The authoritarian regime of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak recently suffered a great indignity in Western eyes (they suffer an indignity everyday in front of Egyptian and Arab eyes for being puppets of the U.S. but they only care about what the West thinks). Egypt’s culture minister Faruq Hosni was the nation’s highly-publicized candidate to lead UNESCO, the United Nation’s body of cultural preservation and education. If he had been elected by the UNESCO committee in Geneva he would have been the first Arab to hold that title.

Egypt would have most likely won the vote, but then it was publicly revealed that Hosni had previously called for the banning of Israeli books from Egyptian libraries in front of a parliamentary committee which questioned, and criticized, the presence of such material. In an effort to play to his audience, the ministry even went as far to state that he would personally burn any Israeli books. Mind you, Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel.

Bernard Henry-Levi and Elie Wiesel, who are in theory intellectuals but really have never produced an insightful or original thought, and someone else (I forget), all apologists for Israeli crimes and occupation, got a hold of Hosni’s remarks and published an editorial in France’s daily Le Monde decrying the nomination. They further organized effort against him. Israel, initially on the sideline, decided not to join the effort against Hosni as part of a quad-pro-quo with Egypt: Israel will not oppose the nomination and Egypt will continue to work on releasing the captured Israeli occupation troop held by Hamas in Gaza. Not that Israeli opposition would have made a difference since Israel only has influence in the United States. Nonetheless, the Jewish state decided not to officially oppose the nomination.

Egypt lost the vote to an ex-communist from the Czech Republic, and the regime was humiliated. Hosni went on a anti-Jewish tirade after the fact. He blamed his loss on Zionist individuals. On that note: I strongly condemn Arab anti-Semitic conspiracies, and while it would be anti-Semitic to pretend “the Jews” denied Hosni it is well-founded to state that Zionists Jews did lobby against him as demonstrated in the aforementioned Le Monde editorial.

Prior to the vote, in an effort to placate critics, Hosni made some comments about how we regrets his words and would pay due regard to Israeli culture. Just efforts are meaningless now since the vote is done with, but Hosni seems to continue to want to win over hostile and propagandist critics. Recently it was reported that Israel will take part in an event at the famed Alexandria Library that Hosni overseas.

What’s the point of this? Is Hosni planning to submit his name for the next election and is crafting a new image from now? Personally, I am glad he lost because (almost) any blow against the Egyptian regime is to be welcomed. An Arab at the head of UNESCO would be welcome, but someone honorable.

And as for the boycott. Shunning Israeli books is narrow-minded since some material is worth reading as a historical guide into the crimes of Israel. Israeli revisionist historians have done good work, and Arabs should have access to them. But the Alexandria event? No to that. Most Egyptians oppose normalization with Israel. A peace treaty, fine. But to welcome Israel into the home, so to speak, all the while the nation is still killing and occupying Palestinians is an affront to decency and morality.