Over the years, a recurring hasbara trope has accused Arab states of ethnically cleansing their entire Jewish populations in the years between 1948-1956. They marshal vivid maps displaying the numbers of Jews originally in these countries and how many are left currently. Phrases like “expulsion,” “refugee,” “Jewish Nakba,” and “pogroms” are bandied about as if they are horrific historical fact. The truth, as often is the case concerning Zionist ideological claims, is otherwise.
Pogrom is an especially problematic term, as it was first popularized regarding mass anti-Jewish violence in Czarist Russia. It is often dangerous in historical terms to conflate two separate periods, separate regions, and separate societies as this use of the term does. The predicament of Arab Jews was caused by different factors than Russian pogroms. The Czar exploited anti-Semitism to distract from social upheaval and his dysfunctional rule. The situation in Arab lands was different. There had been little anti-Semitism there before Israel’s founding. In fact, there had been 2,000 years of peaceful co-existence. Zionism was a major precipitating factor which provoked alienation between Jews and Arabs/Muslims. Pogroms, on the other hand, predated the establishment of the State by well over half a century. The earliest pogrom occurred 16 years before the first Zionist Congress. Thus “pogrom” is appropriated from its true historical period, and exploited in this new context in order to invoke a traumatic emotional response. This is an abuse of history and a distortion, which are also features of Zionism.
Advocates of this Zionist claim have sought to counter Palestinian demands for the Right of Return with demands for compensation for the hundreds of millions (or billions, depending on which source you use) in Jewish property seized by the Arab governments after they left. But this demand could backfire because it will only remind the world that 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed during the Nakba with tens of thousands of homes of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians destroyed or confiscated. Nor were the refugees permitted to return after the 1948 War to reclaim their property. The Infiltrator Law treated them as enemies and entitled Israeli forces to shoot them on sight:
A “free fire” policy towards infiltrators was adopted…shooting those crossing the international armistice line illegally. Eventually, the Israeli leadership came to the conclusion that only retaliatory strikes would be able to create the necessary deterrence, that would convince the Arab countries to prevent infiltration…The strikes [killed] numerous civilians…
The claims of Arab Jewish “Nakba” were intended to raise a counter-claim to that of nearly 1-million Palestinians driven out of their ancestral home during the Nakba. If they were refugees, then so were the Arab Jews “driven” from their own native homes. But advocates of this view neglected the feelings of the Mizrahi Jews themselves, many of whom made aliyah out of Zionist principles. Calling them ‘refugees’ derogated their place in Israeli society and made them into alien outsiders (much as Palestinians are who settled in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan after the 1948 War).
Prof. Yehuda Shenhav, himself a Mizrahi Jew, discredits the equation of Palestinian refugees with Arab Jewish “refugees:”
…The analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition.
In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and oppression.
…The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation.
Shenhav has portrayed this as a self-serving political campaign to undermine a key BDS demand of the Palestinian Right of Return. It also serves to divert attention from Israel’s record of expulsion, theft and oppression of Palestinians:
An intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees has been going on for the past three years. This campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries – depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign’s proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a “right of return” on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of “lost” assets.
The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice.
Eyal Bizawe is an Egyptian-Israeli filmmaker who criticized the Israeli educational curriculum covering the status of Jews in Arab lands. He writes:
…The approach can be summed up, it’s that the Jews in Muslim countries tended to matters in their own communities, wrote in Hebrew or Judeo-Arabic, engaged in Zionist activity – and in their spare time were persecuted. There’s no attention to Jewish involvement in national or communist politics, literature in the local language or European languages, the establishment of the Iraqi broadcast-authority orchestra, the involvement of Jews in the Egyptian film industry, or the Jewish involvement in the war in Algeria.
…You could conclude from the [curriculum] that the only contact that Mizrahi Jews…had with their local surroundings came in the form of the next pogrom… After all, there’s nothing like some good trauma to bring us all together around our memory of national tragedy, where we can put the head of a Persian Jew on the shoulders of a Polish Jew and the head of a German Jew on the shoulders of an Iraqi Jew, wailing together that the shtetl is burning.
…The “Jewish refugees from Arab countries” discourse…embeds the assumption of Muslims as perennial persecutors of Jews, absorbing the history of Jews in Arab/Muslim countries into what could be called a “pogromized” version of “Jewish History”…This rhetoric incorporates the Arab Jewish experience into the Shoah, evident for example in the campaign to include the 1941 farhud attacks on Jews in Iraq in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. One can denounce the violence of the farhud, and even connect it to Nazi propaganda in Iraq coming out of Berlin, without instrumentalizing it to equate Arabs with Nazis, or forge a discourse of eternal Muslim anti-Semitism.
…This millennial persecution discourse connects the dots from pogrom to pogrom, projecting the historical experience of Jews in Christian-Europe onto the experience of Jews in Muslim spaces.
To place this in a broader context of Jewish history, the distinguished historian, Salo Baron, conceived of the “lacrhymose theory” of Jewish history (account required):
I too am a child of this age. All of my life I have been struggling against the hitherto dominant ‘lachrymose conception of Jewish history’ – a term which I have been using for more than forty years – because I have felt that an overemphasis on Jewish sufferings distorted the total picture of the Jewish historic evolution and, at the same time, badly served a generation which had become impatient with the nightmare of endless persecutions and massacres.
In other words, for the purposes of this essay, the overstated claims against Arab states that they perpetrated a “Holocaust,” or “Nakba” against Arab Jews is part of this same view which suggests that all of Jewish history is one of unmitigated suffering, including life in the Diaspora. Thus the Arab Jewish catastrophe joins the Roman martyrdom, Spanish Inquisition and expulsion, the Russian pogroms, and Holocaust as east-west bookends of an endless narrative of Jewish suffering. Embracing this perspective reinforces the Zionist narrative, which claims that Jews can only be safe, sovereign, and in control of their own destiny in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel).
The Zionist view of the Arab Jewish ingathering of exiles to Zion asserts that it saved them from suffering and anti-Semitism. That it released them from lives as eternal aliens within their Diasporic existence. That it brought them to a place where they found refuge; where they could be safe as Jews. But the opposite is the case: the vast majority of Arab Jews preferred to remain in their homelands. It was the Zionist determination to declare a state–despite warnings from Arab leaders that this was a red line they could not countenance–that led to the dissolution of these communities. Ben Gurion’s sole goal was to declare a national state of the Jewish people where they would enjoy complete sovereignty. He didn’t care a whit for Jews in the Diaspora. On the contrary, he pointedly declared he would forfeit the lives of German Jews who refused to make aliya, as long as he could save others willing to emigrate to Israel.
Ben Gurion’s declaration of the State’s independence was only one cause of the unrest forcing Jews to leave their homes. He conceived a carefully coordinated, long-term campaign to inculcate Zionism among Arab Jewish communities via Yishuv shlihim, who were sent on this mission. The ultimate goal was to convince as many as possible to make aliya. They did this by painting an idyllic picture of life in Palestine (one which was quickly dispelled by the miserable conditions in the absorption camps known as ma’abarot) and warning them that they were ultimately hated as Jews in their own homeland and could have no future there.
