1. Gudrun Krämer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914–1952 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989), pp. 234–35. [BACK]

2. For comprehensive modern histories of the Karaite Jews of Egypt, see Mourad El-Kodsi, The Karaite Jews of Egypt, 1882–1986 (Lyons, NY: Wilprint, 1987); Yosef Algamil, Ha-yahadut ha-kara’it be-mitzrayim be-‘et he-hadashah (Ramlah: ha-Mo’etzah ha-Artzit shel ha-Yehudim ha-Kara’im be-Yisra’el, 1985). In 1996, the last formally affiliated male member of the Karaite community living in Cairo, Yusuf al-Qudsi, died. [BACK]

3. For a popular exposition of the tensions around these issues, see Alexander Lesser, “Don't Call Us Jews,” The Jerusalem Report, June 18, 1992, pp. 36–38. [BACK]

4. Yosef Algamil, “Ha-hakham tuvia simha levi babovitch: aharon hakhmei kehilat ha-kara’im be-mitzrayim,” Pe‘amim 32 (1987):49; Tzvi Zohar, “Bayn nikur le-ahvah: nisu’im bayn kara’im le-rabanim ‘al pnei hakhmei yisra’el be-mitzrayim be-me’ah ha-‘esrim,” Pe‘amim 32 (1987):32. [BACK]

5. Shlomo Barad, “ha-Pe‘ilut ha-tzionit be-mitzrayim, 1917–1952,” Shorashim ba-mizrah 2 (1989):115. [BACK]

6. Leonard Praeger, “Yiddish Theater in Cairo,” Bulletin of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo no. 16 (May 1992):24–30. [BACK]

7. Ahmad Sadiq Sa‘d (Isadore Salvator Saltiel), conversation, Cairo, May 1986. [BACK]

8. On the Jews of Syria and their diaspora community in Brooklyn, see Joseph A. D. Sutton, Magic Carpet: Aleppo in Flatbush, the Story of a Unique Ethnic Jewish Community (New York: Thayer-Jacoby, 1979); Joseph A. D. Sutton, Aleppo Chronicles: The Story of the Unique Sephardeem of the Ancient Near East-in Their Own Words (New York: Thayer-Jacoby, 1988). [BACK]

9. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Death of History? Historical Consciousness and the Culture of Late Capitalism,” Public Culture 4 (no. 2, 1992):57. [BACK]

10. James Clifford, “Identity in Mashpee,” in The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 317. [BACK]

11. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991 (London: Granta Books in association with Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 10, 12. [BACK]

12. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), especially pp. 191–281; Edward W. Said, “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile,” Harper's, Sept. 1984, pp. 49–55. [BACK]

13. Paul Gilroy, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993). [BACK]

14. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, pp. 211, 212. [BACK]

15. Ibid., pp. 22, 217. [BACK]

16. Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1993); Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). [BACK]

17. Chakrabarty, “The Death of History?” p. 57. [BACK]

18. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 23. [BACK]

19. Ibid., p. 21. [BACK]

20. Ronit Matalon, Zeh ‘im ha-panim eleynu (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 1995), pp. 294–95. [BACK]

21. Carol A. Breckinridge and Arjun Appadurai, “Moving Targets,” Public Culture 2 (no. 1, 1989):i. [BACK]

22. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, pp. 13, 14. [BACK]

23. Mark R. Cohen, “The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History,” Tikkun 6 (May-June 1991):55–60. A revised version of this essay, with the force of its argument somewhat moderated, appears as the first chapter of Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). [BACK]

24. Yahudiya Misriya (an earlier pseudonym of Giselle Littman), Les juifs en Egypte: Aperçu sur 3000 ans d'histoire (Geneva: Editions de l'Avenir, 1971). [BACK]

25. Bat-Ye’or, Yehudei mitzrayim (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Ma‘ariv ve-ha-Kongres ha-Yehudi ha-‘Olami be-Yozmat Misrad ha-Hinukh ve-ha-Tarbut be-Hishtatfut ha-Mahlakah la-Kehilot ha-sfaradiyot shel ha-Histadrut ha-Tziyonit, 1974). [BACK]

