Point of No Return is saddened to learn of the passing of Zvi Gabay, former Israel ambassador to Ireland and a dogged advocate for the rights of Jews from Arab lands. Gabay was born in Iraq in 1938 and made his career in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, travelling around the world. But the issue closest to his heart since his retirement was always the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
He never failed to keep the issue alive in the Hebrew press, and some of his pieces were published in the English-speaking press, most recently this Jerusalem Post article on 77th anniversary of the Farhud pogrom in Iraq.
Zvi Gabay's memoir, From Baghdad to the Pathwaysof Diplomacy, reflects modesty and restraint. Typically, his memoir understates his tireless advocacy in newspapers and fora for the rights of almost a million Jews driven from Arab lands. As a tribute to him we are reproducing Lyn Julius's review:
"In his book he barely mentions the issue which
– apart from his love of Arabic poetry – has consumed much of his time
since his retirement.
Born in Baghdad in 1938, Zvi Gabay (brother of
the famous film actor Sasson Gabay) was just old enough to remember the
turmoil of 1947, when the Iraqi government tried to divert popular
attention away from domestic issues to the Jews. Iraq was among the
seven Arab countries that declared war against the new state of Israel.
Arrests of local Jews, executions and travel bans followed. The writing
on the wall was clear to Zvi: the Jewish community of Iraq was doomed.
Although he comes from a comfortable middle
class family, several frightening incidents stick in Zvi’s childhood
memory: Palestinian youths hurling stones at Zvi’s bicycle, for
instance. The hostility he encountered in Baghdad made Zvi loathe the
city and strengthened his determination to emigrate to Israel.
There was a two year stint at a ‘cold and
alienating’ kibbutz, night school, then military service in the IDF.
Expecting to be punished for playing without permission his passion,
tennis, in his lunch break, Zvi tells an amusing anecdote when the base
commander insisted, davka, on playing with him. It was ‘tennis under orders’.
His family having sought security in Israel,
then came a terrible twist of fate: his father was murdered in his Haifa
grocery store by a Christian Arab.
Zvi undertook intermittent higher studies and
embarked a long career in the Israeli Foreign Ministry which took him to
Ireland (where he served as ambassador) and Australasia. As a fluent
Arabic speaker he was one of the first diplomats to be assigned to the
Israeli embassy in Cairo. Much of the work was unglamorous: arranging
official visits, undertaking painstaking mediation behind-the-scenes for
the release of Israelis in Egyptian jails. His disappointment at the
cold peace which followed the 1979 Israel-Egypt Treaty is palpable. The
Egyptians he dealt with remained smiling and polite but ultimately
uninterested in advancing relations with Israel.
Zvi Gabay z''l: thoughtful and restrained
The most fascinating section of Zvi’s memoirs
relates to Egypt. He tells a hilarious story of Israelis stuck in a lift
‘with a mind of its own’. The repairmen’s stock answer was ‘patience,
patience.’ The doorman refused to help, convinced that the cries of the
trapped Israelis were the voices of jin (spirits). The firemen
arrived, put out an imaginary fire and left. Zvi and his friends had no
choice but to free their suffocating colleagues with their own hands, by
breaking a hole through the adjoining wall.
A suitable metaphor for the Israel-Egypt peace
treaty, perhaps: the Israelis make all the running, while the Egyptians
imagine Zionist conspiracies, pay lip service, and urge ‘patience’.
In the light of the controversy over the status of Arabic in Israel - 'special' but not official' - it is interesting to examine what the status of Judeo-Arabic was in Iraq. Few Iraqi Jews, and almost no non-Jewish scholar could read the Hebrew characters in written documents called Hetzi Kalmus. In the 1940s, writes historian Sami Sourani, the Iraqi government demanded that all official records be translated into Arabic. Today in the Arab world there is renewed academic interest in Jewish history and language.
The
official documents of the Iraqi Jewish Community are written in
ancient Hebrew letters (modified) and called Hetzi Kulmus. The letters
were modified to accommodate words from various languages that were
assimilated in the spoken Jewish dialect over
time. There were words that were adopted from classical Persian, Greek,
Mongolian, Arabic, Turkish, and some words from other ethnic
communities that lived in Iraq.
A document written by the Chief Rabbi of Baghdad in Hetzi Kalmus (NARA)
The documents were written by different writers and each has his
style of writing. There are very few Iraqi Jews who can read and
understand what was written and what was behind the words and
contemporary expressions. There is no doubt that there is hardly
an Iraqi non-Jewish scholar who can read this language. A few years after the Farhud, the Iraqi Government demanded that the
Jewish Community of Baghdad translate into Arabic all important
documents and records of meetings and send a copy to the Ministry of
Interior Affairs. This Ministry had the right to ask
questions and elaborations of anything in those documents.
When the Jews lived in Iraq and when they felt that they were an integral
part of this country, there was no academic interest in their history
or language or anything related to their culture. There was hardly
anything mentioned in textbooks studied at schools.
The Iraqi Government closed Jewish newspapers even though they did not
deal with politics but mostly with Arabic literature.
In recent years there has been some interest in Jewish culture, in general.
The University of Cairo has now a Department of Jewish studies and some
research studies were written about the Jews of Spain. The University of
Baghdad has a new Department for Jewish studies
with a faculty teaching Hebrew and you even find such a department at
the University of Najaf. Thre are a few Ph.D. dissertations about the
history of the Iraqi Jews! The common thing in all those is that they
show the nice side of the coin and the good life
of the Jews once upon a time.
A recent article written
about the Jews of Iraq was written by a professor at the University of
Baghdad. There is nothing new in it, except that there is an appendix to this
research showing the names of Iraqi Jewish families
that hold the highest number of land deeds registered at the
Department of Land Deeds Registration in Baghdad, that is called TAPO
in spoken Arab Iraqi Language.
Israel's Nationality Law has provoked a furious reaction around the world. Some have criticised it because they are not comfortable with any expression of Jewish self-determination. It has been pointed out that many countries around the world, including European democracies, have similar laws asserting the pre-eminence of the majority ethnic group, religion and language, but only in Israel's case is this deemed 'controversial.'