Shohat quotes the bitterness of her own mother, who made aliyah to Israel:
In the wake of their exodus from Iraq and the shock of arrival in Israel, Iraqi Jews along with Arab/Sephardi/Middle-Eastern Jews more generally, experienced exclusion, rejection, and otherization as Arabs/Orientals, in a place that had been viewed, at the least, as a refuge. The realization of unbelonging could be glimpsed in the frequent lament: “In Iraq we were Jews, in Israel we are Arabs.”
Zionists sowed seeds of doubt in the Arab Jews about their fellow Muslim citizens. They also incited doubt among the latter about the loyalties of their Jewish brothers and sisters. Muslims questioned how any Jew with Zionist sympathies could be loyal to his/her homeland. It was only a short jump from there to the fear and paranoia necessary to demonize Jews as an enemy Fifth Column out to sabotage their Arab nation.
The truth is that Zionism in the Arab world destabilized Jewish life and created hostility and conflict. Jews were less secure and more endangered thanks to Zionism. The exodus did not save lives. In fact, it brought them to a State which viewed them with disdain and treated them harshly. A state which even bartered, sold, poisoned, and killed Mizrahi children out of misguided racist motives.
Even today, we can see that Jews are far more endangered in Israel than in the Diaspora. For every Jew killed in a terror attack outside Israel, more are killed in war and terror attacks inside Israel. Diaspora Jewish life is largely one of stability and religious tolerance. Life in Israel is filled with classism, ethnic prejudice, and economic privation (for Mizrahim, Haredim and Israeli Palestinians). There is great wealth and comfort–but there is also a huge wealth gap between the oligarch families who control the vast majority of the country’s capital and the poor referred to above.
To be clear, I have no problem with Jews making aliyah if they wish. Choice is something everyone should have (including Palestinians). But if one Jews’s choice deprives a Palestinian of having the same choice, then this is a bad bargain.
Arab Jews Invited to Return to Their Homelands
Another proof of the fallacy that Muslims and Arabs are infected with a deep-rooted historic hatred of Jews is that many states whose Jewish inhabitants left, have invited them to return. Leaders of Sudan, Egypt and Morocco have offered public invitations for them to return.
Egyptian President Abdel al-Sisi made a public speech promising to restore Cairo’s grand synagogue. He spent millions doing so and the rededication was attended by 100 Egyptian-Israelis. The Economist notes the about-face orchestrated by Egypt’s leader:
When it comes to Egypt’s Jewish community, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi says all the right things…Mr Sisi promises a resurgence of local Jewry. He has invited back Jews who were pushed out after Israel’s invasion in 1956. He has listed dilapidated Jewish cemeteries as heritage sites and spent millions of dollars restoring what was once the world’s largest synagogue, Eliyahu HaNavi, in Alexandria.
Though Morocco only has 3,000 Jews, a number of them are Israeli-Moroccans who decided to leave Israel and return to their homeland. Other Israelis have substantial business interests there. Still others come to vacation and visit family. This 1979 NY TImes article portrays the radical positive shift in Moroccan attitudes toward its Jewish minority. More recently, the Economist writes:
Morocco[‘s}…Jewish community also shrank when the Arab-Israeli conflict was at its peak. But the Jews who remained now practise openly. King Muhammad VI has restored scores of synagogues and regularly hosts the diaspora at festivals where imams and rabbis sing together. Last month he inaugurated a Jewish heritage centre by touching the Torah and praying. “It was a first for a commander of the faithful [the royal title] in Islam,” says Andre Azoulay, the king’s Jewish adviser.
Despite hundreds of devastating air attacks by Israeli warplanes on Syrian targets, the latter’s government permitted a dozen Syrian-Americans to return for a visit on 2021. They were invited to meet with Syrian officials, but they declined because they did not want their visit to have a political dimension. An Israeli newspaper writes:
…Sources in the Syrian community in Israel as saying, “Some Jewish businessmen who previously lived in Syria returned with their families to work in the country with foreign passports. These Jews work there with the approval of the Assad regime.”
Sudan too, after overthrowing its Islamist dictator, Omar Bashir, issued a warm call for former Sudanese Jews to return:
“Sudan is pluralistic in its thought, pluralistic in its culture, in its ideologies and Islamic religious sects, and even religions.There is Islam, Christianity, and a minority that follow the Jewish faith,” Sudan’s Minister of Religious Affairs Nasr-Eddin Mofarah in an interview with Al Arabiya earlier this month.
Mofarah acknowledged that the Jewish minority may have left the country, but invited them to come back to Sudan “through their right of citizenship and nationality.”
“As long as there is a civilian government [in Sudan], the basis of nationality is rights and obligations,” explained Mofarah.
In 1975, the PLO proposed a resolution calling for Arab countries to permit the return of Jews to their homelands. In response, Joseph Massad writes that Morocco, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Egypt did so.
In 1979, Radio Bagdhad urged Iraqi Jews to return from Israel, reminding them that they are second-class citizens in the Ashkenazi western-dominated Israeli society. Shenhav writes:
…In a Hebrew-language broadcast, [it] called on all Jews of Iraqi origin “to return home,” promising that they would be able to live as citizens with equal rights in Iraq. The broadcast claimed that people of Iraqi origin suffered discrimination in Israel at the hands of the Ashkenazim and that this injustice would be rectified when they returned to Iraq. With these comments Radio Baghdad broke the Zionist taboo and smoothly shifted the discussion from the national discourse to the internal Jewish ethnic discourse.
The Economist reports that views of Jews in many of these countries have shifted radically:
“The promise of our community is the rekindling of a Judeo-Islamic tradition,” says Ross Kriel, president of the new Jewish Council of the Emirates….Arab leaders from Morocco to Iraq are repeating the message…
From Iraq to Libya, a swathe of politicians, film-makers and academics, from secular types to the Muslim Brotherhood, have been re-examining the past, including the post-1948 eviction [sic] of Jews…
Today 13 Egyptian universities teach Hebrew, up from four in 2004. Some 3,000 Egyptian students will finish their Hebrew studies this year, double the number five years ago.
Arab documentaries search for Jewish diasporas that once lived in Arab lands. A new generation of Arab novelists elevates Jews from bit-players to centre-stage. “I wrote it to show that Jews are part of our culture,” says Amin Zaoui, the Algerian author of “The Last Jew of Tamentit”
These sources point to a general reassessment among Arabs of their relations with their Jewish former citizens. Rather than demonize all Arabs and Muslims as irredeemable anti-Semites, it is critical that Mizrahi Jews explore these opportunities and rekindle relations with their former compatriots. It will go a long way to helping Israel eventually find its place within the Arab Middle East. A region in which it is alien and which it treats as uniformly hostile territory.
Historical Background
What follows is not meant to be an exhaustive examination of the history of Jews in Arab lands. It’s meant to be a brief survey of some of the main issues as I see them.
