I don't think I have ever had such a meaningful Yom Kippur as yesterday in Cairo.
It began as a journalistic stunt story. I used to do these stories all the time for mainstream media in my adventurous 30s. Can you do X? (get into X club, ask celebrity X an unseemly question) Well, I was determined to find a congregation on Yom Kippur—for the sake of the finding it. But the Adly street synagogue downtown did not open till 10, the Egyptian guards said; and they sent me on to the Ben Ezra synagogue in Coptic Cairo. I took the Metro to Christian Cairo and walked all around the St George’s monastery till I found the little synagogue in a low alley. It was open, as a tourist attraction. The lady at the desk said I should go to Maadi, the southern suburb where many Jews once lived.
I spent another hour wandering around, and then a cab delivered me to a low domed building in a sprawling residential neighborhood notable for police barricades here and there in the dusty streets. Some were for ambassadorial residences. But at least a dozen cops were posted outside the walls of the tiny Biton synagogue, built in 1934. An iron gate was cracked open. I put on my yarmulke and crept in over recently laid sod and heard the murmuring of prayers.
Inside the synagogue a dozen people, exactly a dozen, sat in a small half circle before the altar. I took a chair in the semicircle, and one of them got up to greet me, a burly bearded guy from the American embassy. How much Hebrew do you know? Not much, I said. Well you will be called on, he said.
The service was led by a doctor at the embassy in what I can only call a downhome manner. The two or three serviceable prayer books were passed along the line so that the rest of us could read aloud. The ark was never opened, I think in an acknowledgement that we did not have a true minyan. One or us was a fidgety 8-year-old boy in glasses, playing with an oversized deck of game cards. Another two or three were not Jewish.
At the break I learned that the service is ordinarily much fuller and more serious; the Israeli embassy staff flies in a rabbi for a couple of weeks. But the Israeli embassy staff fled last month. So everyone in our little group was American. There are a handful of Egyptian Jews in Cairo, but I was told they live downtown, and they are all getting old. There was a thought to bus them to the temple, but it didn’t happen.
For the afternoon service, I brought my wife back, and it was even better. I’m not Jewish, she announced to the leader of the service, who this time was a grad student at the American University of Cairo. That’s fine, he said-- neither was the embassy official’s wife. We made up for the lack of prayerbooks with little fawn-colored chapbooks we found in the lobby. They were printed for His Majesty’s troops, with all the Jewish services in about 100 pages. "God Save the King" was right after the Adon Alom.
At dusk an Egyptian Jew came in on crutches, dignifed and severe in an aubergine crepe blouse, and the 8-year-old boy blew the shofar. I felt tears in my eyes as we sang the Avinu Malcheinu. The melody had never been so haunting.
As the sun set, we had a kind of divine intervention. There was a cry from the courtyard. Out the open door, I saw a sharp blaze rising from the foliage and thought, gasoline. The Egyptian minder of the synagogue was running to and fro, and some congregants scuttled out of the synagogue as if we were under attack. “The burning bush,” said the embassy man’s wife. I tried to walk calmly out to the fire. Later we were told that bad wiring in the Sukkot booth in the yard had ignited the vines. The man from the embassy grabbed a fire extinguisher, but it pissed weakly at the fire. Then the Egyptian minder came round the corner with a hose and trained that on the roof of the booth, now fully consumed.
Of course, when it was well and truly out, a dozen policemen came pouring into the yard dragging a fire hose. And in true comic manner the thing was drenched again and again.
We passed around a mug of wine to break the fast, and Egyptian staff brought in trays of sweets. The old Cairene Jew had seen to that--bananas and ice cream and raw red dates, served by Egyptians.
I sat beside her in a pew and told her how hard it had been to find the service. She explained that they had not advertised it on their website, fearing it might provoke a demonstration. Do you have children? I asked. No. Eight dogs. Do your friends in America tell you to come there? Why should I go there? she responded. A relative in Europe presses her to move there. She's not interested.
I reminded myself that just an hour before I had beaten my breast for being provocative so many times in the year past, then tilted toward her and said, I want to tell you, I am not a Zionist.
That’s good, she said, no intellectual should be an ist.
And what do you think of the revolution? I asked. It is very good, she said. Though we worry about the Muslim brotherhood. So: she is like an American Jew, fighting for liberalism in her land.
It was the most meaningful Yom Kippur of my life because we were affirming the freedom to worship—we were the only congregation for a thousand miles in northeast Africa-- and because the service was so non-Zionist at its heart. Zionism insists that Jews are unsafe as a minority in other lands, they must return to their alleged homeland, and this insistence had created a giant wound across the Arab world, where so many Jews had lived safely—75,000 once in Egypt. Now there are just a handful, and the ethnic cleansing, or self-cleansing, that took place here is held up as an affirmation of Zionism, which is invested in the idea of intolerance, because intolerance rationalizes its creed. And so many Jews in Israel hate the Arab spring, and would like to see the dictatorships last forever.
Yesterday we helped the Jews here to hold their place. We insisted that Jews can be anywhere and safe and following our ancient rituals, with an Egyptian firehose.
You should be president of the Anti-Defamation League, not this Zionist and maybe Jewish supremacist (in that he thinks Jews are more important than other people) Abe Foxman.
This was a great account of your religious experience at that temple. Like you, I am moved by that old lady, by her calm assesment of the situation. She doesn’t fear “the Arabs” per se. Feels no need to automatically heed the call of the Zionists to come to Israel or at least to America.
You struggled with yourself wether you should say the provocative thing (“I’m no Zionist”), and you trusted the human being in front of you, and your trust got rewarded by her stance.
btw, since some establishment voices try to paint OccupyAmerica (another people’s movement like the one on Tahrir Square) as more or less anti-Semitic, here’s video footage of Jewish members of OccupyAmerica celebrating Yom Kippur:
link to desertpeace.wordpress.com (the title by Desert Peace is ironic)
Wise words. She has cut to the heart of why the term anti-zionist irritates me, though I’d never given it conscious thought until this moment.
It’s helps zionist jews feel they are being victimised for just who they are – and lets them off the hook without forcing them confront the idea of *universal* human rights, which in reality, is what most people who are opposed to Israel’s disgusting treatment of Palestinians actually advocate for.
The never ending self-pity among zionists, especially Israeli zionists, has been on my mind a lot lately. Witness eee on other threads recently going on about 10 jews being killed in Cairo being a pogrom, but unable or to apply the same rationale to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the IDF since 1948. They are so heavily invested in the idea of perpetual victimhood that even with the fourth most powerful army in the world and killing Palestinian children at a ratio of 10 to 1, Israelis are still the victims.
It’s …pathetic. And dangerously irresponsible, paving the way for real atrocities (I mean genocidal), so dehumanised have Palestinians become in the mind of many Israelis.
