Muslim Brotherhood leader Ahmed al-Hamrawy resigned from the group and its Freedom and Justice Party to protest a letter introducing the new Egyptian ambassador to Israel. The letter was addressed from President Mohamed Morsy to Israeli President Shimon Peres. Hamrawy, former secretary general of the Lawyers Syndicate in Alexandria, described the letter as “national and religious treason,” and added it a waste of the blood of the Egyptian and Palestinian “martyrs” from 1948 until the present day. The way the letter appointing the new Egyptian ambassador was written has sparked a wave of criticism by opponents of the president because of its intimate phrasing and what they see as an overly friendly tone. Hamrawy told Al-Masry Al-Youm, “I handed in my resignation because of the letter that neither the [Brotherhood] nor the [FJP] rejected or disowned, which confirms the presence of secret ties and agreements between the Muslim Brotherhood and Israel that are conducted away from the people and Brotherhood youth, and I reject them, therefore I announced my withdrawal from the group.” Essam Zahran, former MP for the Salafi-oriented Nour Party, described the writing style of Morsy's letter to Peres as similar to the letters sent by Prophet Mohamed to Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. Zahran told Aswat Masriya, a political website, that what Morsy did “has its origin in Islam.” He described the letter as “following the example of Prophet Mohamed, when he addressed the Byzantine leader, saying ‘from Mohamed the Prophet of Islam to Heraclius the Byzantine greatest,' and the relations between Muslims and Byzantines then were very similar to our relationship with the Israelis now.” “The way of writing the letter,” Zahran continued, “does not mean at all satisfaction of the presidency or the Islamic current with the Israeli policies toward our brothers in Palestine. We still see it as a usurper entity that has established their state on the ruins of another state.”
