Coverage of Jewish refugees meeting in Jerusalem

As the selection of articles below shows, the Jerusalem meeting launching the campaign for rights and redress of Jewish refugees attracted much interest in the mainstream Israeli press, TV and radio. Also covering the story were Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France Presse, Russian National TV, Norwegian Dag Tid, Guysen News, the (New York) Jewish Week and the (London) Jewish Chronicle, Israel News Agency, All Headline News, Israel Hasbara Committee,

Here's a TV clip from Reuters.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is that the London-based Arabic language Asharq-al Awsat picked up the issue and al-Arabiya reprinted the Reuters piece. Radio Free Iraq broadcast this.

Blog coverage: Zionation,
Crif report (French)

The notable flight of Jews from Iraq

This letter (scroll down) appeared in today's Independent. A pity Mr Treeby used the term 'migration' rather than 'exodus'.

Sir: In your article of 23 October, you refer to the Iraqi exodus as one of the largest since the Palestinian refugee crisis of 1948. You missed the smaller, but no less notable, flight of Jews from Iraq that followed. A 150,000-strong community dating back 2,700 years was reduced to a tiny handful. This was just part of the migration of hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern and North African Jews during the postwar period.

ALEXIS ROSOFF TREEBY

LONDON N3

Libyan Jew fled in terror after 1967

The Jerusalem Post continues to play its part in raising awareness of the Jewish refugees issue. Interview of Regina Bublil Waldman by Hilary Leila Krieger.

Tripoli, Libya, was ablaze for weeks after the start of the Six Day War in June 1967 as Muslim mobs terrorized Jews, destroying property and claiming lives.

The Libyan government finally allowed - or forced - the Jews to leave the country, but anti-Jewish anger remained high.

Regina Bublil and her family were on a bus that was supposed to bring them to freedom, but she didn't believe they were safe in the hands of the driver. When he pulled over well before they reached the airport, saying the bus had "broken down," her suspicions became stronger.

Bublil, 19, asked the driver's helper to call a cab for her family from a nearby gas station and then followed him. She overheard him telling someone that the situation was "under control" and decided to make her own call for help.

Bublil wrestled with him for the phone and then called the British engineer she had worked for that summer until the violence forced her to take secret refuge in his house. Her parents and siblings survived because their upstairs neighbor, a Muslim, hid them and convinced the mob surrounding their home that they were out of the country. Meanwhile they burned her father's factory and real estate.

Clutching the phone with shaking hands and speaking English so she wouldn't be understood, Bublil explained to her boss where the bus was stopped and told him to hurry. When she got back to the bus, she found the driver holding a match to the gas-drenched vehicle in order to set it ablaze with her family inside. But just in time, her boss pulled up and helped her and her family escape.

When they got to the airport, they found that they weren't expected. "Bublil family?" the airport attendant asked with surprise. "You're not supposed to be here."

Their reservations presumably canceled because the plot against them was expected to succeed, the British engineer contacted a friend who worked at the airport. The friend removed seven British passengers from a flight departing right then for Malta so that the Bublils could escape.

She also said that Israel, by successfully resettling the refugees without asking for international funds, hadn't brought attention to the issue.

But she added that when it came to international forums such as the United Nations - where the Palestinian refugee issue has been addressed in hundreds of resolutions while none have been devoted to the Jewish refugees - anti-Semitism was at play.

"There wasn't sympathy toward [us]. People really didn't care," she said. "The war in the Middle East created two populations of refugees, and it's a mistake to think, like the international community does, that there's only one group of refugees - the Palestinians."

Bublil said Palestinian refugees' grievances needed to be addressed as part of the process of creating two states, just as those of Jews would.

She also said she hoped that until that happened, the Palestinians would learn from her example.

"Instead of feeling victimized, I never felt I was a victim," she said. Instead she crusaded for the rights of Soviet Jews, victims of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Bosnian Muslim refugees.

"I have forgiven the perpetrators [in Libya]," she said. "Hate is a weapon of mass destruction. And what I think is really sad in the case of Palestinians is that these are people who deserve a better life. They have been victimized by their own leaders, and caught in a web."

"So long as the Arab leaders keep on perpetuating the hatred in the Palestinian territories and in Gaza, they will keep the Palestinian people perpetually walking the path of death and destruction," she said.

In Malta, doctors and stretchers met them at the plane. They were so traumatized, she recalled, that "we couldn't talk."

But now, Bublil isn't afraid to speak out. The problem today, she said, was that not enough people knew what she and other Jews driven out of Arab countries endured.

"The Jews from the Arab countries wanted to let bygones be bygones and just get on with their lives. It wasn't until the next generation came to haunt us that [we realized] this story is not being told, that our heritage is gone, that we're extinct," she said.

Bublil, now known by her married name, Waldman, heads the San Francisco-based advocacy group Jimena: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North America. On Monday she was in Israel to participate in a conference launching an "International Rights and Redress Campaign" on behalf of the estimated 850,000 Jews who fled from Arab states after the creation of the State of Israel.

According to Jimena, less than 10,000 are now left in these countries; the Jews who lived for more than 2,000 years in Libya are entirely gone.

Part of the campaign examines the issue of restitution for Jews who had to leave everything behind at a moment's notice, but its overall focus is on raising awareness. "We want to be part of history," Bublil said. "We don't want to be called the forgotten refugees anymore."

She acknowledged that Mizrahi Jews hadn't done enough to raise the issue within the Jewish community. "We have to look in the mirror and say, 'What have we done to tell our story?'"

She also said that Israel, by successfully resettling the refugees without asking for international funds, hadn't brought attention to the issue.

But she added that when it came to international forums such as the United Nations - where the Palestinian refugee issue has been addressed in hundreds of resolutions while none have been devoted to the Jewish refugees - anti-Semitism was at play.

"There wasn't sympathy toward [us]. People really didn't care," she said. "The war in the Middle East created two populations of refugees, and it's a mistake to think, like the international community does, that there's only one group of refugees - the Palestinians."

Bublil said Palestinian refugees' grievances needed to be addressed as part of the process of creating two states, just as those of Jews would.

She also said she hoped that until that happened, the Palestinians would learn from her example.

"Instead of feeling victimized, I never felt I was a victim," she said. Instead she crusaded for the rights of Soviet Jews, victims of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Bosnian Muslim refugees.

"I have forgiven the perpetrators [in Libya]," she said. "Hate is a weapon of mass destruction. And what I think is really sad in the case of Palestinians is that these are people who deserve a better life. They have been victimized by their own leaders, and caught in a web."

"So long as the Arab leaders keep on perpetuating the hatred in the Palestinian territories and in Gaza, they will keep the Palestinian people perpetually walking the path of death and destruction," she said.


Read article in full

Article in JTA News

Minister calls on Oriental Jews to claim reparations

Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit is planning to counter Palestinian claims of refugees by placing counter-claims of Jews from Arab countries, reports Y-net News.