Altruism and universalism are mostly fictional motives for any kind of substantive politics. More importantly, they are not acultural or divorced from identity itself. Secular humanist universalism IS a subjectivity – a usually very ethnocentric and privileged one in itself – and its genealogy can be traced to deeply religious and ethnic conceptions of the world. Secularism today is also its own religion, but that’s a separate discussion.
I think what the lady Phil quoted meant was that dogmatic thinking – the kind usually attributed to wholesale subscription to an ideology of any kind – is not becoming of any true intellectual leadership. And she’s right.
This has very little to do with identity politics, which are a different story. As I said, it’s a fallacy to suggest that we all act out of transcendental universal values (and in the Palestine solidarity movement, I assure you, we do not) or that our politics should necessarily stem from altruistic humanitarianism (if that were the case, why would we – for example – support the right of Palestinians to armed resistance – a moral, historical and legal right sanctioned under international law). Different people act from different motives. The only danger, I think, is in claiming a privileged voice or narrative in a movement in which the only privileged (and then critically so) voice/narrative should be that of the Palestinians. As long as people do not attempt to elevate their own experiences as central to this movement, I think they are free to negotiate their politics however they choose to for themselves.
“Witness eee on other threads recently going on about 10 jews being killed in Cairo being a pogrom, but unable or to apply the same rationale to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the IDF since 1948.”
If I believed that my people were the only ones worth mourning over, and nobody else but them were close to my heart, wasn’t raised with the idea that equality is desirable, and on top of that was raised to believe that Palestinians and / or Muslims in general disliked Jews for religious reasons, I’d likely not be too sad to see them die, either, regardless of the ratio.
I hesitate to wager that most people like that can ever truly be swayed, I think if they ever are, it would be by an elder in their lives whom they personally respect a lot, and who approaches them with tolerance and understanding before proceeding to challenge them, someone who manages to change their immediate emotional response to these issues through something familiar, someone who has their trust- something a hostile stranger throwing facts at them will never manage to do. Once someone has developed a strong emotional response to something, they’ll construct their own facts to justify it and will tend to ignore or argue away all contrary facts.
Yep, “non-Zionist” is morally better and more precise.
There is a fundamental difference between people killed in war, and people killed in a pogrom. A pogrom is basically when a majority mob attacks a minority population living in its midst. A pogrom by Israelis would be for example the Jews of Tel-Aviv attacking the Arabs of Jaffa because of suicide bombings.
So if you think there were pogroms by Jews against Arabs, give the historical examples and let’s discuss. Of course there was violence between Jews and Palestinians. But I can’t think of a case in which a Jewish mob in a vigilante fashion attacked Arabs living in Jewish cities. Maybe you have some examples in mind.
A clear case of a pogrom is the 1929 Hebron Massacre in which the Arab population of Hebron turned on the Jewish population that was living there for hundreds of years.
Okay, so the settlers are combatants in war, then? All of the Israelis in the West Bank are soldiers? Doesn’t that mean Itamar (if it was committed by the Palestinians who were tortured into confessing) was an act of self-defense, conceivably? By your logic, the parents were soldiers and the children were “human shields.”
eee :
“There is a fundamental difference between people killed in war, and people killed in a pogrom.”
++++ Nope.
Mig,
Ok, there is no difference between killing people during war and killing your neighbors. Why then do we give the former medals and put the latter in jail?
If I understand your argument, you’re saying it’s better to attack innocent people living peacefully in their villages, with the purpose of expelling the native people of the land from their homes, if it’s done by a militia as the zionists/Israelis did?
Lyn117,
There was a civil war in mandatory Palestine, not a pogrom.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Care to give me an example of a Jewish mob attacking Arab Israelis and killing some of them?
eeeeeeeeeeeeee
Do not mention the “Hebron Massacre” without also mentioning the hundreds of Arabs who sheltered hundreds of Jews in their homes, thus protecting them from harm. You are so damn determined to present a situation of 100% hostility from Palestinians that you are sickening.
I can’t think of a case in which a Jewish mob in a vigilante fashion attacked Arabs living in Jewish cities. Maybe you have some examples in mind.
You obviously have a very faulty, or selective, memory. From almost exactly 11 years ago, there were multiple cases over the course of a few days spread throughout Israel.
link to adalah.org
More here:
link to mondoweiss.net
There have been numerous other cases of Jewish mobs attacking Israeli Palestinians or their property, although usually much more isolated in instance, in contrast to the widespread Jewish violence against Israel’s Palestinian citizens that occurred around Yom Kippur in October 2000.
BTW, I noticed your Freudian slip. …”attacked Arabs living in Jewish cities”. Shouldn’t that be “Israeli” cities? Or are all cities in Israel “Jewish” ones in your mind?
A clear case of a pogrom is the 1929 Hebron Massacre in which the Arab population of Hebron turned on the Jewish population that was living there for hundreds of years.
Two points of correction. While it most certainly was a horrible act of mob violence, I don’t think it could be called a pogrom because there is absolutely no indication that the British/Palestinian police played any hand in it, and although vastly understaffed and equipped, the police made valiant attempts to quell the violence. This is in contrast to the Israeli Jewish violence which was assisted by the Israeli police doing nothing to stop the Jewish vigilantes, and in fact attacking the Israeli Palestinian citizens instead.
And number two, I have already corrected you on this one. Most of the victims of the massacre were Ashkenazi, not the resident Mizrahi, and over a third were students from the recently created (1924) Ashkenazi founded Hebron Yeshiva .
link to mondoweiss.net
And BTW, the Egyptian riot in 1945 occurred on November 2, 1945 as a violent consequences of a protest on ” Balfour Day”. Violent attacks occurred against many Westerners, not just Jews, and, again, the Synagogue that was burning down during the riotous violence was an Ashkenazi one. Try reading Joel Beinin’s “The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry.
eee? your reply?
po·grom (p -gr m , p gr m). n. An organized, often officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a minority group, especially one conducted against Jews.
Of course, these pogroms we are discussing are not conducted against Jews, but are instead conducted BY Jews.
Why do you bother to post here, eee, if you’re not going to read the articles on this website?
If you had been reading “Today in Palestine,” which appears every single day, you would know of many, many, many pogroms by Israeli Jews against the Palestinians, since these pogroms are practically a daily occurrence.
Tree,
Your sources are completely slanted. What happened were riots by Israeli Arabs and reaction by Jews. This is not the case of falling on a peaceful population like you want to paint it. It is clear that in Nazareth it is elements in the Arab populations that started the rioting. These were not pogroms.
Here is what happened:
link to en.wikipedia.org
excuse me?
