After the British took control in 1882, Egypt experienced rapid economic growth. This attracted numerous immigrants, including no small number of Jews. Their presence helped to revitalize the Egyptian Jewish community—which dates back to several centuries before the common era—and led to the development of a thriving press, as Ovadia Yerushalmi writes:

The end of World War I brought about a golden age of Egyptian journalism. . . . Jews produced more periodicals than any other minority in Egypt. [Of the country’s 90 Jewish-owned periodicals], two-thirds targeted Jewish audiences. Most of these were written in French, but others appeared in Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino. [The additional third] were marketed to the general Egyptian public.

One of the most important Jewish newspapers in Egypt was L’Aurore (The Dawn). Its owner and founding editor was Lucien Sciuto (1886-1947), a writer and educator who had originally founded L’Aurore in Istanbul. Conflicts with the leaders of the local Jewish community there led to its closure, and in 1919 Sciuto emigrated to Egypt, [bringing L’Aurore with him]. The paper was published in Cairo from 1924 to 1941.

The weekly newspaper, characterized by its pro-Zionist stance, covered many areas of interest—religious affairs, local Jewish community leaders, relations with world Jewry and with the Jewish community of Mandatory Palestine, and relations with the Egyptian regime. In addition, the paper published articles translated from newspapers in Mandatory Palestine; starting in 1938, it even included a page written in Italian.

L’Aurore . . . was not afraid to criticize the heads of the local rabbinate and of the Egyptian Jewish community. It was also the first Jewish Egyptian newspaper to send reporters into the field . . . and carry out investigative journalism to expose the reader to the deficiencies of the local Jewish leadership.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.