Book Review／書評 NAGASAWA Eiji Egyptian Revolution: Causes and Consequences Tokyo: Heibonsya, 2012. 264 pp. Jewish Egyptian Marxists and the Palestine Question Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2012. 606 pp.

KURODA Ayaka ／黒田 彩加

Egypt has contributed to Middle Eastern political history in the form of two remarkable revolutions, namely, the July Revolution of 1952 and the January 25 Revolution of 2011. Eiji Nagasawa, a leading Japanese historian of Egyptian society, has recently authored two books on the legacies of the July Revolution and subsequent implications for the social transformation that has led to the latest revolution. These two books embody the author’s research over more than three decades, and provide a new benchmark for understanding contemporary Egyptian society. The first book, Egyptian Revolution: Causes and Consequences, was published in January 2012, and was written for the general reader to deepen his/her understanding of the causes and contexts of the latest revolution of 2011. This book briefly explains the historical process, the causes, and the prospects of the January 25 Revolution, which toppled the dictatorship of President Mubarak. The author analyzes the revolution from the viewpoint of social and political mass movements over a long time span. He clarifies that the old regime represented zulm, or oppression and corruption, which is a traditional concept in the Arab world. The July revolution of 1952 strongly claimed the liberation of the nation and aimed to overthrow the corrupt monarchy. The Nasser regime, however, using the logic of , soon became authoritarian. Sadat and Mubarak inherited the system brought by the July Revolution

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中東学会28-2.indb 205 2013/02/14 13:16:11 and the Nasser regime to which they added imperfect and unsuccessful reforms, which brought about the corruption of the government and worsened economic conditions. It is often said that the January 25 Revolution in 2011 resembles the July Revolution in terms of the role of the national army and the people’s intention to bring down the corrupt regime. According to the author, however, the biggest difference between the July Revolution and the January 25 Revolution is the quality of the mass movement. In his analysis, he pays special attention to the student movement demanding democratization in 1968 as the root of the revolution in 2011. The movement in 1968 aimed to overthrow the Nasser regime, but it was put down by the government, which only increased its oppression in the following two decades. Thus, under Mubarak’s regime, political violence and social unrest spread as reaction in the 1990s. Under such conditions, however, citizens’ campaigns emphasizing Arab solidarity also started appearing in the late 1970s, the last years of the Sadat era. The tide of citizens’ campaigns grew through the late 1990s and 2000s, and Egyptian society experienced the growth of movements supporting the al-Aqsa Intifada in Palestine from 2000 and the Kifaya (“Enough!”) movement against Mubarak’s dictatorship in 2004. These experiences finally bore fruit in the January 25 Revolution. It was the culmination of a long history of popular movements against subsequent oppressive regimes. The author also introduces the trends of various religious groups after the revolution in 2011, including the Coptic leaders and the Muslim Brotherhood. He suggests some possibilities about their attempts to build a new civil state in the future. Middle Eastern politics, which has endured oppressive regimes, was partly formed by the legacies of colonialism and partly by international relations during the Cold War. The Palestine Question is a symbol of Middle Eastern politics woven by contradictions evolving from such legacies. Against such a background, the January 25 Revolution must be understood, the author emphasizes, not as a purely domestic issue. Based on such an understanding, the second book, Jewish Egyptian Marxists and the Palestine Question was written for the specialist reader. This book aims to depict the life histories of “the generation of the 1940s,” who led the revolution in 1952, and it deals with the history of Jewish Egyptian Marxists, especially focusing on two personalities, namely, Ahmad Sadeq Sa‘d and Henri Curiel. Based on his long time research, part of which appeared earlier as academic articles, this book is the culmination of the author’s profound inquiries into Egyptian social history. Both these personalities played important roles in the history of the Egyptian

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中東学会28-2.indb 206 2013/02/14 13:16:12 Communist Movement. Sa‘d struggled as a member of the “New Dawn” group, and authored many works about the Palestine Question. In his later years, he also became interested in Egyptian social history and popular thought, which the author has coined as “Popular Thought Heritage.” Curiel led the mainstream group in the Egyptian Communist Movement, namely, the Democratic Movement for National Liberation. They were excluded, however, from the central organization when three communist organizations in were integrated into a single Egyptian Communist Party. Curiel’s own organization even broke ties with him while he was in exile in Italy. This exclusion is still the subject of criticism and apologetic counter arguments in defence of the Egyptian Communist Movement. As a result, Sa‘d decided to stay in Egypt and continued to conduct research for Popular Thought Heritage, while Curiel tried to act from abroad as an Internationalist. Evaluations about Curiel are divided, especially in terms of his role in the Communist Movement and his agreement with the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947. The book consists of fourteen chapters divided into five sections. Part One introduces the life of Sa‘d and his commitment to Popular Thought Heritage. Part Two deals with the content of the Curiel Question and the development of the Egyptian Communist Movement he led. Part Three deals with the argument over the role of Jews in the communist movement and its de-Judaization. Part Four analyzes the process of Palestine Affairs from the 1920s up to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine as well as the book written by Sa‘d, Palestine in Claws of Colonialism. In Part Five, the author adds valuable information about the death of an Arab Marxist in the 1950s, and looks back on his friendship with Mustafa Tiba, who worked as a member of the Egyptian Communist Party. The author has skillfully described Egyptian history from a multifaceted viewpoint through these chapters. The book sheds light on the matter of Jewish Egyptian Marxists, a subject that has hardly been researched up until now. The matter of Jewish Egyptian Marxists involves many significant theses. There are few Jews in contemporary Egypt. It is because most of them moved out of the country around the time of the First Arab-Israeli War or the Suez crisis. We may cite factors like “anti-Jewish sentiment” in Egypt caused by the establishment of Israel and the loss of the Palestinian homeland as the reason for their exodus. This brings to notice the impact of many ideologies on the Egyptian society, such as , Fascism, Egyptian Nationalism, and Arab Nationalism. The Middle East is an area that