[1]The Or Commission was established to investigate the police response to the rioting.
sorry eee, panels of inquiry set up by the colonizing power do not constitute impartiality. wiki is a ziozone and not to be trusted as a source on the i/p conflict, obviously.
Another case of Israel investigating itself and lo and behold, Israel finds itse;f innocent.
Yup, that’s convincing.
The evidence I provide is for normal people who do not see a Zionist conspiracy around every corner. Israel panels of inquiry are led by respected judges and are truth seeking and transparent.
Eee,
Its apparent you never actually read the wikipedia links you provide. From your link:
And, BTW, this is from the summary of events from the Or Commission, as printed in Haaretz:
So, apparently you think that the Israeli Government’s Or Commission Inquiry is “slanted” too, since it corroborates exactly what my links said. Give it up, man. Your ignorance is just too overwhelming.
And if you are going to say that these were not pogroms because some unrelated Israeli Palestinians may have engaged in violent protests, then by rights you have to say the same thing about the Hebron Massacre, which followed violent clashes between Jews and Palestinians in Jerusalem which in some cases were instigated by unrelated Jews in Jerusalem.
I forgot to include the link to the Or Commision Summary
link to haaretz.com
Israel panels of inquiry are led by respected judges and are truth seeking and transparent.
Except of course when they contradict your view of events, in which case they are “slanted” since the Or Commission corroborated everything my source said.
Ruth Fogel’s father saw his daughter and her husband and children who died as sacrificial lambs.
“Ruth Fogel’s father, Rabbi Yehuda Ben Yishai said “our children are prepared to be sacrificed as an offering at the altar we have to continue to build to bring redemption. Hudi and Ruthie wanted this redemption.”"
link to cnn.com
“Why do you bother to post here, eee,”
Because Phil’s got him tied up in a basement, and beats him if he doesn’t! Poor “eee”
Being an ex-idfer, eee enjoys basements, beatings, and a good nightly dose of un-escapism.
Phil knows this and takes full advantage of it. Tsk tsk tsk, Phil.
non-zionist lacks a sense that one actively opposes zionism, just not for it. if the goal is justice for palestine, anti-zionist (better, pro-palestinian) is the best fit
Phil –
Glad you succeeded. Thanks for the interesting report.
A couple of of points:
-Jews don’t have altars. At least, not for the last 2,000 years. That’s Christian.
“Bima” is useable (if you can use Avinu Malkeinu in a blogpost) or reading table or dais.
-Speaking of Avinu Malkeinu, I assume that you sang the folk melody in the Ashkenazic mode.
-If, indeed, the service was non-Zionist and anti-Zionist friendly, why could these Jews not have advertized their Yom Kippur service without fear of reprisal? Doesn’t the fear of American Jews in Cairo (which I know is standard), point to Egyptian anti-Semitism rather than well-meaning opposition to the State of Israel’s persecution of Arabs?
Are there really no Egyptian Jews left in Cairo?
Welcome to Cairo Phil. I’m glad you had a rich experience marking Yom Kippur. If you are here for a while longer I suggest visiting Alexandria, where there’s a larger practicing Jewish community (by larger I mean, like, 250-300 at the most). Try meeting Naila Kamel (aka Marie Rosenthal) as well, she is an old Jewish Egyptian communist with many stories to tell.
And very briefly: the problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is not their lack of liberalism or tolerance for other religions. That’s a myth. The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is that they are now fulfilling the role of the NDP in repressing the revolution, all for the sake of their own economic interests. But that’s another story for another day.
Thank you for the beautiful account, it brightened up my day, and truly moved me. I’m glad you managed to celebrate such a wonderful Yom Kippur, despite initial struggles, and thanks for sharing.
“I want to tell you, I am not a Zionist.
That’s good, she said, no intellectual should be an ist.”
What a wise mindset.
In my community, where Jews do not advocate Zionism, we’re asked, and indeed seem to believe that they need to keep it to themselves in order to avoid offending the majority who are, instead of encouraged to strike up conversation about it and present a much needed critical view in front of all. It seems to be the only topic where this policy is encouraged, and non-Zionists seem to be incredibly passive about it. I’ve been thinking about how I could contribute to opening up discourse on Zionism, but have not yet been able to come up with any viable ideas. I’m proud to say that otherwise, critical discourse is highly valued.
Your determination to find a Yom Kippur service is more than admirable.
On the “ist” comment. An anti-”ist” is also an “ist”. If you are just indifferent to Zionism, that is a different philosophical position than an “anti”.
What do you think?
I’m also glad that you acknowledge in other posts, the historical struggle for good, for liberation, that Zionism has achieved, even if you regard the fetishizing of it as a corruption.
On the other hand, a commitment undertaken half-way, say Zionism, usually fails. The consequence of Zionism failing to realize a haven in 1948, was a threat of continuation of the same, globally.
Nobody knew that anti-semitism would recede in the US or Europe at that time, how long it would take, or what form it would take, and what forms it would still remain.
Hey if you’re so concerned about how non-Jews think about Jews, why don’t you tell Abe Foxman, Bubu Netanjahu and Larry Summers to stop being such assholes who try to ruin everyone else’s life?
You dedicate so much time to (in your view) “correct” non-Zionists and critics of the establishment Jews. How about manning up and confronting the greatest menaces to society, the big guns, many of which are Jewish and hide behind their Jewishness whenever criticism comes their way? Phil isn’t afraid of this, but you are because of your eternal fear of non-Jews. You wouldn’t wash dirty laundry in the public if your life depended on it.
Combating the likes of Foxman and Summers would surely lessen the potential for anti-Semitism around the world, something you seem to wish for.
I’m pretty sure that most of the antisemites don’t even know who are Foxman, Netanyahu or Summers. Also they’ve never seen a live Jew before.
First of all, it would not only be a good idea to confront the power elite simply to protect Jews from backlash, but also because it would, you know, help the world.
Besides that, you underestimate how many people know the shenanigans of those fuckers. Just because the mainstream media ignores widespread anger as good as it can doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Take Inside Job for example, the oscar winning documentary about how Summers and Co. pushed deregulation and then profited from it with illegal and unstable financial products. A large percentage of the guilty are Jewish, and people recognize it.
So you need to deal with the power elite before a demagogue seizes the moment and says “look those fuckers are Jewish, we need to get rid of all Jews in this country”. What Witty does is criticize people like Weiss who say “look those fuckers are Jewish, we need to get rid of those individuals”.
So Witty and the like protect the power elite AND enable demagogues in the long term. Well done.
Then why do they find so many anti-Semites in the West to scapegoat? Shouldn’t Foxman and the ADL be out of a job here in the United States, by your logic? They certainly aren’t switching their venue from anti-Semitism to racism against blacks or Arabs, so.