Could the Jews who left countries such as Morocco, Iraq, Egypt and other Arab and Muslim states get reparations for the lost property they left behind? Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit, himself a former refugee from Morocco, has announced the renewal of a campaign to document the legacies of those who came from Arab countries and record their claims.

The claims refer to property and other belongings that were left behind at the country of origin. Sheetrit explains that "we are talking about hundreds of thousands of claims that could be used as a balance to the claims of Palestinian refugees asking to return to Israel."

During his first stint as justice minister, Sheetrit established a special committee within the ministry designed to build a database for the documentation of the public and private legacies and properties of Jews who left Arab countries and to record the culture and heritage of Jews in those countries.

Upon his return to the post as the acting justice minister, Sheetrit reintroduced the committee and was even able to raise the necessary budget for its operation. Sheetrit emphasized the importance of these actions at this time saying that "If the State of Israel will not work on this project, it will never happen. If we wait for years, Israel may find itself in a position where the task cannot be completed."

Sheetrit explained that "the Palestinians are using the refugees as ammunition against Israel. When the time will ripen for peace talks, Israel could present this data as a balancing factor to the claims of the Palestinians."

According to him, "about 600,000 Jews left Arab countries (870,000 - ed), where the vast majority of them arrived in Israel, a country which absorbed them and led them to full integration in the Israeli society. On the other hand, about 200,000 Palestinians left Israel and have not assimilated into the rich Arab countries where they live. In addition, the hundreds of millions of dollars which were given to them by the UNRWA did not bring to an improvement in their position. They still live in refugee camps in Israel and in the Arab countries including the West Bank and Gaza."

Minister Sheetrit appointed Jean-Claude Niddam to head the effort of documenting the properties of Jews who left Arab countries who live in Israel and abroad. The effort will be assisted by more than 60 Jewish communities around the world which have already announced their participation in the campaign.

Read article in full

See comment by Gaza Arab:

"It's about accountability, a topic the Arab world has never fully understood. When the Arab world chose war instead of peace in 1948, they should have accepted the results of their decision. The Arab world should have been held to account. We should not have put the Arabs that fled the war zone for the safety of the surrounding Arab countries into refugee camps and kept them there. Instead we should have absorbed them as the Israelis did absorb the hundreds of thousands of Jews that we expelled from our Arab countries.

"You do realize that if the Arabs are given the right to return to live inside Israel....then the Arabs must return 40% of Baghdad to the jews, large parts of Cairo and Alexandria to the Jews, entire cities to the Jews that fled Yemen, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya ......fair is fair. Or have you always held the Jews to a higher level of accountability than the Arabs? Is it because you believe that we Arabs are incapable of being accountable?"


AHAMAD AHABAL, GAZA

Israeli Justice Minister is committed to refugees

Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit pledged Monday to reestablish his ministry's unit for managing compensation claims of Jews forced out of Arab countries and to reinvigorate the effort to make their case to the world, reports Hilary Leila Krieger of the Jerusalem Post.

Sheetrit addressed a conference on "rights and redress" for this population held in Jerusalem Monday, which launched a campaign to register all the families who lost assets when Jews fled Arab countries after the creation of the State of Israel.

Sheetrit, like many at the conference, stressed that the goal wasn't to get financial compensation.

"The campaign is not for money," the minister said. "The idea is to put on the table, on a parallel level, the claims of Jewish refugees with the claims of the Palestinians," the latter of whom he described as having successfully garnered world attention.

Sheetrit originally established the unit under his first term as justice minister more than three years ago, but admitted that it was neglected once he left office and its duties were transferred to someone already responsible for pursuing Holocaust compensation claims.

"It was a mistake" to have made such a switch, he said, and his promise to make it a separate unit once again garnered cheers from the 50 or so conference participants.

So far, only some 13,000 Israelis have been registered, though the conference organizers estimate that about 850,000 Jews were made refugees from Arab lands after the founding of Israel.

Now it is estimated that less than 10,000 remain in these areas. A conference co-organizer, The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, has suggested that $100 billion of assets were lost or confiscated, though specific calculations are difficult.

A draft declaration from Monday's conference declared that "no just, comprehensive Middle East peace can be reached without recognition of, and redress for, the uprooting of centuries-old Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa."

It urged the government of Israel to incorporate the issue into its negotiations with the Palestinians and Arab states and pressed Diaspora communities to help collect the stories of these Jewish refugees and advocate on their behalf.

Stanley Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, another co-sponsor of Monday's event, also said the "international rights and redress campaign" was intended to heighten awareness of the history and culture of these Jews.

"This is a campaign to document Jewish history," he said to applause, "to record the personal narratives of these families and their displacement, to make sure that the 2,500-year history of Mizrahi Jewry in Arab countries will not be lost to the pages of history."

Sheetrit, whose own family is originally from Morocco, urged speedy action: 'If we wait another 10 or 20 years there will be nobody to make any claims."

Read article in full

Rights sought for Jewish refugees from Arab lands

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Leaders from all over the Jewish world will convene in Jerusalem for a summit meeting with government officials on Monday to officially launch a worldwide campaign for the registration and recognition of human rights abuses and property losses suffered by Jewish families who were expelled from Arab countries during the 1940s and 1950s. (With thanks: Lily)

The International Rights and Redress Campaign, which will be run by the Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) organization in partnership with several other American and international Jewish organizations, will focus on registering these families' claims against Arab states for losses and abuses sustained during the expulsions.

However, summit coordinator and JJAC executive director Stanley Urman told The Jerusalem Post that "this isn't primarily about seeking compensation."
Rather, it is "about registration and recognition and Jewish history."

Yet while the JJAC seeks first and foremost to tell "the story of Jewish history before the memories [of the expelled Jews] fade," the campaign is also intended to prepare for the filing of compensation claims against Arab states.

"We have to also catalogue losses," Urman affirms. "There may be a time when Palestinians demand compensation, and we believe... it would be an injustice to provide rights to one victimized population [the Palestinians] without providing to the other."

This point - placing the Palestinian refugee issue in the context of the broader refugee phenomenon generated by the Arab-Israeli conflict - seems to be the campaign's central political message.

According to Urman, quoted in a JJAC press release, "Two, not one, refugee problems were caused by the strife in the region, and our campaign will insist that the world community recognize the appalling events that befell Jews from Arab countries."

Another press release tellingly noted that "In all relevant international bilateral or multilateral agreements (i.e. UN Resolution 242, the road map, the Madrid Conference, etc.), the reference to 'refugees' is generic, allowing for the recognition and inclusion of all Middle East refugees - Jews, Christians and other minorities."

Urman confirmed this goal to the Post.

"We're working to make sure [world] governments recognize that they [Middle Eastern Jews] were refugees and they have rights as well," he said.

In explaining the timing of the summit, Urman called the current period "our last chance," since "hundreds of these dispossessed Jews are dying every month with virtually no public recognition of either their tragic expulsion or their far-ranging individual and communal property claims."

While Urman declined to quote estimates as to the amount of compensation families of expelled Jews may seek from Arab states, estimates of the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) put the figure at some $100 billion.

