By David Hirst, Excerpts from his book: The Gun and the Olive Branch, 1977, 1984, Futura
Publications
In July 1954 Egypt was plagued by a series of bomb outrages directed mainly against American and
British property in Cairo and Alexandria. It was generally assumed that they were the work of the
Moslem Brothers, then the most dangerous challenge to the still uncertain authority of Colonel (later
President) Nasser and his two-year-old revolution. Nasser was negotiating with Britain over the
evacuation of its giant military bases in the Suez Canal Zone, and, the Moslem Brothers, as zealous
nationalists, were vigorously opposed to any Egyptian compromises.
It therefore came as a shock to world, and particularly Jewish opinion, when on 5 October the
Egyptian Minister of the Interior, Zakaria Muhieddin, announced the break-up of a thirteen-man
Israeli sabotage network. An 'anti-Semitic' frame-up was suspected.
Indignation increased when, on 11 December, the group was brought to trial. In the Israeli
parliament, Prime Minister Moshe Sharett denounced the 'wicked plot hatched in Alexandria ... the
show trial which is being organized there against a group of Jews who have fallen victims to false
accusations and from whom it seems attempts are being made to extract confessions of imaginary
crimes, by threats and torture . . .'49 The trade union newspaper Davar observed that the Egyptian
regime 'seems to take its inspiration from the Nazis' and lamented the 'deterioration in the status of
Egyptian Jews in general'.50 For Haaretz the trial 'proved that the Egyptian rulers do not hesitate to
invent the most fantastic accusations if it suits them'; it added that 'in the present state of affairs in
Egypt the junta certainly needs some diversions'.51 And the next day the Jerusalem Post carried
this headline: 'Egypt Show Trial Arouses Israel, Sharett Tells House. Sees Inquisition Practices
Revived.'
The trial established that the bombings had indeed been carried out by an Israeli espionage and
terrorist network. This was headed by Colonel Avraharn Dar --alias John Darling-- and a core of
professionals who had set themselves up in Egypt under various guises. They had recruited a number
of Egyptian Jews; one of them was a young woman, Marcelle Ninio, who worked in the offices of a
British company. Naturally, the eventual exposure of such an organization was not going to improve
the lot of the vast majority of Egyptian Jews who wanted no-thing to do with Zionism. There were
still at least 50,000 Jews in Egypt; there had been something over 60,000 in 1947, more than half of
whom were actually foreign nationals. During the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948, the populace had
some times vented its frustration against them, and some were killed in mob violence or by terrorist
bombs. In spite of this, and of the revolutionary upheaval which followed four years later, few
Jews-including the foreign nationals-left the country, and fewer still went to Israel. A Jewish journalist
insisted: 'We, Egyptian Jews, feel secure in our homeland, Egypt.'52
The welfare of Oriental Jewry in their various homelands was, as we have seen, Israel's last concern.
And in July 1954 it had other worries. It was feeling isolated and insecure. Its Western friends-let
alone the rest of the world-were unhappy about its aggressive behaviour. The US Assistant
Secretary of State advised it to 'drop the attitude of the conqueror'.53 More alarming was the
rapprochement under way between Egypt, on the one hand, and the United States and Britain on the
other. President Eisenhower had urged Britain to give up her giant military base in the Suez Canal
Zone; Bengurion had failed to dissuade her. It was to sabotage this rapprochement that the head of
Israeli intelligence, Colonel Benyamin Givli, ordered his Egyptian intelligence ring to strike.
Givli's boss, Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon, and the Prime Minister, Moshe Sharett, knew nothing
of the operation. For Givli was a member of a powerful Defence Ministry clique which often acted
independently, or in outright defiance, of the cabinet. They were proteges of Bengurion and, although
'The Old Man' had left the Premiership for Sde Boker, his Negev desert retreat, a few months
before, he was able, through them, to perpetuate the hardline 'activist' policies in which he believed.
On Givli's instructions, the Egyptian network was to plant bombs in American and British cultural
centres, British-owned cinemas and Egyptian public buildings. The Western powers, it was hoped,
would conclude that there was fierce internal opposition to the rapprochement and that Nasser's
young r6gime,faced with this challenge, was not one in which they could place much confidence.54
Mysterious violence might therefore persuade both London and Washington that British troops
should remain astride the Canal; the world had not forgotten Black Saturday, 28 January 1951, in
the last year of King Farouk's reign, when mobs rampaged through downtown Cairo, setting fire to
foreign-owned hotels and shops, in which scores of people, including thirteen Britons, died.
The first bomb went off, on 2 July, in the Alexandria post office. On 11 July, the Anglo-Egyptian
Suez negotiations, which had been blocked for nine months, got under way again. The next day the
Israeli embassy in London was assured that, up on the British evacuation from Suez, stock-piled
arms would not be handed over to the Egyptians. But the Defence Ministry activists were
unconvinced. On 14 July their agents, in clandestine radio contact with Tel Aviv, fire-bombed US
Information Service libraries in Cairo and Alexandria. That same day, a phosphorous bomb
exploded prematurely in the pocket of one Philip Natanson, nearly burning him alive, as he was
about to enter the British-owned Rio cinema in Alexandria. His arrest and subsequent confession led
to the break-up of the whole ring-but not before the completion of another cycle of clandestine
action and diplomatic failure. On 15 July President Eisenhower assured the Egyptians that
'simultaneously' with the signing of a Suez agreement the United States would enter into 'firm
commitments' for economic aid to strengthen their armed forces.55 On 23 July --anniversary of the
1952 revolution-- the Israeli agents still at large had a final fling; they started fires in two Cairo
cinemas, in the central post office and the railway station. On the same day, Britain announced that
the War Secretary, Antony Head, was going to Cairo. And on 27 July he and the Egyptians initiated
the 'Heads of Agreement' on the terms of Britain's evacuation.
