The Tractor meets Sephardi poet Moshe Ibn Ezra

How did a rock group with the unlikely name of The Tractor's Revenge find inspiration in the writings of the 11th century Sephardi rabbi and poet Moshe ibn Ezra? Barry Davis of The Jerusalem Post explains:

There's obviously more to Nikmat Hatractor (The Tractor's Revenge) than initially meets the eye, or the ear. Over the last 20 or so years the veteran rock outfit has built up a solid following for its earthy sound, the odd rough balladic offering notwithstanding, and is best known for tracks like "Mis'hak Shel Dmaot" (The Crying Game), from its eponymous 1990 debut album. However, although it may not be immediately apparent, the in-your-face stuff is heavily laced with some ethnic chestnuts.

Nikmat Hatractor (Photo: Roi Berkovitz)

Nikmat Hatractor frontman Avi Balili is delighted to have the opportunity to delve into the writings of 11th century rabbi and poet Moshe Ibn Ezra, a relative of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra and one of the literary giants of the Golden Age in Spain. Balili and the rest of the band, with sonar and visual enhancement from oud player Eliyahu Dagmi and video artist Shira Misanik, will present their own eminently contemporary take on Ibn Ezra texts at the Jerusalem Theater on Thursday, as the opening slot of this year's Jerusalem International Oud Festival.

In fact, Balili and ethnic and liturgical material are old pals. "We put selihot (penitential poems) to music 20 years ago, and we also recorded Ibn Ezra's 'El Nora Alila' back then. I've been into his writings for a long time. We're marking the band's 20th anniversary and the Oud Festival is 10 years old, so it's nice to come full circle musically as well."

The 46-year-old vocalist-bassist fed off a rich and varied musical pallet from the word go. "My family has Greek roots and my dad came from Egypt," he explains. "We also heard a lot of Italian pop at home, guys like Marino Marini, but my first musical love was [legendary Egyptian singer] Oum Kalthoum. My mother told me that‚ when I was very small, I'd fall asleep listening to music on an Arab radio station."

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Palestinians evicted from Jewish homes in Baghdad

After the first Israel-Arab war in 1948, 150 Palestinian families arrived in Baghdad and were housed in the palatial mansions of the Jewish district of Bataween, seized from their Jewish owners. The Jews had been expelled in an exchange of refugee populations that was never completed. After the fall of Saddam, however, it was the Palestinians' turn to be evicted by the Iraqis. Orly Halpern, an Israeli-American journalist who is writing a book about the year she spent in Baghdad at the time of the US invasion, describes one of history's strange twists of fate for Hadassah magazine in 2004.

Some of the Palestinians who fled to Iraq after 1948 had little idea that their fate would forever be intertwined with the residences of Iraqi Jewish refugees.

As Arab forces battled with the fledgling Israeli Army in the 1948 War of Independence, Akram Muhammad Rizak’s family fled its village home with its stone façade and eventually made its way across the desert to Iraq. There, as refugees, they were given housing and medical care by the Iraqi government.

Fifty-five years later, during the latest conflict to hit the Middle East, the Rizaks became refugees once again.

“I want to go back to my home,” Rizak said. But he wasn’t referring to his ancestral home in the village of Arrabeh, near Haifa. He was talking about the central Baghdad house in which the government of his adopted homeland had given his family living quarters almost 40 years ago. The residence, in the upscale Beitawin neighborhood, once belonged to Iraqi Jews.

In april 2003, one week after the American-led forces conquered the Iraqi capital, the Rizaks were forced to flee. This time it was not the fear of an Israeli advance that prompted the family to pack its bags, but the sudden appearance of a band of Iraqis wielding AK-47’s at their front door.

“They told us we had to get out of the house,” recalled Rizak, who begged the men for time to pack his family’s belongings.

Within days, Rizak, his wife, Wufaa’, and four of his children were living in a cramped 250-square-foot tent—a far cry from the 10,000-square-foot mansion (shared with 12 other families) from which they were expelled. Their tent was surrounded by 399 identical tents set up side by side in what was once the soccer field of the Haifa Sports Center for Palestinians in Baghdad. A single fluorescent light hung from a rope inside the tent. The light and the refrigerator were connected to a generator.

Rizak’s parents had chosen to flee to Iraq because they had seen Iraqi battalions fight for the Arab cause. When the Arabs lost the war and Israel was created, the Iraqi soldiers made their way back across the scorching desert, along with a few thousand Palestinians who had fought beside them. The Rizaks were among the 35,000 refugees who opted for refuge in Iraq. Rizak was born near Jenin, where his family paused during their flight.

The Baghdad government originally housed most of the Palestinian refugees, including the Rizaks, in old British Army barracks dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Then, as now, many Palestinians living in such barracks around Iraq had no running water and were forced to share common bathrooms.

In return for providing housing and medical care for Palestinians, Iraq was later exempted from paying annual dues to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The Palestinians in Iraq were therefore never registered with the United Nations.

In fact, the Iraqi government had hoped to welcome many more Palestinians and be rid of its Jewish citizens in what would have amounted to a formal population exchange. From the tail end of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1949, Iraq spoke with the United Nations and American and British officials about the idea of transferring more than 100,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel in exchange for the same number of Arab Palestinians.

It was not a new idea. According to Ya’akov Meron, former head of Arab legal affairs at Israel’s Ministry of Justice, the plan had previously been proposed by high-ranking British officials. The Iraqi government in particular was keen to put the theory into practice. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Sa’id told an American diplomat in May 1949 of his desire to see a “voluntary exchange on pro rata basis of Iraqi Jews for Palestinian Arabs.”

His words were backed up by a scarcely veiled threat. If Iraqi Jews were not shipped out, he said, “firebrand Iraqis,” incensed by the creation of a Zionist state, “might take matters into their own hands and cause untold misery to thousands of innocent persons.”

His words proved prophetic. There was no official population exchange, and Iraq’s largely affluent Jewish community became the target of numerous attacks. Instead of taking part in voluntary emigration, Iraqi Jews found themselves forced to flee the country.

Only months after Rizak and his family had trudged to the safety of Iraq, Jewish families would escape across the desert, going west toward Jerusalem.

Some Jews tried to hang on, fearful of losing all that they owned. The initial trickle of Jewish refugees became a flood in 1950 when the Iraqi government announced it would allow Jews to keep properties and goods in Iraq and go to Israel legally if they relinquished the country’s citizenship.

It was the beginning of a mass exodus. Thousands had already gone, and by August 1951 more than two-thirds of Iraq’s 150,000 Jews had left, many abandoning luxurious homes and successful businesses.

Once out of the way, they were double-crossed. The Beitawin district, still known as Thawrat (Torah) because of the Jews who once lived there, was suddenly empty. A year later, the government froze ownership rights on Jewish property. In the 1960’s, Jewish property was expropriated altogether.

Rizak was 10 years old when he moved with his parents and four siblings into a handsome red-brick Jewish mansion. Theirs was one of 150 lucky Palestinian families selected to live in the expropriated houses and pay rents subsidized by the government.

“We lived there with three other families and shared the kitchen and the bathrooms,” he said. “As our families grew and sons got married and had children it got crowded. But we never wanted to leave.”

Most Palestinians lived in homes rented from local landlords and paid for by the government, while others were housed in government-owned buildings and paid subsidized rents. A few successful businessmen rented homes themselves from Iraqis.

But for the Palestinians, there was a downside to government assistance. Under Iraqi law they and their offspring retained permanent refugee status. “Because we have no citizenship we are not allowed to register anything...no cars or house,” said Rizak. In addition, the Palestinians were ineligible for secure, and much coveted, government jobs.

That was not the impression left with many ordinary Iraqis, who insist that Saddam Hussein favored the Palestinians—championing their cause when he came to power in 1968 and providing them with a luxurious lifestyle.

“They say Saddam gave us money,” said Dr. Anwar Salem Al-Awadeh, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Iraq. “It’s not true, there are still Palestinians living in the old British Army barracks.”

Whether the property deed was in their name or not, the Palestinian residents of the once Jewish neighborhood considered themselves lucky. “I loved living there,” recalled Rizak. “For me it was a palace.”

The government’s financial woes in the 1980’s would eventually deal a fateful blow to the Palestinian dwellers of the grand Jewish homes. Iraq was in dire need of cash during the Iran-Iraq war and to get some, it sold the expropriated houses to Iraqis—on one condition: The new owners had to allow the Palestinian families to live there indefinitely. The government paid the rent.

Rizak was already married and the father of a newborn when an Iraqi man bought the villa he lived in.

Meanwhile, more Palestinian refugees came to Iraq, causing the government to rent more homes around the crowded capital in which to house them. First-time refugees arrived from the West Bank after the 1967 Six-Day War, while second-stage refugees arrived from the war in Lebanon in 1982 and from the war in Kuwait in 1990. Today there are almost 70,000 Palestinians in Iraq, according to Dr. Al-Awadeh.

For the owner of Rizak’s home, and for the other Iraqi landlords, the investment proved to be an incredibly bad deal. United Nations sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait weakened the economy and the value of the rents plunged. In the oil-rich Iraq of the early 1980’s the 7,000 dinars annually paid to landlords was worth almost $20,000. By 2002 the same rent—which the government would not allow landlords to change—was worth about $3.50.

So when Saddam’s government fell to United States forces on April 9, the Iraqi owners of the old Jewish houses, as well as those of other homes occupied by Palestinians, were quick to seize their expensive properties from the Palestinian occupants. There was no one to stop them.

“At about four in the afternoon, two days after the fall of Baghdad, 15 men with guns showed up with the owner and told us to leave,” recalled Rizak without emotion, sitting in his tent. “We were 12 families living in the house. We asked for one week and they said O.K.”

The new owners are now hoping to sell their properties to foreign investors and companies at high prices. One house, which was home to 16 families, was reportedly sold for the equivalent of $250,000—an outrageous amount in a country where the average person makes only about $70 a month.

Last summer the Rizaks were living in a tent camp with the ironic name of Al-Awda, “The Return.” Rizak’s son Umar, 23, had just married the girl from the tent next door. Rizak had dreamed of making a wedding in the large yard of the beautiful mansion in Beitawin.

Instead, the once fortunate Palestinians were playing the role of refugees in the country that had received them so willingly.

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Refugee bill will negate Palestinian 'right of return'

The Jerusalem Post explains why a historic bill on refugee rights could be crucial to a peace settlement with the Palestinians by negating the basis for an Arab right of return.

The Knesset's Immigration and Absorption Committee began hearings Tuesday regarding a bill that would ensure compensation for Jews who fled or were forced out of Arab countries following the creation of the state of Israel.

The bill, which was sponsored by MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) was initially put on hold by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation out of concerns that one of its clauses would limit the government's ability to conduct peace negotiations, but the committee then unanimously approved it on the condition that Ze'ev agreed to remove the problematic clause.

In addition to allowing Jews to press claims against Arab countries regarding property that they were forced to leave behind, Ze'ev argued that parallel refugee status would enable negotiators to claim that Palestinian and Jewish refugees had been part of a "population exchange," thus negating the basis for Palestinian claims to a right of return.

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Arutz Sheva article

Draft conditioned peace talks on compensation

Bataween adds: in 1957 and 1967 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and UN Resolution 242 of 1967, recognised Jews from Arab countries as refugees with rights. See JJAC legal report. See also The plight of refugees and Resolution 242 by Ruth Lapidoth.

Documentary spotlights the Sephardim of France

They're the largest Sephardi community outside Israel. When Jews from Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco streamed into France in the late 1950s and 1960s, they rejuvenated a Jewish community battered and bruised by the war: 70,000 Jews had been deported to the Nazi death camps from whence only three percent returned.

But the Jews of North Africa brought warmth and a joie de vivre. Being Jewish in France (Comme un juif en France), directed by Yves Jeuland, a three-hour long film documentary, played to a packed house yesterday at the UK Jewish Film Festival. The documentary, which has been screened on national French TV, did not focus exclusively on the Sephardim in its 100 year- survey of Jewish history in France. But the Sephardim are very much part of recent French-Jewish history.

"We took life seriously," recalls one dour Ashkenazi French Jew." Our recipes were always the same - gefilte fish, stewed fruit compote - and could fill a slim volume. But the Sephardim brought with them fruit and sunshine, hundreds of recipes and a different sort of Jewish culture.

The Ashkenazim of France accepted their Sephardi brethren. "They thought we were a funny lot - a bit Spanish, a bit Arab. They were not contemptuous, but they were just ignorant of us", actor Jean Benguigi says of the 'clash of civilisations'. "It was rather like what happened in Israel."

The Jews of Algeria, who were French nationals, arrived on the Marseille quayside with nothing from the Algerian war. "We lost everything, laments one refugee on a newsreel of the time. "People are nice here (in France) but we wish to go back (to Algeria)." It was not uncommon for five refugee families to crowd into one two-bedroom Paris apartment until they could rebuild their lives. There were always young cousins passing through, until they too found their own feet.

Professor Raphael Drai revelled in his triple identity. "I was happy riding my three horses," he says." French, pied noir Algerian and Jewish - in no particular order."

The newcomers had to get used to their couscous-free exile. Courgettes were a poor substitute. In France the sky was never as blue as in North Africa - " it looked washed out," says professor Drai. They had to put up with the dreary weather and the idea of getting to places on time. On the other hand, France's depleted synagogues were filled once again, and noisy arguments - even on Yom Kippur - broke out between the newcomers as to which minhag to follow.

