If you accept the definition of anti-Semitism to be: “The sustained engagement in a discourse or activity that aims at wiping from the face of the Earth all the Semite people or a distinct sub-section of them such as the Jews,” then you may have something to sink your teeth into with regard to the possible surfacing of one case of anti-Semitism in Egypt.
The perpetrator of this outrage would be the English version of a publication called Al-Masry Al-Youm which translates into: The Egyptian Today. And the victimized individual would be Max Strasser, a Jew who says he is an editor at the publication. No, he is not complaining about his employer, perhaps because he does not realize what the latter is up to. But the fact that Strasser does not even know what is happening to him is what makes me suspect that the employer is practicing anti-Semitism.
To explain this, I must refer the reader to an article I published on this website on December 7, 2009 under the title: “He used to say light up the oven”. It is about a Jew I met who thought that the worst enemies of the Jews were the self-appointed leaders who do dumb things and thus endanger the people they pretend to protect. When the man saw the leaders do such things, he used to despair and would throw his hands up in the air as he shouted: “light up the oven!” He hoped that with this response, he would signal to the leaders that their activities will inevitably lead to the lighting up of the ovens and the extermination of the Jews by holocaust.
If the theory of this man holds water, then we must conclude that by allowing Max Strasser to do what he is doing, Al-Masry Al-Youm is not doing him a favor but is using him with the expectation that the dumb things he is committing will eventually lead to the lighting up of the ovens and to what comes after that as a consequence. What is certain, however, is that if this happens, it will happen outside the Arab and the Muslim worlds because a pogrom or a holocaust never happened there and never will.
You will get an understanding of what is going on when you turn to an article titled “Celebrating Police (State) Day in Mubarak’s Egypt” written by Max Strasser and published on January 25, 2010 not in Al-Masry Al-Youm but in fastertimes.com.
Strasser begins his article with a paragraph in which he tries to show how smart he is but misses the mark. He then goes into the second paragraph in which he tries to back up his claims by quoting Human Rights Watch which held a press conference to criticize the human rights record of Egypt. And where was that conference held? Believe it or not, it was held in that very same police state, says Max Strasser. Some police state, that is!
Strasser then explains that his dissatisfaction with Egypt stems from the fact that the country has been under emergency law since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. And what the law does is that it permits the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial. It also permits the trial of civilians in military courts. I suspect that Strasser, who is an American, is a bit too young to remember an Egyptian official telling the Americans right after 9/11 something to this effect: Now you will know why we do things the way we do because you will soon be forced to do the same thing.
The kid then takes a few more paragraphs to rehash old allegations about police brutality. What he does not say is that some of these allegations were substantiated and dealt with by handing jail terms to the offending police officers, and that the other allegations were proven to be baseless and were thrown out of court. Max Strasser then drops this jewel: “This is not a secret. Stories of abuse and torture appear daily in the local independent press.” And this is when you throw your hands up in the air and shout: A police state with an independent press that does not keep the abuse of the police a state secret? What kind of a police state is this? And if my Jewish acquaintance were standing beside you, he would throw his hands up in the air and shout: Light up the oven!
The reason why my acquaintance would be dismayed is not because of what this one kid is doing but because of what he represents. He stands as the product of a system of culture and lifelong education that constantly shapes him, shapes all Jewish kids and shapes all Jewish adults so as to become and to remain loyal soldiers of the cause. And this means that as long as they live, they are expected to fight somebody – anybody -- with lies, deception, insult, denigration and defamation. Nothing can be more Jewish than that.
In fact, the kid rambles on a bit more through several paragraphs of old lies and bad jokes before he drops this other jewel: “Plainclothes police are ubiquitous.” Given that you cannot be in plainclothes and be ubiquitous at the same time, someone should tell him he needs to carry a dictionary at all time to look up the words before using them or take a course in logic to learn how to think like gentiles do. In any case, it is obvious that he is an amateur propagandist with a desire for recognition that exceeds his talent. But then again, is there a self-appointed leader of the Jews that is any better than this? Yes, the kid is primitive but so are his teachers whose knowledge has not advanced one inch since biblical times.
Reading this article I was jolted so many times that I decided to check Al-Masry Al-Youm to see what sort of articles Max Strasser has been writing or editing. The reality is that I had been reading Al-Masry Al-Yom for at least a year and I could not remember seeing his name. There was an original Arabic version of the publication that was maintained as they launched a second Arabic version on a trial basis along with the English version. And I kept reading all of them but no Max Strasser ever caught my eye.
My checking on the kid resulted in the discovery that he is not an editor of Al-Masry Al-Yom and that he has not written a single article. His name appears on a directory with several dozens of other names, all listed under: Writers. And this is what reinforced my view that whoever is keeping him is engaged in a ruse. In my view, the people at Al-Masry Al-Yom are encouraging him to stay in Egypt so as to make the kind of mistakes that will prove costly to all Jews. If this theory is correct and if what these people are doing is intentional, then it must be that they are anti-Semites.
Now all those who have been dreaming of ways to monetize the next accusation of anti-Semitism or better yet monetize the ensuing holocaust can begin to rub their hands and fantasize about what they will do with all the dollar signs now dancing in their heads.
Time to sing: “We’re in the money.”