Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi wants everyone to know he’s not really an antisemite. It’s just that those pesky Jews who control the media make him out to be one.
In a conversation with senior US lawmakers, Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi reportedly implied that the Jews control the US media and have distorted comments he made in the past about Zionists being “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs.”
The meeting earlier this month between Morsi and seven US senators deteriorated sharply and nearly derailed after he made the remarks, Foreign Policy magazine reported Wednesday.
Morsi, a member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, came under fire recently after video surfaced of him calling Jews and Zionists “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”
The senators’ meeting with Morsi was partially intended to receive clarification on his earlier comments.
At first, the Egyptian president defended himself by saying he did not harbor negative feelings about Judaism or Jewish people.
He then launched a diatribe about Israeli policies against the Palestinians, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) told Foreign Policy. “He was attempting to explain himself … then he said, ‘Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably,’” Coons told the magazine’s The Cable blog.
Asked if Morsi specifically named the Jews as the forces that control the American media, Coons replied that all the senators believed the implication was obvious. “He did not say [the Jews], but I watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I,” Coons said. “I thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion.”
In his defense, controlling the media shows a certain sophistication, indicating the unlikelihood of being descendants of primitive creatures like apes and pigs.
Morsi on the other hand..