Without a doubt, the Sephardim brought an exuberance and a pride in their Judaism. They were were not afraid to flaunt it after the euphoric Israeli victory of the Six-Day War: 1967 was indeed a watershed for all of French Jewry. To be Jewish in France was 'cool'. Jews set about frenetically exploring every aspect of their culture. But 2000 was another watershed: the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada. Synagogues were torched, Jewish schoolkids were beaten up. The spectre of antisemitism, spurred on mostly by radicalised Arab youths in the urban slums, was rearing its ugly head once again.

How do you feel when you hear about these incidents? the filmmakers asked Rachel Cohen, the headmistress of a Jewish school: fear, anger, sorrow? "Indignation," said Mrs Cohen. "It was outrageous that Jewish children could be so treated by their neighbours."

Although hers was by no means a majority sentiment, Rachel Cohen was seriously contemplating leaving France. " We split with Morocco. Now we have to split with France."
Already thousands of French Jews had made aliya - ascended to Israel.

With the rise of antisemitism, one thoughtful student leader detected a new self- consciousness in being Jewish. " "I'm not asking that every Frenchman should wake up in the morning and worry about what's happening to one percent of the population," he said. But what affects the Jews sooner or later impinges on the whole of society."

Will France, with the biggest Jewish and the biggest Muslim communities in Europe, manage to weather this particular storm?

Venezuelan Sephardim are ready to move again

The Sephardi Jews of Venezuela are ready to uproot their familes for the second time in one generation, but it's crime, rather than antisemitism, propelling them to leave, JTA News reports:

CARACAS, Venezuela (JTA) -- Esther Benchimol de Roffe arrived in Venezuela as a young bride, leaving northern Morocco more than 50 years ago to meet her groom in a prosperous foreign land.

The young couple fit in easily in a country where, as Spanish-speaking Sephardim, they already were familiar with the language and the Jewish community was established. Her husband built a successful business, and Benchimol raised a family and earned international renown singing the ancient Sephardic hymns she had learned as a child in Alcazarquivir.

“It was a rich country, there were a lot of opportunities,” reminisces Benchimol, now 74. “We had many friends and there was a real sense of brotherhood. There was never any racism against us.”

Her tone changes, however, when she considers the futures of her grandchildren and whether she would advise them to stay in Venezuela.

“I wouldn’t stay here,” Benchimol said. “I’m speaking as a grandmother.”

It’s not anti-Semitism that causes her to fear daily for the safety of her grandchildren but “la inseguridad” -- insecurity. It's the general term Venezuelans use now to describe an unrelenting crime wave that cuts across the country's economically and ideologically polarized society. The issue consistently tops surveys here as Venezuelans’ biggest concern.

Venezuelan Jews say that as citizens of a state in which many have lost faith in the police and judicial system, they fear random violence far more than anti-Semitic attacks. They consistently cite crime as their main source of anxiety.

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Convicted Tehran Jewish teen 'denied a fair trial'

Yaghoghil Shaolian, the Jewish teenager arrested for taking part in the Tehran electoral protests in June, has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison, accused of espionage. An international effort to protect the Jewish teenager's rights in jail has intensified in recent days.

Arieh Perecowicz, a human rights campaigner, who has been following Shaolian's case on his blog, has written to the Canadian government:

"I am writing you – particularly in the wake of Canada’s sponsorship, of a resolution in the United Nations, on Iran’s deplorable human rights record – to request that your government uses its good offices to intervene on behalf and monitor the conditions and trial of Mr. Yaghoghil Shaolian, an Iranian national, who was picked up and falsely imprisoned on trumped up charges, and risks arbitrary severe punishment, or even death. His predicament, as a member of Iran’s small and vulnerable Jewish community, is most precarious, and urgently requires Canada’s and the international community’s protest and intervention.

"Will Canada – together with our allies and international partners – intervene to monitor his conditions of detention, his trial, provide legal assistance, and otherwise protect the life of this innocent Iranian citizen?"

The human rights lawyer and Canadian MP Irwin Cotler assured Perecowicz on 29 October:

"I have been working in concert with others to free the detainees. Indeed I spoke yet again about this in Parliament today and will be doing so again tomorrow. We will keep doing what we can."

Shaolian has close relatives living in California and campaigners hope that more pressure will be brought to bear via the US government.

In response to a parliamentary question in the House of Commons at Westminster on 22 October, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonweath Affairs, Ivan Lewis, said: "The situation of the Jewish community in Iran has long been of concern to us. Its members have suffered discrimination under the Islamic Republic: for example, Iranian Jews are barred from running for President, and from a number of professions, such as the armed forces. President Ahmadinejad’s repeated denials of the Holocaust— most recently at the UN General Assembly in September—only serve to increase our concern.

"We have been disturbed by the Iranian authorities’ response to the protests that followed the disputed June 2009 presidential election, and in particular by the death and imprisonment sentences handed down in recent days. One of those convicted was the Jewish teenager, Yaghoghil Shaolian. He has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison. We are seeking more information about his case, as well as those of the other defendants, and will raise our concerns with the Iranian authorities, since those convicted and sentenced appear to have been denied a fair trial."

Yaghoghil Shaolian, 19,was quoted by the semiofficial Fars news agency as saying that he was not an activist but that he got caught up in the moment and threw stones at a Tehran bank during a protest in June.

"Iran’s only Jewish parliamentarian, Siamak Mereh Sedq, confirmed the detention of Shaolian and his Jewish identity to The Associated Press. He said the detention was not connected to his religion and that Shaolian is innocent.

"The report said Shaolian's lawyer had asked the court for a reasonable and fair prosecution due to Shaolian’s youth."Iran’s sole Jewish parliamentarian, Siamak Mereh Sedq, told The Associated Press: “I have been pursuing his case since we learned about his detention,” said Mereh Sedq. He said Shaolian’s detention was not related to his religion.

“He is innocent, we hope to see his release soon based on Islamic mercy,” he said.

Crossposted on Harry's Place and Z-Blog

Benny Morris: 'there were two refugee problems'

Professor Benny Morris has reinvented himself. The new Benny Morris is not the old doyen of historical post-Zionism he once was, Avi Beker argued in Haaretz recently: and as part of his newfound appreciation of the Arab jihad against Israel, Morris's latest writings reflect that the 1948 war created two refugee problems - the Jewish and the Arab.

"The person who laid the foundation for historical post-Zionism, Benny Morris, is also the one who undermined it and brought about its demise with his own hands. Morris founded the New Historians' school and created the infrastructure for post-Zionist ideology that took over a substantial part of academic writing on the Israeli-Arab conflict. But he gradually refuted the essence of his arguments and in effect closed the book on the entire revisionist writing that tried to present a "different" Zionist history.




Part 2 of a Med Israel For Fred lecture Morris gave on Jewish refugees in June 2009 (Part 1 here)

"His two most recent books, "1948" which will soon be published in Hebrew and was released last year in English, and "One State, Two States," which was released this year, completely contradict his arguments and the factual basis for his revolutionary historical approach.

"More than anyone else, Morris provided the historical sources for the argument that the State of Israel was born as a result of a conspiracy to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. (..)

"Then suddenly, 20 years later, Morris discovered that the Arabs had declared a jihad against Zionism already back in 1948. He explains his new approach as stemming from the opening of archives, including the Israel Defense Forces' archive, which were closed to researchers until now. He also adds that "in the current book, I placed the refugee problem within the overall context of the War of Independence," and with the help of recent studies, "I tried to present a new and comprehensive description of the war, and primarily of the connections between the military processes and the diplomatic processes."

"A new description"? The exact opposite, in fact. Morris returns to what was so detested by the New Historians, or as they put it: to the canonical version of the official Zionist narrative.

"He feels no need to apologize for presenting a sharp indictment of all of post-Zionism, claiming that "historians tended to belittle the importance of the religious rhetoric during the war," and the central role of "religious motivation."

"The dismissal of the threats of jihad was intentional and critical for the rewriting in order to turn the nakba into a "holocaust", but the jihad was apparent to all: threats of annihilation were heard from all sides and even from the dais of the UN in 1947 and 1948.

"The mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini repeated it over and over again; and religious scholars in Cairo issued an official manifesto calling for jihad two days after the resolution on the partition plan was passed on November 1947.

"The translation of the religious order into military action was the invasion of the Arab armies, which were called the Arab Liberation Army and the Jihad al-Mukades (Holy War) Army.

"The new writings also question attempts to debunk "the few against the many myth" that present the IDF in 1948 as the most organized and strongest army in the Middle East, while overlooking the assessments of everyone: the majority in the interim Jewish government prior to the establishment of the state, the Arabs, the British and the Americans, who all thought the Arabs would defeat the Jewish army in Palestine.

"Finally, Morris returns to one of the most important arguments in the historical context and clarifies that the 1948 war created two refugee problems: Jews and Arabs.

"The Jewish refugees, originally from Arab countries, explains Morris, are a clear product of the war, after pogroms and persecutions (including threats of destruction) on the part of the Arab regimes.

"As for the responsibility of the Jewish side, Morris makes a correction: Many of the Arab refugees left of their own accord and the others were not expelled but "moved to flee" amidst the chaos of the war and the threats of jihad, and in effect he defends the right of David Ben-Gurion to expel even more given the threats of jihad.

"The new Morris is even less apologetic than the Zionist historians and stresses the difference is, of course, that Israel absorbed the Jewish refugees and the problem disappeared, whereas the Arab countries did not absorb the Palestinian refugees and the problem has not been resolved to this day."

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Israeli engineer makes friends in Baghdad

Alex Shapira (second from right) with his USAID colleagues

Engineer Alex Shapira from Bat Yam found he got on better with the locals than with the Americans during his assigment in Baghdad. " This is how peace is made - through personal ties," he told Ynet News. (With thanks: Lily)

Israeli engineer Alex Shapira, an advisor for business and energy development, was sent to Iraq by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and has managed to cultivate close friendships with officials in the local energy ministry.

"This is how you make peace, through personal ties," the 59-year-old, Israel-born Shapira told Ynet, "We do not know them well enough. When you live with them, eat with them, and speak with them openly, you connect with them heart to heart."

Shapira, originally from Bat-Yam, says he made special connections with two of the heads of the energy ministry. "Our starting point was when we realized that we like the same movies and the same musicians," he said.

"From there we really made a connection," he continued, "I knew their families and I would eat at their places. While they don't have tehina, their lamb meat is simply delicious. I discovered that they are the exact opposite of what we think, they are very pro-Israel. They told me that they could never have imagined how nice the Israelis are."

Shapira said he connected more with the Iraqis than with the Americans that he worked with: "Our mentality is much more similar to theirs than the Americans. When I left they really cried. Even now, after I left, we still talk through Skype.

"I even introduced them to some of my other Israeli friends. One of them has a child suffering from leukemia and he really wants to send him for medical treatment in Israel, I promised him I would look into this."

He said his friends in the ministry told him they would like to establish diplomatic ties. "They want peace and regret what was in the past," he said.

Shapira said such things aren't said openly, since "the situation there is very unstable. There is no strong government there and there are many extremist political groups influenced by Iran. They are afraid to speak."

While Shapira has been living in the US for the past several years, he considers himself an Israeli in every way.

"To the best of my knowledge, I was the only Israeli in Baghdad. I didn't present my identity candidly of course, and every place we went to we wore bullet proof vests, travelled in an armored vehicle and were accompanied by a private army of security guards.

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Draft conditioned talks on refugee compensation

Wording for the draft refugee law, which passed its first reading last week in the Knesset, was originally much tougher: it made peace talks conditional on compensation for Jewish refugees, AFP reveals. The draft was toned down because it would have been virtually impossible for peace talks to get off the ground.

JERUSALEM — A draft law stipulating that any Middle East peace treaty must mention compensation for Jews forced to leave Arab states has passed a preliminary reading in the Israeli parliament, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

The draft bill, presented by a member of the ultra-orthodox Shas party, a member of the government coalition, passed the preliminary vote 49 to 5 last week, said spokesman Giora Pordes.

The draft, which the Maariv daily called "a curious and provocative bill," still has to pass three more votes before it becomes law.

It calls for the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab states to be raised whenever the question of Palestinian refugees comes up in Middle East negotiations.

"The government should raise the issue about payment of compensation to Jewish refugees for the loss of their property and about granting to Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Arab countries a status similar to that of Arab refugees who lost their property when the state (of Israel) was created," the proposed law states.

Shas had initially wanted a tougher bill stating compensations for Jewish refugees must be agreed before any further peace negotiations are held. The paragraph, which would have made it virtually impossible to reach a peace accord, was eventually removed so the government could support the text.

The text of the draft says that 1.5 million Jews fled or were expelled from Arab states since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

A total of 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in what today is Israel amid the fighting that surrounded the creation of the Jewish state.

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Refugee rights bill passes Knesset reading

Maariv article - Hebrew (with thanks: Iraqijews)

The Philadelphia Bulletin - David Bedein

Fourteen Jewish families stay put in Yemen capital

Yemeni Jewish boy in an apartment in Sa'naa

While scores of Jews head for America and Israel, some 70 Jews have decided to stay put in the Yemeni capital San'aa, AFP reports.

