The Jerusalem Post reports: “Two Swedish reporters were held for hours on Wednesday by Egyptian soldiers accusing them of being Mossad spies, the reporters’ employer, daily newspaper Aftonbladet, reported. The soldiers reportedly attacked the reporters, spitting in their faces and threatening to kill them. Four Israeli journalists were arrested by Egyptian military police in Cairo on Wednesday. Three of those arrested work for Channel 2 and the fourth is from Nazareth.”
The article is headlined: “Pro-Mubarak demonstrators are targeting the press,” and conflates the roughing up of CNN’s Anderson Cooper with the arrest of the Israeli “journalists” — but it is the up-until-now-neutral military, not Mubarak’s thugs, who have detained the accused Mossad agents. For more on the history of Mossad operations in Egypt, go here. Suffice to say here that this isn’t the first time Israel’s intelligence agency has intervened with provocateurs to justify a crackdown.
So let’s step back and look at the progression of events: a peaceful anti-Mubarak demonstration is attacked by pro-Mubarak thugs, and suddenly accused Mossad agents are arrested. And the Israelis are now coming out in public, brazenly calling on their Western allies to tamp down their criticism of Mubarak.
