The United Nations may be asked to appoint an inquiry commission which would go to Egypt immediately to sift the various charges made against Egypt in regard to Jews, Britons and French nationals, it was indicated here today following protests by Israel, Britain and France to the UN.
The Israel protest, signed by Israel’s Foreign Minister Mrs. Golda Meir, was presented last night to Prince Wan Waithaykon, president of the UN General Assembly and circulated today to all United Nations members. It condemned Egypt’s mass deportations of Jews and the confiscation of their property. It also requested that the president of the UN Assembly should urgently intervene with the Egyptian Government to halt its “inhuman” actions against the Jews.
Addressing the General Assembly late this evening, Israel Ambassador Abba Eban said that Israel now has confirmed and supported information showing that Egypt is practicing a “policy of racial terror and persecution against Jews.” He told the Assembly that the Chief Rabbi of Egypt has just resigned against the persecutions.
Denouncing the Egyptian practices as “direct in the Nazi tradition.” Mr. Eban told about the expulsion of Jews not only of Egyptian citizenship but also many who are stateless and who have lived in Egypt for years or for generations, as well as Jews of Italian and Greek citizenship. These facts prove, he said, that the basis for the persecutions is racial.
Mr. Eban declared that numbers of Jews have now arrived by airplane in Switzerland and by ship at Italian and Greek ports. He bitterly denounced “one feature of the Egyptian Government’s action under which hostages are detained.” As a result of the detention of individual members of Jewish families, Mr. Eban charged, those who have been able to escape are afraid to talk.
Mr. Eban accused the Egyptian Government of violating the Geneva convention of 1949, relating to the humane treatment of civilians in time of war, and of violating the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention Outlawing Genocide.
Replying to Mr. Eban’s accusations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi told the UN Assembly that “only a few Jews were put under custody in Egypt” and that in Port Said the Jews fled because the city was bombed. He termed the reports of mass deportations of Jews from Egypt and mass arrests of other Jews “rumors” and challenged the right of Israel to speak for Jews living in other countries. He denied that Egyptian Chief Rabbi Haim Nahoum has resigned in protest against the mistreatment of Jews by Egypt.
Israel’s Foreign Minister in her letter of protest to the president of the General Assembly said that 30,000 Jews have been affected by the anti-Jewish measure of the Egyptian Government. “The deportees, some of whom have already arrived in various points in Europe, are compelled to abandon all their property behind them apart from 10 Egyptian pounds and a suitcase of personal clothing,” Mrs. Meir Said. “In addition to the action taken against the persons and property of individuals of the Egyptian Jewish community, the Egyptian authorities have also moved against the community as an organized body. Jewish hospitals in Cairo and Alexandria have been sequestrated, the sick ejected and the medical staff arrested.”
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.
