Egypt: pilgrimage to Rabbi's tomb a "suicide mission"

Each year, Jews converge on the village of Daymouta to pay homage at the 19th century tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira.  It was prevented in 2009 by Mubarak during the Gaza war, and allowed again in 2010.  Now, as Egypt slips from evil dictator to a more moderate and secular society, we see that the Jews in Egypt are suffering the same fate as the Christians.  This warning, actually more of a threat, comes in the wake of the Obama administration's naive decision to engage the Muslim Brotherhood directly.  I doubt the administration has any fallback plans to cover not just its own ass, but those of the Jews who will undoubtedly suffer some kind of trauma or dismissal.


The number of Jews in Egypt used to number 80,000, today there are less than 60.  


Ethnic cleansing and genocide, anyone?




From YNet January 11 by Rabbi Levi Brackman and Rivkah Lubitch 


Egyptians: No pilgrimage to rabbi's tomb


  Egyptian Islamists and other activists say they have vowed to prevent Israelis from making an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of a 19th-century Jewish holy man in the Nile Delta.

Pilgrimage opponents have decided to stage protests on roads leading to the tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira in the village of Daymouta, 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of Cairo, said Gamal Heshmat of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group which is the country's best organized political movement.

He said that the late December and early January pilgrimage would be a "suicide mission" for Israelis, because of popular opposition to their presence in Egypt.

"Normalization (of relations) with Israel is forced on the people, and the visits too come against the will of people and despite popular rejection," said Heshmat, who recently won a seat in parliament in the country's first elections following the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak.

Egyptian activists have rallied against the pilgrimage every year for most of the last decade. Egypt's daily Al-Ahram newspaper reported Tuesday that 31 parties and groups had joined this year's campaign.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, denounced the attempts to block the pilgrimage. In a Tuesday statement, the center's Abraham Cooper accused the Brotherhood of trying to "curb religious freedom of Jews."

"In their worldview, there is no respect for the traditions for Jews, dead or alive," he said.

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