“This is a decision that calls for astonishment,” said Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit in a statement quoted by the official MENA agency.

“These individuals can be labeled as terrorists as far as international standards go and this is all the more surprising that they are Egyptian Jews,” he added.

“We are very surprised that they should be honored.”

Israel recognized for the first time Wednesday members of a hardline group dismantled some 50 years ago in Egypt for carrying out bomb attacks aimed at destabilizing relations between Egypt, the United States and Britain.

Israeli President Moshe Katzav handed letters of thanks to Marcelle Ninio, Robert Dassa and Meir Zafran, three survivors of the group in their seventies, last Wednesday.

Letters were also given to the families of six other deceased militants, two of whom were sentenced to death and executed in Egypt.

The affair dates back to 1954 when 11 Egyptian Jews, denounced by a double agent, were arrested for attacks against US and British interests in Egypt.

It soon turned out that they were part of an underground group organized by Israeli military intelligence whose goal was to sabotage relations between Egypt and Western countries as Britain’s withdrawal from the Suez Canal was being negotiated.

One of the militants committed suicide while in jail, two were sentenced to death by hanging and four other were freed after spending 14 years behind bars.

The incident sparked a huge scandal in Israel at the time with then Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon refusing to take responsibility for setting up the underground group and instead accusing intelligence chief Benyamin Gibli.

Lavon resigned from his position in 1955 and Gibli soon followed suit but the scandal kept tarnishing the standing of Israel’s founding father David Ben Gurion.