[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 34 (Monday, March 17, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E488]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             THE SERIOUS PROBLEM OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN EGYPT

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, March 17, 1997

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, last week Egyptian President Mohammed Hosni 
Mubarak, as well as Foreign Minister Amre Mahmoud Moussa and other 
leaders of the Egyptian Government, were here in Washington for 
meetings with the administration and with Members of Congress. I was 
one of the Members who welcomed President Mubarak and his delegation at 
a lunch hosted by the Committee on International Relations.
  As always, President Mubarak and Foreign Minister Moussa were 
gracious and frank in their discussion on a whole range of issues 
involving the relationship between the United States and Egypt. One 
issue which deserves particular attention, however, is the issue of 
anti-Semitism in the Egyptian press.
  Shortly before President Mubarak arrived in the United States, the 
Anti-Defamation League [ADL] issued an excellent report ``Anti-Semitism 
in the Egyptian Media.'' This report was another outstanding example of 
the kind of work that the ADL does in fighting racism and anti-Semitism 
here in America and around the world. At our meeting with President 
Mubarak, I presented him with a copy of this report and indicated to 
him my serious concerns about its disturbing findings.
  President Mubarak responded that the Egyptian press was a free press, 
and even the Government media were quite independent. I told both the 
President and Foreign Minister Moussa that the press in Egypt is far 
from being truly free and independent. The moral authority of the 
President and the political, economic, and ethical leverage which the 
Government can exercise could go a long way to discourage and diminish 
the anti-Semitism that appears so frequently throughout the Egyptian 
press.
  President Mubarak gave me a copy of the Egyptian Government response 
to the ADL study, in which was included a collection of Israeli 
cartoons which were considered offensive to Egypt. There is, however, a 
significant difference. The Egyptian cartoons are patently anti-
Semitic--vicious racial stereotypes of Jews appear and there are a 
number of cartoons in which the Star of David is transformed into the 
Nazi swastika. The Israeli cartoons are very much like the political 
cartoons we see here in the United States--Egyptian leaders are 
portrayed in caricatures and the cartoons satirize policies much as 
Herblock or Oliphant would do here. There are no racist stereotypes, 
there are no anti-Muslim overtones to the cartoons.
  Mr. Speaker, as I told President Mubarak, peace must be won in the 
minds of the people--the Egyptian people must accept the Israelis if 
there is to be real peace in the Middle East. People must come to 
accept the right of the Jews to live in the land of Israel. These anti-
Semitic cartoons do not create the climate that is essential for a 
lasting peace. I strongly urged the President to use his enormous 
prestige and moral authority to bring an end to this kind of racism.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that the column of Stephen S. Rosenfeld from the 
March 14 issue of the Washington Post be placed in the Record. Mr. 
Rosenfeld also met with the Egyptian President as I did and his 
reaction was much the same as mine. I urge my colleagues to read 
carefully this article.

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 14, 1997]

                        The War of the Cartoons

                       (By Stephen S. Rosenfeld)

       At breakfast in Blair House I asked President Hosni Mubarak 
     of Egypt about those terrible antisemetic cartoons that for 
     years have adorned the government-controlled Cairo press. The 
     Anti-Defamation League had greeted him on this visit with a 
     booklet and a challenge in a New York Times ad, and it seemed 
     to me a good time to hear how the government that has led the 
     Arab world in reconciling with Israel deals with the 
     seemingly contradictory policy of perpetuating those vicious 
     images.
       Mubarak is rough and affable in an officers' mess style, an 
     old hand at engaging with the foreign press. He looks you 
     right in the eye, and plainly he was ready for the question. 
     He said in essence that Egypt has a press law and he does not 
     control the press, that he is himself criticized in the press 
     and that he had advised editors not to get personal in 
     dealing with Israel but to stick to criticism of official 
     Israeli policies. He batted away my attempt to induce him to 
     say whether the Egyptian press meets that excellent standard.
       At one point in the discussion, he signaled to an aide who 
     left the room and quickly came back with an exhibit so 
     similar in format to the ADL attack booklet that it was 
     almost amusing. Mubarak had suggested that the Egyptian press 
     was merely indulging a type of criticism familiar in the 
     Israeli press. He now handed me a sheaf of cartoons from both 
     English- and Hebrew-language papers in Israel.
       The war of the cartoons may not seem very compelling at a 
     moment when the whole structure of Arab-Israeli peace-seeking 
     trembles on a knife's edge. Consider, however, that one 
     important reason why the process is so precariously perched 
     lies exactly in the fact that it is vulnerable to the popular 
     sentiments evoked in those cartoons, especially the Egyptian 
     ones.
       The Egyptian cartoons have what is to a Western eye an 
     unmistakably racist content. They rely on crude physical and 
     cultural stereotypes of Jews, and they drape Israeli 
     officials with Nazi swastikas. These images and accusations, 
     says the ADL report on ``Anti-Semitism in the Egyptian 
     Media,'' are to be found in words but most flagrantly in 
     political cartoons which, ``often boldly displayed on 
     newsstands, can inflame passions in a country where 
     illiteracy is significant and where young people may not read 
     the newspapers, but obtain a clear and distorted impression 
     of Jews from the illustrations.''
       Mubarak cannot be taken literally when he claims that the 
     Egyptian press is independent and that its independence 
     absolves him of responsibility for its enthusiasms. There can 
     be a discussion only over whether particular parts of the 
     Cairo press are best described as ``tame,'' ``government-
     owned'' or ``-controlled'' or ``semi-official.'' Egypt, for 
     all the sophistication of many in its elite, remains one of 
     those countries where editors get to massage major media 
     themes with the president over coffee. A shrewd Third World 
     leader like Mubarak would hardly ignore the capability his 
     press gives him to conduct a certain second line of public 
     diplomacy based on the domestic mass media to complement the 
     first line conducted at the foreign office.
       It is sobering to consider that no matter how often he is 
     reminded that the cartoons measurably shrivel Israeli 
     readiness for compromise and accommodation, Mubarak still 
     lets them run. He does so apparently in order to appease 
     hard-liners at home and in the Arab world. It is pale comfort 
     to be told that many Arabs don't think those cartoons are all 
     that abusive anyway and that Egypt is actually something of 
     an island of tolerance in the larger Arab sea.
       The Israeli cartoons have what is to a Western eye an 
     unmistakably political content. The Egyptian information 
     ministry's booklet describes them, in this instance fairly, 
     as ``Israeli Caricatures of Egyptian Policy.'' Caricatures 
     they are, strong and abrasive but not racial attacks on 
     Arabs. It is foolish to claim there is no trace of racialism 
     in Israeli attitudes toward Arabs. But if you are looking for 
     it on these pages chosen by Arab officials, you will not find 
     it.
       An Egyptian cartoon from Ros al-Yusuf of last Sept. 9 
     depicts an Israeli soldier bedecked in a Nazi flag. An 
     Israeli cartoon in Maariv of Oct. 29 shows Mubarak unleashing 
     a press attack on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
       An American journalist has to be sensitive to the booby 
     traps that imperil any effort to distinguish objectionable 
     ``racist'' cartoons in one place from acceptable 
     ``political'' ones in another. Such an effort cannot be used 
     either to spare Israeli criticism for its policies or to 
     rationalize censorship practices in Egypt. But the fact is 
     there is an antisemitic strain on public view in Egyptian 
     society and in the media. It is appalling in its own right 
     and it does harm to constructive public policies. Rather than 
     allowing it to go on, responsible Egyptian authorities ought 
     to be repudiating it without equivocation.

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