Moroccan 'diversity' good, Sweden bad

Jonathan Paul Katz writing in the Forward must work for the Moroccan Tourist Board, so  complimentary is he towards the place. Scandinavia, he finds, is more antisemitic (clearly his tour bypassed Morocco's local extremists).   Morocco has rid itself of all but one percent of its Jewish population but is praised for its 'tolerance' and 'diversity', while others excoriate Israel, with 20 percent of its citizens who are Arab, as 'apartheid'. Bizarrely, Katz sees everything western (Ashkenazi) as worthy of criticism. 

Image of the Moroccan sage Baba Sali, whose hilula (pilgrimage to his tomb) takes place yearly

A number of times, I was told — by everyone from taxi drivers to a high-ranking Moroccan government official — of the country’s immense diversity. “We have Arabic-speakers and Berber-speakers, Muslims and Jews and Christians, secular people and niqab-wearers,” one person told me. A taxi driver originally from the town of Taroudant in Morocco’s south told me that “though the Jews and the French of our town have left, we still miss them.”

Sometimes I would reveal that I’m Jewish — it is my dream, after all, to someday attend one of Morocco’s iconic Jewish pilgrimages, a hiloula. This admission was met with one of three responses: an urging to come back and go to the great hiloula of Ouazarzate; an apology or regret for the treatment and exodus of Moroccan Jews in the 1950s and 1960s; or, most frequently, a narration of the Jewish facilities still available in Morocco today. These stories were occasionally punctuated by mentions of the Jews they had met — locals, French, Israelis — or of the Moroccan-Jewish singer Neta Elkayam.

Nowadays, Morocco has roughly 5,000 Jews (more like 2,500 - ed), and thousands of Israelis and other Jews of Moroccan descent visit every year. But in the 1950s and 1960s, many Moroccan Jews did face great difficulty (my emphasis), and freedom of Jewish practice was only strengthened in the recent constitution (Islamists banned 'Jewish' in the constitution, however, and the word Hebraic was substituted  - ed). Morocco’s human rights record leaves much to be desired, and fundamentalists continue to seek (and have harmed) the Kingdom. Yet I was struck by the openness of Moroccans to their Jewish brethren — and to the very idea of their existence. (Why not? Jews preceded Muslims in Morocco and do not have to plead for acceptance  - ed)

What struck me most is a celebration of diversity that we often do not see in Europe. We are always told to engage with Germany, with Sweden, and with the Netherlands — “safe countries” that look like secular-Ashkenazi Israel, with “Western” values and tolerance of Jews. Yet I, a survivor of anti-Semitic violence, have never felt so threatened as a Jew than I did when walking the streets of Lund, Southern Sweden’s university city, in January. In one day, I spotted and heard more anti-Semitism — in graffiti and conversations — than I did in a week in Morocco. But somehow we’re still told that Sweden and Denmark are “clean and safe” (like Israel), whereas Morocco is “dangerous and dirty” for Jews. We celebrate the Jews who return to Berlin, city of Hitler, but not those who return to Tunisia or Morocco.

The very idea that Jews could be and are Moroccans seemed so natural to many locals — in fact, I was told by my host in Casablanca that their grandchildren are “100% Moroccan” — even before they knew I was Jewish. (“And I thought you were Catholic!”) Yet in Sweden and the Netherlands and Norway, the very ability of Jews to integrate is again up for debate. We celebrate without full consideration the countries that Ashkenazim enjoy, yet the countries of Mizrahim and Sephardim somehow remain beyond the pale.

So, from Morocco, what I would like to say is this: Tolerance is not the province of Western white people alone. I saw a greater acknowledgment for the intersection of different identities — Moroccan and Jewish, Berber and Muslim, Arab and francophone — than I have ever seen in much of the West.

Yes, Morocco may have safety issues. Yes, the exodus of Morocco’s Jewry looms large. Yes, Morocco’s support (alongside many Jews’ support) for the Palestinian cause leaves some pro-Israel Jews queasy. But Morocco is in the midst of achieving something that many European countries have not yet started: the idea of a Jew as part and parcel of the country’s heritage.

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Tunisians turn Ashkenormative Judaism upside down (Forward - see comments)

A video tour of Jewish Baghdad

 Update: Sir Sassoon Hskels house was demolished in August 2016


Click here to see the video 

 When 140, 000 Jews left Iraq, whatever happened to the property they left behind?

This report on the Hona Baghdad Channel (Arabic) has been stirring Jewish memories on social media. It begins with a visit to the home of Sasson Heskel, modern Iraq's first Finance Minister, now an arts centre. The programme's presenter then takes us to see the Watania primary school which was located near Qunbar-Ali. The principal was the Arabist Ezra Hadad.


After a visit to Sook Hanoon, we are taken to the imposing entrances of Jewish homes in Abu Nawas St in Bataween, a new district of Baghdad built along the Tigris in the 1930s.

Emile Cohen in London makes periodic appearances on Skype. He describes how the last desperate Jews of Iraq escaped from their homes leaving the television switched on, so that no one would suspect they would be gone for good.

Most of the houses had been sequestrated by the government. There was no chance of the Jews getting restitution - the Jews were considered 'the enemy'.

The overall impression is of neglected sites badly in need of repair, with graffiti on the walls and rubbish strewn all around.   Few Jews would recognise their homes, schools and markets in Baghdad today.

PS The video ends with a view of Baghdad's new Jewish cemetery, with its 2, 000 graves. The land was donated by the Daniel family after the government destroyed the original Baghdad cemetery in 1958.

Blind Algerian-born poet wins Israel prize

 Algerian-born poet Erez Biton is the first Mizrahi to be awarded the Israel Prize for Literature. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Erez Biton has been blind since childhood

Biton, who has been blind since childhood, was born in Algeria and is the first poet of Mizrahi descent to win the Israel Prize in Literature.

His well-known works include 1976’s Mincha Marokait (Moroccan Gift); 1979’s Sefer Hanana (Book of Mint); 1989’s Tzipor Ben Yabashot (Bird between Continents); and 2009’s Timbisert, A Moroccan Bird.

“The five books of poetry he published... are the epitome of courageous dealings,” wrote the Israel Prize committee, “sensitive and deep with a wide range of personal and collective experiences centered around the pain of migration, planting roots in the country and the reestablishment of the Mizrahi identity as an integral part of the overall Israeli portrait.”

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Prosor to UN: save Middle East's minorities

According to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor has called on the Security Council  to “break its silence” on the “plague” of persecution of minorities in the Middle East. At last Israel's public policy is putting the exodus of Jews from Arab lands in its true context. (With thanks: Lily)

Prosor cited the upcoming Passover holiday and the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, saying persecution continues “without interruption and under the nose of the international community.”

In a meeting of the 15-nation council on minorities in the region, Prosor warned that millions of Christians, Kurds, Yazidis, Baha’is and Jews still face persecution.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from, what faith you belong to, or what politics you preach, no decent human being can ignore the calamity facing minorities in the Middle East,” he said.

Israel is as a haven in the region for minorities, he said.

“There is the one place in the Middle East where minorities have the freedom to practice their faith, to change faiths, or to practice no faith at all – and that is Israel,” the ambassador said.

