”

In the TV interview, conducted a few days after the speech, Morsi said:

“These bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs,” Morsi declared, using an insult of Jews which is commonly used across the Muslim world. It is also common in the Arab world to use the term “Zionists” to refer to Jews, in an effort to escape the accusation that one is anti-Semitic, but the use of “Zionists” instead of “Jews” notwithstanding, Morsi repeated historic anti-Semitic themes: “They have been fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout their history. They are hostile by nature.”

It should be noted that the Egyptian — and, more generally, Arab – political discourse is so suffused with anti-Semitic sentiments and language, that there is nothing particularly remarkable about Morsi’s words. Two years ago, for example, the French government shut down a Hezbollah-operated TV station in France after the station announced plans to air a series of programs offering “evidence” that Jews kill Christian children around Passover time in order to use their blood to bake Matzo bread.

We should also note that at least in his foreign policies, Morsi has been pragmatic: he helped Israel negotiate an end to the its short was with Hamas last November; has collaborated with both Israel and the United States to tighten monitoring of Gaza borders to prevent smuggling of Iranian arms; and has openly aligned Egypt with the efforts of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and Qatar to bring an end to the Assad regime in Syria.