(Others - including in Israel's own government - think that more should have been done to reaffirm minority rights in Israel, pointing out that the 'downgrading' of Arabic from an 'official' language to one of 'special status' has frightened loyal minorities such as the Druze.)
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League countries have joined the chorus of disapproval. Jews who have lived in Arab countries - and were forced to leave them - can only marvel at their monumental hypocrisy: not one of these countries has every treated their minorities fairly and nearly all are Judenrein, yet they have the gall the lecture the Jewish state.
Naturally, the Turkish dictator Tayyip Erdogan has not missed this opportunity to slam Israel. This post from Elder of Ziyon is interesting because Erdogan is often blamed for a resurgence of Turkish antisemitism. Secular, westernised Turkey under Mustapha Kamal Ataturk is held up as a model for Muslim nations to follow. But as this snapshot of the anti-Jewish atmosphere in 1934 shows, not only were Jews at the mercy of the mob, but Ataturk himself declared himself unwilling to stand between the Jews and the destructive will of the people.
From the blog of Yekta Uzunoglu, quoted in Elder of Ziyyon (with thanks: Jeanette):
May 25, 1934 The Jewish community in Turkey, in despair and fear of the coming
pogroms, approached the Prime Minister Ismet Inönü himself and to the
Minister of Interior Affairs Sükrü Kaya and appealed for protection
provided by state authorities, against the attacks by crowds, goaded by
mysterious forces… The appeal was never answered. June 14, 1934 The Turkish government responded in a special way, by approving a
shameful fascist law aimed especially against the Jews and their
properties. The law begins with a quotation: This law has been approved to make sure
that one language is spoken in the country, there is one thought, one
and identical feeling and consciousness, especially for the Islamic
homeland, and therefore: a) The areas where Turkish culture represents a minority are nationalized b) All of the areas and regions, where representatives of Turkish culture could be relocated, are nationalized c) All of the buildings, facilities, including houses and factories
belonging to those who are not Mohammedan, are nationalized. They will
serve for our health, culture, politics, army and civil guard. Section 11 of the same law states: “Those who do not speak Turkish as their mother tongue have no right to
set up new neighbourhoods, new villages, new workplaces, artistic
groups or societies, new schools, and they have no right to cede their
trade, their professions or companies to their descendants, relatives or
people of the same origin.” June 21, 1934 The Turkish Government issued the Surname Act All minorities living in Turkey were obliged to accept the Turkish
surnames they were assigned etc. They were the Jews, Kurds, Armenians,
Greeks, Assyrians, Roma, simply all of them. A new wave of forcing
minorities to become Turks began and it continues until now. Just
exceptionally, a member of such a minority succeeds in making the
Turkish authorities to approve the change to the original surname. Well,
in recent years some of them may have succeeded in claiming the
original surnames back but it happened only due to bribes, but the ban
is still in force. The order was not related just to peoples’ names but
also to the names of mountains, rocks, streams, animals, plants or even
flowers. Immediately, after the law was passed, a lot of Jews dwelling in the
European part of Turkey, i.e. near the borders with Greece and Bulgary,
were relocated to the steppes of Central Anatolia, under the pretext of
intelligence activities. June 21, 1934 In the City of Dardanelles, where nearly 1500 Jews lived at that time,
attacks were started against Jewish shops. “Unofficial” guards were
standing in front of the shops and did not let citizens enter. They
placed notices on Jewish house doors, with a threatening appeal saying
that the people must leave the city immediately to avoid being murdered. June 25, 1934 All of the Jews of Dardanelles and the city of Gelibol left the cities
and they were allowed to take just personal belongings with them… On the
same day, “purely by coincidence”, the city was visited by the Turkish
President Atatürk, the Father of all Turks, accompanied by the Iranian
Shah Riza Pehlevi… they came as conquerors. And they were greeted by
applause and cheering by the fanaticized crowds…
Mustapha Kamal Ataturk meeting Shah Reza Pahlavi I of Iran One of the witnesses described the arrival of “the Father of the Turkish
Nation” Atatürk, just on the fatal day when the Jewish residents were
forced to leave the city, saying: “… the crowd cheered at Atatürk’s arrival, shouting “May he live
forever!” and Atatürk’s car stopped among the cheering crowds, he got
out of the car, more self-confident than ever, his appearing put the
crowd to the top of ecstasy. Atatürk enjoyed the feeling of being
admired, as the person giving wealth to his pears, he walked among them,
stopped for a while, and at that moment a citizen broke away and ran
towards him. The guards tried to stop him but Atatürk, believing that
the man is one of his admirers, ordered the guards to let him come and
they had to obey. The disillusioned citizen knelt down on the ground and raised both arms towards heaven, saying in despair, “-My Pasha, for the God’s life, are they driving us out of our own city? Where are we to go? What shall we do, oh my God?” Atatürk understood immediately who the man was and what he expected from
him, nevertheless he asked him ironically and in a mocking way, “-Who
are you?” “-My Holy Pasha, I am a local Jew from Dardanelles, Avram Palto.” “-And who is driving you out? The Government? The Laws? The Police? The Gendarmerie? Go ahead, tell me”! The Jewish citizen of Dardanelles, who was to lose all his property on that day and to leave his own city, replied in despair, “No, my Almighty Pasha, the people are driving us away!” And Atatürk started laughing and then said with a strict look, “Well, if they are the people, nothing can be done, if the people
wished, they could drive away even myself,” and he returned to his car
where there was his guest, the Shah of Iran.
There is a good case for not sending the Iraqi-Jewish archive back to Iraq, writes Sheldon Kirchner in the Times of Israel. Now that the archive has been digitised, there is no reason why Iraq should not have a copy. (With thanks: Imre)
A compelling argument for maintaining the status quo with respect to
the present locale of the archive was made last year by Gina Waldman,
the founder and president of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and
North Africa. As she put it, “There is no justification in sending (it)
back to Iraq, a country that has virtually no Jews and no accessibility
to Jewish scholars or the descendants of Iraqi Jews. The U.S. government
must ensure that (it) is returned to its rightful owners, the exiled
Iraqi Jewish community.”
