The Jews did it

A few weeks ago the Washington Post reported on the intrigue behind the nomination of Farouk Hosni to head UNESCO.

Over his career, Hosni has accumulated a long record of opposing exchanges with Israel, repeatedly saying normalization must await resolution of the Palestinian issue and warning that opening up to Jewish culture would be dangerous for Egypt. But his most notorious sally came in May last year, when he told an Islamist member of the Egyptian parliament that he would personally burn any Israeli books found in Egyptian libraries.

Hosni apologized for the remark three months ago, as his campaign for the UNESCO post gathered speed. In a statement published in Paris, he attributed it to a hot temper and an Arabic-language metaphor that sounded worse than it was. But for his opponents, particularly Jewish activists and intellectuals, the evocative image of book-burning would not go away, and they said it disqualified him for the job.

Note the way the reporter Edward Cody frames the opposition as “Jewish activists,” as if no one else ought to be offended about such declarations.

(At least on the op-ed page the Post published an essay opposing his appointment, even though it minimizes Hosni’s antisemitism.

About the same time the New York Times featured an op-ed by Roger Cohen telling us:

Hosny stands at the crux of the cultural challenges confronting us. Let’s get him inside the tent rather than stoke the old anti-Western, anti-imperialist flames — reminiscent of what led the United States to abandon Unesco between 1984 and 2002 — by rejecting him.

And then, with the big U.S. contribution to the Unesco budget as leverage, let’s press him relentlessly to fight the anti-Semitic bigotry poisoning young Arab psyches; favor dialogue; open Arab minds to science and education; and embrace the peace that Unesco was set up to foster by draining the poisonous well from which his own now-regretted venom was drawn.

In both the case of the report by Edward Cody and the op-ed by Roger Cohen there are disconcerting efforts to play down Hosni’s antisemitism: either its something that only bothers Jews or it’s something that can be overcome with a little leverage. The fact that Hosni’s antisemitism is a reflection of his society’s feelings 30 years after making peace with Israel, doesn’t register with either.

Anyway, as you now know Hosni didn’t get the job. And, of course, who did he blame? Do you have to ask? The real scandal is that the antisemitism of the Arab world continues to be underplayed, rationalized or dismissed rather than taken seriously. And it shouldn’t just be “Jewish activists” who are concerned. And Mr. Cohen, if he’d gotten the job, he’d have used his new perch to promote antisemitism, he would have resisted an pressure to change his world as unwanted interference from New York Jews.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.