It really is a different world in the Middle East. From Egyptian Conspiracy Theorists:
Egypt’s chattering class must have been surprised when Egyptian security arrested several Egyptians for the October 7 bombings at tourist resorts in the Sinai. Egyptian pundits had asserted that Israel must have orchestrated the attacks. But don’t expect a retraction. From the 1997 Luxor massacre, to the crash of EgyptAir 990, to 9/11 and now the Taba bombing, every major event is presented through the prism of vast forces — usually Israeli — conspiring to destroy Egypt. While this penchant for conspiracy is written off to ignorance and poverty, in fact the conspiracies are engineered from the top and serve the purposes of Egypt’s regime.Consider the statement (courtesy of MEMRI) of Dr. Dhiaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism at the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies: “This operation is the [work] of a security apparatus? and the one who gained the most was Israel, and thus one should attribute [the operation] to Israel. For the Israeli security [apparatuses] it is easy to carry out an operation on lands adjacent to its borders and then retreat into Israel?”
The al-Ahram Center is Egypt’s most distinguished think tank. Dr. Rashwan’s s statement is roughly equivalent to a Brookings scholar claiming the CIA masterminded 9/11.