Hugh Fitzgerald: Israel Is Behind the Increase — And Also the Decrease — In Egypt’s Population

00During a November 13, 2018 show that aired on Sada Al-Balad TV (Egypt) discussing population growth in Egypt, the host Ahmed Moussa claimed that Egypt’s “terrible and unparalleled” population growth is leading the country to catastrophe. In 2006 there were 73 million people in Egypt. There are now 98 million, and there’ll be 128 million by 2030. Moussa reflects on the huge increase in the number of Egyptians:

“Population! If we continue at this rate, we will reach a population of 128 million by 2030. In about 40-45 years, we will reach a population of 200 million. We are heading towards a catastrophe. If you want to know why the price of vegetables is rising, and why there are endless traffic jams, it’s because of that. It’s also the reason why there are 40, 80, and even 100 students in one class. And the same is true for the universities. Is there any other country in the world with an auditorium for 5,000 students? That is why. This is our real problem. If we want to be serious and point out Egypt’s real problem – it is our terrible and unparalleled population growth.

[…]

He then asks, rhetorically:

“When you bring 10 children to the world, do you have enough income to support them? I’ll ask again: Do you have enough income to support these 10 children? Do you have the income to support eight children? Do you have enough for food, education, health, and a respectable life for them, or are you planning to have them and then throw them out in the street?”

His guest, Sheikh Saeed Numan, a cleric at Al-Azhar University and a former member of the all-star Fatwa Committee, read a single quote from what he claimed was found in the oldest version of the Torah, which “reveals a Jewish scheme to decrease Egypt’s birthrate.”

Imam Saeed Numan mentions a brief Torah quote that he claims is several thousand years ago old: “What does the Book of Ezekiel say in chapter 29, verses 9 to 16? ‘And I will make the land of Egypt a ruin and a desolate waste from Migdol to Aswan.’ This is mentioned in the false Torah. ‘…from Migdol to Aswan, as far as the border of Cush.’ Then it says, ‘and I will diminish them…’ Underline ‘diminish’ seven times. ‘I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.’ This means that if the Egyptian nation increases in number, it will rule the world.

“It was explained by one of the brothers in the Gestapo or the Russian Intelligence. [sic] I heard his interview with Al-Kahera Wal-Nas TV. He explained how to destroy a country and so on and so forth. You must know that. I’m sure of it. So this is a Jewish discourse on how to decrease the birthrate of the Egyptian people.”

You are asked to believe that a remark made more than 3,300 years ago, in the usual Old Testament language of calling down plagues and ills on one’s enemies — in this case, to leave Egypt “a ruin and a desolate waste” and to “diminish them” [the Egyptians] so that they will no longer “rule over nations” — has to do with Israeli plotting against Egypt today. How has Israel been plotting to destroy Egypt? Did it do so when it handed back the entire Sinai, together with the oilfields Israel had discovered, and the tourism infrastructure it had built at Sharm el-Sheik? Has Israel been attempting to turn Egypt “desolate” by offering to provide cooperation and assistance to Egypt in the fields of solar energy, electricity production, agriculture, irrigation? How clever of those Israelis to pretend to be helping Egypt while actually ruining it — though no one can quite explain how they are ruining it.

It is the same with that Israeli plot, revealed by Sheikh Saeed Numan, to decrease the Egyptian population. Look what the Israelis have diabolically done. They have deliberately allowed Egypt’s population to skyrocket, from 30 million in 1960, to 73 million in 2006, to 98 million in 2017, with predictions of 130 million in 2030. By doing that, it seems that Israel will lull the Egyptians into a false sense of demographic security, and it is at that point, round about 2030, that the Israelis will then begin to cause Egypt’s population to reverse course, and to decrease, even more massively than it had first increased, Egypt’s population. How? you ask. Oh, for goodness sakes, if we — if Sheikih Saeed Numan — knew the exact ways the Israelis are going to carry out their diabolical plot, then it wouldn’t be so diabolical, would it? The whole point to these secret Israeli plots is precisely that we don’t know how they work. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

Of course, some people will claim that there never was an Israeli plot to diminish Egypt’s population, least of all by increasing it first. But if you believe that, then you yourself are unwittingly or — much worse — wittingly part of the Israeli plot. And Sheikh Saeed Numan will no doubt call for your punishment, as an agent of Israel.

Sheikh Saeed Numan did not bother  to explain how the Israelis were working to decrease Egypt’s population even as it skyrocketed. He did not, because he could not, tell us how the Israelis were actually working to decrease — by first increasing — Egypt’s population.

Some people will sensibly argue that the increase and decrease in children has nothing to do with Israel. It is, they will insist, a question of rational economic choice. Very poor people, who have few educational hopes for their children, may regard their children not as expenses — no higher education for them — but as assets, who can be put to work quite young, on farms or in rudimentary factories. The more children, the more potential workers. Polygamy, too, helps raise the Muslim birthrate. And the more children you have, the greater the chance you have that one of them will do every well indeed, like the son of Sheikh Saeed Numan himself, who now “lives in America” — a fact of which the anti-American Sheikh is inordinately proud. Poor Muslim families have traditionally been very large. Rich Muslim families are also large — see the Al-Saud and Bin Laden families — they need not worry about husbanding their wealth by having only a few children. It is middle-class families in the Muslim world who may want to limit the number of their children, in order to increase the life-chances of the few they do have, and for whom expensive educations will be provided.

Dr. Hoda Zakariya disagrees with Sheikh Saeed Numan: she thinks the Israelis are behind the rise in Egypt’s population, seeing that increase as a way to drag Egypt down into poverty. Exactly how the perfidious Israelis have managed to do this she does not say. Do the Zionists have their agents vandalize Planned Parenthood offices in Egypt? Do they arrange for huge shipments of defective condoms, at rock-bottom prices, to Egyptian stores? Do they have their supporters in Hollywood — everyone in Egypt knows the Israelis control Hollywood — make Arabic-language films and television shows where the model families, obviously worthy of emulation, all have at least eight children? None of the above, of course. Dr. Hoda Zakariya cannot begin to explain how the Israelis do what she accuses them of doing — deliberately increasing Egypt’s population, when the Egyptians seem to have been  doing it just fine on their own, and with the same kind of increase that other Arabs — in North Africa and the Middle East — exhibit. Perhaps Dr. Zakariya thinks that the Israelis control Arab birthrates everywhere. Who would put it past them?

No claim is too ludicrous for Muslim Arabs to believe when it comes to Israel. An Israeli plot is behind the current increase in Egypt’s population (Dr. Zakariya). An Israeli plot is also behind the eventual catastrophic decrease — that will begin only after a few more years of increase — in Egypt’s future population (Sheikh Saeed Numan). No one can explain how Israel manages to achieve either of these diametrically opposed goals. The fact that no one can explain any of this is proof positive that Israel is behind both. For what other country has been so sinisterly clever in  achieving  its aims in ways that no one has ever been able to understand? And if no one understands the reason why something is happening, or did happen, or is going to happen, that is an ironclad guarantee that Israel is behind it.