Al-Monitor reports that on Sept. 26, Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a lower court ruling banning the annual celebration in Damatyuh village near the city of Damanhur in Beheira governorate of the birth of Rabbi Yaqoub bin Masoud, known as Abu Hasira. The paper reports:
The court, which is the highest administrative court for administrative appeals in Egypt, ordered removing the shrine in which … Abu Hasira, is buried, from the list of Islamic and Coptic antiquities in Egypt. In addition, it rejected a request to transfer his remains to Israel, which was submitted by Tel Aviv through UNESCO in 2012.
The court based its refusal to transfer the rabbi’s remains because Islam respects the divine religions and rejects the exhumation of graves, and because Palestine is an occupied land and legitimizing the Jewishness of the state must be avoided by keeping this shrine on Arab land.
The appeal was filed by the Egyptian government; the previous ruling thus became final and irrevocable.
Before 2011, hundreds of Jews from Morocco, France and Israel made an annual pilgrimage to the rabbi’s grave.