In a talk last week with a visiting group of US senators, Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi reportedly suggested that the Jewish-controlled media in the United States had distorted his 2010 comments about Jews being “the descendants of apes and pigs” and “Zionist bloodsuckers”.
The American magazine ‘Foreign Policy’ reported on Wednesday that the Egyptian leader had come under fire from the seven senators for his offensive remarks, which became known earlier this month. Morsi apparently denied harboring negative feelings about Jews but added, according to US Senator Chris Coons Morsi told the group: "Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably.”
Coons also told the news site ‘The Cable’ that all the senators present believed that Morsi was referring to the Jews. “He did not say [the Jews], but I watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I,” Coons said. “I thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion. The meeting then took a very sharply negative turn for some time. It really threatened to cause the entire meeting to come apart so that we could not continue. Eventually, Senator McCain said to the group, ‘OK, we’ve pressed him as hard as we can while being in the boundaries of diplomacy. We then went on to discuss a whole range of other topics.”
Morsi's remarks came from a mix of speeches he made in 2010 when he was a leading Muslim Brotherhood figure. The remarks were revived when an Egyptian TV show aired them to highlight and mock Morsi's current policies. Last week, the White House denounced the comments as "deeply offensive."
In a video, Morsi is shown referring to "Zionists" as "bloodsuckers who attack Palestinians" as well as "the descendants of apes and pigs." He says Egyptians should nurse their children on "hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews. They must be breast-fed hatred." He also calls President Barack Obama a liar.
