Ashraf Ramelah: Jews Cope With Egypt’s Hysteria & Revision of Jewish-Egyptian History

Dr Ashraf Ramelah, is the founder and president of Voice of the Copts, a non-profit human rights organisation, whose mission statement is here.

 An able and doughty advocate for the rights of his own community, who as Christians have often been subject to horrendous persecution by Muslim rulers, Dr Ramelah is a friend of Jews and Israel.

 In his latest article he focuses on a subject that will be of interest to all concerned with the history and status of the Jews of Egypt, and I take the liberty of reproducing it here in full:

At the end of last month, the Egyptian courts of Alexandria delivered a verdict to ban annual visits to the historic mausoleum of Moroccan Rabbi Yacoub Abu Hasira in the nearby village of Demto. After thirteen years in the court system, the Administrative Court of Alexandria issued a definitive verdict to abolish the annual celebrations of the Rabbi’s birth on the merit of evidence that Jewish visitors “violate public order and morality and use the opportunity to desecrate the land of Egypt.” In response to the verdict, Israelis requested to have the tomb of Abu Hasira transferred to East Jerusalem. Egyptian authorities denied their request.

The Jewish tradition to journey to the Demto Abu Hasira tomb began in 1907. Jews from around the world – in particular, France, Morocco and Tunisia – made the week-long pilgrimage each year to the Demto tomb to celebrate the Rabbi’s birth (December 26 through January 2). The new ruling now forbids this. Until now, Egypt has always allowed foreign Jews (except for Israeli Jews) to visit the Jewish historical landmark despite the fact that virtually all Jewish-Egyptian citizens have been expelled from Egypt since the Nasser regime – only twenty Jews reside in Egypt today.

Israeli Jews were only allowed visits into Egypt after the signing of the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Special permission was sought from the Sadat government to allow organizing celebration tours (pilgrimages) to the Abu Hasira mausoleum and shrine. This current ruling has put an end to these tours.

Who was Yacoub Abu Hasira, and why is his birthday celebrated? His original name was Jacob Ben Massoud, and he was born in 1805 in southern Morocco. Jewish narrative depicts him as an aged rabbi leaving Morocco by ship on a journey to the Holy Land. During his trip the ship sank, and he clung to a mat (hasira) until he safely reached the shores of Syria. Upon his return from the Holy Land he chose to travel by land. While transiting through Egypt he died, but the miracle of his journey to the Holy Land has been kept alive.

Critically, last month’s court ruling also includes an order for Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities to remove the Rabbi Yacoub Abu Hasira mausoleum from the records of Egyptian Antiquities where it is officially designated a historic monument. The tomb's physical conversion into a mausoleum and simultaneous entry into the records of Egyptian Antiquities can only be considered a second miracle in the Abu Hasira story. Egypt, with its climate of relentless racial bias and paranoia against Jews, is more likely to disavow Jewish-Egyptian history than to embrace it. 

But the reason for the tomb’s designation has more to do with a political decision made by the ambitious former Egyptian Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, in preparing for his bid for the head of UNESCO and the favor he sought for that upcoming election. This occurred shortly before Egyptians and their courts began to stir up the issue of prohibiting visitors to the Abu Hasira tomb. Today, Hosni denies that the tomb conversion and upgrade in 2001 was his doing, citing a committee’s responsibility for it.
 
However, as Culture Minister, committee decisions came through him, and now his response to distance himself from his efforts to seal Egypt’s Jewish heritage only serves to highlight his bigotry. At the time, advocating for the rabbi’s tomb had been politically useful for Hosni in mitigating the impact of one of his previous ideas, publicly declared, to burn all Hebrew books found on the shelves of Egyptian libraries. He was widely known for this anti-Semitic initiative (never materialized) both inside and outside of Egypt which ultimately deprived him of the UNESCO position.

Grievances from Egyptians concerning the Abu Hasira mausoleum and Jewish celebrants began as early as Sadat’s 1977 visit to Israel as a form of indirect opposition to Sadat’s show of friendliness toward the Jewish state. Years later, during Mubarak’s presidency, a heated debate began in 2001. Poor villagers expressed gratitude for the increase in local business during the week-long visits. Although they claimed the Jews were harmless, and no harm would come to them by allowing the festivities, the opposition expressed the standard complaint that Jews in Egypt were a national security problem.

Brainwashed by mosque indoctrination and the public school system, Egyptians tend to believe that Jews coming to Egypt from Israel are spies for the Israeli government. Town’s people backed by Muslim Brotherhood members in the Egyptian Parliament began a case in the Alexandria courts and won an injunction against the Jewish celebrants. A ruling was issued prohibiting the pilgrimage. But this verdict was appealed and reversed within the same year.

