Abbas claimed yesterday that no Jews were expelled from Egypt under the rule of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, according to Al-Masryalyoum. Publicly disagreeing with Essam El-Erian, deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, who in December called for the Jews expelled by Nasser to return to Egypt, Abbas claimed that the Jews left Egypt “willingly” and “as a result of Zionist conspiracies.”
1948: Jewish population of Egypt: 75,000
JVL Between June and November 1948, bombs set off in the Jewish Quarter of Cairo killed more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. In 1956, the Egyptian government used the Sinai Campaign as a pretext for expelling almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscating all their property. Approximately 1,000 more Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps. On November 23, 1956, a proclamation signed by the Minister of Religious Affairs, and read aloud in mosques throughout Egypt, declared that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state,” and promised that they would be soon expelled. Thousands of Jews were ordered to leave the country. They were allowed to take only one suitcase and a small sum of cash, and forced to sign declarations “donating” their property to the Egyptian government. Foreign observers reported that members of Jewish families were taken hostage, apparently to insure that those forced to leave did not speak out against the Egyptian government.