Let’s begin with some history: Jews lived in MENA for millennia. Historical sources trace the earliest presence to the Babylonian exile going back 26 centuries. Similarly, Jordan’s connection to Jewish life is ancient. Several of the Israelite tribes lived in what is now Jordan. The first Jews came to Spain after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE. Over the centuries, despite restrictions imposed on them by Muslim rulers, Jews generally flourished in a period called La Convicencia. They became doctors, poets, bankers and senior advisors to the ruling caliphs. From Maimonides to Judah Halevi to Solomon ibn Gabirol, Jews made enormous contributions to the arts and economic well-being of Spanish society. It’s important not to mythologize or romanticize this period. Most Jews, except perhaps for the elites, were clearly second-class citizens. But compared to the fate of Jews in Christian Europe, Jewish life in Arab lands was largely stable and secure.
When Catholic kings wrested control of Spain from the Moors, they instituted a series of anti-Semitic decrees which culminated in the 1492 expulsion of Jews from the country. Those who remained were forced to convert to Catholicism or become secret Jews. Many of those who fled, traveled to other Arab/Muslim countries in North Africa, and even as far as Portuguese Brazil, New Amsterdam, and Holland.
With the advent of Zionism in the late 19th century, Arab attitudes began to change. European Jewry began to see itself not only as a religious community, but as a nation-in-waiting. Prof. Ella Shohat explains this in the context of the Iraqi Jewish community:
The Zionist redefinition of Jewishness as an ethno-nationality, which was in discord with its traditional status as a religion, brought about new dilemmas and tensions, irrespective of how the Arab Jews may have viewed their Jewish affiliation…
Arab Jews had to pledge allegiance to one identity articulated by two clashing movements— either “Jewish” or “Arab” —both newly defined under a novel historical banner of ethno-national affiliation. In dissonance with the traditional view of Judaism as a religion, the Zionist ethno-nationalist redefinition generated new predicaments for the community itself.
Jewish nationalism began to compete with Arab nationalism, which was ignited in part by the rise of the Ottoman Empire and its decentralized governance, which offered autonomy and rights to its Arab provinces. During this period in Palestine, there were stirrings of resentment from the Arab majority. But the two communities observed a relatively peaceful co-existence. By the 1920s, with the gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of European colonialism, the two groups began to be pitted against each other. They competed for favor with their British masters, who maintained control by showing favor first to one group and then to the other (i.e. the Balfour Declaration). Eventually, this broke out into sectarian violence in which scores of Palestinian Arabs and Jews were killed in spasms of inter-communal violence.
In the period leading up to the 1948 declaration of the State, Jews remained a minority. But the Yishuv leader, David Ben Gurion realized that the Zionist claim to Palestine would only be as strong as the Jewish presence there. For this reason, he took in hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors. Similarly, he saw the Jews in Arab lands as another reservoir of demographic potential. There were nearly 1-million Jews living throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Their immigration to the fledging state would further enhance the Jewish presence and legitimize its claims to territory in negotiations with Israel’s neighbors. All this would immeasurably strengthen the new state.
The Yishuv sent emissaries to each of these countries whose mission was to inculcate Zionist values within the communities; and especially to recruit young people, the generation of the future, to emigrate. These efforts took on a force of their own after Israel declared independence in 1948. As the war progressed and Israel won victories against Arab armies and assumed control of added territory, Jews in MENA faced increasing anger from their non-Jewish neighbors. They were seen as allies of the Zionists, rather than as loyal fellow citizens.
Libya
Libya had been occupied by the Nazis during WWII and sent thousands of Jews to death camps. During and after the war, remnants of anti-Semitism remained among the Arab population. In 1945, there were riots during which scores of Jews were killed. Because the Jewish Brigade had been stationed in the country after the defeat of the Nazis, the tenets of Zionism took root in the community. Israeli shlihim not only urged aliyah; Libyan Jews accused them of fomenting the riots in order to further their goal. In his book, Jewish Life in Muslim Libya, Harvey Goldberg writes:
“Immigration began when the British authorities granted permission to the Jewish Agency to set up an office in Tripoli and organize the operation. As an indication of how the causes of events can be reinterpreted in terms of their results, a number of Libyan Jews have told me that their guess is that the Jewish Agency was behind the riots, for they clearly had the effect of bringing the Jews to Israel.”
Though this is suggestive, rather than definitive evidence, it accords with the known tactics of Zionist militants in other Arab countries. 30,000 of Libya’s 38,000 Jews answered the call of aliyah and left for Palestine. Others emigrated to Italy, where they now form a significant portion of the Italian Jewish community.
Algeria
There was almost no emigration of the Jewish population from Algeria, though the 1950s civil war and its ensuing violence and instability, encouraged many (including Jews) to leave. In 1962, when the country gained independence, it denied citizenship to non-Muslims and most of the 130,000 Jews left. But they were not driven out by violence or virulent anti-Semitism as in other Arab lands. They also had a choice to remain if they chose. Most of them also did not go to Israel, but chose to settle in France.
Iraq
Iraq is one of the most complicated stories of Jewish exodus from their Arab homelands. In the 1930s, Arab nationalism swept the country, led by the new King Ghazi, who fostered strong anti-British/anti-colonial sentiment (the country had just won its independence from Britain). With the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, Iraqi sympathy for the Palestinian cause was further strengthened. By the late 1930s, the nationalists developed sympathy for the Nazi cause as an opponent of British imperialism.
It should be remembered that during this period of political uncertainty, even the Yishuv Avodah and rightist Lehi factions negotiated with the Nazis, seeing them as a useful as a counterweight to the British Mandate.
In 1941, anti-Jewish sentiment peaked and there were riots, known as the Farhud, in which nearly 200 Jews lost their lives, along with looting of businesses and homes. But the Farhud was not the decisive incident that caused Jews to flee the country. After the violence subsided, young Iraqi Jews decided that if they wished to remain in the country, they had to adopt a more militant political approach, and they joined the Iraqi Communist Party. The new government which came to power after the Farhud also guaranteed the safety of the Jewish community.
The Farhud also marked a turning point in the Zionist approach to Iraqi Jewry. The Jewish Agency began sending shlihim, seeing a golden opportunity to bring the substantial portions of one of the oldest Arab Jewish communities to Israel. Those representatives likened their work to a movement for religious “conversion.” Among its efforts was the infiltration of Palestinian Jewish spies into the country to report back to Palestine on conditions in the country. But despite tensions within Iraqi society, Jews did not begin to leave in substantial numbers till 1948, when Iraqi sympathy for the Palestinian cause during the Nakba, made ongoing Jewish life untenable. Iraqi diplomats at the time warned against the Yishuv declaring independence saying it would destroy the relative harmony among ethnic communities inside the country. Indeed, that is exactly what happened. And an outcome which suited Ben Gurion and his government well as it meant that the Jewish population of Palestine would be augmented by many of the 150,000 Jews who lived in Iraq.
In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. . . .The Iraqi police later provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of
an underground Zionist organization, most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had “rescued” really just in order to increase Israel’s Jewish population.”
The intent was to drive any Iraqi Jews who were vacillating about leaving by, in effect, making the choice for them. The Iraqi government blamed Zionist militants for the attacks and arrested three Iraqi Jews for the crimes. By 1951, most had left, with their property reverting to the State. Still, 30,000 Jews determined they would remain in their homeland despite Zionist efforts.
