Nazis and Spies: Representations of Jewish Espionage and Terrorism in Egypt

[...]relying on this memory to assess conditions in Egypt is analogous to generals preparing to fight the last war. [...]to reach the conclusion that the government of Egypt was conducting Nazi-style persecution of Jews, the AJC had to ignore the firsthand evidence it received from an unimpeachable source -- the president of Cairo's Sephardic Jewish Community, Salvator Cicurel. Fabrications and exaggerations were repeated as truth and rarely subjected to rigorous investigation. [...]when Egyptian authorities announced that they had apprehended the perpetrators of Operation Susannah and intended to bring them to trial, this news was easily inserted into a discourse whose contours were already well defined in Israel and the West. [...]it was regarded with suspicion by Israeli military authorities, who objected to any restrictions on the timing and scale of the raids they conducted into the Gaza Strip in retaliation for violations by Palestinian refugees and others. [...]the end of Ben-Gurion's career as prime minister of Israel in 1963 was directly related to the exposure of Israeli aspects of the affair in 1960-61.