Point of no return

Will Jews be able to visit post-Gaddafi Libya?

2012-02-03T09:31:00.014Z

Maurice Roumani, Libyan-born historian

The attitude of Libya's new government towards Libyan Jewry will depend on its composition, argues Benghazi-born historian Maurice Roumani in this interview with Manfred Gerstenfeld in Arutz Sheva. If Libya addresses the compensation issue, Libyan Jews may go back and visit:

“Libyan Jews almost unanimously greeted the fall of Muammar Qaddafi believing that he deserved his fate. Qaddafi was notorious for being anti-Israeli.

With regard to Libyan Jews in Italy, he played games of being close at times, while distant on other occasions. On his last visit to Rome in 2010, Qaddafi was only willing to meet the Jews during the Sabbath. He was well aware that such a meeting would be humiliating, as the Jews would have to desecrate their holy day. Only a few women met with him. They were later condemned by most of the community.

“Qaddafi had promised compensation for the huge collective and private property which the Jews left behind when forced to flee Libya. He never delivered however. Qaddafi also invited Jews to return to Libya, which they regarded as a ploy. All they wanted was to recover their possessions, or to renew business ties with Libya.”

Professor Maurice Roumani, a world expert on Libyan Jewry, taught politics and the Middle East at Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva and is the founding director of the J. R. Elyachar Center for Sephardi Studies there. The latest of his many books is The Jews of Libya: Coexistence, Persecution, Resettlement (2008).

He observes: “The great majority of Libyan Jews now lives in Israel. They regarded Qaddafi’s fall as an even more positive event than Libyan Jews elsewhere - mainly in Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom. Qaddafi had repeatedly invited his former countrymen in Israel to come back to Libya thus allowing the Palestinians to regain Palestine. Qaddafi was also a terrorism supporter.

“The general consensus among Libyan Jews toward the present rulers, the Transitional National Council (TNC), is one of skepticism and ambivalence. No one knows where developments of the ‘Arab Spring’ including those in Libya will lead. North African Islamic political culture is different from that of the Middle East. In the past, Libya was characterized by a strong nationalism and moderate Islamism. That is, however, no guarantee for the future.

“Through overseas representatives, the World Organization of Libyan Jews in Or Yehuda, Israel has had some contact with the TNC.

"Presently, the country is only at the beginning of putting its house in order. There is tribal rivalry, many militias retain their weapons, no national army exists and there is thus no law and order. Furthermore, there are no political parties and no civil society. It will take a long time before a Libyan constitution can be formulated and promulgated. Hopefully that would give minorities a respectful status in the country.

“The attitude of the future Libyan government toward Libyan Jews abroad will largely depend on its composition. It is far too early to assess what the role of the Islamists will be, or that of the revolutionary elite. Libya as a Muslim country, cannot ignore the geopolitical situation in the Middle East including the Palestinian issue.

“Psychologist David Gerbi is the one Libyan Jew who has tried to play an active role in this situation. He was born in Libya in 1955 and became a refugee after the 1967 war. He was then airlifted to Italy like many other Jews. The Libyan Jewish community, which goes back 2,500 years, ceased to exist when Gerbi brought his aunt, Libya’s last Jew, to Rome in 2003. For many years he has been in favor of building bridges with the Arabs. Gerbi visited the country again in 2007 and in 2011, he went there trying to give humanitarian help to victims of the revolution in hospitals.

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Jewish landholdings in Syria seized in 1940s

2012-02-02T07:48:00.018Z

Map shows Jewish-owned land in Syria in green

This blog has already drawn attention to the little-known fact that Jews own substantial property in what is now Syria. Now more evidence comes from Guy Bechor in this GPlanet article in Hebrew: (via Elder of Ziyon)

Bechor writes that some 100,000 hectares were Jewish-owned in the Houran region, (as Michael Fischbach explains in his book Jewish property claims against Arab countries) landholdings almost equivalent to the total area of the Golan Heights, annexed to Israel since 1967. In the late 19th century a member of Hovevei Zion, Adam Rosenberg, a US lawyer, encouraged the purchase of cheap land in the Houran. Another leading purchaser was Baron Edmond de Rothschild. In spite of an Ottoman ban on immigrants and initial refusal to register the purchases, Jewish settlements were established on the land.

But the settlements were attacked and in 1896 all settlers were expelled. The Golan and Houran became part of the French mandate of Syria 'for reasons unclear', according to Bechor. Between 1944 and 1948 Syria confiscated the land - registered in the name of PICA, the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association - without compensation. Title to the land was transferred in the 1950s from PICA to the Jewish National Fund.

Bechor makes the point that the Syrian seizure of these lands, replicated all over the Arab world where property belonging to 850,000 Jews was appropriated, was peacetime theft. These lands were not conquered in war.

He questions Israel's timidity asserting its rights to Jewish lands in the Houran. These lands were purchased with the hard-earned cash of individual Jews. They should be traded for the Golan Heights, which constitutes a mere 1/2 percent of Syrian territory, Bechor argues.

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Iraqis may make travel to Israel illegal

2012-02-02T07:00:00.005Z

The Iraqi parliament is planning to pass a new bill banning Iraqis from travelling to Israel, Al Jazeera online reported this week. If passed the bill would be one more nail in the coffin of 'normalisation' between Israel and Arab countries. Ynet News takes up the story:

The bill was proposed following a number of incidents at Baghdad airport. A local security officer working there said the passport had caught a number of Iraqi officials carrying passports with Israeli entry visas. The officer, speaking on a condition of anonymity, reported that the passports of some nine high-profile Iraqi politicians were clearly marked with Ben-Gurion Airport stamps as well.

According to the source, the politicians made their first trips to Israel after the Iraqi elections, held on January 2010, until around October that same year. The officer claimed that during questioning of the Iraqis, it was discovered that they were operating as envoys to Israel on behalf of Iraqi politicians.

The Iraqi parliament may be targeting Israel (Photo: Reuters)

In response to the report, Iraqi Parliament Member from the National Iraqi Alliance Mohammad Redha al-Khafaji declared that some 50 parliament members have already put their John Hancock (signatures - ed) to a bill proposing to ban such trips to Israel. Khafaji emphasized that in the past, Iraqi senior officials had visited Israel secretly.

Meanwhile, a member of the parliament's judicial committee said these signatures do not necessarily mean that such a law should be passed.

Forbidding a citizen from traveling is against the Iraqis' right to freedom, as written in the constitution. However banning travel to Israel has nothing to do with politics, she told Al Jazeera, explaining that Iraq has never had any diplomatic or political relations with Israel, nor has it acknowledged the State of Israel.

Israel classifies Iraq, as well as most Arab countries, as an "enemy state." However, over the years senior Israeli officials have hinted on numerous occasions that despite having no official diplomatic relations with such countries, many times there are economical and security ties.

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The Jewish faith triumphs over the Taliban

2012-02-01T11:01:00.001Z

Zebulun Simantov - the last Jew in Afghanistan

Lyrical piece by Alex Thomson for Channel 4 News about Zebulun Simantov, the last Jew of Afghanistan. Simantov is an enduring symbol of the Jewish faith in Kabul, having survived Communism, death and destruction.

As we talk, I begin to see how this one man could have left even the Taliban mullahs so confuzzled, they simply left him to get on with his unspeakably un-Islamic practices. In fact, they came to, well, if not exactly like him, certainly let him be.

"It must have been pretty bad during the Taliban time here, no?" I suggest.

"Oh, no, no, no. Not really. You see, they were simple people. "

"Simple?"

"Yes, I used to tease them a lot."

"Let me get this straight Zebolon. You were even then one of perhaps two Jews in the entire country and you teased the Taliban about religion. Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes, yes. Why not?"

"Well I can think of -" but I get no further.

"I used to say to them: 'Come on - you should convert. You should become Jewish.' "

"You what?"

"Yes, and they would just laugh and say I must become Muslim. But I never did."

And so it goes on. Along the verandah from his tiny flat above a restaurant in central Kabul, there is a forlorn, dusty synagogue. Great black cobwebs hang from the ceiling corners. There are pigeon droppings from some unseen roost above.

Zebolon Simontov recites and chants aloud in this forgotten, echoing place. At one point the call to prayer from mosques near and far theatens to drown him out.

There is something moving, almost heroic in this lone recitation of faith. He kisses the scriptures. The smack of devotional lips reverberates from what may very well be the last of this synagogue's faithful.

His wife gone, his children all but strangers to him. Faith remains the one constant. A faith quietly accepted by his friends and neghbours around him. A faith that has come through the godless Communist days of the Russians and then Najib. A faith that remained standing as the city around him was pulverised by the Mujaheddin rocket salvoes which followed. A faith that cracked the beards of the Talibs with smiling incredulity.

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Cleric: Jews have no claim on the Muslim world

2012-02-01T07:16:00.015Z

Jews have no claim or presence in the Muslim world, and if they do want their property back, the Arabs won it fair and square in military campaigns. That's the essence of a Friday sermon delivered by Sudanese cleric Sheik Abd Al-Jalil Al-Karouri, which aired on Sudan TV on January 6, 2012 ( via MEMRI). Why the rant? I can only surmise that Al-Karouri is wracked by guilt every time he is stuck in traffic by the Jewish cemetery in northern Khartoum (with thanks: Lily) :

Abd Al-Jalil Al-Karouri: Since the Arab Spring, Israel has found itself in a fix. That is a fact. As the saying goes: "A bankrupt merchant goes through his old accounting books." [The Jews] are after the property of the Qurayza and Nadhir tribes, Khaybar and Taymaa, from fourteen centuries ago. They ask for information about the Jews who came… We often hear that there were Jewish families in… What were they doing? They were serving alcohol. We saw this when we are young students. They were the ones serving alcohol to people.

The expulsion [of the Jewish tribes from Al-Medina] was a military campaign, because the Jews of the Qaynuqa' tribe incited the people of Mecca to avenge their casualties in the Battle of Badr. As for the Jews of the Qurayza tribe, they supported the [enemy] coalition at the Battle of the Trench, and attacked the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions from the rear.

The only expulsion that took place was in days of Omar [Iban Al-Khattab]. When he confirmed the hadith that "there cannot be two religions in the Arabian Peninsula," he expelled the Jews from Khaybar. How did he do this? This can be the first counter-argument to the Jewish claims. He expelled them by buying their property. So all we need is the record of this purchase. He bought their property and then settled them in other parts of the Islamic world. That was the only expulsion that took place. In all other cases, these were military campaigns. If everybody in the world were to sue following military attacks, all the people would find themselves in debt.

I once asked whether the Jews were planning to sue the apes just because they once were apes themselves. It is written in the Koran that at one point the Jews were transformed into apes in a city called Eilat, which the Jews now occupy. They became apes. Will they demand compensation because they were apes before becoming human again?

The [Jews] flocked to their country in 1948. Do they plan to sue the Arab world – Egypt, Mauritania, and Sudan? I don't think they have anything [Jewish] here, except for the graveyard that obstructs the traffic in north Khartoum. If they want, they can come and take it, and bury their dead wherever they like. Apart from this, they have nothing in the Islamic world.

See clip

Arabs fear Israel will demand Saudi compensation

Jews 'reject' calls to go to Israel - says the BBC

2012-01-31T09:35:00.021Z

Jacob Lellouche, owner of the last Kosher restaurant in Tunis

What's the story on the Jews of Tunisia? They are defiantly rejecting Israeli calls to leave, says the BBC. (Extended article here).

BBC reporter Wyre Davies says there used to be 300,000 Jews in Tunisia ( there were never more than 120,000, but oriental exaggeration is catchy). Numbers, however, came 'crashing' down with the creation of Israel. Those dastardly Zionists, spoiling centuries of interfaith coexistence.

In other words, the BBC neatly avoids any discussion of antisemitism. Could Tunisian Jews have left to escape their historic second-class and insecure status as 'dhimmis' under Muslim rule? And how do you explain the fact that not every Jew left for Israel? We are not about to find out from Wyre Davies.

Since the revolution, he tells us, Tunisians are 'expressing their beliefs' in an overwhelmingly Islamic country. Pray what beliefs may these be? 'Death to the Jews', screamed supporters of Hamas - the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza - at Tunis airport recently. But Rashid Ghannouchi of the Islamist Ennahda party (the Tunisian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) reassures Wyre that Islam is a tolerant religion (although it was he who invited the Hamas leader to visit Tunisia, and his supporters who shouted anti-Jewish slogans). The government posts guards to protect synagogues. So that's all right then. Wyre is not in the mood to ask searching questions.

In contrast to news outlets like Tunisia Live, the BBC acts as a mouthpiece for the 'moderate' Islamists of Tunisia. Two dhimmi Jews are trotted out to give credence to the official line. Look, they even have a Kosher restaurant in Tunis. And a working synagogue. We are not afraid.

Just petrified.

See clip (extended article here)

A date in Tunis (Biased BBC)
Ynet news

Tunisians push to make Israel normalisation a crime

2012-01-30T21:17:00.015Z

National Committee for Supporting Arab Resistance and Fighting Normalization and Zionism

Instead of transmitting messages of false comfort, the guys at Tunisia Live are doing a great job exposing antisemitism wherever it might be rearing its ugly head. Regrettably this is not the first time that we have had news of pressure in Tunisia against normalisation with Israel since the start of the 'Arab Spring' (via EoZ) :

The National Committee for Supporting Arab Resistance and Fighting Normalization and Zionism, is a post-revolution Tunisian association whose mission is to lobby the National Constituent Assembly to criminalize normalization with the State of Israel.

The association organized a rally on Sunday, January 29th at the Ibn Khaldoun Cultural Center in downtown Tunis. Almost 100 people attended.

“We want our new constitution to include an article outlawing all types of normalization with the Zionist terrorist entity,” announced Ahmed Kahlaoui, President of the National Committee for Supporting the Arab Resistance and Fighting Normalization and Zionism.

Kahlaoui expressed his discontent with Tunisian civil society for their disinterest in the Palestinian cause.

He blames the lack of interest on what he calls foreign funding coming from “Zionist bodies” attempting to divert Tunisians from paying more attention to normalization.

“But what can we expect from people receiving huge amounts of money from Zionist bodies disguised behind the masks of tolerance and democracy,” Kahlaoui declared.

Hatem Dkhil, is a high school teacher and an anti-Israel advocate. He accused the Ben Ali regime of cultural normalization with Israel.

Read article in full

Different Mufti, same message

2012-01-29T16:48:00.014Z

Haj Amin al-Husseini meets Hitler in November 1941

As the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day, Petra Marquart-Bigman in her Jerusalem Post blog can't help but recognise an eerie similarity in genocidal intent between the Palestinian Mufti and his 1940s predecessor, Haj Amin al-Husseini..

Sheik Muhammad Hussein, the mufti of Jerusalem, who is the Palestinian Authority's senior religious official, recently recited a traditional Islamic text urging Muslims to “fight and kill the Jews” during a ceremony celebrating the 47th anniversary of Fatah’s establishment, he unintentionally revealed how little the messages of Palestinian religious leaders have changed since the days of another Palestinian mufti by the name of Husseini.

This deplorable rhetorical continuity also serves as a timely reminder that words are usually spoken to inspire deeds. Palestinians, eagerly echoed by many of their world-wide supporters, like to claim that they had no part whatsoever in the Holocaust, and that they should indeed be seen as indirect victims of the Jews who fled Europe.

This “narrative,” which seems particularly popular among Germany’s progressive elites, requires that the historical record of Amin Al-Husseini – the predecessor of the current Palestinian mufti – is ignored. While both muftis call for killing the Jews, Husseini sought and seized the opportunity to contribute to the Nazi’s genocidal undertaking to kill as many Jews as possible.

In a review of a book by Klaus Gensicke about Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis, John Rosenthal emphasized that the mufti did not only collaborate with the Nazis by contributing to propaganda activities aimed at Arab speakers and by organizing the Muslim SS division “Handzar” in Bosnia:

Indeed, perhaps the most shocking finding of Gensicke’s research concerns the repeated efforts of the mufti after 1943 to ensure that no European Jews should elude the camps [...] Thus, for example, Bulgarian plans to permit some 4,000 Jewish children and 500 adult companions to immigrate to Palestine provoked a letter from the mufti to the Bulgarian foreign minister, pleading for the operation to be stopped. In the letter, dated May 6, 1943, Husseini invoked a “Jewish danger for the whole world and especially for the countries where Jews live.” [...]

Inevitably, some people will be inclined to argue that Husseini was only defending the national interest of the Palestinian Arabs when he tried to prevent any Jewish emigration from Europe. But as Gensicke has shown, Husseini was convinced that there was a “Jewish danger for the whole world and especially for the countries where Jews live,” and in May 1943, he also expressed this view in a letter.

Soon after Husseini had written these words, Arab regimes proceeded to demonstrate that they shared this view. The Arab League drafted Nuremberg-style laws designed to disenfranchise and dispossess Jews, and Arab states began to encourage the ethnic cleansing of the ancient Jewish communities that had existed for millenia all over the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of the Jews who had to flee from Arab countries found refuge in the fledgling Jewish state that the Arabs vowed, and tried, to wipe out.

Back then, the motives may have been rooted in Arab nationalism, but as the recent remarks by the Palestinian mufti illustrate, there is a long and – according to the mufti, “noble” – tradition of Jew-hatred in Islam that up to this day is regularly invoked to present the Arab and Palestinian refusal to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state as part of a fight against Jews that is an integral component of Muslim identity.

Nazi-like rhetoric about Jews is nowadays mostly expressed in Arabic and Farsi, and just like 70 years ago, there is widespread reluctance to confront this rhetoric and face the fact that it is meant as incitement to deadly deeds.

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The Mufti and the US election, then and now (JTA News - with thanks Eliyahu)

Indian Jews on 'roots' trip to 'God's own country'

2012-01-29T07:16:00.003Z

The Paradesi synagogue in Cochin, Kerala

Israeli Jews from the Indian province of Kerala have been on a 'roots' trip, reports the Indian medium NDTV. (In this article 'God's own country' is India, not Israel.)

Thiruvananathapuram: Over five decades after they settled down in Israel, a group of Kerala-born jews are back in God's Own Country on a nostalgic trip.