Prof. Shohat, herself a descendant of Iraqi Jews, decries the mythologizing of the Iraqi exodus. Contrary to the Zionist narrative that the country’s Jews were miraculously fulfilling the Biblical prophecy of a return of the original Babylonian exiles to Israel and the final redemption of the vision of Ezra, Nehemiah and Ezechiel, who brought the first Babylonian Jews back to Zion:
What is often recounted as the “ingathering of the exiles” and the restoration of “the Diaspora” to Jerusalem, was in fact a painfully complicated experience, an ongoing intergenerational trauma which engendered an ambivalent sense of belonging for dislocated Middle Eastern Jews. This return, within a longer historical perspective, could also be viewed as a new modality of exile, hence my inversion [of the traditional Biblical passage: “By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept when we remembered Zion”]: “By the waters of Zion we laid down and wept, when we remembered Babylon.”
Egypt
The situation for Egyptian Jews was somewhat similar to that of those in Iraq. Over time, as various crises erupted during the 1948, 1956 and 1967 Wars, the government increasingly restricted Jewish rights and made life miserable for those who chose to remain. By 1967, almost all the community had left. But it’s important to note that there was no major outbreak of violence, no pogroms, and no forced expulsions as the Zionist narrative often claims. In fact, the US embassy there cabled Washington:
“There is definitely a strong desire among most Jews to emigrate, but this is prompted by the feeling that they have limited opportunity, or from fear for the future, rather than by any direct or present tangible mistreatment at the hands of the government.”
Bizawe takes special exception to the phrase employed by the Israeli education ministry in describing this exodus: “the expulsion of Egyptian Jewry” from their homeland. He acknowledges that while some Jews were indeed expelled (especially those with known Zionist sympathies), the majority were not. The decision of leave was based on numerous criteria, some of which involved voluntary choices, others less so. His final conclusion is:
But it’s indisputable that most of Egypt’s Jews were not expelled. In addition, with all my deep identification with members of my people, they were also not the only ones expelled. Unlike in 1948, in 1956 it was not only Jews who were evicted from the country but also members of other communities.
..This case involves…a persecution obsession, which in fact many people believe is the foundation of our existence as a people. After all, when we say “the expulsion of Egyptian Jewry,” it resonates in our mind and in the collective memory that includes a central traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people, “the expulsion of Spanish Jewry.” We can imagine rows of hooded soldiers gathering Egyptian Jews in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and giving them two options: convert to Islam or be expelled. Or even not giving them the choice but expelling them all. But such an event simply never occurred.
An important event which mirrored Zionist covert acts of violence in Arab countries was the Lavon Affair, known in Hebrew as Eysek Bish. No less a Zionist figure than Moshe Sharett, an Israeli prime minister, writing about the Egyptian bombings, related in his diary his own suspicions that the Mossad was involved in the Bagdhad attacks as well.
In 1954, Britain maintained a strong presence in Egypt to protect its interests in the Suez Canal. There was increasing political conflict and the rise of militant nationalists who demanded the nationalization of the Canal. While the Eisenhower administration encouraged the British to leave and supported the anti-colonial movement led by young officers under the leadership of Gamal Abdul Nasser, Israel saw this as a threat to its own economic interests. Realizing that Britain was increasingly divesting its former colonies due to extreme financial distress, the IDF developed a Black Flag campaign called Operation Susannah. Israeli military intelligence operatives who infiltrated the country, recruited and trained local Egyptian Jews to plant bombs at sites associated with foreign governments. It was made to appear that the nationalists were fomenting unrest in order to further their plot to take over the Canal from Britain. Israel’s role was to be concealed at all costs. However, one of the Israeli agents had become a double agent working for Egyptian intelligence. He exposed the plot and four of the suspects were captured and all lost their lives either by suicide (to avoid prosecution) or execution. Exposure of the affair created a furor inside Israel and cost the defense minister, Pinchas Lavon, his cabinet post, destroying his political career.
Though Operation Susannah’s purpose was not to stampede Jews from Egypt, it is similar to other Israeli Black Flag operations using stealth and violence against Arab governments or to promote Jewish immigration.
Iran
The Jews of Iran enjoyed excellent relations with the Shah during his 40-year reign. Many of them were merchants who enjoyed a comfortable middle-class existence. Because Iran also had a close relationship with Israel, Iran’s Jews could rest comfortably, as their fellow Arab Jews in other countries faced a perilous existence. All that changed with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which toppled the Shah. Not only did the Jews feel threatened by the rise of an Islamist state, Ayatollah Khomeini, who aligned himself solidly with the Palestinian cause, himself suspected their allegiance. Tens of thousands of Jews left the country for Israel, America and other destinations. Now living in an Iranian Diaspora, many of them have aligned themselves with the monarchal cause, though it retains little to no support among Muslim Iranians.
However, unlike in Arab countries, 25,000 Jews remain today in Iran, making it far the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. They are recognized by the State as a legitimate religious minority and have representation guaranteed in the Majlis.
Yemen
The history of the exodus of Yemeni Jews is quite different than other Arab countries. During the Ottoman period, Jews could travel freely throughout the empire and several thousand emigrated to Palestine as early as 1880. They left both for religious and economic reasons. During WWII, Ben Gurion viewed the country’s 60,000 Jews as fertile ground for aliyah efforts. But he was stymied by the fact that the Jews themselves did not wish to leave:
“It is a mark of great failure by Zionism that we have not yet eliminated the Yemen exile [diaspora].”
Anger and tension resulting from the 1948 War caused most of the Jewish community to flee, with the permission of the government. Once again, war promoted the interests of the Zionist state.
Conclusion:
If we take away anything from the survey above it is that there is no broad generalization we can make about the attitudes of the Arab/Muslim world to Jews living in their midst. Some countries responded to conflict between the minority Jews and majority Muslims better than others. Claiming there is an inherent hatred against Jews that is embedded either within the countries themselves or within Islam is not only wrong-headed, but perilous in terms of ongoing relations between Israel and the Arab world. If Israel is ever to find a place within the Middle East it will have to create an accommodation with its Arab neighbors, as they will with Israel. That cannot happen if pro-Israel Jews advance the notion that there is an existential battle between the two entities that is irresolvable.
I’ve offered these accounts of the status of Jews among some of the major Arab lands to rebut the notion that there was a carefully executed plan by all these states to rid themselves of Jews by violent means or physical expulsion. It was more complicated than that. Of course, there was anti-Semitism that drove Jews out. But in many if not most cases, the hostility toward local Jewish populations was driven as much by the actions of the newly independent Zionist state, as by local anti-Semites themselves. Rachel Shabi writes:
Jewish Agency officials knew that their activities in Palestine could imperil Jews in the Middle East (see the work of Israeli historian Esther Meir-Glitzenste). They chose to carry on with those actions and committed to “rescuing” those Jews if things did take a turn for the worse. If Zionist officials themselves worried about a backlash in the Arab world, how can Israel then be absolved of responsibility for the Jewish exodus from those countries?
