Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on March 28, 2013

When Amir Ramses decided to shoot a documentary about the history of Egypts rapidly dwindling Jewish community, the filmmaker knew he could be stirring up a hornets nest.

Egyptian demonstrators burn an Israeli flag during a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo on August 20, 2011. (Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty )

People in Egypt have conspiracy theories about Jews, Ramses told The Daily Beast in Cairo this week. When you say the word Jew, people automatically relate it to Israel.

Problems began earlier this month when Egypts Censorship Bureau, which operates under the Ministry of Culture, told Ramses it would not be issuing a permit to allow the film to be released. Speaking shortly afterward, censorship chief Abdel Sattar Fathy explained to a local newspaper that the film had been marked up by State Security as unsuitable for public showing.

But following an outcry from free-speech advocates and fellow filmmakers, officials eventually backed down. And this week the documentary, which presents an unprecedented account of Jewish Egyptian life in the 20th century, finally went out on general release.

According to 33-year-old Ramses, the reaction from preview screenings he conducted before the films premiere was weirdly positive.

We expected people to go into this kind of topic with hostile preconceptions, he said. But actually there was really good feedback.

Rights groups and activists, although welcoming the eventual decision to issue a permit for Ramsess documentary, criticized the earlier attempts by the nations deeply entrenched State Security servicesweaned on anti-Zionist antipathy and reared under the shadow of successive wars with the Jewish stateto torpedo his film.

It implies that the same laws used by the old regime are still being used by the current regime, said Emad Mubarak, director of a free-speech NGO that had been helping Ramses prepare legal action against the Egyptian authorities.

Numbering up to 100,000 at their peak following the Second World War, the Jewish presence in Egypt stretches back more than 3,000 years to the time of Ramses II.

More here:
The Last Jews of Egypt

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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