“It was about this time that I found plastered on the walls of Cairo buildings huge, luridly colored posters, violently anti-Jewish. One of them, showing a bloodstained dagger with the Star of David on its handle, and blood dripping from it, exhorted: “Arm Arabism!” Other posters read: “Don’t talk to the Jews…Don’t do business with them…Kill their business and they die…Consider them as our deepest enemies.” (…)

“Cairo’s mood, the hour before our departure, was one of excitement or terror — depending on your religion. Jews were imprisoned because they were Zionists, and beaten on streets because they were Jews. They huddled in their homes, afraid to leave, afraid to worship on the Sabbath because the Ikhwan (Muslim Broherhood) had spread rumors that synagogues were used for “plotting.” Newspapers daily whipped up new excitement with news from Palestine: FIERCE BATTLE IN HOLY CITY’S NO-MAN’S LAND…HAIFA EXPRESS BLOWN UP AGAIN…MARTIAL LAW PROCLAIMED…There were celebrations as news of the dynamiting of the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem, by a car carrying TNT and “flying an American flag,” was announced, and later when Arabs ambushed a large convoy near Bethlehem, seized scores of vehicles, and killed many Jews. Under Arab League sponsorship, Fawzy Bey el Kawoukjy (who had spent the war years in Germany, marrying there) had begun to attack with his Yarmuk Army of Liberation.

“Arabs everywhere were confident of victory. They gloated over their arms, their money, their numbers. “If we Moslems choose to spit on the Jews we could drown them,” one said contemptuously. From another: “We are like a ball of snow. We have just begun to roll. We will crush the microbe of Zionism forever.”

“The Arab Goliath of eight States and forty-five million people would win over a tiny, sausage-shaped, “militarily indefensible” area, encircled by Arabs, and containing 650,000 poorly armed Jews and a fifth column of at least as many Arabs. There was no doubt that the Arabs would win easily. They said so.”

Solomonia blog