She reminds us that despite the negative characterization of life in Arab lands by Zionists, in reality it was quite rich and full:
Middle Eastern Jewry comprises many threads and, compared with European Jewry, has a distinct history, heritage and culture. This legacy, in all its dimensions, should not be hijacked to fuel further rage and acrimony in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Prof. Shenhav says in his Haaretz article about the Iraqi exile, most Jews did not leave due to force. They made the choice themselves. They certainly had good reason to leave, and actions of Arab governments encouraged these decisions. But there was no conspiracy, no “Nakba” as many claim.
Noted Israeli historian, Tom Segev, warns that the decision to leave their homeland had myriad motivations. Simplifying the issue by declaring there was only a single reason is a falsification of the historical record:
“Deciding to emigrate to Israel was often a very personal decision. It was based on the particular circumstances of the individual’s life. They were not all poor, or ‘dwellers in dark caves and smoking pits’. Nor were they always subject to persecution, repression or discrimination in their native lands. They emigrated for a variety of reasons, depending on the country, the time, the community, and the person.”
In contrast to the false claim of an Arab Jewish “Nakba,” Ben Gurion did order such a campaign of forced expulsion before, during, and after the 1948 War. Palmach and rightist militias like Lehi, drove entire villages out of their homes by military force. There were wholesale massacres like Deir Yassin which drove indigenous Palestinians out via mass panic. These massacres were not one-off events like those against Jews in the countries mentioned above. They were planned, coordinated and orchestrated as part of a strategy of driving Palestinians out and bringing foreign Jews in, in order to provide for a majority Jewish state. This they accomplished with a vengeance.
Interesting. But Iran is not Arab!
@ Matthew W: I know that. That’s why I often used “Muslim” alongside “Arab.” Though there are “Arab” minorities living in Iran.
“Because Iran also had a close relationship with Israel, Iran’s Jews could rest comfortably, as their fellow Arab Jews in other countries faced a perilous existence.”
“However, unlike other Arab countries, 25,000 Jews remain today in Iran”
Sorry to be pedantic, but both sentences imply that Iran is Arab. For Iranian Jews, Arab Jews are not “their fellow Arab Jews” because they’re not Arab Jews. In the second sentence, the phrase “other Arab countries” implies Iran is an Arab country.
Either you’re not reading closely enough or you’re misunderstanding my meaning. All Jews are fellow Jews to other Jews whether they are Arab, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, etc. I didn’t say, nor did I mean to say that Iranian Jews were Arab Jews. They are Iranian Jews who happen to be fellow Jews to Arab Jews. I suppose I could have written “their fellow Jews in other Arab countries.”
If you want to misread my intent, be my guest. But the phrase actually meant “in other countries, which happen to be Arab.” That’s a terribly awkward locution, so I didn’t use it. I could have said “in other Muslim countries.” But I didn’t alas.
I first heard the distinction “Arab” vs. “Jew” during my visit to Haifa, 1998. I asked my host, whatever happened to Arab Jews? The term was an oxymoron for most there.
@Richard. Richard. Richard.
Maimonides, who you brought up, knew something about life under Arab rule.
In 1159, Maimonides and his family fled the ferocious persecution of Jews by the Almohads in Muslim Spain.
Maimonides fled to Fez, where he could live once he’d converted to Islam, which he did. His teacher, Judah ibn Sussan, chose martyrdom in 1165.
Maimonides next moved to Egypt, where the Fatimids were more tolerant towards Jews and where Maimonides eventually became the doctor to the Sultan of Egypt.
In the Sultan’s Egypt, Maimonides could return to practicing Judaism, but his host the Sultan, treated Maimonides no better than an educated slave.
Maimonides was certainly aware that Crusaders were slaughtering European Jews when he wrote in his ‘Epistle to the Jews of Yemen’, that the Nation of Ishmael is the most cruel to the Jews of all the Nations.
@ Kareem: As you offer no sources for your claims, I’m going to take your account of Maimonides various tribulations as tentative pending proof. Not discounting it, but urging you in all cases to offer credible sources.
As for Maimonides’ view of Muslim/Arab as opposed to Christian attitudes toward Jews, he had no direct experience of life for Jews among Christian lands. His only direct experience was of living in Arab lands. So naturally he bemoaned this compared to life among Christians. But Jewish historians confirm that many more Jews died, were expelled, had their homes and towns destroyed, or lived in ghettos in Christendom than in Arab lands.
To argue otherwise shows either ignorance of the historical record or bad faith (or both).
Actually, Maimonides understood full well how badly Crusaders treated Jews.
When Maimonides arrived with his family to Eretz Yisroel, they settled in Acre, which was than the main Crusader port in the Levant.
Finding that the local Jewish community was living in a state of desperate poverty and political oppression at the hands of the Christian Crusaders, Maimonides and family removed themselves to Egypt, finally settling in Fostat, the Old City of Cairo.
Maimonides had lived a full five months in Acre.
Once having established his medical credentials in Cairo, Maimonides was asked by the medical guild there to go to Ascalon and treat a Frankish king, but
Maimonides declined the guild’s request.
This incident would have been during one of the peace accords the Muslims and Crusaders occasionally entered into.
@Sasha: You didn’t bother to read the comment on which you were commenting. That commenter was trying to prove that Muslims treated Jews far worse than Christians. You have proven the opposite, that Christians treated Jews far worse than Muslims. Which is exactly what almost all credible historians of Jewish history report as well.
Richard said:
“Iraq–In 1941, anti-Jewish sentiment peaked and there were riots, known as the Farhud, in which nearly 200 Jews lost their lives, along with looting of businesses and homes”.
One thousand Iraqi Jews were injured, including many rape victims, and 900 Jewish homes destroyed.
Richard said:
“The Iraqi police later provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of an underground Zionist organization”.
Bullshit.
Or, maybe the Iraqis had failed to tell the CIA agent that Iraqi police had already arrested a Christian officer in the Iraqi army known for his anti-Jewish views, was arrested, but apparently not charged, with the offenses. A number of explosive devices similar to those used in the attack on the Jewish synagogue were found in his home.
And since you brought it up, Iraqi Jews were faced with persecution even before the Baghdad pogrom of 1941, aka, the ‘Farhud’.
In both 1934 and 1936, hundreds of Jews holding government jobs, were fired, purged if you will, while other Iraqi Jews were denied entry to government and private schools of higher education.
See, ‘The Jewish Exodus From Iraq’ by Moshe Gat.
@ Kareem: Anecdotal evidence of a single police officer allegedly being involved with the bombings without any source offered is worth precisely nothing.
Further, if I have a choice between believing a pro Israel propagandist and a CIA station chief, I’ll pick the latter every day.
I make specific reference to the Farhud violence and the deaths and destruction of Jewish property. So you’re essentially repeating what I already said, but claiming it is something I didn’t include. Which shows bad faith or carelessness. I never said life was a bed of roses for Jews. In fact, I mentioned that for all Jews but the elite, they were second class citizens. And I also included numerous accounts of violence against Jews. But they key point is that the incidents of violence were eruptions of popular anger usually incited by Zionist agitation. They were not systematic programs of expulsion or genocide (directed at Jews as a religious minority).
No more comments in this thread.
“But they key point is that the incidents of violence were eruptions of popular anger usually incited by Zionist agitation”
Kareem’s comments show that there was popular, Nazi-like anger and government policies directed against Iraqi Jews in the 1930’s, and popular Nazi (or Mufti) inspired violence against Iraqi Jews in the early 1940’s.