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中東学会28-2.indb 207 2013/02/14 13:16:12 has multiplicity of identity, and many ideologies were historically developed there. The author indicates that such ideologies were often connected with each other and were never monolithic. Throughout his book, the author questions why so many Jewish chose Marxism as their core ideology. He suggests that Marxism was a means to Egyptianize themselves culturally and socially, and to commit to an Egyptian mass movement representing themselves. However, the fact that Fascism in Europe began to affect Egyptian Nationalism was a serious problem for young Jewish Egyptians. Not being able to accept European Zionism, which they saw as a form of colonialism or something that would isolate them from Egyptian society, many of them made the choice to be Marxists. Some of their Marxist fellows insisted later that their choice was only a way to conceal their Jewish identity or solve their identity crisis. Here the author disagrees and points out the danger of analyzing their decision from a simple perspective such as identity politics. He claims the question we should ask is not what they were, but what they tried to be, and the meaning of their political choice in the larger context of Jewish problems. On this point, the author is consistent throughout the book. At the time of their exclusion from the central organ of the Communist Party, the crucial issue was not whether they converted to Islam, or whether they acquired Egyptian citizenship. The problem they faced was the condition that made an issue of their roots as Jews or foreigners. This process was deeply connected with the Egyptianization and de-Judaization of the movement. As Egyptian Communism began to embrace Arab Nationalism in the 1930s, the Arabization of the movement progressed. The author implies that such a trans-regional ideology as Arab Nationalism or Islamism could exclude some minority groups. At the same time, the Egyptian Communist Movement was facing another difficult problem: Egyptian mass politics clearly had an anti-Jewish tendency. Communism, which aspires to commit to the mass movement, chose to complete the Egyptianization of the Communist Party. This process causes us to reconsider the nature of Egyptian-ness and the characteristics of Egyptian mass movements. The attitude of Jewish Egyptian Marxists toward the Palestine Question varies according to their own thoughts, positions in the organization, or relations with foreign leaderships. Their attitudes are sometimes optimistic or contradictory. Even so, their attempts to try to find an original position as Marxists distinct from European Zionism should be reevaluated. Many Jewish Egyptians recognized that the quality of anti-Jewish

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中東学会28-2.indb 208 2013/02/14 13:16:12 sentiment was different in Europe and the Middle East. As the author indicates, while anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe had a long history that finally produced Zionism, anti- Jewish sentiment in the Arab world was newly formulated as a reaction to Zionism and the Palestine Question. Jewish Egyptian Marxists were put in a complex position in the era of mass politics. While this book ventures to describe their life histories by utilizing scarce materials to the full, it urges us to reexamine Arab politics and ideologies from a new angle. The combination of micro histories and macro perspective impresses us greatly. Up to the present, we have too often simply grasped the characteristics and ideologies of each political group when we consider Arab politics. The author criticizes this method implicitly throughout his book, clarifying the forming and changing process of these ideologies, and the various reactions to them, and demonstrating great potential for analyzing these ideologies from the point of view of the people who accepted them or were affected by them. The existence of Christians and Jews has contributed to the diversity of religion and ethnicity in Middle East. Their historical significance cannot be revealed by the prejudiced identity discourse or the perspective that regards them as a victimized minority. It is significant, as the book shows, to turn our eyes to their subjectivity and originality in relation to the historical circumstances. However, beyond the author’s intention to depict some life histories, he introduces certain topics that are expected to be studied further. For example, the contents of Popular Thought Heritage, and the relationship between foreign leadership and Egyptian Communists are scope for further study. Moreover, as the author admits, comprehensive study of the Jewish Egyptian Marxists is still strongly needed. The present reviewer is conducting research on religious coexistence in modern Egyptian society, paying attention to relationships among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish citizens. While most of the recent works in this area ignore the Jewish element, Nagasawa’s book has enlightened this reviewer greatly by revealing the Egyptian society in depth. Both books by Eiji Nagasawa encourage us to observe Egyptian society with pluralistic eyes, demonstrating through his own valuable works how it can be done, in which he has succeeded in doing just this.

Ph.D Student, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University 京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科

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