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.