Youssef Darwish - Darwish Views On Zionism, Jews in Egypt and Jewish Exodus

Darwish Views On Zionism, Jews in Egypt and Jewish Exodus

In 1947 Darwish joined a group called Jews against Zionism. In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly two years before his death, he told the reporter, "We denounced the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine but the government closed us down while Zionist organisations continued to function freely". In another interview, he stated that there was no discrimination against Jews in Egypt prior to 1948, except for the 1947 incidents when members of the Muslim Brotherhood attacked the Jews in Haret El-Yehud. But as the State of Israel was established, many Egyptian Jews began to worry and the Jewish exodus began. He claimed that "sequestration wasn’t a general rule applied to all Jews, but a measure imposed after 1956 primarily on French and British Jews and those who were suspected of having ties to Israel" and that it wasn't until after the 1967 war that the majority of the 10000 Jews who had stayed behind began to leave.

Read more about this topic:  Youssef Darwish

Famous quotes containing the words views, jews, egypt, jewish and/or exodus:

    “Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind; but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts constantly directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour.”
    —Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)

    “Seventy-five million Jews deported or murdered, that’s cleansing. I admire such thoroughness, such methodical patience! When one has no character, one must have a method.”
    —Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    “The great pagan world of which Egypt and Greece were the last living terms ... once had a vast and perhaps perfect science of its own, a science in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.”
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    “It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    “Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?””
    —Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 32:21.