Neither instances of popular anger or violence against Iraqi Jews in the 1930’s or early 1940’s were incited by Zionist agitation.
By the late 1940’s and 1950, Iraqi Jewry had had it with Iraq’s Arab nationalist governments, and fled their homeland for the relative safety of Israel.
@ Nate Depp: I’m repeating here what I wrote to “Kareem.” You are repeating in your comment what I wrote in my post. Don’t do that. I note there that in the 1930s some Arab nationalists were sympathetic to the Nazis, just as Jewish nationalist were, if not sympathetic, at least willing to negotiate and do business with them. Arab sympathy for Hitler no more proves an eternal hatred of Jews than Avodah’s Haavara Agreement proves a Jewish romance with Nazism.
Similarly, do NOT publish more than one post in a thread at a time. If you do this, you monopolize the threads. One post at a time.
Again, as I wrote in my post: while there were incidents of violence against Jews before 1948, there were not systematic, not organized, nor part of a plan to eliminate or expel all Jews (as Ben Gurion’s expulsion of Palestinians was such a plan).
As for Iraqi Jews coming to Israel: they neither enjoyed relative safety nor equal treatment to the Ashkenazi majority. They died fighting in Israel’s wars while living in slum-like encampments. They faced massive discrimination and disdain from native Israelis. It was by no means the land of milk and honey promised by the Zionist emissaries who recruited them.
Richard, candidly speaking on the exodus of Algerian Jews said:
“But they were not driven out by violence or virulent anti-Semitism as in other Arab lands.”
Uhhh…which Arab lands are you talking about?
Richard, your additional comments on Algerian Jewry are risible.
Jews living in Algeria in 1963, woke up one day and found they were not citizens in the country of their birth. The Algerian government had revoked their citizenship because they were Jews, and only because they were Jews.
If that’s not anti-Semitism, than what is?
“The Jews had been between a rock and a hard place for quite some time already. Muslim antisemitism reached its peak with the eruption of the Constantine pogrom of 1934, in which 25 Jews were killed. French antisemitism reached its zenith in WW2. Under Vichy rule, Jews not only were stripped of their French nationality, but were sacked from public service jobs and subject to quotas and restrictions.
Citizenship was reinstated in 1943 as the Vichy regime collapsed. Many Jews saw themselves as Frenchmen of the Jewish faith – Français israelites.
Arab Algerians embarked on an ever more brutal campaign of decolonisation in the 1950s, while the pieds noirs engaged in equally brutal counter-terror. The Jewish community originally maintained an official position of neutrality, but they joined the French camp after violent attacks including the burning of the Great Synagogue in Algiers in December 1960. Arabs went on the rampage ripping memorial plaques from the walls, and torching books and Torah scrolls.
Like the pieds noirs, the Jews were faced with a stark choice: suitcase or coffin. They scrambled to reach seaports and airports. By the time Algeria had declared independence on 3 July 1962, all but a few thousand Jews had left for France. Algeria’s ‘Nationality Code’, passed in 1963, deprived all non-muslims of Algerian citizenship, forcing any remaining Jews into exile.”
https://www.pilotguides.com/articles/the-forgotten-jews-of-algeria/
“Jews living in Algeria in 1963 woke up one day and found out they were not citizens in the country of their birth. The Algerian government had revoked their citizenship and blablah”
Total BS, you don’t know what you’re talking about ! How could the Algerian government revoke a citizenship that didn’t exist until 1963. The “Jews of Algeria” (Juifs d’Algérie) that’s the way they were called and call themselves until today (as opposed to the Morrocan and Tunisian Jews who link their identity to the people and not the territory) were French citizen and mostly left with their “new compatriots”. Read Benjamin Stora on the topic, such as his “Les trois exils”
@ Kareem: Read the comment rules. Do not publish more than a single comment at a time in a thread. Publishing 3 comments at one time monopolies the threads and my time responding. One comment at a time.
Do NOT repeat claims I’ve already reported in my post. I reported the loss of citizenship in the post. Then you repeated the exact same information. Repetition is boring and mind-numbing. Don’t do it.
Jews weren’t the only group refused citizenship. There were other ethnic and religious groups in Algeria, not to mention pieds noir or those of French origin. None of them retained citizenship. So this was not specifically anti-Semitic. Unless you wish to claim it was also anti-Christian, anti-French, etc.
Again, much of the violence against Jews WAs due to the agitation of Zionism and emissaries from Palestine who advanced a national-political identity, rather than a religious one. Jews lived in these countries for centuries without facing major prejudice or violence. The sole reason thsi changed was Israel’s wars against Muslim-Arab states and deliberate provocations of Zionism within the countries themselves.
Nothing you’ve written contradicts my own account. Everything you claim is included in general terms in my post.
This is an extensive topic, each country has is own history as far as its Jewish population is concerned.
I have a few remarks on the country that I know best, Algeria: the war 1954-1962 was not a civil war but a war of independence, even French normalized discourse names it so (to Algerians it was of course a war of liberation and is called so also by left-wing French observers).
Saying that Algerian citizenship was denied to non-Muslims is not totally correct:
1. In 1870, the Jewish population of French colonized Algeria became French citizens through the Décret Crémieux (named after a French Jew), the Muslims did not. Colonial divide-and-rule.
2. According to the Accord d’Évian and the Code of the Algerian Nationality, article 9 French citizens could stay in Algeria after independence (1962) as French citizens or individually ask to become Algerian citizens whereas Algerian citizensship was automatically granted to Muslim Algerians (who had no citizenship during the French occupation).
According to historian Benjamin Stora (himself born into a Jewish family in Algeria prior to independence) some 200.000 French citizens among them 10.000-20.000 Jews remained in Algeria after independence, most as French citizens.
Also Tunisian and Morrocan Jews as well as their descendants still have or can reclaim their citizenship, the latest Morrocan constitution reaffirmed this eternal right.
I personnally know a Tunisian Jew who returned home after the 2011 Revolution and even ran for Parliament.
Thousands of Tunisian and particularly Morrocan Jews living in France have secondary homes in their homeland and go there every summer.
Really not comparable to the Nakba.
Oui says:
“10.000-20.000 Jews remained in Algeria after independence, most as French citizens.”
Right. Ninety-five percent of Algerian Jews fled, and five percent,10,000-20,000, remained, but by the time the dust settled after the Six Day War (1967), fewer than 1,000 Algerian Jews remained in Algeria.
The Great Synagogue in Algiers was burned and desecrated in December 1960 and than turned into a rebel headquarters.
“Rebel leaders charged that the rioting had started after Jews had fired on them from the balconies and windows of their homes. Jewish leaders indignantly denied these accusations as utterly false. Some of the rebel leaders told Paris newspapermen that their slogan, “Moslem Algeria,” meant they will no longer tolerate Jews in Algeria. Other rebels, however, said the slogan did not mean they were against the Jews.”–https://www.jta.org/archive/jews-in-algiers-tense-moslem-rebels-make-synagogue-their-headquarters
The slogan, “Moslem Algeria,” meant they will no longer tolerate Jews in Algeria.
