One-stop blog on Jews from Arab and Muslim Countries and the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees, updated daily
Diarna has an exclusive interview with Ruth Pearl. It's not always audible, but it's the first time that the mother of the beheaded reporter Daniel Pearl has spoken on the record of her childhood in Baghdad.
A recurring nightmare haunted Ruth Pearl (nee Rejwan) 20 years after she survived the Farhud pogrom in 1941: even after she had had her children, she imagined she was being pursued up the stairs of her home by a Muslim with a gun.
This would not be her only nightmare: Ruth's son Daniel, a reporter with the Wall St Journal, would fall victim to Islamist kidnappers in Pakistan.
For a child of only six, Ruth remembers quite a lot about the Farhud in which 179 Jews were killed and many more injured. She remembers hearing stories of shops being looted. On the way to fetch a cigarette for her father she saw a wounded looter, whom the Muslim neighbours were not interested in helping: in fact the Muslim neighbours had put the rioters off attacking her family's home. "There are no Jews here", the neighbours had told them.
The family sheltered in their cellar from bombing by German and British aircraft: the Nazis and the British were engaged in a war for control over Iraq in the month before the Farhud. Of all the areas where Jews lived, it must be said that Bataween, a prosperous, modern district of Baghdad, was least affected by the Farhud. Compared to Takht-el Takia and Bab-el Sharq, the old Jewish quarters, there were few Jewish casualties in Bataween. But there was shooting, and Ruth remembers seeing two bullet holes in her house, which narrowly missed the residents.
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A recurring nightmare haunted Ruth Pearl (nee Rejwan) 20 years after she survived the Farhud pogrom in 1941: even after she had had her children, she imagined she was being pursued up the stairs of her home by a Muslim with a gun.
This would not be her only nightmare: Ruth's son Daniel, a reporter with the Wall St Journal, would fall victim to Islamist kidnappers in Pakistan.
For a child of only six, Ruth remembers quite a lot about the Farhud in which 179 Jews were killed and many more injured. She remembers hearing stories of shops being looted. On the way to fetch a cigarette for her father she saw a wounded looter, whom the Muslim neighbours were not interested in helping: in fact the Muslim neighbours had put the rioters off attacking her family's home. "There are no Jews here", the neighbours had told them.
The family sheltered in their cellar from bombing by German and British aircraft: the Nazis and the British were engaged in a war for control over Iraq in the month before the Farhud. Of all the areas where Jews lived, it must be said that Bataween, a prosperous, modern district of Baghdad, was least affected by the Farhud. Compared to Takht-el Takia and Bab-el Sharq, the old Jewish quarters, there were few Jewish casualties in Bataween. But there was shooting, and Ruth remembers seeing two bullet holes in her house, which narrowly missed the residents.
Read article in full
TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2013
Bat Ye'or's 'Understanding Dhimmitude' reviewed
The person who popularised the term 'dhimmitude' to describe the submissive attitude of non-Muslims, is a slight, fragile, shy Jewish refugee from Cairo calling herself 'the Daughter of the Nile'. Mordechai Nisan reviews Bat Ye'or's latest work in Front Page Magazine:Understanding Dhimmitude, a compilation of 21 talks and lectures.
With her five major books in hand, and a growing reputation as a woman of courage and truth, with a call for justice for the defenseless dhimmi victims of Islam, Bat Ye’or lectured in a variety of forums in Europe, America, Canada, and Israel. She was consistently forthright and precise, teaching and warning. The major themes that Bat Ye’or expresses and explains in her lectures can be summarized as follows:
- Islam in its religious doctrine and civilizational aspirations demands a superior status in replacing and superseding Judaism and Christianity, its ancient forerunners;
- Islam has from its origins constructed a “regime of dhimmitude [over the inferior and tolerated non-Muslims], the laws of dhimmitude…the mentality of dhimmitude” (p. 118) that has imposed insecurity and oppression on the native peoples of the Orient/Middle East;
- Islam succeeded to bring about a situation such that “the whole of Oriental Christendom was destroyed” (p. 40), a kind of “religious cleansing” rolling on to this very day;
- There is no validity to “the myth of a marvelous Muslim-Christian symbiosis” or a “Middle East Golden Age” (p. 161), not in the past nor to its present formulations and offshoots, like the Euro-Arab Dialogue and the Alliance of Civilizations, which are deceptive plots for Muslim conquest;
- The Islamic jihad mentality of conquest overwhelmed Eastern Christianity and now targets “the Christian West” (p. 83) – with the goal “to force us all to live in the shadow of dhimmitude in Europe” (p. 52).
- In the face of Islamic jihad, “Israel represents the national liberation of a dhimmi people” (p.55), as the Jews have risen up in rebellion against the forces of Muslim repression and degradation to secure their political independence in their ancient homeland.
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My traumatic flight from Egypt
MONDAY, JULY 29, 2013
What two Syrian Jews taught me
During the 1970s, while I was learning Hebrew at anulpan in Jerusalem, a brother and sister from Syria joined our class. They were both around 13 or 15 years old; the brother was taller and older than the sister. Someone said they had been smuggled into Israel through Lebanon, by the Mossad.
There was something strange about them: they never parted, and they never smiled. They stuck together throughout the many months of the ulpanclass, never once with a smile on their face. This was very odd. Most of the other students were like me, youths from the Soviet Union. We came with our parents from that anti-Semitic country and its oppressive regime. I was familiar with Russian anti-Semitism from personal experience. But none of us looked like these Jews from Syria. Not at all.
A few months after ulpan had finished, I met the brother elsewhere. He was alone, without his sister. He smiled at me and said “Hi Alex, how are you?” The words were quite ordinary, but my feeling wasn’t. I haven’t seen them since, but I haven’t forgotten them.
Over the years I was reminded of them whenever Arab Knesset Members made the pilgrimage to Damascus, showering praise upon the Assads, both the father and son. Azmi Bishara did this quite a lot, but he wasn’t the only one. MK Abdulwahab Darawshe once said, upon returning from Damascus: “If only the Arabs in Israel enjoyed the same conditions as the Jews in Syria.” Indeed, I thought, there might be quite a few supporters for this idea in the Jewish public.
A few years ago, I participated in an Israeli-Palestinian encounter. The young Palestinians taking part made the familiar claim - that the Palestinian people are paying the price for European Anti-Semitism. I was reminded them that half of Israel’s Jewish population originated in the Middle East, not in Europe. The usual historical ideological arguments ensued. In the end, I said I wanted to share a personal story, and I told the story of the brother and sister from Syria, with the smile and the “How are you?” at the end. Silence spread through the room. No one questioned my story’s authenticity. Finally, one of the young Palestinians sighed and said,
“Okay, well, we know how they treat us, the Palestinians, in Arab countries. Why should we be surprised at how they treat the Jews?”
During the coffee break, one of the young Palestinians approached and asked me, “Do you know what happened to that young man?” “No,” I replied, “I lost touch with him. I suppose that all is well and he just became Israeli.” That was a surreal moment, in a positive sense: it was obvious that the young Palestinian was pleased to hear that the Syrian Jew had become Israeli.
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A different story of displacement, by Matti Friedman
SUNDAY, JULY 28, 2013
Film-maker 'betrayed Iran' with Israel visit
Film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf (as reported inYnet-News), is already paying the price for his visit to Israel: the Iranian regime has frozen Makhmalbaf out of the Iranian cine-scene, although the setting for his film 'The Gardener', the Baha'i gardens in Haifa, would likely have been enough to make him persona non grata. In other news of positive developments between Iranians and Jews, I'm mentioning two books of Jewish interest by non-Jewish Iranians:
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is the most senior Iranian to officially visit Israel. During his visit, he held a meeting with journalists and film critics in Jerusalem and told them he was the first Iranian director to allow a commercial screening of his film in Israel. he added that he was breaking a taboo and hoped others would follow in his footsteps.
