Morsi "Apes and Pigs" Comments Draws U.S. Concern

Reuters reports that the US State Department would like to see further gestures of religious tolerance from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-linked government. The requests come in the wake of 2010 video showing now-sitting Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi urging Egyptians to "nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred" for Jews and Zionists. Morsi insists that the comments were taken out of context, as were he insists subsequent comments in which he referred to Jews and Zionists as "bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians", "warmongers," and "descendants of apes and pigs." The final slur, a commonplace in anti-Semitic Islamist invective, intersected with American political debate this week when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof used Twitter to call the American Israel Public Affairs Committee "pig like."