Detail from Torah scroll tik found in the Iraqi-Jewish archive (photo: NARA)
That doesn’t mean that Iraq should be totally deprived of its
cultural patrimony. Since the archive has been fully digitized, there is
no reason why a copy of it should not be made available to Iraq. The
Iraqi authorities could then display the most important pieces in a
permanent exhibition, thereby enabling Iraqi Muslims and Christians to
learn a valuable lesson in history.
With the flight of most of Iraq’s 120,000 Jews following the
declaration of Israel’s statehood, a succession of governments
demonized, marginalized and persecuted Jews, obliterating their stellar
contributions to Iraqi society. This policy hardened after the 1963
Baathist coup, the 1967 Six Day War and the 1979 accession to power of
Saddam Hussein.
A digitized version of the Iraqi Jewish Archive in Baghdad could have
a positive influence on Iraqis who wish to expand their knowledge of
their nation.
So much for warming relations between Israel and Arab states. The sports and leisure world remains a bastion of bigotry and boycott against Israeli participants. The latest victim is the diminutive chess whizzkid, Liel Levitan, who was banned from a chess tournament in Tunisia because she is Israeli. Report in The Times of Israel:
Schoolgirl Liel Levitan from Haifa is unable to accept an invitation
to play in the World Chess Championship because host nation Tunisia will
not allow Israelis to compete, it was reported Thursday.
Liel Levitan: banned
This is not the first time Israeli chess players have been denied
the opportunity to participate in international tournaments due to
their nationality.
Israeli athletes often face difficulties when competing in the Middle
East or against Middle Eastern countries, due to hostility toward the
Jewish state.
“Just a few months ago, a World Chess Championship was due to take
place in Saudi Arabia,” chess player Lior Aizenberg told Hadashot news.
“It was clear to everyone that outstanding Israeli chess players would not be able to participate.”
Aizenberg has instead founded the World Alternative Championship, which takes place in Israel and extends competition invitations to players from across Europe and the Arab world.
Liel has also been invited to compete at the competition, which
counts outgoing chairman of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky and
American pro-Israel group Stand With Us among its supporters.
“The time has come to put an end to discrimination against Israelis in chess, in sports and in every field,” said Aizenberg.
The decision to suspend the tournaments came after organizers at last
year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Slam refused to acknowledge the nationality of
the Israeli athletes — a policy directed only at Israeli participants.
JIMENA (Jews
Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) has announced a new
partnership program with Israel’s Ministry of Social Equality (MSE),
Beit Hatfutsot: The Museum of Jewish Peoplehood, and Ben Gurion
University (BGU), to produce a comprehensive collection of Oral History
testimonies of Jews from Arab countries and Iran. (With thanks: Tony, Carol)
Yemenite children in an Israeli transit camp in 1949
Beginning in 2010, JIMENA launched an Oral History Program in
California to record and preserve the memories of Jews born in the Arab
world and Iran. Inspired and guided by Steven Spielberg’s Shoah
Foundation Institute, the project gives former Mizrahi and Sephardic
refugees an opportunity to assert and preserve their personal histories
and rich traditions in the countries their ancestors lived for over
2,500 years. JIMENA witnesses document their stories of positive
memories as well as human rights abuses, displacement and integration in
new societies.
As an outgrowth of that Oral History Project, JIMENA and BGU launched
a unique partnership in 2012 to ensure JIMENA’s significant collection
of testimonies is shared with scholars and preserved in perpetuity.
International Graduate Students at The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for
the Study of Israel and Zionism diligently transcribed, cataloged and
added JIMENA’s Oral History collection to The Ben Gurion Archives, where
it now proudly resides.
As part of Israel’s 2014 legislation to recognize and advance the
history and heritage of Jews from Arab countries and Iran, in 2016
Israel’s Ministry of Social Equality allocated $2.6 million dollars to
launch a robust national initiative to collect video recorded
testimonies of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. JIMENA and Israel’s Ministry
of Social Equality pledged resources and support to train BGU students
to collect testimonies to add to Israel’s National Collection and
JIMENA’s Oral History collection at Ben Gurion University.
Victor Deloya, one of the main organisers of the migration of Jewish children from North Africa to Israel via Norway in 1949, has died.
Victor Deloya was born in Casablanca, the eldest of eight children. He left Morocco to teach, and while in
Marseille became the first Moroccan to serve the Hanoar Ha'Aliya Zionist youth group.
He was the father of four children, and grandfather of eight. At the time of his death he was living in Miami and New York, while continuing
to work for Israel. He was the president of the Sephardic Moroccan
community in New York, and took care of his small synagogue as a
technical officer while working on his family's genealogy.
Victor Deloya
In 1949 at
the age of 18, after a long stay in Norway, he brought back 200 North African Jewish children (the children of Oslo) to Israel.
Victor Deloya
was forced to leave the country following the illness of his wife
Anne-Marie. She was also involved in the Children of Oslo project. She
suffered from multiple sclerosis, and lived in Norway until
her death a few years ago.
Isaac Allal, the only survivor from the plane crash taking children from Tunis to Oslo in November 1949.
In 1949 an agreement was signed between the JDC and the Norwegian
Ministry of Welfare to admit 200 Jewish children from North Africa to a tuberculosis recovery centre, to strengthen their health
prior to moving to Israel.
In April 1949 the first group of 200 Moroccan children arrived at
the Norwegian Centre. The second group was from Tunisia. On 20 November
1949 two DC-3 Dakota aircraft of Euro Netherlands, took off from Tunis
to Oslo. One plane arrived safely. The second plane landed in Brussels
for radio repairs and took off at 12:56 continuing to Oslo. Just before
landing the pilot encountered heavy fog. He lowered his plane in the
mountainous terrain. Near Hurom, 30 miles south of Oslo, one of the
aircraft wings hit a tree. The plane continued another 60 feet and
crashed into a mountainside. The impact of landing flipped the plane over:
most of the passengers were knocked out and the front of the plane
caught fire. All the children were killed except for one, Isaac Allal.