The 20-member team, which included 16 women, who were at the Santhigiri Ashram near here yesterday, said the long-cherished journey to their birth place was a refreshing and inspiring experience.

Many of them were born at Kochi, which had a centuries old Jewish settlement and often cited as a shining example of Kerala religious harmony.

The forebears of the Cochin Jews had come as spice traders from West Asia and the local ruler gave them permission to build Synagogues for maintaining their faith and religious traditions. But most of the Jewish families shifted to Israel last century.

"Though we have made Israel our home, Kerala has always remained a nostalgia. Now we are here with a great sense of belonging," they said.

"Kerala is not just beautiful but a land pervading with peace and harmony," said Tobia Eliace, a teacher.

Some in the team could still speak Malayalam since they had studied upto 4th class in Kerala. One of them even sang the Indian National Anthem and a couple of lines of an old Malayalam film song.

They said it was with great difficulty that they could obtain visiting visa to come to India. "I feel it like a dream-come-true. How beautiful and calm is Kerala."

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You can't beat Tbeet, the Iraqi Sabbath dish

2012-01-27T15:18:00.000Z

There is a saying in my house: 'you can't beat Tbeet.' It's hard to serve up chicken and rice in a more appetising way. I can almost smell the aroma of cardamon and turmeric rising from the photograph. Excuse me, dear reader, while I hurry off to the kitchen. I'll leave it to Vered Guttman, food blogger at Haaretz, to resurrect her great aunt Toya's Tbeet recipe for you:

In her modest, shack-like home in southern Israel, my great aunt Toya served some of the best food I’ve ever tasted.

After my Iraqi grandmother, Rachel, passed away, her cousin Toya (Victoria) Levy took it upon herself to fill void in our hearts and in our bellies. One of her duties was to prepare tbeet for us on shabbat.

Tbeet is the Iraqi version of a Shabbat overnight stew. A chicken is stuffed with a mixture made of its inner parts, rice and spices, then covered with more rice, topped with hard boiled eggs and cooked overnight. The rice comes out moist and flavorful, the chicken so soft you can literally chew the bones.

The tradition of the Shabbat overnight stews grew from the desire to serve a hot meal on Shabbat, while keeping the Jewish law that prohibited lighting fire on the holy day. Women prepared the dish on Friday and baked it overnight, usually in a communal bakery, so it was ready at lunch time the next day when the men came back from synagogue.

Many people are familiar with the Ashkenazi (Eastern-European) Shabbat stew, the cholent, that is made of beans, potatoes and meat.

But Shabbat stews developed all over the Diaspora, and each community had its own version, using some of the local spices and ingredient that were available to them.

The Iraqi Jews had the tbeet; Yemenites had jachnoon and the kubaneh (both are basically breads that are baked all night and served with spicy tomato salsa); the North African communities had the d’fina, or skheena, a stew of meat, chickpeas, grains and spices; and the Sephardi Jews of Jerusalem had their own version of Shabbat stew, made with beans, meat and bread patties, called chamin.

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This tragic day, 43 years ago

2012-01-27T05:02:00.004Z

Memorial to the nine Jews hanged in Baghdad on 27 January 1969

January 27, marks the anniversary of one of the darkest chapters in the annals of Iraqi Jewry. On that day in 1969, nine Jews were hanged in Baghdad’s central square. Few of the Jews who lived through that terrible period will ever forget it, writes Lyn Julius in the Jerusalem Post magazine.

Over 40 years later, the community and its representatives are still trying to grapple with the consequences of that fateful day.

Following the defeat of Arab armies on all fronts by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and the 1968 ‘war of attrition’, the 3,000 Jews who remained in Iraq following the mass migration of the 1950s were being singled out for vengeance by the Iraqi regime. Dozens of Jews had been arrested and imprisoned. The remainder were placed under virtual house arrest. One Jewish girl remembers that secret service men installed themselves in armchairs opposite her house in order to keep her family under 24-hour surveillance. The tension was such that she and her mother made a suicide pact.

Jewish bank accounts were frozen. Jews lost their jobs. Jewish students were not allowed to pursue their university studies. Foreign trade agencies were taken away from Jews and handed over to Muslims. Telephones were cut off. There was no escape: Jews had to carry special identity cards and could not obtain the necessary passports in order to leave the country. They were virtual hostages to the regime.

Antisemitism intensified with the rise to power of the Ba’ath party in 1968. Saddam Hussein was its deputy leader. Before long the regime had concocted a story of ‘Zionist espionage’. The stage was set for a show trial of unspeakable cruelty and cynicism. Of nine Jews falsely accused of being Zionist spies, four were under the legal age to face execution. No matter – the regime falsified their ages.

The late Max Sawdayee describes the scene on 27 January 1969 in his book All waiting to be hanged:

“Masses of people, red, excited, smiling, laughing, walking fast, running, jostling – all with one and only one goal: to reach as quickly as possible the square where the ‘traitors’ are hanged. We take the same streets we came from, and return home. Wife tells us that she has heard from neighbours that the ‘spies’ now hanged in the Liberation Square were actually executed at the central prison at about eleven o’clock last night. They were brought to the Liberation Square at about two in the morning after improvised scaffolds had been erected by prisoners mobilised from the central prison, and by soldiers. She has heard also that many people were already there at two in the morning watching the scene of preparations for the hanging.

“The poor ‘actors’ of the scene... are dressed in special, humiliating brown linen trousers and shirts, barefoot, with the hands of some of them (for some mysterious reason) dressed in special white gloves. All of them are labelled with large sheets of paper stating, first of all and in big letters, their religion, then in small letters the reasons why they are hanged.

“ The sight of the nine, their heads twisted and drooping, their bodies dangling from the gallows and swinging high in the air, with all these vengeful mobs, all excited, agitated, cheering, dancing, chanting, singing, cursing the dead, spitting and throwing stones on them, or jumping high to catch their feet or their toes – well, this sight is most humiliating and sad, and most unforgettable. It shakes one to the bones. It shakes even one’s faith in humanity.

“When we tune in to our car radio, the announcer is still howling madly. ‘Great people of Iraq! You great people of Baghdad and Basra! Today is a holy day for all of you! Today is your feast! The day of your joy and happiness! The day on which you have got rid of the first gang of despicable spies! Iraq, your beloved Iraq, has executed, has hanged, has settled the account with those traitors! You great people of Baghdad and Basra, get free, move, go to your Liberation Squares to see with your own eyes how the traitors are hanged!’ then he goes on to read the names of those ‘traitors’, perhaps for the third or the fourth time. “

Morris Abdulezer, an Iraqi Jew now living in Canada, describes the lead-up to the hangings:

“These innocent men were tortured then put through a televised mockery of a military trial, which culminated in nine of them being publicly hanged, one acquitted and two others were sent to Basra to face another trial and then were hanged on August 25, 1969 in Basra.

“I can recall precisely how terrified and confused we were throughout the entire trial and, more precisely, the night of January 26 when the guilty verdict was announced by the military judge. We did not believe that the sentence of death by hanging would be carried out because the whole court process did not make sense, from the defendants who were not allowed to appoint their own lawyers, to the stories and accusations that were outrageous and full of lies, where the defendants were being asked to bear witness against each other.

“We waited in fear, praying and trusting in our Jewish faith and hoping for pressure to come at the last minute from the international community to end this mockery.”

But international pressure did not come - until it was too late.

The reign of terror continued. Iraq’s rulers promised that there would be further hangings. Every citizen was urged to inform against their Jewish neighbours. Scores of Jews disappeared. Linda Menuhin, now a columnist and peace activist in Israel, recalls that her own father was abducted on the eve of Yom Kippur on the way to the synagogue. He was never heard of again. “We don’t know what happened to my father exactly. Until today we have never said Kaddish for him.”

Maurice Shohet, president of the World Organisation of Jews from Iraq (WOJI), believes that the number of Jews who were executed in prison, abducted, or simply vanished without trace exceeds 50. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, a young Jewish jeweller, newly-wed to one of the few eligible Jewish women in Baghdad, was abducted in December 2005 and never found again.

The advent of ‘democracy’ in Iraq has left much unfinished business vis-a-vis the Jews. The vast majority of the 3,000 Jews still in Iraq at the time of the hangings had managed to escape, risking their lives, through the Kurdish mountains to Iran in the early 1970s. When the Americans arrived in 2003, there were some 30 Jews still in Baghdad. All but six have since died or fled, and anti-Jewish sentiment is running at such levels that Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad and ‘de facto’ protector of non-Muslim minorities, feels their lives are at risk as long as they remain in Iraq.

On 28 November 2008 WOJI wrote to the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with a list of Jews who were kidnapped off the street, or arrested and disappeared in prison. The organisation asked for any information about them from the thousands of documents retrieved from Iraqi intelligence headquarters. No reply was ever received.

According to Maurice Shohet, WOJI has also written to the Iraqi government following Iraqi media reports that Hebrew inscriptions at Ezekiel’s tomb at al-Kifl and the shrine of Ezra the Scribe at al-Uzair were being removed by the Sh’ia Religious Endowment directorate, which reports to Al-Maliki’s office. None of these letters received answers either.

Another source of friction is the fate of the so-called Jewish archive. The US and Iraqi governments are embroiled in a tug-of-war over priceless documents, books and Torah scrolls seized from the Jewish community and shipped to Washington for restoration. The Iraqis want the archive back, claiming it is part of Iraq’s national heritage. Others argue that the archive should be returned to its rightful owners, the Jewish community, now mainly living in Israel.

To-date, no Jew is known to have received compensation for property seized under the Ba’ath regime in spite of a claims commission set up by the interim US administration in 2003.

In meetings with the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, Samir Sumaidie, members of the World Organisation of Jews from Iraq reminded him that the new Iraqi constitution was founded on a basis of non-discrimination.

“ We applaud the new constitution,” says Maurice Shohet of WOJI. "Our goals are to protect, preserve and promote Iraqi-Jewish heritage – including holy sites, shrines and cemeteries. We will continue to pursue our goals. First among them is to find out any information of the tens of Jews who disappeared in Iraq.”

The spectre of nine bodies swinging from the gallows in Baghdad’s central square on that dreadful January day still haunts Iraqi Jews. Until the corpses and the rest of the missing Jews are returned to their loved ones, the living will not achieve closure.

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Forty years since the Baghdad hangings

Safeguard Christianity in the Middle East

2012-01-26T17:36:00.014Z

A cross on Mount Lebanon

I may be mistaken, but I think we are seeing an awakening of western interest in the plight of Middle East minorities. Some people are even beginning to join the dots between the plight of Christians and that of Jews. The next challenge is to apply this new awareness of Arab and Muslim bigotry to an understanding of the rejection of Israel. Dexter van Zile in The Algemeiner covers a recent US conference on minority persecution (with thanks: JIMENA):

Walid Phares, an American scholar born in Lebanon who advises the U.S. Congress on issues related to terrorism, said Christians and other minorities have been the victims of violence for decades. “I lived through it in the 20^th century. Now we’re all living it, trying to witness for it,” he said. “We have crossed the threshold of a new century and yet it’s still happening.”

Attendees of the conference heard testimony from Juliana Taimoorazy, founder of the Iraqi Christian relief council and Egyptian human rights activists Cynthia Farahat. Taimoorazy, who reported on the plight of Assyrians in Israq stated that since June 2004, churches in Iraq have been bombed more than 80 times. Sometimes, multiple churches would be bombed at the same time as part of a coordinated attack.

“Most of these attacks happened on Fridays, marking the day of Islamic prayer,” she said. Clergy have been routinely kidnapped and killed on a regular basis. Even children have been killed by Islamists, Taimoorazy reported.

“In October of 2006 – in the 21^st century – a 14-year-old boy was crucified in Basra, in the center of the city,” she said.

Farahat reported that Copts are second-class citizens in their homeland

“But for me, as a woman and a Copt, I am a fourth-class citizen,” she said. “The first class citizen is the Egyptian Sunni Muslim male, the second class is the Sunni female. The third is the Christian male. The fourth is the Christian female. I’m a fourth-class Egyptian citizen with absolutely no legal rights.”

The plight of religious and ethnic minorities in Muslim and Arab majority countries in the Middle East has largely been ignored because of an obsession with the Arab-Israeli conflict, Phares said during his keynote address. Phares first witnessed this after immigrating to the U.S. from Lebanon in the 1990s.

“In the 1990s, if there as an incident in the West Bank, the son-in-law, the mom, the uncle of both sides would be interviewed and the psychologists would come in and talk about the deep roots of the conflict,” Phares said. “At the same time, two villages were burned in Egypt or the Kurds would be gassed. Zero [coverage] in the New York Times.”

Franck Salameh, assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies at Boston College, echoed Phares’ complaint.

“There’s clearly a prevailing hierarchy in the media’s treatment of Middle Eastern violence,” he said. “Some victims get airtime on prime time, all the time. Others simply don’t. Middle Eastern Christians are not a top priority. Those uncouth, cross-wearing primitives are not cause for curiosity. They are too Christian in a world plagued by political correctness, cultural relativism and a false conception of the Middle East as an Arab Muslim preserve.”

Documenting attacks on Near Eastern minorities is not fashionable, Salameh said, because it is viewed as being anti-Arab and anti-Muslim and part of a Western attempt to divide a cultural and linguistic monolith. If this thinking were applied to North America, no one would talk about the plight or fate of Native Americans because it would be regarded as subversive to the Anglo-European paradigm.

“Middle Eastern minorities, Christians and Jews, are the native Americans of the Middle East,” Salameh said. “The dominant Arab-Muslim culture is indeed the colonizing intruder culture here.”

Read article in full

The Copts face same fate as the Jews of Medina

2012-01-26T07:42:00.013Z

Salafist Yassir al-Burhami

With thanks: Lily

Here's a chilling reminder of what lies in store for the Copts of Egypt, in the words of the Egyptian Salafi preacher Yassir Al-Burhami (via MEMRI). The Salafists are the doctrinaire Islamists who won around a quarter of the vote in the Egyptian elections.

Al-Burhami compares the Copts to the Jews of Medina whom Muhammed vanquished and exterminated after a temporary truce.

While Muslims are weak they are enjoined to bide their time until the opportune moment arrives for the mass slaughter of non-Muslims.

Here is a transcript of a clip from Egyptian TV, broadcast in December 2011:

Yassir Al-Burhami: Appointing infidels to positions of authority over Muslims is prohibited. Allah said: "Never will Allah grant the infidels a way [to triumph] over the Believers."

We are not afraid of losing the elections or of not getting votes. We are not trying to ingratiate ourselves before the people.

Can the Christians of Egypt be compared to the Jews of Al-Medina? The case of the Jews of Al-Medina is one example of the relations between the Muslims and the infidels. The Muslims can implement any form of conduct used by the Prophet Muhammad. When the Prophet Muhammad was still in Mecca, he dealt with the infidels in a certain way, and when the Muslims are weak, they should deal with the infidels this way. "Refrain from action, pray, and pay the zakkat."

In many infidel countries, such as occupied Palestine, we instruct Muslims to do just that. We are not telling the Muslims in Gaza to launch rockets every day, which would lead to the destruction of the entire country. We tell them to adhere to the truce.

When the Prophet Muhammad first arrived in Al-Medina, he signed a treaty with the Jews without forcing them to pay the jizya poll tax. This was necessary at the time, but when they breached the treaty, he fought them, and eventually, he imposed the jizya upon the People of the Book.

The Christians [of Egypt] can be dealt with like the Jews of Al-Medina. This is possible.

This article explains what happened to the Jews of Arabia in the 7th century, according to a Muslim source. There are no Jewish sources because the Jews of Arabia were exterminated, and dead people are not known to write history.

No room for religious minorities in an Islamist Egypt

2012-01-25T08:28:00.009Z

The traditional Hilula to the tomb of Rabbi Abu Hatseira was cancelled this year

The news that 75 percent of votes in the Egyptian parliamentary elections went to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood should be setting off alarm bells in the democratic West: yesterday's chants, intolerant of non-Muslim minorities, have become today's policy - argues Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal center on Fox News.

Some see the results of proof that the democratic process is alive and well in the Arab world's largest nation. Indeed, former President Jimmy Carter declared he was "pleased" by the orderliness of the process; yet he and other international figures are devastatingly silent about Islamists’ moves to curb the liberties of religious minorities, starting with the Jews.

Witness the broad-based protest spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood that led the Foreign Ministry, on the day after the final election run-off to announce the cancellation of an annual religious pilgrimage to honor a saintly Jewish Scholar who died over 1,100 years ago.

Jews from North Africa have an age-old tradition (Hilula) of visiting the graves of the pious on the anniversary of their death. The Hilula combines prayers and songs. Each year hundreds of Jews, including Israelis, made a pilgrimage to a hilltop mausoleum Egyptian city Damanhour, to the Tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abu Hatzeira, a renowned religious figure from Morocco, who fell ill and died there in 1880, enroute to the Holy Land.

Sometimes contemporary events, like Israel’s 2009 incursion into Gaza made such visits impossible. But as late as last year, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak allowed hundreds of Jewish pilgrims to visit the Abu Hatzeira’s Tomb, which is an official antiquity site protected by the government of Egypt.

Not this year.

According to, MENA, the state-run news agency reported that a number of political groups announced that they would form a human chain if necessary, to block any “Zionists” from reaching the mausoleum for the religious rite.

The groups signing on to the protest were led by Egypt's new power brokers-- the Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and JusticeParty, along with the Nasserist Trend, the April 6 Youth Movement, BloggersAgainst Abu Hasira and Mohamed ElBaradei's presidential campaign. The Hilula celebration, in the view of these groups “was unpopular, and unacceptable legally and politically.”

It is easy to see why a ‘Hilula’ taking place on an isolated hill in a small town would horrify so many Egyptians. After all, the celebration traditionally includes the consumption of dried fruit, butter and feteer, as the faithful sit alongside the mausoleum, cry, and the recitation of King David's Psalms.

Yesterday's intolerant chants have already become today's policy.

It is clear that the heroes of Tahrir Square and all the hopes that their struggle would lead their nation and the entire Middle East into a 21st century of change and freedom have been "democratically" defeated by fanatics seeking to drive their nation's value system back to the 12th century.

We got the message loud and clear: There is no room in the new Egypt for Jews, dead or alive.