Well, I was responding to Phil’s heartful post, what were you responding to.
everyone should support justice for palestine because it’s the right thing to do
we jews have an added incentive, which is to put the lie to the one about israel speaking for all jews
left out are those of us who side with the palestinians and oppose the zionist occupation of their homeland
by traditional rules?
we’re jewish
based on?
jewish culture going way, way back & then some
but then, the jewish powers, on their own, have added another prequiiste to one’s being accepted as a jew; namely, one’s dedication to the zionist project of colonizing palestine, its native people be damned
but many jews would not bow down
couldn’t fool us with their “it’s always been the jewish homeland, besides, we deserve it because of the holocaust & not to forget the pogroms.”
like when the jewish kossacks descend upon the palestinians, pepper-spray them their international friends, with at least three body bags a a week & injuring many more?
we’re to buy into that horror story?
become involved in a project to wipe-out another people?
why until recently the settler entity israel (in america, israel-firsters) denied that a palestinian people even existed
no name
land gone
water going
wotj crops soon to follow
& this was done in our names
Since Foxman and the ADL define any criticism of Israel to be “anti-Semitic,” they will never be out of a job. The more we learn about Israel, the more reasons we have to be “anti-Semitic.”
Was that directed at me or dimadok, Witty? Because I was responding to dimadok.
The whole question of Jewish identity and the struggle against oppression as a minority is thousands of years old. I was privileged to see the play “New Jerusalem” last night in Philadelphia. It is about the “The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656″. I found it to resonate profoundly on today’s issues surrounding Zionism, the separation of church and state vs. theocracy, and freedom of speech and expression.
Anyone who can get to Philadelphia to see it should do so. There is also a Philosophy Festival as part of the play. Information is at:
link to lanterntheater.org
I neglected to link the information for the Philosophy Festival. It is at:
link to lanterntheater.org
Also, a very good recent book on Spinoza is “A Book Forged in Hell: Sprinoza’s Scandalus Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age.” by Steven Nadlar.
link to amazon.com
I think you should write a book, Phil. The best writers bring a different insight and you have that.
I’d order it in a heartbeat. I have Sand, Mearsheimer and Walt, Finkelstein, Burg, Pappe in my bookshelf. Would really like to add Weiss.
Time to hate those towelettes, towelresets, towelbrackets … for being so…, so…., soo anti-semantic, anti-septic, anti-sriptic!
Thanks Phil,
I remember couple years ago in Ramadan there was a 30 episode series about the life of Lila Murad the famous Egyptian Jewish superstar who refused to join the Zionist movement then. I only watched pieces here and there so I can not tell you much about it, but it was also about her Jewish family and community in Egypt.
Here is a short video I found on YouTube ( starts with a drunk fan with a gun asking her to sing again when she was too tired to do so ) :
link to youtube.com
noland, careful. You are putting dents into the western Zionist Propaganda that Jewish communities and culture has a deep, rich and positive place in Arabic speaking countries — Semitic regions.
Elderly Lebanese Jews living in Israel mourn a loss. The very few still in Lebanon hold their home of Lebanon dear as they and their families were there for many many centuries.
“We had Christian, Sunni, Shiite and Druze neighbors with whom we had an excellent relationship,” the red-haired and light-eyed woman in her 60s said, as she pulled on an ever-present cigarette. ”
link to haaretz.com
(In fact after the creation of Israel, Lebanon’s Jewish population increased. That was a scary development for the Zionist enterprise.) The emergence of Zionism made life precarious for Jews everywhere in the ME. Was that the point? To make life miserable for Jews in the ME and get them into Israel. The purpose of the Lavon Affair. The global fear mongering?
Yet as a few young Lebanese, who are Jewish say:
“Before the (1975-1990) civil war, there were about 22,000 of us. It was after the 1982 (Israeli) invasion of Lebanon that our presence became considerably diminished,” said Samuel.
For Efraim, also a merchant and a member of the Jewish Council, the community’s official authority, one of the annoyances of life in Lebanon is the way in which other Lebanese mix the terms “Jewish” and “Israeli”.
…
To him, “that’s exactly as if we used the term Iranians to describe Lebanese Shiites.
“They do not understand that Israel means nothing to us. ….,” he said.
link to ynetnews.com
And for this Lebanese Jews are discriminated against, disliked (perhaps even hated by some) in Zionist Israelis. Arrogantly told that they need to be rescued, or are not even Jewish. (Same for Arab Jews elsewhere.)
Where is the Zionist tolerance of Jews?
“I never had so meaningful a Yom Kippur as yesterday in Cairo” .
What low standards you must have . No rabbi , no cantor , no prayerbooks , a remnant of an ark no doubt minus a Torah scroll . No minyan , in fact no community whatsoever . Not even the ghosts of a once thriving, colourful Jewish community of some 80,000 to observe this grotesque parody of a Yom kippur service . A veritable one man and his dog effort – without the dog .
This you call the freedom of religion . Well it’s free of the Jewish community that’s for sure . Overnight 80,000 Jews suddenly became ardent zionists . Piffle . The creation of Israel gave Arabs the perfect excuse to rid themselves of their Dhimmi Jews and unleashing the ever present visceral antisemitism of the masses . Antisemitism that maintains itself today with state tv broadcasting blood libels and reference to the protocols as a norm .
Jewish businesses and property were seized in the process never to be returned or compensated for . But your ” freedom of religion” is not confined to the Jewish community . Just ask the Copts how they are enjoying their own “freedom ”
Just how far removed are you from your religion to perceive this as anything other then what it is . The ethnic cleansing of an entire Jewish community .
The creation of Israel gave Arabs the perfect excuse to rid themselves of their Dhimmi Jews
but the jews didn’t leave egypt with the creation of israel. they left after the lavon affair.
Annie, what you are doing is making excuses for ethnic cleansing. it would be like saying the Palestinians ‘left’ Israel because of Israel’s war of independence. with a heavy heart, I accept the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel, why is it impossible for you people to accept the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries.
I suppose you and harvey would rather celebrate Yom Kippur in Israel.
And anyway, you make excuses for ethnic cleansing all the time! How many times do Zionists cite the Holocaust as justification for ethnically cleansing Palestine. I’ve yet to see you object to and challenge that DBG, NOT ONCE have you shown even an iota of care for what your Jewish nation has done and the atrocities it is accountable for.
It’s hardly anti-Semitic to worry about whether the “Jewish nation” is territorially aggressive or subversive to nations which host Jewish communities. Those are facts now, thanks to Israel.
no, it is you making ‘excuses’ dbg, in fact you have already used the word twice in this exchange. i am merely pointing out, had your allegation been true about the alleged egyptian “perfect excuse to rid themselves of their Dhimmi Jews ” as resulting from the “creation of israel” the timing of their expulsion would not have been precipitated by other events.
link to en.wikipedia.org
your claim, that the expulsion was a result of the creation of israel is false.
