Egyptian state-run media has been overwhelmingly hostile toward Israel over the last year and half of the war against Hamas in Gaza, while a significant portion of its coverage crosses into outright antisemitism, an Israeli think tank said on Wednesday.
The findings, which come after a tumultuous period in the region following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre that triggered the war, contradict those of a separate recent study that found Egyptian textbooks feature “greatly improved” attitudes toward Jews and Israel.
The new study by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that 87% of op-ed articles about Israel in the past year from Egypt’s two leading state-controlled newspapers were negative, while 29% of articles mentioning Jews contained antisemitic content.
Many of the pieces portray Israel as a “colonialist entity,” “the Zionist enemy” and “a cancerous plague,” while accusing it of seeking regional expansion and the displacement of Palestinians, the study found.
The AI-based analysis focused on 4,000 opinion and commentary articles from Al-Ahram, the country’s largest and most influential daily, and Al Gomhuria, which is closely aligned with government authorities, in an effort to gauge how the Egyptian establishment shapes public perceptions of Israel and the Jewish people.
About 30% of the opinion pieces that referenced Jews were explicitly antisemitic, the study found, employing stereotypes such as Jewish greed, referencing “The Elders of Zion,” depicting Jews as disloyal and traitorous, and minimizing the Holocaust by claiming that far fewer than six million Jews were murdered.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1979. The cold peace between the Arab world’s most populous nation and the Jewish state has been marked by strong security ties on the government-to-government level for much of the last half century, with people-to-people relations fraying during times of volatility with the Palestinians, including the last year and half.
“The data shows that unfortunately a formal peace agreement does not guarantee fraternity between peoples,” Shuki Friedman, director general of Jewish People Policy Institute, told JNS on Thursday. “We hope that the regional alliance and the Abraham Accords can be expanded. These must be accompanied by education for tolerance and respectful dialogue among all the nations of the region.”
The classroom today
In contrast, a study released last year of Egyptian textbooks found marked improvements in a curriculum seeking to promote peace and coexistence.
“It’s vital to understand the distinction between long-term societal transformation through education and short-term fluctuations in public sentiment, especially in countries like Egypt, that are undergoing meaningful, if still incomplete curricular reform,” Marcus Sheff, CEO of the London-based IMPACT-se think tank that carried out the earlier study, told JNS on Thursday.
“There is a dissonance today, and if anything, it proves the necessity and urgency of continued textbook reform,” he said. “What’s happening in the classroom today will be reflected in future public opinion and hopefully in the tone of future media as well.”