Israel is home to a pluralistic society where people of various faiths are represented in the upper echelons of society, Prosor stressed. He noted the freedoms exercised by those who face persecution in much of the rest of the region, including members of the Baha’i, Jewish and Christian faiths.

Christians living under Hamas rule in Gaza do not have the same political freedoms as those in Israel, the ambassador underscored. After the Islamist group took control of the Strip in 2007, half of the Christian community fled, Prosor said.

He also spoke of the Christian population under the Palestinian Authority, saying Bethlehem’s Christian population fell by 70 percent since the PA assumed control in 1995.

Referring to a variant of an Arab proverb that relates to Jews and Christians, Prosor said radical Islamists having a saying: “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.

“Having driven out the vast majority of Jews out of the Arab lands, extremists have turned on the Christians,” he said.

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A-wa: yes, Yemenites rock!

Yemenite rain song, performed by the three Haim sisters 

 Three sisters of Yemenite descent from Israel's southern Arava desert have been taking the Arabic music world by storm. The Times of Israel has their story:

Here’s a sound that hasn’t been heard before. The guttural trills of Yemeni Arabic, couched in the text of a traditional women’s song, filtered through the harmonies of American musicals and the stylized rhythms of hip-hop and reggae. It’s the sound of A-Wa (pronounced Ay Wah, and Arabic for “yes”), a trio of sisters who are about to release their first single, “Habib Galbi,” based on the music they’ve been hearing since birth.

 “It’s like we ransacked everything,” said Tair Haim, 31, the eldest, and smallest, of the three. “We’re sisters, and we’re three sisters, we’re Yemenite, we’re from this tiny place down south, and we’re adding hip-hop and reggae to traditional Yemenite music.”

 Tair, Liron and Tagel Haim, 31, 29 and 25, are perched close together on an old black leather couch in the Kaboom studio, on the edge of Tel Aviv’s Florentin. They just completed a rehearsal for next week’s gig at Barby, Tel Aviv’s club for local rockers. The three are the oldest of their parents’ six children, raised on Shaharut, a remote southern farming community in the Arava where they learned to rely on one another.

 It was Tair Haim who was first bitten by the performance bug. She got up on a makeshift stage at her seventh birthday party and announced an upcoming performance, to which she graciously invited Liron, the next in line.

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 l  
Another popular Israeli group blending Yemenite rythms and modern rock: Yemen Blues, led by Ravid Kalahani

Last Jews of Yemen stubbornly stay put

How dangerous does Yemen have to become before the last Yemenite Jews decide to flee? Ynet News reports :

Israel is closely following developments in Yemen, where Gulf states are bombing Iranian-backed fighters, and has expressed deep concern over the fate of the last few Jews in the country.

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a series of air strikes overnight Wednesday, battling Iranian-backed Houthi fighters who have captured swathes of the country.

The Jews of Yemen (Photo: Reuters)

Israel believes that there are less than 100 Jews remaining in Yemen. Most of that number is concentrated in Sanaa, which has fallen to the Iranian-backed rebels.

The Foreign Ministry and the Jewish Agency have been in an ongoing state of frustration over the refusal of Yemen's Jews to leave, despite the risks there.

The Jews living in Yemen - most of whom had the opportunity to leave for Israel or another country, but refused – face an approaching danger from the advancing rebel forces, who have repeatedly made statements against Israel.

"We don't want to leave. If we wanted to, we would have done so a long time ago," Sanaa's chief rabbi Yahya Youssef said in February.

He did concede, however, that: "Since last September, our movements have become very limited for fear of the security situation."

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Syria: Jews smuggled out, Matza smuggled in

 Rabbi Abraham Haim at the Turkish border with Syria with boxes of Matza destined for the tiny number of Damascus Jews. The photo was taken some years ago.


The Israeli press has reported that a mother and daughter were smuggled from Syria into Israel last year. It is likely that the mother lived outside the known  Jewish community - possibly a Jewess married to a Christian. The remaining 20 Jews caught up in the war-torn country have shown no intention of leaving. This year, as in previous years, they are being sent supplies for Passover.

The Jerusalem Post reports:
 A mother and her daughter escaped from Syria and made aliya to Israel last year, Ma’ariv reported Friday after the news was cleared for publication by the censor.

Their escape via a neighboring country of Syria was facilitated by the Jewish Agency, and the two are now in an absorption center in the South.

Another daughter, who was turned down, returned to Syria. She had married a Muslim with children from a previous marriage and agreed to convert to Islam by a Muslim cleric. A source familiar with the situation explained that the second daughter’s request was denied because the Law of Return doesn’t recognize the right of Jews who convert to another religion to exercise their right to immigrate to Israel and automatically become a citizen.

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 Israeli rabbi smuggles Matzah to Damascus (Jewish Journal: with thanks: Andrew)

By the morning of Feb. 19, Rabbi Abraham Haim had collected more than 300 pounds of Jerusalem-made matzah for delivery to Syria. Boxes of the traditional Jewish crackers were stacked up to the ceiling of his cramped apartment in Bnei Brak, a religious suburb of Tel Aviv.

A few days later, the matzah would travel on a plane with the rabbi to Istanbul, Turkey.

And by late March, just before Passover — “God willing,” said Haim — the matzah, repackaged in label-less brown boxes, will have made the journey, through rain and snow, to a Turkish border town near Aleppo, Syria. Turkish smugglers who work closely with Haim then plan to cross into Syria and hand-deliver the matzah to approximately 50 Jews who, according to Haim, still live in the urban center of Damascus. (Others with connections to the Syrian-Jewish community have put its population even lower, at around 20 people.)
Haim makes this Passover mission every year — “and every year, we have a miracle,” he said, sitting at his dining-room table in Bnei Brak. “I’m speaking by phone with these people, and every year, they tell me they got it, that it arrived.”

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Another renovated synagogue, but fewer Jews

 (Photo: Reuters)


As the renovated Edirne synagogue is unveiled, Turkey joins the ranks of those Muslim countries giving priority to beautiful but empty Jewish buildings over a thriving community of actual Jews. Article in the Jerusalem Post: (with thanks: Heather)

EDIRNE, Turkey - When the domes of Edirne's abandoned Great Synagogue caved in, Rifat Mitrani, the town's last Jew, knew it spelled the end of nearly two millennia of Jewish heritage in this Turkish town.

As a boy, Mitrani studied Hebrew in the synagogue's gardens and in the 1970s, dispatched its Torah to Istanbul after the community shrank to just three families. In 1975, he unlocked its doors and swept away the cobwebs to marry his wife Sara.

"Only I am left. It happens slowly, becoming the last one," said Mitrani, 65, whose family fled here more than 500 years ago.

Now a five-year, $2.5 million government project has restored the synagogue's lead-clad domes and resplendent interior ahead of its Thursday re-opening, the first temple to open in Turkey in two generations, but one without worshippers.

It is part of a relaxation of curbs on religious minorities ushered in during President Tayyip Erdogan's 12 years in power.

Yet it coincides with a spike in anti-Semitism in predominantly Muslim Turkey and a wave of Jews moving away, say members of the aging community, which has shrunk by more than a third in the last quarter century.

The increase, observers say, is linked to anti-Israel sentiment which reached a crescendo during Israel's Gaza offensive in July. Erdogan compared Israel's assault on Palestinians to "genocide" and "Hitler's barbarism."

