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Friday, 3 October 2008 at 11:57

Egyptian Jews constitute perhaps the oldest Jewish community outside Israel in the world.
While no exact census exists, the Jewish population of Egypt was estimated at fewer than a hundred in 2004, down from between 75,000 and 80,000 in 1922 !
The historic core of the native Egyptian community consisted mainly of Arabic-speaking Rabbanites, where Rabbinic Judaism is a system that guides the interpenetration of Jewish scripture, and Karaites, where Karaite Judaism is a system that bases its believes on Scripture alone and rejects Talmud and Oral Law.
After their expulsion from Spain, more Sephardi and Karaite Jews began to emigrate to Egypt as it was free of intractable national, ethnic, religious, etc. conflicts, and their numbers as such increased specially with the growth of trading prospects after the opening of the Suez Canal, to play effective role in the commercial and cultural activities of the modern community.
In brief, until the early 20th century the Jewish community, fleeing persecution in Europe, found safe haven in Egypt.

However, the Arab-Zionist clash in Palestine between1936 to 1939, allowed for the first time in modern Egypt the ideological groups to start gaining penetration into the cultural, political, religious, etc. life of the Egyptian society. While such ideological groups were not anti-Semite, but it affected the Jewish relations with Egyptian society, along with its other negative effects on the socity in general, despite the fact that the number of Zionists in the Egyptian Jewry was limited.
Further, with the rise of militant wings for such ideological groups, conditions worsened for Egyptian Jewry by the 1940s, and the decline accelerated after 1952 coup (adopting an Arab Nationalist ideology), then the failed operation of Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs in Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954, and finally Israel's participation, with France and England, in the Suez War in 1956 against Egypt.

In his summing up statement Fu’ad al-Digwi, the prosecutor at the trial of jewish Egyptians which were invovled in 1954 Israeli operation, repeated the official government stance:
"The Jews of Egypt are living among us and are sons of Egypt. Egypt makes no difference between its sons whether Moslems, Christians, or Jews. These defendants happen to be Jews who reside in Egypt, but we are trying them because they committed crimes against Egypt, although they are Egypt's sons.”
However, such tone was acceptable only in the early days of 1952 coup and also as Mr. Digwi was not member of the coup ruling team.
Immediately after England, France and Israeil attack to Egypt in 1956, on November 23, a proclamation was issued stating that 'all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state', and it promised that they would be soon expelled.

Based on ethnic, financial, educational, political, etc. factors, Egyptian Jews left to Israel (35,000), Brazil (15,000), France (10,000), the US (9,000) and Argentina (9,000).

Of the individual Egyptian Jews who played an important role in Egypt:

René Qattawi, leader of the Cairo Sephardi community, endorsed the creation in 1935 of the Association of Egyptian Jewish Youth, with its slogan: 'Egypt is our homeland, Arabic is our language. Qattawi strongly opposed political Zionism and wrote a note on 'The Jewish Question' to the World Jewish Congress in 1943 in which he argued that Palestine would be unable to absorb Europe's Jewish refugees.

Murad Beh Farag (1866-1956) was both an Egyptian nationalist and a passionate Zionist. His poem, 'My Homeland Egypt, Place of my Birth', expresses loyalty to Egypt, and his book, al-Qudsiyyat (1923), defends the right of the Jews to a State.

Yaqub Sanu, an Egyptian nationalist advocating the removal of the British. He edited the nationalist publication Abu Naddara 'Azra from exile which was one of the first magazines written in Egyptian Arabic, and mostly consisted of sarcasm, poking fun at the British as well as the government parties known for their loyalty to British.

Henri Curiel, who founded 'The Egyptian Movement for National Liberation' in 1943, an organization that was to form the core of the Egyptian Communist party.