Journalists and internet bloggers have criticized Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina for planning to hold a workshop on 3 January in which Israeli intellectuals were reportedly scheduled to take part. The date of the event, critics pointed out, coincides with the one-year anniversary of Israel’s three-week long assault on the Gaza strip.
In an official statement, library administrators said the workshop had been canceled before the names and nationalities of scheduled participants had even been selected. According to the statement, library officials had been "surprised" by attacks on the event made by journalists and online critics.
Al-Masry Al-Youm obtained a number of documents, however, confirming that 51 professors from Arab and American universities–along with four professors from Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute of Technology–had been invited to attend the workshop.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