He drew distinctions between Israel and Turkish Jews, yet his words helped stoke outrage, and local Jews were threatened by public figures and pro-government newspapers.

Turkey's Jews, most of whose ancestors sought refuge here from the Spanish Inquisition, are on edge. Their schools and synagogues are behind security tunnels, shielded by steel blast protection.

"They have lived in a state of fear for a long time after terror attacks and the feeling that they are not treated as Turkish citizens. There is worry for the younger generation," said Ohad Kaynar, Israel's deputy consul general.

Louis Fishman, an expert on Turkish affairs at Brooklyn College in New York, saw evidence of government indifference to anti-Semitism. "Buildings might be protected but the people who visit them are subjected to regular hate speech and threats," he said.

Erdogan's spokesmen and other officials did not respond to requests for comment for this article. However, the Turkish government has been at pains to distinguish between its Israel policy and its attitude towards Turkey's Jewish population.


Close allies under previous governments, Israeli-Turkish ties hit a nadir in 2010 when Israeli commandoes stormed a Turkish-led convoy of ships carrying aid to Gaza and killed 10 Turks. Turkey withdrew its ambassador and ejected Israel's.

"Regardless of the fact that we identify ourselves as Turks, we are still perceived as foreigners. Tensions between Turkey and Israel directly impact us," said Karel Valansi, a political columnist with Salom newspaper.

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The spectacular synagogue of Dura-Europos

The media have claimed that  the spectacular synagogue of Dura-Europos in Syria, one the world's oldest, has been seized by ISIS: in reality, most of its wall paintings have been transported and  reconstructed at the National Museum in Damascus. Adam Blitz describes how western archeologists found the site in the Times of Israel:

The site was (re) discovered by chance during the Arab revolt of 1920 when British-Indian troops pitched camp. Several well-preserved wall paintings with scenes of the Roman commander Julius Terentius sacrificing to the gods were unearthed in (what was later identified as) the Temple to the Palmyrene Gods.

News of the discovery reached James Henry Breasted, archaeologist and founder of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, who was on expedition in Mesopotamia (beyond the Euphrates) at the time. On the 2^nd of May 1920 Breasted, together with his colleague Daniel Luckenbill, crossed over from Abu Kamal to devote a day to the site. Breasted’s notes and Luckenbill’s photographs would later appear in the inaugural publication of the Oriental Institute in 1924, Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine Paintings. The conclusions would shape discussion about Dura-Europos and its art for decades to come.

The site was subsequently excavated by Franz Cumont of the French Academy [1922-23] and later by Yale University under Michael Rostovtzeff, Clark Hopkins and Frank Brown [1928-1937]. During Yale’s tenure the city was identified as the Dura cited in Parthian Stations by the 1^st Century Greek Geographer, Isidore of Charax. The identification was secured with an inscription to the goddess Tyche, “the good fortune (tyche) of Dura” within a wall painting from the Temple of the Palmyrene Gods.

It was also under Yale’s leadership that the synagogue rose from the dust. It was the most sensational find of the sixth season [1932-33] and arguably the entire 10 year expedition.

Saul anointing David

This was in fact the second of two synagogues built on the same site opposite the Temple of Adonis: a short distance from both the main gate and the House-Church (the earliest securely dated Christian building ever to be discovered). The original and substantially smaller synagogue had evolved from a private house built in the Parthian age; as it was for the neighbouring Christian shrine.

Construction began afresh shortly after Roman rule. Concurrent with the developments of other public and private spaces to include the Mithraeum and the House-Church, the synagogue was renovated. It was given a colonnaded atrium and the House of Assembly (the shrine) was enlarged such that it now covered an entire city block in width. The date of the renovation (245 CE) was ascertained from an inscribed ceiling tile with mention of the benefactor, Samuel the leader, Abraham the treasurer and Arsakh the non-Jew or proselyte.

The synagogue’s House of Assembly was also embellished as part of the programme. Wall paintings, tempera on plaster or secco (not fresco), were added in 249/250 CE. These covered all four walls in five horizontal bands.

Dura Europos Synagogue West Wall with Torah Niche

At the time of its unveiling in 1932, 40% of those images had been destroyed. 29 panels with just under sixty biblical scenes in three bands awaited; as did peripheral stone benches and an aedicula: a scallop-shaped niche for the Torah built in the western wall (which faced Jerusalem).

In diverse hue some of the most prominent narratives refashioned themselves in a very local setting: baby Moses in the basket with Pharaoh’s daughter as a Grecian water nymph, Moses crossing the Red Sea, the binding of Isaac, Saul anointing David, the investiture of Aaron (in Roman toga), Mordechai riding triumphant, Elijah restoring the widow’s son, the capture of the Ark by the Philistines and the defeat of the Philistine god Dagan (and destruction of his temple at Ashdod), are a few examples.

Upon the walls were also two sets of inscriptions: dedicatory Aramaic with less abundant Greek and graffiti inked on the “Purim Panel” (with Mordechai) in Middle Persian and Parthian – a “calling card” from unknown visitors.

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Yemini: There is no abyss between ethnicities

After all the abuse directed at Mizrahim in recent days, Ben Dror Yemini (himself of Yemeni-Iraqi parentage) steps forward (in a climb-down from a previous article slamming anti-Mizrahi elitism) to declare that there is no gulf between Ashkenazim and Sephardim /Mizrahim. We are simply witnessing extremists on both sides, mostly post- or anti-Zionists, amplified by the media, who are trying to bring down society by playing a race card. The reality, he writes in Y-Net News, is quite different.

There is a fascinating coalition between militants on both sides. They are trying, with great effort, to put together a conflict between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
The former are returning to the days of old anti-Mizrahi racism, and the latter are excited by the "A Mizrahi votes for a Mizrahi" slogan. The former include types such as Prof. Amir Hetsroni, author and former actress Alona Kimhi, and the "Lo Latet" ("Don't Give") campaign, and the latter are intellectuals from the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow who have turned Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri into their messiah. We should pay attention to the fact that most of the people taking part in this dispute, on both sides, are either post-Zionist or anti-Zionist. That's no coincidence. They are trying to sell us a split, racist society which is falling apart.

In the 1960s, Kalman Katzenelson published a book titled "The Ashkenazi Revolution," a slanderous lampoon by a revisionist who claimed that there are two people living in Israel: Supreme Ashkenazim and inferior Sephardim. It was an antithesis of the integration of exiles vision. The book wasn't a success. Katzenelson didn't represent the revisionists, and his new successors, Hetsroni and Kimhi, don't represent the Ashkenazim. Just like the Shas voters among the anti-Zionists don’t represent even one-quarter of the Mizrahim.

Shas, represented by Arieh Deri (bottom), launched its 'A Mizrahi votes for a Mizrahi' campaign after Yair Garbuz (pictured top) insulted 'talisman-kissers and tomb-worshippers'(Photo: Shas )

The problem is that both groups are being given backing and a stage in certain media channels. They are being discussed and inflated. They are being turned into a stream and phenomenon. In the social media, this slander is turned into a celebration.

So we should put things in order. There is no abyss between the camps. There is no abyss between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. That's nonsense. There is an abyss between the extremes. Insanity versus insanity. Hatred versus hatred. In reality, there is a different Israel.