SANAA — Forced to flee fighting between Shiite rebels and the army in the north, Yemen's Jews have found a new home in Sanaa, where they benefit from the special protection of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

"May God keep him alive," repeats Rabbi Yahya Yussef Moussa, the leader of the Jewish community of Al-Salem, every time he refers to the Yemeni president during an interview with AFP.

Al-Salem is close to Saada in northern Yemen, which is the stronghold of the Shiite Zaidi rebels, who are also known as Huthis.

Fighting between the Huthis and the army since 2004 has seen the exodus from the area of an estimated 150,000 people, including the entire Jewish community of Al-Salem.

"He is the president of all Yemenis," Rabbi Moussa says surrounded by his family, housed inside a tourist resort in Sanaa, where the 45 Jews who fled their villages in the north in 2007 have been relocated.

"We are 70 today because there were marriages and births," says Habbub Salem, the rabbi's cousin, garbed in the local dress and chewing on Qat, a euphoric drug used by the majority of Yemenis.

"We were only nine families when we arrived and now we are 14," Rabbi Moussa says.

His father, Rabbi Yussef Moussa, finds it difficult to speak since he had a heart attack. His mother Nemaa, wearing a black veil over a long coloured dress, nods her head approvingly while following the conversation.

The many children of the rabbi and his cousin, who return from school, lighten up the large living room, which is also a place of prayer.

The girls cover their heads with a white veil, which is part of their school uniform.

If it weren't for their curls and their kippas, nothing would distinguish them from their compatriots of other religious persuasions. The males in the community tend to take up the trades of cabinetmakers or blacksmiths.

"We lived quietly among the 4,000 or so Muslims," remembers Rabbi Moussa.

"But things got bad in April 2007 when we received a written threat from the rebels telling us to leave.

"Three days later, armed men came at night and asked us to leave our homes with only what we were wearing. We returned to Saada and they then destroyed our houses and our library which contained valuable Torahs," he explains.

The main slogan of the rebels is: "Death to America, death to Israel and shame on the Jews."

After being received by the provincial authorities, the Jews of Al-Salem were airlifted in helicopters to Sanaa, recalls Habbub Salem, who had never before set foot in the capital.

Since then, they have been living in tightly guarded accommodation provided by the government.

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Are Mizrahim still marginal? Rachel Shabi reviewed

No, Mizrahim are no longer marginal in Israel, they're mainstream. Maddeningly wrongheaded: that's Lyn Julius's verdict of Rachel Shabi's book Not the enemy. Here's her book review, published in Israel Horizons Magazine (Autumn 2009).

Not the enemy by Rachel Shabi. Yale University Press, 2009 ( 264 pp.)
We look like the enemy by Rachel Shabi, Walker & Company, 2009 (272 pages)

In the 1930s, Jews from Palestine smuggled date palms out of Iraq and planted them in what became Israel. But they never bore fruit as delicious as the original, magnificent, Iraqi dates.

As with the dates, so with the people. If we are to believe Rachel Shabi, the author of Not the enemy, the Jews of the Orient, or Mizrahim, transplanted to Israel, somehow “did not grow right” in their new land.

Rachel Shabi is the Israeli-born daughter of Iraqi Jews who settled in England where Shabi was brought up. She recently went back to live in Israel to research her book. Not the enemy catalogues the “European” prejudices which Mizrahi Jewish refugees – at one time a majority, now 41 percent of Israel’s Jewish population – encountered at the hands of the Ashkenazi establishment when they arrived in Israel in the 1950s and ‘60s. “Israel’s leadership was perennially paranoid about the possibility of the Jewish state sinking to a Levantine cultural level,” she writes.

Shabi insists on seeing every example of injustice through the prism of identity politics – dark-skinned, deprived Mizrahim versus privileged Ashkenazim. Her book argues that Mizrahim were forced to speak Arabic only in private, mocked for their accents, and consigned in the dead of night to frontier development towns, “like cattle being taken to market.” They received the worst education and housing, and now form the bulk of Israel’s poor and criminal classes.

She cites the genuinely disturbing case of Yemenite Jews evicted from land claimed by an “Ashkenazi” kibbutz on the shores of Lake Kinneret. She also mentions a land dispute between the predominantly North African town of Kiryat Shemona and neighboring kibbutzim.

Yet the author cherry-picks examples of cultural repression. She meets actors rejected for their so-called guttural accents. Arabic music was “scorned and hushed up, decreed as belonging to the enemy camp and considered low-quality – like all things Oriental,” she alleges.

Readers familiar with Israel will have a strong sense of déjà-vu. In the beginning there was discrimination, but Israel has changed. Mizrahi culture has moved from the margins to the mainstream. Songs by Ofra Haza, Avinoam Nini, Kobi Peretz and Sarit Haddad fill the airwaves. Moshe Ibgui, Ronit Alkabetz and Alon Abutbul are Mizrahi stars of TV and film. The new generation is eagerly rediscovering the culture which their immigrant grandparents had been all too eager to get their own children to forget.

Shabi’s claims are mostly based on anecdotal evidence. An Ashkenazi Rachel Shabi could just as easily have written a book lamenting the dearth of klezmer music on Israeli radio. Aficionados of Eastern European cuisine would be hard-pressed to find kreplach, kugel or lochshen pudding on Israeli restaurant menus, while the Mizrahi favorites of mujadera, shakshooka and falafel are ubiquitous. An Ashkenazi Shabi would be outraged that Yiddish is hardly spoken outside ultra-Orthodox circles.

In its zeal to mold the new Israeli, neither European nor Levantine, Israel has had an ambivalent, even hostile attitude towards the Galut (Diaspora). In the 1950s, for example, state authorities used censorship laws inherited from the British to prohibit or severely limit Yiddish theatre in Israel. Israelis were discouraged from expressing themselves in Yiddish. Even Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion himself once sneered, “That language grates in my ears.”

In those days Israel’s leadership patronizingly decided what was good for the people. Western values were infinitely preferable to Levantine corruption, extortion and lack of freedom. Television – there was no national broadcasting until 1968 – was considered a corrupting influence. The Beatles – who were banned from performing in Israel – were another.

When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said that the Mizrahim “had the worst Jewish and human education,” he was merely speaking the truth: among the half-a million Mizrahi refugees flooding into the Jewish state in the ‘50s and ‘60s were ‘primitive’ Jews -‘poor human material’ - from the Atlas and Kurdish mountains and Yemenites who had never even seen an airplane. Any Jew with education, resources and connections went to the Americas or Western Europe rather than endure years in a leaky ma’abara or tent camp in Israel. Although then a struggling developing country, Israel took in the stateless, the destitute, the least educated -- simply because they were Jews.

There is still much progress to be made, if only because, scandalously, one in four Israeli children remains below the poverty line, but a curmudgeonly focus on discrimination obscures just how far Israel has come. No other country – not even the US - has had to integrate people from 130 different countries. Today Mizrahim are not some repressed minority: they are generals and doctors and property developers and bank managers, and have held every government post except prime minister. Most importantly – a fact Shabi glosses over – intermarriage is running at 25 percent and the mixed Israeli family is fast becoming the norm. Soon there will be no such thing as Mizrahi or Ashkenazi in the Israeli melting pot.

Jews, Arab Jews and Arabs: Yet Shabi insists on pigeonholing Jews from Arab countries as Arabs. Shabi aligns herself with anti-Zionists who have long argued on behalf of an “Arab Jewish” identity as a way of repudiating Jewish nationalism. It presupposes that Arabs and Mizrahi Jews are natural allies, and that both are victims of Ashkenazim, who lured Mizrahim to Israel under false pretenses.

The author speculates with the conviction that: “if Israel could find a way to reconnect with its own Middle-Eastern self, the chances are that this would result in the country having entirely different relations with the region. Because long before they were apparent arch enemies, Arabs and Jews were culture collaborators, good neighbors — and friends."

“We got along and how. Believe me, it was a pleasure,” gushes Naima (who left Iraq at 17). “They would come and make tea for us on the Shabbat!”

But Shabi’s nostalgia trip is leading us up a blind alley. She does what many activists do, confusing the personal with the political. The old Sephardi notable and politician Elie Eliachar spent his life pleading for New Settlement Zionists from Europe to show greater sensitivity toward the Arabs in Palestine by deferring to the experience of Old Settlement Jews who had coexisted with Arabs for generations. But the Old Settlement could not prevent the Arab massacre of 67 of its members in Hebron in 1929.

Neither did Arabs making tea for Jews prevent the Iraqi government from dismissing Jewish civil servants, instituting quotas, banning travel and higher education, practicing extortion, arresting Jews at random and executing them as spies. It did not prevent the wholesale dispossession of Mizrahi Jewry to the point where under 5,000 Jews still live in Arab countries out of a 1948 population of one million.

Rachel Shabi is a journalist specializing in social issues. She is not a historian. In this book, history is selective and decontextualized. A person who writes, “there are no Oriental Jewish names on a list of key Zionist thinkers precisely because there was at the time no nationalism and no murderous antisemitism in the Middle East,” is either mindlessly naïve or in denial. This denies, for example, Sephardi Rabbi Yehudah Alkalay, whose Zionism was a response to the 1840 Damascus blood libel, and is said to have inspired Herzl himself.

Shabi presents the persecution of Mizrahi Jews in Arab countries largely as a backlash to Zionism. The pro-Nazi pogrom in Iraq of 1941 in which 130 – some say up to 600 -- Jews were murdered (seven years before Israel was established) is portrayed as a mere hiccup in Arab-Jewish coexistence. On the other hand, the refugees being sprayed with disinfectant on arrival in Israel is a “visceral memory.”

Secure in her conviction in the idyll of pluralistic coexistence in Arab countries, predating the State of Israel, Shabi is at a loss as to why the vast majority of Mizrahim have “hard-right, Arab-hating opinions.” Her explanation is a Marxist-style false consciousness, nurtured by Zionist social forces: “After so many years of learning to hate their own rejected Arab features and having to hide them, the Mizrahis simply projected all that revulsion on to the neighboring Arab community.”

What makes Not the enemy so maddeningly wrongheaded is Shabi’s refusal to recognize that most Oriental Jews suffered under Arab rule to the point where they could see no future in their ancient communities. Israel, for all its faults, is the place where they regained dignity, freedom, rights and a sense of personal security. If Shabi wants to promote peace and reconciliation, ignoring Arab responsibility for Jewish suffering and idealizing the Jewish-Arab past is not the way to do it.

Meretz USA Israel Horizons magazine

More on Rachel Shabi's book here, here, here and here

The Nazi skeletons in the Middle East's cupboard

In her blog Warped mirror Petra Marquardt-Bigman drives home the point, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, that while the Germans are expected to own up to the evils of Nazism, no such demands are made of the admirers and collaborators of Nazism in the Middle East:

"The argument that the danger posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions must also be assessed in view of the Holocaust denial of Iran's president and the threats against Israel that are a staple of the Iranian regime is often rejected, not least because the implied comparison between Iran and Nazi Germany is regarded as very controversial.

"In an article on "Iran, the Jews and Germany" written in March, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen haughtily dismissed criticism "from several American Jews unable to resist some analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany" and asserted firmly that "Iran's Islamic Republic is no Third Reich redux."

"Of course, much has changed in the meantime, and some experts have argued that Iran is evolving into a military dictatorship. Moreover, as far as history is concerned, it is worth remembering that during the Third Reich, relations between Nazi Germany and Iran were excellent. In an article on this subject, Edwin Black has pointed out that it was admiration for Nazi Germany that prompted the shah in 1935 to change his country's official designation from Persia to Iran, because this term refers to the Aryans so admired by Nazi racial ideology.

"It may be debatable if this past is relevant for today's developments, but what is certain is that a curious double standard exists: Europeans firmly believe that it is important to confront the past, and particularly the Germans were and still are expected to own up to the evils of Nazism. But no such demand is made of the admirers and collaborators of the Nazis in the Middle East.

"Quite the contrary - Middle Eastern enthusiasm for Nazism is something of a taboo in Europe. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Daniel Schwammenthal reported on the difficulties encountered by the German organizer of an exhibition that was devoted to the subject "The Third World in the Second World War" and included one section on the role of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, who was a Waffen SS recruiter and Nazi propagandist in Berlin.

"The exhibition was scheduled to be shown in a multicultural center located in a Berlin neighborhood with many Turkish and Arab residents, but the center's director objected to the segment that focused on the mufti's enthusiastic collaboration with the Nazis.

"It is worthwhile to note in this context that even before the mufti came to Berlin, he had played a role in what has been described as "Kristallnacht in Baghdad," the pogrom in June 1941 that is commonly known as "Farhood" (also spelled Farhud or Farhoud), which was no less brutal that the German Kristallnacht.

"As Schwammenthal rightly emphasizes, there is no justification for the "politically correct" tendency to downplay the role of the mufti:

The mufti 'invented a new form of Jew-hatred by recasting it in an Islamic mold,' according to German scholar Matthias Küntzel. The mufti's fusion of European anti-Semitism - particularly the genocidal variety - with Koranic views of Jewish wickedness has become the hallmark of Islamists world-wide, from al Qaeda to Hamas and Hezbollah. During his time in Berlin, the mufti ran the Nazis' Arab-language propaganda radio program, which incited Muslims in the Mideast to 'kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.'

Among the many listeners was also the man later known as Ayatollah Khomeini, who used to tune in to Radio Berlin every evening, according to Amir Taheri's biography of the Iranian leader. Khomeini's disciple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still spews the same venom pioneered by the mufti as do Islamic hate preachers around the world."

