Ayoob Kara, who served under Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s Communication, Satellite, and Cyber Minister, last Wednesday visited the World Center on Egyptian Jewry in Tel Aviv, and shared that “when the first Egyptian Ambassador came to Israel, his first visit was to the World Center for Egyptian Jewry.” Kara praised the peace agreement that was signed by the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and recalled with pride that he was the Druze officer assigned to be Sadat’s translator during his appearance in the Knesset. “This is for the history books,” he said.
Kara met with Egyptian Jewish activist Levana Zamir at the center and learned about the history of the Jewish people in Alexandria, Cairo, and other Egyptian cities.
Kara told Zamir that President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi is considered the greatest Egyptian leader “for saving his country from the Muslim Brotherhood. If it were not for him, then the likes of Hamas would have controlled everything from Cairo to Gaza. This would have adversely affected all the countries in the region.”
Zamir told Kara that the “Jewish nation was born in Egypt.” In response, Kara told her that so was the Druze nation: “They were part of the Israeli nation from the beginning during the exodus (Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, is an exalted Druze prophet – RA). After the Second Temple period, some stayed in Egypt, starting with Al-Hakim (the sixth Fatimid caliph who is adorned by the 2 million Druze living in the Levant whose eponymous founder Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad proclaimed him as the incarnation of God in 1018 – RA).
“Al-Hakim was the leader of the Druze nation. For a long time, they lived in Egypt. But the basic history of Egypt revolves around the Copts (an ethnoreligious group indigenous to North Africa who has primarily inhabited the area of modern Egypt and Sudan since antiquity. Most ethnic Copts are Coptic Orthodox Christians. Coptic Orthodox Christians are the largest Christian denomination in Egypt and the Middle East – RA). They were the majority in Egypt for thousands of years. After Al-Hakim, the Druze left to the north and became the Druze nation in Syria, Lebanon, and the surrounding area,” Kara said.
“For this reason, Egypt is important to the history of the world, more than any other country, and not only because of the Exodus story,” Kara noted. “The Pharaohs were the dominant leaders of the entire known world for many years. To this day, archeologists look to Egypt when studying the history of the region.”
Kara confessed that “for this reason, I am very sorry that the Muslim Brotherhood became dominant in Egypt. They are not part of Egyptian society. Slowly, step by step, they came to be the majority of Egyptian society. The Muslim Brotherhood infiltrated Egypt from other countries. They are extremists. They want to make Egypt even more Islamist. Egyptian citizens don’t like this, nor do the army and the political leadership. But the Brotherhood remains Egypt’s biggest problem, troubling every leader, including the late President Hosni Mubarak.”
“Presidents Obama and Clinton’s mistake was that they thought there could be democracy in Egypt,” Kara explained. “But there’s no way this could ever happen. Democratic elections in Egypt will always end up with a religiously dominant party that gets elected and retains its hold on the country. Fortunately, now the secular regime is dominant. Truth be told, without President al-Sisi, millions would starve. He changed everything. He is a patriotic Egyptian who takes the right steps.”