AP Whitewashes Egyptian Antisemitism
The following AP headline caught my eye this morning:
Egypt closes Great Pyramid after rumors of rituals
Seemed intriguing, so I read on:
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s antiquities authority closed the largest of the Giza pyramids Friday following rumors that groups would try to hold spiritual ceremonies on the site at 11:11 A.M. on Nov. 11, 2011.
What unidentified “groups”, I wondered, would be so scary that the pyramids would have to be shut? Perhaps a pro-Mubarak group was planning on protesting his ouster?
Reading on several more paragraphs, I came across the following:
The closure follows a string of unconfirmed reports in local media that unidentified groups would try to hold “Jewish” or “Masonic” rites on the site to take advantage of mysterious powers coming from the pyramid on the rare date.
So the rumors were that “unidentified groups” would try to hold “Jewish” or “Masonic” rites? Something doesn’t make sense, because in the Arab world, “unidentified groups” do not perform “Jewish rites”, Jewish groups do.
And so, I looked for another source for the news, preferably one that is not in the business of whitewashing antisemitism, and, sure enough, here is a news report that explains what actually happened:
Supreme Council of Antiquities succumbs to pressure over rumors that Jewish Masons were on their way to Cairo to claim pyramids as their own.
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) closed the Great Pyramids on Friday after protesters said various groups, among them Jews, planned to attend a numerologist ceremony on the Giza Plateau.Egyptian media reported that some Egyptians feared that the event would be used by Jewish Masons to reclaim the Pyramids as ancient Hebrew structures, denying Egyptians their claim to the pharaonic monuments.
One SCA employee claimed that a crew of 1,200 Jews were planning to attend the event, crowning the mightiest of the three structures with a Star of David in order to assert the claim that Jewish slaves built the pyramids, and not the ancient Egyptians, Egyptian daily Al Ahram reported.
Egyptologists have never proven whether or not Jewish slaves took part in the construction of the monuments, or even settled in Egypt in the time when Old Kingdom pharaohs commissioned their massive mausoleums.
Former SCA Secretary General Abdel Halim Noureddin told Al Ahram Jewish Masons have been trying to cap the Great Pyramid since 1931 with the Jewish emblem, so this instance should not be surprising.
According to a report from British daily the Telegraph, a Polish numerologist group had, in fact, received permission from the Egyptian government to hold a ceremony at the pyramids in order to protect the world from “cosmic forces” aimed at destroying Earth next year.
The resulting commotion surrounding the event, including the attendance of Jewish Masons, pushed the SCA to cancel the event, called the “Ceremony of Love.”
Nope, no antisemitism here. Move along. Nothing to see.