JJAC was founded in 2002 by a coalition of Jewish organizations, including WOJAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Sephardi Federation. (...)

While JJAC and WOJAC will coordinate the International Rights and Redress Campaign, it will operate in conjunction with Jewish organizations from 40 countries from South America, Europe, North America and Asia.

Read article in full

Campaign to compensate Jews from Arab countries

A campaign to gain restitution for Jews expelled from Arab countries in the mid-20th century was launched, JTA News reports.

The “International Rights and Redress Campaign” opened with a one-day summit in Jerusalem on Sunday attended by representatives of Jewish communities from 10 countries.

Participants called for a campaign to document properties lost by an estimated 900,000 Jews who were driven out of Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen after Israel’s founding in 1948.

Most of the refugees ended up in the nascent Jewish state, while others immigrated to the West.

One group, the World Organization of Jews From Arab Countries, has valued the refugees’ lost property at $100 billion, and wants a concerted effort to sue for reparations.

Some of the conference participants want the Jewish refugees’ claims to be given equal weight to those of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war for Israeli independence.

Read article in full

Mid-East Jewish refugees campaign for recognition

JERUSALEM, Oct 22 (Reuters) - World Jewish groups began a global campaign on Sunday (today) calling for recognition of Jews from Arab countries as refugees in the Middle East conflict, Jonathan Saul reports.

"The world sees the plight of Palestinian refugees, and not withstanding their plight, there must be recognition that Jews from Arab countries are also victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict," said Stanley Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC).

"JJAC, a U.S.-based coalition of Jewish organisations, is one of the groups coordinating the campaign which aims to record testimonies of Jews who fled in the face of persecution, list asset losses and lobby foreign governments on their behalf.

"Jewish groups have estimated that since 1948 at least 900,000 Jews have been forced to leave their homes in Arab countries such as Egypt,Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen.

"At least 600,000 went to Israel. The rest sought sanctuary in France, Britain, the United States and other countries. A meeting of Jewish groups in Jerusalem on Sunday marked the first concerted effort to put the issue on the world agenda.

"Linda Abdel Aziz, who fled to Israel in 1971, is one of many thousands of Jews born in Iraq who left or were expelled as conditions deteriorated due to discriminatory legislation, pogroms and public executions.

"Abdel Aziz has recorded her testimony in the campaign. Her father, Jacob, who stayed behind in Iraq disappeared in 1972, and family members believe he was executed by the ruling Baath party regime for being a Jew.

"We did not interfere in politics but we were persecuted. We are all haunted," said Abdel Aziz,

"Jewish communities in the Middle East stretch back over 2,500 years. But anti-Jewish violence, fanned by Arab nationalism, swept through the region in the early 1940s. A wave of pogroms against Jews was triggered by the establishment of Israel in 1948 and a war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became the Jewish state.

"After 1948, conditions deteriorated for Jews in many Arab countries, including property confiscation by Arab governments.

"The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, another body spearheading the new campaign, has estimated that Jews lost more than $100 billion in personal and community assets through confiscations by various Arab governments. While some individuals have tried to file suits for lost property particularly in Libya and Iraq, there has so far not been a concerted effort by Jewish groups to seek reparations.

"JJAC is working in tandem with Israel's Ministry of Justice which is collecting and registering testimonials, affidavits and property claims. The ministry has already received thousands of claims to date.

"With memories fading, and elderly people passing on each day, this will be our last, best chance to obtain this important record of Jewish history and the evidence for future claims," Urman said.

"Any future claims are complicated by the fact that the departure of Jews from Arab states happened alongside the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Millions of Palestinians who fled themselves or are descended from those who left their homes behind demand a "right of return" to what is now Israelor at least compensation for their losses. Most live in Arab states neighbouring Israel.

"If there will be compensation for Palestinian refugees, there must be compensation for Jewish refugees," Urman said. Abbas Shiblak, a British-based Palestinian writer and author of a book on the Jews of Iraq, said their plight should not be compared with the Palestinian refugee issue. "Their (Middle Eastern Jews') rights should be addressed and discussed with each of the concerned Arab states with the help of the international community and only after a comprehensive peace settlement is agreed," Shiblak said.

Reprinted in Haaretz (with thanks:Lily)

Read the comments thread: No.17 comment points out that the writer's uncle accepted an invitation to return to Iraq in 1971. After being paraded on TV he promptly disappeared.

Bahrain's Jews cannot travel to Israel

Life is good for Bahrain's 36 Jews, as long as they do not visit Israel, reports Larry Luxner of JTA News. (With thanks: Albert)

..."(Of all the Gulf States) only in Bahrain has a real Jewish community ever existed.

"That’s a source of pride for Bahraini officials, who mentioned that fact during recent lobbying for a free-trade agreement with the United States. In order to win approval for the FTA in 2004, Bahrain agreed to drop its boycott of companies that do business with Israel.

"Bahrain’s ambassador in Washington, Naser al-Belooshi, spoke proudly of his country’s Jewish community at a recent speech at a synagogue in Florida sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County. (...)

"Electronics retailer Rouben Rouben was born in 1954 to a Sephardi Jewish family from Baghdad.

“In the 1930s and ’40s, the area along Al-Mutanabi Road was known as ‘Jews’ Street’ because there were so many Jewish-owned shops,” Rouben told JTA. “On Saturday, all the shops would close for Shabbat.”

"Things changed in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel. Riots erupted, the synagogue was burned down and most of Bahrain’s Jews emigrated to Great Britain.

"Even in the 1960s, there were still 200 to 300 Jews in the country, but after 1967 — when anti-Israel riots again broke out following the Six-Day War — Jewish communal life in Bahrain came to an end.

"Today, the country’s Jews rarely get together, (Nancy) Khedouri said. The last Jewish funeral was in 2001, and they barely managed to get a minyan.

“The community is dying out,” she said. “There is no rabbi here, so all religious ceremonies must be conducted abroad. Most of the people who are still in Bahrain are single. There’s not much to choose from, and there are very few cases of intermarriage between Jews and Arabs.”

"The community’s unofficial leader is Abraham David Nonoo, who’s also a member of Bahrain’s 40-man Shura, or parliamentary council.

"Nonoo, who couldn’t be reached for comment, recently renovated the country’s synagogue with his own funds.

“The roof started falling in, so we decided to renovate it, inside and outside,” Rouben said. “The community at one point wanted to convert the building for another use or give it to charity, but the government wouldn’t let us. They insisted it remain as a synagogue.”

"Finding the shul isn’t easy, because it isn’t identified in any way as a Jewish house of worship. Even Khedouri had a hard time locating the nondescript beige structure along Sasa’ah Avenue in a lower-class commercial district of Manama.

"In fact, the only marking on the synagogue itself was a blue-and-white bumper sticker slapped on the front door with the Arabic word “la,” or “no,” superimposed on the U.S. and Israeli flags, with a message in Arabic: “Every dinar you pay toward American goods goes to kill a Palestinian. And every dinar you pay toward the Palestinian people helps restore their rights.”