Not at all comparable to the Nakba.
Nope.
First, I’m not Oui.
So all you have is an article from 1960 about the taking over of the grande synagogue in the Casbah by the Algerian rebels ? Do you know what happened in the Casbah during the war of liberation ? If not, I suggest you see Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece “The Battle of Algiers”.
And in case you don’t know there used to be a mosque there, Sidi al-Harbi going back to the 14th century, the French colonizers sold it to members of the Jewish community who destroyed the mosque and built a synagogue on top. Facts that you can easily verify with our friend Google.
I also suggest that you read the book I mentionned “Les trois exils” by Benjamin Stora or procure a 2012 special edition on “Les Juifs d’Algerie” by French Jewish magazine l’Arche.
So I’ve lived most of my adult life in France, and I’ve never heard a Jew from Algeria claiming he’s a refugee … they were French citizens and left with the French.
PS. I also have to mention that the Front de Libération National specifically adressed the Jewish population in Algeria on various occasions asking them to side with the liberation movement, but unfortunately only a few did, such as Daniel Timsit whereas many French Jewish intellectuals from the mainland sided with the liberation movement, many risking their lives.
@Deir Yassin
Regarding the founding of the Grand Synagogue, my understanding is that, ‘In 1839 the French government tore down several buildings and synagogues in the Jewish quarter as part of urban renewal and promised in return to provide 120,000 francs toward the construction of a grand synagogue. 25 years later, after much bureaucratic hassle, the site was finally inaugurated on September 19, 1865.’
Regarding the FLN’s mindless assault on the synagogue, ‘They went on a rampage inside, ripping torah scrolls and leaving the torn parchments strewn on the front steps. Memorial plaques – including the two large monuments to Algiers Jews killed during World War I – were ripped off the walls. Rebels raised their green and white flag atop the synagogue. “Death to the Jews” and swastikas were daubed on the walls. After two days of wild rioting, which included attacks on nearby Jewish shops and homes, French forces restored order. But the synagogue – and its community – would never be restored.’
Death to the Jews.
http://archive.diarna.org/site/detail/public/292/
BTW, I watched Battle of Algiers 30 years ago. An excellent film.
@ Sasha: The source you quote does not offer a source for its alleged historical account. So I’m not prepared to grant it credibility. Also I read the About page of this website says it seeks to preserve the remnants of North African life before it is entirely lost. In fact, this is not the condition of these communities. In several countries, as I noted in my post, synagogues and cemeteries have been restored. In some countries like Morocco a community exists and is by no means “lost.” Another bit of praise for the site from a right-wing pro-Israel scholar obsessed with a global anti-Semitism plot to kill Jews :
So it would appear to me this website & those behind it have their own ideological ax to grind.
I would have no problem with an NGO like Centropa which seeks to promote and preserve existing Eastern European Jewish life. But an NGO that treats Jewish life as dead and needing to be preserved in mothballs is not helpful.
You are done in this thread.
@ Nate Depp: What you conveniently omit from your faux history exercise is that Zionists fomented much of the hatred by dividing native Jews from their Muslim fellow citizens. Jews lived relatively peacefully for over a millennium. Yet within a decades Jewish communities were decimated. The fire of hatred was fanned by Zionists. Not to say that Arab countries themselves didn’t play a role in this. Of course they did. But you want to erase a critical piece of the historical record, and we won’t let you.
No more comments in this thread.
Richard, you said that, “Because the Jewish Brigade had been stationed in the country after the defeat of the Nazis, the tenets of Zionism took root in the community.”
I don’t believe that statement to be accurate.
The Jewish Brigade fought exclusively in Europe and had never been stationed in Libya.
A Palestine Regiment, made up of Jews and Arabs from Palestine, did fight the Nazis in Libya, but was removed to Europe in 1944, well before the Libya pogroms in 1945.
So, that dog won’t hunt.
Moreover, an actual eyewitness who lived the Libyan pogrom, neither blames the victims nor libels the Jewish Agency.
https://www.jewishrefugees.org.uk/?s=An+eye+witness+account+of+the+1945+pogrom
Woof.
@ Nate Depp: My account of the Jewish Brigade comes from the Wikipedia article on the Jews of Arab lands. If you think this is wrong, you’d best add your view in the discussion page for the article. Until I see a credible source saying otherwise (which you haven’t offered), I’ll stick with Wikipedia.
A single account of indeterminate credibility is just that. I’ve offered multiple sources for many of these accounts for just this reason.
Also “pogrom” is a loaded term seeking to link the experience of Arab Jews to the suffering of European Jews and indirectly to the Holocaust. This is something that should be avoided at all costs. The experiences of Jews in Arab lands are totally different than those in Christian Europe. The terms used must reflect that.
Richard, you said that, “Because the Jewish Brigade had been stationed in the country after the defeat of the Nazis, the tenets of Zionism took root in the community”.
I offer you this;
“In October 1944, under the leadership of Brigadier Ernest F. Benjamin, the brigade group was shipped to Italy and joined the British Eighth Army in November, which was engaged in the Italian Campaign under the 15th Army Group. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Brigade#Military_engagements
As I said, the Jewish Brigade was in Europe, not North Africa, in 1945.
And by all means, Richard, stick with Wikipedia, which labels the massacre of Jews in Tripoli a ‘pogrom’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_anti-Jewish_riots_in_Tripolitania
Richard, the point isn’t whether Arabs can commit a pogrom, or where in Europe the Jewish Brigade was in 1945. The point is, that neither the Jewish Agency nor the Jewish Brigade had the slightest thing to do with the Tripoli pogrom.
@ Nate Depp: The Palestinian Regiment preceded, and became the Jewish Brigade:
As for Wikipedia’s description of anti-Jewish violence in Libya, it is not Moses’ tablets from Mt. Sinai. It is a useful source in general terms on some subjects. But not every word is to be treated as sacred.
You are done in this thread.
If neither the Libyan Jewish victims, or the Jewish Agency, or the Jewish Brigade weren’t the cause of the Libyan pogrom, than who is?
The answer may lie in an Oct. 2, 1945, newspaper article from the main Arab newspaper in Tripoli, which published a startling account of a meeting in Damascus between Muslim religious leaders; which leaders has spoken of rumours of a United Nations plan to partition Palestine.
The newspaper said that the rumours had aroused the scorn of the religious leaders who supported ‘any action aimed at eliminating the Jews of Arab countries’.–Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835-1970, page 364, notes 11 and 12.
@ Sasha: “If” the Jewish Agency didn’t do it? Neither you nor the other hasbarists here have proven that it didn’t. So your hypothetical is unfounded.
As for your souirce: you claim an unanamed newspaper published an account of a meeting of unnamed leaders in which an unnamed rumor was scorned.
And all this published by an author I’ve never heard of. Sorry, but it doesn’t make the grade.
Renzo DeFelice is very well known in Italy and among academics as a 20th century Italian historian specializing in the study of Fascism. The book Sasha is referring to, Ebrei in un paese arabo: gli ebrei nella Libia contemporanea tra colonialismo, nazionalismo arabo e sionismo (1835–1970) (Available on Amazon as “Jews in an Arab Land: Jews in contemporary Libya between colonialism, Arab nationalism and Zionism (1835-1970)”) is without a doubt, the most complete and authoritative historical study of the Jews of Libya in that era. Just so you know.
blaming the victims for the evil of the perpetrators. The Arabs conquered the land from the Byzantiums. They lost it just like they lost Spain by the same method they took it. End of story,.