"In recent years, there have been a number of scholarly studies examining the lasting influence of Nazi propaganda in the Middle East. A new book on Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, by Jeffrey Herf, has just been released. In a class of its own will be the forthcoming work A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad by Robert S. Wistrich, the Director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem."

Read post in full

See also articles under 'Holocaust in Arab and Muslim lands' label

Jewish rights ignored in Jerusalem evictions story

Once again the world's press and media are full of emotive images and reports of Arabs being evicted from homes in Jerusalem.The wretched inhabitants are being photographed being dragged away by police from homes in which they claim to have lived for 50 years. Rarely do the media give the backstory: that these occupants never had legal tenure, and the homes were once owned by Jews who were themselves evicted. The homes have been the object of legal disputes in the Israeli courts going back several decades. If they do mention such facts, the media assume that - flying in the face of demonstrable proof that the Israeli courts are no friends of settlers - the system would automatically side with the Jews.

The Jerusalem Post, however, does give this piece of background information:

"The roots of the ownership dispute over the 28 properties in question dates back to 1948, when a number of homes in the neighborhood that belonged to Jews before the creation of the state were seized by the Jordanian government under its Enemy Property Law during the War of Independence.

"In 1956, 28 Palestinian families who had been receiving refugee assistance from UNRWA were selected to benefit from a project in which they forfeited their refugee aid and moved into homes built on the seized properties in Sheikh Jarrah.

"The agreement stipulated that the ownership of the homes was to be put in the families' names - a step that never took place - and court battles between Jewish groups that represent some of the former Jewish homeowners and the current Palestinian residents have been going on in some cases since the 1980s."

This Reuters report is one of the few to quote the words of one of the Jewish claimants:

"They can go to Syria, Iraq, Jordan. We are six million and they are billions," said Yehya Gureish, an Arabic-speaking Yemen-born Jew who said his family owned the land and had Ottoman Empire documentation to prove it."

To those who worry that the issue sets a precedent and opens up a can of worms, exposing the whole of Israel to Palestinian property claims and legitimising an Arab 'right of return', the answer is that there are two cans of worms here - any Palestinian claims must be set against Jewish claims for their property seized in Arab countries.

As commenter Rafael Moshe wrote on the Jerusalem Post thread:

"In brief, the Arabs are seeking to retain the fruits of 'ethnic cleansing' of Jews. The current residents may even be the heirs to the perpetrators. When the Jews from North Africa and the Middle East were expelled by the Arab nations in response to Israel's declaration of independence, real estate totaling an estimated five times the size of the state of Israel was confiscated from these Jews. Yet, the Western apologists for the Palestinians are far more concerned with the "rights" of Arab squatters. Any explanation?"

Tangled web of Jewish ownership in Arab areas

Mufti intended genocide against Jews of Arab world

With thanks: Eliyahu

As we approach the 9 November anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom which 'softened up' German Jewry for mass slaughter, the academic and antisemitism expert Robert Wistrich compares present-day resurgent Islamic antisemitism with Nazi Jew-hatred at its worst. The Middle East has taken on a particularly dangerous, toxic and potentially genocidal aura of hatred, he argues in his Haaretz piece of 3 November.

"Only a fortnight after "Crystal Night," the SS journal, Das Schwarze Korps, chillingly prophesied the final end of German Jewry through "fire and sword" and its imminent complete annihilation.

"Today, shocking to relate, the specter of such apocalyptic anti-Semitism has returned to haunt Europe and other continents, while often assuming radically new forms.

"In the Middle East, it has taken on a particularly dangerous, toxic and potentially genocidal aura of hatred, closely linked to the "mission" of holy war or jihad against the West and the Jews."

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that the Middle East's 'genocidal aura of hatred' has existed since the days of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The Mufti met Adolf Hitler in November 1941 to ask him to declare his support for the Arabs. This meeting took place barely six months after Haj Amin al-Husseini had instigated his own an anti-Jewish 'Kristallnacht' in Iraq killing 179 Jews.

As you will see from this edited transcript of their conversation from the Emperor's clothes blog, translated into English by the US government after World War 2, the Mufti's genocidal intentions were directed not just against the Jews of Palestine, but the Jews of the Arab world.

"The Grand Mufti began by thanking the Führer for the great honor he had bestowed by receiving him. He wished to seize the opportunity to convey to the Führer of the Greater German Reich, admired by the entire Arab world, his thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially the Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches. The Arab countries were firmly convinced that Germany would win the war and that the Arab cause would then prosper.

"The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists. They were therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in the war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. The Arabs could be more useful to Germany as allies than might be apparent at first glance, both for geographical reasons and because of the suffering inflicted upon them by the English and the Jews.

"Furthermore, they had close relations with all Moslem nations, of which they could make use in behalf of the common cause. The Arab Legion would be quite easy to raise. An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries and the prisoners of Arab, Algerian, Tunisian, and Moroccan nationality in Germany would produce a great number of volunteers eager to fight. Of Germany's victory the Arab world was firmly convinced, not only because the Reich possessed a large army, brave soldiers, and military leaders of genius, but also because the Almighty could never award the victory to an unjust cause.(...)

The Führer replied that Germany's fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the function of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.

The Führer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart:

1. He (the Führer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.

2. At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.

"3. As soon as this had happened, the Führer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration."

Coca Cola should not benefit from Bigio property

After 12 years of legal wrangling, the substantive issues of the Bigio case against Coca Cola are about to be heard in court, writes Richard Shulman on his Examiner.com blog:

A Jewish family from Egypt sued Coca Cola Company for occupying property there which the Nasser regime had confiscated from them when it persecuted the Jewish population in the 1960s. The suit contends that when the Company took over the property in 1994, it knew the circumstances of its availability to them.

The lawsuit began 12 years ago, but the Company preoccupied the courts with technical matters. Now the substantive issues finally are about to be heard.

The suit states “…that Nasser systematically persecuted Egypt’s Jews, and that his anti-Jewish program included police detention of Jews, the sequestration of Jewish-owned businesses and property, depriving Jews of Egyptian citizenship, and the expulsion of Jews from Egypt. Incredibly, Coca-Cola disputed the truth of these statements.”

Zionist Organization of America provides historical and regional context. The Arab world did not treat Jews as full citizens. With Israel’s formation, persecution intensified. Almost 900,000 Jews were expelled! In Egypt, the Jewish population of 75,000 fell to under 200. Coca Cola company should not benefit from this persecution, and to retain its benefit, deny that there was persecution.

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Refugee rights bill passes Knesset reading

It was a historic moment in the Knesset recently when a bill to secure rights and redress for Jewish refugees from Arab countries passed its preliminary reading with an overwhelming majority.

Forty-nine Knesset members voted in favour. Five MKs - all Arab - voted against.

The Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) office in Israel, which was instrumental in lobbying for the bill, commented: "One day we will try to convince them (the Arab MKs) that this Act will promote peace by demanding compensation for all refugees from the conflict through an international fund, as outlined by President Clinton."

The Deputy Finance Minister, Yitzhak Cohen, was determined to salvage the bill after it was rejected by a Ministerial Committee on Legislation. Others who pressed hard for the bill to be introduced were Minister Moshe Kahlon and MK Nissim Zeev. Many others worked behind the scenes.

But the JJAC Israel office cautioned: " we must not rest on our laurels. It's a long road ahead: the bill must pass through the committee stage before it is approved by the Knesset and becomes law."

JJAC's New York Headquarters has issued the following press release:

"New York, NY - (November 4, 2009) In a significant development, the Israeli Knesset has given approval to a law, supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to secure rights and redress for Jews displaced from Arab countries.

"The law was first introduced by Member of Knesset Nessim Ze'ev (Shas) and was strongly promoted at the Committee of Ministers by Minister of Communications, Moshe Kahlon (Likud) and Deputy Finance Minister, Yitzhak Cohen (Shas).

"The law was adopted for further action by a Knesset vote of 49 in favor and 5 against-all of whom represented Arab parties. Before its introduction in the Knesset, the bill was vetted by a committee of Ministers of the governing coalition, meaning that this law, as it makes its way through the Knesset, will have the full support of all the participating political parties which make up the present government.

"After its adoption, the bill was referred to a Knesset committee for review, following which the process for adoption calls for three readings before the Knesset.

"This matter was spearheaded by Israeli representatives of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), with the full participation of the leadership of the Mizrahi-Sephardi communities in Israel.

"Stanley Urman, Executive Vice-President of JJAC, stated "This is the first step in what we hope will be an expeditious and successful adoption of this law. The world must realize that Palestinians were not the only Middle-East refugees; that there were Jewish refugees who also have rights under international law. This recognition is good for the State of Israel and it is good for the people of Israel."

"Members of the public are encouraged to contact members of the Knesset and urge them to support this bill when it comes before them for consideration."

Full text of the bill (with thanks: Iraqijews)
Bill of MK Nissim Zeev

F / 1154/18

A bill regarding compensation of Jewish refugees from Arab countries within the framework of the peace process, Edition -2009

Purpose
1.
The purpose of this law is to protect the rights of Jewish citizens of Israel who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries and left their homes and property following the establishment of Israel and are defined as refugees under the UN Refugee Convention. (1951 UN Refugee Convention)


2. In this Law:

"Jewish refugees from Arab countries" - these are citizens of Israel and Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab lands following the establishment of Israel, leaving property owned in the country of origin and defined as refugees under the UN Refugee Convention.

Signing a political agreement:

3.(A) The Government of Israel will not sign, directly or through its representatives, any treaty or agreement of any kind with a country, body or authority, regarding a political settlement in the Middle East without securing the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, according to the UN refugee Convention.


(B) in any discussion about the Palestinian refugees as part of peace negotiations in the Middle East, the Israeli government will discuss the issue of awarding compensation for loss of property and providing equal status to Jewish refugees from Arab countries with Arab refugees who left their property after statehood.


(C) The Government will define in a precise manner the property that will be introduced into the framework of discussions as stated in (b) above.

Explanations

*According to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (rights of indigenous people), the state has the obligation to compensate indigenous lands and cultural, religious and spiritual assets they had lost in the past; the principle is the only answer to the Palestinian claim "right of return" and is the appropriate compensation according to UN indigenous rights.
It is proposed that the Government will act according to UN resolutions on appropriate redress and compensation for the million and a half Jews who were expelled or fled and were forced to leave their homes and property in Arab countries since the founding of the state.

*The U.S. Congress passed a resolution (HRES 185 EH) in February 2008 ruled that Jews who were expelled or fled their homes in the Middle East are defined as refugees under the explicit definition of the UN Refugee Convention. It was also stipulated that the United States had an obligation to demand that talks on Middle East Peace Process granted the same status to refugees of all religions, including Jews and Christians as that given to Palestinian refugees, and in fact states that the U.S. recognizes the principle of equal treatment for all victims of the Israeli - Arab conflict.

* Government resolution dated 28 December 2003 (1250) renewed the government's decision (34) dated March 3, 2003 2002. 3. 3 entitled "Registration of claims of Jews from Arab Countries", a decision that renewed government decision no. 34 categories of September 28, 1969.

"1) The State of Israel will concentrate on the handling of claims and registration rights of the Jews who left Arab countries as refugees, in this country and abroad, with home and foreign affairs officials, various organizations, involvement in Jewish communities, Jewish Agency officials abroad, with the help of various Jewish organizations working with them, as necessary. "

An essentially similar bill was introduced into the seventeenth Knesset by MK Nissim Zeev (P / 4017/17).

Jewish-Muslim music fest a 'lesson in tolerance'

Rabbi Haim Louk sings with a Moroccan orchestra (AFP)

I can't help but be amused when AFP applies the adjective 'tolerance' to Arab-Jewish relations in Morocco, where the Jewish population is down to 1 percent of what it used to be. Nevertheless one can see why royal adviser Andre Azoulay -'spiritually Jewish', but 'a Berber' (having in the past described himself as an Arab) - strains to put a positive spin on the Muslim-Jewish music festival in his hometown of Essaouira. But let's give the Moroccans credit where it's due, such an event could hardly take place, say, in Egypt today. (With thanks: bh)

ESSAOUIRA, Morocco — A music festival bringing Jews and Muslims together in this windy, walled fishing port, long a crossroads of civilisation, is a step in breaking down political divides, says festival founder Andre Azoulay.

"Azoulay, a high-profile businessman and advisor to Morocco's King Mohammed VI, who is a player in the Middle East peace process, is the driving force behind the Andalousies Atlantiques festival of Judeo-Arab music, whose sixth edition ended this weekend.

"Essaouira throughout its entire history and its entire way of living was a synthesis between Muslims and Jews," Azoulay told AFP. "It was not something artificially constructed, it was natural."

"And this festival is a reconstruction of that reality as it was historically. It is not cosmetic, it is real."

"The opening concert at the three-day fest improbably featured an 80-year-old singer-rabbi, Haim Louk, backed by a Moroccan band who drew thunderous applause from the audience -- people of all ages and social class, women wearing headscarves and others in western gear, tourists, foreigners, Jews and Arabs.

"Azoulay grew up in the town, which then had a big Jewish community, and returned after a successful banking and communications career in France with the idea of reviving the local economy.

"An obvious path was to turn the town into a cultural hub to reflect its past, and a number of festivals including the world's leading festival of pulsating Gnaoua (or Gnawa) music now take place in the town.