In 2010, the Israeli government commemorated the 'Oslo Children’s Disaster' in a state ceremony.
Today is the festival of Tisha B'ab, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. It is a fast day and commemorates the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and other disasters to have befallen the Jewish people.
Here is a Moroccan rendering by Rabbi Moshe Nahon of the kinot of Arvit (the evening service) recited before al Naharot ('By the rivers of Babylon').
CAIRO - 16 July 2018: Head of the Egyptian Jewish community, Magda
Haroun, said that the tomb of her father, prominent Jewish lawyer
Chehata Haroun, was vandalized.
The tomb is located in the 1200-year-old Jewish cemeteries in
Bassatine, Cairo, which is considered the second oldest Jewish
cemeteries in the world.
Haroun posted on her Facebook page photos of the vandalized tomb,
saying “I spoke. People, help us build a fence. If I were financially
capable, I would actually build it myself, brick by brick, to protect
the memory of the people buried here."
The desecrated tomb of Shehata Haroun in Cairo's Bassatine cemetery Read article in full
Europe-Israel reports (with thanks: Michelle):
Update: Elder of Ziyon quotes Tunisian media saying that the police have arrested six men for this offence. Sadly, it is thought these men are different from the culprits.
The Jewish cemetery of Sousse (Tunisia a country
of tolerance) was desecrated this Tuesday, July 17, 2018, by anti-Semitic
Muslims who openly organized a mechoui (barbecue) on Jewish graves.
Having a barbecue on a Jewish gravestone
Tunisia has become one of the most active centres
in the Muslim world for spreading anti-Semitism. This hatred of the Jews does
not spare the dead and the cemeteries.
These acts of hatred in the third city of Tunisia deepen the
disappointment of the small Tunisian Jewish community, which can not rely on
local authorities to prosecute the culprits.
This kind of behavior is tolerated by the local
authorities who want to reclaim the land using these
same people. The city of Sousse, led by
the new mayor Tawfik Aribi, seeks to take over the property of some Jewish families
who have not yet left.
In 1946, the Jewish community of the city of Sousse had
3,530 people. In 2017 there are only 31 people left.
Some good news at last regarding the Iraqi-Jewish archive: four senators have introduced a bill (to be posted tomorrow) calling for the agreement to return the archive to Iraq to be re-negotiated by the State Department. The State Department say that they are working with Iraq to obtain an extension. This means that the collection of Jewish books and documents shipped to the US for restoration in 2003 will almost certainly stay there beyond the September deadline:
Pages from a Pesah Haggadah found in the archive - before restoration.
Here is the press release issued by Senator Pat Toomey, one of the bill's sponsors:
Washington, D.C.
- U.S. Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Marco
Rubio (R-Fla.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have introduced a
bipartisan measure to help protect a trove of historic Jewish artifacts.
Known
as the Iraqi Jewish Archives, U.S. soldiers uncovered the collection of
2,700 priceless books, religious texts, and civic documents in the
basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police headquarters in 2003. Because
the archive was in a badly damaged state upon discovery, the U.S. and
the Coalition Provisional Authority signed an agreement whereby the U.S.
would restore the material and then send it back to Iraq.
In
addition to preserving the archive, since 2013 the National Archives
and Records Administration has displayed the collection throughout the
United States for the benefit of scholars, citizens, and the Iraqi
Jewish diaspora. The collection is currently set to return to Iraq in
September 2018, despite the fact that only a few Jews live in Iraq
today. The Senate resolution calls on the United States to renegotiate
the agreement with the Iraqi government to allow the archive to remain
in America for a longer period of time.
"In
2014, I introduced a resolution with Sens. Blumenthal and Schumer
calling on our government to keep this priceless archive in the United
States," said Senator Toomey. "That resolution passed the Senate
unanimously. It makes no sense for this material to return to Iraq when
the vast majority of Iraqi Jews and their descendants live in the
Diaspora. I hope that the Senate swiftly approves our resolution to once
again urge the State Department to keep these artifacts in the United
States."
"These
personal and irreplaceable trove of Jewish artifacts still belong where
they can be preserved and accessed by the Jewish community and
scholars, not returned to Iraq," said Senator Schumer. "These
invaluable cultural treasures like a prayer book and Torah scrolls
belong to the people and their descendants who were forced to leave them
behind as they were exiled from Iraq. The State Department should make
clear to the Iraqi government that the artifacts should continue to stay
in the United States."
"By
urging the State Department to renegotiate our agreement with the Iraqi
government, this resolution will help ensure that the recovered Iraqi
Jewish artifacts remain in the United States, where they can be
protected and preserved for future generations," said Senator Rubio.
"These recovered Jewish artifacts must be protected and preserved," said Senator Blumenthal.
"Keeping these artifacts in the United States will ensure that people
from around the world will be able to see these priceless pieces of
history for years to come."
*Gina Waldman of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North africa) welcomed the news as a 'good step'.
"We are keeping the pressure on and working on this very diligently. Almost 80% of JIMENA time is spent on the Iraqi archives," she said. She urges US citizens to show a copy of the bill to their representative and ask for their support.
At first glance, it is heartwarming to see that Talya Zax, the culture editor of the Forward, has devoted a trilogy of articles to the saga of the Iraqi-Jewish archive, which the US has promised to return in September. But reader irritation and even anger soon begin to mount.
A crate of waterlogged items from the Iraqi-Jewish archive. The crate was marked with the name of Harold Rhode, an orthodox Jew working for the Pentagon in Baghdad in 2003, who first drew attention to the archive.
Firstly, Zax has got elementary facts wrong: the Babylonian exile began in 586 BCE, not in 596 BCE. The troubles of the Jews are said to have started in 1948, ie can be blamed on the creation of Israel - no mention of the 1941 Farhud in this context.Then the man who discovered the archive in the waterlogged basement of the secret police headquarters is not even named - Harold Rhode. The impression is given that members of the Iraqi National Congress were present at the salvage operation. (More accurately, Ahmed Chalabi facilitated it. Other key figures like Natan Sharansky are not given the credit they deserve.) The Hebrew inscription in the photo is not on the ceiling but the wall of Ezekiel's shrine ( bizarrely, the caption calls the site by its Muslim name, Dhu al Kifl).