Over the weekend, two days ago, I attended a family event in one of Tel Aviv's satellite cities. A celebration for a daughter who has just been born. The mother is "mixed." She is neither Mizrahi nor Ashkenazi. The father is an engineer, a kibbutznik. There were many other similar couples there. The middle class. The elections were forgotten. It's seems that when you leave the bubble of the phalanges of the extremes, there is another life. It's a bit different. The newborn baby has no ethnic identity. There are many others like her, from Gideon Sa'ar to Dov Khenin, even when people don't know that's what they are.

Following the outburst of racism on the days after the elections, we have forgotten, and so have I, that the other Israel represents the majority. Eighty percent of the members of the golden age club already have "mixed" grandchildren and great grandchildren. Here and there, there are ethnic ghettos, mainly among the haredim, but for the rest this is a disappearing thing.

There is no need to cover up anything. There are still expressions of racism. There are remainders of the state racism we used to have here, which requires distributive justice. And certain elites, like the Supreme Court and the academia, are finding it difficult to change. Not because there are no suitable candidates, but because of the power maintenance mechanisms.

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How the Israeli election awakened the ethnic demon (Huffington Post)

Satirical article (Preoccupied territory)

Herzog blames failure on talisman-kissers speech:

Hotplate fire victims were Syrian Jews

Seven children died and the mother and eldest daughter are fighting for their lives. Media coverage of the tragedy that befell the Sassoon family after a Sabbath hotplate malfunctioned  casts a fascinating light onto the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn, NY, to which the family belonged. Article in the New York Times:
 

The couple came from far-flung corners of the Syrian Jewish diaspora: He was the son of a grandee in a Syrian Jewish outpost in Kobe, Japan, who attended a Canadian international school and spoke fluent Japanese; she was the daughter of a family with a comfortable life in southern Brooklyn, home to a thriving enclave of more than 75,000 Syrian Jews.

But when they met, in Israel, around 1998, Gabriel Sassoon and Gayle Jemal had arrived at similar points in their spiritual journeys. After his secular upbringing and her moderately religious one, personal blows and a deepening sense of devotion had propelled them to Israel, where he studied the Torah. There, they married and began raising the family that would grow to include eight children.

Not long ago, the man who had roamed across continents and the woman with roots deep in New York returned to Brooklyn with their children, settling into what promised to be a contented life not unlike the one she had grown up in — full of big Sabbath dinners in her childhood home and summers on the Jersey Shore.

Then came the fire: the relentless blaze that spread from a malfunctioning hot plate in the family’s first-floor kitchen to the upstairs bedrooms early Saturday morning, killing seven of the Sassoon children and critically injuring their sister and mother. Mr. Sassoon, who had continued studying the Torah after leaving Israel, was at a religious retreat in Manhattan at the time.

“Seven Sassoons are gone,” Mr. Sassoon’s second cousin, David Sassoon, said softly on Sunday, a few hours before a crowd of hundreds mourned the seven children at an Orthodox Jewish funeral in Brooklyn. “It’s very hard to think about that.”

Among the Syrian Jews who live in Midwood, Gravesend and along Ocean Parkway, the deaths are, collectively, a tragedy of stunning proportions. Ms. Sassoon, who remained hospitalized on Sunday, is one of their own, one of several siblings who grew up in the terra cotta-orange-roofed house at 3371 Bedford Avenue that is now a charred shell.

Like other affluent Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, her parents spend summers in Deal, N.J., and winters in Florida. Like other observant Jews in their community, the Sassoons used an electric hot plate to keep their Sabbath meal warm on Friday night to adhere to religious prohibitions against cooking on the day of rest.

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A dose of Neanderthal realism

The Israeli election seems to have unleashed an ugly, pent-up racism among the left-leaning cultural elite towards the Mizrahim who voted 'in their droves' for Netanyahu's party. But Mizrahim, with their memory of the 'Jewish Nakba' in Arab countries, were, on the whole, never going to vote for the more dovish Zionist Union. Lyn Julius blogs in The Times of Israel:

“Drink cyanide, bloody Neanderthals. You won. Only death will save you from yourselves.”

By the time the author of these words, an award-winning writer called Alona Kimhi, had deleted them from her Facebook page, it was too late. The blogosphere was buzzing, and Facebook and Twitter heaved with similar enraged disgust, even hatred, accusing Netanyahu and his supporters of racism. Some Israelis even started a campaign called ‘Lo latet’ to stop donating charity to the poor: They deserved punishment for perversely supporting the Right, even when Netanyahu’s ‘capitalist policies’ hurt them most. 

Netanyahu’s ‘racist’ comments pandered to his racist supporters. He had exhorted them to come out and vote because ‘Arabs were being bussed to the polling stations in their droves’.

But the Zionist Union’s own chairman, Yitzhak Herzog, blamed a speaker at his party rally the previous week for the Zionist Union’s defeat: artist Yair Garbuz had derided the “talisman kissers” and “tomb worshippers” who support Netanyahu.

His remarks were taken to refer to the country’s traditionalist Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent. But, argued columnist Ben Dror Yemini, Garbuz was not the only one who harboured these condescending thoughts. The Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli establishment – writers, artists, dramatists, media people, academics – must crush its ‘inner elitist’.

 

Professor Amir Hetzroni's insulting diatribe against Mizrahim is the most venomous yet. Had he been a minister 60 years ago, he would never have let Moroccan immigrants enter Israel under the Law of Return. When the presenter demanded he apologise, he walked out of the TV studio. (With thanks: Ahuva, Janet) 

The Garbuz moment unleashed the ‘ethnic demon’ into the election campaign, Yemini opined. That was the moment when the Israeli election became about identity politics.

“There’s no question that the speech given by Garbuz hurt us,” Zionist Union chairman Yitzhak Herzog admitted.

Although he did not distance himself from Garbuz’s comments at the time, Herzog said he ‘did not subscribe to those beliefs’.

“I have nothing to do with Garbuz. “I have a golden rule – never to criticize beliefs and opinions, or to insult someone for their faith.”

A chastened former Labour leader Shelly Yafimovitch appeared on Israeli TV. She bitterly regretted Yair Garbuz’s words, and promised change.

Even before the election, far leftist commentator Dimi Reider wrote that the Garbuz episode showed something was seriously rotten in the state of the Left. The Israeli electorate has not voted in a Labour government since 1999. If they are ever to win back voters from Likud, the Left needs to do some serious soul-searching.

But Dimi Reider still failed to put his finger on the Mizrahi malaise. Is it pride and pugnaciousness? Or simply fear?

Call it fear – but it is fear grounded in bitter experience.

All Israelis have experienced Hamas rockets and Arab terrorism, but only the Mizrahim carry the memory of what it was like to have lived in Arab countries and to have been brutally displaced from them.

The average Likud voter has not forgotten the ‘Jewish Nakba’. He and his family were dispossessed and uprooted from Morocco or Iraq, but antisemitism still haunts and hounds his tiny corner of the Middle East.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the beheaders of ISIS hover on Israel’s doorstep while Iran rattles its nuclear sabre.

Israel would be mad to go the route of political concession and show weakness, the Neanderthals reasoned. There is no compromise with genocidal jihad. It’s a no-brainer.

