Since 1919Edit in Egypt too no animosity with jews until israel problem cropped up.
During British rule, and under
King Fuad I, Egypt was friendly towards its Jewish population although between 86% and 94% of Egyptian Jews did not possess Egyptian nationality whether they had been denied it or opted not to apply. Jews played important roles in the economy, and their population climbed to nearly 80,000 as Jewish refugees settled there in response to increasing persecution in Europe. Many Jewish families, such as the Qattawi family, had extensive economic relations with non-Jews.
[42]
A sharp distinction had long existed between the respective Karaite and Rabbanite communities, among whom traditionally intermarriage was forbidden. They dwelt in Cairo in two contiguous areas, the former in the
harat al-yahud al-qara’in, and the latter in the adjacent
harat al-yahud quarter. Notwithstanding the division, they often worked together and the younger educated generation pressed for improving relations between the two.
[42]
The impact of the well-publicized Arab-Jewish clash in Palestine from 1936 to 1939, together with the rise of Nazi Germany, also began to affect the Jewish relations with Egyptian society, despite the fact that the number of active Zionists in their ranks was small.
[47] The rise of local militant nationalistic societies like
Young Egypt and the
Society of Muslim Brothers, who were sympathetic to the various models evinced by the Axis Powers in Europe, and organized themselves along similar lines, were also increasingly antagonistic to Jews. Groups including the Muslim Brotherhood circulated reports in Egyptian mosques and factories claiming that Jews and the British were destroying holy places in Jerusalem, as well as sending other false reports stating that hundreds of Arab women and children were being killed.
[48] Much of the anti-Semitism of the 1930s and 1940s was fueled by a close association between Hitler's new regime in Germany and anti-imperialist Arab powers. One of these Arab authorities was
Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was influential in securing Nazi funds that were appropriated to the Muslim Brotherhood for the operation of a printing press for the distribution of thousands of Anti-Semitic propaganda pamphlets.
[48]
By the 1940s, the situation worsened. Sporadic
pogroms took place in 1942 onwards. The Jewish quarter of Cairo was severely damaged in the
1945 Cairo pogrom. As the
Partition of Palestine and the founding of Israel drew closer, hostility towards the Egyptian Jews strengthened, fed also by press attacks on all foreigners accompanying the rising ethnocentric nationalism of the age. In 1947, the Company Laws set quotas for employing Egyptian nationals in incorporated firms, requiring that 75% of salaried employees, and 90% of all workers, must be Egyptian. As Jews were denied citizenship as a rule, this constrained Jewish and foreign-owned entrepreneurs to reduce recruitment for employment positions from their own ranks. The law also required that just over half of the paid-up capital of joint stock companies be Egyptian.