Annie,
In September of 1947 the Iraqi Prime Minister warned the British Foreign Office that if the UN’s plan to solve the Palestine problem was not “satisfactory” to the Arabs, “severe measures should be taken against all Jews in Arab countries.” In October senior Egyptian UN delegate Hussein Heykel announced that “the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Moslem countries would be jeopardized by the establishment of a Jewish state.”
In 1948 there was about 75000 Jews in Egypt. The wikipedia article is silent on the fact that some 1000-2500 Egyptian Jews were hustled into internment camps after the pan-Arab invasion of May 1948, and that some 10,000 left in the 1948-1950 period. The rough consensus from a variety of sources is that there were about 40,000 Jews that were left there in 1958. All scholars agree that some 25,000 were expelled between 1955-1957, meaning that about 10,000 left in the period before, and that there is not any record of any mass migrations between 1951-1954.
Benny Morris, in his most recent work on the 1948 war, puts the number fleeing in 1948-1950 much higher and has asserted that,
“about 25,000 left in 1948—1950. The bulk
of the remainder left under duress or were
deported, with their property confiscated, in
1955-1957, immediately before and after
the Sinai-Suez war. By 1970 only about
1000 remained. These too, subsequently
departed.”
So, according to all of the available evidence, it would seem that at least 10,000, perhaps more, Egyptian Jews fled immediately following the 1948 War.
(“1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War,” p.414)
link to justiceforjews.com
Mainly because it is based on a myth that was invented by WOJAC in the 1970′s and was unanimoudly rejected by the Mizrahi Jewish community.
I was hoping I’d run into you.
I have a gift, just for you:
link to walt.foreignpolicy.com
Scroll down to the comment section, and enjoy.
Since my reply to your spurious October 1, 8:24am post
link to mondoweiss.net
was banned, I decided to post my comprehensive reply on the comment section of Stephen Walt’s “What I’m telling the South Koreans” October 5 blog entry, so that you would not feel cheated.
I specifically picked Walt’s blog. Appreciate the irony?
Said you “Except that none of this took place. In Iraq for xample, it was Jewish terorists who w3ere caught setting off bombs against Jewish targets, in an attempt to create panic and flight of the Jewish population from Iraq.”
This is pretty silly. The wave of persecution that swept over Iraqi Jewry was ferocious: about 1500 Jews dismissed from government positions, doctors having their licenses revoked, merchant’s import and export licenses canceled, to the accompaniment of a whole range of economic sanctions.
Said Iraqi PM Nuri Sa’id in January 1949: “all Iraqi Jews would be expelled if the Israelis did not allow the Arab refugees to return to Palestine.” They weren’t, but in October some 2000 Jews were thrown into jails and concentration camps, and their property and money extorted and stolen. After 1949 they began to leave, and not because they were being treated so swell.
I think this is called “collective punishment.”
And this was just Iraq. There were innumerable pogroms and acts of mob violence all over the Arab world after November 30, 1947 and again after May 15, 1948.
Seriously Robert,
You have to be the most desperate and case I’ve come across. I am flatterered (and disturbed) that I have become such an object of your obsession. It’s pretty creepy.
So let me get this straight, you highkacked Walt’s blog in order to try and prove a point (failing miserably of course) on this one. That’s not ironic Robert, that’s pathological and disturbed.
That was AFTER jewish terrorists sert of bombs nio Baghdad, whcih I would nto dedscribe as silly.
But they weren’t expelled Robert as you admit. They left. There were no expulsions carriwed out by milirias, armed forces of police.
That’s true, but pretty depsrate gioven that Israel had just perpetrated this very crime on 800,000 Palestinians a year ealier.
There were no pogroms Robert and you know it. Yes, there were occasional acts of mob violence, but they took place long after 1948.
BTW. I it looks like you’ve become a source fo comic relief over at Walt’s blog. Thanks for the laugh.
BTW. AJ Cristol, was not a naval aviator (never flew a plane) nor a navy lawyer, but he was indeed a bankruptcy judge who believes, ontrary to the history of the US nazy, believes that eye winess accounts do not constitute evidence.
Robert, it occurs to me that Phil and Adam might have rejected your comment because they have a 4 billion word limit; it’s published in their comments policy. Walt must pay no attention whatsoever to his comments or yours surely would have been banned there as well. Have you no shame? You hijack a post about Korea with a book-length diatribe about the USS Liberty? Do you think there is one human being on Earth who will actually read it? Do you not realize how deranged/obsessive you appear?
Chaos, the Holocaust was no justification for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
I seem to recall that when he suffered persecution elsewhere (when a certain tolerant Muslim regime was replaced by a more aggressive, less tolerant one), Maimonides fled to Egypt and spent the rest of his days there. Did he not?
That seems to be correct, Chaos. It appears that Maimonides left the Iberian Penensula after the Almohads took over Muslim Spain. Interestingly enough, the Almohads were very similar to the modern day Salafi/Wahabi movement . Maimonides ended up travelling to the Middle East to become Saladin’s physician after studying medicine at Al-Qarawiyyin University, one of the oldest Islamic madrassas in the world .
I’m glad to see you’re still around :D Is it just me, or are we getting less feedback from Muslims and other “minorities” lately? I worry that this place has become incredibly hostile, quite frankly, to Muslims generally and Palestinians specifically because the moderators give Israeli posters such latitude (which to be fair they maybe have to, otherwise Israeli posters could post nothing at all given how frequently they break standards of civility).
Well, I’m glad that your still holding down the fort :D I can’t speak for the other brown people who contribute to Mondoweiss but I do not comment that often because I just don’t have that much to contribute. The things that I wanted to say have already been said far more eloquently by commenters like you, Shmuel, Avi and others .
Just not true, they started leaving from 1919.
In 1948, “bombings of Jewish areas killed 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200, while riots claimed many more lives”.
link to en.wikipedia.org
By the time of the Lavon affair, the community was well on its way to disappearing.
By the time of the Lavon affair, the community was well on its way to disappearing.
do you have any evidence to support this. the bombings in 48 is not evidence of the community ‘disappearing’.
The evidence is right there in the article. From as early as 1919, the situation in Egypt became hostile to the Egyptian Jews:
In Joel Beinin’s summary: “Between 1919 and 1956, the entire Egyptian Jewish community, like the Cicurel firm, was transformed from a national asset into a fifth column.”
Do you really believe that killing more than 70 Jews and wounding many did not make Most Egyptian Jews understand that their future there was very limited?
