Thursday 30/October/2025 – 03:27 AM
The crisis in choosing the Jewish writer Raphael Cohen as a member of the Naguib Mahfouz jury at the American University sparked controversy in cultural circles recently between supporters and opponents of the matter.
For his part, the writer Mukhtar Issa, former vice president of the Egyptian Writers Union, commented, saying: Certainly, distinction is necessary between the Jew and the Zionist. We are not among those who deny the other due to his religion, gender, color, or social class. Regardless of the idea of awards in general and the suspicions, complicities, political, racial, or tribal calculations that surround it, or the exchange of interests, the position here is determined on the basis of knowing the affiliations of this member and his position on the usurping cancerous entity.
Mukhtar Issa: The position on choosing Raphael Cohen as a member of the Naguib Mahfouz Award is determined based on his affiliations.
He continued in statements to Cairo 24: No right writer can accept a competition controlled by a racist, a murderer, or someone whose ideology is based on the denial of Gentiles, as is the case with Jewish extremists who are no different from the Nazis in this context. Therefore, as a writer concerned with his country and preoccupied with human beings, regardless of their gender, I cannot participate or bless any participation of any writer in an award that seeks help from someone who contradicts the human right to exist out of arrogance or based on the idea of (the people of God). Al-Mukhtar) whatever the awards, and once again I stress that the matter has nothing to do with religion.
He added: In addition to the nature of this competition, its objectives, the nature of its award, the arbitration mechanisms, its standards of objectivity, the nature of the narrative discourse that it supports, the arbitrators, their ideological orientations, their national positions, their affiliations, and their repercussions on the results.
