Times: Is Egypt Restoring Maimonides' Synagogue to Curry Favor with Unesco?

It seems to us that the Times speculates a lot more than it used to about the motives for various governmental actions in foreign states. We consider this story an example of how not to report news -- seeking to explain away a good deed by ferreting out an imagined ulterior motive.

Roger Cohen gives the background in his op-ed, "An Egyptian for Unesco," in which he reluctantly supports the appointment of Farouk Hosny, a "71-year-old painter who has served as President Hosni Mubarak’s cultural guru for more than two decades" as head of the United Nations cultural agency Unesco.

And so what does this have to do with the sudden rehabilitation of the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo?

Michael Slackman connects the dots for us in his, "Cairo Journal - Private Motive for Egypt’s Public Embrace of a Jewish Past."