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| Egyptian security boats search for sharks after the first attack on a German tourist in December 2010. |
The governor of South Sinai, backed by numerous Egyptian television broadcasts, insisted that the shark attacks were linked to an Israeli conspiracy to harm Egyptian tourism. These were no ordinary sharks - but remote-controlled Israeli spies. Fuelling this theory was the fact that some sharks were found with GPS devices attached to them.
It's rather evident that this theory was propagated by nothing but anti-Semitism. As someone who has studied international relations in university, I'm well aware that conspiracy theories about Israel and the Jews are relatively commonplace in the Middle East.
There's actually a pretty simple explanation for the shark attacks. During the Islamic Festival of Eid al-Adha, dozens of sheep carcasses had been illegally dumped into the Red Sea, luring the sharks to the shore. Additionally, Egypt's issue with over-fishing by the Red Sea also contributed to the depletion of natural prey in the area. Those GPSs that were apparently controlling the sharks? Planted by marine biologists to study shark behaviour.
And, as the cherry on-top of the cake, guests of the resort had been feeding the reef fish and the sharks.
Remote-controlled Israeli spies? Nice try.
Spy sharks, now that would be something and impressive at that. Love how you got to the truth of this conspiracy and that it could all be explained pretty rationally. Too bad both people and sharks had to die over humans not thinking things through.
ReplyDeleteLet me tell you, it was hard to not just write a novel on every one of your posts. What a great topic, the relationship maintained between certain ethnicities and cultural backgrounds in modern day are barbaric. All we can do is hope for some kind of revolutionary to step up, be supported and declare peace, but for the meantime maybe fend off remote control jaws!
ReplyDeleteI'm really happy you wrote about this. People believe many things, some are pretty crazy and unfortunately ignorance is contagious. It makes me extremely sad that those sharks were killed. The population of sharks has been declining and they're an essential part of the food chain, hence why the sharks most likely had GPS trackers, biologist are trying to find out more information about them. Like you I studied Political Science, so I'm also familiar with animosity between Israel and surrounding countries, not to mentions illegal dumping of dead animals that are shipped from all over the world, the sheep most likely came from Australia.
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed reading this Kelly. Thank you for mentioning the over-fishing issue we are currently have.