Given the violent images being broadcast from Cairo and reports of violent clashes in the streets of Alexandria between ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s opponents and supporters, it is no wonder that so many Israelis, including this very writer, are wondering whether Egypt really is a “partner for peace.” As long as that thought keeps running through my head, I am reminded of my uncles and aunts who were sent by the people of the great poet Friedrich von Schiller, to the gas chambers to the sweet sounds of that anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner.

There are still men and women among us who remember how their Hungarian, Polish and Ukrainian neighbors, all part of the “European cultural milieu,” turned them over to the Nazis. There is nothing like the Holocaust in all of modern history, and yet for Israelis and Germans alike, it was not enough to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries 20 years after the war was over. Despite the trauma, despite the memories, these two enemies became friends. Israel’s finest musicians now play in the Berlin Philharmonic, Israeli students pack the lecture halls of German universities, Israeli researchers attend scientific conferences in Munich alongside colleagues whose grandparents belong to the SS generation, and German colleagues are welcomed to Jerusalem with open arms.

This is not the case when talking about relations between the people of Israel and the people of Egypt (though for some reason, when talking about Arabs, the more commonly used term is “the Arab street”). Although 35 years have passed since Israel's then-prime minister Menachem Begin and Egypt's then-president Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, peace with Egypt is, at best, a formal agreement between two countries, or what we like to call a “cold peace.”

During deposed president Hosni Mubarak’s long term in office, Israel’s various governments made do with security cooperation, while complaining that Egypt was not fulfilling the normalization clauses of the peace agreement, and criticizing open manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Egyptian media. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, as far as pundits and decision-makers in the fields of policy and defense were concerned, Israel’s interest in the Arab Spring could be summed up in three words: Sinai border security. Relations with Egypt meant relations with the heads of the Egyptian army and intelligence. It does not matter to them whether the ruler in Cairo was a corrupt dictator or a “Muslim Brother” who hated Jews. The main thing was that there was someone to talk to on the Egyptian General Staff, and if not directly, then at least through the Americans.