"Shopkeepers eyed this reporter warily as he snapped pictures of the synagogue, which is always closed — as is the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town.

"However, both were visited in the early 1990s by Yossi Sarid, a left-wing member of Israel’s Knesset, when a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict appeared imminent. The Jewish state quietly set up trade offices in Oman and Qatar, two moderate Arab countries that seemed ripe for peacemaking.

“Then the intifada started and things went backward,” said Rouben, noting that the trade office in Oman closed in the wake of hostilities, though the Israeli mission in Qatar remains open for business.

"Rouben, who sells TV sets, DVD players, copies, fax machines and kitchen appliances from his downtown showroom, said “95 percent of my customers are Bahrainis, and the government is our No. 1 corporate customer. I’ve never felt any kind of discrimination.”

"His nephew, Daoud Rouben, 19, is studying architecture at MIT. Daoud has two sisters; one goes to Cambridge University, while the other is at the London School of Economics on a Bahraini government scholarship.

“I think people abroad have an image that the Middle East is full of tension between Arabs and Jews,” said Daoud Rouben, who was back home visiting family. “But if I walk down the street here, people can’t tell where I’m from. They think I’m just another Bahraini.”

"The only restriction at all, the elder Rouben said, is that he can’t travel to Israel. But he claims he wouldn’t do that anyway until there’s peace between Arabs and Jews.

Khedouri says she feels the same way.

“We’ve never been to Israel, we have nobody there, and because we hold Bahraini passports we cannot travel to Israel,” she said. “As far as we’re concerned, whatever the government will not let us do, we will not do. We’re law-abiding citizens.”

"Rouben said that even during Israel’s recent war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, he had no problems.

“Since we are a very small community, everybody knows who we are. Even if you gave me all the wealth of this world, I wouldn’t leave this country. For me, it is home.”

"He added cautiously, “The government doesn’t tell me, ‘You’re a Jew, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ The day they say that, I’ll be packing my bags.”

Read article in full

Divided we stand with Duki Dror....

If you happen to live in London and are free on Wednesday evening 25 October - come and meet Duki Dror. This acclaimed young Israeli director is flying in especially to attend the UK premiere of two of his films.

Duki Dror is more than a director - he's an auteur. Almost all his works bear the hallmark of a personal obsession with roots and divided identities - be it a Vietnamese refugee growing up in Israel, or his own story - as the Israeli-born, US-educated, son of Iraqi-Jewish refugees.

The film evening at the French Institute in South Kensington, organised by Harif and Spiro Ark, will end with a Q & A session with Dror.

A word of advice if you're planning to do something else next Wednesday - cancel it!

An American in Yemen - blog exclusive!

In September Seth Kaplan spent a week in Yemen, and Shabbat with the Jewish community. 'Point of no Return' thanks him for taking the trouble to reply to the following questions:

Where did you go? How long for?

Seth: I was on my way to Somaliland, the secessionist northeast part of Somalia for some research and flew Yemenia arilines. It offered me a free stopover and since I am curious about Yemen and its people, I stayed there for a week in early September.

Who did you stay with?

I stayed mainly in cheap hotels in Sana'a and elsewhere, but also spent Shabbas with the Jewish community -- or what is left from a far larger community -- in a relatively small town about 90 minutes north of Sana'a.

What was it like? How different from the usual?

It was a great experience. Yemen people are very hospitable and the country has some fascinating sights. I also had one of the better Shabbatot I have had because of how interesting and different it was. Conditions were pretty primitive compared to more advanced countries. Electricity would go out every day or so. Homes were very simple, bare of many of the electronic items we are so familiar with (though they did have refrigerators and TVs of course). People were poor by our standards and had trouble finding good paying work. Education levels were low (though Yemenite Jews knew the Torah by heart, it seemed). Everyone chewed khat

(a leafy plant with narcotic properties -ed).

How many Jews still in Yemen?

They say about 500, all in this one town.

Why were they still there?

They generally like Yemen, preferred it to other countries, and if it wasn't for financial difficulties would never contemplate leaving. Many children attended Satmar schools in Brooklyn, New York.

How do they live? What do they eat? How do they dress?

The women dress like most women in Yemen and cover themselves completely in a chador. The men earn money from simple jobs: repairing and selling second hand shoes; producing and selling milk and milk products from their own cows; running small retail shops; teaching in yeshiva.

Did they want to leave?

No. They only worried about the money. They dressed very religiously but faced no discrimination. As in most Moslem countries, the average person has nothing against Jews.

What were the conditions they lived in like?

Very simple. The homes were not large. Some people had cars and cell phones but nothing fancy. People were very close to each other and spent a lot of timing visiting community members and working together. On Shabbas, we visited six or seven homes, walking for over 30 minutes to reach some of them. Then we would talk and drink sweet Arab tea and partake in some fruit and cakes. As there is almost no furniture in Yemenite homes, we always sat on the floor, on carpets with a pillow as armrest.

How did your hosts receive you? What relations do the Jews have with the outside world?

They visit Israel and the Satmar in Brooklyn and they were very hospitable to me. I slept in someone's home and joined them for all Shabbas activities.

What were relations between the Jews and their Muslim neighbours like?

Generally, pretty friendly. After all, these 500 people lived in a town with many thousands of Moslems and they all stood out because of their dress and no one bothered them. My hosts often greeted Moslem neighbors as we walked down the street. Yemen has a secular government but is very socially conservative and therefore everyone is very religious and the women dress very conservatively. But this does not mean they have anything but good relations with Jews who have lived in their midst for millennia.

Supporting the national struggles of small peoples

As this summer's Hezbollah war ended, an article scathing of Israel's elites appeared in Haaretz by Ari Shavit calling for Israel to adopt a new 'intellectual discourse'. In this eloquent and thoughtful piece Hillel Halkin in Commentary says that Israel's new 'intellectual discourse' must affirm its faith in a nation state with a natural affinity for minorities and small struggling peoples everywhere.

"The Jews are among the oldest of the world’s nations. And because nations are thorns in the side of empires, the Jews have been disliked by imperial powers just as much as they have been disliked by other nations among which they have lived. They have always fought for the right to be themselves, whether politically in the Roman Empire, spiritually in the religious empire of the Catholic Church, or socially in the nation-states of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe. And that fight has also been, even if Jews did not historically think of it this way, for every other people’s right to be itself, too.

"The nation-state is the only reliable vehicle in modern times for preserving the heritage of a people. If Israeli intellectuals were to reflect on this, they might dwell less on the solitariness of their fate and more on its commonality with the fate of others.

"There is an irony in the fact that Zionism, initially because of its association with the British Mandate, and then because of close U.S.-Israeli relations, has become regularly associated with Western imperialism when the true imperial forces in the Middle East have always been, instead, Arabism and Islam. These, starting with the Arab conquest of the area in the 7th century, have imposed a uniformity of language, culture, and religion wherever they have spread. In recent decades they have sought to crush the Kurds of Iraq and the Africans of southern Sudan, to repress Berber culture in North Africa, to attack the Copts of Egypt and the Nestorians of Iraq—and to destroy the state of Israel.

