The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which last month listed President Mohamed Morsi and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as number one on its Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-IsraelSlurs, which was widely reported internationally, including in the Arab media, today called on the Obama Administration to link the consignmentof F-16’s and other military hardware to Egypt, to a commitment by President Morsi to curb the vicious anti-Semitism, which both he and senior figuresin the Muslim Brotherhood have publicly articulated.
"America must signal that it will not be business as usual with the government of the Arab world's largest and mostpowerful nation, while they continue to characterize Jews as 'descendants of apes and pigs', 'war mongers', and threaten anti-Semitic Jihads,” chargedRabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Founder and Dean and Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "Today Egypt is asking the U.S. and theinternational community for $12 billion to keep its ailing economy afloat.”
“Now is the time for American leadership to demand an end to Egypt’s public anti-Semitic posturing. Themainstreaming of Jew hatred in the Arab and Muslimworld will not only end hopes for any Middle East peace deal, butputs Jews in jeopardy around the world," they added.
Center officials further pointed to the bitter irony of a dangerous double standard that is of Washington’s ownmaking. “On the one hand it is apparently willing to reward an unrepentantly anti-Semitic government in Cairo, while at the same time it continues torefuse to use its clout to force Israel’s admission to the global anti-terrorism forum the U.S. itself launched in 2011.”
"It is past due for the Obama Administration to use its clout to demand full membership for America’s one reliable ally in theMiddle East, whose experience and expertise in combatting terrorism is unparalleled,” Center officials concluded.
Also read related: SWC's Huffington Post op-ed, Bigots Threaten toPush Us Off the Other Cliffwhere, on January 10, 2013, Rabbi Cooper wrote, "... welook to President Obama to use his clout to demand that Morsi curb the hatred. For now, the Egyptian leader should be reminded he has 12 billionreasons to cooperate. That is the amount of aid he is asking from the United States, the World Bank and the European Union to help prop up his nation'sailing economy."