But the most egregious omission is that nowhere in the three articles does Zax refer to the fact that the archive was not abandoned by departing Jews in the same way as they 'lost their life', homes, assets and property, but was physically seized by Saddam Hussein's regime. Witnesses watched aghast as Saddam's men carted off piles of books and documents from the ladies' gallery of the Bataween synagogue.The ownership of the archive ceases to be 'up for debate', but appears more of an open-and-shut case of brazen theft.The extraction from Iraq may have been legal, but was based on a false premise.
Zak gives credence to the Iraqi ambassador who claims that Iraq has a 'deep emotional tie to the archive'. Yet there has ben hardly a peep about 30,000 other documents concerning the Baath regime : the US shipped these from Iraq and insists on retaining them 'for security reasons'. Who might guarantee that the 'museum-like space in which the ambassador pledges to house the archive on its return to Iraq will be preserved, and the archive smuggled out, sold to the highest bidder or destroyed? Then there is the fear that the archive will not be accessible to them exiled Jews themselves, an argument which the writer fails to develop. (Past experience does not inspire confidence.)
The horrific stories told by the Iraqi ladies of the Bene Naharayim congregation contradict the idea that these Jews left 'voluntarily, but under duress'. No amount of quibbling can deny the fact that these people fled Iraq as dispossessed refugees and that Arab states were responsible for the Jewish exodus. Granting reparations to the Palestinians should not obviate reparations to Jews.
It is a pity that the articles are written in the style of, 'he said, she said', with scrupulous equivalence between thief and victim. With the return of the archive to Iraq imminent, few readers new to this issue will be persuaded of the justice of the Jewish claim.
Useful summary in History is Now of the expulsion of Jews from Egypt after 1956. (With thanks: Boruch)
The Suez Crisis, aside from producing an understandable rise in support for President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his regime, had devastating effects for persons living within Egypt who had become ‘egyptianized’ i.e. those who were not Egyptian citizens; or those whose ancestry was not wholly Egyptian, but had attained Egyptian citizenship through various legal statutes.
These people were collectively known as the mutamassirun, and, in the immediate post-colonial period in Egypt (from 1922 onwards) they owned a large share of capital and operated a large number of businesses in Egypt. They were also acknowledged to have made significant contributions to Egyptian cultural, religious and linguistic diversity in the past.
Although measures to expel members of the mutamassirun were already underway before the Suez Crisis came to a head, the Crisis is widely seen as giving Nasser the necessary impetus and legitimacy to proceed to make it extremely difficult for ‘egyptianized’ persons to remain in Egypt.
It was a natural step for Nasser to seek to blame the Suez Crisis on the mutamassirun population.
After all, Nasser had risen to power on an avowedly pan-Arab, anti-colonial message. As Britain had directly ruled Egypt from the late nineteenth century until 1922, and France had previously invaded under Napoleon in 1798, the mutamassirun were easy targets for blame post-Crisis Egypt, as many were of British or French nationality or extraction. There was also a sizeable population of Jews living in Egypt around the turn of the twentieth century.
As the pre-Crisis period coincided with an increasingly confident and assertive Zionist movement, leading up to the creation of Israel in 1948, which led to great discomfort across Arab states, the Crisis only provided Nasser with a further reason to expel large numbers of the Egyptian Jewish population in its aftermath.
For the Jews specifically (including those Jews who also happened to be British or French citizens), Nasser’s policy of removal post-1956 was carried out in two ways: expulsion and ‘voluntary’ emigration.
With regard to expulsion, the Egyptian government was able to make the number of Jews removed from Egypt seem much lower than the actual number by statistical sleight of hand: the estimate that at least 500 Egyptian and stateless Jews were expelled from Egypt by November 1956 does not include the expulsion of those Jews that were French or British citizens, nor does it include any member of a family who was not deemed by the Egyptian authorities to have been the ‘head of a family’, but who nonetheless had to leave Egypt along with the head of their family.
The first of three articles in the Forward about the Iraqi-Jewish archive by the culture editor, Talya Zax, makes depressing reading. (For full background to the case, see under 'Jewish archives'). As well as claiming that the ownership of the archive is up for debate, the article disturbingly claims that the status of the archive is ambiguous because Iraqi Jews 'left voluntarily, if under duress'. Apparently it is not a violation of international law for a government to have seized its citizens' property. Should the Iraqi-Jewish community bring a lawsuit against Iraq, it is also unclear if the case could be heard in a US court. However, successful Holocaust restitution does set a precedent.
Page from a Haggadah found in the Iraqi-Jewish archive
One reason the ownership of the archive appears to be up for debate is that the majority of the Jews who left Iraq did so voluntarily, but under duress. That was also the case for many European Jews who fled the Nazi menace, and the decades-long work of Holocaust reparations has established a mixed precedent as to what can and ought to be done with their property.
Ambassador Yasseen declined to discuss the grounds on which Iraq claims ownership of the archive.
I asked Gina Waldman, president of the advocacy organization Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) how the Iraqi Jewish community can claim ownership of materials left behind when their owners chose to leave.
“This was what was considered communal property,” Waldman said. “No one person could sign off and say, well, this synagogue now belongs to the Iraqi government.”
Basri, in an article outlining a legal argument for the United States to refuse to return the archive, refers to U.N. Resolution 242. Passed after the Six Day War, that statute calls for a “just settlement of the refugee problem.” Yet the Iraqi Jewish community has limited legal opportunities, says Patty Gerstenblith, director of DePaul College of Law’s Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law. The State Department, Gerstenblith said, granted the archive a status known as immunity from seizure, meaning that courts cannot hear cases or issue orders about it. “Doesn’t matter if it’s stolen property,” she said.