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French Sephardim choose aliya over integration

France's majority-Sephardi community is refusing to heed the advice of its leading lights, such as the author Marek Halter, to stay in France and fight antisemitism rather than choose aliyah to Israel, The Times of Israel reports. (With thanks: Michelle)

Halter is among the most prominent French Jews to urge his coreligionists to stick it out in France, but his campaign is exposing tensions between integration-minded progressives — many of them Ashkenazi, like himself — and a more insular Sephardic majority that favors aliyah.

 

Sephardic Jews are believed to constitute a disproportionate number of French immigrants to Israel — 80-90 percent, according to Sergio DellaPergola, a sociologist at Hebrew University and one of the world’s foremost experts on Jewish demography. Overall, Sephardim represent about two-thirds of French Jewry.

The overrepresentation of Sephardim, according to DellaPergola, owes to “traumas that many North African Sephardim who settled in France after the 1950s brought with them, from living in Muslim societies where many enjoyed a peaceful coexistence, but where many others were beaten and discriminated against.”

Violent anti-Semitism “brings back very unpleasant memories for Sephardic Jews, who already have a higher propensity to make aliyah also out of religious sentiment as they come from more traditionalist societies,” DellaPergola said.

Shoppers outside the Hyper Cacher market near Paris, where four people were murdered in January. The shop reopened on March 15, 2015. (Serge Attal/Flash90/JTA)

Last year, 7,231 French Jews moved to Israel, a record-setting figure nearly three times the number who came in 2012 and which made France the world’s largest source of new Israeli immigrants. After the supermarket killings and the murder of a volunteer security guard outside a synagogue in Denmark, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel was preparing for massive immigration and urged European Jews to consider the Jewish state their home. Some officials at the Jewish Agency, the semi-official body that coordinates global aliyah, expect as many as 15,000 Jews to arrive from France this year.

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Herzog blames failure on 'talisman-kissers' speech

According to Arutz Sheva, the leader of the centre-left Zionist Union party blamed its failure to win Israel's election on a speech at a party rally by artist Yair Garbuz, backed by playwright Yehoshua Sobol. In what was widely taken to refer to Israel's traditionally religious Sephardim, Garbuz derided 'talisman kissers and tomb worshippers'. In a TV interview leading politician Shelly Yafimovich also regretted that Garbuz's remarks cost the Z U the election. 

Artist Yair Garbuz: infamous

Days after a somewhat unexpected loss, Zionist Union Chairman Yitzhak Herzog has found a scapegoat for the party's poor showing.

According to Herzog, Yair Garbuz - the now-infamous artist who said before elections that Israel was under the control of a cabal of “swindlers, molesters, and mezuzah kissers" - was the reason for the party's big loss.

Speaking in an interview Thursday, Herzog “complimented” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his very effective campaign, especially in the days preceding Election Day.

“He ran an obsessive campaign full of lies and fear-mongering, and he managed to ruin Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home and Eli Yishai's Yachad, and to take votes from Shas and Yisrael Beytenu. It's as if Netanyahu reinvented himself last Friday,” when the polls showed Likud trailing his party, Herzog said. (...)

“There's no question that the speech given by Garbuz hurt us,” he said.
Although he did not condemn or distance himself from the comments when they were made, Herzog said Thursday that he obviously did not subscribe to those beliefs.

“I have nothing to do with Garbuz,” Herzog said. “I have a golden rule - never to criticize beliefs and opinions, or to insult someone for their faith.”

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Leftist slams leftist anti-Mizrahism 

Iraqi poet al-Hamdani visits Israel

Poets and fellow Iraqi exiles Salah Al Hamdani and Ronny Someck found they had a great deal in common: both were born in the same year in Baghdad, and both share a love of the land where poetry likely began. Ilene Prusher wrote in Haaretz:

A groundbreaking meeting in the Middle East peace process took place this week, part of a secret back channel that could change the face of the region.
Scratch that. Rephrase, as writers are wont to do, with less hyperbole and more happenstance.
The groundbreakers in this event were poets, not politicians, and the back channel is not so secret. Salah Al Hamdani, an Iraqi poet jailed under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and now living in France, is in Israel this week, in part to acknowledge and celebrate his deepening friendship with the poet Ronny Someck, who was born in Iraq and came to Israel with his family at the age of 2.

Both men discovered a little over four years ago, during a poetry festival in France, that not only were they moved by one other’s writing, but they were both born in Baghdad the same year.

“When I realized that he was born in Baghdad in 1951, I came to a realization then: I have a Jewish brother who lives in Israel,” Al Hamdani told an audience gathered Monday night to hear the two men interact and read from their works as part of the Jerusalem International Book Fair. “I ran to meet him, because I thought, maybe he looks like me. And we do look like brothers, right? Especially around the head,” Al Hamdani joked with the crowd in a theater of the Jerusalem Cinematheque, running a hand through his thick white shock of hair and gesturing to Someck’s bald head.

They do not actually look alike, but they share a love of the land where poetry likely began, with the Epic of Gilgamesh, and both have deep, gravelly voices that rumble so low, it’s hard to fathom that someone can sound so manly and so poetic at the same time.

“I speak to him, Ronny speaks his Iraqi as he feels like it,” Al Hamdani continued, eliciting more laughter. “And we understand each other, beyond the words. From there, two Iraqis in exile sitting in France, we came to realize that Baghdad needs us.”

Al Hamdani proposed a collaboration, and Someck agreed. In 2012, the two men came out with a joint book of poetry, “Baghdad-Jerusalem,” with their work appearing in French, Hebrew and Arabic. The next year, Al Hamdani took up Someck’s invitation to come to Israel for a poetry festival in Haifa — largely a quiet visit. But this, Al Hamdani’s second visit to Israel, amounted to his first appearance in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to attend a major literary event.

“I’m here and I will return here to meet the Jews of Iraq. They’re my family, they’re my blood,” Al Hamdani said in French, his comments followed by interpretation into Hebrew. “There’s a lot to say about all the problems between Israel and Palestinians, and Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, but these are not what I’m here to talk about.”

In a separate interview, Al Hamdani said he “lost some friends” when his connection with Someck and his travel to Israel became known. Many other poets, writers and artists in the Arab world hold that any kind of cooperation with Israel amounts to “normalization” that should be avoided, particularly in the face of a complete meltdown in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“I can’t be dictated to about where I should go, any more than I was able to tolerate living under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein,” Al Hamdani told Haaretz. Referring to the late Palestinian poet, he said: “Even Mahmoud Darwish wrote and spoke Hebrew. Should he be ostracized for that? I do have my critique of Israeli policy, but I think it’s for the Palestinians to work out a solution to this conflict with Israel, and I don’t think someone from Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Qatar can decide for them. In the meantime, I am proud to be here, and proud of what the Jews of Iraq contribute to my culture.”

Another poet was also involved in bringing Al Hamdani to Jerusalem: Gilad Meiri, director of the Poetry Place, a literary project working out of a community center in Jerusalem. Meiri was present at the festival in Sète, France, when the two men signed a contract to do a joint poetry collection on a coffee-stained café napkin.

