THE FORCED MIGRATION OF JEWS FROM ARAB COUNTRIES

AND PEACE

Prof. Ada Aharoni

EGYPT

The 1947 Egyptian census reported 65,639 Jewish residents of that country, many of them in finances and liberal professions: engineers, lawyers, doctors and teachers. However, Jewish estimates ran as high as 100,000. Today there are only about 200 Jewish residents left in Egypt. When Egypt joined the 1948 invasion of Israel, it also promulgated anti-Jewish decrees, taking severe measures against those suspected of "Zionist" activities, including imprisonment in concentration camps in Huckstep and in El Tor in the Sinai desert. Jewish property was confiscated and hundreds of Jewish families were banished and dispossessed. Homes were bombed and many Jews were killed or wounded. A mob attacked the Jewish quarter of Cairo, killing a great number of Jews and looting their houses and shops. By November 1950, more than half the Jews had left the country; and most of them made new lives in Israel. Like the Iraqi and Syrian Jews, the Jews of Egypt had been a prosperous and rich community with assets in millions of dollars. When they were forced to uproot themselves, they lost everything.

In 1956 the Egyptians undertook ruthless economic and political measures aimed specifically at the Jews in their midst. Many leaders of the large Egyptian-Jewish community were arrested, led through the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, and some were stoned. Jewish families who had resided in Egypt for generations but had not been granted citizenship, were evicted. Only 5% of the Jews of Egypt had been allowed to become Egyptian citizens, the others were "Apatride" - with no citizenship at all, in the land of their birth. A government order was read in the mosques that Jews were to be regarded as "enemies". (In 1967, 600 Jews were imprisoned, beaten and held for long periods without food or water.) We hear that such slogans are again used in mosques today, all over the Middle East, even in Israel.

Bank accounts were blocked, private and commercial property was confiscated, business firms were liquidated, and Jewish employees were discharged. Jewish department stores, bank and other businesses were confiscated and taken over, as were the Jewish schools, youth movements, old age homes, welfare institutions, hospitals and synagogues. Jewish judges and lawyers were expelled from the bar, and Jewish engineers, doctors and teachers were denied the right to practice. The Egyptian Medical Association instructed the population not to consult Jewish physicians and surgeons.

These ruthless measures brought the end of one of the oldest and most prosperous Jewish communities in the Middle East. It comprised the uprooting of Jews from the whole of Egypt, and especially from Cairo; Alexandria and Port Said, that had been flourishing centers of a tolerant and rich Jewish life. Half of the Egyptian Jews emigrated to Israel, through France or Italy, and the other half are dispersed all over the world, like the Palestinians. Families were broken up and many hitherto prosperous people died of heart attacks when they realized, that all their wealth and property was confiscated by the (Egyptian) government, and that they had become paupers overnight.