Danny Danon is Israel’s ambassador to the UN. He’s not as suave as such eloquent predecessors as Abba Eban and Chaim Herzog. He’s pugnacious. But at times like this, Israel needs someone pugnacious to punch back at the kangaroo court of the UN General Assembly, with Israel permanently in the dock. Danon has just given an interview to a journalist on radio station Kol Barama’s program News of the Week. Danon may be a diplomat, but he has given voice most undiplomatically, and indispensably, to Israeli alarm about Egypt’s military buildup. After all, Egypt has no enemies that threaten it, so why does this poor country continue to take delivery of billions of dollars worth of American weapons and spend more billions of dollars in American economic aid to buy still more weapons? More on Danon’s alarm, that he hopes will be echoed by Israel’s supporters in Washington and lead to a cutback in both American weapons and money sent to Egypt, can be found here: “Israeli UN envoy warns of Egypt’s military buildup: ‘Why all the submarines and tanks?,’” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2025:
Israeli envoy to the UN Danny Danon raised concerns about Egypt’s military expansion, questioning its necessity in the absence of threats.
“They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on modern military equipment every year, yet they have no threats on their borders,” Danon said recently during a Kol BaRama radio interview. “Why do they need all these submarines and tanks? After October 7, this should raise alarm bells. We have learned our lesson. We must monitor Egypt closely and prepare for every scenario.”
Speaking to journalist Mendi Rizel on News of the Week, Danon pointed to Washington’s role in supplying Egypt’s military and urged a reevaluation of the issue.
Israel, already engaged in a seven-front war, would not like still another threat to arise on its southern border. It can well imagine what could happen if Egyptian tanks came smashing across the border into southern Israel, Egyptian troops intent on committing mayhem and murder, in a repeat of Hamas’ attack on October 7, while other Arab armies, from Syria and Jordan, were to attack the Jewish state from the north and from the east.
“They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on modern military equipment every year, yet they have no threats on their borders,” Danon said. “Why do they need all these submarines and tanks? After October 7, alarm bells should be raised. We have learned our lesson. We must monitor Egypt closely and prepare for every scenario.”
Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel — the Camp David Accords of 1979 — in order to get back the entire Sinai, that it had lost in the Six-Day War of 1967. But the Egyptian government has not allowed relations to flourish; it’s a “cold peace,” with Egypt rejecting all Israeli overtures for cooperation between the two countries on agriculture, culture, and technology. The only time an Egyptian leader has visited Israel is when Hosni Mubarak attended the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, making clear that he was going not as a representative of the state, but because Rabin’s widow had asked him to come as a personal favor. Egypt opposes Israel at every international forum, its diplomats making speeches and voting against the Jewish state, whether at meetings of the General Assembly or at the Security Council (when Egypt has been a member) or the UN Human Rights Council, or gatherings of the Arab League.
Still more worrisome, the Egyptian government, that exercises total control over the media, has allowed an endless campaign of vituperation to be conducted against the Jewish state, as well as permitting antisemitic conspiracy theories to appear in the press that would not be out of place in Der Stürmer. […]
— Read More: www.frontpagemag.com