"The changes in the town have been tremendous," Azoulay said. "Twenty years ago there was no airport. The hotels here now employ hundreds of people."

"Azoulay grew up in a building in the kasbah where a Jewish family lived on one floor and a Muslim family on the next.

"It was so normal that it was banal."

"When you see a concert such as Haim Louk, it is very moving," he said. "It is a reflection of what was and what is today in Morocco, and it is a step in the right direction in terms of our values.

"I would challenge anyone to take that social and cultural cohesiveness away from us, because of a political situation in which people are at odds with each other," he added.

"Describing himself as spiritually Jewish, but also a Berber who is strongly influenced by Arab-Islamic history and culture, Azoulay said this meant he could enjoy Mahler, Um Kalthoum and Andalusian music."

Read article in full

Yemen's Jews. The end

Yemeni Jews arriving at Ben-Gurion airport

This Jerusalem Post editorial is essentially an obituary for the Jews of Yemen. The article points out several neglected home truths, but fails to convey the desperate conditions that Yemeni Jews over the centuries lived in - to the point that Jews were ready to walk to Palestine in the 19th century. Thousands have converted to Islam over the years.

"History will record that 2,500 years of Jewish life in Yemen is now over. As The Wall Street Journal reported October 31, the US State Department has completed a clandestine operation which brought 60 of the country's remaining Jews to America. The newspaper quoted Yeshiva University's Hayim Tawil, a Yemeni Jewry expert, as issuing the certificate of death: "This is the end of the Jewish Diaspora of Yemen. That's it."

"As Israelis and Jews we earnestly appreciate the efforts of the Obama administration on behalf of our Yemeni brethren.

"The rescue illuminates an often overlooked aspect of the 60-year-plus Arab-Israel conflict. Whereas the Arab world has purposefully maintained the 700,000 or so Palestinian Arabs made homeless in the course of the 1948 war and their descendants as permanent refugees and political pawns, the State of Israel and world Jewry have worked hard to resettle a roughly equal number of Jewish refugees forced to flee Arab lands.

"The behavior of Arab leaders toward their Jewish subjects after the creation of Israel was (with notable exceptions) characterized by scapegoating and marginalization culminating in mass exodus. In 1947, Arab rioters in Aden killed dozens of Jews to protest a two-state solution in Palestine. In 1949 and 1950 the bulk of Yemen's Jews, some 49,000 souls, were airlifted here in "Operation Magic Carpet." The broad Arab refusal to accept the legitimacy of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state is partly attributable to Arab attitudes toward their Jewish minorities.

"Coexistence was possible - so long as Jews knew their place.

"Jewish life under Muslim rule was historically neither the utopia Arab propagandists claim nor the purgatory Jewish polemicists assert. As the doyen of Middle East studies Bernard Lewis wrote in The Jews of Islam, the actual state of affairs varied depending on the era, locale, political and economic conditions, the stability of the ruling Islamic regime, and on developments within the Jewish community.

"Jews were granted Dhimmi or tolerated status. They paid a special jizya tax to underscore their subordinate position in society. If they missed the point, Islamic tradition allowed for the local Muslim authority to deliver a ceremonial slap on the neck to the Jew upon payment of the levy. Jews were required to wear distinguishing clothes; they were expected to deport themselves deferentially in the presence of Muslims. And unlike everyone else, Jews were not permitted to carry weapons.

"On the other hand, Lewis wrote, Jews were not required to convert to Islam, and could enjoy a high degree of acculturation. (They were certainly better off than their coreligionists living under medieval Christendom.)

"At any rate, this social contract crumbled in part because the Zionist movement was a direct assault on the Dhimmi principle.

"The Yemen experience also reminds us that the Arab world's antagonism to modern values has led it to extended periods of internal instability as well a visceral rejection of Israel for embodying the Western liberal idea."

Read article in full

America's 'secret' mission to save 60 Yemeni Jews

The father of murdered Moshe Al-Nahari outside the courtroom with his burka-clad daughters (AFP)

Feature by Miriam Jordan for the Wall Street Journal on the not-so-secret rescue of 60 Jews from Yemen and their resettlement in Monsey, New York, USA. With the emigration of these Jews, who have neither seen a multiplication table nor an alarm clock, a 3,000 year-old pre-Islamic Jewish presence in Yemen is coming to an end (with thanks: Shaul):

MONSEY, N.Y. -- In his new suburban American home, Shaker Yakub, a Yemeni Jew, folded a large scarf in half, wrapped it around his head and tucked in his spiraling side curls. "This is how I passed for a Muslim," said the 59-year-old father of seven, improvising a turban that hid his black skullcap.

The ploy enabled Mr. Yakub and half a dozen members of his family to slip undetected out of their native town of Raida, Yemen, and travel to the capital 50 miles to the south. There, they met U.S. State Department officials conducting a clandestine operation to bring some of Yemen's last remaining Jews to America to escape rising anti-Semitic violence in his country.

In all, about 60 Yemeni Jews have resettled in the U.S. since July; officials say another 100 could still come. There were an estimated 350 in Yemen before the operation began. Some of the remainder may go to Israel and some will stay behind, most in a government enclave.

Moshe Nahari, murder victim, dancing at a wedding (Reuven Schwartz)

The secret evacuation of the Yemeni Jews -- considered by historians to be one of the oldest of the Jewish diaspora communities -- is a sign of America's growing concern about this Arabian Peninsula land of 23 million.

The operation followed a year of mounting harassment, and was plotted with Jewish relief groups while Washington was signaling alarm about Yemen. In July, Gen. David Petraeus was dispatched to Yemen to encourage President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be more aggressive against al-Qaeda terrorists in the country. Last month, President Barack Obama wrote in a letter to President Saleh that Yemen's security is vital to the region and the U.S.(...)

President Saleh has been trying to protect the Jews, but his inability to quell the rebellion in the country's north made it less likely he could do so, prompting the U.S. to step in. The alternative -- risking broader attacks on the Jews -- could well have undermined the Obama administration's efforts to rally support for President Saleh in the U.S. and abroad.

"If we had not done anything, we feared there would be bloodshed," says Gregg Rickman, former State Department Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.

Mr. Yakub says the operation saved his family from intimidation that had made life in Yemen unbearable. Violence toward the country's small remaining Jewish community began to intensify last year, when one of its most prominent members was gunned down outside his house. But the mission also hastens the demise of one of the oldest remaining Jewish communities in the Arab world.

Jews are believed to have reached what is now Yemen more than 2,500 years ago as traders for King Solomon. They survived -- and at times thrived -- over centuries of change, including the spread of Islam across the Arabian Peninsula.

"They were one of the oldest exiled groups out of Israel," says Hayim Tawil, a Yeshiva University professor who is an expert on Yemeni Jewry. "This is the end of the Jewish Diaspora of Yemen. That's it."

Centuries of near total isolation make Yemeni Jews a living link with the ancient world.

Many can recite passages of the Torah by heart and read Hebrew, but can't read their native tongue of Arabic. They live in stone houses, often without running water or electricity. One Yemeni woman showed up at the airport expecting to board her flight with a live chicken.

Through the centuries, the Jews earned a living as merchants, craftsmen and silversmiths known for designing djanbias, traditional daggers that only Muslims are allowed to carry. Jewish musical compositions became part of Yemeni culture, played at Muslim weddings and festivals.

"Yemeni Jews have always been a part of Yemeni society and have lived side by side in peace with their Muslim brothers and sisters," said a spokeswoman for the Embassy of Yemen in Washington.

In 1947, on the eve of the birth of the state of Israel, protests (now there's a euphemism - ed) in the port city of Aden resulted in the death of dozens of Jews and the destruction of their homes and shops. In 1949 and 1950 about 49,000 people -- the majority of Yemen's Jewish community -- were airlifted to Israel in "Operation Magic Carpet."

About 2,000 Jews stayed in Yemen. Some trickled out until 1962, when civil war erupted. After that, they were stuck there. "For three decades, there were no telephone calls, no letters, no traveling overseas. The fact there were Jews in Yemen was barely known outside Israel," says Prof. Tawil.

Read article in full

Reuters piece

Haaretz article

Jerusalem Post

Rescuing Yemenite Jewry (UJC)

Beware neighbours who turn into monsters

Arab-Jewish coexistence projects are all the rage - there is no shortage of them in Israel. But dialogue must be balanced and each side must recognise one another's pain, argues Lyn Julius in The Jewish Chronicle.

At the National Theatre in London, Our Class is telling the story of the 1941 massacre of the Jews of the Polish village Jedwabne — all the more painful for being true. What makes the play so hard to watch is that the murderers and victims knew each other. Catholics and Jews sat in class together, flirted, shared dreams and aspirations. Eventually, though, deep-seated antisemitism and prejudice caused one half of the class to turn on the other.

The idea that familiarity leads to mutual respect underpins the work of some 30 Arab-Jewish coexistence projects in Israel alone. If Jews and Arabs talk to each other, live together, play music together — so the thinking goes — there could be peace.

Coexistence is not new to the Middle East. Jews and Muslims lived cheek-by-jowl for 14 centuries. Arab mythology holds that the Golden Age in Muslim Spain was a model for peaceful coexistence. But the relationship was not equal. Jews were subjugated, self-abasing dhimmis, exploited for their talents. They had to buy their physical security from the ruler of the day. Maimonides fled from fanatical Muslims, not Christians.

In modern times, Jewish-Arab coexistence broke down completely. Roughly half the Jewish population came to Israel not as refugees from the Holocaust, but fleeing Arab and Muslim antisemitism. A million Jews once lived in Arab lands. Today, their communities, predating Islam by 1,000 years, are almost extinct.

The periodic violence that has erupted in the Middle East has tested interpersonal relations to the hilt. Just as Righteous Gentiles saved Jews from the Nazis, some Arabs saved Jews: 300 Jews sheltered in 28 Arab homes during the Hebron massacre of 1929. Honourable Muslims rescued Jews from rioting mobs in Arab countries. While the authorities failed to intervene to protect Jews — or even incited the rioting — the friendly neighbour stood as the last line of defence.

But familiarity also breeds contempt, resentment and greed. Among stories of neighbourly betrayal in Hebron was the Jewish doctor murdered by his own patients. The Makleff family near Jerusalem was slaughtered by the Arabs they worked with. Jews terrorised by the 1941 Farhoud in Iraq (179 Jews dead) and the Libyan pogrom in 1945 (130 Jews dead ) recognised, among their assailants, the local policeman, butcher and milkman.

Yet there must be a place for coexistence initiatives. Projects such as Daniel Barenboim’s East-West Divan Orchestra play a role in humanising Arabs to Israelis, and Israelis to Arabs — whose countries habitually demonise them. The cooperative village of Neve Shalom introduces Arabs and Jews to each other’s cultures.

Unless the dialogue is balanced, however, coexistence can become an exercise in Jewish self-abasement. It can lead to Jews suppressing their rights, identity and suffering while empowering Arab grievances. Jews may feel the pain of a Palestinian refugee and even “understand” terrorism, while there is no corresponding shift on the Arab side — because Jewish rights, suffering and the pain of expulsion of Jews by Arabs, may be ignored.

The prejudice at the root of rejectionism and terrorism can turn a neighbour into a monster. Only if we confront this unpalatable truth can people live as equals in true peace and mutual respect.

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J-Street leads nowhere on Jewish refugees

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who has not heard about J-Street, the new, hip 'pro-peace' lobby group that claims to speak for mainstream American Jews.

Sadly I must conclude that J-Steet have espoused the usual pro-Palestinian, Eurocentric distortions in the debate. These make 'Israeli occupation' and withdrawal from Jewish settlements in the West Bank the centrepiece of their agenda, not Arab rejectionism and incitement to hatred. They seem to espouse the principles of the Saudi peace initiative, complete with its ambiguity about 'solving' the Palestinian refugee problem with a possible 'return' to their homes in Israel.

I have looked in vain for any any expression of sympathy for the tragedy experienced by Mizrahi Jewish refugees driven out from Arab lands. On the contrary, we have this astonishing statement from Michelle Goldberg, extollling J-Street on the Guardian's website Comment is Free:

How does a liberal justify the fact that a middle-class American, like me, has the right to become an Israeli citizen tomorrow, but that Arabs refugees born within its borders don't? If you don't believe in biblical claims, or in blood and soil nationalism, what's left is the fact that history has shown the necessity of the Jewish state, and Israel is the only one there is, and that not all political ideals are reconciliable.

What grudging Zionism from Michelle Goldberg. The phrase 'Jewish self-determination ' does not even figure in her vocabulary. How does a liberal weep for 'Arab refugees', but not the Jewish refugees that Arabs states persecuted and expelled - roughly half the Israeli Jewish population? History has certainly shown the necessity of a Jewish state for Jews fleeing antisemitism, not just in Europe but in the Arab and Muslim world. Goldberg, is like almost all similarly-aligned Jews on the Left, silent on what Israel has done to integrate these refugees, and what redress they deserve as part of a settlement of the conflict.

Beirut synagogue running out of restoration funds

A scheme to renovate Beirut’s last standing synagogue is running out of money. The project needs another £66,000, Josie Ensor reports for The Jewish Chronicle.

Maghen Abraham Synagogue, located in the former Jewish quarter of the Lebanese capital, was destroyed by Israeli shelling in 1982. It has been abandoned ever since, leaving Lebanese Jews without a synagogue building.

