Egypt is escalating its dangerous double game. Having endorsed President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan only to stab it in the back by working to preserve Hamas, the regime in Cairo has now orchestrated a state-sponsored spectacle that exposes its hostility toward Israel and the concept of peace. An event titled “Egypt: Homeland of Peace,” held at the New Opera House on October 25, 2025, under the patronage of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was in fact a masterclass in institutionalized incitement and an endorsement of jihad.
This was not an isolated incident, but a demonstration of the regime’s duplicity. The celebration, meant to project an image of moderation, instead served as a platform for messages more akin to Hamas and Islamic Jihad propaganda. The event wove together religious justification, historical taunts, and populist rhetoric to reinforce enmity, proving that the Sisi regime is not a genuine partner for U.S.-led peace efforts.
The event wove together religious justification, historical taunts, and populist rhetoric to reinforce enmity.
The ceremony revealed its true colors, commencing with a recitation of Quranic verses 8:60-61. The passage, which commands believers to “Prepare against them what you can of military power ... to deter God’s enemies and your enemies,” is the official emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood and is a favorite reference for jihadist groups like the Islamic State to justify violence against Jews and Christians. By launching its “peace” pageant with this text, the state-sanctioned event endorsed the Islamist ideology Sisi claims to combat. The signal was unmistakable: When it comes to Israel, the regime, the Brotherhood, and its Palestinian branch Hamas, stand on common ideological ground.
The incitement then descended into mockery. Popular television figure Esaad Youniss joked on stage about not bringing “the Kustor pajamas,” a direct reference to the striped uniforms Jews wore in Nazi concentration camps, which Egypt also forced Israeli prisoners of war during the 1973 Yom Kippur war to wear. This was not off-the-cuff humor; it was a calculated taunt, leveraging Holocaust imagery at an event branded as a celebration of peace.
The regime then provided a platform for its most virulent media voices. The event featured political commentator Osama al-Daleel, who has repeatedly stated that war with Israel is “inevitable” and that the peace treaty is merely a “hudna” [truce]. He once asked why Egypt would administer Gaza when it could “rule from Tel Aviv,” exposing an expansionist vision that transcends commitment to coexistence. Similarly, journalist Hind Al-Dawi, who eulogized Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar and Al Qassam’s spokesperson Abu Obaida, represents a media environment that feeds hatred to the public under the guise of patriotism.
[Sisi’s] emphasis on the six tunnels linking the Nile Delta to Sinai, reducing military deployment time to just fifteen minutes, was a message to Israel.
The performance by actor Mohamed Salam added a layer of geopolitical spite to the proceedings, aimed at Saudi Arabia amidst an ongoing Egyptian-Saudi dispute. Making his first public appearance on October 25—exactly two years to the day after his much-publicized boycott of Saudi Arabia’s “Riyadh Season,” an international entertainment and tourism festival—his recruitment represented a regime snub to Riyadh. On stage, surrounded by children, he presented the film Guardians of the Sands, which featured Sinai residents referring to “Israel, the enemy,” leveraging the youth to broadcast state-sanctioned hatred.
Sisi’s concluding remarks provided the strategic anchor for the spectacle. His emphasis on the six tunnels linking the Nile Delta to Sinai, reducing military deployment time to just fifteen minutes, was a message to Israel. While framed as an infrastructure achievement, the subtext was clear: Egypt is ready for confrontation. This posturing was matched by action: Days after the pageant, Sisi approved hosting twenty-three new ambassadors from several countries, but omitted Israel.
This public hostility serves a strategic purpose. The driver of Egypt’s unspoken opposition is two-fold: the plan’s failure to secure an Israeli withdrawal from the strategic Philadelphi Corridor and Cairo’s calculation that Hamas’s survival as a political entity is essential to its own geopolitical relevance. This manufactured state of perpetual conflict, and the ensuing antisemitic conspiracy theories, serves a domestic and international purpose: to justify the regime’s authoritarian grip at home and billions of dollars in U.S. aid, a critical lifeline for its crippled economy. By positioning itself as the vanguard of “resistance,” Cairo maneuvers to monopolize the role of mediator, ensuring that no peace plan can advance without its sanction—and only on its own terms.
