CAIRO: A few dozen Egyptian protesters climbed an outer wall of the United States Embassy complex in Cairo on Tuesday evening and tore down the American flag, replacing it will another flag that read “There is no God but God and Mohamed is His Messenger.” Shocking? Only slightly.

Flashback to August 2011 in front of the building housing the Israeli Embassy in Egypt. Then, a thin fence was erected to supposedly keep protesters from storming the embassy, housed on two upper levels. We know that didn’t work. But the most popular event of that demonstration – which saw protesters storm a lower level to the embassy and toss documents from the windows – was a young man who scaled the outer side of the building to take down the Israeli flag and replace it with the Egyptian flag, gives a clue as to why Egyptian protesters might have decided to climb the US embassy walls on Tuesday.