Egyptian-Jewish Emigrés in Australia By Racheline Barda

as well as American and British, archival collections. In addition to published and unpublished works, he examined articles that appeared in the Egyptian and Israeli press, as well as films and television programs. He made extensive use of oral history as an additional investigative research tool and demonstrated impressive insight, particularly on the fundamental issue of identity conflict and resolution in minority groups. Beinin also offered an original perspective of the Levantine identity, which in his opinion typified Egyptian Jews. Beinin argued that they represented a model of how people handle multiple identities and loyalties in a turbulent political and cultural context, although he recognised the drawbacks of marginal identities. Thus, his work constitutes an essential tool for researchers interested in the topic of Egyptian Jews and their recent dispersion, and I heavily relied on some of the data he provided. It is also critically important to the study of the formation of culture and identities and to the understanding of the complexities of the modern Middle East.

Any serious research into the profile of Egyptian Jews as a migrant group in Australia had to start with the examination of official records, namely the National Archives of Australia, which houses the records of their landing permit applications and entry into the country, as well as all related correspondence. Turnbull’s Safe Haven: Records of the Jewish Experience in Australia (1999) greatly facilitated my access to those records. That publication is part of a series of research guides published by the National Archives with that specific aim.⁶³ For example, chapter 2 of that guide provides an overview of government policy regarding the entry of Jews into Australia from the beginning of the twentieth century to 1974, with a listing of correspondence files, their reference numbers, their origin, their present location, and their contents. The files A445, 325/5/9 include information on the “Alleged discrimination against admission of Jews…Question of Jewish or Not on departmental forms, 1939–54”; the files A446, 1972/77857 refer to the “Admission of Jews of Middle East Origin, 1949–74”. Chapter 3 lists immigration case files that contain correspondence between individual migrants and the Department of Immigration “on a range of issues, including the initial appli