Mubarak Finally Plays the Jew Card

Mubarak is quickly running out of options. He tried saying he wouldn't run for president again. He tried firing his old cabinet and appointing a new one. He tried to claim that the protesters were really just lawbreakers intent on chaos. None of it has worked.

But in the Arab world there is one scapegoat that has never failed to increase people's capacity to believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories or suspend their grasp on reality: Jews.

Today, a young Egyptian woman has "come forward" to discuss how she was brought to Qatar by "Israelis and Jews" to learn how to bring down a government. The organization that she claims brainwashed her and other gullible Egyptians? Freedom House.

Yeah, right.

According to the article:
"after her initial recruitment, she was sent to Doha in Qatar with a group of other young people... "We received intensive training for four days. The trainers had different citizenships but a predominant number among them were Israelis," she said.

At the end of the interview the woman was asked what led her to confess her secret activities. At this point, she burst into tears and answered that President Mubarak was "like a father to me," which is why she decided to share what happened to her."


But she what is more likely is that her real father, or another member of her family, is being held in one of Mubarak's prisons. Though it could be as simple as her being paid off.


The utter lunacy in the assertion that Israel was behind the Egyptian Revolution is made even greater when one remembers that up until just a few days ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu was not only standing behind Mubarak, but instructing all of Israel's ambassadors around the world to plead with their host governments NOT to abandon him! It wasn't until yesterday (when he finally realized the revolutionaries would win) that he changed his tune and said that even if there is regime change, the peace treaty with Egypt would stand (which is Israel' prime concern at the moment).


Mubarak must know that claiming the Mossad planned the protests won't convince most of the revolutionaries to go home, since they know that the only reason they are protesting is because they genuinely want Mubarak to leave. But by blaming the Mossad, Mubarak is really talking to the Egyptians who are still sitting on the sidelines, deciding whether or not to join in the revolution.


Blaming Israel and the Jews is a common passtime in the Arab world. Whether it's saying the Mossad is training vultures to spy on Saudi Arabia, sending sharks into the dead sea to destroy Egyptian tourism, or  some other crazily funny scheme, or the more disturbing ones claiming Israel was behind Southern Sudanese secession, or using the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a screenplay for a Ramadan mini-series, or blaming the Jews for 9/11. It is on this history of conspiracy theories that Mubarak is building. Though they seem comical to us, theories like these are widely believed in the Arab world. Since Arabs know they can't trust the government for accurate news, they call all news into question and end up grasping at straws for something close to the truth. Often that leads people to believe that utterly ridiculous things are possible, from Mossad sharks to a conspiracy of Jews bent on world-domination and Arab subjugation.

But this time it probably won't work. The Revolution is too big and there are too many people involved. Also, even if some people might buy into the idea that Israel played a role in starting it, they have so many legitimate grievances that it won't likely prevent many people from taking part.