FROM THE "YOU COULDN'T MAKE THIS UP" FILE:

Egyptian Plans To Sue Jews Over Exodus Gold (Forward Magazine via Jim West on Ioudaios-L)
By MAX GROSS
FORWARD STAFF

A prominent Egyptian legal scholar is preparing a lawsuit against Jews around the world over gold allegedly stolen in biblical times during the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

Nabil Hilmy, dean of the faculty of law at Egypt's Zagazig University, announced his plan in the Egyptian government weekly, Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute � known as MEMRI � a group that specializes in translating articles in the Arab media. Hilmy reportedly told Al-Ahram that if the story of the exodus is to be believed, Jews fleeing Egypt "stole from the Pharaonic Egyptians gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more, leaving Egypt in the middle of the night with all this wealth, which today is priceless."

Calling the alleged heist the "greatest fraud history has ever known," Hilmy said that he and a number of Egyptian jurists will sue "the Jews of the world" for these lost treasures, the value of which Hilmy estimates in the trillions of dollars.

Trillions of tons of gold, actually.

Here's a link to the excerpted MEMRI translation of the Al-Ahram Al-Arabi interview. My favorite bits:

The inteviewer asks:

"It is clear why they stole the gold, but why the cooking utensils?"

Last question and response:

Question: "Is a compromise solution possible?"

Hilmi: "There may be a compromise solution. The debt can be rescheduled over 1,000 years, with the addition of the cumulative interest during that period."

Even my sarcasm fails me.

UPDATE: MEMRI is a pretty reputable source, so I don't doubt that they're translating what they found. I would really, really like to believe that Al-Ahram Al-Arabi is indulging in a "he looks!" spoof, but even if that turns out to be so, the interview is awfully anti-Semitic, as Eugene Volokh points out. And Judith Weiss at Kesher Talk collects various answers to the proposed lawsuit on the level it deserves. Lots of people in the Blogosphere and elsewhere are scratching their heads over this one.