Read transcript in full

Pilgrimage cancellation 'disrespects' all Jews

Rabbi Abraham Cooper's interview with David Gerbi

More about Arab Jews (updated)

2012-01-24T17:46:00.012Z

Although this blog has already fleetingly referred to the article: Arab Jews: are they extinct? I was asked by blogger Elder of Ziyon if I would comment further on it. My comment has turned into an EoZ guest post:

Naava Mashiah’s article is doing the rounds of the Arab media, gaining prominence in Arab News. Much of what she writes is only partially true, and is designed to ingratiate herself with her Arab Muslim readership.

Is there such a creature as an Arab Jew? Even Naava’s own father says there is no such thing. We agree.

Very few Jews from Arab countries self-define as ‘Arab Jews’, unless they are far-leftists. The ‘Arab world’ is itself a modern false construct, defining identity by language and culture. It’s like saying that a Spaniard and a Peruvian are both bound by a ‘Hispanic’ identity. But whereas a Spaniard and a Peruvian might have the same ancestry, religious communities in the Middle East always kept apart from each other; there was limited social interaction and almost no intermarriage.

Moreover - If you scratch away at an ‘Arab’’s identity, you will often find that he or she is not Arab at all. The region is a kaleidoscope of sects, religions and ethnicities. There is no such thing as ‘Arab’ culture. The famous singer Farid al-Atrash was not Arab but Druze, and many of the stars of Egyptian 20th century cinema were Jews or Copts. The roots of 20th popular ‘Arab’ musical culture in Iraq - the Jewish al-Kuwaity brothers had a powerful influence – could be said to be Jewish.

When she tries to explain why Jews left Arab countries, Naava Mashiah assigns equal blame to Zionism and antisemitic propaganda. In fact antisemitism alienated Muslims from Jews. Miss Mashiah makes no mention of the 1941 Farhud pogrom, seven years before Israel was established, and the rise of pro-Nazi feeling in the 1930s. Zionist activity in Iraq was a response to the Farhud, not the other way around.

Miss Mashiah’s allegation that Israel ‘effaced’ the identity of Jews from Arab countries is a charge commonly levelled by radical leftists and anti-Zionists. It is true that in its zeal to create a new Israeli, the establishment disparaged ‘Arab culture’, in the same way as it did ‘Yiddish culture’. But whatever the situation in the 1950s – and there was real discrimination then – Mizrahi culture has come back with a vengeance in Israel today.

In the final paragraph, Miss Mashiah herself gives the reason for writing her article: ‘my interest in my Arab roots grew about 10 years ago when I established my business which focuses on economic cooperation between Israel and the Middle East.”

So now we know. Being an ‘Arab Jew’, and downplaying the impact of Arab antisemitism, is good for business.

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Is it coz I iz black (or white) ?

2012-01-24T11:50:00.011Z

Why it makes sense to be colour-blind when discussing 'colonialism' in the Middle East: AKUS, writing in CiFWatch, takes Comment is Free contributor Khalid Diab to task for his reflections on Arab and Israeli stereotypes.

His article included the following:

On a lighter note, she [Israeli student Rachael studying Islam] recalls that their group included a couple of fair-complexioned Palestinians, one of whom even had red hair. This apparently threw some of the Israelis who expected all Palestinians to look “Arab”.

The majority of Diab’s article deals with what he believes is Israelis’ surprise at the ability of Arabs to hack Israeli computer systems and stereotypical responses such as the surprise of a West Bank Arab IT professional at discovering that Israelis are human beings just like himself.

But the above reference to Rachael’s friends’ surprise at seeing “fair-complexioned Palestinians” seems to say more about Diab’s prejudices than those of Rachael and her friends.

One of the common charges leveled at Israel by those who wish to challenge its legitimacy is that it is peopled by European colonists (who should pack up and “go back to Poland, Germany America and everywhere else” as Helen Thomas notably recommended). That Diab selected the issue of Israeli attitudes to Arab “complexions” in contrast to Arab accomplishments but without a similar example from an Arab suggests that he has a frame of reference which is roughly this: Israelis are “light complexioned” and therefore are colonials, while Arabs are “ many complexioned” and therefore indigenous. Of course, it also implicitly implies that Israelis are (white) racists without any similar reference to Arab attitudes to “complexion”.

Diab even quotes an Israeli Arab woman from Nazareth who has absorbed the mantra of Jews as colonists:

“It’s not because [Jewish] Israelis don’t encounter Arabs. It’s just more comfortable for them to look down on us – it makes their colonial enterprise easier,” she contends. “If they acknowledge that we are similar, this will raise the uncomfortable question of why they don’t treat us as equals.” [emphasis added]

I would contend that the intifadas and the wedge-politics of Arab MKs and references to colonials with the implication that Jews do not belong in Israel (i.e. – which is really Arab Palestine) have had more to do with Jewish suspicions about their Arab fellow citizens than some imaginary “colonial enterprise”.

Of course, while many Israelis are “light-complexioned”, most are not. Even with the arrival of the Russian Jews in the 1980s the majority are descended from parents who fled from Arab countries in 1948-1951.

Jews who fled Iraq in 1951 register upon arrival in Israel.

To quote Diab, they “look Arab”. In addition, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews frequently inter-marry so most Israelis are “dark-complexioned” to one degree or another. Diab seems to view Rachael and her friends as white, blue-eyed European colonials who expect their neighbors on the West Bank conform to a dark, brown-eyed Arab stereotype.

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Azeris thwart terrorist attack on two rabbis

2012-01-23T22:32:00.005Z

It's been hailed as one of the few Jewish communities in a Muslim state to be thriving - and its brand new synagogue is proof enough - but is the honeymoon for the Jews of Azerbaijan over? Haaretz reports:

Three men were detained last week after planning to attack two Israelis employed by a Jewish school in Baku, the Azerbaijan Ministry of National Security has revealed. Meanwhile, an Azeri commentator considered close to the republic's president has launched a scathing indictment of Iran.

The Azeri ministry said it had arrested a cell that planned to "kill public activists," before it became apparent that the intended victims were two Israeli Chabad emissaries, a rabbi and a teacher employed by the "Chabad Or Avner" Jewish school in Baku. The ministry said that the three men, named as Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov and Balaqardash Dadashov, received smuggled arms and equipment from Iranian agents. The action was apparently planned as retaliation to the gunning down of Iranian nuclear scientists.

	Waterfront in Baku, Azerbaijan.
	Photo by: AP

"The Azeri security forces acted covertly without alerting us," said Rabbi Shneor Segal, one of the two targets. "It was published that they originally planned to attack 'people who look Jewish and hold foreign passports,' near the school, but when the school guards began suspecting them, they started monitoring the area where I live," he told Haaretz.

Segal added that the second target was Rabbi Mati Lewis.

Irani-Azeri relations, which were never rosy, recently deteriorated even further after Azeri Communication Minister Ali Abbasov accused Iran of carrying out a cyber attack against several offices in the country accused of "cooperation with Israel."

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Maoz not sacked after all for 'white tribe' remarks

2012-01-23T14:52:00.006Z

Shlomo Maoz... his sacking is now in doubt

Shlomo Maoz was not sacked by investment firm Excellence-Nesuah, but only relieved of some of his duties, an official in the firm told the Knesset Monday. Maoz, a Sephardic Jew, aroused the firm's ire when he made a speech denouncing "white" Ashkenazi elites that he claimed wield unfair power in the country, Arutz Sheva reports.

Excellence-Nesuah's Deputy Director for Management, Moshe Barmak, told the Knesset's Finance Committee that Maoz was removed from the positions of chief economist and presenter, but continues to serve as director and funds manager.

The Finance Committee was scheduled to discuss the Maoz affair but did not do so because Maoz and Excellence-Nesuah's General Manager David Baruch both failed to show up for the session. Neither man explained why he did not come.

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Mizrahim are movin' on up

Bostom on understanding Islamic antisemitism

2012-01-23T08:13:00.012Z

The onward march of the 'Islamist winter' (with thanks: Philippa C; Tony C)

In this Front Page magazine interview, Dr Andrew Bostom tells how 9/11 sparked his interest in Islamic antisemitism. He has since written several seminal works on the subject. It should be noted, however, that current Arab antisemitism demonises Jews in a way that good old-fashioned Islamic antisemitism did not.

In the wake of the farcically mislabeled “Arab Spring,” we are witnessing a swelling tide of Jew-hatred emanating from the triumphant Islamists throughout the Middle East who don’t even bother to conceal it. And why should they? Our own willfully blind and/or complicit media downplay it or ignore it altogether.

Some argue that what is mistaken for contemporary Islamic anti-Semitism is just a reaction to Israel’s “occupation” and “genocidal oppression” of the Palestinians. Or that it is not intrinsic to Islam but derives from the influence of Nazism. Or that it is a perversion of Islam on the part of a tiny minority of extremists. What are the true roots of Islamic Jew-hatred?

Andrew Bostom, M.D., M.S., has documented the answer. An Associate Professor of Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, the major teaching affiliate of Brown University Medical School, he is the author of two essential, extraordinary, and meticulously documented works of scholarship, The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, and of the upcoming Sharia versus Freedom (with a foreword by the incomparable Andrew C. McCarthy). He has published articles and commentary on Islam here on FrontPage and in the Washington Times, National Review Online, Revue Politique, American Thinker, and elsewhere in print and online.

This Tuesday in Los Angeles, Mr. Bostom will present “Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew-Hatred.” See here for information about attending.

Mark Tapson: Dr. Bostom, what inspired you as a scholar to focus on Islam?

Andrew Bostom: It’s pretty straightforward. The stimulus was 9/11/2001. Until then I was simply a medical academic at Rhode Island Hospital (the major teaching hospital of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University), and an average citizen trying to keep abreast of world events. I am not particularly religious as a Jew though I certainly support the state of Israel. But I grew up in New York, living in Queens most of my life, and I went to medical school in Brooklyn. My wife and I still have family in New York City, so the day of 9/11/2001 itself was traumatic, trying to make sure everyone was OK. A colleague’s wife was in the second tower. She was very lucky, barely getting out before it collapsed.

On the way home I grabbed a book by Karen Armstrong about Islam. I was reading it and commenting to my wife that it just didn’t seem to jibe. (I learned later that Armstrong is a notorious apologist.) As I read it out loud my wife was just laughing. I didn’t find it particularly funny. Nor the news reports over the next days that were transparently apologetic. And I was alarmed at stories that appeared in the New York Times (and other New York area newspapers) about an Egyptian Imam who was preaching at a large Mosque in Manhattan, and spreading conspiracy theories about Jews leaving the World Trade Center in advance of the attacks, due to their “prior knowledge.”

So I started reading independently. A small book by Yossef Bodansky, a terrorism expert, discussed Islamic anti-semitism as a political instrument, and referenced the work of Bat Ye’or on the dhimmi. I got that book by Bat Ye’or, and everything else she has written in English—all her books, essays, and published lectures. I met Bat Ye’or after a correspondence with Daniel Pipes, and brought her to Brown University to give a guest lecture. She became a very close mentor, and introduced me to Ibn Warraq and that’s how things started. I had begun writing short essays within a year of 9/11. Ibn Warraq resided with us in 2003, for a time, and he encouraged me to consider a book project. I was increasingly interested in the Jihad and it was with Warraq’s support that I put that first book, The Legacy of Jihad, together.

MT: What do you say to the common defense that Islam preaches tolerance toward Christians and Jews – “the people of the book” – and that Jew-hatred is not inherent within it?

AB: Although often invoked, these apologetic canards are diametrically opposed to Islamic doctrine and the sad, if predictable historical realities this sacralized hatred has engendered.

What has always been the nature of the system of governance imposed upon indigenous non-Muslims conquered by Islam’s timeless, institutionalized jihad wars?

In his seminal The Laws of Islamic Governance, al-Mawardi (d. 1058) — a renowned jurist of Baghdad — examined the regulations pertaining to the lands and infidel populations subjugated by jihad. This is the origin of the system of dhimmitude. The native infidel “dhimmi” (which derives from both the word for “pact” and also “guilt” — guilty of religious errors) population had to recognize Islamic ownership of their land, submit to Islamic law, and accept payment of the Koranic poll tax (jizya, the tax paid in lieu of being slain) based on Koran 9:29. Al-Mawardi notes: “The enemy makes a payment in return for peace and reconciliation. … Reconciliation and security last as long as the payment is made. If the payment ceases, then the jihad resumes.” A treaty of reconciliation may be renewable, but must not exceed 10 years.

This same basic formulation was reiterated during a January 8, 1998, interview by Muslim Brotherhood “Spiritual Guide,” and immensely popular Al-Jazeera television personality Yusuf al-Qaradawi, confirming how jihad continues to regulate the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims to this day. The “contract of the jizya,” or “dhimma,” encompassed other obligatory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim “dhimmi” peoples. Collectively, these “obligations” formed the discriminatory system of dhimmitude imposed upon non-Muslims — Jews and Christians, as well as Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists — subjugated by jihad. Some of the more salient features of dhimmitude include:

– The prohibition of arms for the vanquished dhimmis

– The prohibition of church bells

– Restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches, synagogues, and temples

It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or Sharia. The writings of the much lionized Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali (d. 1111) highlight how the institution of dhimmitude was simply a normative and prominent feature of the Sharia:

The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. … Jews, Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non-Muslims]. … On offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]. … They are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells. … Their houses may not be higher than the Muslim’s, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddle-work is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the [public] baths. … [Dhimmis] must hold their tongue.

The practical consequences of such a discriminatory system were summarized by the great historian of Muslim and non-Muslim (especially Jewish) relations during classical Islam, S.D. Goitein, in 1970 :

Taxation [by the Muslim government] was merciless, and a very large section of the population must have lived permanently at the starvation level. From many Geniza letters [a trove of Oriental Jewish correspondence etc., particularly from the Middle Ages, discovered in Egypt] one gets the impression that the poor were concerned more with getting money for the payment of their taxes than for food and clothing, for failure of payment usually induced cruel punishment. … The Muslim state was quite the opposite of the ideals … embedded in the constitution of the United States. An Islamic state was part of or coincided with dar al-Islam, the House of Islam. Its treasury was … the money of the Muslims. Christians and Jews were not citizens of the state, not even second class citizens. They were outsiders under the protection of the Muslim state, a status characterized by the term dhimma … They were also exposed to a great number of discriminatory and humiliating laws. … As it lies in the very nature of such restrictions, soon additional humiliations were added, and before the second century of Islam was out, a complete body of legislation in this matter was in existence. … In times and places in which they became too oppressive they lead to the dwindling or even complete extinction of the minorities.

Important scholars of Islamic Antisemitism — from Hartwig Hirschfeld in the mid-1880s, Georges Vajda in the late 1930s, S.D. Goitein in 1971, and Haggai Ben-Shammai in 1988 — have demonstrated, collectively, all of the following:

– Clear historical evidence of specific Islamic anti-semitism, from the Geniza record of the high Middle Ages — including the coinage of a unique Hebrew word to characterize such Muslim Jew hatred, sinuth — published in full by Goitein as of 1971

– The content of foundational Muslim sources detailing the sacralized rationale for Islam’s anti-Jewish bigotry, including Hartwig Hirschfeld’s mid-1880s essay series on Muhammad’s subjugation of the Jews of Medina, based upon the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad

– George Vajda’s elegant, comprehensive 1937 analysis focusing primarily on the hadith (the putative words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, as recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions)

– Haggai Ben-Shammai’s concise 1988 study of key examples of Jew-hatred in the Koran and Koranic exegesis

– Inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to taxes and penal law

– The refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts

– A requirement that Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims, including Zoroastrians and Hindus, wear special clothes

– The overall humiliation and abasement of non-Muslims

It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or Sharia.

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Avnery hasn't a clue about Jews from Arab lands

2012-01-22T08:36:00.015Z

Surprise, surprise - that grand old man of the Left, Uri Avnery (pictured), has jumped on to the 'white-discrimination-against-Mizrahim' bandwagon, following the Shlomo Maoz 'scandal'. Why should we take Avnery seriously? Because he still has an international following. Many radical leftists are casualties of an inadequate Israeli schooling system. They simply haven't a clue about Jews from Arab countries and apply Marxist class stereotypes. We must redouble our efforts to educate 'leftists' as to the true history of Jews in Arab countries. My comments follow in italics.

Avnery: The Orientals have deep grudges against the Ashkenazim. They believe – not without justification – that they have been humiliated and discriminated against from their first day in the country, and still are, though quite a number of them have reached high economic and political positions. The other day, a top director of one of the foremost financial institutions caused a scandal when he accused the “Whites” (i.e. Ashkenazim) of dominating all the banks, the courts and the media. He was promptly fired, which caused another scandal.

The discrimination has been overstated and in many ways is a thing of the past. And one cannot generalise: As our commenter Sylvia says: Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi Jews have done very well - while Jews from North Africa are still struggling.

Avnery: The Likud came to power in 1977, dethroning Labour. With short interruptions, It has been in power ever since. Yet most Likud members still feel that the Ashkenazim rule Israel, leaving them far behind. Now, 34 years later, the dark wave of anti-democratic legislation pushed by Likud deputies is being justified by the slogan “We must start to rule!”

The scene reminds me of a building site surrounded by a wooden fence. The canny contractor has left some holes in the fence, so that curious passers-by can look in. In our society, all the other blocs feel like outsiders looking through the holes, full of envy for the Ashkenazi “elite” inside, who have all the good things. They hate everything they connect with this “elite”: the Supreme Court, the media, the human rights organizations, and especially the peace camp. All these are called “leftist”, a word curiously enough identified with the “elite”.

How has “peace” become associated with the dominant and domineering Ashkenazim?

That is one of the great tragedies of our country. Jews have lived for many centuries in the Muslim world. There they never experienced the terrible things committed in Europe by Christian anti-Semitism. Muslim-Jewish animosity started only a century ago, with the advent of Zionism, and for obvious reasons.

