Summary
Anis Mustafa Kamil, an Egyptian writer whose series of articles on “Jewish capitalism in Egypt” in al-Ahram al-Iqtisadi gave opponents of the peace treaty a historical argument casting the Jewish business elite as compradors, in The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4163-4187, 4214-4295).
Details
- His analysis rests on the assertion that “the Jewish groups that undertook a capitalist role in Egyptian history were predominantly non-Egyptian in origin” — a factor he regards as constant across the Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Fatimid, Ottoman and modern eras (Chapter 9, note 18); he classifies any firm with significant Jewish participation as “Jewish,” permitting their representation as a monolithic bloc of Jewish capital, and concludes: “It is impossible to speak of Jewish capitalism except as a branch of imperialist capitalism” (note 20) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4163-4187).
- His desire to identify Jews with a foreign capitalist ethos produces the misunderstanding that Karaite Jews originating in North Africa were more entrepreneurial than the Rabbanite majority because they embraced a Weberian Protestant spirit (note 19), although most Karaites had resided in Egypt for many centuries (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4163-4187).
- On the Egyptian Sugar Company he notes none of its Egyptianization shifts and charges that the firm “continued until 1948 to be the basic source of sugar for the Zionists of Tel Aviv” (note 46); of Qattawi’s and Cicurel’s Bank Misr board participation he concludes, “[T]he only Egyptian bank did not escape the Jewish presence which had consolidated its grip over the world of finance” (note 51) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4214-4295).
- His series was introduced by al-Ahram al-Iqtisadi’s editor Lutfi ‘Abd al-‘Azim in the genre of “know your enemy” (note 56); Nabil ‘Abd al-Hamid Sayyid Ahmad develops his line in three books (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4163-4187, 4296-4326).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Nabil ‘Abd al-Hamid Sayyid Ahmad, Egyptian Sugar Company, Colonial Capitalism