Renovation work began on the 85-year-old synagogue in August. The rusty padlocked gates were removed and benches once used for prayer were restored to their former state.

But now, the Lebanese Jewish Community Council (LJCC), the non-profit group in charge of the renovations, has been forced to appeal to the international community as funds run low.

“Your support for the synagogue is not merely a financial gesture, but a reaffirmation of your belief in Lebanon’s rich tradition of cultural pluralism and religious diversity,” said LJCC’s Aaron-Micaël Beydoun*. “Help us ensure we can continue with the renovation, be part of history and contribute today.”

Lebanon is officially estimated to have just 100-150 Jews, down from 24,000 in 1948 — although some believe the real count is higher, with many Jews afraid to identify as such. The synagogue’s last rabbi fled in 1997.

While there were once 17 synagogues operating in Beirut alone, there are now just four synagogue buildings remaining in the whole of Lebanon — all of them disused. Jews in the capital have spent the past 30 years praying in specially designated houses as they wait to have their places of worship restored.

The renovation project was first given the green light by the late Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri more than five years ago. It unexpectedly received the public support of Hizbollah, with a party spokesman welcoming the work.

Earlier this year Solidere, a major Lebanese construction firm owned by the Sunni Hariri family, agreed to pay $150,000 towards the renovations. This was part of a larger donation made to 14 religious groups to help them restore their places of worship.

But the LJCC is yet to receive the first of three promised payments.

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*What is this gentleman doing on the Lebanese Jewish Community Council? Beydoun is not actually Jewish, but a Shi'a Muslim. However, he has been conducting a one-man campaign to revive the Lebanese Jewish community so that Lebanon can once more boast of its 'tolerance' and 'pluralism' - ed.

Two shot in Sephardi synagogue 'hate crime'

Two Jews arriving for prayers at the Sephardi synagogue of Adat Yeshurun Valley, Hollywood, California, USA, are in stable condition following a shooting today. Police are treating the incident as a hate crime, the LA Times reports (with thanks: Heather):

Two worshipers at a North Hollywood synagogue were shot this morning in an attack Los Angeles Police Department detectives are investigating as a hate crime.

The shooting occurred at 6:20 a.m. at the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue, at 12405 Sylvan St.

LAPD Deputy Chief Michel Moore said the shootings occurred in the underground garage of the temple. A man coming to the temple for worship parked his car in the lot and was approached by suspect who Moore said was wearing a black hoodie.

"Without any words," Moore said, the suspect shot the man in the leg. Then the gunman fired on a second man who had arrived for prayers. That second victim was also wounded in the leg.

The gunman then fled from the garage. Witnesses called 911.

Moore described the victims as being in their 40s. He said both were in good condition.

Detectives are "working with [the victims] to understand more information," Moore said.

Detectives don't believe the motive was robbery, according to LAPD sources, who spoke to The Times on the condition that they not be named because the investigation is ongoing.

At about 7:40 a.m., Los Angeles police arrested a man near the synagogue but the sources say they don't believe he was the gunman.

LAPD officials have alerted other synagogues around Los Angeles about the shooting, and police have stepped up patrols at Jewish religious institutions.

The sources said detectives are trying to determine the motive, and whether the gunman acted alone or as part of a larger group.

The scene at the Adat Yeshurun Sephardi synagogue (LA Times)

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Comment by Phyllis Chesler at Pajamas Media

Bahrain bill penalises contacts with Israel

Bahrain's parliament

Note that the politicians behind this move to penalise Bahrainis for contacts with Israel are Shia, and that the bill has little chance of being passed by the upper house, which is full of (Sunni) government supporters appointed by the King. Even so, who would have thought that this is the same country which appointed a Jewish woman as Bahrain's ambassador to Washington? (With thanks: Lily)

MANAMA (Reuters) - Bahrain's parliament on Tuesday approved legislation penalising contacts with Israel, a move which could complicate Gulf Arab leaders' efforts to promote peace talks with Israel.

"Whoever holds any communication or official talks with Israeli officials or travels to Israel will face a fine ... and/or a jail sentence of three to five years," member of parliament Jalal Fairooz from the Shi'ite Al-Wefaq bloc, an opposition group that was the driving force behind the move.

"The motivation is that steps are being taken by certain countries to allow certain talks to be held with Israeli officials. Israeli delegates have managed to participate in events in Arab countries with no treaties with Israel."

Diplomats and analysts say Arab governments have been pressured by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to make steps towards normalising ties in order to help encourage Israel to enter peace talks with Palestinians.

But popular sentiment has been opposed to such moves. An Egyptian writer is facing disciplinary action by the journalists union for meeting the Israeli ambassador in Cairo.

Bahrain's Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa wrote in the Washington Post in July that Arabs had not done enough to communicate directly with Israelis.

Bahraini officials visited Israel in July in an official capacity for the first time to collect five of their nationals Israel was deporting after seizing them on a ship bound for the Palestinian territory of Gaza, blockaded by Israel.

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Egyptian liberals flaunt antisemitic credentials

Egyptian opposition politician Ayman Nour (photo AP)

There's one comforting aspect to this eloquent Wall Street Journal piece slamming Egyptian liberals as opportunistically or viscerally antisemitic: the authors, Amr Bargisi and Samuel Tadros, themselves Egyptian liberals, are not. (with thanks: Lily)

Later this week, Egypt will play host to the 56th Congress of Liberal International, which bills itself as the world federation of liberal and progressive democratic parties. Among the nearly 70 parties represented by LI are Britain's Liberal Democrats, Germany's Free Democrats, and the Liberal Party of Canada. In the U.S., LI's Web site cites the National Democratic Institute as a cooperating organization since 1986.

In Cairo, the visiting delegates will be hosted by the Al-Gabha, or Democratic Front Party. Western liberals (in the old-fashioned sense of that word) are always delighted to discover like-minded people in the Third World, and perhaps nowhere more so than in Arab countries. Yet, at least in Egypt, there's a dirty little secret about these self-described liberal parties: They are, for the most part, virulently anti-Semitic, sometimes opportunistically but just as often out of deeply-held rancorous convictions.

Consider the case of Sekina Fouad, a well-known journalist who also serves as the DFP's vice president. In an article published earlier this year, Ms. Fouad dismisses any distinction between Jews and Israelis, the reason for which is "the extremity of the doctrine of arrogance, distinctiveness and condescension [the Jews] set out from and seek to achieve by all means, and on top of which blood, killing, terrorizing and frightening." She corroborates this argument with an alleged statement by "President" Benjamin Franklin, asking Americans to expel Jews since they are "like locusts, never to get on a green land without leaving it deserted and barren."

Needless to say, Franklin never made any such statement, not that a journalist like Ms. Fouad would bother to check. She also asks the question "Are Zionists Human?" which offers backhanded credit to Jews for having "helped [her] understand a history full of examples of their expulsion, getting rid of them and their unethical and inhuman methods." In earlier writings, Ms. Fouad has written about what she calls "Talmudic teachings that determine types of purity unachievable by the Jew unless by using Christian human sacrifice" for the making of "blood pies." Not surprisingly, she also dismisses the Holocaust as part of an "arsenal of Jewish myths."

Nor is Ms. Fouad some kind of outlier in the Egyptian liberal movement. Take Ayman Nour, who contested the 2005 presidential election under the banner of his own party and was subsequently jailed for nearly four years, becoming something of a cause célèbre among Western officials, journalists and human-rights activists.

Immediately after his release earlier this year, he attended a celebration organized by opposition groups—including the Muslim Brotherhood—in the northern city of Port Said, commemorating "the first battalion of volunteers from the Egyptian People setting off to fight the Jews in 1948." The word "Jews" was stressed in bolded black lettering on the otherwise blue and red banner hanging above the conference panel. Yet far from trying to distance himself from that message, Mr. Nour got into the spirit of the conference, talking not only about his solidarity with Palestinians but also "the value of standing up to this enemy, behind which lies all evils, conspiracies, and threats that are spawned against Egypt."

Then there is the case of Egypt's oldest "liberal" party, Al-Wafd, whose eponymous daily newspaper is one of Egypt's most active platforms for anti-Semitism. Following President Obama's conciliatory Cairo speech to the Muslim world, columnist Ahmed Ezz El-Arab faulted Mr. Obama for insisting that the Holocaust was an actual historical event and gave nine historical "proofs" that it had never happened. He concluded that "the evil Jewish lies succeeded in creating an atmosphere of hatred for Germans that resulted in the death of millions."

These examples are, sadly, just the tip of an iceberg. What makes them all the more remarkable is that, contrary to stereotype, they do not have particularly ancient roots in Egypt. Until Egypt's Jews were expelled by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and '60s, Egypt had a millennia-old, thriving Jewish community. As late as the 1930s, Jewish politicians occupied ministerial posts in Egyptian governments and participated in nationalist politics.

But all that changed with the rise of totalitarian and fascist movements in Europe, which found more than their share of imitators in the Arab world, both among Islamists and secularists. When Egypt's monarchy was overthrown in 1952 by a military coup, anti-Semitism became an ideological pillar of the new totalitarian dispensation.

Since then, Egypt has evolved, coming to terms (of a sort) with Israel and adopting at least some elements of market-based economic principle. But anti-Semitism remains the political glue holding Egypt's disparate political forces together. Paradoxically, this is especially true of the so-called liberals, who think they can traffic on their anti-Semitism to gain favor in quarters where they would otherwise be suspect or unpopular. They have taken to demonizing Jews with the proverbial zeal of a convert.

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Ayman Nour rejects antisemitism charge (with thanks: Lily)

Anti-Israelism clouds Egypt's view of Jewish past

Disinterest to outright hostility - that's the spectrum of interest in Egypt in its Jewish heritage, declares this disarmingly frank AP piece reprinted in Haaretz. How sad: (With thanks: bh, Lily)

The warren of slum alleys is called the Jews' Quarter, but no Jews live there. The ancient synagogue still stands, but its roof is gone. The government is renovating it, but is doing so at a moment when anti-Israel feeling is running especially high in Egypt.

The Ben Maimon synagogue exemplifies this country's conflicted relationship with its Jewish past.

The Jewish community that once flourished in the Arab world's most populous nation left behind physical traces ranging from grand temples in central Cairo and Alexandria to a holy man's humble grave in a Nile Delta village. But the modern-day Egyptian view of those relics lies within a narrow spectrum ranging from disinterest to outright hostility.

On a recent morning, teenage workers were busy lugging planks across what was once the Ben Maimon synagogue's sanctuary and pumping out greenish water flooding the dirt floor of an adjacent room.

The bimah, the lectern where the Torah scroll was once read, was visible under plastic sheeting, and a niche in the wall facing toward Jerusalem was all that remained of the elaborate wooden ark that held the scrolls.

Not everyone was pleased about the renovation.

"We are a nation that doesn't have enough to eat and doesn't have clean water," grumbled Mahmoud Fahim, a Muslim who runs a clothing store in the Jews' Quarter. "Why are we paying for these temples to be developed?"

He called it "a superficial act to make Egypt look good to the West and to Israel."

Fahim was touching on a sore point - the failed bid last month by Farouk Hosny, the Egyptian culture minister, to be elected head of UNESCO, the UN culture agency. The minister blamed his defeat on a Jewish conspiracy "cooked up in New York."

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Though the peace has always been cool, the relationship is going through an especially rough patch because of the aftermath of Israel's bloody offensive in Gaza, compounded by the UNESCO affair and Hosny's remarks.

Egypt's Jewish community, which dates back millennia and in the 1940s numbered around 80,000, is down to several dozen, almost all of them elderly. The rest were driven out decades ago by mob violence and state-sponsored persecution tied in large part to the Israeli-Arab conflict, a story repeated across the Arab world.

Egypt and Israel fought a war every decade from the 1940s to the 1970s until the 1979 peace treaty was signed.

Despite that treaty, Egyptian sentiment remains deeply unfriendly to Israel, and anti-Semitic stereotypes still occasionally appear in the Egyptian media.

Some government officials take a more tolerant line.

"Jewish sites are an important part of our heritage, and we place as much importance on the maintenance and development of the Jewish temples as we do to the mosques and the churches in Egypt," said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist and the official responsible for fixing up the synagogue.

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Blog exclusive: 100 Israelis vote in Tunisian poll

With thanks: Shaul

The Tunisian president, Zine Ben Ali, is set to serve a fifth five-year term following a landslide win in the presidential elections held yesterday.

Point of No Return can reveal that 100 Israelis of Tunisian origin cast their votes. The voting took place in a polling station in Jerusalem in the presence of the Tunisian ambassador to the Palestinian Authority.

The vast majority are thought to have voted for the ever youthful-looking Ben Ali, 73, pictured below.

The Paris-based Association of Tunisian Jews in France had urged Jews to support Ben Ali. It praised him for his wise and clear-sighted social and economic policies, which had enhanced Tunisia's international standing.

In a message addressed to the Head of State, the association said it "prides itself on the welfare and dignity benefiting Tunisians, as well as the indicators of development and progress recorded by Tunisia in a climate of openness, tolerance and solidarity."

Some 2,000 Jews still live in Tunisia of a community which once numbered over 100,000. They comprise one percent of the inhabitants of the island of Djerba. Many have relatives in Israel and can and do visit them, although there are no direct links.

