Egyptian to claim compensation for gold taken in Exodus
dailystar.com.lb
Lawsuit by dean of law at Zagazig University seeks approximately 125 trillion tons of precious metal from Jews
Charles Levinson
Special to The Daily Star
CAIRO: Jewish-Arab relations often seem to hinge as much on the past as on the present.
Now a lawsuit being readied by the dean of an Egyptian law school against “all the Jews of the world” seeks compensation for the gold the Jews absconded with during the Exodus from Egypt nearly 6,000 years ago.
Nabil Hilmi, dean of the law school at Zagazig University, said he is preparing the case on behalf of a group of Egyptian expatriates living in Switzerland. The case, according to Hilmi, was inspired by many Jews’ successful claims regarding money and valuables stolen by the Nazis during World War II and deposited in Swiss banks.
“This is just the right of the Egyptians,” Hilmi said, during a phone interview with The Daily Star. “The Jews are asking for their rights always, so why not the Egyptians.”
Hilmi has calculated that 300 tons of gold were stolen from the Egyptians before the Jews fled. After accounting for 5,758 years of compound interest, Hilmi claims the Jews owe the Egyptians approximately “1,125 trillion tons of gold,” according to an interview he gave in the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram al-Arabi.
The lawsuit has found a sympathetic ear among some within the Arab world, who see it as a clever rebuttal to some Israelis’ assertions that the Old Testament is sufficient justification for Israeli’s claims to their land.
In the Western media, the lawsuit has been the butt of jokes and reported with a hint of derision. Hilmi however, has the reputation of a moderate and sober thinker. He has been repeatedly invited to the American Embassy in Cairo to participate in dialogs with Washington officials, according to the US Embassy spokesperson Phillip Frayne.
“I’m pretty puzzled by this whole thing and what’s motivating him to do this,” Frayne said. “It may win him a lot of admirers in the Arab world, but outside the Arab world he seems he’s gone a little bit off the deep end.”
If, however, we accept the Old Testament as fact, and discount statutes of limitations, Hilmi may have a legitimate case, according to David Noel Friedman, a professor of Near East Studies at the University of California, San Diego and perhaps the foremost biblical expert in the world. An ordained Presbyterian Minister, Friedman is the editor of the Anchor Bible Dictionary, which comprises six core volumes, 100 volumes of commentary, and 30 volumes of references.
“(The Jews) despoiled the Egyptians,” said Friedman. “They borrowed and had no intention of returning, so there’s an ethical issue here.”
The passage in question, Exodus 12:35-36 says, the Israelis had done as Moses told them and asked the Egyptians for silver, gold and cloth. “Thus they despoiled the Egyptians,” the text says.
For scholars and theologians however, the passage raises many questions which have made it controversial and much debated. Why would the Egyptians have readily agreed to hand over their possessions?
Having recently endured the 10 plagues, among them lice, boils, locusts and finally the slaying of every first-born son, the Egyptians were likely eager to see the Jews leave and may have been willing to fork over anything in order to expedite the Jews’ departure, a bribe of sorts, suggests Friedman.
Some have posited that the Egyptians had grown to care for their Jewish slaves, and out of a sense of retribution for the 430 years of slavery, or merely to help them on their journey, were willing to give them their valuables. Others believe that the Egyptians believed Moses’ claim that the Hebrews were going out into the wilderness for only three days, after which their possessions would be returned.
What really miffs scholars, however, is the passage that says, “the Lord had given the Hebrews favors in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked.”
This latter passage has proven a point of endless ethical debate and could prove an insurmountable hurdle to Hilmi’s 15-man legal team. It appears that God, who has so far proved unaccountable to mortal legal codes, aided and abetted the swindle.
“This has bothered religious leaders and scholars ever since because it looks as though God himself encouraged this,” Friedman said.
Academic bantering aside, however, this is an issue that many take seriously. Hilmi appears to have been caught off-guard by the coverage the issue has received in the Western press. Following his rather inflammatory interview with Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, he has noticeably toned down his rhetoric.
In that interview he is quoted as saying, “This is clear theft of a host country’s resources and treasure, something that fits the morals and characters of the Jews.”
In an interview with The Daily Star, however, he denied that he was an anti-Semite, or that his lawsuit was connected in any way to politics, Israel, or the relationship between Jews and Arabs.
Jewish leaders in America are waving this case as another example of anti-Semitism in the Arab world.
“We respect the Arab world too much to just dismiss this (lawsuit) with a kind of snicker because it does reflect the need on the part of some in the Arab world to delegitimize the enemy, and unfortunately for many, the enemy is the Jew,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Los Angeles based Simon Weisenthal Center, which claims to be the largest Jewish human rights NGO in the world.
Last Ramadan, Egypt was the center of a similar controversy, when it allowed a television series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to air, despite vociferous objections from American Jewish leaders.
That controversy prompted an unusual three-part series in Egypt’s daily Al-Ahram newspaper by President Hosni Mubarak’s top political adviser Osama al-Baz, in which the latter argued forcibly that anti-Semitism is wrong. |
