The storm erupted at once, as if they were all waiting for it in Cairo. Dr. Essam al-Erian, [until recently] an advisor to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, was interviewed by a local TV channel and called on the Egyptian Jews who had immigrated to Israel to return home.

Dr. Essam al-Erian is a senior Muslim Brotherhood official and, in addition to his role as an advisor at the Egyptian President Bureau, serves as deputy chief of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in the Egyptian parliament. Professionally, he is a physician specializing in diseases of the circulatory system. As a politician, he is well known in Egypt from way back, from the days of former President Hosni Mubarak.

“I hope that, God willing, the Jews will return to their homeland,” al-Erian told his interviewer, Hafez al-Mirazi, on the ON-TV channel. Al-Erian reminded his listeners that former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was wrong when he persecuted the Jews and expelled them from Egypt in the first place. “Why did he have to persecute them? After all, the outcome of it all was that they joined in the occupation. I am calling on them and telling them: Egypt is your land. Why should you go on living under an oppressive and racist regime, a regime of occupation? Why should you be stained with crimes of war that the leaders of the occupying regime are going to be punished for?”

However, al-Erian was careful to qualify his statements and said that the return of the Jews would be possible only in the framework of a comprehensive solution for the Palestinian problem, which would assure in exchange the return of the Palestinian refugees to Palestine. A couple of days following that interview, al-Erian further commented on the issue, noting, “The end of Israel is already in the offing. This venture is not going to survive for more than 10 years.”