"We have to get to know each other through art, literature and cinema, so we can become friends and end the hostility. That's the reason I filmed my latest movie, 'The Gardener,' in Israel. I hope Israeli filmmakers will be able to shoot films in Iran," he said.
Feel the love: last year's 'Israel 'hearts' Iran' Facebook campaign
In a candid interview to Yedioth Ahronoth on the eve of his arrival in Israel, the veteran director expressed his hope for peace and a change in his homeland, and praised Israel and the Israelis.
"In a previous secret visit here, I looked at the faces of young Israelis and saw the faces of my children and their friends," he said. "I thought I was coming to a military country but discovered a democracy instead."
The Iranian authorities, however, were quick to respond to the positive public and media buzz created by the Israel visit. The official Iranian cinema association declared a full boycott on all of the films made by Makhmalbaf, who left the Islamic Republic in 2005 after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.
The cinema organization ordered all museums and cinema to erase every single memory of the famous director and boycott him forever. Senior Iranian officials referred to Makhmalbaf as a "rootless and soulless man" following his visit to Israel. The official Iranian news agency called him a "traitor."
But while some Iranian academics and artists condemned Makhmalbaf over his visit to Israel, a group of journalists and artists published an open letter praising him for his courage.
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A new book in Farsi on the Holocaust is a hit among non-Jewish Iranians (The Tablet)
A new book in French by Ardavan Amir-Aslani 'Juifs et Perses' (Scroll down to last story)
FRIDAY, JULY 26, 2013
Rabbi shot in Dagestan
Antisemitism is suspected as the motive for the shooting of a Chabad rabbi in the Muslim republic of Dagestan. Since this report appeared in theJerusalem Post, the rabbi has been flown to Israel for treatment: (with thanks: Anonymous reader)
Update: The President of Dagestan has blamed the attack on one of the most extremist Islamist groups operating in the Chechnya-Caucasus region (The Algemeiner)
Rabbi Ovadia Isakov, 40, an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch hassidic movement, was shot and seriously wounded in Derbent in the Republic of Dagestan on Thursday.
Isakov, identified as chief rabbi of Derbent by Chabad sources, was wounded in the lung after being shot from behind by an unidentified assailant not far from his home.
The attack took place as the rabbi exited his car to enter his home in the predominantly Muslim republic.
He is currently in intensive care and reported to be on a respirator.
Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar has made arrangements to fly Isakov to Israel for further treatment “as soon as his condition stabilizes,” according to Chabad’s website.
The website also reported that Russian authorities believed the attack might have been motivated by the rabbi’s Jewish appearance. Police said they were considering “religious motivations” but were exploring all leads.
The rabbi’s house had been vandalized in 2007.
Dagestan, a republic of Russia, has a history of Islamic insurgency and has served as a battleground in clashes between Chechen rebels and federal troops.
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Guardian omits 800,000 Jewish refugees
Three cheers for Adam Levick of CiFwatch for his critique of yet another article that deliberately ignores the 'ethnic cleansing' of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Of course, you can't expect the Guardian's historical overview of refugee movements to be exhaustive - the movement of 14 million refugees after the 1947 Indian-Pakistani war is left out, for instance - but to mention the 'Nakba - Palestine' (complete with tendentious account of its causes) without also mentioning the greater movement of Jewish refugees in the opposite direction - reduces the article to bare, naked propaganda.
It’s one thing to re-write history, but quite another to pretend as if a major historical event – involving a well-documented case of ethnic cleansing – never occurred.
A July 25th edition of the Guardian’s Data Blog, edited by Mona Chalabi, was titled ‘What happened to history’s refugees?‘ Here’s the strapline:
Did you notice an historical omission?
The Guardian completely whitewashed the expulsionof hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugeesbetween 1948 and 1967!
As the site of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) explains:
Of the 800,000 or so Jewish refugees between 1948 and 1972, more than 200,000 found refuge in Europe and North America while 586,000 were resettled in Israel, ”without any compensation from the Arab governments who had confiscated their possessions.” Further, unlike Palestinian refugees who were displaced by war, a definitive report, co-authored by Irwin Cotler, concluded that Jews’ expulsion was part of an intentional and coordinated effort by Arab rulers:
The Guardian’s ideologically inspired animosity towards the Jewish state has crossed a line, and the paper’s editors need to be held accountable for such completely ahistorical propaganda.
Read article in full
It’s one thing to re-write history, but quite another to pretend as if a major historical event – involving a well-documented case of ethnic cleansing – never occurred.
A July 25th edition of the Guardian’s Data Blog, edited by Mona Chalabi, was titled ‘What happened to history’s refugees?‘ Here’s the strapline:
People have been forced to leave their countries since the very notion of a country was created. We take a look at some of the largest human movements in history to find out why people left their homes, where they went and what became of them.This ambitious project includes Israelites: Canaan (740 BC), Edict of Fontainebleau (France 1685), Muhacirs (Ottoman Empire 1783), Pogroms (Russia 1881), WWI (Europe 1914), WWII (Europe 1945), Nakba (Palestine 1948), and others. (...)
Did you notice an historical omission?
The Guardian completely whitewashed the expulsionof hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugeesbetween 1948 and 1967!
Jewish Refugees, 1948
…under the heavy weight of Anti-Jewish governments and policy, nearly one million Jews [beginning in 1948] from the Middle East and North Africa had their property confiscated, basic human rights stripped, and were systematically persecuted and victimized. Ultimately these Jews were forced to flee their homes and surrender their nationalities, becoming the “Forgotten Refugees” of the Middle East and North Africa.JIMENA reminds us that, though “UN Resolution 242 asserted that Jews fleeing Arab countries were ‘bona fide’ refugees” the international community,the media and educational systems have continuously ignored their plight.
Revisionist history of the Middle East conveniently excludes the fact that over half of Israel’s Jewish population live there not because European atrocities during World War II, but because of Anti-Jewish Arab governments who dispossessed and displaced their native Jewish populations following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Adopted narratives of the Arab-Israeli conflict fail to address the fact that Israel was the largest refugee camp in the Middle East, providing safe haven to some 650,000 dispossessed Middle Eastern and North African Jewish refugees whose ancestors had a continuous presence in the region for over 3,000 years.
Of the 800,000 or so Jewish refugees between 1948 and 1972, more than 200,000 found refuge in Europe and North America while 586,000 were resettled in Israel, ”without any compensation from the Arab governments who had confiscated their possessions.” Further, unlike Palestinian refugees who were displaced by war, a definitive report, co-authored by Irwin Cotler, concluded that Jews’ expulsion was part of an intentional and coordinated effort by Arab rulers:
These massive human rights violations were not events that occurred coincidently or haphazardly; nor were they the result only of state-sanctioned patterns of repression in each of the Arab countries, though this would be bad enough; rather, as the evidence discloses, they were the result of an international criminal conspiracy by the League of Arab States to target and persecute the Jewish populations in their respective countries.It’s one thing to parrot the Palestinian narrative of the “Nakba”, but what the Guardian did was to completely erase from the historical record the well-documented (and completely undisputed) forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews.
The Guardian’s ideologically inspired animosity towards the Jewish state has crossed a line, and the paper’s editors need to be held accountable for such completely ahistorical propaganda.
Read article in full
THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013
The Palestinian position on Jewish refugees
With thanks: Lily
Last October Palestinian spokesmen and apologists were frantically mobilising to put out a fire. The conflagration started when the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the World Jewish Congress sponsored a conference on the issue of Justice for 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. It was the most high-profile event yet launched on the Jewish refugees' behalf, but the Palestinians were seriously worried. They saw this unexpected focus on a second set of refugees produced by the Arab-Israeli conflict as the biggest threat yet to their monopoly on refugee victimhood.