"A “new discourse” among Israeli intellectuals might concern itself with Israel’s relationship to such minorities, as to minorities everywhere. It might ponder Israel’s natural affinity with the national struggles of all small peoples, some of whom—the Tibetans, for example—have cultures every bit as unique and rich as that of the Jews. On his visit to Israel earlier this year, the Dalai Lama, with little protest from the public or from Israeli intellectuals, was cold-shouldered by Israel’s government because of pressure from the Chinese, who have regularly sold arms and given support to Israel’s enemies. Yet the Tibetan leader has spoken often about how, in their struggle for cultural and religious survival, the Tibetans have found inspiration in the Jews. There is reason for rue when he has been able to see in a Jewish state what a Jewish state does not see in itself."

Read article in full

New book: "Last days in Babylon"

Marina Benjamin was alway something of a rebel - refusing to speak Arabic to her relatives, preferring hamburgers and beer to the Middle Eastern food at home. But having her own child made her want to reconnect with her Iraqi-Jewish past. Her quest for roots took her bravely to Iraq in 2004 at a time of great danger to foreigners - especially women travelling on their own - and when the country was already sliding into mayhem.

Her book "Last Days in Babylon: the story of a family, the history of a nation" just published in the USA by Simon and Schuster and due for publication in the UK early next year, reconstructs a vivid picture of the Jews of Baghdad through the story of Marina's grandmother, Regina Sehayek.

Here's an extract from the prologue, in which Marina describes visiting Baghdad with her guide Mahmoud:

"Mahmoud was well aware of the Baghdadi Jews' legacy, as most educated Iraqis were. More to the point, he knew that the ancient Jewish Quarter had more or less overlapped large sections of the Old City. But when he realized that I was hoping to find traces of Jewish life in old Baghdad, he had shrugged his shoulders and frowned. "But there is nothing left," he said. "The place where the great synagogue used to stand is now a shopping centre. All the old houses that used to belong to Jews have been converted into tenements." Intending encouragement, he added that if we happened to strike up a conversation with some of the neighbourhood's older residents, they would be bound to remember the Jews. But if I was looking for evidence -- for artefacts, vestiges, even resonances -- I would be disappointed.

"Unlike other ex-pats attempting to reconnect with a foreign homeland, at leisure to wander freely, talk to people, soak up the experience of being in a place at once familiar and unknown, I began to understand that I would have to make do with scraps. Given that this was Iraq, and that a war was on, I would be grateful even for that much. Nonetheless, I had heard it said that there were things that a keen observer might yet chance to discover; small cigarette-shaped indentations in the doorposts of houses to which Mezuzahs, long-ago pilfered for their silver, had once been nailed, and stars of David ingeniously incorporated into a building's brickwork.

"And so we pushed on, my hope being that as Mahmoud guided my steps I could drift into a parallel universe, picking up echoes meant specifically for my eagerly attuned ear, while my eye alighted on hidden signs and symbols, invisible to all but an Iraqi Jew.

"Our tour began on the eastern banks of the Tigris at the foot of the Maude Bridge, from where rolls of looping razor wire stretched away into the distance along the top of the pale stone embankment and vast piles of litter, heaped into neat mounds, awaited collection. The bridge had undergone a succession of name changes over the years, but it was still known colloquially as the Maude -- after the British General who had liberated the city from the deadweight of Turkish rule back in 1917 and then promptly died.

"Through the shimmering haze of the morning's heat, I could just make out the old British Residency directly opposite us on the river's western bank. It was a large villa-style building with tall windows and thin decorative pilasters. Its faded grandeur alluded to the influence that the British had enjoyed here between the two world wars. This was where the indefatigable Gertrude Bell, a gifted Arabist and contemporary of my grandmother's, had worked as oriental secretary. Bell was one of a handful of Britons who had fought for Iraqi self-rule. Famously, she is reputed to have drawn Iraq's borders in the sand for the young Winston Churchill's edification. She had also urged King Faisal -- first king of this new-born nation, kludged together from provincial leftovers of the Ottoman Empire -- to appoint an Istanbul-educated Jew to his very first cabinet as minister of finance. The Jews were then approaching the pinnacle of their power in Baghdad. They were well-connected, urbane and bent on self-advancement. It was a soaring peak to attain after centuries of being merely tolerated -- but also, a dizzying height from which to fall."

To read the rest of the prologue or order the book online click here

Kabyls who helped save Jews from the Nazis

While we're on the subject of Robert Satloff's book on 'Righteous Arabs' who saved Jews during the Holocaust (see below), it is only fair to point out that the rescue of Jews by the rector of the Paris Mosque was almost entirely a 'Kabyl rescue effort'. (If the anonymous commenter who is writing a book on the subject and would like to meet survivors is reading this - the French organisation Enfants caches would be a good place to start your search.)

Here's an article by Annette Herskovits, herself a 'hidden child', about this amazing wartime episode:


" I learned of Muslims who helped rescue Jewish children only recently, in the newsletter of Enfants Caches (Hidden Children), an association of Jews who survived the Holocaust in France as children.

"The mosque-based resistance network consisted of people from Algeria's mountainous Kabylia regions. Kabyls are one of several North-African groups who have preserved their Berber language and culture; the Berbers inhabited North Africa before the Arabs invaded and introduced Islam in the 7th century. At least 95 percent of Algerian immigrants to France came from Kabylia.

The network's Kabyls communicated in their Berber dialect, Tamazight, making infiltration almost impossible. Access to Paris's sewers directly beneath the mosque's grounds provided an escape path, as did the mosque's proximity to the city's central wine market on the Seine, where barges laden with wine barrels came and went. One woman recalled being taken out of Paris on a barge; a Kabyl at the helm took fugitives concealed in his cargo to the south of France, where they could be smuggled to Algeria or Spain.


The French League against Racism and Antisemitism has asked Israel's Yad Vashem Institute to recognize Benghabrit as one of "The Righteous among the Nations," a title honoring non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Benghabrit would be the first Muslim to earn this distinction.(...)


"On July 16, 1942, Paris police set out to arrest 28,000 Jews on orders of the French Vichy collaborationist government. They had in hand names and addresses, obtained from a census of Jews the Germans had ordered soon after they occupied France. That day and the next, the police fanned out through the city, packing the arrested Jews into requisitioned city buses. They found only 13,000 - largely because some police officers had spread the word ahead of time and many Jews had fled. More than 4,000 children aged 2 to 16 were among those arrested.

"On the second day, a tract was circulated through the miserable hotels that were home to immigrant Algerian workers. The tract, in Tamazight, was read out loud to the mostly illiterate men: "Yesterday at dawn, the Jews of Paris were arrested. The old, the women, and the children. In exile like ourselves, workers like ourselves. They are our brothers. Their children are like our own children. The one who encounters one of his children must give that child shelter and protection for as long as misfortune - or sorrow - lasts. Oh, man of my country, your heart is generous."

"We can't know how much help these men were able to give.