“We see the terrible racism now in Israel toward outsiders, so it was very important for us to bring Salah to the fair to send a message of openness and coexistence — of multicultural realities,” Meiri said in an interview. “Moreover, the fair’s roots have been more focused on commercial interests, and so the position of the poet at the fair is not that high. Bringing an international poet like Salah Al Hamdani to the fair means raising the profile of the poet. Most Arab poets don’t want to do any kind of artistic cooperation with Israel or feel they can’t, and he’s engaging with us in an amazing and wonderfully warm way.”

At the book fair event, Meiri — accompanied by the music of Luna Abu Nassar, an Israeli Arab musician whose songs move flawlessly between Hebrew and Arabic — read a poem he’d written about Katamon, a West Jerusalem neighborhood populated by wealthy Christian Arabs until 1948. The sale to a developer of a plot of land that had been the place where Meiri watched years of Hapoel Katamon soccer games helped him relate to the Palestinians’ feelings of loss and longing, he said.

In reaction to this, Al Hamdani told the audience that this poem, like his very presence in Israel, was a statement.

“He who is in exile, he is doing a political act. My presence here is itself a political act. And in a way I am taking a certain risk. There are those who would like to take our heads off for this and see us dead,” Al Hamdani said. “When I come here, I bring memories, I bring messages. The poem on Katamon, what, there’s no political meaning there? Of course there is, and that is a natural thing.”

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Did Tunis terror target Jewish collection?

Mosaic flooring the shape of a Star of David in the Bardo's Jewish heritage room

A terrorist attack in Tunis could have been targeting a room in the capital's Bardo Museum dedicated to Tunisia's Jewish heritage, Le Monde Juif speculates.

Seventeen tourists and two Tunisians were killed by gunmen with Kalashnikovs. The attack ended on the afternoon of 18 March.

Some 100 tourists had been in the museum, which is in the same compound as Tunisia's parliament building. Most had been evacuated, said a spokesman.

In 2002, a terrorist attack on the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba killed 19 people, almost all German tourists.

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Education must follow Mizrahi cultural revolution

 Writing in Middle East Eye, Michal Zak is right that Mizrahi Jews are discriminated against in Israel. But in my view they are not in the same boat as Arabs and Palestinians, the darlings of the Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli Left, as Zak implies. Education is indeed the answer, but while schoolchildren must be taught the glories of Mizrahi civilisation, they must also be told about the Jewish Nakba in Arab and Muslim lands.

School textbooks devote only nine out of 400 pages to Mizrahi history

At the end of 2014 the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities held a conference called “From hating the stranger to accepting the other.” The President of Israel and the Minister of Education were guests at this distinguished conference. The list of speakers included both Jews and Arabs. Mizrahi Jewish speakers were not on the schedule. The organisers of the main conference did not seem to see any need to point out who among the Jews has European origins and whose origins are North African and Asian.

But while the conference of the Israeli Academy went about discussing how to accept the other, Mizrahi artists, religious leaders and intellectuals who had not been invited to join the panels took part in an alternative conference organised at the last minute in a religious centre across the street. They named it: “The Voices of the Others.” Despite the last-minute notice and the cold and rainy weather, they filled the auditorium. Jewish musicians sang in Arabic and scholars spoke of their visions.

Dr Meir Buzaglo, a philosopher who organised the event, pointed out how the name of the official conference reflects the dominant discourse. When speaking about “accepting the other” it appears to be clear to everyone who the other is and who is responsible for doing the accepting:  “It’s as if Mizrahim, Arabs, Orthodox Jews and Ethiopian Jews, who constitute three quarters of the population, are all sitting around and waiting to be accepted.”

Professor Haviva Pedaya, an expert in Judaism, pointed out the achievements of Mizrahi activists: "We led a revolution in the cultural arena (Mizrahi music has moved from the margins to the mainstream over the years), but we must remember that this is only a cultural revolution. The next step must be an educational revolution. All of the history textbooks describe us as backward and none of us have encountered a fair textbook.”

Israel's Jewish population is divided into these two groups, with the European (Ashkenazi) group as the majority group among the Jewish citizens. It is also the group that has been in power since 1948 and has discriminated against the Jews from North Africa and Asia (Mizrahi Jews).

One reason for this kind of “colour blindness” at the conference is that Israel was established to be a safe and secure home for all Jews. Divisions, racism and discrimination among Jews undermines this historical promise. I can only compare the attitudes towards discrimination against Mizrahi Jews to the ways in which abusive relations within a family tend to be handled – with silence and denial and with a tendency to blame the victim. Those who claim that Mizrahim suffer discrimination are told that this is a thing of the past and that today anyone who works hard can succeed.

Next step: representation in text books: Pedaya's discussion of textbooks was graphically illustrated some years ago by the artist Reuven Gal who addressed the marginalisation of Mizrahi history in the books that were used when he was a high-school student.  He showed that only nine out of the 400 pages in the book were devoted to the history of Jews from Muslim countries.

Pages have been added since then, but Pedaya's call for an educational revolution requires more than that. History is still told from the perspective of European Jews with the Mizrahi - and of course the Arab - as the “other”. Throughout my education I was given to understand that there is less representation of Mizrahi history and culture than of Jewish history in Europe because nothing worthwhile happened in the Jewish communities in Muslim countries over the past 200 years.

The Jewish communities from the Muslim countries are often portrayed as backwards and as needing to be saved by the Ashkenazi Zionists - a perspective contributing to stereotypes about the Mizrahim as passive, primitive and lazy. The history textbooks have evolved over the years and these overt stereotypes have been replaced by a more subtle discourse which describes the Mizrahi as partners in the building of the nation. But until this new discourse includes admitting to the racism they suffered from, it is unlikely that things will fundamentally change.

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The Mizrahi party leaders in Israel's elections

From top: Moshe Kahlon, Eli Yishai and Arye Dery

  As Israelis cast their votes today, Haaretz assesses the chances of the main contenders on the hustings. Here is the newspaper's analysis of the prospects of three major Mizrahi party leaders: Moshe Kahlon, founder of Kulanu, Eli Yishai, who leads the Be'Yahad breakaway from Shas, and Arye Dery, who heads Shas.

Moshe Kahlon: Polls give him anything between eight and twelve seats in the new Knesset, and if hundreds of thousands of undecided voters turn to Kulanu as their default choice, Moshe Kahlon could even do much better. What isn’t in doubt is that he will be the kingmaker within the next Knesset. Netanyahu and Herzog both need Kahlon’s MKs to form a coalition, he may be the decisive voice forcing them to sit together in a national-unity government.

With a less than overwhelming charisma and a rather low-key campaign, Kahlon has reached the point where both prospective party leaders are bound to give him the coveted post of finance minister. He did it by sticking doggedly on the trail to social-economic issues, particularly cost-of-living, and by refusing to say who he plans to recommend as prime minister when summoned to the president. He will have a tough choice on March 18 and his political future is far from clear, but for now he is man of the moment.

Eli Yishai: Two years ago the political future of the then-Shas chairman seemed to be in terminal decline when the ailing Rabbi Ovadia Yosef demoted him twice, handing the political leadership of the party first to a triumvirate and then to the old-new chairman, Arye Deri. A few months later, Rabbi Yosef, who nevertheless remained his patron, was dead. Yishai is not the first former Shas lawmaker to breakaway and form his own party, though he is the first who seems about to succeed in an independent venture.