In its effort to pour water on the issue, the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights produced a 'position paper'. If thelatest peace talks get anywhere between Israelis and Palestinians, we might expect Palestinians to toe the BADIL line.
Unlike PA spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi and MK Ahmed Tibi, BADIL does not attempt to deny that Jews from Arab countries were refugees.
"All refugees are entitled to, amongst other things,voluntary repatriation, property restitution and financial compensation", says BADIL.
By voluntary repatriation BADIL means a 'right of return' for Palestinian refugees to Israel proper, based on the December 1948 UNGA resolution 194. But the resolution, which is actually only a recommendation, stipulates a crucial rider: the refugees, returning 'at the earliest opportunity' have to be ready to live in peace with their neighbours. (The resolution does not set a time limit for refugee return, but its drafters would never have imagined that refugees would wish to return after 60 years or more. ) Presumably, resolution 194 would also apply to Jewish refugees returning to their Arab countries of birth.
The BADIL paper states:
"All reputable refugee-centered campaigns should acknowledge that the rights of all refugees are enshrined in international law. As such, the State of Israel must, in initiating this new campaign, recognize not just the rights of Arab Jewish refugees (sic), but also those of all other refugee groups, including Palestinians."
Translation: we are happy to see Jewish refugees return, as long as Arab refugees can do so too.
Naturally, introducing a second set of refugees into the picture dents Palestinian exceptionalism. The last thing Jewish refugees want is to return to countries which persecuted them - states that are still today hostile and dangerous to Jews. Israel has of course stated over and over again that the mass return of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants will destroy the Jewish state.
It so happens that the Palestinian and Jewish refugees exchanged places in the Middle East in similar numbers, as had happened in other war situations (Greece/Turkey; India/Pakistan). A peace settlement stipulating that neither set of refugees should return to their countries of birth, but should receive compensation, becomes the most likely solution.
Not only would neither set of refugees be able to return, people will be tempted to make comparisons between Palestinians, who are in the exclusive care of the UN agency UNWRA, and allowed to pass on their refugee status in perpetuity; and the Jewish refugees, who enjoy no such privilege.
That's why BADIL views the Jewish refugees campaign as cynical and politically-motivated,'demonstrating a clear Israeli disregard for the rights of Palestinian refugees.'
Next, BADIL denies any linkage between the two sets of refugees. It says: take your grievances to Arab states, not to us:
Refugee claims to be made against offending states only: Claims made by, or on behalf of refugees should be filed with the state(s) whose actions are said to have created the individual's refugee status.
It further affirms: "No group of refugees should have their fate tied to that of a separate, unrelated group."
But the Jewish refugees are not an unrelated group. Their exodus began at more or less the same time as the Palestinian exodus, after the Arab League drafted a series of discriminatory measures in 1948 targeting their Jewish citizens as 'members of the minority of Palestine'. The Arab side enthusiastically linked the two groups, embracing the idea of an exchange of populations between Palestinians and Iraqi Jews, for instance. There is another link: Palestinians themselves, under the leadership of the Mufti of Jerusalem, were active in inciting the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of the Middle East.
According to BADIL, Arab states have no responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis. Only Israel does.
For Israel to draw Arab states into the Palestinian refugee crisis is to use refugees as political capital, and is a deeply cynical attempt to achieve wider strategic aims.
So it is Israel drawing Arab states into the Palestinian refugee issue? This is a clear rewriting of history. Who rejected the 1947 UN Partition plan and started the 1948 war? Who denied citizenship to Palestinian refugees, in an attempt to use 'refugees as political capital'?
Israel cannot divest itself of its obligations: Regardless of whether Arab states have, through their past actions, created Arab Jewish refugee populations, the State of Israel has created - and continues to create - a Palestinian refugee and displaced population which now numbers in excess of 7.4m individuals.
It is an astonishing thought that there were about 6 - 700, 000 Palestinian refugees in 1948, but Israel 'continues to create' a virtual displaced population of millions! Meanwhile, between 2 - 300, 000 Palestinians have been displaced in Syria, but no UN resolutions have been passed, and no position papers produced.
Full text of BADIL Position Paper - October 2012
Round-up of articles published in September/October 2012 on Jewish refugees
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013
Arabs without Jews: roots of a tragedy
It is good to see that the Jewish Voice has reprinted Magdi Allam's clear-sighted article,Arabs without Jews: roots of a tragedy. Allam wrote it just after seeing Pierre Rehov's 2004 The Silent Exodus, the first film ever made on the topic of Jews driven out from Arab countries. Much has changed since, but some things have stayed the same: as the Arab world tears itself apart, Allam's words ring truer than ever. Allam is an Egyptian Muslim journalist who converted to Catholicism; the deputy editor of Corriere della Sera, he became a Euro-MP.
Israel is the keeper of a mutilated Arab identity, the repository for the guilty consciences of the Arab peoples, the living witness to a true history of the Arab countries, continuously denied, falsified and ignored.
Seeing Pierre Rehov's documentary film 'The Silent Exodus' about the expulsion and flight of a million Sephardi Jews helped me gain a better understanding of the tragedy of a community that was integral and fundamental to Arab society. Above all it has revealed to me the very essence of the catastrophe that befell it, a catastrophe which the mythical Arab nation has never once called into question.
In a flash of insight I could see that the tragedy of the Jews and the catastrophe of the Arabs are two facets of the same coin. By expelling the Jews who were settled on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean centuries before they were arabized and islamized, the Arabs have in fact begun the lethal process of mutilating their own identity and despoiling their own history. By losing their Jews the Arabs have lost their roots and have ended up by losing themselves.
As has often happened in history, the Jews were the first victims of hatred and intolerance. All the "others" had their turn soon enough, specifically the Christians and other religious minorities, heretical and secular Muslims and finally, those Muslims who do not fit exactly into the ideological framework of the extreme nationalists and Islamists. There has not been a single instance in this murky period of our history when the Arab states have been ready to condemn the steady exodus of Christians, ethnic-religious minorities, enlightened and ordinary Muslims, while Muslims plain and simple have become the primary victims of Islamic terror.
Underlying the Arab 'malaise' is an identity crisis that neither Nasserist nor Ba'athist pan-Arabism, nor the Islamism of the Saudi Wahabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Khomeini and Bin Laden has been able to solve. It's a contagious identity crisis, spreading to and taking hold of the Arab and Muslim communities in the West.
I remember that around the mid-1970s the Arab exam in civic education taken in both state and public schools in Egypt defined Arab identity thus: "the Arabs are a nation united by race, blood, history, geography, religion and destiny."
This was a falsification of an historical truth based on ethno-religious pluralism, an ideological deception aimed at erasing all differences and promoting the theory of one race overlapping with a phantom Arab nation in thrall to unchallengeable leaders. It was directly inspired by Nazi and fascist theories of racial purity and supremacy which appealed to the leadership and ideologues of pan-Arabism and Islamism. It is no wonder that in this context Manichean Israel is perceived as a foreign body to be rejected, a cancer produced by American imperialism to divide and subjugate the Arab world.
The historical truth is that the Middle Eastern peoples, in spite of their arabization and islamization from the 7th century onward, continued to maintain a specific identity reflecting their indigenous and millenarian ethnic roots - cultural, linguistic, religious and national. The Berbers, for example, who constitute half the population of Morocco and a third of that of Algeria, have nothing or very little in common with the Bedouin tribes at the heart of Saudi or Jordanian society. When in 1979 Egypt was sidelined from the Arab League for signing a peace treaty with Israel President Sadat restored its Pharaonic Egyptian identity which he proudly contrasted with its Arabness. Here was an isolated but significant attempt to recapture an indigenous identity - advertising historical honesty and political liberation while saying 'enough is enough' to rampant lies and demagogy.
(..)
