Cohen Does It Again

Here's Roger Cohen's take on the appointement of an antisemitic, albeit a contrite antisemitic, after being caught out, Farouk Hosny, as UN Cultural czar:

...there are shadows over Hosny. Questioned in Parliament last year about the presence of Israeli books in the Alexandria Library, the minister replied: “Let’s burn these books. If there are any, I will burn them myself before you.”

A comment summoning Germany, 1933, is not what you want on your résumé when applying to become cultural conciliator-in-chief. That’s not all. Reflecting stock thinking in Egyptian and Arab intellectual circles, Hosny has characterized Israeli culture as “aggressive” and “racist,” stalled cultural ties with Israel that might change attitudes, and peddled the old canard about “the infiltration of Jews into the international media.”

...Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy...dismissed Hosny as “a dangerous man, an inciter of hearts and minds” and called for his rejection.

Hosny responded with an apology...

Case closed? Not quite. This is an important political appointment, behind which Mubarak has put all his weight, so let’s think coolly about it. Hosny, within a grim and repressive Egyptian political spectrum, has shown some openness — taking heat to get Daniel Barenboim to conduct the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, daring to criticize women in headscarves, and pledging to translate the Israeli writers Amos Oz and David Grossman (although this move is being contested).

How dumb can you be?

Translating two of the most leftist, progressive anti-establishment writers, severely critical of a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria and about everything else done to shore up Israel's security and religious and national heritage, is no great shakes.

His solution to the proposed appointment is worse:

What Hosny said was vile, a reflection of the prejudices of his compatriots...But...Hosny stands at the crux of the cultural challenges confronting us. Let’s get him inside the tent...And then, with the big U.S. contribution to the Unesco budget as leverage, let’s press him relentlessly to fight the anti-Semitic bigotry poisoning young Arab psyches; favor dialogue; open Arab minds to science and education...

Cohen, the Jew, uses money as leverage? Wouldn't that simply strengthen Hosny's latent antisemitism?