The trial lasted from 11 December to 3 January. Not all the culprits were there, because Colonel
Dar and an Israeli colleague managed to escape, and the third Israeli, Hungarian-born Max Bennett,
committed suicide; but those who were present all pleaded guilty. Most of them, including Marcelle
Ninio, were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. But Dr Musa Lieto Marzuk, a
Tunisian-born citizen of France who was a surgeon at the Jewish Hospital in Cairo, and Samuel
Azar, an engineering professor from Alexandria, were condemned to death. In spite of
representations from France, Britain and the United States the two men were hanged. Politically, it
would have been very difficult for Nasser to spare them, for only seven weeks before six Moslem
Brothers had been executed for complicity in an attempt on his life. Nevertheless Israel reacted with
grief and anger. So did some Western Jews. Marzuk and Azar 'died the death of martyrs', said
Sharett on the same day in the Knesset, whose members stood in silent tribute. Israel went into
official mourning the following day. Beersheba and Ramat Gan named streets after the executed
men. Israeli delegates to the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission refused to attend its
meeting, declaring that they would not sit down with representatives of the Cairo junta. In New York
there were bomb threats against the Egyptian consulate and a sniper fired four shots into its
fourth-floor window.56
This whole episode, which was to poison Israeli political life for a decade and more, came to be
known as the 'Lavon Affair', for it had been established in the Cairo trial that Lavon, as Minister of
Defence, had approved the campaign of sabotage. At least so the available evidence made it appear.
But in Israel, Lavon had asked Moshe Sharett for a secret inquiry into a matter about which the
cabinet knew nothing. Benyamin Givli, the intelligence chief, claimed that the so-called 'security
operation' had been authorized by Lavon himself. Two other Bengurion proteges, Moshe Dayan and
Shimon Peres, testified against Lavon. Lavon denounced Givli's papers as forgeries and demanded
the resignation of all three men. Instead, Sharett ordered Lavon himself to resign and invited
Bengurion to come out of retirement and take over the Defence Ministry. It was a triumphant
comeback for the 'activist' philosophy whose excesses both Sharett and Lavon had tried to modify.
It was con-summated, a week later, by an unprovoked raid on Gaza, which left thirty-nine Egyptians
dead and led to the Suez War Of 1956.57
When the truth about the Lavon Affair came to light, six years after the event, it confirmed that there
had been a frame-up-not, however, by the Egyptians, but by Bengurion and his young proteges.
Exposure was fortuitous. Giving evidence in a forgery trial in September 1960, a witness divulged on
passant that he had seen the faked signature of Lavon on a document relating to a 1954 'security
mishap'.58 Bengurion immediately announced that the three-year statute of limitations prohibited the
opening of the case. But Lavon, now head of the powerful Histradut Trade Union Federation, seized
upon this opportunity to demand an inquiry. Bengurion did everything in his power to stop it, but his
cabinet overruled him. The investigation revealed that the security operation' had been planned
behind Lavon's back. His signature had been forged, and the bombing had actually begun long
before his approval --which he withheld-- had been sought. He was a scapegoat pure and simple.
On Christmas Day 1960,the Israeli cabinet unanimously exonerated him of all guilt in the 'disastrous
security adventure in Egypt'; the Attorney General had, in the meantime, found 'conclusive evidence
of forgeries as well as false testimony in an earlier inquiry'.59 Bengurion was enraged. He issued an
ultimatum to the ruling Labour party to remove Lavon, stormed out of a cabinet meeting and
resigned. In what one trade unionist described as 'an immoral and unjust submission to dictatorship',
his diehard supporters in the Histradut swung the vote in favour i)f accepting Lavon's resignation.
Lavon, however, won a moral victory over the man who twice forced him from office. In the streets
of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, students demonstrated in his favour. They carried placards reading:
'Bengurion Go to Sde Boker, Take Dayan and Peres with You. We do Not Accept Leaders with
Elastic Consciences.'60 The affair rocked the ruling establishment, split public opinion, forced new
elections and contributed largely to Bengurion's eventual disappearance from public life.
But Lavon was not the only real victim. There were also those misguided Egyptian Jews who paid
with their lives or long terms of imprisonment. It is true that when, in 1968, Marcelle Ninio and her
colleagues were exchanged for Egyptian' prisoners in Israel, they received a heroes' welcome. True,
too, that when Miss Ninio got married Prime Minister Golda Meir, Defence Minister Dayan and
Chief of Staff General Bar Lev all attended the wedding and Dayan told the bride 'the Six-Day War
was success enough that it led to your freedom'.61 However, after spending fourteen years in an
Egyptian prison, the former terrorists did not share the leadership's enthusiasm. When Ninio and two
of her colleagues appeared on Israel television a few years later, they all expressed the belief that the
reason why they were not released earlier was because Israel made little effort to get them out.
'Maybe they didn't want us to come back,' said Robert Dassa. 'There was so much intrigue in Israel.
We were instruments in the hands of the Egyptians and of others ... and what is more painful after all
that we went through is that this continues to be so.' In Ninio's opinion, 'the government didn't want
to spoil its relations with the United States and didn't want the embarrassment of admitting it was
behind our action'.62
But the real victims were the great mass of Egyptian Jewry. Episodes like the Lavon Affair tended to
identify them, in the mind of ordinary Egyptians, with the Zionist movement. When, in 1956, Israeli
invaded and occupied Sinai, feeling ran high against them. The government, playing into the Zionist
hands, began ordering Jews to leave the country. Belatedly, reluctantly, 21,000 left in the following
year; more were expelled later, and others, their livelihood gone, had nothing to stay for. But
precious few went to Israel.