Barmitzvah in Baghdad

With thanks: Ellis



This precious Youtube clip shows how Barmitzvahs used to be celebrated in Baghdad in the early 1960s: an intimate affair at home. No swanky, catered affair in a top hotel, this. The Haham, or chief rabbi (why do they always wear dark classes?) is on hand, in traditional head-dress, to help the Barmitzvah boy put on his teffilin. The ritual marks the moment when the boy becomes a man, with all the duties becoming an adult Jew entails. In this clip two friends share their Barmitzvah, as the mother of one of the boys was too sick to organise her son's.

There is plenty of home-made food for the guests, young and old (including the traditional, triangular cheese-, chickpea- or meat-stuffed sambusek), and a huge cake conveying 'Best Wiches' to the Barmitzvah boy. By the 1960s, only 5,000 Jews were still living in Iraq - 90 percent of the community having fled to Israel in 1950-51.

There are four clips of Jews enjoying their leisure in 1960s Iraq here. Clip Three shows Jewish families enjoying a picnic at the ancient temple of Hatra, south-west of Mosul. Great fun, even if you also need to change a tyre on your car.

'Sephardi Spielberg' project collects testimonies

They call it the 'Sephardi Spielberg' project. An international effort to gather the oral testimonies of Jews displaced from Arab countries before they all disappear, and record these stories on videotape, is gathering steam. JTA News reports from California:

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Joseph Samuels, born Yosef Sasson in Baghdad, was 18 when he fled Iraq for the new state of Israel.

It was 1949, and life was becoming increasingly difficult for Jews in Iraq, as it was throughout the Arab world. The Sasson family’s good relations with their Muslim neighbors changed with Israel’s creation in 1948, and Yosef’s parents urged him to leave, promising they would follow when they could.

Unable to secure an exit visa, Yosef escaped Iraq with his younger brother in tow, taking the train to Basra, then cramming into a smuggler’s boat with 16 other young Jews, rowing to Iran and finally making his way to Tehran. There he joined a massive airlift to Israel, landing in time for Purim that year.

“That Passover was the first time I celebrated as a free man,” says Samuels, who served in the Israeli navy and now lives near Los Angeles.

Like many Holocaust survivors, Samuels only shared bits and pieces of his story with his children.

“I didn’t want to seem like a victim, so I didn’t tell them,” he explains.

Unlike Holocaust survivors, however, his story -- as well as those of more than 800,000 other Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East -- is not widely known. These Jews, part of large, ancient communities in nine Arab countries, were victimized and persecuted, stripped of their rights and property, and in some cases forcibly expelled from the lands of their birth from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Finding refuge mainly in Israel, France and North America, they became the forgotten refugees of the Middle East conflict.

Jimena, a San Francisco-based organization for Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, is trying to change that.

As part of an international consortium led by Hebrew University and the University of Miami that is collecting and documenting testimony from these Mizrahim, or Jews from Arabic-speaking countries, Jimena has launched a visual history project to interview those now living on the West Coast.

Jimena's East Coast partner, the American Sephardi Federation in New York, began its interviews of New York-area Sephardim in September, while partners in several other countries are working to collect oral testimonies in their regions. Each project is responsible for its own funding.

The goal, organizers say, is to do for Jewish refugees from Arab lands what Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation Institute has done for Holocaust survivors: preserve their stories and dignify their heritage.

“Their stories have not been documented,” says Sarah Levin, Jimena’s program director. “We want to collect as many stories as we can. These people are getting older, and soon it will be too late.”

On Oct. 18, a dozen Jews born in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and other lands of the Maghreb gathered at the Jewish federation offices in San Francisco to learn how they could become a part of the project.

Filmmaker Avi Goldwasser, director of “The Forgotten Refugees,” says that when he grew up in Israel, he learned nothing about this history. In the United States, where the Jewish community is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, it is even lesser known.

“We want to get people like yourselves to share your personal stories,” he told the group. “We have to get the word out that Palestinians were not the only people displaced by the conflict.”

It’s not about denying Palestinian suffering, Goldwasser said, but about presenting all sides of the history as a precursor to real peace and reconciliation.

Rachel Wahba of San Raphael, Calif., nods her head. The child of an Iraqi mother and Egyptian father, Wahba was born in 1946 in India, where her mother’s family had fled after Iraq’s June 1941 pogroms.

“My mother heard the screams for 48 hours until the British finally put a stop to it,” she recalls.

Expelled from India, as they had no papers, the family ended up in Japan as stateless refugees. They finally reached California in 1968 and rebuilt their lives.

Wahba used to lecture about her family’s history, but she tired of the hostility and ignorance she encountered.

“I’d tell my story, and people would say, 'so, your grandmother spoke Yiddish.' As if they hadn’t heard me," she said. "I said no, we spoke Judeo-Arabic. The non-Jews would listen more openly than the Jews -- they just couldn’t get it.”

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If you would like to have your story recorded please contact bataween@gmail for details.

Bukharian Jews reign over Queensistan

Interesting article in Haaretz about the 50,000 Bukharian Jews of central Asia who now live in New York's Borough of Queens: (with thanks: Lily)


For two decades, Aron Aronov has transported embroidered garments, oil portraits of rabbis and other examples of traditional Bukharian Jewish culture from his native Uzbekistan to a small museum in New York.

"Here is all my money, all my life, all my time," Aronov, 71, said as he unbolted the door to the crowded, three-room Bukharian Jewish Museum, which he said is the only such museum in the world.

It tells the 2,500-year history of the Bukharian Jews of Central Asia, where they lived as a pious, insular ethnic community until leaving the region in droves in the early 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

They come mostly from Uzbekistan, and were concentrated in the Uzbek city of Bukhara.

"This museum is a desperate attempt to stop time," said Aronov, gesturing to an elaborate display of a Bukharian yard, including a wooden sofa covered with colorful rugs, cooking pots and an outdoor stove. "I don't want all this to go."

Bukharians had lived in relative harmony with their Muslim neighbors, but fled Central Asia as soon as it became possible to leave the Soviet Union, whose secular policies had long frustrated pious Bukharian Jews.

Now, they are struggling to protect an ancient culture they fear could vanish. Unlike some other ethnic communities in Queens, New York City's most ethnically diverse borough, Bukharians have no real homeland.

Most of the estimated 300,000 Bukharian Jews have settled in Israel but the second-largest concentration of about 50,000 live in the Queens neighborhoods of Rego Park and Forest Hills - earning the area the nickname Queensistan.

Only a few hundred remain in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, local leaders say.

Today, a stretch of Queens Boulevard is dotted with Bukharian synagogues, restaurants and cultural centers. There is also a theater staging plays in Bukhori, a Jewish dialect of Farsi, a newspaper, a cemetery and the museum.

Malika Kalantarova, a Bukharian from Tajikistan, was a celebrated dancer in the Soviet Union and now operates a dance studio in a Queens subway station.

"It's like a new Bukhara in New York City," said Itzhak Yehoshua, the head rabbi for Bukharians in America, a reference to the Uzbek city that gave Bukharians their name.

Bukharians attribute their success in keeping their heritage to their strong tendency to marry within the community and stick together. Of the 500 Bukharian weddings registered in 2007, Yehoshua said 400 were among Bukharians, 60 were between Bukharians and other Jews and 40 were between Bukharians and non-Jews.

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New class on Bukharian Jewish history opens

Mizrahi Open Letter closed to Europeans

Remember Obama's speech in Cairo ? In what now seems a false dawn, the Left hailed it as a new beginning for relations between the US and the Muslim world.

At the time, so excited was a small group of leftist Mizrahim in Israel about the wind of change that Obama seemed to promise, that they drafted an Open Letter, directed at the Arab and Muslim world, called A new spirit .The letter did the rounds of blogs and email networks. It seemed to die a death and nothing more was heard about it, until it resurfaced this month in the Palestine Chronicle., revealing the anti-European,anti-Zionist agenda behind it.

An interview by Sherri Muzher with one of the signatories, self-styled Arab Jew and activist Mati Shemoelof, begins with a disingenuous reference to how Nasser demonstrated his regard for the Jews by choosing Leila Murad over Um Kalthoum as the Revolution's official singer - even as he expelled 25,000 Jews from Egypt. (Muzher forgets to mention that accusations of disloyalty to Egypt dogged Murad until she died.) The Palestine Chronicle reveals the Open Letter's signatories to be 'social activists' who seek to decolonise Israel - ie divest its of its European nature. In reaching out to the Arabs, bringing down the 'apartheid' wall between Judaism and Islam, they are prepared to drive a wedge between themselves and European Jews - an act of apparent racism.

The letter glosses over the antisemitism which caused the parents of these signatories to flee the Middle East and North Africa. It was a 'temporary crack'. The signatories are saying, "we are Arabs like you - Arabs of the Jewish religion. We have more in common with you than with the European Jews that fate has lumped us together with in Israel. We know something bad happened between you Muslims and us Jews but it's nothing really, nothing in the overall scheme of things."

At first sight, the letter is full of lofty sentiments:

" we express our support for the new spirit presented by president Obama in his Cairo speech. A spirit of reconciliation, realistic vision, striving for justice and dignity, respect for different religions, cultures and human beings, whoever and wherever they are."

You can't argue with any of that.

We were born in Israel and we are Israelis. Our country is important to us, and we would like to see it secure, just, and prosperous for the benefit of its inhabitants. Yet, the recent conflict into which we were born cannot erase the long history of hundreds and thousands of years, during which our parents and ancestors lived in Muslim and Arab countries. Not only they have lived in the region from time immemorial, but were also part of the fabric of daily life and have contributed to the development of the region and its culture.

These are younger Mizrahi Israelis with no direct experience of life in an Arab or Islamic country except for a romantic notion of the Arabic language and culture. They call themselves 'descendants of Jews from Islamic countries'. They are Jews from Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, where Arabic is not the national language, as well as Morocco and Libya. Quite what all these Jews have in common is not clear. It is enough that they are not Europeans.

Nowadays, the cultures of the lands of Islam, Middle East, and the Arab world, are all still part of our identity; a part which we cannot, and do not wish to repress nor uproot.

A mighty strange way of referring to oneself. Imagine if Ashkenazi Jews were to say that they come from the 'lands of Christendom'. To say that you belong to the Middle East is one thing; to say your identity is rooted in the Arab world, and what's more, the lands of Islam, means that you define the region you come from primarily by its religion, a religion that conquered the region 1,000 years after your Jewish ancestors settled there.

Surely, the Jews living in Muslim countries endured some difficult times. Nevertheless, those painful moments should not conceal nor erase the well known and documented history of shared life. Muslim rule over the Jews was much more tolerant and lenient compared with non-Muslim countries. The fate of Jews in Muslim regions cannot be compared with the tragic fate of Jews in other regions, Europe in particular.

...endured some difficult times. The euphemism of the year. Jews were ethnically cleansed, robbed, their 2,000-year-old civilisation destroyed. Imagine the Ladino-speaking Jews of Spain telling the Spaniards - we endured some difficult times. The odd pogrom, denunciation, inquisition or auto-da-fe, but hey! it wasn't as bad as what Jews went through in other places. Our nostalgia for Spain and its glorious culture and language, which we still speak, more than makes up for any 'bad stuff'. And we adore borekas.

One can view the last decades as a period during which a deep chasm has been opened between the Jews and Israel and the Arab and Muslim world. We however, prefer to perceive these last decades as a painful yet temporary crack in a history that goes longer than that. We have a shared past and a shared future. Thus, when we look at the map, we see Israel as part of the Middle East, and not solely from a geographical perspective.

Judaism and Islam are not far apart from religious, spiritual, historical and cultural point of views. The alliance between these two religions dates back many generations. Yet the memory of this partnership and the unique history of Jews originated from the Muslim and Arab world (which today constitutes 50% of the Jewish population in Israel!) has unfortunately faded, both in Israel as well as in the majority of the Muslim world. In the necessary reconciliation process between West and East, oriental Jews can and should embody a live bridge of remembrance, healing and partnership.

From our point of view the rift between Israel/Jews and the Arab/Muslim world cannot last forever, it is splitting our identities and our souls. As for the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we hope that a fair solution of mutual respect and mutual recognition will be reached very soon. A solution that considers the hopes, fears and pains of the Palestinian side, as well as those of the Israeli side.

Anyone who believes that Judaism and Islam are not that far apart has little knowledge of either religion or the dhimmi status suffered for centuries by Jews who lived among Muslims. Do Jews really want to return to that permanent sense of inferiority and vulnerability? The letter-writers don't hold humans responsible for that deep chasm - It must have just happened. Arab governments bear no responsibility for persecuting their Jews, it was an act of God or Mother Nature. Note that in the last sentence Palestinian pain takes precedence over Israeli pain. But for true reconciliation to take place, the Arabs and Muslims must feel Israeli pain, and recognise that they are responsible for it.

Irony of ironies, these Mizrahim have taken on a guilt-ridden Eurocentric vew of the conflict, where Israel is the coloniser, the Arabs and Muslims lack agency for all the 'bad stuff' and the Palestinians are the main victims. The letter-writers' own Mizrahi history has been erased, lost in a cloud of warm, fuzzy nostalgia.

Crossposted on the Israel News blog

Saga of Islamist harassment goes on in Djerba

The El-Griba synagogue, Djerba

The scandal of alleged Islamist harassment, first reported on Point of No Return, continues to dog the Djerba Synagogue and Yeshiva in Tunisia.