In fact 'the Silent Exodus' testifies that anti-Semitism and the pogroms against the Jews of the Middle East preceded the birth of the state of Israel and the advent of ideological pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism. It infers that hatred and violence against the Jews could originate in an ideological interpretation of the Koran and the life of the prophet Muhammed taken out of context.
It would be a mistake to generalize and not to take into account that for long periods coexistence was possible between the Muslims, Christians and Jews of the Middle East, at a time when in Europe the Catholic Inquisition was repressing the Jews and when the Nazi Holocaust was trying to exterminate them. In the same way, one cannot ignore Israel's responsibility together with Arab leaders in the emergence of the drama of millions of Palestinian refugees and the unresolved question of a Palestinian state.
The fact remains that of the million Jews who at the end of 1945 were an integral part of the Arab population, only 5,000 remain. These Arab Jews, expelled or who fled at a moment's notice, have become an integral part of the Israeli population. They continue to represent a human injustice and an historical tragedy. Above all, they are indicative of an Arab civil and identity catastrophe.
That is why to recognize the wrongs committed towards the Arab Jews - as the maverick Libyan leader colonel Gaddafi has recently done - by objectively rediscovering their past and millenarian roots, by finding again their tolerant and plural history and by totally and sincerely reconciling themselves with themselves, the Arabs could free themselves from the ideological obscurantism which has relegated them to the most basic level of human development and has changed the region into the most problematic and conflict-ridden on earth.
Read article in full
TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013
Jewish dialects are on brink of extinction
Isaac Yousefzadeh is a man with a mission: to record his unique Judeo-Kashan dialect before it becomes extinct. One of the effects of the dispersal of Jewish communities from Iran and the Arab world is that their traditional dialects and accents are disappearing fast, as Iris Mansour reports in The Tablet:
Isaac Yousefzadeh is in mourning for his mother, who passed away a few weeks ago. But with her death comes a second, more subtle loss—that of her language, Judeo-Kashani, which is now on the verge of extinction. “It’s like somebody is sick in bed and in another few days or years he will die,” he said. “That’s it.”
The language’s speakers trace their roots to Kashan[1], a city in central Iran where Judeo-Kashani had been spoken for centuries. But in the past several decades, the Jews of Kashan have scattered [2]—first to Tehran, and later around the world—and their descendants have adopted different languages. Virtually the only speakers left are a handful of Jews from Yousefzadeh’s generation who were born in Kashan, a city that no longer has any Jewishresidents [3]. They are the end of the linguistic line. “It’s a language that each day, the number of people that know it is less and less,” said Yousefzadeh. “In 20 years, I’d say no one would speak it. Because they’re dying each day.”
Judeo-Kashani is not alone. Dozens of Jewish communities in Iran, India, and the Caucasus region once spoke their own languages [4], which encoded centuries of Jewish life; today they, like Judeo-Kashani, are dying off.
With approximately one of the world’s 7,000 languages going extinct [5] every 14 days, linguists around the world are trying to document them before they go. Scholars in Brazil, the United States, and Israel are working specifically on Jewish languages; New York alone is home to at least seven endangered Jewish languages, ranging from Juhuri, once spoken by Jews from the Caucasus Mountains, to a different Persian-Jewish dialect from Isfahan. Because speakers are getting older, the Endangered Language Alliance in New York has launched a project dedicated to recording and transcribing these languages while they are still being spoken—including Judeo-Kashani.
***
Yousefzadeh, now in his sixties, sits at the kitchen table in his Long Island home and describes Jewish life—the characters and the tensions—he remembers from Kashan. He puts on his reading glasses and begins to recite from a tightly packed list in handwritten Persian script, a record of the past. “Yehada Rahamim and seven children,” he said, his finger slowly moving down the list. “Rabbi Abbol Levy and six children. Yehezkel Haim Meshedi. This guy had six children.” These are the names of approximately 300 Jewish families—roughly 2,500 Jews—who lived in Kashan with him. The list was created by two men who had also grown up in Kashan and made this record based on their memories of families who’d lived there; Yousefzadeh estimates that only 20 percent of the people on the list are still alive.
“I have memories when I see this list,” he said, taking off his glasses. “How they take a bath, how they went to the school, how they went even to buy a piece of bread—they had a tough time.”
He describes Kashan as no bigger than Great Neck, not far from where he now lives on Long Island; it had seven synagogues packed into a space so tight that it was nicknamed Little Jerusalem: “I want to say that the synagogues were like two to three minutes walking from each other.” He remembers the Small Synagogue, another opposite a cheese-maker, and another built by one of three childless brothers who also built a Jewish burial ground, a public bath, and a school.
He remembers the hardships, too. Yousefzadeh describes Jews living four to six people in a room, as well as restrictions on buying food and going out in the rain: “Because they’re Jewish and according to Muslims they’re not clean, they weren’t meant to touch [food].”
Historian David Yeroushalmi, a senior fellow at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies who specializes in the history and cultural heritage of Iranian Jewry, paints a complicated picture of Jewish life in Kashan. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it was a major center of Jewish learning, and the Muslim population had a reputation for being relatively tolerant toward Jews. But as Shi’a began to take hold from the 16th century onward, the Shi’ite population began to develop a harsher opinion of religious minorities including Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. There were known periods of persecution and forced conversions, but less so than in other Jewish communities, says Yeroushalmi; Jews could still engage in Jewish life, and the Jewish quarter wasn’t entirely set apart. Nonetheless, Jews were outsiders and their language reflected that.
“First of all, the Jews had a different accent to the Muslims,” said Yousefzadeh. “There were different words that Jews would use. It’d mean that people would find out if these were Muslims or Jews talking.”
Read article in full
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Bataween adds:
A unique Judeo-Arabic dialect also developed amongst Jews in Iraq and in other Arab countries. In this clip (starting at 10:18) emeritus professor of Arabic literature at Tel Aviv university Sasson Somekh explains that one of his main influences was a leading dialectologist in Israel, Haim Blanc. Ablind scholar of Arabic, Blanc had made a study of why Jews in Iraq passed down over the centuries to their children a different form of Arabic from that spoken by Muslims. Professor Somekh estimates that perhaps no more than 5,000 speakers of Judeo-Arabic dialects remain in the world today. (with thanks: Lily)
saac Yousefzadeh is in mourning for his mother, who passed away a few weeks ago. But with her death comes a second, more subtle loss—that of her language, Judeo-Kashani, which is now on the verge of extinction. “It’s like somebody is sick in bed and in another few days or years he will die,” he said. “That’s it.” The language’s speakers trace their roots to Kashan, a city in central Iran where Judeo-Kashani had been spoken for centuries. But in the past several decades, the Jews of Kashan have scattered—first to Tehran, and later around the world—and their descendants have adopted different languages. Virtually the only speakers left are a handful of Jews from Yousefzadeh’s generation who were born in Kashan, a city that no longer has any Jewish residents. They are the end of the linguistic line. “It’s a language that each day, the number of people that know it is less and less,” said Yousefzadeh. “In 20 years, I’d say no one would speak it. Because they’re dying each day.” Judeo-Kashani is not alone. Dozens of Jewish communities in Iran, India, and the Caucasus region once spoke their own languages, which encoded centuries of Jewish life; today they, like Judeo-Kashani, are dying off. With approximately one of the world’s 7,000 languages going extinct every 14 days, linguists around the world are trying to document them before they go. Scholars in Brazil, the United States, and Israel are working specifically on Jewish languages; New York alone is home to at least seven endangered Jewish languages, ranging from Juhuri, once spoken by Jews from the Caucasus Mountains, to a different Persian-Jewish dialect from Isfahan. Because speakers are getting older, the Endangered Language Alliance in New York has launched a project dedicated to recording and transcribing these languages while they are still being spoken—including Judeo-Kashani.
