Egyptian clerics and academics have been seething against an announced government decision to translate books by Israeli authors Amos Oz and David Grossman into Arabic for the Egyptian public.

Gaber Asfur, the head of the Center for Translation in the Culture Ministry, told AFP he was considering publishing short stories by Oz, Grossman's "The Yellow Wind” (which rails against “the Israeli occupation” of land captured in 1967) as well as works by so-called new historians Tom Segev and Avi Shlaim.