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Arabs Still Openly Call Jews "Their Dogs," Even in San Francisco
by Joseph Abdel Wahed
Tuesday October 03, 2006 at 09:56 PM
The author, born in Cairo, is the retired chief economist for Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco.
I was at the anti-Israel demonstration in front of the Israeli consulate in San Francisco on July 12. The demonstration, organized by a Palestinian group called Al Awda, was loud, boisterous, and passionate. Suddenly and shockingly, demonstrators began chanting in Arabic: "Al Yahud Kelabna," or "the Jews are our dogs."
My first reaction to the Palestinian chanting was one of disbelief. Then I felt a mixture of fear, anger, and heavy-heartedness. Terrible memories cascaded before me taking me back to when I was a young boy, growing up in Egypt. These memories included Egyptian mobs descending upon the Jewish quarter of Cairo chanting "Al Yahud Kelabna," followed by violence that left some Jews dead and injured, and the community dazed.
Egyptian Muslim mobs no longer do this because there is no longer an Egyptian Jewish community to speak of. We once were over 80,000. Today there are fewer than 50 Jews remaining in Egypt.
Indeed, once thriving Jewish communities in ten Arab countries were likewise cleansed. Within a 20-year period starting in 1945, nearly one million Jews were forced out of Arab countries. Our schools, homes, synagogues, businesses, farms, hospitals, were all confiscated by Arab governments. Today, virtually no Jews remain in the Arab or Muslim world.
Also heard at the anti-Israel demonstration were chants such as "Black, red, brown, white! We support Hizballah's fight! Black, red, green, blue! We support Hamas too!"
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