Tel-Chai Nation

How many Jews live in Egypt today? Only eighteen:

According to the Agence France-Presse, the Egyptian Jewish community consists of 18 people.

Two-thirds of Egypt's Jews are confined to the port city of Alexandria. A woman named Magda Haroun works tirelessly to ensure that the community's heritage and legacy remain integral to the future of Egypt, even though it is increasingly obvious that Egyptian Jewry will cease to exist in another generation or two. Earlier last year, Egypt's Minister of Antiquities Khaled el-Enany, suggested that Egypt's government, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is interested in preserving Egypt's Jewish heritage.

I'm afraid that, so long as Islam continues to dominate Egypt, there's no chance Jews will want to move and live there for a long time.

Once upon a time, the world's most populous Arab nation had somewhere between 80,000 to 120,000 Jews, and the Jewish community played an active role in Egyptian society. That changed after Israel's War of Independence in 1948 when the Egyptian public's attitude toward the Jews soured, leading to a decades-long campaign of persecution and ethnic cleansing.

For example, during the Suez campaign in 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser's government declared that all Jews were Zionists and enemies of the state, leading to the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews, many of whom settled in Israel. Even after Egypt and Israel signed a peace accord in the late 1970s, radical Islamists persecuted Egyptian Jews and barred them from holy sites as recently as 2011.

Even now, there's anti-Israelism running rampant in Egypt. In fact, it's basically the same in Jordan. Specifically, it's not only dangerous for Jews to live there, the Jordanian government won't even allow it. That's by far the most offensive part of the "peace treaty" between Israel and Jordan from the mid-90s.

Labels: anti-semitism, dhimmitude, Egypt, islam, Israel, jihad, jordan