Sisi might have been tapping into a real grievance that Egyptians have with a core element of Jewish identity, the tale of the Exodus

October 15, 2023

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi mentioned Blinken’s Jewish identity, and made a false and curious claim.

“Mr. Secretary, you spoke about the crisis and you spoke as a Jewish person, and let me tell you that I am an Egyptian citizen, and I was born and brought up in a neighborhood where we had Jewish neighbors,” Sisi told Blinken, who was in Cairo Sunday to drum up support for Israel’s war against Hamas. “And Jews who used to live here in Egypt [had] not ever suffered from oppression and persecution… As a matter of fact, the Jews were never targeted … throughout the whole history. ”

Sisi, who is an ally of the United States and is friendly with Israel, has nurtured what’s left of the Jewish community in his country. But Egypt’s treatment of its Jewish population in modern times is replete with repression, discrimination and at times bloody violence — especially during and after Israel’s establishment. From a community of 80,000 in 1947, Egypt’s Jewish population now counts in the single digits.

Anyone familiar with the Bible and the Passover story, of course, can point to a far more ancient history of Jews being oppressed in Egypt — and that’s whey Sisi may have been referencing in his comment. Modern Egyptians take umbrage at the tale of the...

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