Metro

Queens ‘Mossad’

PYRAMID ‘SCHEME’: New York native Ilan Grapel is being detained in Egypt on charges he’s a spy for Israel and incited protesters, something his Queens, parents Irene and Daniel (above), strongly deny.

PYRAMID ‘SCHEME’: New York native Ilan Grapel is being detained in Egypt on charges he’s a spy for Israel and incited protesters, something his Queens, parents Irene and Daniel (above), strongly deny. (Dennis Clark f)

(
)

A Queens-born law student — who once was wounded while serving in Israel’s military — was being held yesterday in Egypt on what his worried parents and pals say are “ridiculous” charges of being an Israeli spy.

“My world dropped,” said Irene Grapel, about learning her son Ilan Grapel, 27, was busted in Cairo Sunday for allegedly being a Mossad secret agent and trying to incite protesters against Egypt’s military.

“I just don’t know how to deal,” said Irene, whose son, an Emory Law School student, went to Egypt last month on his US passport to volunteer for a refugee resettlement group.

“He called us late last night. He told us he was being detained. That he was OK and they were treating him well,” said Irene, a viola player with the New York Philharmonic, who lives with her podiatrist husband, Daniel in Hollis Hills, Queens.

Addressing claims by Egyptian authorities that her left-leaning, Arabic-speaking son — who has US and Israeli citizenship — is a Mossad spy, Irene sputtered, “That’s ridiculous! He’s been in school for the last two years.”

And, she added, “I call him an Arabist. He loves the language. He loves the culture.”

As she spoke, Ilan Grapel’s detention was becoming a full-blown international incident.

A US consular official visited Grapel in Cairo, where he has been ordered detained for at least 15 days on suspicion of spying. Egyptian authorities accused Israel of deploying him to create mischief on the heels of President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February, while Israel denied Grapel was an intelligence agent.

A Johns Hopkins University grad, Ilan Grapel moved to Israel — where his grandparents live — in 2004, and months later enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces, becoming a paratrooper.

He participated in the evacuation and removal of Israelis from the Gaza Strip, and in 2006 was shot in the shoulder during the invasion of Lebanon. He also reportedly participated in protests of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and of the erection of a security fence shielding Israel from Palestinians.

Two years ago, he began studying at Emory Law in Atlanta, and last summer did an internship for a judge on Israel’s Supreme Court.

dan.mangan@nypost.com