That leaves only one option, which would be for the community to bring suit against Iraq. It’s unclear if such a claim could be heard in American court. “Usually,” Gerstenblith said, “when a government takes property away from its own citizens that’s not a violation of international law.”
What about the example of Holocaust restitution? Objects looted during the Holocaust can be recoverable so long, Gerstenblith said, as suits are brought by clearly identifiable owners. A less direct precedent has been set for communal property. “In a sense, the Holocaust expropriations have been treated as a unique set of cases,” Gerstenblith said. “Having said that, there’s no reason that a court couldn’t extend that to another historical circumstance.”
The Iraqi Jewish community has yet to attempt any legal action. In the short term, it’s unclear if they’ll have to, as the State Department would not comment on plans for the archive’s return. A spokesperson specifically declined a request to confirm that the current administration intends to return the archive in September, as scheduled. If the return is delayed, it won’t be for the first time.
This is the first of three articles on the Iraqi Jewish Archive. Come back tomorrow for part 2, “In Exile, Iraqi Jews Are Desperate To Reclaim Their Artifacts — But So Is Iraq” and Tuesday for part 3, “The Iraqi Jewish Archive’s Future Is Uncertain. Foreign Policy Depends On It.”
The Jews of France have sustained a double blow - an antisemitic crime is attributed to mental illness, while an institution of the Jewish community ostracises one of the foremost experts on Arab and Muslim antisemitism. Lyn Julius writes in JNS News:
Sarah Halimi: hurled from her balcony
The first is that the murderer of Sarah Halimi, who shouted “Allah Hu Akbar” as he tortured and hurled the Orthodox Jew to her death from her balcony in April 2015, may not even stand trial. Kobili Traore has been declared “mentally incapable” by a panel of psychiatrists. After months of foot-dragging by the judge, the panel has reversed the findings of an earlier evaluation, which had retained the charge of anti-Semitism as an “aggravating circumstance.”
The second blow delivered to the Jewish community concerns the shoddy treatment of French historian and director of the Paris Holocaust memorial Georges Bensoussan. Over the last three years, Bensoussan has been fighting charges of “Islamophobia” and incitement to hatred against Muslims. In a television debate, he had said that Arab anti-Semitism was endemic, quoting the words of an Algerian sociologist that “Arabs sucked in antisemitism with their mother’s milk.”
Georges Bensoussan: dismissed
Thus far, Bensoussan has been acquitted in the French courts. But his reward has been to be unceremoniously dismissed from his job after 25 years of faithful service. His contract had still had two years to run, but the lock to his office was changed. When he was eventually allowed in to collect his possessions, a minder looked over his shoulder.
The Sarah Halimi case points to the institutional denial of Islamist anti-Semitism. Not for the first time have the perpetrators of anti-Semitic crimes been declared “insane.” France does not want to admit that its terrorism problem has ideological roots. It prefers to blame economic grievances, despair or mental illness.
The Bensoussan case points to the fecklessness of Jewish community institutions in France. They have remained silent or have ostracized or have refused to support one of the most respected historians of their generation. Bensoussan may have won the argument in court, but he has become an embarrassment to the bien-pensants.
The Halimi and the Bensoussan cases are two sides of the same coin. The first was another instance of jihad terrorism against Jews: an anti-Semitic crime whose criminal nature has been denied. The second is a judicial jihad, in collusion with human rights and anti-Islamophobia organizations: the attempted criminalization of the act of calling out anti-Semitism. He who is reckless or bold enough to venture into this politically unpalatable territory is himself branded a racist.
The writer Albert Camus once said that “to misname things is to add to the woes of the world.” How right he was. If the French can’t even identify a problem, then how can they ever hope to deal with it?
Double vision: the Jamal sisters perfected synchronised belly dancing
The Egypt of the interwar years had its fair share of Jewish celebrities. This is the amazing story of the Jamal Twins, who introduced a new style of belly dancing. Read their story in Israel National Library (with thanks: Michelle):
The foreign military forces that filled Egypt’s main cities in the post-World War II era brought about many changes in the local entertainment culture. Many nightclubs were opened and musicians, actors and dancers – both male and female – took advantage of the tremendous thirst for entertainment, which they were more than happy to supply.
The big stars of Helmieh Palace were “The Jamal Twins -” belly dancers who introduced a new style into this ancient style of eastern dancing. The sisters, Leila and Lamia, became the foremost stars of the Egyptian entertainment world at the end of Farouk’s regime. Their audiences were always packed and the Egyptian king was one of their greatest admirers. What was the magical secret of these girls that launched their star studded careers?
The Mediterranean Sharkiya dance was one of their specialties. The musicians who accompanied the pair practiced with them for hours at a time to match the choreography to the musical repertoire, which was carefully selected. Grueling practice sessions, endless exercises and daily rehearsals produced extraordinary results.
The Jamal sisters’ performance was bright and innovative; the two dancers moved in wonderful harmony, with the dance and the music completely in sync.
Their dance performances, in which they also used various stage props, was not simply another exotic oriental dance. They knew how to create a symmetrical picture of movement and make it virtuosic, while vibrantly expressing the music they moved to. The connection between them and the musicians was lively and exciting for the audience.
The Jamal sisters’ musical talents were wholly unsurprising. They were daughters of musicians and had learned to play instruments from early childhood. Their father, Fishel Alpert was a violinist in the Vienna symphony orchestra. His name reveals his origins as a Jew who had moved from Chernowitz to the Austrian capital, where he became a professional musician. The reason for his emigration in the 1920’s to Egypt is unknown. It could well have been the great economic crisis which propelled him far away from Europe, to a place where he would have a dignified position in an orchestra and a decent income.
In Alexandria, Fishel met his wife, Jini (Janin) Elpert. The impressive presence and the beauty of this opera singer, the daughter of Jewish emigrants, captured his heart. Their firstborn daughter, Helena, was born just a year after their wedding and her younger sister, Bertha, was born two and half years later, in 1932.
