The Egyptian government asked CBS not to show an interview on 60 Minutes in which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi confirmed his army collaborates with Israel against ISIS terrorists in the northern Sinai. He also admitted to jailing his opponents and the massacre of 1,000 civilians when he was Defense Minister. Needless to say, the interview will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, January 6, at 7:00 PM New York Time.
Scott Pelley asked el-Sisi if this was the closest cooperation ever between his country and Israel, and the president responded, “That is correct…We have a wide range of cooperation with the Israelis,” by which he meant that Egypt has been allowing the Israeli air force to attack the estimated 1,000 ISIS-affiliated terrorists in the Sinai.
El-Sisi, who was then defense minister, ousted democratically elected Muslim Brothers-affiliated president Mohammad Morsi in a coup. El-Sisi was blamed for the 2013 massacre of close to 1,000 Morsi supporters. Pelley asked the new president if he gave the order, and el-Sisi said, “There were thousands of armed people in the sit-in for more than 40 days. We tried every peaceful means to disburse them.”
Incidentally, el-Sisi’s government reported finding only about a dozen guns in the crowd of many thousands of protesters.
Now here’s a question we can mull over Shabbat: did el-Sisi really think CBS would bow before his demand to kill the interview, or was that his clever way of making sure every television in America be tuned to CBS on Sunday evening?