The Egyptian press has launched a bitter attack against the French owned “Club Mediterranee,” accusing it of fiscal fraud and of serving “as an intelligence outpost at Israel’s service.” The club, a major international travel organization which operates a hotel and several tourist camps in Egypt, is owned by Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Gilbert Trigano, a French Jewish businessman.
The French paper, Le Monde, reports from Cairo that the club has been under attack for the last few days. The major Egyptian daily, Al. Ahram, is accusing it of operating “a colonial enclave right in the center of Cairo” and has called on the government to “outlaw it before signing a peace treaty with Israel.”
In one of the Egyptian paper’s articles which contains slight anti-Jewish innuendos, the club is accused of “being owned by rich French Jews” who, says the paper, are operating in Egypt “under a false name.” Le Monde reports that the late President Nasser, who wanted the club to open travel facilities in Egypt, advised Trigano to create a company under a different name so as not to be barred from Egypt because of the Arab boycott restrictions.
According to the French paper, the attacks are motivated by the Egyptian government’s desire to cancel the club’s leases and hand them over to “other Western interests.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
