From Brookings, last May:
Egypt’s worrying population boom fails to generate the same headline attention as terrorist attacks, the impact of economic reforms on the poor, the country’s hyper-constrained politics, or accusations of human rights violations. Yet, the very real dangers it poses were highlighted when the head of the country’s statistical agency, Abu Bakr el-Gendy, called this seemingly irrepressible tide a “catastrophe.” To Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, it is a “challenge as critical as terrorism.”
The numbers are certainly daunting. In 2000, the United Nations estimated that Egypt’s population would hit 96 million in 2026. They were off by about 10 years. In 2017, there were some 104.5 million Egyptians, of which 9.5 million lived outside the country. The 2006 census counted 73 million people, an annual increase of 2.6 percent since then. Unless the fertility rate of 3.47 changes, by 2030, Egypt’s population is expected to grow to 128 million.
On Egyptian TV show “Paper and Pen,” Dr. Hoda Abdol Monem Zakaria, a professor of political sociology and one of the twelve members in the Supreme Media Regulatory Council, agreed with the TV host Nishat Dehi that overpopulation is part of the US/Jewish plot.
The official Egyptian government website for the Supreme Media Regulatory Council doesn’t even bother mentioning the US part of the plot, saying only that Zakaria said that Egypt’s population crisis is “a Jewish scheme, because we will not be able to accomplish any national project” with the anticipated population crisis.
Other Arabic media picked up on the interview without any negative comment on blaming the Jews for Egyptians having too many babies.
(h/t WC)
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