Summary
Shlomo Kohen-Tzidon, a native of Alexandria who emigrated to Israel in 1949 and became a member of the Knesset, whose 1965 book memorializing the executed Operation Susannah defendant Shmu’el Azar is treated in The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry both as an argument that Egyptian–Israeli accommodation was possible and, in Chapter 4, as a text that ultimately reproduced the official discourse it resisted (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 485-513, 1902-1924).
Details
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As late as 1965 the Alexandrine Shlomo Kohen-Tzidon, by then a Knesset member, memorialized the executed Shmu’el Azar in a book arguing that accommodation between the Egyptian and Israeli national movements was possible and desirable (Chapter 2, note 13) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 485-513).
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On the tenth anniversary of Azar’s and Moshe Marzuq’s execution, Kohen-Tzidon published a book memorializing Azar and the Jews of Alexandria — as far as the author has been able to determine, the first book about the Jews of Egypt to appear in Israel. The text reinserted his community’s history and what he regarded as its most heroic members into the Israeli public debate on Operation Susannah and the Lavon Affair, while expressing a certain resistance to Egyptian Jews’ exclusion from the official narrative; its cautious manner limited its impact and ultimately reproduced and reinforced many elements of the prevailing discourse (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1902-1903).
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Recounting the “foolish and childish” exploits of Operation Susannah, Kohen-Tzidon wrote that he did not know all the details of what Azar and the other network members did or why they did it, and did not think it credible that Israel would have recruited Jews as spies, because as a minority they were highly visible; yet he did “know” that the treatment of the Egyptian Jews after their arrests was reminiscent of cruelest tortures of the gestapo (Chapter 4, note 72). He reinforced this by reprinting Felix Harari’s Yedi’ot Aharonot article: “Today there is almost no doubt that the Egyptian version of the story is false… Today…it is clear that Victorine [Marcelle Ninio] was entirely innocent” (Chapter 4, note 73) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1904-1906).
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Sixty pages after declaring the conspirators’ innocence, Kohen-Tzidon appeared to admit the possibility of their guilt: “To the extent that the youths did what was attributed to them in the court, or a little of what was attributed to them, they acted good heartedly as a result of misdirection according to ill-considered instructions” (Chapter 4, note 74) — the guilt enhancing the entire Egyptian Jewish community’s status in Zionist terms (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1908-1910).
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Parts of his printed text are rendered unintelligible by defaced type, much of the censored material in the section reprinting journalistic accounts of the Cairo trial; a censored Ze’ev Schiff article had asked whether it was permissible to endanger Egypt’s Jewish community by recruiting its members as spies and had quoted The New Statesman and Nation to the effect that Sharett should “exercise strong supervision over the Israeli Ministry of Defense and its various secret operations” — a passage excised from the book despite having appeared in ha-Aretz in 1955 and again in 1964 (Chapter 4, note 75) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1914-1920).
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The chapter’s judgment: to have his book published, Kohen-Tzidon had to adopt a certain naiveté about Operation Susannah; as a politician seeking to advance his career and legitimize his social base, not an investigative reporter, he was willing to restrain his doubts, and the result was “a sentimental, unpolished, and unconvincing narrative” that could have little impact on a public debate already framed by national security and MAPAI leadership rivalry (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 1920-1924).
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Chapter 8 returns to his memorial volume as “the first literary expression of the existence of a distinct Egyptian Jewish community in Israel,” establishing the community’s Zionist credentials through Azar’s and Marzuq’s sacrifices and his own status as its leading spokesperson; he subsequently extended the image of victimhood to the whole community, asserting in the army chief rabbinate’s monthly shortly before the 1967 war that hundreds of Jews were transferred to “concentration camps” (mahanot rikuz) after the state’s establishment (Chapter 8, note 2) and that after 1948 “the Jews of Egypt were defined as enemy subjects and Israelis in all respects” (Chapter 8, note 3) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3482-3518).
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The same chapter holds his exaggerations against Chapter 3’s record — detentions, sequestrations, attacks and constriction were real, but the majority remained in Egypt after 1948 and the government distinguished Jews from Zionists in principle — while recording his own disclaimer that mob action in Egypt “never reached the pathological proportions of hatred of Jews by the Christians in ‘civilized’ central Europe (Poland and Germany) or the satanic and murderous ‘organization’ of the Nazis” (Chapter 8, note 4), and his argument that the conflict was “the sad and tragic misunderstanding between two national liberation movements,” which let him assert that Azar and Marzuq had betrayed neither Egypt nor the Jewish people (Chapter 8, note 5) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3482-3518).
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He was legal counsel for the Organization of the Victims of Anti-Jewish Persecution in Egypt founded by Sami ‘Atiyah (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3482-3518).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Operation Susannah, Lavon Affair, Marcelle Ninio, Moshe Marzuq, Organization of the Victims of Anti-Jewish Persecution in Egypt, Sami ‘Atiyah