Richard, Bat Yeor, and Lynn Julius would totally disagree withyou. Pardon me, if i take the side of Mizrahi Jews, over the few anecdotal sources you cite.
You omitted to mention somehting that discredits your entire narrative. Most mizrahi Jews in Israel, are more anti Arab than Askhnezi Jews, even the most right wing.
I suggest you go and live in Israel for a while.
@ You’re offering Bat Yeor and Lyn Julius as your proof? Two of the most biased untrustworthy sources one could dig up?
You aren’t taking the side of Mizrahi Jews. Many of them totally disagree with you. You’re taking the side of the tendentious Zionist narrative, which is much different.
Your claims about Mizrahi Jews are also untrustworthy. Many Mizrahi Jews feel just the opposite to what you claim. Generalizations tend to flatten reality, rather than reflect it. Especially when they’re used to advance a Zionist narrative.
I suggest you not offer me any advice about what I should do. Besides, I lived in Israel for two years and studied at the Hebrew University in Hebrew-taught courses, and speak Hebrew fluently. I suggest you haven’ t the faintest idea who you’re dealing with.
Richard, if those Arab countries who let their Jews go (I will accept your argument it was not a ‘nakba’) did not accept the Palestinian refugees, then your analysis is not a fair one.
You said to the some of the commenters that they are ‘Zionists’. In other words, the Zionists alone claim that their was a ‘Nakba’ for supposedly dubious reasons of taking Palestine? If that is true, then you cannot have the same bias as an antiZionist and expect us to accept it.
There is the case of Pakistani Zionism. When India was forced to cede terrirtory to Pakistan, there was a forced population exchange. The Hindus and other in Pakistan contolloed territory had to leave and vice versa.
Now the real issue about the Arab jewish refugees is this. They had the right to stay in the Middle East and should have suffered no consequences regardless of what was going on in Palestine. The Arab States should not have let them go, but doing so they gave Zionism a legitimacy it did not deserve at the beginning. Don’t you agree? They kept Jewish property, why? They need to compensate all those Jews, and take in the Palestinian refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and around the world. Just like India and Pakistan partook in a population exchange, so should Israel and the Arab states. That is a fair solution to the whole refugee problem.
The interesting thing here, is that the Arab Jews do not want to return to Arab lands.
@ Anupam: Well if it isn’t our Hindutva hasbaroid back among us!
Arab countries have absolutely no obligation to accept Palestinian refugees (though many did). They are Palestinian, born in Palestine, indigenous to Palestine. Not to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, etc. Israel expelled them. It is Israel’s responsibility to repair the injustice by offering them Return to their prior homes. Jews have much experience with forced exile. Believe me, it is traumatic, even deadly. I wish it on no one, Palestinian or Jew. Besides, such for e population exchanges are explicitly forbidden under Geneva Conventions.
I don’t permit you to tell me what I am, what I believe or otherwise characterize my views. I do that and need no help from you. Nor do I care whether you “accept” my definition or not.
A nonsensical term.
That too is nonsensical. Of course your statement is true in theory. But the Middle East doesn’t deal well in theories. It only deals with cold hard reality; which was this: Jews lived peacefully in the region for 2,000. But in one short decade, Zionism destroyed an entire Jewish civilization. With the help of callous Arab leaders, of course. But the main new ingredient in this was Zionism and its effort to infiltrate and sabotage Arab Jewish life.
Yes, because that population exchange between India and Pakistan went so well for the victims didn’t it? How many were slaughtered on each side? Millions. THere is absolutely no reason for such a population exchange. Of course, Arab Jews should be, and in many cases are, free to return to their homeland. Palestinians must be free to return to theirs. ANything else is a violation of international law and a denial of democracy and the rule of law.
Not “interesting” and not true. When there is true normalization and a resolution of conflict then Arab Jews will return to their homelands in significant numbers. Some are doing so now. Do not offer slogans or opinion disguised as fact. You must offer credible sources for your claims. Where you do not, you will not be believed.
You are done in this thread.
Why hasn’t anyone objected to what Richard said here:
It was the Zionist determination to declare a state–despite warnings from Arab leaders that this was a red line they could not countenance–
Richard is saying Jews should cower when anyone threatens them if they seek independence. Thanks G-d for Moshe and Joshua. Recall, even in Egypt there were some Jews who preferred to live as slaves than join the mulititude and go for independence.
But even if we take this argument to its logical conclusion, it can be turned on its head. It could be said, the the Arabs who refused to accept partition were warned bloodshed would follow. But they still chose to refuse to let Jews have the same independence they craved themselves. And they paying the price to this day. Except, those that realise their mistakes.
Just curious, Richard, what do you make of the UAE assertions that Arabs were wrong to reject the creation of Israel from the onset? That was a mistake, which you seem to think was not.
@ Tiff:
Don’t EVER presume to summarize, characterize or otherwise speak in my name. Don’t say what I mean. Don’t tell anyone you know what I mean. You don’t.
Ben Gurion had many options available to him in 1948. There were Israeli Jews like Judah Magnes who urged him to delay to give UN-sponsored negotiations an opportunity. Of course, it was future PM Yitzhak Shamir who assassinated the chief UN peace negotiator, Count Folke von Bernadotte. BG knew he had superior military force and deliberately chose the path of war and independence. Also, other major sources have correctly claimed that BG and the Zionists knew the impact independence would have on Arab Jews in their homelands. They deliberately chose to ignore these matters in favor of Israeli independence. Zionists have always derogated the welfare of Diaspora Jews. And it is a shameful betrayal of Jewish (as opposed to Zionist) values.
Your racism and presumption in making judgements against “the Arabs” is noxious.
Your comment went far off-topic. READ THE COMMENT RULES and follow them. You will not get another warning.
The Jewish refugees were double victims, but the hypocricy of the Arab countries that expelled/murdered them should not go unchallenged. Israel used laws first deployed by Pakistan a year earlier against its non Muslim minorities, yet the Arab world did not condemn Pakistan and the exodus of non Muslim Hindus.
How Pakistani Law Inspired Israel to Seize Arabs’ Landhttps://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-why-d-israel-seize-arabs-land-1.5332147
The new Jewish state used the legal techniques of a new Muslim state to deprive its own mainly-Muslim refugees of their properties. How ironic.
Benjamin PogrundNov. 26, Updated: Apr. 10, 2018
@ Lenna: It is indeed ironic that a failed Muslim state offered Israel a legal fig leaf to steal the lands of Palestinians. This comparison will not flatter Israel nor make Israelis happy.
“It is always dangerous in historical terms to conflate two separate periods, separate regions, and separate societies as this use of the term does.”
I agree which is why calling Israel Apartheid or Colonialism is wrong.
@ Dan Lev: Not so. Actually the analogy between Israel and South African is quite apt and has been confirmed by numerous scholars “in historical terms.”