Read more at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/136371/endangered-jewish-languages#GfudBFJKzsXkizYo.99
Read more at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/136371/endangered-jewish-languages#GfudBFJKzsXkizYo.99
saac Yousefzadeh is in mourning for his mother, who passed away a few weeks ago. But with her death comes a second, more subtle loss—that of her language, Judeo-Kashani, which is now on the verge of extinction. “It’s like somebody is sick in bed and in another few days or years he will die,” he said. “That’s it.” The language’s speakers trace their roots to Kashan, a city in central Iran where Judeo-Kashani had been spoken for centuries. But in the past several decades, the Jews of Kashan have scattered—first to Tehran, and later around the world—and their descendants have adopted different languages. Virtually the only speakers left are a handful of Jews from Yousefzadeh’s generation who were born in Kashan, a city that no longer has any Jewish residents. They are the end of the linguistic line. “It’s a language that each day, the number of people that know it is less and less,” said Yousefzadeh. “In 20 years, I’d say no one would speak it. Because they’re dying each day.” Judeo-Kashani is not alone. Dozens of Jewish communities in Iran, India, and the Caucasus region once spoke their own languages, which encoded centuries of Jewish life; today they, like Judeo-Kashani, are dying off. With approximately one of the world’s 7,000 languages going extinct every 14 days, linguists around the world are trying to document them before they go. Scholars in Brazil, the United States, and Israel are working specifically on Jewish languages; New York alone is home to at least seven endangered Jewish languages, ranging from Juhuri, once spoken by Jews from the Caucasus Mountains, to a different Persian-Jewish dialect from Isfahan. Because speakers are getting older, the Endangered Language Alliance in New York has launched a project dedicated to recording and transcribing these languages while they are still being spoken—including Judeo-Kashani.
Read more at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/136371/endangered-jewish-languages#GfudBFJKzsXkizYo.99
Read more at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/136371/endangered-jewish-languages#GfudBFJKzsXkizYo.99
saac Yousefzadeh is in mourning for his mother, who passed away a few weeks ago. But with her death comes a second, more subtle loss—that of her language, Judeo-Kashani, which is now on the verge of extinction. “It’s like somebody is sick in bed and in another few days or years he will die,” he said. “That’s it.” The language’s speakers trace their roots to Kashan, a city in central Iran where Judeo-Kashani had been spoken for centuries. But in the past several decades, the Jews of Kashan have scattered—first to Tehran, and later around the world—and their descendants have adopted different languages. Virtually the only speakers left are a handful of Jews from Yousefzadeh’s generation who were born in Kashan, a city that no longer has any Jewish residents. They are the end of the linguistic line. “It’s a language that each day, the number of people that know it is less and less,” said Yousefzadeh. “In 20 years, I’d say no one would speak it. Because they’re dying each day.” Judeo-Kashani is not alone. Dozens of Jewish communities in Iran, India, and the Caucasus region once spoke their own languages, which encoded centuries of Jewish life; today they, like Judeo-Kashani, are dying off. With approximately one of the world’s 7,000 languages going extinct every 14 days, linguists around the world are trying to document them before they go. Scholars in Brazil, the United States, and Israel are working specifically on Jewish languages; New York alone is home to at least seven endangered Jewish languages, ranging from Juhuri, once spoken by Jews from the Caucasus Mountains, to a different Persian-Jewish dialect from Isfahan. Because speakers are getting older, the Endangered Language Alliance in New York has launched a project dedicated to recording and transcribing these languages while they are still being spoken—including Judeo-Kashani.
Read more at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/136371/endangered-jewish-languages#GfudBFJKzsXkizYo.99
Read more at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/136371/endangered-jewish-languages#GfudBFJKzsXkizYo.99
MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013
Helen Thomas and the forgotten million
The death of White House journalist Helen Thomas (pictured) is an occasion for Sarah Sheafer to draw attention, in the Times of Israel, to the million Jewish refugees who came not from 'Poland, Germany or the US' (as Thomas notoriously put it) but fled antisemitism in Arab lands. However, I take issue with Sheafer's fashionable focus on the 'discrimination' these Jews encountered on arrival in Israel. Israel did not 'hide the issue because of shame' nor could the issue become 'sore because of lack of awareness.' Rather, the absorption of 600, 000 immigrants was achieved, despite the hardships, precisely because Israel refused to exploit refugees as political capital - as the Arab side has done.
In my spring semester at the College of Charleston, I was lucky to have an Israeli visiting professor originally from Iraq. She co-taught a course titled Cultures of the Middle East with a Palestinian professor. On the first day of class, she introduced herself: “Hello, my name is Naomi and I am a refugee.” Naomi Gale’s words stuck with me as she told the class about the hardships her family went through.
She told us how her family was forced to leave Iraq due to an increase in discrimination after Israel became a state in 1948. They were forced to flee their home country for Israel, where they lived in a tent for five years, eventually transitioning to a tin home in a development town in Israel. Her family, which consisted of her mother, father and eleven children, came along with one million other Mizrahi Jewish immigrants as they were forced to leave their homes in Arab or Muslim countries. By the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the majority of Jewish communities in the Middle East, other than Israel, were practically non-existent.
Ma’abara, a development town near Nahariya in 1952 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
She told the class how her family was classified as refugees by the United Nations, but their story was swept under the rug as the world devoted all of its attention to the Palestinian people and as Israel tried to hide the story because of shame. Regardless of discrimination against Mizrahi Jews, the Israeli government was more concerned about building and protecting its infant state.
Pushed aside, Mizrahi Jews were not a concern. While the gap between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews has shrunk since then, the topic is still a sore subject, which is evident by the lack of general awareness on the issue.
Ma’abarot transit camp in 1950 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
She described her initial experience of moving to Israel as a melting pot, but not the type Americans generally think of. Instead, the pot didn’t embrace multiculturalism. It forced her to conform to a Western Ashkenazi Zionist ideal. In school, she studied heritage and historical figures from her European counterparts. In the religious realm, she was told to pray and practice Judaism according to Ashkenazi customs. But what about her heritage?
Discriminated first in her country of origin, Naomi found herself in the same situation, but now by fellow Jews. Just because her skin was dark, other little children weren’t allowed to play with her. Just because she spoke Arabic, she wasn’t invited into Ashkenazi homes.
A Yemenite family walking through the desert to a reception camp (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Her story was common during the time. Discrimination against Mizrahi Jews in Israel started to diminish with the help of the military, integrating the two groups. As the immigrants began to establish something for themselves, so too did the perception of them change.
Read article in full
What about Mizrahi Jews, Helen Thomas?
Why it can be 'cool' to suppress Mizrahi history
Baghdad, from the other side of the tracks
A fleet of memoirs of Baghdad has been sailing out in recent years, like guffas floating down the river Tigris: now comes an English version of Salim Fattal’s charming memoir, In the Alleys of Baghdad. Lyn Julius writes in The Times of Israel:
Salim Fattal’s memoir is another requiem for a city where Jews were once the largest single ethnic group. Jews made their mark on Baghdad continuously over almost three millennia – from the time that Nebuchadnezzar hauled the Jewish slaves into captivity by the waters of Babylon. Today five timorous Jews are all that remain from an influential and prosperous community of 140, 000.
Salim’s book, however, is set on the other side of the tracks. With zest and wit, he tells the comi-tragic tales of the Baghdad Jewish ghetto of Tatran, criss-crossed by dark alleys. It is a place of ancestral tradition and folklore where even the cellar snakes have a secret pact with the inhabitants.
Whereas some Iraqi Jews remember a comfortable, even idyllic life with servants, Salim’s childhood is marked by grinding poverty. The boy is forced to earn a living from an early age, while attending night school. His widowed mother cherishes the dream that her five sons would some day be doctors, lawyers, engineers, poets and scientists. The dream would come to pass – but not in Iraq. Salim is the poet and later makes a successful career as a journalist, film-maker and a founder of Israel TV’s Arabic service.
