Magda El-Ghitany reports on Egypt's reaction to Israeli official honouring of Egyptian Jews involved in a 1950s espionage scandal Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul- Gheit has described Israel's honouring of nine Egyptian Jews who carried out a series of bomb attacks that targeted locations in Cairo and Alexandria in the 1954 -- known later as the Lavon Affair -- as a "decision that calls for astonishment". Last week, Marcelle Ninio, Robert Dassa and Meir Zafran, the three survivors who in 1954 took part in operations that aimed mainly at souring Egypt's relations with the US and Britain, received letters of thanks from Israeli President Moshe Katsav who also handed similar letters to the families of the six other culprits. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Abul-Gheit attributed Egypt's surprise at this move to the fact that the culprits "are Egyptian Jews" who had committed "terrorist attacks against civil targets". Therefore, he added, "They should be labelled terrorists," according to "all international standards". "Cairo made sure to deliver its official, strong objection to Israel's top officials by recalling and informing the Israeli chargé d'affaires in Egypt," an Egyptian diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly. In addition, Egypt's ambassador to Tel Aviv submitted an official objection to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. More than half a century following the Lavon affair and at a time when the international community stands united against any action that may cost innocent lives, Israel "decided to express respect for these heroes", Katsav said. The ceremony took place only few weeks after the return of Egypt's ambassador to Israel, Mohamed Assem, who had just submitted his credentials to Katsav. Assem took over four years after Egypt's former ambassador, Mohamed Bassiouni, was recalled to underscore Cairo's official protest against Israel's aggressive policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. "The Israeli commemoration of the 1950s terrorists is by all means a shameful international scandal," Mohamed El-Sayed Said, deputy director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, told the Weekly. What the nine Egyptian Jews did, Said said, was a violation of international law. Honouring them is therefore a violation of this law. "It is ironic that while Israel keeps on trying to win the international community by portraying itself as a victim of what it calls terrorism, it proudly honours terrorists, and calls them heroes." This, he added, clearly shows the "double standards that Israel applies regarding itself and others". Said attributed the ceremony to the desire of Israel's rightist party to "show how powerful it is to the world. Such a commemoration constitutes an internal and external message that the ruling party has the power to do whatever it decides to do, with no force to stop it." The Lavon Affair -- also known among intelligence apparatuses as Operation Susannah -- is named after Pinhas Lavon, Israel's former minister of defence, who was held responsible for authorising the bombings, and accordingly was forced to resign. In his book The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, Joel Benin writes "One possible objective of Operation Susannah was to convince the British government, then engaged in negotiations with Egypt over the withdrawal of the British garrison from the Suez Canal Zone, that Egypt was an unstable, radical, nationalist state and therefore that British forces ought not to be evacuated." Several attacks did target the main Alexandria post office, the United States Information Services Libraries in Cairo, the Cairo train station, and several movie theatres in Cairo and Alexandria, all of which caused panic and gave Egyptians anxious moments. On 14 July 1954 one Egyptian Jew, Philippe Natanson, who planned to attack a movie theatre, had a bomb explode in his pocket, setting his clothes on fire. Natanson was caught by Egyptian police and with help of famed Egyptian spy Refaat El-Gammal, his confession led to the arrest of 11 out of the 13 members of the ring. One of them committed suicide while in jail, two were executed and the rest were sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven years to life. Four were later exchanged with Egyptian POWs following the 1967 war. Although Moshe Sharett, the Israeli prime minister at the time, described the trial as a big fiasco, the Israeli military intelligence services admitted later its responsibility for carrying out the attacks. Egyptian Jews had always constituted a vibrant part of Egyptian society. Their migration to Egypt began in the early 19th century. In 1947 the Egyptian Jewish community was made up of 75,000 who came from the world over. Unlike their counterparts in Europe who lived in small ghettos, Egyptian Jews lived alongside Muslims and Copts in larger, upper middle class districts, in Cairo, Alexandria, Mansoura, Tanta, Port Said, Suez, and Ismailia. Many Jewish families in Egypt -- Cicurel, Adds, Levy and Mosseri -- established large corporations that specialised in agriculture, finance, trade, transportation and the steel industry. By the 1960s, over 65,000 Egyptian Jews had already left Egypt; and by 1977 there were only 300 Egyptian Jews, mostly elderly, left in Egypt. There are no accurate figures for the number of Egyptian Jews who live in Egypt today, some say they do not exceed 100 individuals.
