The fig leaf of moderation the Muslim Brotherhood has put on drifts lazily and embarrassingly to the ground. They have tried to put on a friendly face, and many in the West have been taken in by the ruse, but the Ikhwan simply cannot sweep eight decades of supremacist and antisemitic rhetoric under the rug and expect no one will find it. In fact, it doesn’t seem like they are trying all that hard to do so. “‘Muslim Brotherhood site rife with anti-Semitism’,” by Oren Kessler for the Jerusalem Post, January 19:
The Arabic website of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is rife with anti- Semitic and anti-Israel content, according to a recent report by a US-based media monitoring group.
The report found that the Islamist group’s website, Ikhwanonline.com, regularly features articles denying the Holocaust and warning Muslims against the covetous and exploitative nature of the “Jewish character.” Other articles extol jihad and martyrdom, condemn Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and denounce negotiations as means for regaining lands lost by Islam.
The study was published last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a non-profit group that monitors and translates Arabic and Farsi media. Based in Washington, it was founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, an Israeli former intelligence official, adviser and diplomat.
The Brotherhood has emerged as the biggest winner from the overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak, taking some 45 percent of votes in recent elections for the lower house of parliament. In the 11 months since Mubarak’s ouster, however, the Brotherhood has issued contradictory signals over its willingness to maintain the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Early this month Dr. Rashad Bayoumi, its deputy leader, told Arabic media the group would never recognize the Jewish state.
“This is not an option, whatever the circumstances, we do not recognize Israel at all. It’s an occupying criminal enemy.”
A week later, Essam Al-Arian, deputy leader of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), assured The New York Times the party would in fact honor the agreement.
MEMRI”s latest report, however, gives no indication the Brotherhood has changed the virulently anti- Semitic, anti-Western rhetoric that has characterized the movement for more than eight decades.
One common motif on the Brotherhood’s site is “Jewish character” and its supposed history of sowing evil in the world.
In May 2010, following Israel’s Gaza flotilla raid, a writer named Mahmoud Abd Al-Rahman wrote on the website, “For ages, human society has faced the problem of the Zionist Jewish character. All nations and cultures are in agreement over the nature of the disease intrinsic in the Zionist character… namely sanctification of money, sex, robbery, interest and treachery.”
“We saw this in pharaonic Egypt, and in the Canaanite, Amalekite, Babylonian, Persian and Roman [eras],” he wrote. “During the pharaonic era, it was written on the tomb of [the pharaoh] Marnephtah, “˜The Egyptians have annihilated the Zionists.–
Did the Ikhwan’s account say “Zionists,” or “Jews?”
Since Mubarak’s exit the Brotherhood has sought to to position itself to Western media as a moderate, pragmatic movement dedicated to promoting a prosperous, tolerant Egypt. But the last 11 months have seen no appreciable change in tone when addressing their constituents in their native language.
That is key. Many policymakers can’t seem to stomach the possibility that they are being lied to.
There is much, much more. Read it all.