In 1948? Which would be after 1947, which was after your family started razing Palestinian villages and driving the natives out of Palestine.
eee, let’s back up. i’m not sure what your point is. when you wrote earlier Just not true, they started leaving from 1919. were you disagreeing with dbg’s claim it was the creation of israel that gave egyptians the ‘excuse’ to expel jews?
if the evidence is right there in the article copy the part supporting that allegation please because according to that wiki link (i posted it also @12:13 pm with the part about their expulsion) it doesn’t say anything about jews being expelled from egypt as a result of israel’s creation. it lists other events, ones that happened years later.
Annie,
As Arab and Jewish nationalism evolved and grew post WWI, the Egyptian Jews were not seen by their compatriots as Egyptians any more. The creation of Israel was a singular even, but what was pushing Jews out was the growing nationalistic consciousness by Egyptians which grew significantly after the end of the Ottoman empire. The Jews started leaving not because of official expulsions, but because they saw no future for themselves in an Arab nationalistic society.
Yes Chaos, just like the Jews rounded up the Germans living in Israel after WWII and killed 70 of them. Oh, wait they didn’t. Only in your demented mind what happened in Palestine justifies what happened in Cairo.
In your demented mind, what happened in Germany and Poland justifies what happened in Palestine.
eee :
“From as early as 1919, the situation in Egypt became hostile to the Egyptian Jews”
++++ Ahha. So what happened in 1919 ?
“In your demented mind, what happened in Germany and Poland justifies what happened in Palestine.”
Where did I ever say that?
This entire exchange illustrates one of Zionisms greatest triumphs. Namely equating Jewishness with Zionism and thereby creating the conditions that resulted in the expulsion of many tens of thousands of Arab Jews into Israel. That was a major accomplishment for the Zionist. Focus that population into that tiny sector on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean in order to create the Jewish majority that would then justify the expulsion of the native Arabs. It has worked for the last 60 years. Now the big question is whether the Zionist can consolidate their gains. Next big problem is how does a modern economy survive in the face of BDS now that they have used up all of their Misrahi fodder. Once the rest of the world no longer supports this crazed Zionist experiment in the land of Palestine its days are likely numbered.
According to your own link, they didn’t. In fact, your own link opints out that there was a strong anti Zionist sentiment in Egypt and a belief that Palestine could not abosrd all the Jewish refugees from Europe.
Again, your won Wiki link provides no evidence to support this.
From your own sources (after 1922):
During British rule, and under King Fuad I, Egypt was friendly towards its Jewish population, though Egyptian nationality was denied to 90 % of Egyptian Jews regardless of how many generations they resided in the country. Jews played important roles in the economy, and their population climbed to nearly 80,000 as Jewish refugees settled there in response to increasing persecution in Europe. A sharp distinction had long existed between the respective Karaite and Rabbanite communities, among whom traditionally intermarriage was forbidden. They dwelt in Cairo in two contiguous areas, the former in the harat al-yahud al-qara’in , and the latter in the adjacent harat al-yahud quarter. Notwithstanding the division, they often worked together and the younger educated generation pressed for improving relations between the two.[19]
You’re lying eee,
The evidence is right there in the article. From as early as 1919, the situation in Egypt became hostile to the Egyptian Jews:
In Joel Beinin’s summary: “Between 1919 and 1956, the entire Egyptian Jewish community, like the Cicurel firm, was transformed from a national asset into a fifth column.”
This is one of the fallacies of using a single line from a Wikipedia article to make broad assumptions. Beinin, in writing “The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry”, covers the time from 1919 (the end of WWI and the end of Ottoman rule, as well as the first stirrings of modern Egyptian nationalism, and the rise of Zionism in Palestine) up through 1977 and beyond. Its clear from his book that he is making no such claim as eee’s that Egyptian Jews faced a hostile environment starting in 1919, and that Egyptian Jews left Egypt during that time, and in fact Beinin contrasts the significant place Jews had in the Egyptian national discourse during that time, compared to the suspicion of Zionist leanings and disloyalty to Egypt that was a major factor in their insecure status in the mid 1940′s and beyond.
From Beinin’s “Dispersal of the Egyptian Jews”:
So, in other words, Egyptian Jews were NOT leaving Egypt in significant numbers prior to the 1948 War, since these 100 emigrants in 1945-6 (“the largest single group prior to 1948″) constituted about one tenth of a percent of Egyptian Jews.
As to the Egyptian riots in 1945, this is what Beinin wrote:
And, in the interest of giving a clearer picture of the situation of Egyptian Jews in 1948 through 1956, here is Beinin again, on the start of the 1948 war:
All quotations transcribed from “The Dispersal of the Egyptian Jews”
I thought it was after Israel attacked Egypt in 1956 that the Jews were expelled from Egypt. I read somewhere that half of them were foreign Jews, I don’t know if its true. There both because they were fleeing the nazis and because of the long decades of European colonialism.
However, Egypt is one of I believe only 2 Arab states from which Jews were actually expelled. Syria and Iraq passed laws to prevent Jews from leaving – surely a violation of their rights but a long way from “ethnic cleansing”. In Algeria (and probably Tunisia), the French gave full citizenship to native Jews, something they didn’t grant to native Muslims (I guess the colonial Jews already had citizenship). Consequently most Jews left with the other colonial French when Algeria gained its independence.
I thought it was after Israel attacked Egypt in 1956 that the Jews were expelled from Egypt.
yes, according to wiki also.
What low standards you must have . No rabbi , no cantor , no prayerbooks , a remnant of an ark …..
you didn’t mention atonement and repentance. isn’t that what makes yom kippur meaningful?
Oh, annie! Christmas isn’t about the mass, it’s about the decorations and the gifts! Why should Jewish holidays be any different? :)
there are no decorations or gifts on yom kippur.
Since when was Yom Kippur about the material symbols and trappings?
A minyan is not a material trapping. The whole idea is to make Jews pray as communities and not as individuals. An individual prayer does not count, only a communal one. There is just no Jewish community in Cairo if there is no minyan.
It may not be a minyan in the sense of a public, communal prayer, but that does not prevent the ritual celebration by a few individuals of Yom Kippur.
Otherwise the prayers of a Jew who must pray alone, for whatever reason, do not count???? Prayers do not c o u n t??
Catholics may have a Christmas prayer and observation without a Priest and a ritual Mass. It is still a spiritual Christmas celebration.
You have said you are not a religious Jew, seems so.
Show that you really care about the Copts. They are being slaughtered today by the SCAF. All private stations were turned off are so that the state TV can promote sectarian violence. See a military vehicle running over protesters. link to pic.twitter.com
WARNING. The following photo is extremely graphic. link to yfrog.com
On the other hand a Muslim protestor was heard saying, “Let’s head to the front. I’m not going to let the Christians take a bullet alone.” and “One hand, Muslims and Christians.”