"The soul of the network was the mosque's rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, a man with three nationalities - Algerian, Moroccan, and French - who moved with ease in all three worlds, and whose Islam was tolerant and inclusive.

More than 1,700 people are thought to have found short-term shelter in apartments on or near the grounds of the mosque. Benghabrit set up an alert system that allowed fugitives to disappear swiftly in case of a raid - if necessary to the prayer room's women's section, where men were normally not admitted. He wrote numerous false birth certificates making Jewish children into Muslims."

Read article in full

The Holocaust's Arab heroes (continued)

The flurry of interest in Robert Satloff 's exploration of Arab Holocaust history coincides with his recently-published book.

'Point of no return' featured the article Satloff wrote for the Washington Post last week. The piece got the following comment from Ami Isseroff:

"Satloff strangely omitted the star of the Arab Nazi show, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin El Husseini, who organized an axis coup against the government of Iraq, and then fled to Nazi-land, where he hobnobbed with Hitler and Eichmann about the final solution, organized SS Units in Yugoslavia and broadcast for the Nazis.

"To be fair, Satloff also did not mention the Holocaust Museum in Nazareth, founded by an Israeli Arab, nor did he mention the visit of Anwar Sadat to Yad Vashem. He did not note either, that Yasser Arafat was barred from visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC owing to Jewish protests.

"In surveying the record of Arab-Nazi collaboration, it is fair to point out that almost no nation in Europe, and certainly no occupied nation, was free of the shameful stain of collaboration in genocide, and the Arab countries were by no means the worst."

Whitewashing Egyptian antisemitism

Several prominent academics have fudged and distorted the history of Jews in Arab and Muslim lands in order to fit their political agendas. Joel Beinin of Stanford University is one: here his work is thoroughly deconstructed by Alyssa A. Lappen in Front Page:

"Beinin’s antagonism toward Israel pervades his commentary concerning the Jewish state. He maintains that exodus of Jews from Arab lands after 1948 resulted not from their forced expulsion by Arab governments but from “provocative actions by Israeli agents.”

"Despite the fact that Israel offered Jews a haven from mass murder in Europe, and atrocities and mass expulsion from Muslim lands,Beinin holds that “Modern Zionism is a revolution against traditional Judaism, not its fulfillment.” (He shares this view, ironically, with a tiny minority of anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews.)

"Beinin’s specializes in Egyptian history. Here, too, his work bears an anti-Zionist tone and frequent contradicts the facts of history. "In opposition to “the Zionist project,” he instead favors “Levantinism,” an Israel-replacement ideology that calls for revitalizing the “fruitful compromise” of cultures he believes existed in the past.

"Scholars and Jewish refugees from Muslim lands both maintain that such idyllic harmony never existed, but Beinin romanticizes and politicizes their history. He also dismisses bona fide work on Arab and Muslim attitudes toward Jews by such writers as Yehoshafat Harkabi and Bat Ye’or, calling this perspective a “neo-lachrymose interpretation”that inexcusably has “distracted attention from Palestinian claims. ” "It appears that Beinin delves into history only to support his own preconceived theories.He ignores facts that contradict his ideas, sweeping certain events aside as if they never occurred.In his 1998 book on the fate of the Egyptian Jewish community, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, Beinin ignores the 1730s riots that destroyed Cairo’s Jewish quarter, killing 5,000 to 10,000, at least half its population.

"He makes no mention of the 1901 blood libel leveled at a Cairo Jewish woman. He condescendingly informs a former Jewish resident that the harat al-yahud was “not a ghetto,” when in fact it was. He minimizes Egypt’s 1929 Nationality Law, which blocked citizenship for Jews and many Christians, making some 40,000 Jews apatrides—stateless.

"He downplays the 1947 Company Law that made it nearly impossible for minorities to work in Egypt.He insultingly twists Egypt’s Jews into “Arabized” nationalists who would have been happier without Israel’s existence.Beinin even neglects Egypt’s state-sponsored publication of hateful tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an edition of which was issued by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s brother Shawki.

"He denies the inherently anti-Semitic nature of arrests of Egyptian Jews during the 1940s and 1950s on trumped-up charges.He asserts that Nazi officials in Egypt’s government cannot be traced – and anyway, that they had no political influence – ignoring a well-documented record of Nazis having moved to Nasser’s Egypt and their significant impact there.

"In 1956 and during 1967-70, Jewish males over 19 were imprisoned in the Abu Za’bal and Tura camps.They were tortured, forced to walk barefoot on broken glass and recite “I am a coward Jew. I am a Jewish donkey.”Beinin makes no mention of these camps.In Egypt, leaders of Jewish communities were forced to publicly denounce Zionism. Incredibly, Beinin takes these denunciations at face value.In fact, these Jews were Zionists; Cairo’s Jews fasted for Israel’s safety in 1967 and then massively resettled there."

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French Jews flee Muslim antisemitism for Israel

Feature by Larry Derfner in the Jerusalem Post on the French Jews, mostly of North African origin, who are making aliyah:

"Yosef Ben-Zion, 60, who left the largely-Muslim Parisian suburb of Noisy de Sec two years ago and who now lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh with his wife and two children, said, "I started to feel that there was a real problem about 10 years ago. I started hearing the Muslim youth say 'sale Juif' as I was on my way to the synagogue. They used to throw rocks over the wall into the synagogue garden, and the police did nothing about it."

"The problems in Noisy de Sec didn't begin a year ago with the riots and car-torchings that engulfed the country; Ben-Zion's wife, Simcha, 50, recalls that in the years before they left the suburb, Muslim firebrands "would start preaching in the street - 'Beware of the modern ways, beware of the influence of the Jews.'"

"Yosef, who left Tunisia for France with his family around 1960, as North Africa was emerging from French colonial rule, says the Jews used to get along with the Arabs back in Tunisia, and also after they found themselves living next to each other as immigrants in France.

"Said Zana: "The younger Muslims who don't have a history of living with Jews are the problem, their parents got along well with Jews. It's unusual - the first generation of Muslim immigrants to France was integrated better than their children."

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Cooking defines Sephardi Jews at Succot

Foodies will have their tastebuds tickled by this New York Times article. The rich Syrian culinary tradition, which comes into its own at Succot, is alive and well and living in Brooklyn. Enjoy! (with thanks: Albert)

All over the borough, observant Jewish families spent the first week of October building sukkahs, outdoor rooms with open roofs, in preparation for the holiday of Sukkot, which began last Friday and ends this Friday. Perched on asphalt roofs and in concrete gardens, they will eat under the stars for a week to commemorate the Jews’ biblical wanderings in the desert.

For one food-loving community within Brooklyn’s sizable Jewish population, Sukkot has additional significance.

“We always cook a lot, but for Sukkot, we do even more,” said Aida Hasson, who grew up in Beirut and is part of Brooklyn’s tight-knit community of Middle Eastern Jews.

This network of a few hundred families shares roots in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, and also an extraordinary culinary tradition. They use the term Syrian Jews, to distinguish themselves within the larger world of the Sephardim, the Jews of the Mediterranean.

