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Sobhi is a distinguished Egyptian
artist
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CAIRO,
November 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Egyptian government
said it embraced a policy rejecting attacks on religious values as it
renewed Friday, November 1, its defense against charges that an upcoming
television series is anti-Semitic.
"Our
media policy is to reject a dramatic work, a documentary or a program
that contains any references that harm sacred religious values,"
Information Minister Safwat al-Sherif told the government daily Al
Ahram.
The
paper said Sherif, quoted during a visit to Morocco with President Hosni
Mubarak, was reacting to a U.S. campaign against plans by a private
satellite channel, an Egyptian state-run channel and several Arab
networks to broadcast the series, "Horseman Without a Horse."
"The
passages and screenplay of the dramatic work (Horseman Without a Horse)
which raises a debate contains nothing which can be considered
anti-Semitic," Sherif said, repeating remarks he gave Wednesday,
October 30, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"Horseman
Without a Horse" covers Middle Eastern history from the mid-19th
century to 1917 and tells of the story of an Egyptian man fighting
against the British occupation of mandate in Palestine and Zionist plans
to establish a Jewish state.
The
41-part series, starring actor and screenwriter Mohammed Sobhi, is
scheduled to debut Wednesday, November 6, at the start of the Muslim
holy month of Ramadan.
U.S.
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said his government has
complained to Egypt and other countries in the Middle East about plans
to broadcast the series.
"It
is a series ... supposedly on other topics, but that incorporates or is
based on these odious protocols, the Elders of Zion," Boucher told
reporters.
"We
have raised it with (Egypt and with) other governments," Boucher
said.
He
declined to comment on the content of the U.S. messages, but a senior
department official said later that Washington was unhappy with the
series, which it believed to be drawn from "racist and untrue"
sources.
"We
don't think that government television stations should be broadcasting
programs that we think are racist and untrue," the official told
reporters.
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Sobhi, in a scene of the
series
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In
a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, the U.S.-based Jewish
rights group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) branded the series the
"latest manifestation of an ongoing pattern of anti-Semitic
incitement in the Egyptian media."
The
ADL also warned that the series "could have a broader impact beyond
Egypt," since the satellite channel airing it, Dream TV, broadcasts
around the Middle East.
A
New York Times columnist wrote on October 25 that the controversial
Protocols appear to be "gaining a new foothold in parts of the Arab
world."
In
the same article, Dream TV Vice President Hala Sarhan was quoted as
saying that the Protocols were only a small aspect of the wide-ranging
documentary series.
Only
brief commercial spots for the series have appeared until now on
Egyptian television, but one of its screenwriters, Mohammed Baghdadi,
told AFP that "we have used the book of the Elders of Zion at a
dramatic level.
"We
don't have any problems with the Jews, but we are against the racism of
the Zionists," he added.
Sobhi,
the second screenwriter and main actor in the series, said things
changed since the document was first published.
"We
know that the book in question was banned for a century, because they
(the "Elders of Zion") were working in the shadows, but now
they are working in the light of day," Sobhi said.
"We
have not tried to determine if the book is authentic or
fabricated," Sobhi said.
"Israel's
practices in Palestine are more dangerous than this book."
Sobhi
plays an Egyptian who leads the struggle against the British until he
finds a book written in Russian that turns out to be the "Protocols
of the Elders of Zion," which provides proof that the true enemy is
not the British, but the "Elders of Zion."
Diplomatic
sources in Cairo said the Israeli authorities are, meanwhile, mulling
the best response, which could include an appeal to the Egyptian
authorities to have it banned.
According
to a report published by the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot Thursday,
October 31, “Horseman Without Horse” caused deep fury among Israeli
officials, with calls to withdraw the Israeli Ambassador from Cairo.
Israel
and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979.
Egypt
recalled its Ambassador from Israel in November 2000 protesting the
Israeli army's excessive use of force in the occupied Palestinian
territories.