The real enemy of the Copts is the remnants of the Mubarek regime. Again, if you really cared you would really ask the Copts. A quick way to do so is to follow hashtag: #maspero.
Many in Egypt say that all the attacks are Mubarak loyalists or others to see “I told you so, you need Mubarak, you will need the military control” Whatever it takes to hold on.
No, not even the Copts claim it is Muslim extremists.
Interesting how the Hasbara brigade keeps bringing up the danger to Christians in Egypt all over the net.
Some more video from Maspiro showing Army vehicles running over unarmed mostly Christian and some Muslim protestors:
link to youtube.com
Graphic video of victims:
link to youtube.com
More info:
link to arabawy.org
Vivian holding hand of her dead fiancee, Maikel, killed by army.
link to s1.proxy03.twitpic.com
Picture from her engagement party:
link to a.yfrog.com
What low standards you must have . No rabbi , no cantor , no prayerbooks , a remnant of an ark no doubt minus a Torah scroll .
Not a Hasidic bone in your body, Harvey? Never heard the story of the illiterate shepherd-boy whose whistle – so the Ba’al Shem Tov said – carried all of the Yom Kippur prayers of the “decent Jews” in the congregation up to heaven? The Rabbis didn’t call prayer “service of the heart” for nothing.
Exquisite writing Phil, that freedom is what America is all about.
“G’mar Hatimah Tovah” or “May You Be Sealed for a Good Year (in the Book of Life).” This reflects the Jewish view of Yom Kippur as the day when God seals our fates (determined by our actions) for the upcoming year in the Books of Life or Death. The entire ten Days of Awe from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur are viewed as the beginning of the New Year, so you may also still wish your Jewish friends a “Happy New Year” or “L’Shana Tovah” on Yom Kippur.
Peace.
Wow we humans make such pretty frills of comfort outta ancient superstitions – the vine burning due to faulty electrics becomes the “burning bush”.
C’mon now seriously!
Thousands of years of every type of imaginable ‘ritual’ has not brought justice to the victims of the world. I be sure that ‘god’s’ foremost wish is for humans to spend their limited time on earth in active pursuit of justice which is the precursor to universal peace.
A worthy observation to remember.
As to the puny number of Egyptian jews in Cairo, what the heck Phil?! They’re born ARAB SEMITES before they’re reared jewish. They’re Arabs and they’re very much at home in Egypt – yet you’re making them out to be ‘victims’. Well they’re not victims – they’re proud individuals. Unlike the self-exiled Arab jewish population who were gullible enough to buy into zionism – their own direct fault, not israel’s (regardless of it’s evil ways). I mean for Pete’s sakes there’s something called taking ‘responsibility’ that adults are supposed to encumber themselves with.
Yeah sure nice diary by Phil Weiss – if your like saccharine with your maudlin shot of gin.
How is this Yom-Kippur non-Zionist? They admitted that the backbone of this congregation are the Israelis from the embassy. Did you even ask the people there how many were non-Zionists?
And what have you affirmed if the people there are frightened to advertise that they are having the service? You affirmed that it is dangerous being a Jew in Cairo.
What he should have asked is how many of them would support Israel invading and taking control of the Sinai again. If what you’re suggesting is true.
As I wrote on another thread, I have to agree with eee on that.
If the congregation is non-Zionist friendly (and the Israelis have all left) surely they should be able to advertize their services without fear. Why does each and every worshipping Jew in Cairo need his own policeman to guarantee his safety?
In light of the posting by an Alexandrian Jew, I wonder how different is it for the Alexandria Jewish community.
Haunting. Very beautiful and very sad. I will remember this.
So Annie if I understand you correctly the Lavon affair justified the ethnic cleansing of an entire community comprising of some 80,00 people . Tell me , were they all in on the Lavon affair ? That is on a par with the assassination of Ernst Von Rath by a Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan in order to justify Crystal Night and the Holocaust . How about the destruction of Grozny and the death of 150,000 Chechnyans in response to the terrorist outrage in Breslan . Using your argument Britain would have been justified in expelling its Irish community because of the IRA bombings on the mainland . Or perhaps the Asian Muslim community after 7/7 .
I’m new to this site . Your comment is not what I would hope to see on a serious blog .
nice strawman harvey. and no, you do not understand me correctly and that is certainly not my argument.
Well Annie, what is your argument?
Can’t you read? Seriously?
i don’t ever justify ethnic cleansing eee. there’s a difference between interpreting historical events and analysis and justification.
initially my argument was related to what dbg said, that the creation of israel gave egyptians an excuse to expel jews. i don’t think that’s a proper recounting of what happened. i think it is very likely there were forces operating in egyptian society at the time very similar to the rabid neocon islamaphobes operating in american society today. you wrote upthread about “growing nationalistic consciousness by Egyptians which grew significantly after the end of the Ottoman empire.”
i think there is a difference between official action taken by a government and the mood of a society. an action like the lavon bombings goes a long way towards moving a whole society. look at american society today compared to pre 9/11. look at how certain people took that emotion and used it to ferment hatred of muslims.
anyway, my argument is it was not one event, like the creation of israel.
The Jews started leaving not because of official expulsions, but because they saw no future for themselves in an Arab nationalistic society.
well, ” no future for themselves in an Arab nationalistic society” is not ethnic cleansing. and the wiki link describes 25,000 leaving as a result of the first expulsions and more after 67. why some started leaving as early as 1919 doesn’t really address the expulsions.
Annie,
You are really splitting hairs. The government of Egypt by allowing a hostile environment against Jews for decades was de facto practicing a un-official policy of ethnic cleansing.
how am i splitting hairs?
The government of Egypt by allowing a hostile environment against Jews for decades was de facto practicing a un-official policy of ethnic cleansing.
things do not happen in a vacum eee, this reminds me of all the recent news reports about israel’s embassy in cairo, the ones that skipped the part about israel killing 5 policeman. i don’t agree or support the egyptian government’s expulsion of jews, not at all. i am against collective punishment. but it doesn’t dismiss the fact it was not a one way street. read your own wiki link for heaven’s sake. your head is so wrapped around the innocents of jews you can’t seem to fathom how a society gets to this point. dbg stated jews were expelled because egyptians had an ‘excuse’ with the creation of israel. either you agree with that stupid argument or you do not. i merely pointed out the official expulsions started years later, after egyptian jews spies working for israel carried out a series of bombings.
