Here’s the headline and subhead in a Newsweek piece (7/10/11) about the Egyptian presidential election:

Egypt’s Rising Power Player Amr Moussa is on track to succeed Mubarak. And that spells danger for Israel.

Reporter Dan Ephron characterizes Moussa like this:

“long and vocal history of anti-Israel diatribes” “his anger against Israel” “one of Israel’s most relentless detractors in Egypt” “He confronted Israelis at conferences and attacked them in television interviews” “His tirades even made him the subject of a hit song” “his longstanding dislike of Israel” “anger at Israel is genuine”

This would be a lot more convincing if there was some rhetoric or record from Moussa that would suggest an obsessive dislike of Israel. Instead, we get one quote from him saying the peace plan was “just [an Israeli] trick to continue talking and make the cameras flash … but there’s no substance. We shall not engage in such a thing anymore.”

It would be hard to argue, whatever your position, that this “peace process” has led to much in the way of peace.

Newsweek goes on on to note that opposition to the current “peace plan” is common in Egypt. That suggests Egyptians don’t believe that their views were reflected by the foreign policy of their country’s previous dictatorship–one that Moussa served for a decade. But readers get less a sense of that fact, and plenty of discussion of the supposed anti-Israel obsession of a leading presidential candidate.