Ah, that Golden Age myth again. Avnery is blissfully ignorant of the history of Jews in Arab countries, where they lived in an atmosphere of 'cordial hatred' - as Professor Paul Fenton, a scholar of Moroccan-Jewish relations once put it. Avnery is at once ignorant of antisemitism in the Koran, and the long history of Jewish servitude, known as 'dhimmitude', under Muslim rule. (Somebody please tell him about pre-20th century massacres). Furthermore it is shocking that a German Jew whose family escaped the Nazis should be ignorant of the Nazi inspiration behind 20th century Arab Jew-hatred.

Avnery: When the Jews from Muslim countries started to arrive en masse in Israel, they were steeped in Arab culture. But here they were received by a society that held everything Arab in total contempt. Their Arab culture was “primitive”, while real culture was European. Furthermore, they were identified with the murderous Muslims. So, the immigrants were required to shed their own culture and traditions, their accent, their memories, their music. In order to show how thoroughly Israeli they had become, they also had to hate Arabs.

It is true that Israel did not at first appreciate Arabic culture, but Jews arriving from Arab countries were able to get state grants to do degrees in Arabic literature at the Hebrew University. They still continued to listen to Farid al-Atrash. Likewise the state did nothing to promote Yiddish culture. Leftists tend to overstate the cultural 'discrimination' that Jews from Arab lands experienced because they hate all elites, without recognising that they are part of them.

It is not true that all Jews from Arab countries were products of Arab culture. In fact many were fans of western culture. Those who were products of the Alliance Israelite system, spoke English and French. They could recite the poems of La Fontaine and Rudyard Kipling. They sang along to Edith Piaf.

Avnery: It is, of course, a world-wide phenomenon that in multinational countries the most downtrodden class of the dominant nation is also the most radical nationalist foe of the minority nations. Belonging to the superior nation is often the only source of pride left to them. The result is frequently virulent racism and xenophobia.

Avnery has got it precisely backwards. Many oriental Jews brought with them a pre-existing hatred of Arabs - the result of suffering and dispossession. It is this leftist inability to recognise or downplay Arab antisemitism which is actually raising roadblocks to peace.

Avnery: This is one of the reasons why the Orientals were attracted to the Likud, for whom the rejection of peace and the hatred of Arabs are supreme virtues.

Nonsense. Who signed a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979? Menahem Begin of the Likud.

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Arab journalist raises Jewish refugee issue

2012-01-20T17:15:00.008Z

Most telling in this interview about what western journalists miss in their MidEast coverage, the Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who writes in the Jerusalem Post, raises the issue of justice for Jewish refugees from Arab countries, FrumForum reports:

Toameh notes that the same foreign journalists would then ask him: “are you on the payroll of the Israel lobby?” Do they [the Jews] pay you to say these things against Arafat and the PLO?’ Toameh’s response to them:

what do the Jews have to do with this? I’m telling you what the Palestinians are saying about there being corruption in the Palestinian Authority. I’m even telling you that the PA is saying that the PA is corrupt.

It is a sad reflection on the state of society, and in particular, the media industry, that not only are they not sufficiently concerned or outraged at the death of Arabs by Arabs (which coincidentally has claimed many more lives than the Israel – Palestinian conflict), but that they will only muster even an iota of concern if they can put in an ‘anti-Israel’ angle.

On the proposed loyalty oath as well, Toameh offered a pragmatic response: “I have no problem with it because it applies equally to both Jews and non-Jews alike.”

One of the biggest and most intractable sticking points has consistently been the Palestinian demand for a right of return, which Israel will not agree to because it would mean the death knell of Israel as a Jewish state.

However, Toameh offers a very simple and pragmatic three stage solution, where the Palestinian refugees could:

1. Go to the future Palestinian state;

2. Resettle elsewhere, including other Arab states; and

3. Be offered compensation.

Most tellingly though, and in a statement seldom ever heard from Arabs (or the West), Toameh then asked: “and what about Jewish refugees that were forced to flee Arab nations”, suggesting that the issue of Jewish refugees must also be part of any future solution.

Focusing on the problem from Arab dictatorships and their insistence on inciting their people against Israel, Toameh says that we have a problem in the West in failing to believe what people tell us.

If Hamas say they want to destroy you, you have no reason not to believe them. And if Ahmadinejad says he wants to destroy you, there’s no need to start analysing what he means by that. Stop fooling ourselves and if anyone thinks that Hamas will ever recognise Israel’s right to exist, you’re also living in an illusion. Take it from their mouth directly…the PLO however is different – they will tell you one thing in English and then another in Arabic.

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Mizrahim in Israel are movin' on up

2012-01-20T07:39:00.007Z

The economist Shlomo Maoz lost his job last week after lambasting the 'white' Ashkenazi establishment. But a new study reveals that Mizrahi oriental Jews are doing better than ever - and intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is running at 25 percent - testifying to the astonishing success of the Zionist 'ingathering of the exiles'. Haaretz reports:

Tens-of-thousands of words, thousands of Internet comments and enumerable conversations have been devoted to Shlomo Maoz's "white man's speech" last week - the lecture where investment house Excellence Nessuah's chief economist called Bank Leumi "the whites' bank."

Two issues have been in focus. First, was Excellence justified in firing Maoz for his remarks, or was this illegitimate censorship? Second, what about the fact that Maoz himself is not exactly deprived but rather a longtime collaborator with tycoons of all colors? He's a member of 15 different boards of directors and earns NIS 200,000 a month, by conservative estimates.


	Photo by: Ayala Tal

Few people have addressed the main points of the speech, which took place at Sapir College. Maoz was hard-hitting, referring to "the ruling white society" and "the robber kibbutzim." He said he'd like to see "someone bash the heads of the Ashkenazim on Rothschild Boulevard." Maoz didn't provide any data to back up his allegations.

But a new study, to be published this year, maps the ethnic component of each of the economic deciles of Israel's population. It was the widening gaps between them that propelled last summer's social protest. As of 2010, almost half (47 percent ) of the upper two deciles - the only people who end each month in the black - are Israeli-born non-Haredi Ashkenazim with fathers born in Europe or the United States. Yet Ashkenazim constitute only 25 percent of the general population.

Only 26 percent of the people in the highest decile are Mizrahim - Jews of Middle Eastern or North African descent - and this is also their exact proportion of the population.

In the lowest decile only 6 percent are non-Haredi Ashkenazim, while 12 percent are Mizrahim. Nearly half of this decile - 48 percent - are Arabs, while Haredim of all ethnic groups account for 19 percent (most of the remainder are new immigrants of different backgrounds). The average per capita income of Mizrahim is 20 percent lower than that of Ashkenazim.

The study was initiated by Prof. Momi Dahan, a former director general of the Finance Ministry and former chief economist of the Bank of Israel. Dahan also investigated socioeconomic gaps a decade ago and concluded that they had widened. But this time he's actually optimistic.

"I had the feeling that Maoz's speech was motivated more by personal distress than by observation - meaning a dispassionate, thorough analysis," Dahan told Haaretz in an interview. "You don't use the word 'robber' in a dispassionate analysis."

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How a Tunisian Muslim became an orthodox Jew

2012-01-19T08:09:00.002Z

It's always moving to read stories of people who convert to Judaism out of conviction and against all odds. But you will find few more extraordinary stories than that of Zipporah (not her real name), who was born a Tunisian Muslim. Zipporah came to Israel from the US with her Honduran husband Oscar, who converted from Catholicism. Here is an abridged, rough translation from the Hebrew feature in Maariv (with thanks: Sylvia) :

As the world marked a decade and three months since the September 11 attacks, Zipporah (full name kept confidential) recalled how in the midst of tragedy Tunisia, her homeland, changed for her in front of her very eyes. Like the rest of the world, the North African country was considered relatively moderate, but instead of having compassion for thousands of victims, a wave of religious extremism and hatred of the West washed over it.

Zipporah with her husband Joseph and baby Sophia (Photo: Reli)

"Tunisia before the attack was not a particularly religious country," recalls Zipporah, who was still called by her Arabic name, Asma. "Most of my friends were secular, not people who pray five times a day. But in the days after the attack people on the street felt a tremendous sense of pride in Muslims. A sense of unity.

"Suddenly the world was divided between the followers of Islam on the one hand and Western countries on the other. It was amazing. A few days after the attack I came to school and I saw more girls wearing head coverings. Students went about with pictures of Osama bin Laden in their wallets. The blow the West took was a moment of elation for Tunisian people. "

Asma's father, an economist educated at Syracuse University, New York, was employed by the UN and was working with international relief organizations. The relationship with Israel was characterized by an uncompromising disgust. "My father is a full-fledged antisemite," she stresses. "On the one hand, an educated man who went to university in New York and on the other hand, he hates Jews. Deep down he believes that all Jews a bad smell, they are not clean. He watches the news on Al - Jazeera and keeps saying he does not understand why the world did not fight against Israel, why it allows it to continue the occupation, why it does not destroy them.

"Despite the hatred of Israel father was a true intellectual," she says. "A curious man who travelled all over the world. Very open. He worked with many Americans. He knew them intimately and felt a great affinity for American culture. After the attacks he was afraid we were going for the hard bloodshed, polarization between East and West.

"We were a wealthy family. My housewife mother and three sisters. I had everything. We used to go overseas for holidays annually almost anywhere in the world. We lived in a two-story building in the capital Tunis, we had a dog. For seven years I studied violin."

But the holidays in the Alps, violin lessons, took place in the framework of a strong Islamic faith and pan-Arab solidarity. "My mother was religious, one of those who pray five times a day, advocating for maintaining a religious lifestyle. In the heat she would fill bottles with cold water and go to the poor. At Ramadan, when fasting was over in the evening, she would fill pots of food and giving them to people the street. She was a woman of much grace. " A nostalgic smile spreads over her face when she says the word "grace" in Hebrew without an accent.

How did you feel about the outbreak of the uprising in Tunisia last winter?

"At first I was very happy that the Tunisian people were taking their destiny into their own hands at last. One of the reasons I wanted to leave Tunisia and study outside the country was like many other young people in the country, I felt suffocated as a result of the political situation. When Zine - Abedine Ben Ali left the country it was really surreal. The way in which he and his family came to prey on Tunisia is terrible. the way that they took over everything - mobile operators, airlines, the education system. They were sponsored by a Tunisian mafia. "

Were you surprised by the victory of the Islamic movement in recent elections?

"I'm not surprised that the Tunisian people choose a religious party. This is the essence of democracy, people choose who represents them best. However, I was disappointed, as many of the liberal elite of Tunisia expected to establish a secular state. If you look at it realistically, we need to understand how the Arab world works - a Muslim Tunisian, even in liberal circles, values his tradition, religion, faith. The bottom line is that any party in Tunisia is anti-Israel, and it might soon pass a law making any contact with Israel a crime. Which means that my mother cannot talk to me on the 'phone. It is very bittersweet for me ".

We meet a kosher pizzeria in a Jewish part of town in upstate New Jersey. Zipporah covers her head and a long skirt, apparently fittting well with the locals. Beside her husband Joseph, a black skullcap on his head, his ritual fringes out, holding his half-year-old daughter, Sophia - they are religious. The New Jersey family arrived three days ago along with hundreds of other Jewish couples who chose to leave the United States and to immigrate to Israel, with the assistance of "Nefesh B'Nefesh".

Outwardly, their profile is different from that of other Jewish families who followed a similar path in recent years: young, in their mid-twenties, with a child or two, recently completed university, just before a career ties them to a permanent job. Like her husband, Zipporah sees herself a devout Zionist. "When Joseph and I wanted to get married the first thing he wanted to know is if I'm ready to move to Israel," she recalls.

But underneath lies a human story of two exceptional young men who were born as far as possible from Israel and Judaism. She, Asma (her last name, like her, because she is afraid to reveal the great sensitivity of the situation), a Muslim family from Tunisia brought up to hate Jews, he, Oscar Hwarz (Juarez), a Catholic family from Honduras, a devout Christian who spent his adolescence active in the church. Both are educated, speak several languages and are equipped with unique experience. But instead of living in cosmopolitan New York, they chose to convert, become strictly observant and make their home in Israel.

Zipporah says the clues that she would undergo change appeared at an early age. "I remember watching TV at age 15. As always, the news channel was on Al - Jazeera, showing the IDF's activity. My cousin responded angrily. She said she did not believe what Jews do to Palestinians, they put them through torture and cruel occupation. And I sit there and think to myself, all I know about what happens there comes from Al - Jazeera.n I have never met Israelis, have never learned about what happens there from anywhere else. No one let me hear what the other side feels. My father, with all his education and openness, never thought that maybe there is another side to the story. When it comes to Israel, to all Tunisians have one position - that Israel is the embodiment of all evil and must be destroyed. "

So how have you concluded it's different?

"Ironically, my father taught me to think for myself. He taught me not to accept what the media tells me blindly. Although I know he would not like it, my desire to learn about Israel, get to know the other side, came from him. It is curious he taught us to learn all the time. I remember at the age of eight, nine, I told my dad that it would probably takes forever to count to a thousand. and he, in turn, asked me to count, to see for myself how long it takes. So we sat together and counted from one to a thousand, without skipping a single number. He would not give up until I could see how long it takes. "

Read article in full (Hebrew)

Being an 'Arab Jew' could be good for business

2012-01-18T17:08:00.011Z

Na'ava Mashiah has written a gushing article pitching herself as an 'Arab Jew'. In fact very few Jews would described themselves thus, unless they are far-leftists. Her account of why Jews like her grandfather left Iraq is only partially correct: what about the rise of pro-Nazi feeling and the Farhud of 1941? Regrettably her motivation for ingratiating herself with the Arab world seems to be purely economic (with thanks: Andrew):

The growing rift between Israel and the Arab world makes it hard to imagine that Jews and Arabs once coexisted across the Middle East. At one point these identities could be found not only in the same neighborhood, but even in the same person.

Is it an oxymoron to be an Arab Jew? An Arab Jew refers either to a Jew living in the Arab world or whose ancestors came from Arab countries. This term flourished once in the Middle East but is not widely known today. Not long ago there were Jews living in the cities of the Middle East who were integrated into their societies and held influential roles in their communities and economies.

My grandfather, Baba Yona Mashiah, was such a figure in Baghdad. He was, I would say, an Arab Jew. My childhood was sprinkled with stories of his grand personality, power and business acumen. He was a prominent land and real-estate developer and in the 1940s contributed to building “Baghdad el Jedidah”, a chic neighbourhood in the Baghdad suburbs. His partners were mostly Muslim and some were prominent government officials.

Over the years I have accumulated stories about Baba Yona like pearls on a string and play with these beads, just as he played with the beads on hismisbaha,the traditional Muslim prayer beads. My father recalled how he used to accompany my grandfather, who was also known by the Arabic name Abu Fuad, to meetings in cafés and the respect that people showed him.

Baba Yona was an integrated member of Baghdad society and its business world, yet he was a Jew.

In the 1950s the Jews of Baghdad experienced an exodus from Iraq. A reluctant exodus, I would claim, which was brought about by a combination of increasing Zionism, anti-Semitic propaganda, envy of the privileged life Jews had when Iraq was under British control and the creation of Israel. The displacement of thousands of Palestinians and the humiliating defeat of the Arab armies were the final blow.

Life had become unbearable for the Jews and even those who had wanted to stay were compelled to leave. Jews were assumed to be a fifth column and turned into scapegoats following the defeat of Arab armies by the Israeli Defense Forces. Baba Yona watched his empire crumble. His peer and neighbour, Mr. Addas, another influential Jew, was hung in the square. He himself was imprisoned for three months, accused of having Zionist connections.

At a certain point the Iraqi government offered a deal for Jews, inviting them to escape to Israel if they would renounce their citizenship and relinquish their property. Baba Yona was forced to leave Baghdad with over 100,000 other Jews to the one country that would accept them at the time – Israel. Ironically, the Zionists, whose movement played a part in alienating Muslims from their Jewish compatriots, were there to save them.

So as they were airlifted out of Baghdad, did my nine year-old father know where he was headed? Was it en route to Cyprus and during the eventually landing in Israel that he stopped being an Arab Jew?

In Israel the younger generations became embarrassed by their Arabic-speaking parents. My father, Sabah, was given a Hebrew name, Shaul; but his brother who had arrived in his late teens, too late for a name change, is called Jamil until this very day.

In fact, my father’s Arab identity was totally effaced in Israel. It was a combination of external pressures and self denial. Thus he became successfully integrated into the dominant culture in Israel of that period.

My interest in my Arab roots began about 10 years ago when I established my business, which focuses on economic cooperation between Israel and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Many Israelis asked me why I had chosen to do so. The notion that Israel should forge economic ties with other countries in the MENA region is not self-evident within Israeli society. (It is even less so within Arab society - ed).

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Bahrain Jews welcome interfaith dialogue

2012-01-18T07:38:00.012Z

King Hamad of Bahrain

The Jews of Bahrain have leapt to the King of Bahrain's defence, by endorsing his intention to host an interfaith conference organised by Rabbi Marc Shneier. The rabbi has rubbished reports that this is a cynical effort to rebut accusations of religious intolerance in Bahrain. (With thanks: Lily)

The Jewish community in the Kingdom yesterday hailed talks between His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and leading Jewish Rabbi and Vice President of the World Jewish Council Marc Schneier.

Members of the community said that the talks were a testament of Bahrain’s religious tolerance.
DT had earlier reported the visit of Rabbi Marc Schneier to Bahrain. His Majesty received him. Both leaders agreed that Iran is a common threat to Bahrain and the US.

“It’s a good gesture from King Hamad to receive Rabbi Marc Schneier,” said Bahraini-Jewish community leader Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo. “I was pleased with the outcome that Bahrain will be hosting the interfaith conference.”

Rabbi Schneier had requested for to play host to a Jewish-Muslim dialogue later this year during the meeting with His Majesty. The objective of the dialogue would be to prove ties between the two faiths.

Rabbi Schneier rubbished reports that claimed His Majesty was reaching out to the Jews only to get rid of accusations of religious intolerance made against him. “King Hamad has implemented reforms and reached out to his opponents and tried to help,” he said.

The Bahraini-Jewish community in the country is one of the only Jewish communities in the region. Although there used to be thousands, now there are only four families left here – less than 40 members. Many of them have served at important posts, most notably Nancy Khedoury in the Parliament and Houda Nonoo as Kingdom’s Ambassador to the US.

