Israeli Head of State – Born Zamalek.

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Israeli Head of State – Born Zamalek.

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Israeli Head of State – Born Zamalek.

Well almost – in an equal opportunity society – which Israel is with its 1.6 million Arabs/Palestinians and its professional and public life full of women including that great warrior Golda Meir, 4 female billionaires, 1/3rd of top Chief Executives but alas their politics still reflects the region.

Aura Steinberg born Zamakek learned how to shoot, joined the feared Hagana and in 1947 she married Chaim Herzog, 6th President of Israel. She served as an officer in the Science Corps in the War of Independence in ’47 and was wounded during the siege of Jerusalem, but made a full recovery with her army defeating four armies. Some armies don’t let women in.

Herzog's son Isaac Herzog was leader of the Israeli Labor Party from 2013-2018.

Sometimes being tossed out is the best thing that ever happened.

Her husband founded a major international law firm based in Israel – unlike the Egyptian law firms that no sane person would use. He was Educated at UCL fought with the allies in WW2 both in the Middle East and was there when the concentration camps were liberated and personally identified Himmler leading to the arrest of that monster. Possibly fought against the famous SS Nazi Muslim killing squads organized by that great Muslim hereditary religious leader and theologian, still hero of the PLO, and second Mufti in Islam, and big supporter of Nazi gas chambers, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (friend of Nasser and uncle of Arafat) Husseini.

His Egyptian wife initiated the annual Bible Contest of Independence Day events in 1959, and founded the Council for a Beautiful Israel in 1968. She served as its president for many years and is now its honorary international president. Under her leadership, the Council encouraged people without gardens to plant window boxes, persuaded factory owners to build gardens around their production plants and launched programs in schools so children would learn to care for the environment. Might sound silly to some from green and wet places but to me it’s a good way of softening a dry sun bleached environment. A very un-Suzanne project.

Her sister Suzy from Zamalek also married a future Israeli leader, Aubrey Eban a triple first from Cambridge – fought with allies in WW2, something no Egyptian ever did. Their wedding in Cairo was attended (in good times) by David Ben Gurion (who fought alongside Australian troops in WW1 to save Egypt from Ottoman invasion and to give freedom to the people of the Middle East – which they squandered). In his career, Eban was Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations. He was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Not bad for a man from a country of then of only a few million and just established from near nothing.

Eban as a senior Israeli military officer fought and defeated the army of Egypt in 1948 and again in 1956 and 1967 but never claimed to be ‘ever victorious’ - although he was.

Suzy was the founder of the Israel Cancer Association over which she presided for some 30 years which is a lot more than she, or any woman, would have been allowed to do in Egypt.

The girls family Cairo home was ‘taken’ and given, or maybe sold, to the Saudis as their embassy – if it was sold they got no money but I think someone did. It was an ‘interesting’ time when lots made money, not on moral terms, and house guards in Maadi ended up ‘owning’ major villas.

The family had previously been kicked out of the Ottoman empire as Jews in the early 20th century and came to Egypt and did very well only to be kicked a second time. Whilst those who have had it hard have a right to complain so do others.

They were hard working immigrants, not vulgar new rich and ensured their daughters all went to university – something still not usual in Egypt 90 years later – and all married well and, after being kicked out of Egypt and loosing all the family money, did outstandingly well. As you do when you leave Egypt.

The current opposition leader in Israeli Parliament is Eban’s nephew – so a half Egyptian and could be the next PM of Israel. You can’t bribe your way into the Israeli parliament, the press isn’t censored and those who stand against you can’t be rounded up. Also you can’t use tens of millions of taxpayers money to bribe people or post 30 foot high banners with 4th rate photographs of your overweight midget self in central Cairo.

One cousin is the world-famous neurologist Oliver Saks and another nephew the script writer for Yes Minister. Egypt once produced talent.

Other tipees (those tossed out) include Aicman the famous writer, Sir Ronald Cohen "the father of British venture capital"[3] and "the father of social investment", the famous psychiatrist Hassoun who was imprisoned as a spy by Nasser, Eric Hobsbawm one of the most famous historians in the world in the last 70 years, Jabes the poet, Moewno inventor of the smart card, Saban one of the most important film producers in the world and one of the richest, Schinazi the inventor of the state of the art HepC treatment. Ellis Douek FRCS (born 1934) the British surgeon and cochlear implant pioneer.

There are many others of talent kicked out because they were not authentically Egyptian – whatever that means. The ruination of the cotton industry is closely linked with the Greek and Jewish expulsions following which it crashed whilst booming in all other countries.

