Egypt restricts marriage to Israelis
Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling on Saturday, that orders the country’s Interior Ministry to strip citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.
The court said that the Interior Ministry should present each marriage case to the Cabinet on an individual basis. The Cabinet will then rule on whether to strip the Egyptian of his citizenship, taking into consideration whether a man married an Israeli Arab or a Jew when making its decision to revoke citizenship.
Saturday’s decision, which cannot be appealed, comes more than year after a lower court ruled that the Interior Ministry, which deals with citizenship documents, must implement the 1976 article of the citizenship law. That bill revokes citizenship of Egyptians who married Israelis who have served in the army or embrace Zionism as an ideology. The Interior Ministry appealed that ruling.
The lawyer who brought the original suit to court, Nabih el-Wahsh, celebrated Saturday’s ruling, saying it “is aimed at protecting Egyptian youth and Egypt’s national security.”
The government has not released figures of Egyptians married to Israeli women, but some estimates put the number around 30,000.
Israeli officials said they had no comment on Saturday’s ruling.
Somehow, I doubt that the UN Human Rights commission, the National Organization for Women, and liberal feminists everywhere will be any more forthcoming.
Now, imagine if Israeli women who married Egyptians automatically lost their Israeli citizenship.
Feminists everywhere would be deeply indignant.
As always, essentially ANY insult aimed at Israel is merely business as usual, even though the reverse would suddently become an intolerable outrage.
