Egypt's leader incorrectly claims his country never persecuted Jewish people

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi falsely claimed on Sunday that Egypt had never persecuted Jewish people living in the country.

“You spoke about the crisis and you spoke as a Jewish person,” Sisi said to Secretary of State Antony Blinken via an interpreter. “I am an Egyptian citizen, and I was born and brought up in a neighborhood where we had Jewish neighbors. And Jews who used to live here in Egypt [did] not ever suffered from oppression and persecution.”

Sisi’s comments directly contradict Egypt’s history, including the enslavement of ancient Israelites as characterized in the biblical story of Moses and violence against Jews during the early centuries of Christianity. In modern times, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt led a campaign to expel Jews from the country during the late 1950s and ’60s. The Jewish population in Egypt once numbered around 80,000, but today almost no Jews live there.

The comments came following a meeting between Sisi and Blinken, who traveled to Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to meet with leaders across the Middle East. He is there to discuss the conflict between Israel and Hamas that exploded last week after the Palestinian militant group launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel from Gaza.

Israel has since commenced a siege of Gaza, firing its own barrage of retaliatory missiles and killing more than 2,000 Palestinians, while restricting access to food and electricity in the region that’s long been blockaded by Israel and Egypt.

While addressing reporters alongside Blinken, Sisi criticized Israel’s reaction to the attack.

“We are facing here a huge crisis, and I’m quite concerned about the reaction — they just overextend the right of self-defense, and it turns into a [collective] punishment of 2.3 million Palestinians,” Sisi said, according to a transcript provided by the State Department.

Blinken responded by condemning the “atrocities” committed by Hamas, and by promising to stand against the militant group.

“I come first and foremost as a human being, a human being like so many others appalled at the atrocities committed by Hamas,” Blinken said. “We’re determined to stand against Hamas and what it has done, and to make sure that it can’t happen again.”