Jews more affluent were more likely to escape the WW1 Ottoman draft, but Tatran is caught up in a dragnet: despite Salim grandfather’s best efforts to hide young Jewish men, his brother Menashe is taken into the Turkish army, freezing to death on the front.
Tragedy strikes the family again when Salim’s uncle Meir is kidnapped and murdered during the 1941 Farhud pogrom in which 179 Jews were killed. Meir’s body is never found. The family survive a night of murder and rape by bribing a policeman with a shotgun into protecting them, by paying him half a dinar per shot.
Another uncle, Naim, drinks and smokes himself to an early death and a third, Joseph, is lured into the desert and murdered by two Bedouin associates.
After the catastrophe of the Farhud, triggered by an atmosphere poisoned by antisemitism imported from the Third Reich, the Jews of Baghdad sense they are living on borrowed time. Of the two paths offering redemption, Zionism and Communism, Salim chooses Communism. The Wathba protest movement of January 1948 against the neo-colonial Portsmouth Treaty with the British looms larger in Salim’s life than the war in Palestine.
As the keeper of the local Communist underground’s library in a bag under his bed, Salim narrowly escapes arrest by convincing the secret police that Chekhov was not a Marxist. He is a marked man but cannot afford to pay his passage out of Iraq. ‘Zionism was for Jews who had money’, he claims. But like other Jewish Communists, he eventually is forced to run for his life – to Israel.
A word about the vivid women characters who populate the book: the oversexed Habiba, who runs away with a Muslim to escape an arranged marriage, but is lured into prostitution; Salim’s first love Hanan, as daring a dalliance as the times then allowed; Tova, the Russian Jew on the run during WW2 to Israel, who finds in the Fattal family a substitute for her own.
Salim Fattal was motivated to write ‘In the Alleys of Baghdad’ in order to scotch one of the great myths of the age: “Before the Jewish state was established, there existed nothing to harm good relations between Arabs and Jews.” His Baghdad was a spirited city of warm interpersonal relations and humour, but it was also a place of untimely death, gallows and pogroms. Salim has dredged up his Baghdad from the ocean floor, but as with the Titanic, there is nothing much worth salvaging any more.
In the Alleys of Baghdad by Salim Fattal, illustrated by Ruth Doner (Paperback, $16.55, published by Shlomo Levy, Tel Aviv Tel 0525471060)
Read article in full
Marina Benjamin's Last Days in Babylon
Eli Amir's The Dove Flyer
Violette Shamash's Memories of Eden
Naim Kattan's Farewell Babylon
Mona Yahia's When the Little Grey Beetles took over Baghdad
Iraqi Jew's memoirs shake up Arab intellectuals
Read article in full
Marina Benjamin's Last Days in Babylon
Eli Amir's The Dove Flyer
Violette Shamash's Memories of Eden
Naim Kattan's Farewell Babylon
Mona Yahia's When the Little Grey Beetles took over Baghdad
Iraqi Jew's memoirs shake up Arab intellectuals
SUNDAY, JULY 21, 2013
Knesset bill passes first reading unanimously
Point of No Return exclusive
Shimon Ohayon, MK
The Knesset bill designating a day to remember the Jewish refugees driven from Arab lands passed its first reading on 17 July.
Ahmed Tibi (Raam Ta'al party) objected to the bill, claiming that Jews had not left Arab countries as refugees but of 'their own free will.'
However, Tibi did not cast his vote against the bill. It passed unanimously.
The bill's sponsor, Shimon Ohayon MK, wrote to the Arab League general secretary calling on the League to admit its historic responsibility for the plight of the Jewish refugees.
The Knesset bill designating a day to remember the Jewish refugees driven from Arab lands passed its first reading on 17 July.
Ahmed Tibi (Raam Ta'al party) objected to the bill, claiming that Jews had not left Arab countries as refugees but of 'their own free will.'
However, Tibi did not cast his vote against the bill. It passed unanimously.
The earliest version of the bill set the date for commemoration to 30 November, the day after the 1947 vote in the UN General Assembly approving the partition of Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. It was on the following day [after the partition vote] that Arab states initiated attacks on the Jewish communities in their countries as part of their effort to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state.
According to a spokesperson for Yisrael Beytenu, the date will be changed to February 17 in future versions, the date of an Arab League call on member states to impose restrictions on the lives, property and legal status of Jews.
The bill's sponsor, Shimon Ohayon MK, wrote to the Arab League general secretary calling on the League to admit its historic responsibility for the plight of the Jewish refugees.
The bill stipulates that a special Knesset session must be devoted to the issue, along with activities in schools and in Israeli embassies and consulates abroad.
Refugee Day gets government support
Israel to honour Jewish refugees
Refugee Day gets government support
Israel to honour Jewish refugees
SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2013
How Algiers got its mikveh
The Jewish women of Algiers evidently took coexistence with their Muslim neighbours seriously: they had a bath set aside for them in the Moorish Baths near the Bab el Oued market. But according to a little snippet from Infojuive (May/June 2013), the Consistoire (the French-based authority which ran the Algerian Jewish community) determined that the Jews of Algiers should have their own mikveh.
Infojuive says that the new mikveh was built by an Italian builder friend of Joseph Dahan, who had once asked him for a jerrycan of petrol for his van when he was going through tough financial times. The Italian builder was himself indebted to Dahan and began constructing the mikveh in a small courtyard adjoining the synagogue on the rue de Dijon.
The mikveh was finished in 1958 when it was officially opened. It was little used, however. Who could blame the good Jewish women of Algiers - they probably much preferred the steamy atmosphere of the Moorish baths.
In any case, within three years, the Jews of Algeria had begun their mass exodus.
FRIDAY, JULY 19, 2013
A ghostly Jewish village in Yemen
With thanks: Lily
The Middle East and North Africa is full of the palaces of bygone rulers and the ghosts of extinct communities.
According to the WebUrbanist, Here's all that's left of Beit Baws, an abandoned Jewish village perched on a rock on the outskirts of the Yemen capital Sana'a.
Its residents were among the 50,000 Jews who left Yemen for Israel in the great airlift 'Operation Magic Carpet'.
However, a few families still live at Beit Baws and have even rigged up electricity.
The video clip below gives an idea of how and where this pious community lived in Yemen, set to the music of Ofra Haza and Zion Golan. Today there are estimated to be barely 100 Jews left - with some 70 confined to an enclave in the capital Sana'a.
Read article in full
The Middle East and North Africa is full of the palaces of bygone rulers and the ghosts of extinct communities.
According to the WebUrbanist, Here's all that's left of Beit Baws, an abandoned Jewish village perched on a rock on the outskirts of the Yemen capital Sana'a.
Its residents were among the 50,000 Jews who left Yemen for Israel in the great airlift 'Operation Magic Carpet'.
However, a few families still live at Beit Baws and have even rigged up electricity.
The video clip below gives an idea of how and where this pious community lived in Yemen, set to the music of Ofra Haza and Zion Golan. Today there are estimated to be barely 100 Jews left - with some 70 confined to an enclave in the capital Sana'a.
THURSDAY, JULY 18, 2013
That's my house in Egypt you're living in
Tahrir Square has been in the news as the focal point for Egypt's 'Arab Spring' revolutions. But how many people know that the imposing buildings around it were once home to Cairo's wealthy Jews ? In an extraordinary five-page feature published on 12 July in the Weekend Supplement of the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot titled "That was my house "(no link available), Ronen Bergman explores the highly sensitive question of property and assets seized without compensation from Jews in Egypt. The list is not exhaustive (with thanks: Levana):
That's my house you're living in... or mansion, or palace.Partial list of Jewish properties around Tahrir Square
Joseph Nissim's home on the banks of the Nile: Now the residence of the Russian ambassador. The site houses the modern Russian embassy.
