Egyptian journalist Bassem Youssef returned to the spotlight again, through a television interview with the famous British broadcaster Piers Morgan, during which he supported the Palestinians, on Tuesday evening.

The intervention of Youssef, who has lived in America for years, achieved widespread interaction in Egypt and the Arab world, and because of it, it topped the most searched list on Google, in addition to the X website trend on Wednesday.

During the intervention, Youssef impersonated an Israeli citizen, addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and asked him questions that observers considered “embarrassing,” including “When will you stop killing?”

Bassem mentioned during the interview that he “watched an interview with a former Israeli ambassador to the United States in which he said (the solution for these Palestinians is to go to the vast land of Sinai and live there temporarily), and here Bassem winked, as he used to do in his satirical program (The Program) after the January revolution ( January 2011, then Bassem continued with the ambassador’s words sarcastically... until we build Gaza and then we call on you again to return to it, before he followed with a popular Egyptian term (inappropriate).”

Youssef continued his intervention: “We have seen this movie before.” He referred to “the number of deaths that fall daily in the Gaza Strip, and compared them to those falling in Israel,” stressing that “he was unable to check on his wife’s family members in Gaza.”

Youssef's interview was admired by millions within a few hours, because he adopted the Egyptian and Arab point of view rejecting “the aggression against the Palestinians or their displacement from Gaza,” as many considered him to have “succeeded in conveying the voice of the Arabs to foreign media outlets biased toward Israel in a professional manner.”

Dr. Mohamed Shoman, Dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication at the British University in Egypt, described Bassem Youssef’s appearance as “positive,” and told Asharq Al-Awsat: “I consider Youssef a sane and professional voice, among the sane voices that have begun to appear in the Western media (biased toward Israel).”

But Schuman does not count on such voices to change established trends in Europe and America regarding support for Israel, although he is betting on the appearance of Youssef or some of the writings that have also begun to appear in the Western press to achieve more international sympathy with the Palestinian people and with civilians in the Gaza Strip.

According to Dr. Gamal Abdel Gawad, advisor to the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Bassem Youssef’s sarcastic method in his interviews has proven “effective in exposing the contradictions of Western positions that carry double standards.”

Abdel Jawad added in statements to Asharq Al-Awsat that “Youssef’s intervention revealed that there is underestimation of Arab and Palestinian rights in the West, and showed that Arab societies must develop tools for communicating with Western public opinion and follow unconventional methods.”

Dr. Sami Abdel Aziz, former dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication at Cairo University, commented on these praises, saying in statements to Asharq Al-Awsat: “Bassem Youssef came close to drawing a picture of the painful reality that the Palestinians live in in this intervention.”

Adding that “current events have made many masks fall,” which Bassem Youssef mentioned in his intervention: “There are heads of state whose language has become racist. They do not see the suffering of Palestinian children, but only look at what is happening to the Jews.”

Abdel Aziz downplayed the impact of the criticism directed at Bassem for using a word that was described as “inappropriate” in opposition to the displacement of Palestinians: “It constitutes nothing compared to the lack of humanity practiced by the other party,” explaining that the Arab world “needs intelligent arguments to expose the lies of the West, and these "Introductions and others like them can perform this function."

This is what Abdel-Jawad agrees with, saying: “We must invest in understanding the Western mind and Western media, and test different methods of communicating with them.”

Bassem Youssef is considered one of the most influential Arab media figures, according to media experts, despite the discontinuation of his famous satirical program “The Program” in 2014.

Shoman believes that “our problem in the Arab world lies in the lack of influential or powerful media outlets that address Western public opinion,” explaining that “sovereignty and control in most Western media outlets are biased toward the Jewish lobby,” as he put it.

Source: Al Sharq Al Awsat