Free Republic

US actor’s family was deported from Jaffa to Egypt in 1914 bataween | Posted on 15 February 2023 | No Comments The celebrity US actor David Duchovny has just discovered something about his family he never knew: his grandfather Moshe was deported from Jaffa to Port Said in Egypt by the Turkish authorities at the start of World War I. Duchovny learned about his family’s migration from their place of birth, Berdichev in the Russian empire, to Palestine (then under Ottoman rule), thence to Egypt. They ended up taking a boat from Greece to the US, where Moshe acquired American...

Like many of Egypt’s towns and cities, Port Said is bustling. Donkey-carts weave through traffic on roads, while westerners – once the focus of local hostility – move about undisturbed. Sitting at the northern mouth of the Suez Canal, many call Port Said Egypt’s most beautiful city. It is also a popular tourist destination for cruise ships, which roll in and out, unloading their passengers at Egypt’s second largest port. Here, the visitors watch as cargo vessels line up to enter the canal – a 150km stretch of water that links the Red and Mediterranean seas, cutting out the long...

A ship bound for Syria from North Korea and detained in Cyprus on an Interpol alert for suspected arms smuggling was carrying an air defense system, Cypriot authorities said. The shipment was billed as weather-observation equipment on the freight manifest of the Panamanian-flagged Grigorio 1. The ship was carrying 18 truck-mounted mobile radar systems and three command vehicles. "The radars on the 18 trucks appear to be part of an air defense system," a police spokeswoman said.

Since the beginning of the 19th century, Egypt's Port Said, because of its location near the Suez Canal, has acted as a global city located on the very hub of world commerce. In fact, Rudyard Kipling once said of Port Said "If you truly wish to find someone you have known and who travels, there are two points on the globe you have but to sit and wait, sooner or later your man will come there: the docks of London and Port Said." Using the Suez Canal, it is 7200 miles (11,600 km) from London to Mumbai. Without using the...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt plans to build a $1 billion tunnel under the Suez Canal at Port Said and will begin seeking finance as soon as the designs are completed, Al-Akhbar newspaper on Monday quoted the investment minister as saying. The tunnel, to be built 19 km (12 miles) south of the Canal's northern entrance, will have 3 passageways, one for rail and two for cars, the newspaper quoted Mahmoud Mohieldin as telling a conference in Dahab in the eastern Sinai Peninsula. The conference was called to discuss investment in the cities along the canal and in the Sinai, which...

Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources. The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country. Uncovering such a deadly...