Victor Castro's palace: now Jehan Sadat's residence. Egyptian government property.
Emile Zikov's house - now the Pakistani embassy.
Isaac Abdo's house: the merchant's home is now the South Korean embassy.
The home of the Zuckerman family. Now the Swiss embassy.
Maurice Cattaoui's home. Now the German embassy.
Ovadia Salem's house. The home of the manager of the Chemla department store is today the Canadian embassy.
Guido Levy's house. Today the Dutch embassy.
Moise Cattaoui's house. Today the Great Library of Cairo.
Henri Curiel's house. Today the Algerian embassy.
The Castro family house. Today the embassy of Bahrain.
The Rollo family house. Formerly the US embassy. Now in private hands.
Salvatore Cicurel's house. Became a stock exchange and events hall. Now part of the US embassy.
The Chemla, Ades, Benzion, Levy, Cicurel, Orosdi Bak department stores still exist, but are owned by the Egyptian government.
My house is your house: Jewish rights denied
Joseph Nissim's home on the banks of the Nile: Now the residence of the Russian ambassador. The site houses the modern Russian embassy.
Victor Castro's palace: now Jehan Sadat's residence. Egyptian government property.
Emile Zikov's house - now the Pakistani embassy.
Isaac Abdo's house: the merchant's home is now the South Korean embassy.
The home of the Zuckerman family. Now the Swiss embassy.
Maurice Cattaoui's home. Now the German embassy.
Ovadia Salem's house. The home of the manager of the Chemla department store is today the Canadian embassy.
Guido Levy's house. Today the Dutch embassy.
Moise Cattaoui's house. Today the Great Library of Cairo.
Henri Curiel's house. Today the Algerian embassy.
The Castro family house. Today the embassy of Bahrain.
The Rollo family house. Formerly the US embassy. Now in private hands.
Salvatore Cicurel's house. Became a stock exchange and events hall. Now part of the US embassy.
The Chemla, Ades, Benzion, Levy, Cicurel, Orosdi Bak department stores still exist, but are owned by the Egyptian government.
My house is your house: Jewish rights denied
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2013
Magda blames antisemitism on ignorance
Illuminating interview in Egypt Independent with the head of the tiny Jewish community of Cairo. Despite bending over backwards to distance herself from Israel, Magda Haroun, whose father Shehata let another daughter die rather than forfeit his Egyptian nationality, admits that as a Jew she had to wait two years for her ID card. She blames 'ignorance' for Egyptian discrimination against Jews. She also reveals concerns regarding the determination of Jewish property, an Egyptian hot potato. She confesses she does not have the 'required documents' (to prove Jewish ownership) and fears her position as head of the community will be politicised.
Update: After being asked by The Jerusalem Postvia phone about her statement comparing Zionism to racism, Haroun paused and seemed not to recall making such a statement. After the Post cited the interview in question, she confirmed the quote before stating, “Israel was established for Jews.”
Asked how this differs from Egypt – defined by the nation’s constitution as a Muslim state with Islam as the official religion and Islamic law as the principle source for legislation – a flustered Haroun denied the constitution’s statement on Egypt’s defining characteristics, saying that it is a state for various religions with Muslims being the majority.
Here is an extract from the Egypt Independentinterview:
A: When someone asks why we have not left the country, I feel provoked. Why would we leave the country and emigrate? And where would we go? Why do some people think that all the Jews should emigrate to Israel? Do all Muslim emigrate to Saudi Arabia?
Q: When your father, Shehata Haroun, was asked to choose between his country and his elder daughter Mona, he chose his country. Can you tell us more about this?
A: In 1954, my sister was diagnosed with leukemia when she was four years old. From what I hear from my family, my father loved her like crazy and he took her along with him to every place he went to. When she got sick, the only treatment available in Egypt was blood transfusion. My father donated blood to her every day because they shared the same blood group. But the doctors said they could not do anything more for her and told my father to to take her to France [for treatment]. He asked for permission to travel but was told he would not be allowed back. He said that nobody should force their will on him and Mona died.
Q: How did you expect the conditions of the Jewish community in Egypt to be, and how did you actually find them, after you became the president of the Jewish community?
A: I used to say a lot that [Haroun's sister] Nadia and I will be the ones to close the door on the history of Jews in Egypt and my mother used to tell me that Shehata Haroun had prepared us for the day.
He nurtured our feelings of belonging to the country and he taught us about our rights and duties as Egyptian Jews. But the burden is heavy.
I did not mix much with members of the community, only at feasts and funerals. Just thinking about their affairs is difficult because it is all about trouble, from a humanitarian point of view. The elderly live in fear because of the image of Jews being promoted as traitors and spies. They fear people finding out they're Jews.
I fear I will not be able to provide them with a decent ending to their lives or to fulfill my pledge to safeguard the Jewish legacy and restore it. This legacy is part of me as an Egyptian Jew.
Q: What are the major problems that you face as the president of the community?
A: Besides what I just said, I have concerns regarding the determination of Jewish property. So far, I do not have all the required documents for that and I also fear my position will be politicised even though it is of a purely humanitarian nature.
Q: Many Egyptians frown upon the presence of Jews in Egypt. How do you explain this?
A: This is because Egypt's history has been falsified, not only with regards to the Jews but also many other things. If a person wants to progress then he or she must know their history well. It is time to correct the path, we have to know our history well. The youth have an opportunity and tools for knowledge which I hope they will use because they are our hope. Indeed, there were Jews in Egypt, most of whom have left Egypt but they did not do so willingly. They were forced to leave and only a few of those who left Egypt went to Israel. The establishment of Israel has put us, Egyptian Jews, in trouble because it is a country built on religious foundations.We paid the price. I hope this does not happen with other communities. I beg those leaving now not to leave because the burden is heavy and the sadness deep to be the one to close the door on the history of a section of the Egyptian society.
Q: Have you faced any problems as a result of the religion slot on your ID?
A: First, religion is about how you treat people, but that does not mean that the religion slot on my ID has not caused me trouble because of people's ignorance. For instance, I had to wait two years to get an ID. When I went to issue an ID, the employees were surprised about my religion and they kept inquiring if it was right to wrong. They even asked me if I were Egyptian or not. In the last step before the issuing of the ID, the employee sitting at her computer called her boss and pointed to the religion slot and he told her “to write it as it is, this is a religion of God." When I went to correct something in my birth certificate, the employee asked me if I were Egyptian and I said yes but then he objected, saying that I was born at al-Saqf al-Israeli Hospital--the name of the hospital where I was born in Alexandria--and so I asked him if someone born at the “Railways Hospital” would have a "railways nationality" or another born at the Italian Hospital an Italian nationality. He asked to see my passport. After he saw it he asked me to write down my address and phone number and when I asked why, he said for "security reasons." I refused to write them and he did not issue me a birth certificate.
Q: How do you feel as an Egyptian Jew when you find the media, including state-owned media, attacking Jews and smearing their image?
A: We are not the only ones under attack. Christians and moderate Islam also come under fire.
Q: Intentionally or not, some in Egypt (and beyond) believe the Jews are invariably loyal to Israel. What do you think?
A: My loyalty is to my country where I was educated, where I grew up, fell in love and got married. I am loyal to the country that made me. I do not think that a French or English Jew would be loyal to Israel. Indeed, he or she would defend their religion but would also defend his or her country. The same applies to Egyptian Jews.
Q: Could that be because some do not differentiate between Judaism and Zionism?