After the devastation wrought by ISIS, Mosul is slowly coming back to life, and traces of Jewish existence are re-emerging from under the rubble. Seth Frantzman and Omar Mohammed report in The Forward:
Mosul once had a thriving Jewish community whose roots stretch back to the 8th century B.C.E. There are tombs in and near Mosul that commemorate the biblical prophets Jonah and Nahum — ISIS blew up the tomb of Jonah, known as Nabi Yunis in Arabic, in July 2014.
Many other local Jewish sites were known to local people but were kept secret after the last Jews left Mosul. The community secreted away inscriptions and items with family friends; these were passed down or left aside to collect dust. The fact that they were hidden kept them safe from ISIS invaders. Some of the sites, such as the synagogue, were used for other purposes — ISIS turned the synagogue into a storage area for bombs and used it as a hideout to avoid coalition airstrikes, according to the Voice of America. The former Jewish quarter in Mosul was called ‘Mahalet al-Yahud’ (Jewish neighborhood), and now it’s called ‘Ahmadiya’.
After the destruction from the 2017 fighting subsided, we found a local resident who asked to remain anonymous and was posting photos that were circulating privately online of inscriptions and old buildings. He didn’t know what the pictures were of, but someone noticed the Hebrew letters. Residents thought one of the buildings was “just rubbish.” We checked it out and the writing on a stone lintel was indeed in Hebrew. It is not surprising that people thought the site was “rubbish” — an American soldier wrote about finding the building in 2003 and described it as a “garbage dump.”
The sad truth is that individuals like Hussein who reach out to Jews and change their negative views about Israel are all too easily branded as traitors and harassed by their own. Rachel Wahba tells his story in The Times of Israel:
Rachel Wahba
Hussein’s story is unusual to say the least. His courage, after he
unintentionally unearthed the truth in a land of censorship, is epic. He
could not stop, and he could not stay silent once he started learning
the truth about Jews, Israel, Christianity, and the world.
The middle child in a Middle class mostly secular Muslim family,
Hussein was eleven years old when he embarked on a religious path. He
began praying several times a day, getting more and more devout. He
found himself praying for the destruction of the Jews and Israel. By the
time he was a teen he hated us with a passion, a budding Jihadi ready to fight the good fight against the Zionists.
Obsessed with comic book Superheroes, Hussein channeled his hate in a wholly original way – He was
going to be a superhero. He, Hussein, would “learn everything about
the Arch Enemy, the Jew,” the ultimate evil in the universe, responsible
for everything wrong with civilization.
He studied Hebrew, first on his own via the internet and then in
university. He knocked on the door of the Israeli embassy in Cairo and
got a hero’s welcome (they don’t get many visitors). They gave him
books, a world opened.
Threatening calls came to his home, He was arrested for a night, his
father was arrested, he was told several times to stop visiting the
embassy. He didn’t take the arrests seriously enough, he refused to stop
blogging his new ideas.
His consciousness expanded, his friends thought his new ideas were
crazy, he kept learning. He studied Jewish history, and then
Christianity. There were no Jews in Egypt, but he saw how Egyptian
Christians (like Jews), were not the dirty, smelly, vile sub-human filth
he was taught. He read about Israel. He wrote.
Instead of becoming the Superhero he set out to be, he rejected Islam. He became a Zionist, an enemy of the state.
He was arrested and tortured for two months until he lost the
capacity to see color, to care about anything except dying. Eventually
he was helped out of the country, to flee for his life, into America,
where I first heard him speak on a panel with other dissidents from the
Middle East.
When I first met him, I asked about criticizing Islamic ideology
without being silenced as “Islamophobic.” He laughed, saying one cannot
care about that. It was validating, because I am accused regularly,
even when I am talking about my family’s experience. Even when I tell
the story of how my Iraqi mother, accompanying her father to Basra on
business, seeing the Shia merchant wash his hands to cleanse himself,
after doing business with the Jewish merchant, my grandfather. This
story is “Islamophobic.”
The validation I experience and every Zionist feels with Hussein is a blessing. We need our story understood.
I don’t have to explain to Hussein how sick to their core it makes
Islamists that although they got rid of us Jews in their countries all
over the Middle East, Israel rose and keeps thriving as a Jewish country
in their midst.
With Hussein I don’t have to find ways to explain the legitimacy of
Israel as a Jewish country, or how the Palestinians were and continue to
be inhumanely groomed by Political Islamic ideology as a means to get
rid of us after major aggressive wars to destroy the one Jewish country
failed. I don’t have to try to convince him that the “refugee” issue and
“peaceful protests” in Gaza that keep multiplying in numbers is a cruel
sham. He knows.
He knows first-hand, as did my family, as do most Jews from Arab
lands, as does anyone who refuses to live in ignorance of a reality we
have to wake up to if we want Israel to survive. This connection with
him means the world to me.
Zineb El Razhoui was a journalist with Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine whose staff were gunned down by Islamist terrorists in 2015. In this eye-opening article for the Nouvel Observateur she responds to an initiative by prominent French intellectuals to stem 'the new antisemitism'. The 'new antisemitism' is as old as the hills in her native Morocco, she contends. But it need not be fatal. (With thanks: Penina)
"When I first heard the word Yhoudi (Jewish) more than 30 years ago in Morocco, it sounded like an insult. It
was at a large family reunion, the kind of meeting where the adults
enjoying the reunion are irritated by their brats running in all
directions. Someone
had just called his child Yhoudi ould lyhoud (Jew son of a Jew!) to
tell him he was a naughty kid. I was going to have the opportunity to
hear this " insult " in different forms during my life in Morocco, a country that I later learned was the least antisemitic in the Arab world.