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Why I am worried - by a Tunisian Jew

2012-01-17T08:16:00.008Z

The Tunisian-born writer and broadcaster Andrew Nahum (pictured), now resident in France, is a worried man. From Radio Judaiques FM, via JForum:

"Tunisian friends sometimes ask me: Why did you leave? Why did you leave Tunisia?

I felt embarrassed and did not really know what to answer - but I now understand that my intuition, pushing me to leave, did not deceive me.

It was not possible to regard oneself as a full citizen when the first article of the Constitution stipulated that the language of the republic was Arabic and its religion Islam.

While in all sincerity having supported the new Tunisia, being neither Arab nor Muslim (unless you consider Arabic-speaking Jewish Tunisians as authentic) I felt my citizenship could only be a sham. One day, the difference would be felt in a more or less tragic way, the conflict in the Middle East would come crashing down on my head and at every opportunity the old antisemitic demons would come out in the cold light of day.

The few Jews who still remain in this country, 1,500 of the 150,000 or 120, 000 that we once were, now have their work cut out and I applaud their courage for daring to protest to the new "moderate Islamist" authorities against the hysterical demonstrations which welcomed Ismail Haniyeh, terrorist leader in Gaza, at the airport in Tunis.

To hear shouts of "Jews out, kill the Jews," after the Ennahda leader had tried to reassure international opinion by recently inviting Tunisian Jews to return to live in the country, after a pilgrimage to the tomb of the highly revered Rabbi Hai Taieb in Tunis had gone without a hitch last month - under heavy police protection to be sure - while the government is struggling to bring back tourists and jump-start the economy, does something to dampen one's enthusiasm for the Tunis spring which began just a year ago, when we believed that a democratic Tunisia would continue with greater vigour its march towards progress and modernity.

Today one can legitimately be worried for this country and of course for the tiny Jewish community that still lives there.

Worried, because young people disappointed by developments still continue to set themselves on fire, concerned that the "Ennahda" party in power is already being taken over by an even more fundamentalist and radical Salafi movement, concerned that the University is under threat, worried about the future of women, concerned that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are once again becoming the mandatory excuse for hiding the real problems the country faces.

It is not by shouting 'Kill the Jews', is it not by welcoming with pomp and ceremony the Hamas leader and shouting with him hate-filled slogans against Israel and Jews, not by criminalizing contact with the "Zionist entity" in the Constitution that we will grant work to the unemployed, a new start to the economy, prevent the brain drain and the clash between democrats, secularists and universalists on the one hand and the advocates of an all-powerful and omnipresent Islam on the other.

This is all very worrying."

Andrew Nahum

Read transcript in French

Tunisian Jews shaken after Haniyeh tour

Burt concerned at 'deplorable ' Gerbi incident

2012-01-16T10:50:00.021Z

Alistair Burt, minister in the UK Foreign Office

Exclusive to Point of No Return

The British undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Alistair Burt, will raise the forced departure of David Gerbi from Libya with the Libyan authorities after his attention was drawn to it, seemingly for the first time, by a letter from Robert Halfon MP. Assets of the Libyan regime frozen in Britain will not be used to compensate victims of the Gaddafi regime, Burt affirmed.

Assets of the Libyan regime frozen by the British government cannot be used to compensate Libyan Jews whose property was seized by the Gaddafi regime, the British undersecretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Alistair Burt, has affirmed.

In a reply to a letter about Jews and other minorities in Libya from Robert Halfon MP, (himself of Libyan origin), Mr Burt urged 'individuals who feel they have a claim against the Libyan authorities to pursue the matter through the appropriate legal channels'. He quoted the Libyan Prime Minister al-Kib's call for the establishment of a programme to gather testimony from victims of the Gaddafi regime and to process compensation claims.

It appears that Mr Burt had been previously unaware of the forced exit of Dr David Gerbi, the psychiatrist whose life was threatened simply for expressing the desire to clean up the Dar al-Bishi synagogue in Tripoli.

"I was very concerned to hear about this deplorable incident," Mr Burt wrote. " I have asked our Embassy to raise this case with the Libyan authorities.

"The British government is concerned about the rights of all minorities in Libya. the National Transitional Council's Constitutional Declaration states that all Libyans are equal and are not discriminated against because of religion, faith, language, wealth, gender, ancestry, political views, social status or tribal group or family affiliation.

We have urged the NTC to live up to these commitments. It will be important for the new Libyan government to signal a clear break from the past. The Libyan government's respect for human rights violations is therefore crucial."

The UK was determined to be a strong partner for Libya in its transition to an 'open democratic state.'

Historian challenged over 'Muslim saved Jew' film

2012-01-14T20:49:00.020Z

Michael Lonsdale plays the rector of the Paris mosque in the film Les hommes libres

The Algerian-born ex-Trotskyist Jewish historian Benjamin Stora has been embroiled in controversy after acting as historical consultant to 'Free Men' ('Les hommes libres') - a film inspired by the wartime friendship of the rector of the Paris mosque, Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit with Salim Halali, a Jewish singer in Paris. Ben Ghabrit saves Halali from the Nazis by issuing him with a false certificate to say Halali was a Muslim, The Forward explains. See my comment below:

Benjamin Stora, an Algerian-born writer and political activist who turned 61 in December, has for years combined history and self-history as a North African Jew. Most recently he has become embroiled in a controversy about the role that Muslims may have played in saving French Jews during the Holocaust.

As adviser for the acclaimed French film “Free Men” (“Les Hommes Libres”), the prolific Stora was responsible for its historical accuracy. Released in Paris in the fall, and set for American arrival in the spring of 2012, “Free Men” tells how, in German-occupied Paris during World War II, a young Algerian immigrant unexpectedly joins the anti-Nazi resistance after becoming friends with a Jewish cafe singer. Co-written and directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi, a Frenchman born in Morocco, “Free Men” is inspired by real-life episodes in which Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, an Algerian-born high-society lover of the arts who served as the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, managed to save the life of Jewish singer Salim Halali, who would later become a well-known performer of North African music.

Born Simon Halali in Algeria, the singer was performing in Paris by the late 1930s. The artsy and intellectual Ben Ghabrit was also an amateur violinist and oud player. He frequented high-toned Gallic salons, where he was admired as the “most Parisian of Muslims.” He hired Halali to perform at the Café Maure de la Mosquée, a North African-style coffeehouse and tearoom still located within the Great Mosque in Paris’s 5th Arrondissement.

Ben Ghabrit, although required to collaborate with the Nazi-controlled French Vichy government, was also a close friend of Mohammed V, King of Morocco. The latter monarch’s laudable efforts to protect his Jewish subjects during the Second World War have led to his name, among others, currently being bruited about to be named one of the “Righteous Among the Nations,” an initiative that Shimon Peres reportedly supports. As Eva Weisel pointed out in a December 28 Op-Ed in The New York Times, getting Yad Vashem to grant the honorific to a Muslim seems to be unusually difficult*.

If not quite this heroic, Ben Ghabrit did indeed save Halali by issuing him a false certificate of Muslim religion to mislead the Nazis. To back up this document, the name of Halali’s father was even inscribed on a blank headstone in the Muslim cemetery of the Parisian suburb of Bobigny.

“Free Men” cites other cases of such false certificates being issued, although the full number has been a matter of dispute, with undocumented estimates ranging from more than 1,500 to a scant few, depending on the account. After “Free Men” opened, a number of articles on the news and culture website rue89.com alleged that the film exaggerated the number of such salvations. The articles also implied that the filmmakers painted a misleading portrait of solidarity between Arabs and Jews.

In an October reply posted on the website, Stora explained that the film was centered on the true story of Halali as well as that of two little Jewish girls whose rescue by Mosque officials was authentic because Stora had personally interviewed them as part of his previous research. Stora further explained that “Free Men” is a fictional film based on factual incidents, in the manner of Claude Berri’s much loved “Le Vieil Homme et L’enfant,” “The Two of Us”, about an old Frenchman who shelters a Jewish child during the Nazi occupation. Stora concluded the polemic over how many Jewish lives were actually saved by Arabs by reminding readers of the talmudic saying “Whoever saves one life, if it is as if they had saved the whole world.”

Precisely the same phrase is cited in a 2006 Washington Post article by Robert Satloff, author of “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories From the Holocaust’s Long Reach Into Arab Lands (PublicAffairs, 2006).” In The Washington Post, Satloff stated: “There is strong evidence that the most influential Arab in Europe — Si Kaddour [Ben Ghabrit], the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris — saved as many as 100 Jews by having the mosque’s administrative personnel give them certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation.”

*Yad Vashem's decision was justified in this NY Times letter.

Read article in full

My comment: another historian, Michel Renard, has criticised Stora and the film. Renard implies that the rescue of individuals like Halali was a one-off, and somewhat incidental to the mosque's work. It is wrong to give the impression that the rector of the Paris mosque headed up some kind of Resistance network in Paris.

Stora has tried to defend himself by arguing that he does nothing of the kind. The Halali case was one of about 100 such cases where the mosque issued false certificates to save Jews, and the film seeks nothing more than to highlight the rescue of an individual Jew.

Fair enough. It is important to know that individual Muslims saved Jews, as did brave French non-Jews. But it is also important to highlight, as Satloff says, that some actively persecuted Jews, and that the vast majority did nothing. The French, whose police force collaborated in the Nazi round-up of Jews in France, are only now beginning to come to terms with their role in this painful episode of history.

Robert Satloff found it almost impossible to find Muslims who would admit to saving Jews in North Africa. Whatever the climate of wartime opinion - and much of it was pro-Nazi - few Muslims would now see Jews as anything other than traitors and enemies.

The three exiles of Algerian Jewry

Was the King of Morocco a Righteous Gentile?

Great Algerian-Moroccan-Jewish singer dies

Jewish singer will perform Turkish Eurovision entry

2012-01-14T19:40:00.006Z

Relations may be icy at the political level between Israel and Turkey, but here's some warming news from the pop world. The Izmir-born Jewish singer and TV personality Can Bonomo will be representing Turkey at the Eurovision Song Contest:

Turkey has announced that the young singer and television personality, Can Bonomo, will represent the country in the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest which will take place in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku in May of this year.

Born into a Jewish family, Bonomo has become famous not only as a musician, but also a TV presenter, writer and radio host.

His selection has provoked a range of reaction. Some have praised the decision, saying it will pave the way for young, alternative artists who truly represent the nation, whereas others are expecting a repetition of last year where singer Yuksek Sadat failed to pass the semi-finals.

Read article in full and see video

Let's reframe the Israel debate

2012-01-13T07:58:00.012Z

Israel's legitimacy is under assault in churches (Photo: Alessandro Abbonizio AFP)

It seems that every Jew is a foot-soldier in the war against Israel's delegitimisation. But are we putting across the right message? Lyn Julius in the Jerusalem Post argues that Jewish refugees have a central role to play in reframing the Israel debate:

According to the Reut Institute, Israel’s legitimacy in the West is under assault in politics, academia, trade unions, the media and churches. There is a worrying disconnect between Israel’s excellent relations at government level with its European allies, while grassroots public opinion is increasingly alienated. Israel’s advocates never tire of repeating how much Israel wants peace, and what a boon this tiny country is to the world in technology, science, agriculture, ecology, immigrant absorption - if only the media would cease focusing on bad news from Israel, holding up its microscope to every blemish and imperfection.

But are we putting across the right message? The argument will be won or lost on the liberal Left, which dominates the West’s opinion-forming class.

We need to explode the misconception, commonly held on the Left, that Israel is an outpost of western colonialism and imperialism. Jews were indigenous to the region 1,000 years before the Islamic conquest, with an uninterrupted presence not just in Palestine, but all over the ‘Arab’ world. The Arab invasion turned native Jews and Christians into minorities in their own lands, converting them to Islam, appropriating their shrines and erasing their history. Jews ‘stealing Arab land’ is an offensive inversion of reality. Jews in 10 Arab countries were stripped of their rights and in most cases dispossessed of their property.

The terms we use undermine Jewish rights to our ancestral homeland. ‘Settlements’ and ‘West Bank’ reinforce a sense that the land has always been Arab, and paint Israelis as colonialist imposters. Yet, until their ethnic cleansing in 1948, Jews had always lived beyond the Green line. Yet it must be said that to talk of Judea and Samaria, and Israeli ‘communities’, not settlements, in no way precludes an Israeli withdrawal as part of a peace deal.

We need to restore a vital context to the discussion: the conflict is not between the Israeli Goliath and the Palestinian David. It pits six million Israelis against 300 million Arabs. In terms of values, the battle is between pluralistic, democratic Israel and the jihadists of Islam. The Palestinians are not independent agents. Economically they are propped up by international aid; strategically, they represent a pan-Arab, and increasingly pan-Islamic cause; politically, they are controlled by external regional forces.

We need to emphasize that half the Jews of Israel never left the region - they were uprooted from the Arab and Muslim world to a tiny sliver of land on the Mediterranean. If these Jews are now full and free Israeli citizens, it is largely because Israel offered them unconditional refuge from pre-existing Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism.

This anti-Semitism takes the form of an ancient religious contempt for ‘dhimmi’ Jews, on the one hand, and a modern, Nazi-inspired, genocidal Jew-hatred on the other. The former accounts for a deep religious and cultural resistance to the idea of a Jewish state. The latter drove out almost a million Jews from Arab states, and still drives the conflict with Israel. The violence and abuse suffered by these Jews constitute an unresolved human rights issue.

There is a reckoning to be made between Israel and Arab states cleansed of their Jews. At every turn, Israel should be demanding justice for its own wronged refugees. Palestinian losses and any territorial adjustments Israel may make in the future pale in comparison to the deeded land and assets forfeited by Jews forced from Arab countries.

Refugees are the single most important issue on the Middle East agenda. Borders can be agreed to and Jerusalem can be divided, but the Palestinians are adamant in their insistence on their 'right of return'. Only if they can be made aware of the suffering and the losses of a larger number of Jewish refugees, can we hope to break the deadlock.

You only have to witness the sorry plight of the region’s persecuted and uprooted non-Muslim and non-Arab peoples to understand that the so-called ‘Arab world’ leaves no room for myriad ethnicities and religions. All have suffered at the hands of totalitarian autocracies, whether nationalist or Islamist. Regrettably, the Arab Spring bodes more repression to come. There are twice as many Copts as Palestinians, but where are the leftists protesting against violations of their human rights? There are three times as many Kurds as Palestinians, but where are the calls for their cultural and political rights? As one of the few Middle East minorities to exercise sovereignty, Israel must fly the flag for minority rights. As one of the only democracies, it must make common cause with the secular liberals of the Middle East and North Africa.

We must convince western libertarians to see the self-determination of a small, indigenous Middle Eastern people – the Jews – as a progressive cause. Rejectionism of Israel is rooted in a religious and cultural view of ‘dhimmi’ Jews and Christians as inferior, forced to surrender their rights to the Muslim overlord. For a non-Muslim people to rule itself, still less Arab Muslims, is anathema. By supporting the Palestinian campaign against Israel – deceptively cloaked in the language of human rights - western liberals have become unwitting agents for the re-establishment of Arab and Muslim supremacy over a ‘dhimmi’ people.

Israel represents the national liberation of the Jews, one of the most ancient of native Middle Eastern peoples. If we are to win hearts and minds, we must reframe the debate.

Read article in full

Pilgrimage cancellation 'disrespects' all Jews

2012-01-12T11:29:00.020Z

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which monitors antisemitism worldwide, has vigorously denounced Egypt's cancellation of the annual pilgrimage to Rabbi Hatzeira's tomb in the Nile delta near Alexandria as a sign of disrespect for Jews, dead or alive, according to Haaretz. (With thanks: Lily)

Egypt's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it had told Israel that it would not be "appropriate" for Israeli pilgrims to make an annual visit to the tomb of a 19th-century Jewish holy man in the Nile Delta, as activists mobilized to block the pilgrimage route.

Ceremonies at the tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abu Hatzira have triggered yearly political sparring in Egypt throughout most of the last decade, with Islamists, nationalists, and others claiming that the government by allowing the pilgrimage is pursuing an unpopular policy of normalization with the country's former enemy.

	Jewish pilgrims at the tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira in Egypt, December 1999..
	Photo by: AP / Archive

Egypt notified Israel two months ago that it would be "impossible to hold the annual ceremony because of the political and security situation in the country," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

An Islamist politician involved in organizing protests against the march meanwhile said that visiting Abu Hatzira's gravesite in the village of Daymouta, 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of Cairo would be a "suicide mission" for Israelis, because of popular opposition to their presence in Egypt.

"Normalization (of relations) with Israel is forced on the people, and the visits too come against the will of the people and despite popular rejection," said Gamal Heshmat of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's best organized political group.

Heshmat said that activists planned to stage sit-ins and other protests to block the route as soon as they hear the pilgrims are on their way. Egypt's daily Al-Ahram newspaper reported Tuesday that 31 parties and groups had joined this year's campaign.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, denounced the attempts to block the pilgrimage. In a Tuesday statement, the center's Abraham Cooper accused the Brotherhood of trying to "curb religious freedom of Jews."

"In their worldview, there is no respect for the traditions for Jews, dead or alive," he said.

Read article in full

Jerusalem Post article

Washington Post

Ynet News (Associated Press)

Elder of Ziyon

Revenue sacrificed to anti-Israel vendetta (Commentary blog - with thanks: Eliyahu)

Israel has complained to UNESCO (Rosa El-Yussef - with thanks: Michelle Malca)

Economist sacked for slamming 'white' elite

2012-01-12T06:51:00.013Z

The chief economist of the Excellence Nessuah brokerage firm was unceremoniously ousted on Wednesday after launching a blistering attack on "the Ashkenazi establishment" that included calling Bank Leumi "the whites' bank, Haaretz reports. Interestingly, most of the comments online agree with him. (With thanks: Michelle; Sylvia)

Update: Arutz Sheva reports that the Sephardi Orthodox party Shas has condemned the sacking of Shlomo Maoz. Labour party: Maoz has touched a raw nerve (with thanks: Michelle)

"Was society egalitarian in the 1950s?" economist Shlomo Maoz asked in a lecture on Wednesday at the Sapir Conference on a Different Politics in Sderot. "It was an egalitarian society for Ashkenazim. And even today, the chutzpah continues - for example, the nepotism on the Supreme Court, or in higher education. There was a time when to be promoted in the universities, you had to be close to someone from the ruling population group.


