Two planes chartered by the Jewish Agency began today daily trips to transport some 800 Egyptian refugees who arrived here yesterday to new homes in Israel. Meanwhile, the exiles have been put up in 19 hotels here with funds provided by the Joint Distribution Committee.
The refugees report that the Jewish community of Egypt is growing more destitute with each day. They said that many thousands who want to leave Egypt have to wait because they have no funds and shipping for those who cannot pay their own passage is in short supply. Few of the passengers who arrived on the Misr yesterday had paid their own way.
Among the 800 were four families of Karaites, numbering about 100 persons. The Karaites are a dissident sect which refuses to accept the Talmud but otherwise follows the Bible and has suffered the same handicaps in Egypt as Orthodox Jews. They have all been welcomed by the Jewish State. The Karaite refugees reported that over 75 percent of the Karaite community has Egyptian nationality, but the exiles were deprived of it when they left Egypt.
(In Jerusalem today, S. Z. Shragai, head of the Jewish Agency’s immigration department, said that both the United Nations and the United States Government have information that Egypt intends to expel all its Jews, including the native born. He estimated that 30,000 of the remaining 45,000 Jews in Egypt would arrive in Israel this year.)
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