Nearly all the polls have Yahad passing the electoral threshold and receiving at least four seats in the next Knesset. Yishai has linked up with some of the most extreme elements in the religious right, creating a potent mixture of Haredi rebels, radical settlers and Kahanists. Many Israelis are shocked at the prospect of Rabbi Kahane's disciples making it into Knesset; but from Yishai's perspective, it seems to be working. He has created a new constituency and wreaked revenge on his old rival. He is unlikely to be a member of any future coalition, but is now the voice of the extreme-right in Israeli politics.

Arye Dery: With the death of party founder Rabbi Ovadya Yosef and the departure of his old rival Eli Yishai, Dery is now the sole leader of Shas. The rabbis of the Council of Torah Sages are mere puppets he has appointed and the party’s fortunes rest solely on his shoulders. But the man who was once the wunderkind of Israeli politics (before he was convicted of bribe-taking and sent to prison) seems to have lost his magic and Shas was slowly sinking in the polls.
Dery may still work his magic and outperform the polls as Shas has often done in the past. But he has lost his ability to dominate the agenda and Moshe Kahlon has stolen his thunder as the brave Mizrahi politician working for the underclasses. Shas’ campaign on behalf of the “transparent” Israelis failed to capture the imagination of voters and his last-minute slogan “A Mizrahi votes for a Mizrahi” was seen by many among its target audience as a crass play of identity politics. Dery will almost certainly be a minister in whatever government is formed after the election; but it will take all his fabled deal-making acumen to secure him a major ministry. A poor result will also cast doubt on his ability to continue leading Shas in the post-Rabbi Yosef era.

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Story of Libyan exile dramatised in Rome

 David Gerbi at the Teatro Argentina in Rome during the January 2015 run of 'I love Libya'.

 Remember David Gerbi? He was the intrepid Libyan Jew who returned to the land of his birth during the 'Arab Spring' in 2011. He tried to pray in a Tripoli synagogue but was unceremoniously thrown out of the country after threats to his life.

David Gerbi has been telling his story, mainly to schoolchildren, in a one-man show called 'I love Libya'. He first enacted it in English in the US in 2007 and in South Africa. The show toured San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle in 2013.

'I love Libya' was put on for World Refugee Day in June 2014 under the patronage of UNICEF and most recently at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in January 2015 to mark the first day of remembrance for Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

The Tripoli-born psychiatrist fled Libya as a refugee in 1967 aged 12. He returned to encourage the Arab Spring opposition to Colonel Gaddafi in the hope of seeing a new focus on democracy, freedom and respect for human rights.

"The show tells the story of suffering, injustice and individual and collective persecution," Gerbi told the Rome newspaper Corriere della Sera."It 's also the story of a community dispersed from Libya but reborn in Italy."

Lebanese Jew: 'being Jewish is not an illness'

With thanks: Ahuva

The Beka'a valley, home to Myriam, one of the last Jews of Lebanon

Myriam, 83, is a Jewess living in the Beka'a valley in Lebanon. She has never been to Israel, only a few miles away. But she wants to be buried in the Holy Land.

Myriam tells her moving story here (scroll down to sound file). She remembers a few Hebrew phrases from the Jewish school she went to in Beirut. She grew up in the multi-confessional environment of Lebanon - Christians and Muslims would vie for the chance to be her family's 'Shabbat goy'.

She had intended to go to Israel to get married: her aunt had arranged for her to meet suitors there. But by some twist of fate, her mother broke her leg and insisted that Myriam stay in Lebanon to look after her. She cashed in her air ticket and eventually married an Orthodox Christian.

She used to speak to her family in Israel on the telephone. However, the Jews of Lebanon became the target for vengeance attacks. "Being Jewish is not an illness," she says defiantly."We're all human," digging up for the France Inter interviewer her Hanukiah and an artefact with the Ten Commandments from among her crucifixes.

She pushed aside her anti-Jewish friends as all contact was cut off between Lebanon and Israel. "Israel is my country, my religion", she says. Although she has never been there,  she wants the tiny Jewish community of Lebanon (less than 30 members ), contrary to her children and grandchildren's wishes, to help her achieve her last wish of burial in Israel near her mother's body.

Leftist slams leftist 'anti-Mizrahism'

With the Israeli elections looming, an artist and Haaretz contributor called Yair Garboz (Garbuz) has been venting his prejudices against 'talisman-kissers' and 'tomb worshippers', an obvious reference to Israel's Sephardim and Mizrahim. Condemnation comes from an unlikely source, founder of the far-leftist 972 magazine Dimi Reider. Reider produces some fascinating data indicating that Israelis still vote along ethnic lines, with the poorer Mizrahim supporting Shas and the more affluent Ashkenazim supporting Yesh Atid and Meretz. The mainstream parties are more evenly divided. The left needs to address Mizrahi grievances if it is to make headway, writes Reider. I would say he is partly right - but the Left also needs to tailor its foreign policy agenda to a constituency hard-bitten by Arab antisemitism.

Yair Garboz:derided 'talisman-kissers'

Garboz’s remarks were not merely patronising and prejudiced, throwing such innocuous - and to many, cherished - experiences as pilgrimage into the same category as corruption, genocidal racism and murder. They also highlighted a tremendously important and painful political divide that usually goes unseen by foreign observers: Israeli voters attribute considerable importance to the often unstated ethnic affiliation of a party, almost as much as they do to its political role.

A week before the rally, this overwhelmingly ignored reality was confirmed by a rare survey broadcast by Channel 10 that asked for whom Ashkenazis and Mizrahis intended to vote. The resulting division could not be clearer: 51 percent of the potential voters who support the Zionist Union, which the current standard bearer of Labor Zionism, are Ashkenazi, and only 29 percent are Mizrahi.

Among the voters for the Union’s more liberal cousin, Meretz, whose stronghold is among Tel Aviv academics, kibbutzim and professionals, 69 percent are Ashkenazi and 12 percent are Mizrahi. Habayit Hayehudi, product of the historic Ashkenazi Religious Zionist movement, has 46 percent Ashkenazi voters and 31 percent Mizrahi. Yesh Atid, an “apolitical” centrist capitalist party appealing to Israel’s urban young professionals, has 51 percent Ashkenazi voters and 29 percent Mizarhi.

Meanwhile, Likud, the original vehicle of Mizrahi electoral awakening, boasts the most equal division between the two communities, with 41 percent Ashkenazi voters and 39 percent Mizrahi. Kulanu, a centrist party led by a prominent Mizrahi, ex-Likud politician Moshe Kahlon, comes close to the Likud balance with 36 percent Ashkenazi voters and 42 percent Mizrahi. Shas, the only party so far to bill itself as a party by Mizrahis for Mizrahis, specifically, ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Jews, boasts 75 percent Mizrahis among its voters and only 5 percent Ashkenazi.

These results are further borne out by the voting data from the 2013 elections, processed into map form by the Madlan real estate portal. Hover over Tel Aviv, its northern suburbs or any of the kibbutzim that dot the map, and you will see overwhelming votes for Labor, Meretz and Yesh Atid. 

Look over Tel Aviv’s poorer southern suburbs, like Bat Yam and Rishon Letzion, or over the far-flung “development towns” where the original Mizrahi immigrants were shunted, and see the color change to blue, with overwhelming vote for right-wing parties and for Shas.