	Photo by: Eyal Toueg and Ofer Vaknin

Shlomo Maoz (centre) with Ayelet Nir and Ron Eichel

Maoz went on to say, "That same white society dominates at Bank Leumi. Bank Leumi is the whites' bank. Only whites can be appointed to [senior] positions there."

Excellence said that "in light of his crude and unfortunate remarks, Maoz has been terminated from all his positions at our investment house. Excellence apologizes for and rejects these statements." At the conference, Maoz also said land policy had been discriminatory: There was downright "land theft by the kibbutzim and moshavim," he said. "They got water at low prices, even in Savyon," one of Israel's wealthiest towns.

Similarly, the national lottery (Mifal Hapayis) "pours money into unique schools in prestigious neighborhoods."

Maoz charged that he was rejected for a job at Leumi because the search committee "was all about Ashkenazi purity. I went to the Supreme Court - there, too, they were all Ashkenazi."(...)

Part of the problem, he said, is that the Finance Ministry's budget department, which drafts the state budget, is also dominated by veteran Israelis of European descent, with "one token Russian [immigrant] and one Mizrahi," or Jew of Middle Eastern descent.

Neither the distress of the poor nor discrimination against Mizrahim elicit any reaction from "white Tel Aviv," Maoz charged. "Only when it hits the whites in Tel Aviv in the pocket do they start to scream."

Read article in full

Mizrahi Supreme Court justice chosen

Tunisian Jews shaken after Haniyeh tour

2012-01-11T20:43:00.010Z

Tunisian Jews are far from convinced by the reassurances of the Ennahda Islamist party leader, Rashid Ghannouchi, condemning the anti-Jewish chants which greeted Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, on his arrival in Tunisia. Too little, too late, says one Jew, interviewed by Kouichi Shiranayagi for Tunisia Live:

In the aftermath of Gaza based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s visit to Tunisia, the Tunisian Jewish community is shaken, looking for answers and hoping the Tunisian government will act quickly to address the community’s fears.

Many in the small community feel the Tunisian government was slow to condemn violent chants of “kick the Jews- it’s our religious duty,” “expel the Jews- it’s our religious duty,” and “kill the Jews- it’s our religious duty” by a group attending the welcoming ceremony of Haniyeh at the Tunis Carthage Airport.

Ennahda officials have condemned the anti-Jewish chants as isolated incidents not reflecting the values of the the Ennahda Party. Rachid Ghannouchi the leader of Ennahda condemned the anti-Jewish slogans as unrepresentative of the spirit of Islam or it’s teachings. He attributed the slogans to a fringe handful of individuals aiming to undermine the image of Ennahda among hundreds who came to welcome Haniyeh. “Ennahda calls on Tunisians of all faiths to stand together and be united for the good of the country,” he said.

However, to many in the Jewish community the visit of Haniyeh has brought them new found fear.

Ezekiel Haddad is a Djerba based Hebrew teacher. “I don’t understand why the Tunisian government allowed someone with no political legitimacy to come to Tunisia and get the opportunity to tour the country with the welcome that he got,” Haddad lamented.

Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali (Left) with Senior Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh (Right)

While many Western governments have widely praised Tunisia’s post-revolution transition, their much needed support to Tunisia could be lost by visits of leaders of what they consider to be terrorist organizations like Haniyeh’s according to Haddad.

“Why is the Tunisian government destroying the goodwill with the world Tunisia has been building since the revolution?” Haddad asked. ”I don’t have a problem with Haniyeh visiting Tunisia as a person but I disagree with the way his visit brought together the worst people in Tunisian society,” he said.

Haniyeh’s five day visit in Tunisia included meetings with officials in the Tunisian government, visits to cities that played a critical role in the Tunisian Revolution such as Sidi Bouzid and Kassrine, visits to Tunisian historical centers of Islamic significance such as the Mosque of Oqba Ibn Nafaa in Kairouan and large rallies promoting Hamas.

The statements currently coming from the government have been too little, too late according to Haddad. He wants the recently elected Constituent Assembly to open an investigation into what happened during Haniyeh’s visit and try those who chanted the hateful slogans.

“I want the people who shouted ‘kill the Jews’ punished,” Haddad said “All the Jews in Djerba are scared, uptight, and uncomfortable with what has happened, very few will speak truthfully of their level of fear now.”

While Haddad was willing to be named for this story, a Djerbian based jeweler was not.

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not our problem,” he complained.

Senior Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh with Ennahda Spokesman Samir Dilou

“I have grown up my whole life breaking bread with my Muslim neighbors, living freely with my Muslim friends. Tunisia has always been an open society and this visit by Haniyeh has caught our community completely by surprise.” The jeweler stressed that Islam does not call for killing people “rabi yuster (may god protect us from a possible calamity).”

However, the Jeweler believes that since the government was slow to act against the violent chanting, there is a strong possibility that the government really has no problem with the violent chants. ”We don’t know what the government is going to do, they need to punish those who made those chants but since they have not they are tacitly endorsing their message– that’s a big problem.”

Read article in full

Tunisian Jews fearful after Haniyeh visit (Harry's Place)

Jewish woman rescued from an Arab country

2012-01-11T13:31:00.013Z

An Israel-based organisation which rescues Jewish women in distress managed to spirit a heavily-pregnant woman from an Arab country to safety within 48 hours of being told of her plight, the French website J-Forum reports.

Update: the woman has given birth in Jerusalem, and a Brit Mila ceremony (circumcision) held (Arutz Sheva)

Julie (not her real name) had been held against her will in a village in an Arab country together with her two-year-old daughter. She had been kept a virtual prisoner by her Arab partner, beaten, raped and generally abused. Although pregnant, she had only been allowed to see a doctor once.

Julie had been sweet-talked into a relationship with her partner when she visited the Arab country (we can assume it is either Tunisia or Morocco) with a holiday tour group. One imagines that she thought she had fallen in love with her Arab companion, and decided to stay behind with him. The relationship soon soured and it became clear that Julie's partner wanted to force her into marriage so that he could acquire French papers.

Julie's plight became apparent when her mother, in tears, attended a meeting of the HEMLA organisation in Ashdod, Israel, on 25 December 2011. HEMLA sprang into action and managed to successfully arrange Julie's and her daughter's flight to Israel within 48 hours, although one carrier refused to take her because of her advanced pregnancy.

HEMLA claim to have rescued 1,500 Jewish girls in Israel and around the world from what they call a 'silent intifada'. While living in the Arab country, Julie claims to have met other Jewish girls in similar circumstances.

Although details are sketchy of how long and to what extent Julie came to find herself as a prisoner of her companion, this video interview with her answers some questions.

Read article in full (French)

Jewish girl abandoned by her family

Iraqi- Jewish abductee reunited with her family after 55 years

The West neglects and misreads Arab antisemitism

2012-01-11T07:28:00.013Z

Howard Gutman

Following the shocking display of wishful thinking by US ambassador to Brussels Howard Gutman, Colin Rubenstein of the Australian Israel/Jewish Affairs Council asks why the West refuses to take seriously Arab and Muslim antisemitism, predating the creation of Israel. Those who see the rise of Islamism in Arab countries as 'moderate' are also indulging in wishful thinking:

The US Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, addressing a conference on antisemitism on November 30, controversially insisted that Muslim "hatred and indeed sometimes... violence directed at Jews generally [is] a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories" and should therefore not be seen as the same thing as "real" antisemitism. He went on to insist that a Mideast peace deal would see a "huge reduction of this form of labeled ‘antisemitism'."

Aside from the immorality of, effectively, rationalising a form of racism as due to the alleged behaviour of its targets, Gutman's comments were factually indefensible. There are clearly elements of strong, even eliminationist, antisemitism within the Muslim tradition predating Zionism by centuries.

A good example is the hadith [a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammed] which was quoted by various figures associated with the Muslim Brotherhood at an election rally in Cairo on Nov. 26. It states: "The Hour [of judgement] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. When a Jew hides behind a rock or a tree, it will say, ‘O Muslim, O servant of Allah! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'"

This hadith is among the most quoted passages about Jews in certain Islamic traditions. It is certainly part of the Hamas Charter and utilised by al-Qaeda as well as the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is true that, in medieval times, Jews in Muslim societies tended on the whole to be better off than in Christian Europe, but this is hardly to suggest that their human rights were fully respected. Further, Muslim antisemitism became more vicious and dangerous in the 19th and 20th centuries primarily due to the influence of modern European ideologies, including Nazism, which often came to be perceived through the lens of problematic anti-Jewish Islamic sources.

As a result, Jews across the Middle East began to suffer heightened violent hatred well before Israel and Zionism emerged on the agenda. In 1912, the Jewish quarter in Fez was almost destroyed in a mob attack. In the 1930s and 1940s pogroms and other attacks on the Jews were widespread in Iraq and Libya. Pro-Nazi Arabs slaughtered dozens of Jews in the "Farhoud" pogrom in Baghdad in 1941.

A good exhibit of the contemporary reality of this racist ideology was one of the speakers at the Nov. 26 Cairo Muslim Brotherhood rally - Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, probably the most popular Sunni cleric in the Arab world. He has previously described the Holocaust as "divine punishment" for the Jews and expressed the hope that "Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the [Muslim] believers." He also stated he wants to die a martyr in the process of killing "Allah's enemies, the Jews."

To imagine this ugly and pervasive amalgam of traditional regional and European antisemitism is all going to evaporate if Israel signs a peace deal with the Palestinians is fantasy. So why do people like Ambassador Gutman utter such fallacies?

Perhaps because it would make reality so much easier if it were true. The pervasiveness of Muslim and Arab antisemitism is a significant barrier to a lasting peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours. If we can fantasise that it will all disappear the minute a deal is signed, advocating a peace deal becomes so much more urgent, straightforward and uncomplicated compared to preparing a basis for peace by eradicating the inculcation of hatred and building an ethos of coexistence and compromise.

Read article in full

Does Israel cause Arab antisemitism? (Commentary blog by Michael Rubin)

Adam Levick at CifWatch points out that western media routinely ignore Arab antisemitism in favour of bad news from Israel.

Is Aisha Gaddafi seeking asylum in Israel?

2012-01-10T14:49:00.023Z

Aisha Gaddafi

With thanks: Ranbir

I've been avoiding this story for some days now - but the time might have now come to comment about news reports that Aisha Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator's daughter, is seeking asylum in Israel.

As evidence, the reports cite the fact that Aisha, who fled to Algeria with members of her family, has engaged Israeli lawyer and human rights activist Nick Kaufman to represent her.

Firstly, engaging an Israeli lawyer does not mean anything much. I seem to recall that Aisha's brother Saif al-Islam once had an Israeli girlfriend. So what?

Next, I would point out that several press reports take a more cautious line: Aisha might be seeking asylum, or is eyeing asylum.

In the next breath reporters invariably bring up the fact that Colonel Gaddafi is rumoured to have had Jewish origins - that's why Israel might be Aisha's natural choice. In support of this theory the Los Angeles Times blog and USA Today both linked to this Point of No Return blogpost in which two women in Israel claim to be related to Gaddafi's grandmother, who ran off with a Libyan sheikh.

Under Israel's right of return, having a Jewish grandmother might well have entitled Colonel Gaddafi to citizenship. But if Aisha is claiming the right to move to Israel because her great-grandmother was Jewish - the link is becoming somewhat threadbare.

Of course, there is the possibility that the whole asylum story may have been cooked up by Gaddafi's enemies. In the Middle East and North Africa, there is no better way to discredit someone than to call them a Jew. For instance, rumours have been circulating in Egypt that Boutros Boutros Ghali, the Coptic ex-UN secretary-general, was all set to follow his Jewish wife to Israel.

If Aisha does indeed move to Israel, no reporter seems to have bothered to ask the Israeli public why they should offer asylum to a hostile dictator's daughter. When he was alive, Colonel Gaddafi was responsible for the expulsion and wholesale dispossession of the last 6,000 Jews in Libya. Perhaps Israel should grant Aisha asylum after all - on condition she apologises and donates to Libyan Israelis a large chunk of her father's billions, squirrelled away in Swiss bank vaults.

Protesters to block 'Zionist' visitors to rabbi's tomb

2012-01-10T06:41:00.015Z

The tomb of Rabbi Abu Hatseira in the Nile Delta (Photo: A. Hayman)

Reports that this year's annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Abu Hatseira in the Nile delta near Alexandria had been cancelled seem to have been exaggerated. But pilgrims will have to run the gauntlet of several groups of protestors. Elder of Ziyon has the story:

From Al Masry al Youm:

A number of political groups in Egypt announced Monday that they plan to protest at the Abu Hasira festival near the delta city of Damanhour.

The festival, scheduled for 9 to 10 January, is held on the annual anniversary of the death of Abu Hasira, whose mausoleum is located in the village of Damtu outside Damanhour.

The groups said they will form human shields to prevent any "Zionist" visitors from visiting Abu Hasira's tomb in the near future, saying that such a visit was unpopular, and unacceptable legally and politically, state-run news agency MENA said.

Bloggers Against Abu Hasira, the Nasserist Trend, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party, the April 6 Youth Movement and the Mohamed ElBaradei campaign signed the group statement.

Permission for Israelis to visit Abu Hasira’s tomb has angered some in Egypt, especially because it is not included in the list of celebrations authorized to be held in Egypt. The Supreme Administrative Court upheld a 2001 lower court decision to abolish the annual event.

In 2009, Israeli reports indicated that ousted President Hosni Mubarak agreed to a request on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow hundreds of Israelis to celebrate the festival.

Abu Hasira was born in Morocco and, according to Jewish lore, the ship that was carrying him to Palestine sank. Abu Hasira floated on a straw mat which eventually landed on Syrian shores. The rabbi, according to Jewish tradition, went from Syria to Palestine and then on to Egypt.

He died in Damtu in 1880. Every year, thousands of Jews come to celebrate the anniversary of his death.

After Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords in 1979, Israel requested the cooperation of the Egyptian security authorities in the organization of annual official trips to the tomb for the festival, which lasts for a period of one week.

The celebrations include a number of Jewish rituals along with the consumption of dried fruit, butter and feteer. During the celebrations, the visitors sit at the mausoleum, cry, recite Jewish prayers and slaughter animals in accordance to Jewish law.

The mausoleum, which includes the tomb and the hill it is situated upon, is among the Jewish Antiquities in Egypt registered with the Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities. Former Culture Minister Farouk Hosni issued decision No. 75 of 2001 annexing the mausoleum to the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The youth division of the Muslim Brotherhood party said that "cessation of these celebrations should be considered one of the fruits of the January 25 revolution."

But don't call them anti-semitic. They're just "anti-Zionist."

Rosa el Youssef reports that Israel asked UNESCO to compel Egypt to allow the ceremonies.

Read post in full

If in a tight spot, hold Jewish-Muslim dialogue

2012-01-09T22:47:00.008Z

Rabbi Marc Shneier with King Hamid (photo:WJC)

When you're in a tight spot, make nice with the Jews. Sorry to sound cynical, but his Jew-friendly policy has gained brownie points in the past for King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who rules the giant US aircraft carrier they call Bahrain - despite facing stiff resistance from his disenfranchised Sh'ia majority. And, as the Jerusalem Post reports, Marc Schneier is not one to pass up another chance for interfaith dialogue. (with thanks: Lily)

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has agreed to hold a Jewish-Muslim dialogue in Bahrain later this year.

Iran is a common threat to Bahrain, Israel and the US, the King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa was quoted as saying by a Jewish official on Sunday.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, vice president of the World Jewish Congress, said the king told him he was alarmed by the Islamic Republic during a 45- minute meeting held in the capital city of Manama late last month.

“I made a point how it’s ironic how we share a common enemy and he acknowledged that Iran has been a threat,” said Schneier, who gave the king a hanukkia at the end of their conversation.

The oil-rich island nation has a troubled history with its northern neighbor across the Persian Gulf, which once laid claim to its territory.

Schneier said Hamad agreed to his request to host a Jewish-Muslim dialogue in the oil-rich country later this year. The rabbi, who is also president of the Foundation for Interfaith Dialogue, said there was no set date or list of participants yet but that the conference would aim to improve ties between the Abrahamic faiths.

The news comes at a time when the Sunni elite that rules Bahrain has been accused of oppressing the country’s Shi’ite majority.

Last year Sunni security forces and Shi’ite protesters clashed for weeks, leaving 51 people dead, according to local human rights groups.

Schneier said he did not believe Hamad was reaching out to Jews to rebuff charges of religious intolerance against him, saying the ruler had “implemented reforms and reached out to his opponents and tried to help.”

He said it was imperative to hold talks between Jews and Muslims now because the perfect conditions to conduct such a conversation would never arise.

Read article in full

'Mizrahi' Supreme Court judge chosen

2012-01-09T15:24:00.011Z

The Israeli Supreme Court building

Call it tokenism or positive discrimination, the newly-appointed Israeli Supreme Court Justice Uri Shoham was specifically selected because he is of 'Mizrahi' origin, Haaretz reports.

Four new justices were picked for the Supreme Court on Friday by the Judicial Appointments Committee, in a session whose brevity belied the recent controversy over the candidates and the selection process.

The newly minted justices, who were chosen in a meeting lasting not more than 90 minutes, are the Dean of the Tel Aviv University law school, Daphne Barak-Erez; Jerusalem District Court Deputy President Zvi Zylbertal, Jerusalem District Court Judge Noam Sohlberg and Tel Aviv District Court Judge Uri Shoham.(...)

Committee members said after the vote that it was obvious that the compromise deal would include both Sohlberg, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut and is considered a candidate of the right, and Zylbertal, who is in Beinisch's circle.

There was also a consensus that at least one of the other two candidates be of Mizrahi origin, in light of recent criticism about the absence from the nominees' list, and from the Supreme Court bench itself since the resignation in October of Justice Edmond Levy, of a candidate of North African or Middle Eastern Jewish origin. Shoham fills that slot; Nazareth District Court vice president, Judge Yitzhak Cohen, was a contender for the slot, as was former Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, who said he did not want to be considered as a specifically Mizrahi candidate.