“We call ourselves Syrian, Sephardic, Middle Eastern, whatever,” said Giselle Habert, who was born in Cairo. “The important thing is that we all know each other, and we all cook the same things.”

This community’s favorites are labor-intensive dishes that are still passed down from mother to daughter: sambusak, crisp little half-moons stuffed with allspice-scented meat or tangy white cheese; mujadara, lentils and rice cooked together and thickly piled with gold-brown strands of onion; mahshi, vegetables like tiny eggplant and finger-size zucchini stuffed with spiced meat and rice; and kahk, sesame-sprinkled rounds of crumbly pastry.Photo shows a dessert table includes, from top, sesame rounds called kahk; preserved apples and spaghetti squash; and cactus pear and pomegranate seeds, fall fruits that are traditional for Sukkot.

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Photo by Evan Sung shows a dessert table includes, from top, sesame rounds called kahk; preserved apples and spaghetti squash; and cactus pear and pomegranate seeds, fall fruits that are traditional for Sukkot.

Iranian envoy: 'We have nothing against Jews'

Once again the Iranian regime makes the doubtful distinction between 'Jews' and 'Zionists'. The Islamic Republic News Agency reports:

Iranian Ambassador to Paris Ali Ahani here on Wednesday said the Islamic Republic of Iran respects Jews and has nothing against them.

Addressing a press conference here, he said Iran's Jewish community is living peacefully in the country and is represented in the Iranian parliament.

Making a distinction between Jews and Zionists, he said the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not recognize the Zionist regime does not mean that Jews are placed in the same category.

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Antisemitism on the rise in Turkey

Shelomo Alfassa writing in Israel National News detects a worrying radicalisation of Turkish Muslims:(with thanks: Albert)


"Throughout the centuries, the sultans of Ottoman Turkey never issued edicts, firmans or fatwahs against the Jewish people living in their dominions. In the modern Republic of Turkey, the same holds true. Yet, an alarming situation existing today threatens to change the historic course of Turko-Jewish relations. The Turkish Muslims, long known for their hospitality and peacefulness towards the Jewish people, are quickly being radicalized by the introduction of Nazi-inspired Arab zealotry against the Jews.

"With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century, the Jews continued to remain close to the Turkish people. In 1923, President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk declared, "Our country has some elements who gave the proof of their fidelity to the motherland. Among them, I have to mention the Jewish element; up to now, the Jews have lived in happiness and from now they will rejoice and will be happy."

"Today, the tide is turning, and the Turkish land that for so long remained a bastion of peace for the Jews is rapidly becoming a playground for the Islamofascists that feed off of ferocious propaganda being disseminated from Arab countries and Iran. Attacks, violence and anti-Jewish graffiti are becoming more and more common in Turkish cities. "

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Arabs must stop denying their Holocaust history

By denying the Holocaust, argues Robert Satloff in the Washington Post, Arab countries are also denying the heroism of those Arabs who rescued Jews (via Normblog):

"When Arab leaders and their people deny the Holocaust, they deny their own history as well -- the lost history of the Holocaust in Arab lands. It took me four years of research -- scouring dozens of archives and conducting scores of interviews in 11 countries -- to unearth this history, one that reveals complicity and indifference on the part of some Arabs during the Holocaust, but also heroism on the part of others who took great risks to save Jewish lives.

"Neither Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to Holocaust victims, nor any other Holocaust memorial has ever recognized an Arab rescuer. It is time for that to change. It is also time for Arabs to recall and embrace these episodes in their history. That may not change the minds of the most radical Arab leaders or populations, but for some it could make the Holocaust a source of pride, worthy of remembrance -- rather than avoidance or denial.

"The Holocaust was an Arab story, too. From the beginning of World War II, Nazi plans to persecute and eventually exterminate Jews extended throughout the area that Germany and its allies hoped to conquer. That included a great Arab expanse, from Casablanca to Tripoli and on to Cairo, home to more than half a million Jews.

"Though Germany and its allies controlled this region only briefly, they made substantial headway toward their goal. From June 1940 to May 1943, the Nazis, their Vichy French collaborators and their Italian fascist allies applied in Arab lands many of the precursors to the Final Solution. These included not only laws depriving Jews of property, education, livelihood, residence and free movement, but also torture, slave labor, deportation and execution.

"There were no death camps, but many thousands of Jews were consigned to more than 100 brutal labor camps, many solely for Jews. Recall Maj. Strasser's warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film "Casablanca": "It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here." Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

"About 1 percent of Jews in North Africa (4,000 to 5,000) perished under Axis control in Arab lands, compared with more than half of European Jews. These Jews were lucky to be on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the fighting ended relatively early and where boats -- not just cattle cars -- would have been needed to take them to the ovens in Europe. But if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

"The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews; and a brave few even helped save Jews."

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Robert Satloff's article for Commentary

'Since the Jews left, everything has gone down'

Haaretz correspondent Daniel Ben Simon visits Morocco:

Morocco changed utterly on May 16, 2003, when several suicide bombings in the heart of Casablanca rocked the land. Passersby were killed, hotels and restaurants were destroyed, the Jewish community building was demolished. (...)

Following the initial shock, there are now signs of a reconciliation with religion and religious clerics. Under the king's leadership, the state is evincing openness toward religious faith, and newspapers contain numerous reports about openings of new mosques or renovations of old ones. But this time, it is all being done under the watchful eye of the state, and is overseen closely by its emissaries. Since this past May, all imams and clerics are appointed and trained by the state. Political parties are strictly prohibited from dealing with religious matters. Only the Islamic Party in parliament is exempt from that ban. (...)

It is hard to tell whether the new formula will succeed. In a country where 99 percent of the citizenry is Muslim and 99 percent fast during Ramadan, it will probably take more than that. Poverty is the greatest threat to the state's stability. That is what drove the fanatic Islamicization of the young men who carried out the suicide bombings in 2003.

In the mellah, or Moroccan ghetto, that once housed the Jews of Tineghir, a poor Berber town in the Upper Atlas not far from Warzazat, folks were busy this week with construction work at a renovated mosque. Nothing has changed here in the past few centuries, not even the dark hovels in which Jewish families lived before they immigrated to Israel. "Since the Jews left, everything has gone down," one workman said nostalgically. And indeed, the town's commercial life has plummeted since then. (My emphasis -ed). The town center is a bunch of rundown bazaars, and along the pavements are stands selling kitchenware that has seen better days. There is hardly any work even for those who want to work.

In Tineghir and hundreds of similar towns lies the real threat to Morocco. Religious extremism is sometimes the cause, but mostly it is the result of horrific social injustice. If Morocco reduces such injustice, the impact of the moderate mosques will be felt more greatly.

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Not all Iraqi Jews want to leave

The Washington Post reporter, Amit Paley, who broke the story below that 'rabbi' Emad Levy was about to leave Baghdad, also profiled another Jew, Sameer, who spends his days searching for his kidnapped brother. (With thanks : Aida, Dominique)

"Not every Iraqi Jew feels that way. Sameer, 40, a construction contractor, said he could not quit his homeland, even though that might mean he never finds a Jewish woman to marry."This is my destiny. I am Iraqi. I am part of Iraq," he said. "It is okay for me to stay without a wife."

