Israel’s UN Ambassador: Why Does Egypt Need All Those Weapons?

Danny Danon is Israel’s ambassador to the UN. He’s not as suave as such eloquent predecessors as Abba Eban and Chaim Herzog. He’s pugnacious. But at times like this, Israel needs someone pugnacious to punch back at the kangaroo court of the UN General Assembly, with Israel permanently in the dock. Danon has just given an interview to a journalist on radio station Kol Barama’s program News of the Week. Danon may be a diplomat, but he has given voice most undiplomatically, and indispensably, to Israeli alarm about Egypt’s military buildup. After all, Egypt has no enemies that threaten it, so why does this poor country continue to take delivery of billions of dollars worth of American weapons and spend more billions of dollars in American economic aid to buy still more weapons? More on Danon’s alarm, that he hopes will be echoed by Israel’s supporters in Washington and lead to a cutback in both American weapons and money sent to Egypt, can be found here: “Israeli UN envoy warns of Egypt’s military buildup: ‘Why all the submarines and tanks?,'” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2025:

Israeli envoy to the UN Danny Danon raised concerns about Egypt’s military expansion, questioning its necessity in the absence of threats.

“They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on modern military equipment every year, yet they have no threats on their borders,” Danon said recently during a Kol BaRama radio interview. “Why do they need all these submarines and tanks? After October 7, this should raise alarm bells. We have learned our lesson. We must monitor Egypt closely and prepare for every scenario.”

Speaking to journalist Mendi Rizel on News of the Week, Danon pointed to Washington’s role in supplying Egypt’s military and urged a reevaluation of the issue.

Israel, already engaged in a seven-front war, would not like still another threat to arise on its southern border. It can well imagine what could happen if Egyptian tanks came smashing across the border into southern Israel, Egyptian troops intent on committing mayhem and murder, in a repeat of Hamas’ attack on October 7, while other Arab armies, from Syria and Jordan, were to attack the Jewish state from the north and from the east.

“They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on modern military equipment every year, yet they have no threats on their borders,” Danon said. “Why do they need all these submarines and tanks? After October 7, alarm bells should be raised. We have learned our lesson. We must monitor Egypt closely and prepare for every scenario.”

Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel — the Camp David Accords of 1979 — in order to get back the entire Sinai, that it had lost in the Six-Day War of 1967. But the Egyptian government has not allowed relations to flourish; it’s a “cold peace,” with Egypt rejecting all Israeli overtures for cooperation between the two countries on agriculture, culture, and technology. The only time an Egyptian leader has visited Israel is when Hosni Mubarak attended the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, making clear that he was going not as a representative of the state, but because Rabin’s widow had asked him to come as a personal favor. Egypt opposes Israel at every international forum, its diplomats making speeches and voting against the Jewish state, whether at meetings of the General Assembly or at the Security Council (when Egypt has been a member) or the UN Human Rights Council, or gatherings of the Arab League.

Still more worrisome, the Egyptian government, that exercises total control over the media, has allowed an endless campaign of vituperation to be conducted against the Jewish state, as well as permitting antisemitic conspiracy theories to appear in the press that would not be out of place in Der Stürmer.

Danon also pointed to Washington’s role in supplying Egypt’s military and urged a reevaluation of the issue.

“We need to ask the United States why Egypt requires all this equipment,” he said….

Egypt is the second largest recipient of American military aid, after Israel. (Ukraine is a special case; it is not a longterm recipient, buy will cease to receive such aid after the war with Russia ends.) Since 1979, it has received a total of $50 billion in military aid and $30 billion in economic aid from Washington. These huge amounts have been justified by some as “helping to keep the peace with Israel” — meaning that Egypt needs to be given billions of dollars in bribes to keep the peace with Israel that it was already committed to keeping, and for which it had been given back the entire Sinai, with its oilfields, airbases built by Israel, and the resort at Sharm el-Sheik that Israel had developed.

Not only is Egypt a country where antisemitism is widespread, and encouraged in the media, but it has a long history of making war against Israel. Egypt has taken the most important part in every major Arab war against Israel. Egyptians fought against Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973. It was attacked by Israel in 1956 in the Sinai War, a response by Israel to years of Egyptian fedayeen attacking Israeli civilians from the Sinai.

But, some will say, America gives even more military aid to Israel. Why begrudge Egypt $1.3 billion a year when Israel is receiving $3.3 billion in military aid.?

Here’s why:

Israel is America’s most steadfast ally. It belongs indissolubly to the Western alliance, is part of Western civilization, of which it might be described as a founding member. Muslim Egypt is not part of that civilization and never will be. As Muslims see things, the world is divided uncompromisingly between Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam, meaning all the lands where Muslims rule, and Dar al-Harb, the House of War, where Islam has not yet conquered. Between the two, as Muslims are taught to believe, there can be a hudna, a truce, but not a permanent peace.

Israel is one of the smallest countries in the world, a permanently embattled state, that has had to fight for its very survival three times, in 1948, 1967, and 1973. It has had as well to fight continuously against the terrorists who would destroy the country and its people. Israel is surrounded by enemies in what has recently become a seven-front war. Israel must contend with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Jihadis — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — in Judea and Samaria, and most threatening of all, must attempt to stymie Iran’s nuclear program. With all those enemies, Israel needs all the weaponry it can get from the United States. Egypt, on the other hand, has no military threats to worry about from any side.

But in Washington, supporters of Israel should echo Danny Danon’s question: why does Egypt, that has no enemies threatening it, need so many tens of billions of dollars in tanks, fighter Jets, and other weaponry? Wouldn’t it make sense to convert that military aid to economic aid, in order to improve the lot of Egypt’s poor?

Why should the Americans contribute so massively to an Egyptian military buildup, when the weapons being delivered, if they are ever to be used, will almost certainly be used against Israel? Can we count on the regime of El Sisi, or on a successor, to keep even the “cold peace” with Israel, when the Egyptian Muslims (the Copts are a different matter) themselves are so virulent in their hatred of the Jewish state? If Egypt needs some help with outfitting its police with small arms, that should be allowed, but let’s put paid to this ill-considered practice of sending tanks, fighter jets, bombs, and missiles to the banks of the Nile.