Read article in full

Tunisian Jews protest anti-Jewish death chants

2012-01-08T17:26:00.012Z

An Ennahda Islamist party spokeman has called the chants of 'Kill the Jews! It is our duty!" greeting the arrival of the Hamas leader in Tunisia an 'isolated incident', following complaints by Peres Trabelsi (pictured), a representative of the country's 1,500-member Jewish community. According to an AFP report in the Lebanon Daily Star, Mr Trabelsi protested: " There are no Zionists in Tunisia." (But Mr Trabelsi - when did Islamists ever make the distinction between Zionists and Jews?)

TUNIS: Jews in Tunisia asked the government Sunday to take steps to avoid a repeat of the anti-Semitic slogans chanted during a visit to the country by Gaza's Hamas leader last week.

"No Tunisian should be insulted, and the government must take measures to ensure this incident is never repeated," Peres Trabelsi, a representative of Tunisia's small Jewish population told AFP after the incident.

Ismail Haniya, prime minister in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, visited Tunis on Thursday to meet the new moderate Islamist-led administration while he was on a tour of the region.

Islamist activists welcoming Haniya were heard chanting slogans like: "Kill the Jews, it is our duty", along with anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian messages.

"There are no Zionists in Tunisia and we don't want to be mixed into the problems of the Middle East," said Trabelsi. "Tunisia is our country."

Tunisia has one of the Arab world's largest Jewish minorities, numbering about 1,500 individuals in a population of more than 10 million.

The population has shrunk drastically from the 100,000 Jews who lived in Tunisia after independence in 1956.

Ajmi Lourimi, a member of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, said the slogans were an isolated incident that did not reflect the views of the government.

Read article in full

Haniyeh promises 'difficult days' for Israel (AFP)

Lost Jewish assets: cock-up or conspiracy?

2012-01-08T00:30:00.017Z

With thanks: Michelle; Yoram

The film 'Secrets of the lost assets', two years in the making, was finally seen by the Israeli public recently. The villains of the piece should have been the Arab governments who dispossessed their Jews of assets and property. But the film seems to reserve its strongest criticism for Israel itself, and accuses the Iraqi Zionist underground leader Mordechai Ben-Porat of suppressing important documentation relating to Jewish assets and taken out by the Americans after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

To the reputable columnist Ben-Dror Yemini (pictured), the issue is more cock-up than conspiracy, as he writes in his Maariv blog. (Forgive my imperfect translation from Hebrew.) It is unfair to turn on Ben-Porat, who fought long and hard the get the issue of the Jewish assets on the national agenda, he argues. The Palestinians have managed to hijack the argument, but recent efforts to highlight the issue of Jewish refugees make us none the wiser as to what the Israeli government's position really is.

Ben Dror Yemini writes:

"This week on satellite TV the documentary film Secrets of the lost assets by Inbal Petel and Emanuel Rosen was shown - about the systematic dispossession of Jews from Arab countries. The film includes a severe indictment against Israel, who ignored and did everything possible to keep the issue from the national agenda. Former minister Mordechai Ben - Porat was accused of 'conspiring' to suppress the issue.

"The film is important. The issue was neglected, and Israel ignoring it was criminal. To-date, no Israeli prime minister has put the issue of the dispossession and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, the "Jewish Nakba", on the negotiating table. The only one who said the obvious things was actually former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

"One must congratulate Yes for making the film while treating with caution the allegations expressed in the film against the state and against Ben - Porat. Because it's mostly out of stupidity and opacity, and less out of malice. Although the country engaged over several decades in the registration of Jewish property, it did so slowly. The film reveals the many registration documents taken out by the Americans after the invasion of Iraq and some of them, it was claimed, were hidden by Ben-Porat. But there is more that does not appear in the film. Iraq accuses the U.S. of stealing documents, and requires their return. Also the name of Ben - Porat comes up in complaints from the Iraqi side. For decades Ben - Porat fought ignorance and tried to arouse public awareness of the issue. So from wronged accuser he turned defendant.

"The point is that the Palestinians have managed to invert the refugee problem and the central narrative of dispossession in any discussion about the conflict. But the vast majority of those who matter, and that includes the Israeli side, have ignored the issue of Jewish refugees. Only recently Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon produced a short video clip. It's a great clip, but it is not intended to clarify the Israeli position.

"There is a difference between Arab and Jewish refugees. Arabs, some of whom actually were dispossessed and deported, declared a war of annihilation against Israel. They are victims of Arab aggression and rejectionism. Jews in Arab countries, however, did not threaten or declare war on the Arabs. Therefore, the rights of refugees from Arab countries outweigh Arab refugee rights. It's not a matter of "narrative". This is solid historical fact."

Read blogpost in Hebrew

How much did the Jews lose?

How Arabs stole Jewish property

Tunisians greeting Gaza leader cry 'Kill the Jews!'

2012-01-06T09:28:00.015Z

With thanks: Michelle

Cries of 'Out with the Jews!', 'Kill the Jews!' greeted the arrival at Tunis airport of the Hamas chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, StandWithUs (France) reports.

A few hundred people gathered on 5 January at the Tunis-Carthage airport to welcome Haniyeh. As they waited for him they sang antisemitic chants and slogans to the glory of Palestine and the liberation of Gaza. They carried Palestinian flags, the flags of the Ennahda movement, and the black flags of the Salafists.

Ismail Haniyeh was arriving in Tunisia from Turkey for a two-day visit.

Point of No Return commenter Sammish clarifies what the demonstrators were shouting:

Speaker(One person):" Kick the jews:
Crowd:"Duty" [wajib] (It is a duty)

Speaker:" Expell the Jews"
Crowd: "Duty".

Speaker: "Kill the Jews"
Crowd: "Duty"

Read article in French

Crossposted at CifWatch

House of Lords debates plight of MidEast Christians

2012-01-05T16:17:00.018Z

Here's one story I missed earlier: on 9 December 2011, the UK House of Lords agreed a motion noting the situation of Christians in the Middle East. The debate turns up some surprising results: the Archbishop of Canterbury (pictured left) speaks of the historic Jewish communities of the Maghreb and Middle East. Lord Patten, who is not known for his sympathy for Israel, speaks eloquently of the plight of Jews and the pernicious antisemitism of the Middle East. Lord Sacks (pictured right), who as chief rabbi might be expected to mention Jews, says not a word about them. Only Lord Turnberg states clearly that 700,000 Jews were driven from the Middle East - and were it not for Israel they would be dispersed as refugees around the world. (With thanks: Lily)

The Archbishop of Canterbury: My Lords, many people these days have a short and skewed historical memory. It is all too easy to go along with the assumption that Christianity is an import to the Middle East rather than an export from it. Because the truth is that for two millennia the Christian presence in the Middle East has been an integral part of successive civilisations- a dominant presence in the Byzantine era, a culturally very active partner in the early Muslim centuries, a patient and long-suffering element, like the historic Jewish communities of the Maghreb and the Middle East, in the complex mosaic of ethnic jurisdictions within the Ottoman Empire and, more recently, a political catalyst and nursery of radical thinking in the dawn of Arab nationalism. To be ignorant of this is to risk misunderstanding a whole world of political and religious interaction and interdependence and to yield to the damaging myth that, on the far side of the Mediterranean or the Bosphorus, there is a homogeneous Arab and Muslim world, a parallel universe. I do not need to elaborate for your Lordships the dangers we invite in accepting any such assumption. The Middle East is not a homogeneous region, and the presence of Christians there is a deep-rooted reality. We are not talking about a foreign body, but about people who would see their history and their destiny alike bound up with the countries where they live, and bound up in local conversations with a dominant Muslim culture, which they are likely to see in terms very different from those that might be used by western observers.

Yet at the present moment, the position of Christians in the region is more vulnerable than it has been for centuries.

Lord Patten: My Lords, I am a bit gloomier than the most reverend Primate about things to come in the Middle East, which will be reflected in the three points that I have to make.

First, I stress my belief that we are facing religious cleansing in parts of the Middle East and may be entering what might be thought of as an Arab winter for Christians, Jews and other minority groups alike on a scale that we have not hitherto seen. We have heard about what is going on in Iraq, and I reflect that if some of the movements that are already happening were addressed not at faith groups but at ethnic groups, or those of this or that personal preference, the whole bang-shooting match of outrage in the United Nations-with Secretary of State Clinton flying in to try to deal with the issue-would have been released. Yet we do not seem to see that with religious freedoms. Secondly, in our religious comfort zone in the West we have to recognise that we have much to learn from those who are threatened in the Middle East. Thirdly, we must persuade our rulers to treat religious freedoms as being just as basic as other, much vaunted human rights. Religious freedoms belong in the premier league of human rights; in that context, I entirely agree with what the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Exeter has just said.

On my first point, to exemplify the Arab winter, it seems clear that all non-Islamic faith groups in the Middle East are in it together. It means facing up openly to the fact that some Islamic groups, however many good and moderate adherents there may be, are self-professed militants against Christians and Jews alike. We evidence this in their own words and actions. One sad manifestation of this in the western world today is not just to brush this issue under the carpet but to feel that it is not possible or polite even to talk about it in decent society. Yet the fate of Christians in the Middle East is indivisible from the fate of Jews there, for example, and indeed from other minority Muslim groups such as the Alevi adherents of Shia Islam who are so discriminated against, even in Turkey today with its increasingly authoritarian Government.

There can be no walking on the other side of the faith road in the Middle East in the face of a self-declared agenda by some of religious cleansing in some parts of the region. We must not do that any more than we can, even in the Palace of Westminster, ignore the manifestly Newspeak anti-Zionism, which concentrates as a surrogate on the Jew as a nation-I borrow from the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, on this-rather than on the Jew as a person, as it was in the old-style and now wholly non-PC anti-Semitism. At least in the Middle East, people are honest about it; we should be honest about it here.

However threatening this may be perceived to be in this country it is nothing like the threats facing the last Jews in Baghdad, nor the last few Jews in Iran. But then, it cannot be very nice for the last remaining 13,000 of my co-religionists left in Iran either. The pace of religious cleansing is gathering. Only this week, the organisation Minority Rights Group International introduced figures to show that while in 2003 there were between 800,000 and 1 million Christians of different brands and classifications in Iraq, the few years since have seen the numbers leach away to fewer than half a million. In his own words, not my suppositions, we heard it again earlier this week when Archbishop Sako, the leader of the highly threatened Chaldean Catholics in Kirkuk and the surrounding regions, despairingly said: "It is a haemorrhage. Iraq could be emptied of Christians".

Lord Turnberg: There are now barely 50,000 Christians in the whole of the West Bank. Of course, Christians are not alone in being chased out. The Baha'i faith has been eliminated from Iran and other Middle East countries, and the Jews have a long history of persecution in the region. No fewer than 700,000 Jews have been driven out in the past 50 or so years; were it not for the existence of Israel, they would be refugees and dispersed around the world. It is also the case that I as a Jew would be very unwelcome in many of these countries; in fact, I would find it very hard to visit Saudi Arabia as I would not be given permission.

This is troubling indeed at a time when we in the UK and the largely Christian western societies are quite rightly leaning over backwards to accommodate people of every race, creed and religion. You have only to look around your Lordships' House to see our tolerance of diversity. At the same time, fundamentalism is increasing in the Middle East along with a dangerous anti-Christian intolerance.

There are two exceptions-possibly more-to this general pattern: Jordan and Israel.

Lord Sacks: First, on the Arab spring, which has heightened the fear of Christians in many of the countries affected, we make a great intellectual mistake in the West when we assume that democracy is, in and of itself, a step towards freedom. Usually, that is the case, but sometimes it is not. As Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill pointed out in the 19th century, it may merely mean the "tyranny of the majority". That is why the most salient words in the current situation are those of Lord Acton, in his great essay on the history of freedom, who said:

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities".

That is why the fate of Christians in the Middle East today is the litmus test of the Arab spring. Freedom is indivisible, and those who deny it to others will never gain it for themselves.

Secondly, religions that begin by killing their opponents end by killing their fellow believers. In the age of the Crusades, Christians fought Muslims. Between the Reformation and the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, Christians fought Christians-Catholic against Protestant. Today, in the Middle East and elsewhere, radical Islamists fight those whom they regard as the greater and lesser Satan, but earlier this week we mourned the death of 55 Shia worshippers at a mosque in Kabul and another 28 Shia who were killed in a terror attack in Iraq. Today, the majority of victims of Islamist violence are Muslim, and shall we not shed tears for them, too? The tragedy of religion is that it can lead people to wage war in the name of the God of peace, to hate in the name of the God of love, to practise cruelty in the name of the God of compassion and to kill in the name of the God of life. None of these things brings honour to faith; they are a desecration of the name of God.

May God protect Christians of the Middle East and people of faith who suffer for their faith, whoever and wherever they are.

Read full transcript of House of Lords debate:

Ist Part

2nd Part

Afghan scrolls could be most significant find yet

2012-01-05T12:17:00.008Z

Screenshot from the Channel 2 report

The Jewish scholarly world is abuzz over the discovery of ancient Jewish scrolls in a cave in Afghanistan’s Samangan province, Israel's Channel 2 reported last week. From the Jerusalem Post, via Elder of Ziyon.

According to Arab Affairs correspondent Ehud Ye'ari, if validated the scrolls may be the most significant historical finding in the Jewish world since that of the Cairo Geniza in the 19th century.

“We know today about a couple of findings,” Haggai Ben-Shammai, Professor Emeritus of Arabic Language and Literature at Hebrew University was quoted as saying. “In all, in my opinion, there are about 150 fragments. It may be the tip of the iceberg.”

The scrolls, which were part of a geniza, a burial site for sacred Jewish texts, date from around 1,000 years ago and are in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and ancient Persian.

One scroll, whose replica was shown to the cameras, is apparently a dirge written for an important person whose identity has not been determined.

Other texts said to be found include an unknown history of the ancient kingdom of Judea, passages from the book of Isaiah and some of the works of Rabbi Saadia Gaon, a medieval sage.

In addition, rings with Jewish names like Shmuel Bar Yosef inscribed in Hebrew on them have surfaced.

The area in which the findings were discovered is on the so-called Silk Road, a trade route that connected Eastern Asia with the Middle East and Europe which Jewish merchants often traveled.

Ye'ari quoted sources as saying the scrolls were first moved to Peshawar province in Pakistan and from there had been sold to antiquities dealers around the world in Geneva, London, Dubai and Jerusalem.

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Arabs fear Israel will demand Saudi compensation

2012-01-04T15:01:00.023Z

House at Giza, Egypt, belonging to the Castro family

Update: in a likely response to the Israeli drive for compensation for seized Jewish property in Arab lands detailed below, Egyptians are demanding $500 billion for alleged 'damage' by Israel to the Sinai. Via Elder of Ziyon.

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If the Israeli government decides to pursue compensation claims on behalf of Jews who lost property in Arab countries, it is safe to assume that our Arab friends will be somewhat alarmed at the prospect. How else to explain a flurry of articles in the Arabic press?

According to the pro-Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood Middle East Monitor :

The Director of Property Management at Israel's Foreign Ministry is preparing a draft bill which, if passed into law, will see the Zionist state sending claims for compensation for Jewish property in a number of Arab countries. It is believed that the bill will be held back to be used during any negotiations discussing the situation of Palestinian refugees and their right of return.

The bill is divided into two: the first will demand that Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Bahrain pay compensation for the properties of 850,000 Jews, with an estimated value of $300 billion. The figures are based on the 1948 census of Jews from each country.

There is no such person as the Director of Property Management at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, unless it is the person who looks after foreign embassies and consulates. Secondly, it is not up to the Israeli Foreign ministry to draft bills. Thirdly, I know of no Jews who ever lived in Mauritania. Fourthly, there was no 1948 census carried out.

It gets more bizarre:

At a second stage, Saudi Arabia will be landed with a compensation bill of more than $100 billion for Jewish properties in the kingdom since the time of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). Apparently, Israeli experts in international law, history and geography in the universities of Bar-Ilan, Beer Sheva, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa are working on this part of the claim. The budget for their work has been taken from the Foreign Ministry and is claimed to be in the region of $100m for 2012.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman denies there is any truth to this report.

"This article is so full of ridiculous assertions, I wouldn't know where to begin," he said.

And try this for size:

Compensation for the alleged hundreds of dead and missing Iranian Jews in Iran whose fates are unknown will be set at $100m.

The numbers of dead and missing Iranian Jews do not run to 100s, and Israel has never made any compensation claim for $100 m.

All in all, this article appears to be another product of the over-active Arab imagination - or perhaps guilt for ill-treating their Jews?

Thankfully, nobody has thought to bring up this Arab claim for compensation dating back to the time of the Exodus from Egypt. (It makes claims for property seized at the time of the Prophet Mohammed look quite reasonable...)

Arab/Muslim states exclude minorities

2012-01-04T11:04:00.000Z

Coptic Egyptian Prime Minister Boutros Ghali, assassinated in 1910

States based on Islam deny citizenship to religious minorities such as Copts and Jews, while states based on Arabic language and culture leave no room for non-Arabs such as Kurds and Berbers. The Arab Spring has failed to resolve these two conflicting visions, argues Zvi Mazel in his excellent JCPA essay (November-December 2011) on majorities and minorities.

With the post-World War I dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new nation-states by the colonial powers of the time, Britain and France, the minorities issue in the Arab world rose to the surface. Some 1300 years of Muslim-Arab subjugation had not succeeded to suppress the identities of the conquered peoples or erase their uniqueness, nor to eradicate the other religions. On the contrary, Islam itself engendered additional minorities, particularly the various strains of Shiites.

The Arab states that were established at the stroke of a pen, in keeping with British and French interests, were not homogeneous polities and included diverse kinds of minorities. The Arab nationalism that grew in the new nation-states, along with the belief in the supremacy of Islam, bedeviled relations between the minorities and the Sunni majority and spawned conflicts that continue into the present. In a 1995 article, Prof. Saad Eddin Ibrahim noted that the Arab world, which then accounted for 8 percent of the global population, was responsible for 25 percent of all armed conflicts in the world since 1945. Occurring in a context of ethnic clashes, these conflicts had caused 2.5 million deaths. While the Middle East population is currently only 6 percent of the world's population, the domestic and external conflicts continue and it appears that the number of victims has doubled.

