Conspiracy alert: Is Egypt's shark-attack crisis the work of Israel?

The conspiracy theory: A German woman was killed in a shark attack on Sunday near Egypt's, and four other tourists have been injured in the last week in a spate of shark incidents in the Red Sea. "This is unnatural," says Egypt's Tourism Minister Zuhair Garana. "We have no explanation." Some Egyptians think they might: Could the real culprit behind all the bloodshed be... Israel? "What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark (in the sea)... is not out of the question," said South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shoush, according to an Egyptian news source. And on Egyptian television, a man introduced as a "famous diver" theorized that the attacking sharks were not native to the Red Sea and were being "monitored [by Israel] to attack in Egypt's waters only." In the meantime, scientists announced that a captured mako shark was responsible for some of the attacks, but warned that another man-eater may be on the loose. (Watch a Sky News report about the attacks)

The reaction: "Egyptian officials have plumbed new depths of pottiness with their latest Zionist conspiracy theory," says Dominic Waghorn in Sky News. Rather than throwing out wild theories, maybe they should "see what the shark scientists rushing to Sharm find out and then act on their advice." This fear of a "Mossad shark," says Jonathan Kay in Canada's National Post, suggests that Mossad marine biologists have somehow "bred, brainwashed, or otherwise genetically programmed" the creatures to kill Egyptians and tourists. That's a tricky proposition: "My experience with training sharks for foreign-policy purposes is that when you release them, they will just follow your boat back to port instead of going out and eating your enemies."

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