Back in May, before I owned a blog, the S.F. Chronicle published an oddly-skewed opinion piece, dateline Cairo, by someone named Ashraf Khalil. What the Chronicle didn't bother to tell its readers was that Khalil also happens to be the editor of something called the "Cairo Times". My subsequent letters to the editor of the Chronicle (letter1 and letter2) were picked up by a few bloggers, including Howard Fienberg, Charles Johnson, Susanna Cornett and David Melle .
So David Melle, who writes Facts Of Israel, wrote me today all excited:
to my surprise, Mr. Khalil has used my "Email this Entry' feature to send the article to 3 people.amorrow@amcham.org.eg turns out to be Adam Morrow, a copy editor in the publications department of the American-Egyptian Chamber of Commerce in Cairo. I looked through my own server log and found that someone with an Egyptian IP address visited my blog today after performing a google search for ... Ashraf Khalil! And these were the same IP addresses that sent the emails from Melle's site.What he doesn't know is that I get a copy of all recommendations, as you can see below.
He sent the link to:
- okhalil@aol.com with a message of 'Here it is' (this looks like his personal email)
- amorrow@amcham.org.eg with 'I've been targetted'
- tcastle@sfchronicle.com with 'Did you see this??'
I'm flattered, really, that my blog is being read all over the world, including (especially?) in Cairo. One of the happiest public events that I ever got to witness was when I was in tenth grade in Jerusalem and Anwar Sadat came to town. The reality of peace with Egypt has not lived up to all of its promises. Part of the fault must lie with the Egyptian state-smothered press, which seems to have little freedom except to publish anti-Semitic and anti-American diatribes. Khalil's editorial that I had issues with was by no means the worst of Egyptian journalism. But it simply wasn't good journalism. And no, Ashraf, you're not being "targetted", you're only being challenged to do a better job. That's what people in a country with free speech do for each other.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 19, 2002 08:00 AMBe careful... All your steps are being monitored! ;)
Posted by: Rinat on July 19, 2002 06:13 AMgosh. Lucky. Even my own family will not read my blog if the Jerry Springer show is on.
Posted by: fred lapides on July 19, 2002 07:46 AMYou really need to do your homework. Ashraf Khalil is probably surprised that he is being followed by right wing extremists in the US. His newspaper, The Cairo Times, went out of buisness August 24, 2004. It went out of business partly because of government censorship of many of the issues caused them to be unprofitable. It is not the mouthpiece of the Egyptian government, but one of the few struggling independent newspapers that did not make it, unfortunately for the Egyptian people. You cant label all Egyptians as "people on the other side". Do you homework before you set out to tar and feather people.
Posted by: Ted Johnson on October 23, 2004 01:29 PM