For the last four or five years a seamstress by the name of Vassila Ben Kirat, a member of an Islamist group, has been harassing teachers and visitors to the Yeshiva on Djerba from her premises nearby. She has repeatedly brought lawsuits against them for no apparent reason, forcing the rabbi to make almost weekly court appearances and engage a lawyer. Her shop is owned by the Yeshiva, but she has taken control. In spite of having apparently served a two-year prison term for assisting an Islamist murder gang targeting western hotel developers in Djerba, she has verbally and physically abused the Yeshiva head, Chief Rabbi Matsliah Haddad.

'Our man in Djerba' for the Succot holiday reports that there have been 100 complaints or police cases brought by both the woman and the rabbi. Rabbi Haddad alleges she has molested him and even tried to kidnap a child. He claims that she has friends and relatives in high places protecting her interests.

Supporters of Ben Kirat say that the allegations against her are lies, that the rabbi's accusations are unfounded and a pretext to get her out of her premises. The rabbi (who has his critics in the Jewish community) denies this. He believes only President Ben Ali himself can resolve the case, having already appealed to the Minister of the Interior.

There are 1,200 Jews still living in Djerba's Jewish quarter - one percent of the island's population. Except for one government- sponsored demonstration, there was no rioting against the Jews during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The Jews are avid listeners to Kol Israel radio, and often visit relatives in Israel, flying via Istanbul.

Is it all over for the Jews of Turkey?

Last week, Turkey poured cold water over relations with Israel when it withdrew from a joint military exercise and stepped up its rhetoric on Israeli 'injustices' in Gaza. For Turkey's 17,000 Jews, is the writing finally on the wall?

The Turkish-Jewish community is that rare thing - a Jewish community still living in a Muslim-majority country. Yet, as expert Rifat N Bali observes, it has no political, cultural or intellectual impact on the host country. Between 1946 and 1961, a few Jewish MPs sat in parliament. Now there are none.

With hostility growing from the Islamist government, anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism, the climate is on the verge of tipping over into outright antisemitism. Turkish Jews will not speak up for Israel. They insist on their Turkishness, and keep their heads down. A population of 81,872 in 1921 is down to a quarter of its original size. Half the Jewish population left for Israel in the three years after 1948.

Between 1923 and 1948, Jews became increasingly marginalised as the country underwent Turkification. The community was resented for its economic success and for its failure to even speak Turkish. The Jews of Turkey are overwhelmingly Ladino-speaking Jews from post-Inquisition Spain. Although they have been in Turkey for 500 years they have never been able to shrug off a certain 'foreign-ness'.

Although Ataturk's Turkey was a secular, 'democratic' republic, it was a one-party state in its first 22 years and excluded Jews from public service jobs. After 1923, Turkish companies sacked 50 to 75 percent of their non-Muslim staff.

In June and July 1934, there erupted the Thracian events in the provinces of Edirne, Canakkale and Kirklareli. Jewish shops were boycotted, Jews stoned and Jewish women assaulted. There followed a mass migration of Jews to Istanbul.

In May 1941 all non-Muslim males between 27 and 40 were conscripted into forced labour gangs and made to build roads and airbases in Anatolia. This was the practice in Ottoman times - Turkey was reverting to type. It feared that non-Muslim soldiers - Armenians especially - would constitue a fifth column in case of a Nazi invasion.The entire minority male population was interned.

On 11 November 1942 Turkey passed a law taxing non-Muslims four times as heavily as Muslims. Those who could not pay had to do hard physical labour. In practice this was applied selectively to non-Muslims and foreigners.

Although Turkey now has a multiparty system, politicians have preferred to use populist methods to appeal to the great uneducated, rural, religious mass of electors. Following the 1980 military coup, the financial and economic gap between Jewish and Muslim businessmen narrowed, thus reducing 'economic' antisemitism; at the same time, and with the rise of radical Islam, 'conspiracy theories' about Jews and power have multiplied.

In 2003 the dentist Yasef Yahya was murdered for being a Jew. Three months later, Islamists attacked the two main synagogues of Istanbul. The authorities and media have since downplayed the Islamist threat.

Conspiracy theories concerning infiltration into positions of power by donmeh or crypto-Jews and agents in the pay of Israel and the US became rife following the American invasion of Kuwait.

Only if Turkish society in general liberalises is there any hope for the future survival of the Jewish community.

With acknowledgements to Entre nationalisme et islamisme: la lente disparition de la communaute juive de Turquie by Rifat N Bali ( La fin du judaisme en terres d'Islam - ed Shmuel Trigano)

Top photo : the Zulfaris synagogue, now the Jewish museum of Istanbul. Bottom:the 15th century Ahrida synagogue, Balat, Istanbul.

Living in the ruins of the Jewish West Bank

It is not the place of this blog to say who should rule those disputed lands that the media like to call 'the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank'. Often overlooked in the current debate, however, is the long pre-Arab history of the region, once again 'ethnically cleansed' between 1948 and 1967 of its Jewish inhabitants. Here Bat Yeor, the groundbreaking historian of the dhimmi, lyrically evokes Jewish Judea and Samaria in an article she wrote in 1978:

"Silence. We have taken cover in the shade of an olive tree. Instantly the children have nestled in the branches, listening solemnly to our guide. Somewhere a fig tree perfumes the air...or is it merely the breeze of the Judean hills? Circular gesture by Ya'acov Meshorer, chief curator of archaeology at the Israel Museum, renowned numismatist and former supervisor of excavations in Judea-Samaria.

"Excavations in Judea have brought to light flourishing towns possessing numerous synagogues. The architecture as well as the ornamental patterns are typical of the attractive pre-Islamic Hebrew civilisation, represented in Galilee by the synagogues of Capernaum, Beth Shearim, Chorazim, Kefar Baram, Meron and other places. Between the years 70 AD and the Arab invasion and occupation in 640, these hills were dotted with Hebrew towns and villages where an intense national, religious and cultural life prospered. Deprived of its indepdendence, the nation concentrated its genius by reflecting upon the richness of the national past. This the period in which the Mishnah was elaborated and completed in the second century, shortly to be followed by the Talmud - monumental religious, legal and social compendia. Completed in about 400, this work was continued for another two centuries, keeping alive an intense Messianic fervour whose force was to be felt as far as Arabia.

"The Arab occupation scarcely modified the Hebrew place-names and the Jewish inhabitants, now considered dhimmis, remained on their land. It was only later that the relentless mechanism typical of every colonisation gradually wiped out the indigenous population, thereby encouraging a progressive Arabisation of the soil."

"In the former Jewish town of Bethar, there are now 1500 Arabs. They call the place where the Jewish vestiges stand Khirbet al-Yahud, the ruins of the Jews. Nevertheless, were the Israelis to return, the Arabs would not hesitate to chase them away with indignation, referring to them as foreign intruders. Mystery of the Oriental mind or logic of the occupant? These Arabs, hardly interested in a past which is not theirs, ignore totally the history of the places where they live. Of course they know that the spot was inhabited formerly by Jews, as the name indicates, but these ruins, relating to a people dispossessed and driven out, are only of interest as a quarry conveniently providing stones which others have hewn. But the excited comments from the olive tree taught me that many a Jewish child knows more about the history of this place than its Arab inhabitants.

"In Eshtemoa, a bibical name Arabised by the occupations into Es-Samoa, the Arab inhabitants still live in houses built practically fifteen centuries earlier. The architectural elements and decorative designs, including the menorah, are all typical of pre-Islamic Hebrew art. It is common to find Arab villagers cooking on ancient mosaic floors. In the centre of the village was once a three-storied synagogue, of which only two ruined floors remain. The size of the synagogue suggests that there flourished here an important community. Like many other indigenous monuments, the synagogue was destroyed at the beginning of the Arab occupation. Its stones, particularly those decorated with bas-reliefs, were used by the Arabs and today adorn their door posts.

"At Yata, the biblical name of a Hebrew village, beautifully decorated Jewish ossuaries typical of the 1st and 2nd centuries are scattered around Arab houses and used as drinking-troughs for their cattle. Many troves of coins dating from the 2nd Temple and Hasmonean periods have been found in this area.

"The discrepancy between history and population in Judea and Samaria troubles the traveller constantly. It is true that the Hebrew place-names have been Arabised, that Jewish religious shrines have bene Islamised - as in Hebron and elsewhere - and that Arabisation has succeeded in erasing all traces of Hebrew nationalism. It is also true that from afar the Arab villages seem picturesque. This is only a superficial impression, however, for the traveller, endeavouring to account for his troubled spirit, were to look more closely he would discover a mere heap of ruins. The neglect of the surrounding vegetation is so general that one is reminded not of a biblical landscape of wooded hillsides, but of the sandy wastes of Arabia. One is struck with pity, for people do not generally live in ruins, however poor they are. Ruins are seen everywhere, so much so they are no longer noticed. (...)

"Today the populations of these regions are Muslims, with the exception of a few pockets of Arabised Chrstians, remnants of the Byzantine occupation or of Crusader times, which have survived thanks to the protection of European Christendom. The Samaritans have been reduced in their homeland to 470 survivors*, of whom 250 still live in Nablus. Up until 1948, Jewish inhabitants of the region were massacred or expelled and the right to reside was prohibited to them until 1967. The Arabisation of the region resulted in a judenrein Arab province, ie 'cleaned' of all trace of its pre-Arab culture.

"The indigenous peoples were replaced by Greeks, Arab-Beduins, Persians, Druze, Circassians, Turks and Slavs, who were thus able to benefit from the Arabised land of the dhimmis. Yet since 1967, these peaceful villagers, with unperturbed consciences, who justified their Arab rights established by the martyrdom of the banished or annihilated native peoples, are now experiencing a nightmare. The Hebrew, exiled in the wake of successive waves of occupation and its sequels, or tolerated in his own homeland but in a state of subjection - this Hebrew now returns. And he comes back, no longer a dhimmi - the sole status acceptable for a native - but as a citizen enjoying all the rights of a free man."

From Dhimmi peoples: oppressed nations by Bat Yeor (1978). Scroll down to link

* Today the Samaritans number about 700, divided between Nablus and the Israeli city of Holon

Turkish TV show may boost antisemitism

A Turkish TV drama showing Israeli soldiers as child-killers may boost incitement against the country's 26,000 Jews. Meanwhile relations between Turkey and Israel have taken a turn for the worse:

(IsraelNN.com) Turkey, Israel’s erstwhile ally in the north which abruptly called off a joint air exercise with Israel this week, is broadcasting a TV series depicting IDF soldiers as child killers.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded sharply: “The television series broadcast on Turkish TV constitutes the most serious level of incitement,” he said, “and it is being done with state sponsorship.” Lieberman has issued instructions to summon the Turkish Ambassador to a meeting with Foreign Ministry officials to protest the broadcasting of the series.

The TV shows “bear no connection whatsoever to reality,” a Foreign Ministry announcement stated, “presenting IDF soldiers as murderers of innocent children. It is not worthy of broadcast even in hostile states - and certainly not in a state that maintains full diplomatic relations with Israel.”

Email readers, please click here to view the video.

Scenes on the shows include “Israeli soldiers” cold-bloodedly shooting an Arab girl to death, killing Arab youngsters who throw rocks, kicking and pushing elderly Arabs, and the like. A brief scene is even shown of a line of Palestinian Authority Arabs standing before an Israeli firing squad.

Broadcasts of the weekly series, entitled “Separation (Ayrilik) ,” began this past Tuesday on the Turkish public television station TRT1.(...)

The direction of future Turkish-Israeli relations is not clear; until now, Turkey's army has led an approach that is sympathetic to Israel, but of late, the increasingly anti-Israel government appears to be setting the tone. Turkey also announced this week that it would soon hold a joint military exercise with Syria.

Jews in Turkey say the incitement is nothing new. “Israelis are always depicted as the bad guys and the Palestinians are the good guys,” a Turkish Jewish leader told Ynet. “During the Gaza War, they never showed both sides – only the Palestinian side… But we sense no change in how Turkey relates to us both as Jews and as Israelis.”

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The Jerusalem Post reports:

(Beniz) Saporta (of the Jewish community leadership) said Ayrilik depicted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict differently than how some of the Jews of Istanbul view it.

"It was being portrayed as a war of religion," she said. "But it's a war over land. It's a political problem."

Saporta said she was wary of a potentially dangerous future for Turkey's Jews. "This is bothering us, because we think it may increase anti-Semitism," Saporta said, although she did not know of any recent anti-Semitic occurrences stemming from the events of the past week.

Ayrilik producer Selcuk Cobanoglu told Israel Radio on Thursday that the soldiers depicted in the drama "are not Israeli soldiers," but it was clear to Saporta what was being presented.

No pro-Israel rallies or educational programs are being planned by community members or the Rabbinate at this time, according to Saporta, although the Rabbinate was still formulating an organized response to the media on Thursday.

The Israeli Embassy in Ankara sounded cautious, with one representative saying, "The situation is problematic, but we don't want to blow it out of proportion."

A representative from the Jewish Agency said that its emissary in Istanbul would not be allowed to speak on the topic of Jews in Istanbul because the matter was "very delicate."

According to the Chief Rabbinate of Turkey's Web site, there are around 26,000 Jews in Turkey. The vast majority live in Istanbul, with Sephardim making up 96 percent of the community.

There are about 100 Karaites, an independent group that does not accept the authority of Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva, known as the hahambasi.

There are currently 19 synagogues in Turkey, with Neve Shalom in Istanbul's Galata district being the largest.

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