The warfare against Abu Hasira continued. In 2010, Jews around the world were warned by Israeli authorities and the Egyptian embassies that attending the pilgrimage might be dangerous in view of the Muslim Brotherhood rise to power and anti-Jewish graffiti smeared on the mausoleum walls. A national television talk show videotaped the Jewish Abu Hasira festivities and saw nothing wrong, but bystanders claimed they saw vicious acts. One witness recalled seeing “slaughtering of pigs in the streets.” A reporter from the Egyptian press described “hysteria and half-naked dancers, unethical behavior.” Chancellor Jaber Qasim, Deputy General of Sufis, ranted that, “the pilgrims are a plot and plan of Zionism to rape the nation by claiming that Jews have roots in Egypt …”  

This frenzy – fabrications and hysteria  – was the “evidence” used by the courts to decide last month’s verdict -- ignorance and prejudice once again leading to the discrimination of minorities. This court ruling now sets a precedent whereby every non-Muslim religious monument, artifact and sacred place in the historic registry becomes vulnerable to the whims of Egypt’s biased courts. In the first place, Egypt’s courts do not have jurisdiction over the status of antiquities or the registry of monuments in the Ministry of Culture where its protection act has the absolute authority. It is not the job of the courts but rather for panels of experts to decide. Moreover, this case sets a precedent which directly contradicts Egypt’s constitution – Part 1, Article 4 and Chapter 3, Article 47-50, 64 – which declares freedom of religion and respect for all religions. Israeli authorities have now launched a complaint with UNESCO where the Abu Hasira mausoleum is recorded as a historic Egyptian monument.

Censored! Egypt Bans Documentary About Jewish Community

Here's the English language trailer for a documentary about the pre-1950s Jewish community in Egypt, which was some 65,000 strong, and thriving.  As reported here the Egyptian authorities have at the eleventh hour withdrawn permission for the film's release.

A Jewish Refugee From Egypt Remembers ...

Gisèle Littman, aka Bat Ye'or ("Daughter of the Nile"), the nom-de-plume attached to her famous book  Eurabia (2005) and other works, has given a fascinating interview on the subject of growing up Jewish in Egypt.

Of the situation of Egyptian Jewry in the immediate wake of the Suez Crisis of 1956, she recalls:

"The anti-Jewish apartheid system deepened. Jews were expelled from clubs, forbidden to go to restaurants, cinemas and public places. Many were immediately expelled from the country or thrown into jail. The secret police would come at night to arrest them. Others, like my mother, were under house arrest and their bank assets frozen. Their telephones were suppressed. Many Jews were isolated and could not communicate. Many left the country immediately, abandoning everything. I remember seeing their flats and beautiful villas ransacked. Each one was leaving in secret, fearing to be prevented from leaving their country which had become a jail.

Just before my mother was put under house arrest, I accompanied her to the bank where she quickly withdrew her jewels. We sold our flat for nothing since the pillage of Jewish homes had lowered prices. I choose twenty books among the hundreds we had and we sold all the rest. This was heart-breaking, as I always wanted to be a writer. I had accumulated many diaries since an early age, and later essays and literary criticisms. I realized that I was witnessing the agony of the Egyptian Jewish community and I made notes for a book. One night I burnt them all in the chimney. It was like dying. I knew we could only leave with two cases each and that the censors would read every piece of paper.

Families were dispersed in all directions. One sister went to London with her husband and child, another planned to go to Belgium, cousins went to Brazil, others went to Switzerland and France. As people were leaving secretly, I never knew whether I would be seeing them for the last time. I was living through the death of a world, not knowing if I would survive the next day. While the mob rejoiced in pillaging, I observed closely the inner destruction of family, friendships, bonds, society and the dignity and resolve of the victims.

By then, I had very few friends remaining. For me they belonged to a beloved and disappearing world that was dying with a part of my life, where everything being so transient also became so precious. In the last months preceding our departure, I walked alone throughout Cairo and Alexandria, their old quarters, their museums and every place that now was deserted of friends and family. For years I was fascinated by Egyptology, art and history. I knew I would never see these treasures again.

We left at night in secret. My father and mother could hardly walk. Thanks to a lawyer my father had at last sold a parcel of land. The proceeds from this sale, together with my mother’s jewels were sent out of the country through a clandestine channel. The Swiss consulate gave us a Nansen passport since Egyptian Jews were allowed to leave Egypt only on condition that they renounce their nationality and all their belongings in Egypt and never come back. We all signed such a declaration.

We had reservations on a KLM flight. We were kept at the airport for hours, our bodies searched, our cases emptied on the floor, insulted, humiliated and threatened by an Egyptian Sudanese officer who was cracking a whip (curbash) around us. My meager twenty Egyptian pounds were confiscated. Finally, they let us depart. We stopped at Amsterdam where my other sister came from Belgium, with her husband and baby to see us and tell us that money and jewels were safely deposited in a bank.

It was strange to see them in an Amsterdam hotel. We were now refugees, homeless, stateless, in a world where we knew no one. We were full of apprehension on the threshold of a new life, where we would destroy our past to build the future. It was my first night in exile."

Read more here.

And on the subject of those forgotten refugees, Jewish fugitives from Arab lands, see Michelle Huberman's new piece here.