26. Many scholars are more nuanced and careful in their judgments than Bat-Ye’or. Nonetheless, her general approach has been embraced by prominent figures in Anglo-American intellectual life. Martin Gilbert explicitly adopts Bat-Ye’or's perspective in arguing that from 750 to 1900, “Despite many decades of prosperity, influence, trade and toleration, the Jews living in the Arab and Muslim World faced the continual danger of anti-Jewish discrimination, violence and persecution”: The Jews of Arab Lands: Their History in Maps (London: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries and Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1976), Map 4. She is recognized in Gilbert's acknowledgments. Gilbert lists random acts of discrimination and persecution against Jews with no reference to historical context or sources. His text contains errors, inflated numbers, and tendentious “facts.” It is, in fact, a propaganda tract rather than a piece of scholarship, but it is remarkable that a widely acclaimed historian was not embarrassed to put his name on such a work. Norman A. Stillman's reply to Mark Cohen, “Myth, Countermyth, and Distortion,” Tikkun 6 (May-June 1991):60–64, puts a certain distance between himself and Bat-Ye’or, but his books The Jews of Arab Lands (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979) and The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), though less crude, embrace a similar perspective. Likewise, Bernard Lewis's The Jews of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) adopts a judicious stance, which nonetheless tends to degenerate into neo-lachrymosity in the final chapter on the modern period. Written for a popular audience, Lewis's Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York: Norton, 1986) indulges in vulgar characterizations of Arab-Jewish relations. See my review in Middle East Report no. 147 (July-Aug. 1987):43–45. [BACK]

27. This is the implication of Gilbert, The Jews of Arab Lands, Map 13. [BACK]

28. Anonymous bystander at the July 1987 demonstration. For details see Joel Beinin, “From Land Day to Equality Day,” in Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (eds.), Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation (Boston: South End Press, 1989), p. 214. [BACK]

29. Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972). Harkabi's work from the 1980s until his death substantially repudiates the arguments of this book. However, Harkabi never admitted that he changed his mind about the Arabs; he always argued that it was the Arabs who changed their mind about Israel. [BACK]

30. Egypt, Ministry of Information, The Story of Zionist Espionage in Egypt (Cairo: Ministry of Information [1955]), p. 5. The copy I examined is in USNA RG 84 Cairo Embassy General Records (1955) Box 264, 400.1, Israeli Spies in Egypt. [BACK]

31. The French novel by Karmona's daughter, Marcelle Fisher, Armando (Tel Aviv: Yeda Sela, 1982), presents a fictionalized account of his fate. [BACK]

32. This possibility is insinuated by Avri El-Ad (Avraham Seidenwerg/Paul Frank) in his memoir, Decline of Honor (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1976). Stephen Green, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (New York: William Morrow, 1984), pp. 110–14, presents a circumstantial case for this possibility. In a 1982 interview, El-Ad told Green that he believed the Mosad intentionally exposed him and his group. [BACK]

33. Despite these limitations, Shabtai Teveth compiled such a political history, ‘Onat ha-gez: Kitat yorim be-vayt jan, Kalaba‘n (Tel Aviv: Ish Dor, 1992), abridged English edition: Ben Gurion's Spy: The Story of the Political Scandal That Shaped Modern Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Teveth presents a systematic apology for Ben-Gurion. He does not deign to engage and refute arguments that differ from his own. Therefore, Teveth should be used with great caution despite his access to many documents unavailable to others. [BACK]

34. In addition to Teveth, ‘Onat ha-gez, see Eliyahu Hasin and Dan Hurvitz, ha-Parasha (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ha-Sefer, 1961); David Ben-Gurion, Dvarim ke-hevyatam (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ha-Sefer, 1965); Hagai Eshed, Mi natan et ha-hora’ah? ‘ha-‘esek ha-bish, parashat lavon ve-hitpatrut ben-gurion (Jerusalem: ‘Edanim, 1979); Iser Harel, Kam ish ‘al ahiv: ha-nituah ha-musmakh ve-ha-mematzeh shel ‘parashat lavon (Jerusalem: Keter, 1982); Yehoshafat Harkabi, ‘Edut ishit: ha-parashah mi-nekudat re’uti (Tel Aviv: Ramot, 1994). [BACK]

35. Itamar Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), and Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), offer divergent assessments of the extent of Israeli responsibility for the “second round” in 1956. [BACK]

36. Eric Davis, Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization, 1920–1941 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 116. [BACK]

37. Quoted in Nabil ‘Abd al-Hamid Sayyid Ahmad, al-Hayat al-iqtisadiyya wa’l-ijtima‘iyya li’l-yahud fi misr, 1947–1956 (Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 1991), p. 39. [BACK]

38. On the Yemenis, see Gershon Shafir, Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1904 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 91–122. [BACK]

40. This is the only instance in this book where I have altered a name and identifying details to protect the identity of someone who has spoken with me. [BACK]