CAIRO – 5 January 2018: From Tel Aviv, Egyptian-American academic Saad Eddin Ibrahim told Makan, a state-owned Israeli television channel, on Thursday, that the balance of international powers has changed and a lot of concepts should change as well.

On Tuesday evening, a group of students at Tel Aviv University heckled at Ibrahim for coming to speak there, calling him a "traitor" for perpetuating "normalization with Israel."


Ibrahim further added to the Israeli channel that what happened made him both happy and sad; he said he was happy because the young people who interrupted him were ardent about their Arabism and it is actually Arab-Israelis' right to criticize Israel in Israel itself.

"It is funny that they are actually students in the Tel Aviv University, and they still objected my presence at the university; there is contradiction here" Ibrahim added. "However, young people have the right to be angry and express themselves freely."

Ibrahim added that there is a wave of change across the glove and Arab people must be part of it.


Saad Eddin Ibrahim being interviewed by Israeli state-owned TV channel Makan – Still shot from the interview
"This is not my first time in Israel, it is in fact my third time there," Ibrahim said when the presenter asked him about being accused of normalization with Israel. "For 20 years, I have been coming to Israel, along with some Egyptian students, to meet their Israeli friends; we would also go to the West Bank just to make them naturally observe the scene without any fabrication or exaggeration."

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Who is Saad Eddin Ibrahim?

80-year-old Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian American sociologist and author. He is deemed one of Egypt's leading human rights and democracy activists.

Ibrahim was a strong critic of former president Hosni Mubarak.

Ibrahim founded the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. He has been criticized for accepting international funds to promote civil society and election monitoring in Egypt, and for suggesting that the United States should condition its aid to Egypt on improvements in the country's human rights record.

In December 2007, Ibrahim worked with the Arab Democracy Foundation in Doha.

In August 2008, Ibrahim was sentenced to two years in prison for "tarnishing Egypt's reputation" according to court verdict.


Ibrahim was sentenced to two years in prison for "tarnishing Egypt's reputation"
In 2001, Ibrahim was sentenced to seven years in prison for the same charges, until he won an appeal that got him released in 2003.