Egypt's strange brand of liberalism

Liberal International (LI), which bills itself as the world federation of liberal and progressive democratic parties, lists as members nearly 70 such parties including Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Germany’s Free Democrats and the Liberal Party of Canada. Its 56th Congress is now underway in Egypt, hosted by local member Al-Gabha, or the Democratic Front Party (DFP), a political organization both proudly liberal and virulently anti-Semitic. Consider the case of Sekina Fouad, a well-known journalist who also serves as the DFP’s vice president. In an article published earlier this year, Fouad dismissed any distinction between Jews and Israelis, the reason being “the extremity of the doctrine of arrogance, distinctiveness and condescension [the Jews] set out from and seek to achieve by all means, and on top of which blood, killing, terrorizing and frightening.” She corroborates this argument with an alleged statement by “President” Benjamin Franklin, asking Americans to expel Jews since they are “like locusts, never to get on a green land without leaving it deserted and barren.” (Franklin, who never made it to the presidency, never made any such statement.) Fouad is no outlier; that’s all standard rhetoric from Engyptian liberals. The country’s oldest “liberal” party, Al-Wafd, runs an eponymous daily newspaper that is one of Egypt’s most active platforms for anti-Semitism. Following President Barack Obama’s conciliatory Cairo speech to the Muslim world, columnist Ahmed Ezz El-Arab faulted Obama for insisting that the Holocaust was an actual historical event

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