My neighbors

I wrote a few months ago about an Israeli effort to convince the coach of Egypt’s national soccer team to coach Israel in an appeal for normalization. Mr. Shehata’s response:

“I’d rather die of hunger than entertain the possibility of coaching Israel.”

Lovely. Today, the Guardian reported that the Egyptian Olympic soccer team has postponed a match against the Palestinian Olympic soccer team. Care to guess why?

“If our team go there with Israeli visas, it will be a clear endorsement of their occupation of Palestine,” says Ahmed Omar Hashem, head of the People’s Assembly religious affairs committee. Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, but anti-Israel sentiment still runs high in the country. When renowned television presenter Amr Adib opened the matter for discussion during his talk show, the majority of viewers phoning in expressed opposition to the idea.

Must everything be political?