You've made a good faith guess, I think. But again, Egypt has a visa exclusive program for Palestinians. Visa exclusive means that Palestinians do not need a visa to enter and travel through Egypt. So, at least based on the story so far, the only visa he needed was an American one, having nothing to do with Israel except that he probably was afraid to enter Egypt.

This is all speculative in terms of how it relates to your friend. All this to make the point that bias and generalizing about things, and a desire to blame people one has been taught to hate, can be detrimental to one's success.