The list could go on for ages and doesn’t include the 10’s of thousands of Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, Syrian, Turk and French who only needed to be kicked out to do well.

Most of these people/families lost all their money/businesses/houses when kicked out by Nasser. Unlike others they have moved on and are strangely silent on the need for compensation which the Camp David Agreement gave them a right to, Egypt signed up to that treaty but then welshed on that part of the deal whilst requiring the US to pay up on their part of the deal. Business as usual.

Nationalism, tipping outsiders/foreigners out, is all rather odd given Egyptian DNA is full of sub-Saharan, Sudanese and Ethiopian slave origins, as well as Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Mamaluk breeding. There is no homogenous Egyptian blood line except that, after the tipouts and expulsions, the dregs are left. (an aside – Gamal Mubarak’s lecturer at AUC said he was a boring C class student https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010 ... contenders). The whole argument about nationalism gets perilously close to those who required that all ‘be of German blood’ – whatever that meant to Hitler, Himmler and Goring who never looked Aryan, as defined.

On the positive there should be at least one country in the world where purges and corruption mean that vegetables can rise to the top/scrounge at the bottom/be bottom feeders of the food killed by others or of fish that have just died and fallen to the bottom. Do anything except hard, creative and clear headed work.

Egypt has intergenerational achievement – in the Nasser’s, insanity, in the Mubarak’s corruption and I think the Sadat’s have been good at clouding their family history. Odd for a country that puts so much emphasis on breeding or is it in-breeding and absolutely rejects the notion of diversity or social mobility – the idea that a peasant boy could grow up to be a judge.

I think social/economic mobility might have been greater under the Kingdom than under the unhinged socialism/communism/state control/military dictatorship of Nasser and his successors. In any event the Army gene pool is 4 generations of complete failure/defeat.

On a ‘lucky’ side all the Jews are tossed out – including the enterprising, well educated and successful ones and the children of rich Cairenes nowadays get a local ‘education’, marry a male or female model, lock themselves away in a gated and machine gun protected housing compound and do little. Sure to produce success.
http://www.egy.com/zamalek/93-09-11.php

An aside. The number of Jews kicked out of North Africa after 1948 and 1956 probably exceeds 700,000 which was roughly the number of displaced Palestinians at that time. When the PLO wants financial compensation for the Palestinian displacements, they get confused from time to time – sometimes they want a homeland back other times they just want cash (Arafat A/c Panama) or a shandy, they forget that justice requires the Jews be compensated and the cash cost of this would be ten times higher and payable by Egypt etc.

What was left and cemented up after ’52 was a unskilled management class and shocking shortage of lawyers, accountants, doctors, scientists, economists etc. There replacements were locally educated which produced another shock. In part poor management is a result of these years and all the human and material waste that goes with that.

Three researchers — Michael Clemens, Lant Pritchett and Claudio Montenegro — recently found a novel way to measure how well various countries use the workers they have. Its published by Harvard. They compared the wages of immigrants to the United States with the wages of similar workers from the same country who remained home.

Here is their finding. A 35-year-old urban Egyptian man with a high school education who moves to the United States can expect an incredible eightfold increase in living standards, the researchers found.

Mr. Clemens says that for every green card the United States awarded in a recent immigration lottery, 146 Egyptians had applied.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/rap ... ith-cities

An extreme, but maybe true, interpretation of this study is that for those with initiative Egypt holds them back. Still in a military dictatorship, command and control, society holding people back is the objective – except for those who are ‘inspirational’ military – as all of them are after running the country into the ground for 70 years. At a minimum it shows that regimes like Sisi waste their human resources to significant degree and their poverty is due to one major reason – their awful leaders.

If you drive out all the talented people the 4th rates that remain will look brilliant.

There are weaknesses in the study methodology but its interesting, not without integrity and confirms impressions.

Jews got out and found other lives, probably better lives as did some Palestinians who got out of the cess pit. Those who stayed under their traditional leaders (all unelected some in their 9th decade, all corrupt and incompetent) might have showed strong emotional attachment to their homeland but also gross stupidity. If you want a good life get out of the Middle East or go and live in Israel – Netanyahu will eventually pass.

One could go on for pages just dealing with those who were born in Zamalek and purged by the socialist humanity of Nasser only to glory the world after they got out. Two more examples that might appeal to UK tastes of people who contributed to the world whilst the religiously pure Egypt achieved nearly nothing.


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