Alternatives To Neo-lachrymosity

The mirror image of the neo-lachrymose interpretation of the history of Arab Jews is the common Arab claim that Jews were always well treated in the lands of Islam. Many educated Egyptians are aware of the prominent positions of Ya‘qub Ibn Killis and other Jews in the Fatimid era, Maimonides's choice of Cairo as a safe haven, the waves of Jewish refugees who were welcomed in Egypt from the Spanish expulsion to the pogroms of Russia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the wealth and economic influence of many Jews from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. In support of its claim that Jews had never experienced mistreatment of any sort in Egypt, an official publication of the Egyptian government maintained, “Egypt, throughout its history, has been the shelter of persecuted Jews—no matter where they came from.” ^[30] In recent years, both Arab nationalists and Islamists have asserted with increasing vehemence that despite the warm welcome they received and the wealth they attained, the Jews betrayed Egypt by collaborating with imperialism to undermine the national economy and embracing Zionism. In Chapter 9, I present a critique of this argument and offer an alternative approach.

Despite Bat-Ye’or's claims, there is nothing in medieval Jewish Arab history that can reasonably be compared to the expulsion of Jews from Spain. Many scholars would agree that Jews were generally better treated in Muslim lands than in Christian Europe during the medieval era. And nothing in modern Jewish Arab history can reasonably be compared to the Nazi mass murder. But communities and individuals live in specific moments, not broad historical tendencies. Even if we do not judge by the standard of civic equality, which was not an operative ideal in the premodern Muslim world any more than it was in pre-Enlightenment Europe, there have been more than occasional instances of socially structured discrimination against Jews in Egypt. In the twentieth century, they were inextricably linked to the processes of colonization and decolonization, the nationalist struggle to expel the British troops who occupied Egypt from 1882 to 1956, and the intensification of the Arab-Zionist conflict.

During and after the outbreak of the nationalist uprising of 1919, many Jews identified with and supported the Egyptian nationalist movement. Leading members of the Jewish business elite such as Yusuf Cicurel Bey and Yusuf ‘Aslan Qattawi Pasha, like many of their Muslim and Coptic compatriots, were wary of the populism of Sa‘d Zaghlul and his Wafd Party—the popular leaders of the mass movement. Nonetheless, they regarded themselves as nationalist Egyptians. Decolonization followed a convoluted course, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow never materialized. Unable to negotiate with the militant Wafd, the British overlords unilaterally granted Egypt nominal independence in 1922, and a constitutional monarchy was established. But the palace and the British Embassy, backed by a very large garrison of imperial troops, retained substantial power in the country. They connived to dismiss each government formed by the Wafd, which won every democratic election from 1923 to 1952 (except the two it boycotted because they were obviously rigged). The scope of Egypt's sovereignty was augmented by the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, but many nationalists maintained that as long as British troops remained in the country, independence was a fraud.

Even under the monarchy, there were clear signs pointing to the impending decline in the status of foreign nationals and the mutamassir minorities—permanently resident Greeks, Italians, Armenians, Syrian Christians, and Jews—in postcolonial Egypt. The abolition of the Capitulations in 1937 ended the tax immunities of foreign nationals. The Company Law of 1947 set quotas for the employment of Egyptian nationals in incorporated firms. The abolition of the mixed courts in 1949 established a unified legal system for resident foreign nationals and Egyptian citizens.

On July 23, 1952, a military coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers overthrew the monarchy. The Free Officers were motivated by humiliation over their ignominious defeat in the 1948 Palestine War, revulsion from the corruption and excesses of privilege flaunted by King Faruq and the large landowning elite, resentment over the grossly unjust distribution of Egyptian national wealth, and a burning desire to end the British occupation. The military regime further eroded the privileges of foreigners and mutamassirun and in practice impinged on the status of non-Muslim citizens as well. The markers of this trajectory were the October 1954 Anglo-Egyptian agreement on the evacuation of British military forces, the abolition of the communal courts in 1955, the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956, the confiscation of the property of British and French nationals and Jews in 1956 and Belgian nationals in 1960, and the nationalization of large sectors of the economy in 1961–62, which affected many mutamassir—owned firms along with enterprises owned by Muslim, Coptic, and Jewish citizens. Listing these measures in chronological succession creates the impression of an inexorable trend, but this was not the perception of most contemporary observers.