An Egyptian journalist from a popular news site dressed up as an ultra-Orthodox Jew and walked the streets of Cairo asking locals for directions to a synagogue, in order to gauge the public’s reaction.
A video was uploaded to YouTube.
Donning a black suit, hat, a fake beard and payot, the Egyptian man asked locals in Egyptian Arabic for directions to the “Jewish synagogue,” often eliciting shock from bystanders.
The responses varied. While some Egyptians ignored the two “Jews,” others greeted them with anti-Semitic slurs, threats of violence and shoving.
Other incidents of hostility, mild violence and brief scuffles were also shown in the short clip.
When the journalist walked around looking for the synagogue sans beard and sidecurls, passersby seemed to be less hostile.
The reporter told one man straight out that he was Jewish and was told: “You are the best [people].”
Another man, asked to look at a piece of paper where the presumed address of the synagogue was written, asked the journalist if what he was looking at was Hebrew and then if the man in front of him was Israeli. When the journalist answered “yes,” the man hurriedly walked away.
One Egyptian man advised the journalist to put the paper with Hebrew writing on it away and not show it to anyone, presumably in an effort to protect him.
The experiment is similar to several other projects that took place in European cities like Paris, London or Malmö, Sweden, where journalists took the streets wearing kippahs to document anti-Semitic abuse firsthand.
Once home to a thriving Jewish community, Egypt today is home to just a handful of mainly elderly Jews - less than two dozen according to some estimates.
The country was home to around 80,000 Jews in 1948, but expelled most of them and seized their property as part of a wider campaign of ethnic-cleansing carried out by Arab states in "revenge" for the defeat of Arab armies by the nascent State of Israel in 1948.
Many Egyptian Jews were also murdered or executed by the government during anti-Semitic pogroms and purges.
Roughly one million Jews were expelled or driven from their homes due to violence and extreme persecution in Arab states in the decades following Israel's War of Independence.