I think we all knew this was coming.

UPPER EGYPT — Maha, an Egyptian merchant in her 40s, doesn’t sleep well at night. Ever since the January 25 revolution, she is experiencing a difficult period. “In the first days of the mass demonstrations against Mubarak, my mother and me couldn’t even sleep because of fear,” said the Christian Copt. “We didn’t know what will happen to us. Ever since then, even though the general security situation in the country has stabilized, our fears were confirmed.”

In recent months we have seen significant escalation in violent clashes between radical Islamists and members of the Copt minority across Egypt. It started with the lethal suicide attack in one of Alexandria’s main churches in the first days of the year, even before the popular protest against Mubarak gained steam. Twenty three worshippers were murdered and some 100 were wounded. . . .

According to official figures, some eight million Copts live in Egypt, comprising 10% of the population. The Copt Church claims that the community numbers 13 million. Many Christians, young and wealthy, left Egypt in recent years, seeing no future for themselves in the country.

“At first we thought that the revolution would put Egypt on the right path,” said Maher, who immigrated to Canada and returned to visit his family. “We believed that the many minorities in the country would be able to live freely in a new society, yet today we no longer believe it. The Islamists are reckless and are taking over the country. It’s only a matter of time before they impose Islamic law here.”

In post-revolution Egypt, almost no day goes by without the Salafiyun assaulting Christians or members of other Muslim sects. They even took over a Cairo mosque held by the State, removed the local Imam and appointed one of their own instead — an elderly preacher who was recently released from jail and boasts of fighting the “Zionists” in 1948.

The Islamists are careful not to voice overly zealous sentiments in respect to Israel. They know that after the elections they will have to swallow some bitter pills. Some of the people interviewed for this article estimated that the Islamists will expel Israel’s ambassador from Cairo should they win the elections but that they still realize they must show some flexibility.

However, the Islamists don’t need to make much effort on the Israel front. The supreme military committee, the transition government and the secular democratic parties are doing the job for them by spreading hateful anti-Israel propaganda and erasing any sign of peace, with the exception of the business normalization. In the days of the previous regime, anti-Israel propaganda was the only area where almost absolute freedom of speech was allowed, but now we are seeing reckless abandon.

Israel is accused of everything — causing the “civil war” between Muslims and Christians, causing the terrible Egyptian economy’s terrible state, and of course, engaging in reckless espionage. The best way to eliminate someone politically is to accuse him of having ties with Israel. Egyptians are eagerly reading reports about Israel’s “secret takeover” during Mubarak’s era; most of the stories are pure inventions meant to implicate former top officials in the gravest crime of all: Normalization with Israel.

Meanwhile, businessmen associated with the previous regime are accused of planning to sell Cairo’s main streets to the Jewish Agency, “which is planning to take over Cairo as it took over Palestine.” If this hysterical witch-hunt, which is replete with anti-Semitic tones, wasn’t enough, Egyptian daily al-Wafd reported this week that Israel also stole the opera Aida from Egypt.