Sameer spoke on the condition that his last name not be printed because he fears for his life. His 33-year-old brother was kidnapped 10 months ago -- although it was not clear whether his religion played a role in his targeting -- and Sameer spends every day searching for him. He has fled his Baghdad home and lives outside the capital in a location he will not disclose for security reasons.

A tightly wound bundle of nerves, Sameer frantically fiddled with a pencil during a conversation with a reporter as his eyes darted around the room. He sat balanced precariously on the edge of a dusty couch.

"I must go now!" he said every few moments during a 20-minute interview. "It is very dangerous for me."

Sameer refused to discuss life under Saddam's regime, saying the topic itself was dangerous, but interviews with Levy and former Iraqi intelligence officials make clear that life was not particularly easy for Jews before the American-led invasion.

Kawan al-Qaisi, a former member of the state intelligence service, known as the Mukhabarat, said he was assigned to follow Sameer for a month in 2002 to see if he was a spy for Israel or involved in plots against the government.

"There was a file on every Jew in Iraq," Qaisi said. "Every Jew had an intelligence officer assigned to him."Qaisi said the surveillance meant the Jews were protected, and by some accounts, they were largely spared from torture and execution because Hussein did not consider the tiny community a political threat. "

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Baghdad's last 'rabbi' to leave Iraq

Emad Levy, who has featured in numerous articles about the Jews of Iraq, has had enough: he's finally leaving Baghdad, according to Haaretz. Note that Levy is not an official rabbi, just one the few left who could read Hebrew and conduct a service.

BAGHDAD - Baghdad's last remaining rabbi announced on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar that he plans to leave Iraq.

Rabbi Emad Levy, one of about a dozen remaining members of the city's Jewish community, which once topped 100,000, compared his life to "living in a prison" as he broke his Yom Kippur fast Monday evening.
Levy said that his father fled to Israel after Iraq was invaded by the United States in 2003, but he stayed behind to care for a Jewish octogenarian sick with diabetes, The Washington Post reported yesterday.

The man is now in the care of friendly Kurds, Levy said, adding he will exit the country as soon as possible.

Levy said that most Iraqi Jews are homebound out of fear of kidnapping or execution. "It's like I'm living in a prison all the time," he said. "I have no future here. I must go out to have a life for myself.

"What should I do?" he continued. "Of course this is not the way Yom Kippur should be. When you are alone, it is very different than when you do it in the synagogue or with a lot of people. It is sad. This is why I must leave for the Holy Land."

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Gooood morning Iran! This is Jerusalem

DNA World of India reports on Israel Radio's Farsi service: (with thanks: Albert)


JERUSALEM: While arch-foes Israel and Iran step up the tough political rhetoric against one another, short-waves and a wood-panelled radio studio in Jerusalem offer the people of the two countries a rare communication bridge.

Seated behind a microphone in Studio 4 of the Israel Broadcast Association compound near Jerusalem's Zion Square, Menashe Amir, an expert on Iranian affairs, reads today's news bulletin in Farsi.

Amir, 66, left his home town of Tehran 47 years ago to come to Israel and has since worked as a broadcaster at the Voice of Israel service in Farsi, which is beamed via short-wave into Iran.

"In 40 minutes we cover news from the world, the Middle East and the Israeli-Arab peace process but also news inside Iran," he says.

Amir vehemently rejects any suggestions he and his colleagues are involved in state propaganda against Iran, where the Jewish minority population has fallen since Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 but still numbers some 25,000.

"We expose Iranian citizens to things the regime tries to hide," says Amir.

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A 'minyan' at Alexandria synagogue

There was a minyan at Alexandria's Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue for Rosh Hashana this year. But the Jews of Egypt belong in the past, according to JTA News.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, Sept. 25 (JTA) — During this year’s Rosh Hashanah evening service at the grand Eliahou Hanabi Synagogue, a short walk from the Mediterranean Sea here, all eyes turn toward the three foreign visitors who are making their way quietly to the front.

Word spreads quickly in the women’s half of the synagogue: “We have a minyan,” a couple of elegantly dressed ladies whisper excitedly to one another.

Here in this coastal city known for its cosmopolitan flair, where only four Jewish men and 27 Jewish women remain, the prospect of having 10 males at a New Year’s service is always a reason to celebrate.

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Yom Kippur in Egypt

Writing in Opinion Journal, Lucette Lagnado on the almost mystical passion for fasting of the Jews of the Middle East (with thanks: Lily):

"I had a perfect role model: My Egyptian-born mother, who approached fasting with a passion and abandon that I haven't seen before or since. Even when there wasn't an official fast on the horizon, she would sometimes make one up. That was not uncommon among Jews of the Middle East, where faith was tinged with a sense of mysticism. Some great rabbis the world over and even ordinary folks, fasted on certain weekdays, believing it led to a greater state of holiness. One Jewish tradition has it that you can change the outcome of a bad dream by fasting. The illness of a loved one is another occasion: When I became grievously sick at 16, my mother fasted regularly, as if God would listen more closely anytime she made a plea on an empty stomach.

"My mother taught me to regard every fast, even the ones that were not biblically mandated, as sacred. The Fast of Tammuz. The Fast of Lamentations. The Fast of Esther. The Fast of Tevet. Even the relatively minor Fast of Gedalia, which comes one day after the celebration of the Jewish new year.

"My mother had a special passion for the Fast of the First Born. Held the day before Passover, it recalls God's final plague against the Egyptians, his decree that the Angel of Death go from house to house and slay all of their first-born children. The fast, which is only observed by the first-born in a family, is a way of expressing gratitude to God for saving the Jewish children from this fate."

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The limits of tolerance

The full Jerusalem Post article by Seth Wikas, who visited the Jewish community in Tehran and Shiraz recently: (with thanks: Albert)

"Don't you want to leave?" I asked (Peyman).

"Of course, but I have a problem," he said.

His particular problem is that he did not serve in the military. Before Ahmadinejad's election in 2005, Iranians could pay money rather than perform military service, and Peyman paid for such an exemption. But now this practice has been canceled, and only those who have completed military service can travel abroad.

"So why don't you just serve in the army?" I asked.

Peyman demurred, saying that two years - the service requirement - is a long time, and he makes a decent living working for his father; leaving his normal life for two years is out of the question.

"But is there any social life here? Don't you want to marry someone Jewish?" I asked.

Social life in Iran is limited, as bars, dance clubs and other non-Islamic establishments are illegal. Peyman talked about meeting people - including women - through friends, and noted that there are social activities arranged through the Jewish Association and the synagogue.

What was most interesting about our conversation was that Peyman's friend Arash, a Muslim and a member of Teheran's police force, was in the room as we spoke. When I asked Arash about friendships between Jews and non-Jews in Iran, he considered it a non-issue, preferring instead to lambaste the regime."

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