Zineb El Razhoui: grew up insulting Jews "Hachak (with all due respect) is a word that Moroccans, very concerned about verbal politeness, attach to any infamous term. Thus, a Moroccan will say "hachak garbage" or "hachak donkey". But more surprising still, many Moroccans would say "a woman, with all due respect" or "a Jew, with all due respect". Moreover, legend has it that before the lions of the
Atlas mountains became extinct in time immemorial, the traveller who feared an attack of
wild beasts had to gird himself with Jews, of flesh so vile that the king of the animals would not stoop to go after him. "A
little later at Al-Amani Primary School in Casablanca where I learned
Arabic, French, and had many lessons in religion, it was rumoured in the courtyard
that the terraced house was inhabited by Jews. We
then thought that we, little schoolchildren of a rather bourgeois private
establishment, were allowed to throw insults and rubbish from the
windows of our classrooms. The
owner complained to the director, a graduate of the Al Azhar
Theological University in Cairo and a doctor of Arabic literature, who
furiously doled out punishments to us. For the first time, the neophyte antisemites that we were had just learned that hating the Jews was wrong. Ironically,
it was Mr. Fahmi Shanti, a brilliant Palestinian intellectual refugee
in Morocco and founder of our school, who taught us this lesson. "This lesson I was never going to forget. I learned that antisemitism - with all due respect to the detractors of Georges
Bensoussan* - is indeed atavistic - that one has a good chance of suckling
it from one's mother's breast if receiving a standard Islamic education.
Atavistic, but not fatal. I have also learned that the Palestinian cause cannot be a pretext for antisemitism, even for those who have pad a personal price like Mr Shanti. As an Al-Azhar theologian he was particularly keen to maintain good relations with his neighbours. If he could live together with his Jewish neighbours, why can't we in France?
Read article in full (French - registration required) * a reference to the case of the French historian who was accused of 'hate-speech' after quoting a Muslim sociologist who claimed Arabs 'sucked antisemitism with their mother's milk'.
The Farhud pogrom of 1 and 2 June 1941 in Iraq could have claimed up to 1,000 Jewish casualties, according to a contemporaneous Mossad report.
The report, issued on 17 July 1941 after the Iraqi government had tried to suppress news of the pogrom, was apparently based on eye-witness testimonies and letters. It claimed that 90 Jews were murdered on the morning of the first day and many others were injured.
On the second day, the mob began to attack Jewish homes. "Police and
military officers and students, moved from house to
house, killing young boys and the elderly, without any mercy. Their
actions were even more severe than of the Kishinev pogrom's killers.
Jewish blood was nothing and poured like water. Besides the killing,
there was looting and robbing of houses and stores," said the report,
putting the total value of property lost at a million Israeli lira.
The report puts at 120 the number of Jewish patients poisoned in Iraqi hospitals. This would give a total of 210 deaths, exceeding the official estimates. But the report goes further: לפי אומדנא מגיע מספר ההרוגים והאבודים למעלה מאלף איש. ("According to estimates the number of dead and lost is greater than 1,000." )
Although the figure of 179 dead is commonly quoted, the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center has managed to identify the names only of 141
dead in Baghdad and seven in the rest of the country. Zvi Yehuda of the
Center says he is aware of the report but refutes the figure of 1,000, arguing that no evidence exists for this number.
The final death toll may
never be known. The prominent historian Elie
Kedourie put the numbers of Jewish dead at 600. The bodies were buried in a mass grave in the old
Jewish cemetery, which itself was later destroyed. Whole
families are thought to have been wiped out in the old Jewish quarter of
Baghdad, with no-one alive to witness the deaths.
The report claims that the Jewish community paid over enormous amounts of money to the rioters. It points to the complicity of the police in the violence:"Suddenly rebel gangs attacked the Jews, and among the gang members,
there were police officers that removed their police insignia." After the poisoning of the Jewish patients became known, Dr Diab Bik, the local hospital
manager, had his licence to practice medicine suspended for five years.
The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, has recovered a watch belonging to the famous spy Eli Cohen. Born in Egypt, Eli Cohen was one of Israel's most audacious spies. He was caught and executed in 1965 in Syria but his body has never been found. The Sydney Morning Herald carries this story by Ronen Bergman:
Tel Aviv: The news came in a brief announcement from
the Israeli Prime Minister's office: A watch belonging to a legendary
Israeli spy had been recovered in a secret operation and brought back to
Israel.
The watch belonged to Eli Cohen, whose spying in Syria is
credited with helping Israel to a quick victory in the 1967 war, long
after he had been caught and executed by the Syrian government.
Eli Cohen wearing the watch in Damascus, early 1960s
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the "determined and courageous
action" of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, for returning "a memory from a
heroic fighter who contributed greatly to the security of the state."
But
the Thursday announcement was tantalisingly short on specifics, setting
off a buzz across Israel. Cohen was a national hero, with streets and
buildings named after him and ceremonies honouring his memory every
year. But had Mossad, as Netanyahu implied, carried out a secret
operation to recover a wristwatch?
In part, yes.
The operation, according to an Israeli official with knowledge of it,
was part of a broader 14-year hunt by Mossad to find Cohen's body, which
53 years after his execution in Damascus had never been located. The
main goal was to recover the body and return it for a hero's burial in
Israel. But part of the operation was to recover any personal items
belonging to the spy.
The spy agency has invested huge sums and resources in the larger
quest, including endangering human life and paying bribes to agents and
crooks, Israeli intelligence officials said. Still, the body has not
been found.
But during the search, the official said, Mossad agents located a man who had the watch and began an operation to obtain it.
A document written by the Chief Rabbi of Baghdad in Hetzi Kalmus (NARA)
Detail from Torah scroll tik found in the Iraqi-Jewish archive (photo: NARA)
Liel Levitan: banned
Yemenite children in an Israeli transit camp in 1949
Victor Deloya
Isaac Allal, the only survivor from the plane crash taking children from Tunis to Oslo in November 1949.
The desecrated tomb of Shehata Haroun in Cairo's Bassatine cemetery
Having a barbecue on a Jewish gravestone
Rachel Wahba
Zineb El Razhoui: grew up insulting Jews 
Eli Cohen wearing the watch in Damascus, early 1960s
The operation, according to an Israeli official with knowledge of it,
was part of a broader 14-year hunt by Mossad to find Cohen's body, which
53 years after his execution in Damascus had never been located. The
main goal was to recover the body and return it for a hero's burial in
Israel. But part of the operation was to recover any personal items
belonging to the spy.