Israeli left-wingers who like to claim that intra-Jewish discrimination is a thing of the past also like to wonder loudly - and often sneeringly - why the poorest Israelis continue to vote for Netanyahu, even though his ultra-capitalist economic policies hurt them first. The question should rather be who and what they are voting against, and how the left-wing parties can address these grievances, past and present.  

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A rejoinder by Benny Ziffer in Haaretz (with thanks: Eliyahu)
Cavemen accuse national poet of racism 
 Playwright derides mezuzah-kissers as fools

Zeev puts refugees in pole position

 With thanks: Levana

In the last frenzied days before Israelis go the polls, the new Beyahad party has put compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab countries at the top of its political manifesto. Beyahad is headed by Eli Yishai, who broke off from the main Shas party, and includes the splinter group Moetzet Hakhmei Hatorah.

Livni(above):'lukewarm'. Right: Nissim Zeev, driving force for Jewish refugees

The Beyahad website commits the party, if elected to government, to work with the Jewish organizations from Arab countries in order to implement their rights  and to develop the initiative of funding compensation for refugees through the Clinton Plan. The Beyahad platform also includes a  paragraph on improving education about Jews from Arab countries in schools as well as promoting their heritage and history.

Other parties also mention the Jewish refugee issue, such as Yisrael  Beteinu and the Zionist Union. However, Beyahad is the first party to recommend compensation by way of the Clinton International Fund.

The driving force behind the Beyahad initiative is MK Nissim Zeev, who followed Eli Yishai out of Shas. There is no doubt that the Jewish refugee issue is close to Nissim Zeev's heart. It was Zeev who introduced the bill passed in the Knesset in 2010 requiring compensation for Jewish refugees to be on the peace agenda, and also initiated the idea of instituting 30 November as a Memorial Day for Jewish Refugees from Arab countries in the Israeli calendar. When Shas became part of the opposition, the Memorial Day bill was shepherded through the Knesset by Shimon Oyahon MK of Yisrael Beteinu.

Zeev, who stands a good chance of being re-elected to the Knesset, last week convened a meeting with organisations representing Jews from Arab countries, and is seeking to get ex-President Bill Clinton, who first proposed the idea of an International Fund at the Camp David talks in 2000, to kick-start the fund.

All countries would contribute to the International Fund, including Arab countries and Israel, although the US is likely to donate the lion's share. The fund would be used to compensate both Jewish and Palestinian refugees.

The commentator Nahum Barnea  caused a stir recently in Y-net News when he asked if the Kerry peace talks last year had taken seriously the Jewish refugee issue.

The very next day, the article brought forth a robust 'yes' from Netanyahu's office: he and his chief negotiator Yitzhak Molho had not agreed to any proposals which excluded Jewish refugees. Molho had taken over from Tsipi Livni after her failed talks with Abu Mazen.

Perhaps to make up for her lukewarm approach to the Jewish refugee issue,  Livni's Zionist Union, which she heads with Labour's Yitzak Herzog, added the folllowing unexpected words to their manifesto:"the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries must be addressed in any final-status agreement."

However, organisations representing Jews from Arab countries are disappointed that the Zionist Union does not intend to raise the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries during the negotiations themselves.

Enter Gideon Levy,' expert' on Jews in Muslim lands

Norway will host a conference during the week ahead on Jews under Islamic rule. Hold on to your hats, the main guest from Israel will be far-leftist anti-Zionist Gideon Levy - who knows a lot about the subject - not. Ben Dror Yemini in Y-Net News: 

A read through the lecture program reveals that the central line of the conference will be that the Jews lived wonderful lives under Muslim rule, until the Zionists came along, snatched them from their Muslim health resort, and enslaved them in Israel. I may be selling some of the participants short; perhaps someone there will have something of value to say. It's been known to happen on occasion – even in the academe.

  The thing is, the main guest from Israel, the great expert on the history of the Jews under Muslim rule, who is also a great expert on the situation of the Arab Jews under the rule of the Zionists, who is also the great expert on the situation of the Muslims under Jewish rule, is – hold on to your hats – Gideon Levy.

Iraqi Jews make way to Israel

For the most part, Jews lived under Muslim rule as subjects of inferior status. Now and then there were periods, during a part of the Golden Age for example, in which Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
When the Christians expelled the Jews from Spain, the Ottoman sultan was the one who invited them to settle in his empire. The colonial era saw another period of flourishing Jewish life under Muslim rule. These periods, however, were the exception.
Some academics have managed to turn the tables. They glorify the periods of coexistence. They hide the pogroms, the decrees, the abuse and the oppression. And they certainly hide the Jewish Nakba. The Jews didn't suffer from abuse and oppression because of Zionism. To the contrary. They became Zionists because of the abuse and oppression. But manipulating the facts will triumph once again – under the patronage of Gideon Levy and so-called academic freedom. 

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More about Gideon Levy

Terror victim's father : 'I am an Arab'

 A Jew in Tunis needs to tread on eggshells, and Rabbi Benjamin Hattab, in London to collect funds for a school in memory of  his  son Yoav - killed in the Hyper Casher attack in Paris -  is nothing if not a diplomat.  But did he really need to say, 'I am an Arab'? Report in Jewish News (with thanks: Michelle):

In London to honour his son at a communal dinner hosted by the Centre for Jewish Life, Rabbi Hattab is speaking to the British media for the first time since the Paris attacks.
 
Having appeared already on French and Tunisian television, Hattab has been a powerful ambassador for reconciliation and interfaith dialogue.

But when it comes to the spectre of rising European anti-Semitism, what we believe and what we want to believe can be two very different things.
Did his son feel safe in Paris? “Yes, he felt at ease in France. He never feared that something like [the attack] could happen.”

No provocations at all? No warning signs? “The truth is that when he first arrived [in France] he told me: ‘Dad, there’s ‘death to the Jews’ written on walls.’ Then he said: ‘Dad, when I walk in the street wearing my kippah, Arabs sometimes hit me.’ Then, he paid for his Judaism with his life.”

Yoav with his parents

In 2014, some 7,000 of France’s 600,000 Jews made aliyah. That’s twice as many as the previous year. Hattab sympathises with their motives, saying: “I feel safer in Tunisia than I do in France, more than I do in England.”

The tragic irony of this latest attack on Paris’ Jews is not lost on him. Having left an Islamic country for the land of liberté, egalité and fraternité, his son met his end at the hands of a French-born Islamist.

For Hattab, it is the cultural and religious exclusion felt by Arabs living in the West that is chiefly to blame for the fractious ideological landscape that serves as fertile ground for home-grown jihadists. Radicalised Arabs aren’t ‘chez eux’, at home in the West, whereas, he says, in Tunisia “we live together, we have a shared history. There are no problems between Jews and Arabs. I myself am an Arab”.

There are an estimated 2,000 Jews living in Tunisia today – that’s just two percent of the 100,000 strong community at the outbreak of the Second World War.

As Chief Rabbi of a diminished Jewish population in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, Hattab is as skilled a diplomat as he is a scholar. His measured delivery and broken voice betray a still-raw grief. Yet his message for the Tunisian government that “protects our synagogue, our school” is one of gratitude.

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