Egyptians today marked two years since the start of the revolution that toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak. But is the country better off now under the Muslim Brotherhood? Read this interview with Egypt expert Eric Trager who talks to Moment about current president on Mohamed Morsi, the secrets that drive the organization and the future of Egypt in the modern Middle East.

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Yesh Atid, the newly formed political party headed by veteran journalist Yair Lapid was the surprise winner in yesterday’s elections in Israel. A centrist party that advocates for universal conscription, it won 19 seats, making it the second largest party after Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Beytenu.   But as Netanyahu tries to cobble together a government, one question looms: How will the next Israeli government bridge the growing secular-religious divide?   Aluff Benn, editor-in-chief of the Israeli daily Haaretz explores that question, as well as the divide that separates Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the current issue of Moment.

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  By Aylin Kocaman Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s new head of state., called the Jews in 2010  “sons of apes and pigs” Morsi addresses Jews in this way in a video clip that has recently appeared in the press, together with an even worse expression. Morsi, who has been trying to create an impression of a peaceable attitude to the Jews since taking over in Egypt, who promised that the Jews would be guaranteed freedom of worship under the new constitution and who declared that he was not responsible for his adviser’s words who said to the Jews that “There won’t be a thing called Israel anymore; so occupiers (Jews) will have to return their homelands”, said those words in 2010. Is that really what he thought? Does he still think like that? And I wonder if Morsi, who...

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  The White House went on the offensive and condemned Egypt after videos of president Mohamed Morsi’s anti-Semitic slurs went public.   In the videos, Morsi described Israelis as “descendants of apes and pigs” and also urged Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists.   Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, called the slurs “deeply offensive” and said that State Department officials in Cairo were discussing the issue with Egyptian officials. “This type of rhetoric is unacceptable in a democratic Egypt," Carney also said. “It is counter to peace."   Moment gives its readers a look into Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood its current issue. Click here to read “Inside Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood” to learn more about the movement’s secretive origins, its stance on female circumcision, and what a Morsi government means for the future of Egyptian-Israeli relations.    

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  The Jewish Book Council announced its selections for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award winners. City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York was named the best Jewish book of the year, while Herman Wouk’s The Lawgiver was named a finalist in the fiction category. Other winners include Jonathan Sarna’s When General Grant Expelled the Jews, which was named as a finalist in the American Jewish studies section. Moment Magazine reviewed these award-winners, as well as many others here, here and here. Enjoy!

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