Via the Commentator:
Footage of Mohammed Morsi, now President of Egypt, has emerged showing his inflammatory and hateful comments against the State of Israel. The clips, hosted and translated by MEMRI, show Mohammed Morsi in 2010 giving a speech to camera on negotiations with Israel. Morsi claims any negotiations are, “futile and a waste of time and opportunities”
He states, “No reasonable person can expect any progress on this track. Either [you accept] the Zionists and everything they want, or else it is war. This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know – these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”
As the Commentator notes, Morsi has since been “lauded for his role in brokering a peace between Hamas and Israel last year….”
People can change, even so…
While we’re wandering down memory lane, here’s an extract from the editorial in which the Economist (the same publication that continually refers to Turkey’s thuggish prime minister as “mildly” Islamist) endorses (albeit reluctantly) Morsi in the run-off round of Egypt’s presidential elections last year:
People are nervous of the Muslim Brothers. Many secular-minded Arabs fear that if ever they gained power they would never let go. However slickly the Islamists repackage themselves, a strain of intolerance runs through them, particularly in religion. Egypt’s 8m Christians, about 10% of the population, are understandably anxious—not least because, to get elected, Mr Morsi will need the support not just of the Brothers but also of the Salafists, a far more worrying band of Islamists who hark back to the puritanism of the Prophet Muhammad’s era and who have amassed an alarming degree of popular support in the new Egypt. Already, the Brothers and the Salafists hold a majority in Egypt’s parliament. Should a Muslim Brother become president, the risk is that the Islamists will then ride roughshod over the rest. That is the fear of many secular Egyptians; and Israelis are worried too.
But these fears look overblown…
Count me unconvinced.