Until the creation of the Arab nation-states in the twentieth century, the Middle East-North Africa region was an Islamic expanse in which all the Muslims were part of the Muslim nation and lived in a sort of single state based on Sharia and led by a caliph. That ideal picture, however, should be qualified. Throughout its history the Muslims of the region were involved in countless fratricidal wars; caliphs were murdered and competing caliphates were set up. The Middle East and North Africa were, most of the time, divided between antagonistic rulers, though the region was open to the movement of people and merchandise.

For five hundred years the Middle East was mostly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which rarely intervened in the affairs of non-Muslims so long as they accepted their dhimmi (protected minority) status. This status granted non-Muslims the protection of Islam. They paid a poll tax, the jizya, and in return were allowed to manage their community affairs. All this was conditional on honoring the Muslim majority and recognizing the sovereignty of the Islamic state. It should be stressed, though, that these non-Muslims were second-class citizens, subject to the caprices of the masses and of Muslim rulers who, at different points in this long history, killed and massacred them or forced them to convert to Islam.

As the Ottoman Empire declined, the dhimmi status was abolished in 1856 due to pressure by the Western powers. The terms changed completely, however, with the establishment of the new states after World War I. These were expected to be modern polities, with a separate national civil identity for the whole state, and to develop a political-social-economic policy that would ensure reasonable equality for all citizens, economic growth, and prosperity. This is the basis for the running of every state in the world, and the way to prevent conflicts that subvert unity. Here all the Arab states have failed.

The Arab States' Failed Efforts at National Unity: Immediately after the creation of the Arab states, even before they attained full independence, two visions competed among them concerning state-building and the identity of their citizens: the Islamic vision and the secular-national vision. Given their basic tenets, both were far from conducive to national unity and the emergence of an egalitarian democratic state. In both cases, realizing the vision meant excluding various minority groups from the majority political system.

The Islamic vision posits a state based on religion, its governance and social structure determined by Sharia. That would mean the Kurds, who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs, would be citizens with equal rights, while non-Muslims, and particularly Christians, Jews, and idolaters, would revert to being second-class citizens of dhimmi status who could not be appointed to key posts such as president, ministers, and judges.

According to the secular-Arab-national vision, however, the state would be based on Arab nationality-that is, those whose first language is Arabic and who identify Arab culture as their own. For the secular Arab nationalists, anyone who met these criteria was acceptable; they would be citizens with full rights regardless of ethnic or religious origins. This ideology put the Christians, who were scattered throughout the Arab states and for the most part saw themselves as Arabs, within the majority community.

At the same time, this national vision left no room for national or religious minorities claiming rights as a separate community, which would contravene nationalism. If the Kurds or the Berbers-both of them also Sunni Muslims-were to petition for rights as a culturally-nationally unique community, they would remain outside the majority community, be denied recognition, and suffer discrimination. This vision also discriminates against the Copts, who are fully Egyptian but are a religious community that asks to be recognized as a separate group.

In practical terms, a situation emerged in which two forces acted together in different dosages. In the first stage, upon their establishment, the new Arab states made an effort to tackle the problem of identity. The first constitutions that were formulated in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s, under the influence of Britain and France, were relatively liberal and granted equality to citizens without connection to their religion-at least on paper. However, all of these constitutions affirmed that each state was part of the Arab world and worked for its unity, and that Islam was the state religion and Sharia the source of legislation.

These constitutions enabled the appointment of prime ministers who were not Sunni Muslims. Boutros Ghali, a Christian and grandfather of Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros Ghali, was appointed prime minister of Egypt in the 1910 and assasinated by a Muslim. The Christian prime minister Faris al-Khoury was appointed in Syria, and Iraq had Shiite and Kurdish prime ministers. At the same time, the constitutional principles of Arab unity and Sharia as the source of legislation cast a shadow over the minorities. If the Arab states are Arab states and strive for Arab unity, what becomes of non-Arab minorities? If the Arab states consider Sharia an important source of legislation, what is the fate of non-Muslims or of Muslims who are not from the mainstream?

The establishment of the Arab League on Britain's initiative was intended to promote cooperation between the Arab states with an eye to possible unification in the future. Today, as well, the constitutions of all the Arab states still emphasize in the first paragraph that the state is part of the Arab nation and aims at its unification.

The relatively liberal spirit began to change in the 1950s and 1960s as the two visions failed to solve the domestic and foreign problems of the Arab states. Economies were not developing; corruption was rampant. To this must be added the resounding failure of the principal Arab states-Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan-to prevent Israel's creation and their humiliating military defeat. This period saw religious and nationalist ferment in all the Middle Eastern states. The result was that Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan underwent military coups that purported to remedy the problems of Arab society. The military regimes promised their peoples modernization, economic and social reforms, and universal education. Yet, within a short time, it turned out they could not fulfill their promises; instead their states further deteriorated into cruel dictatorships marked by both domestic oppression and conflicts with neighbors. Seemingly the main reason for these regimes' failure was their inability to come up with a narrative that could unify the whole mosaic of ethnic, national, and religious groups-along with corruption, which is endemic in the Arab states and stems from tribal Arab traditions.

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Iraqi Jew awarded CBE in New Year honours list

2012-01-04T09:27:00.011Z

Naim Dangoor was made a consultant professor of Nanjing University in China

Besimantob to Dr Naim Dangoor who has been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his charitable services.

The 97-year-old Iraqi-born former property developer, who moved to Britain in 1964, was awarded an OBE in 2006 for education and Jewish communal philanthropy. As well as a generous donor to Bar-Ilan university and UK university projects, he has actively promoted Iraqi-Jewish education and history through his (now online) journal The Scribe.

His late wife Renee having been born in Shanghai, Naim Dangoor has had an abiding interest in China. Last year he was made a consultant professor of Nanjing university. Nanjing's Institute of Jewish Studies opened in May 1992, just a few months after Israel and China established diplomatic relations. There are now believed to be around 10 Jewish studies centres in the country.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Naim Dangoor called on the Iraqi government to compensate Iraqi Jewish exiles for lost assets estimated at $20 billion.

David Gerbi wants to 'right a historic wrong'

2012-01-03T20:15:00.009Z

When it comes to Jews from Arab lands, says David Gerbi, the Jewish psychiatrist hounded out of Libya, people shrug their shoulders rather than say out loud that there was an historic injustice which needs to be put right. Although much of this Jewish Chronicle interview goes over familiar ground, what comes through is Dr Gerbi's determination to right that historic wrong. He is also scathing about the Libyan National Transitional Council head, Mustafa Jalil, whom he accuses of duplicity.

It's official - Dr David Gerbi still has his sense of humour. And given what happened to the 56-year-old psychiatrist earlier this year, that is quite surprising.

Two days after Yom Kippur, Gerbi had to leave Libya in a hurry after hundreds of protesters called for his deportation. He even received death threats. His crime? Defiling an "archaeological site". In fact, he was trying to pray in Tripoli's sealed-up Dar al-Bishi Synagogue, where no Jew had worsphipped for decades.

The Libyan-born Gerbi had returned to the country from Italy, where, as a 12-year-old, he went into exile with his family when the last remnants of the community were expelled in 1967. On arriving back in the land of his birth, he had joined up with the revolutionary forces and provided them with specialist psychiatric care. With the fall of Gaddafi he seized the moment to reassert the Jewish presence in Libya.

The angry reaction of some of his erstwhile comrades-in-arms might have shaken his resolve, but far from it. In fact, he can still see the funny side.

Gerbi meeting Gaddafi

"Hey, I've got a joke for you," he announces, before the interview has even got under way.

"Three Jews are going to be executed and are lined up in front of a firing squad. The sergeant in charge asks each Jew whether or not he wants a blindfold. 'Yes,' says the first Jew, in a resigned tone. 'OK,' says the second Jew, bracing himself to his grim fate. 'And what about you?' he enquires of the third Jew. 'No,' says the third Jew, 'no, I don't want your lousy blindfold. You can stick your blindfold.' At this, the second Jew leans over to the third one and says: "Listen, Moshe, take a blindfold. Don't make trouble'."

Gerbi has told this joke not just to make me laugh but because, as he says, "it happens to be pertinent to what I have been going through. The attitudes expressed by many members of my own family echoed the sentiments of this joke. For far too long there has been a culture of silence and suppression within the exiled Libyan Jewish community. We have been invisible and mute. My own family was against me. 'Keep a low profile. Don't make a fuss. Get over it - accept what has happened and move on.' That was the approach. Just like in the joke. But I can't and I won't.

"We have suffered a historic wrong - and one which I have every intention of putting right. The Palestinians are masters of ensuring that their rights are recognised. Everyone, it seems, now dances to their tune. Standing ovations all round at the United Nations. But tell me, why am I not entitled to speak up for the rights of Libyan Jewry? I was exiled at 12 years of age in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. But for some strange reason, when it comes to Jews from Arab lands, people sit around and shrug their shoulders rather than say out loud that there has been a historic injustice which needs to be put right."(my emphasis - ed)

The history of Jews in Libya stretches back to the third century BC. They settled mostly in coastal towns such as Tripoli and Benghazi and lived under a shifting string of rulers, including Romans, Ottoman Turks, and Italians. The majority of the 38,000-strong community fled to Israel in the years following the devastating pogrom of 1945. The remaining 6,000 finally left in 1967, many of them, like Gerbi's family, settling in Rome. Their assets and possessions were confiscated by Gaddafi after he came to power in 1969.

Now, with Gaddafi gone, Gerbi is a man on a mission. And whereas less courageous individuals might have been dissuaded from walking around Tripoli wearing a kippot or by protesters bearing placards announcing that "there is no place for Jews in Libya", he ignores them and ploughs on undeterred.

Why? Because he wants the Dar al-Bishi synagogue to become the symbol of reconciliation between Jewish and Muslim Libyans, despite the discouraging and dangerous nature of his first tentative steps.

Within the walls of Tripoli's Old City the faded, peach-coloured synagogue of Gerbi's childhood is in a sorry state. The Star of David is still visible inside and an empty ark where Torah scrolls were once kept still reads Shemah Israel in faded Hebrew. But all around there is graffiti painted on the walls, empty paint cans are strewn across the floor, next to an unsightly array of plastic water-bottles, clothes, mattresses and the carcasses of dead pigeons. The site of the mikvah, once used for ritual cleansing, is now a rubbish dump where stray cats scour for food. When Gerbi entered the synagogue, having knocked down a concrete wall with a sledgehammer to get in, he said a prayer and cried.

"What Gaddafi tried to do is to eliminate our memory. To eliminate our amazing language. To remove all trace of the Jewish people," he declares. "I want to bring our legacy back. I want to give a chance for the Jews of Libya to return."

Despite the odds being stacked up against him, and a total absence of funding to give momentum to his campaign (Gerbi has been nominated as the executive director of the World Organization of Libyan Jews but pays for everything out of funds generated from his private practice in Rome), it remains his intention to become a member of Libya's new National Transitional Council, either as a parliamentarian in his own right or as the country's official representative for Libyan Jewry. But everything remains in the pending tray.

"I am still waiting for an answer," he complains. "But in my view Mustafa' Jalil, who heads the NTC, is playing a rather duplicitous game by saying that people like me who have other nationalities can't participate in the new Libya. Of course, that is the most ridiculous reasoning I have ever heard. I only have an Italian passport because I was kicked out of Libya in the first place. Sometimes when you hear such distorted thinking, you don't know whether to laugh or cry."

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The case for intervention to save minorities

2012-01-03T15:12:00.008Z

To intervene or not to intervene on behalf of beleaguered Middle Eastern minorities? Interventionists run the risk of being labelled 'neo-cons', but journalist and social commentator Ed West, blogging in the Telegraph, thinks the point may come when the West has no choice. In the circumstances a Jewish state was a good thing for Mizrahi Jews, he declares. (With thanks: Lily)

...unpopular though it is, interventionism is not going away, for there is one issue that becomes more and more pressing with each week – the parlous state of the Middle East's Christian (and other) minorities. The ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s Assyrians and Chaldeans was the great, ignored tragedy of this century so far; Egypt and Syria’s Christian populations are substantially larger, and if the former slides into an Islamic theocracy and the latter into civil war life will become unbearable.

The West is then left with the decision: whether to open its borders to save them, and so enable religious cleansing, or to take action.

Already, as Andrew Brown of the Guardian noted last month, there is growing concern among western Christians, and a willingness to do something about it. What is only missing is an organisation. Up until now the fear has always been that any sort of help will be presented as a crusade and will only incite further violence, but a point might come when there is nothing to lose anymore.

Having said that, there may be nothing we can do anyway. The Middle East is going through the same transition that Europe underwent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where democratisation and national consciousness led to minorities everywhere being driven out, starting in the Balkans (where Turkish Muslims were often the victims) and culminating in the events of 1939-1945, with the worst genocide in history and subsequently the worst mass expulsion, of 12 million Germans. Where religious and ethnic minorities lack defensible territories, they tend to end up far away from home or dead, and, with the possible exception of the Lebanese Maronites and the tiny Assyrian Nineveh Plains region of Iraq, minorities in the Middle East have no such territory. Of course all this goes to show that the establishment of a separate Jewish state was a good thing for Mizrahi Jews, who almost certainly would have ended up suffering a sad fate even without the establishment of Israel.

Unless, of course, you believe that without Zionism none of the Middle East’s current problems would have come about. In which case you’re an idiot.

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CifWatch accuses Rachel Shabi of moral inversion

2012-01-02T14:31:00.003Z

New York Times headline on 16 May, 1948

The Guardian's Comment is Free website signed off 2011 with a warning from Rachel Shabi that minority rights are the litmus test of Arab Spring democracy. True - but what about state-sanctioned antisemitism resulting in the ethnic cleansing of the Arab world's Jews ? The monitoring blog CifWatch picked Shabi up for a grave moral inversion. Its response began with a nice plug for this weblog (thank you, Adam Levick):

Yes, in a mere fifty years roughly one million Jews were expelled from Arab lands for the sole crime of sharing the religious identity of the resurrected Jewish state. Thousands of communities were wiped out of existence, as well as the world’s collective imagination – those for whom nobody (and no UN agency) will speak. And, in less than fifty words ‘Comment is Free’ contributor Rachel Shabi morally absolved Arab rulers who initiated the ethnic cleansing of Jews of the guilt typically assigned to those who commit such reprehensible acts.
Shabi’s latest CiF essay, “Equality must be the legacy of the Arab Spring“, included this moral obfuscation:

the main reason Arab countries were all but emptied of Jewish communities during the 1940s and 1950s [was that] the ideologies of Zionism and Arab nationalism…yanked at opposing ends of hyphenated Arab-Jewish identities and forced them to fall apart.

It’s vitally important that you read, and re-read, this passage to fully appreciate the art of Shabi’s moral inversion.

In a remarkably thrifty polemic apologia for antisemtism, Rachel Shabi distributes guilt for the expulsion of one million innocent Jews evenly between two abstractions: Jewish and Arab “nationalism”.

However, it is simply undeniable that Jews were expelled from their homes by quite particular Arab rulers – those who cynically exploited prevailing antisemitic mores to justify freezing Jews’ bank accounts, confiscating their assets and expropriating their property, revoking their national citizenship, and inciting murderous riot s.

It is not an overstatement to compare such measures which stripped Jews of their citizenship to the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 (Nuremberg laws), and Arabs’ theft of Jewish assets (estimated to be valued at over $100 billion) are similarly analogous to Nazi measures against Jews initiated in the late 1930s.

Further, as Bataween, of the blog Point of No Return, observed:
From 1949 to 2009, General Assembly resolutions focused much greater attention on the issue of Palestinian refugees – some 20 percent – than on any other Middle East issue. There were never any General Assembly resolutions that specifically addressed the issue of Jewish refugees, nor any resolutions on other topics that even mention Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Actually, it was Stan Urman of JJAC who wrote these words, but thanks for the compliment- ed

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'Jews want to go back to Libya' - Jewish leader in Israel

2011-12-28T13:21:00.002Z

The leader of the Libyan Jewish Association in Israel, Meir Kahlon, is trying to give the most positive spin possible on regime change in Libya. Jews of Libyan origin in Europe,want to go back, he says. But not Jews from Israel - they only want to visit. Report in Israel National News:

The fall of former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi (pictured) has caused Libyan Jews to wish to return to their homeland and resume the great heritage they established there, a Libyan Jewish leader told Arutz Sheva on Tuesday.

Meir Kachlon, Chairman of the World Organization of Libyan Jews, said that his organization has created an excellent relationship with the opposition leaders who took power instead of Qaddafi.

“We sent Dr. David Gerbi, who is a psychologist by profession, to help those who were affected by the civil war in the country,” Kachlon said. “We received a letter from opposition leader Abdul Jalil who asked us to provide humanitarian assistance. We have contacts all over the world and we told him that we are happy to help him.”

The World Organization of Libyan Jews last summer formally recognized the National Transitional Council, headed by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, as the country’s new regime. The organization is comprised of some 200,000 former refugees, many of whom fled to Israel.

Kachlon said on Tuesday that there are Jews who currently live in Europe and who left considerable property in Libya and that those Jews wish to go back to their place of birth.

“We hope they establish a democratic government and those Jews can return to Libya,” he said. “Recently the only synagogue in Tripoli that was not destroyed was cleaned up. There is a large percentage of Libyan Jews who fled to Europe and want to go back. We in Israel have no interest to go live there, but we would be happy to visit.”

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New booklet launched on Jewish refugees

2011-12-28T06:28:00.002Z

In association with Harif, StandWithUs has just launched its booklet ‘Jewish refugees of the Middle East – an unresolved human rights issue’. The A5 booklet sets out the facts about the Jewish refugees from Arab countries, now largely resettled in Israel.

The 870,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, whose ancient communities have been liquidated in the last 60 years, outnumber Palestinian Arab refugees, but their claims for recognition and compensation have been ignored by the UN and the world.

Acknowledging the terrible injustices committed against these Jews, however, can help bring about reconciliation and peace between Israel and the Arab states.

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Click to see new booklet on Jewish Refugees (PDF)- also available from Harif in handy A6 size.