Egyptian-Jewish Emigrés in Australia By Racheline Barda

that the gradual improvement of their social and legal position from the 1840s was facilitated by the intrusion and growing influence of Europe in the Middle East and that their personal welfare and economic security were insured by the presence of European governments.⁵³ Once these governments were removed or removed themselves from the area, that protection was no longer effective and the status of Jews plummeted. Beinin’s proposition that “the neo-lachrymose interpretation of Jewish Arab history distracted attention from Palestinian claims by constructing a narrative focusing on the eternal suffering of Jews under Islam”⁵⁴ could be construed to emanate from Beinin’s personal ideological views rather than from solid evidence.⁵⁵ Conversely, Beinin’s own historical account validates the claims that the Jews of Egypt were encountering increasing difficulties in obtaining citizenship and in being recognised as “real Egyptians”, and they were specifically targeted after each of the three wars between Egypt and Israel.⁵⁶ In the last chapter of his book he even rejected, although not as vehemently, the claims of innocence and fairness of the Egyptian nationalist discourse regarding the fate of the Jews of the Arab world. Like Krämer, he tended to conclude that the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. It is, therefore, difficult to understand his rationalisation that because those “occasional instances of socially structured discrimination against Jews in Egypt” were linked to the contextual political climate, they were not significant.⁵⁷ Even if in the second half of the twentieth century the Jews of Egypt were not discriminated against for being Jewish but for being “others” in the midst of an Arab Muslim world, the fact remains that they were forcibly driven out of that world and suffered considerably in the process.⁵⁸ My book addresses that issue through in-depth analysis of the various experiences of my interviewees.

The other controversial issue raised by Beinin is his retelling of the Israeli intelligence operation of July 1954, known as the Lavon Affair, already discussed in relation to Laskier’s work. Beinin stated that it was “the most salient symbol of the transformation of the status of the Jews in Egypt”.⁵⁹ Again, from Beinin’s own account of the so-called Affair, the official Egyptian representation tried to minimise the seriousness of