A: The failure to draw a distinction between Judaism as a religion and the Israeli state is the result of ignorance, which is to blame on social science curricula and teachers... I remember that in a social sciences lesson, the teacher described Jews as dogs and I was the only Jew in class and all the students looked at me. I stood up and left the class. When I went back home, I told my father about what happened and he told me that children in Israel, too, are told that Arabs are dogs, so I felt better. The problem is that the person who said so is a teacher that is supposed to be raising children, so when someone like her says so it is a catastrophe. Much like some people mix up al-Qaeda and Islam, others mix Israel and Judaism up. Just like not every Muslim is a member of al-Qaeda, not every Jew is an Israeli. Regarding Israel’s Law of Return, which states that all Jews should return to Israel, these are their own man-made laws.
Q: For reasons related to the Egyptian government and the president of the Jewish community, the affairs of Egyptian Jews were shrouded in ambiguity. Is this ambiguity going to remain under your presidency?
Read article in full
Jerusalem Post article
Goodbye Carmen, hello Magda
TUESDAY, JULY 16, 2013
Tisha b'Av, Tunisian style
Famous scene from Titus's arch in Rome, showing Romans carrying off booty from the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem
Today's fast of Av marks the mourning of the destruction of the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem. It is the climax of three weeks when no meat is eaten, or anything new undertaken. Dr Victor Hayoun recalls this season in Tunisia, known as 'Agein': garlic warded off non-existent scorpions, and delicious vegetarian dishes followed a surfeit of Merguez sausage.
We commonly used to call this period in Tunisian Jewish-Arab dialect, "agein" or "Ayamet El-TKAL"[literally "heavy days"], as our parents referred to them.
These days were fraught with fear and prohibitions.We knew it was in memory of a serious event, or even a loss, because we did not eat meat. These are austere days, full of restraint: no celebrations, excessive joy, haircuts, new clothes or anything else new, no undertaking new projects or signing new contracts, no new initatives. In fact, we stopped growing and treaded water. It was our way to mark mourning the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem.
That was not all - there were dietary restrictions.We did not eat meat, chicken, except for Shabbat.We had the right to eat fish in all its forms: fresh, canned: tuna / sardine / anchovy, dried fish (Bou-Zmeimar) and bottarga (for wealthy people who could afford it). There was fried fish cooked in spicy sauce (H'raiimé) or cooked in vegetable couscous to fish with fish balls, fried and baked. We had a great selection. A range of possibilities for fish to "fill" the absence of meat and chicken.
But the Tunisian Jew is still a "kifeur". He does everything to take pleasure in all circumstances and more importantly, at the table. There are no holds barred. If he found a way to eat rice over Pesach it is really nothing for him to eat meat, or a derivative, during the days preceding the fast days preceding the 9 Av. So he becomes a major consumer of Merguez during the first 8 days of the month of Av (not Shabbat of course). In our childhood, our mother, God rest her soul, prepared the Merguez before the month of Av, she dried it on a clothes line and then cooked us Chakchouka withmerguez, mloukhia with merguez, beans "Bsal-or-Loubia" with merguez and many other dishes withmerguez.
From these fish dishes and dried meats, we proceed to add "Falsou" dishes.
( "Falso" in Italian means "false"). These are actually "fake" foods because the "real" dishes were with meat, chicken or fish. In fact, those dishes that did not contain meat chicken or fish, were equally delicious - pasta, cooked vegetables, couscous or (more rarely) rice.
"Agein" always falls in summer, in July or August.During this period, when we lived in Tunisia, we were always at La Goulette (coastal resort outside Tunis - ed). It was hot and we often slept on the floor to enjoy the freshness of the ground. Our bed was very often made of or covered with the underside of a sheepskin sheet which provided some freshness but had the distinction of never quite covering us. We always had our feet on the ever so cool ground.
On the evening of 8 Av, the day before the 9th of Av, the fast had already started: we lay on the ground. That's when our mother had the soles of our feet brushed with garlic. She told us that it was to ward off scorpions: they came in the evening of"agein" to sting. It is true that we never saw any scorpions, but it was a way to ward off evil, as many misfortunes and disasters happened during this austere period. For example we did not go to the beach, so as not to have fun but also out of fear of drowning.
There were two specific dishes on 9 Av, before and after fasting. On the eve, we ate "Falsou" couscous, without meat or chicken or fish with vegetable broth. The predominant orange color came from squash and carrots. That night, Mum put a poached egg in the broth and chickpeas. Others have the custom to eat a hardboiled egg per person. This was also a sign of mourning, because the mourners begin their period of mourning eating a hardboiled egg and black olives.
Read article in full (Google translate)
Read original article in French
Something light for Tisha B'Av
MONDAY, JULY 15, 2013
It was hard, but we made it in the end
Avram Piha tells the story in the Times of Israel of his Iraq-born landlord Eli, who struggled to overcome untold hurdles to rebuild his life in Israel. The family 'made it' in the end:
I spent Sunday morning with my landlord ensuring we were leaving his apartment in good shape. When he confirmed all was ok, I handed over the keys and asked him if he had time to tell me a little bit about his life. Eli had on numerous occasions mentioned his childhood memories of Iraq, and the difficulty of being a refugee in Israel in the 1950s, but we had never had the chance to sit down and really talk about it. We both decided there was no better time than the present, so we sat down on a bench and got to it.
Eli was born in Baghdad a few months after the Farhud. Eli remembers the city well as he spent much time with his father, who was a taxi driver. The shukim (open-air markets) are what sticks out most for him, “They were phenomenal.” His schooling from the age of six through nine was at the local synagogue. He always walked to the synagogue in a group, as the Jewish children suffered daily abuse from Arab children and young adults, everything from verbal to physical. “It was very tough,” Eli sighed, but he did note that his Arab neighbors always looked out for his family, and, understanding the rules of Shabbat, prepared them tea every Shabbat! In March 1951, along with the majority of Iraqi Jewry, Eli and his family left all their possessions behind and made their way to Israel. All they had with them was their clothing, and Eli described the shock of seeing Iraqi soldiers demand his parents hand over the blanket they were using to keep his baby brother wrapped up and warm.
Though leaving Iraq was traumatic, the new reality of Israel was harsh as well. Along with two other families, Eli’s family shared one tent in the Sha’ar Yerushalayim ma’abra (near Atlit). “It was an unbelievable shock to us,” Eli explained. “We went from having a two-bedroom apartment to living in a tent with no running water, electricity or other essentials – with two other families!” I just looked at him, almost in awe, and continued to listen as he continued, “We weren’t angry, we were just happy to be out of Iraq, but this was extremely difficult.” With regards to food, Eli smiled, “It was terrible, but when you’re hungry, you’ll eat even that.”
After a few months, Eli’s family “upgraded” to ama’abara near Megiddo, where they had a tent to themselves. They soon moved to the Kastalma’abara (near Meva’seret Zion), where Eli’s family lived in a pachon (tin shack). Though it was better than a tent, life in the pachon was also challenging: “We froze in the winter, faced leaks every time it rained, and burned ourselves on the metal every summer as the weather got hotter.” Despite all these difficulties, Eli stressed that his family remained upbeat and positive and only really worried about their continuing financial struggles. With his father unable to hold a steady job in Jerusalem, the family moved to Beit Yosef in the Beit She’an Valley. Here is where the family would hit rock bottom.
Eli’s father tried his hand at agriculture, which was only possible during the autumn and winter months. Unfortunately, he had little success. After seven years of helping out, Eli was drafted to the Armored Corps and rarely had time to help his father. Two years later, Eli’s father passed away. Eli was released from his military obligations and became the “father” to a family of nine (his mother, five brothers and three sisters). After nine unsuccessful agricultural seasons, the family’s luck changed and under Eli’s handling, they hit the jackpot and earned 10,000 lira for their produce. With this money, Eli bought the family an apartment in Jerusalem and began working many jobs to sustain his family. Sibling after sibling eventually “made it,” as did Eli, who eventually owned his own building company. Eli smiled, “I’m so proud of my family, every single grandchild – all children of immigrants – has a university education. That’s how I know we really made it.”
This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.
(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)
In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.
ReplyDeleteThis website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.
(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)