Of course things do not happen in a vacuum. But it seems that this only applies to Arabs, not to Jews. You completely dismiss the killing of Jews by Arabs that led to the 1947-1948 civil war in Palestine as the main reason that led to the Nakba. The killings themselves do not justify the Nakba, but they sure as hell explain it. How do you like this argument?
of course i dismiss the killing of Jews by Arabs pre 1947-1948 civil war in Palestine as the “main reason” that led to the Nakba. there’s tons of evidence the zionists had no intention of having 100′s of arab villages in their midst and they wanted to expel the palestinians so they would be the majority in their ‘national home’.
also, i didn’t say the lavon affair was the ‘main reason’. i’m not sure why you are arguing as if i support this expulsion. i don’t.
dbg stated jews were expelled because egyptians had an ‘excuse’ with the creation of israel. either you agree with that stupid argument or you do not.
do you agree with this statement eee, that jews were expelled because egyptians had an ‘excuse’ with the creation of israel?
Annie,
Of course DBG is right. The Egyptians knew Israel would accept them so they could officially expel the Egyptian Jews. What could they have done if no country were willing to take them?
Do you dismiss the killings of Jews by Arabs as one of the reasons for the Nakba?
eee :
“How do you like this argument?”
++++ More and more idiotic, lately from you.
eee quote :
“You are really splitting hairs. The government of Egypt by allowing a hostile environment against Jews for decades was de facto practicing a un-official policy of ethnic cleansing.”
tell us, if correct, how it differs from what israel has been doing for the past however many years? don’t be selective in your righteousness eee…
BS. There is a hostile environment against Muslims in the US. Does that amount to a facto practice of un-official policy of ethnic cleansing?
Were Egyptians wrong to fear that Jews in their country might wage an insurgency? It happened in Palestine and the Lavon affair mirrors the Zionist terrorism that preceded the Nakba.
Chaos, I think it is really almost impossible to judge — right or wrong — Egyptian paranoia of the time as they were coming out of Ottoman/French/British occupation and into rising Arab Nationalism as centuries of occupation broke up. But the Zionist nationalist narrative (claiming all Jews as Zionist) and the terrorism around Zionism struck fear into the Arab world.
But in hindsight let’s say it was very wrong for the Egyptians to fear. Just as wrong as Roosevelt acting on fear and locking up Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Yes, you are right. It is clear that the US needs to expel its Muslims because of the terrorist attacks and attempts by Muslims on its soil.
Furthermore, it is clear that maybe 20,000 Jews of fighting age could easily take over Egypt. They were responding to a huge risk,
eee , Have you lost your mind completely ?
Don’t you see that this is the argument Chaos is making? sigh.
eee, Chaos is not making any argument. In fact might even be pointing out the inanity and inhumanity and crime of of collective punishment of others by a paranoid society.
….you are projecting and mig is right….have you lost your mind?
Ellen,
Of course Chaos is making an argument:
“Were Egyptians wrong to fear that Jews in their country might wage an insurgency? It happened in Palestine and the Lavon affair mirrors the Zionist terrorism that preceded the Nakba.”
He is implying Egyptians were not wrong to fear an insurgency by Egyptian Jews. I am projecting nothing, just reading what he wrote.
Was Egypt later invaded by Israel and was the Sinai peninsula taken by military force, eee? You really can’t have it both ways. The fact is, Zionism is a threat to safety and security in the Middle East. You are the Jewish equivalent of al-Qaeda — or more accurately, al-Qaeda is the Muslim equivalent of you.
I have yet to hear of ANY Muslims talk about ethnically cleansing the United States and making room for Muslim colonization — let alone a majority, as you like to claim about Zionism and Jews. So really, your feeble attempt at analogy doesn’t work.
No Hervey, and accorduign to all sources, 80,000 were not ethnically cleansed.
it seems that the “Lavon affair” had many repercussions. I just found this on a contemporary Time magazine article. It seems that one thing leads to another and it is not useful to extrapolate one small piece of a larger puzzle:
>”Road to War. Through all the fog of censorship and intrigue obscuring the Lavon affair, the one clear fact was that Lavon’s resignation in February 1955 brought Ben-Gurion back from 15 months’ retirement in the Negev to take Lavon’s post. Shortly afterward, Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister, replacing Moderate Moshe Sharett, who was more susceptible to the argument that Israel must try to quiet the fears of its Arab neighbors if it is to live in peace with them. Eleven days after Ben-Gurion’s return, the Israeli army carried out the massive reprisal raid on Gaza in which Israelis blew up the Egyptian headquarters and killed 38 Egyptians.
Egypt’s President Nasser has often pointed to this blow as the event which convinced him that only if he sought arms, and quickly, could he save Egypt. Failing to get them in the West, Nasser turned to make the cotton-for-guns deal with the Russians that brought Communist influence into the Middle East. As more Israeli raids followed, young Shimon Peres flew to Paris to negotiate the alliance that armed Israel with French jets and tanks and paved the way for the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in the fall of 1956.>”
link to time.com
it is not useful to extrapolate one small piece of a larger puzzle:
i’m not sure i understand your meaning. if it’s not useful to extrapolate one small piece of a larger puzzle why do it?
annie, i thought i pointed out that the subsequent events that were triggered by the lavon affair are of hugely more importance than the affair itself. it’s like the pro zionist posts here that keep dredging up the “hebron massacre” without addressing the effect of the ashkenazi jews on the community. i have been disgusted with israel since 1982
thanks phil… great story with some fascinating perspective…
Chaos4700
” I suppose you and Harvey would rather celebrate Yom Kippur in Israel ”
Where on earth did that come from ? The thrust of my comment concerned the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish community in Egypt .
I live in London and celebrated Yom Kippur in a packed Synagogue with my family . Unlike Mr Weiss , we are fortunate in that we have all the necessary accouterments of a thriving community to worship in accordance with the precepts and solemnity of the occasion .
How sad that Mr Weiss could not participate in the full experience of Yom Kippur in Cairo , there being no community to share it with . I earnestly hope that he is able to return to a proper, meaningful Yom kippur next year in a safe, welcoming community .
…which pretty much discounts any Zionist synagogue.
I earnestly hope that he is able to return to a proper, meaningful Yom kippur next year in a safe, welcoming community .
No you do not. You are ridiculing Mr. Weiss.
A happy day for Phil but a sad one for Cairo. In clashes between the Christian Copts and the Cops in south Cairo today, it’s being reported that dozens and maybe a hundred have died. Where’s Phil on this?
Phil is adamant that his Arab Spring was not bogus and the true face of what really happened is starting to show through. We can forget about freedom of religion as far as Christians are concerned.
I apologise if it offends, but isn’t going all that way to celebrate a Jewish festival in Cairo at this particular moment a bit like hiking on the Iranian border? Suppose it had led to trouble, hardly an inconceivable scenario, how would that have helped anything or anyone?
You are my hero Phil, good job!
“It began as a journalistic stunt story.”
Wow, and I thought “having your cake and eating it, too” was such severe criticism, I was almost afraid to write it.
No matter how cynical I try to be, I can never keep up.