Update: The Economist relents

Point of No Return was perhaps too hasty in condemning the Economist for failing to provide an opportunity to refute the distortions in its article 'Let there be justice for all' (April 12). In its May 9 issue, it printed this letter from JIMENA co-founder Joseph Abdel Wahed :

A refugee's tale

SIR – Resolutions that recognise the plight of Jews forced to flee from the Arab world when Israel was founded are not primarily about compensation (“Let there be justice for all”, April 12th). What we want most of all is to tell our side of the story. For 60 years the focus has been on the Palestinians, with nothing much said on the brutal expulsion of nearly 1m Jews from the Arab world and Iran. No trial; no jury; no justice. Human-rights organisations did not call attention to this crime against humanity. The United Nations did not convene the Security Council to censure the Arab countries. British academics did not seek to divest from these countries.

“Who is fighting for my rights?” I asked in 1948 when I was 12 years old and living in Cairo. This was when the Arab League likened its “war of extermination...to the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades” and after the Mufti of Jerusalem exhorted Palestinian Arabs to kill Jews “wherever you find them”. The Middle East conflict created not one, but two refugee populations.

Joseph Abdel Wahed
Moraga, California

Although not included its print edition, The Economist posted this letter in its 'Inbox' (Scroll down to April 28) from David Dangoor.

Hunting for kosher chicken in Marrakesh

It's been the talk of the town all week. The popular BBC TV show The Apprentice flew two rival teams of aspiring young men and women to Morocco and let them loose on the Marrakesh souk. Their task was to find a number of items in the shortest time and at the cheapest price. On their shopping list was a green mosque alarm clock, a fruit juicer, a branded tagine pot - and a kosher chicken.

Haaretz has the hilarious details, highlighting the embarrassing ignorance of the cream of entrepreneurial British youth. Team member Michael, a self-declared 'Jewish ' boy - did not know the meaning of the word 'kosher' and settled for a halal chicken 'blessed' by the butcher who obligingly intoned, 'Allah, allah!'

Michael's team-mate Claire, had earlier remarked: "am I stupid or what, but is kosher chicken Jewish, and this is a Muslim country?" Like most non-Jewish Britons Claire had assumed that Jews do not live in Muslim countries, or perhaps were as common in Arab countries as aliens from Mars.

But the winning team did find what was left of the Marrakesh Jewish quarter. They found a kosher butcher who sold them a kosher chicken. And seven million BBC viewers learned something new: there is Jewish life in Arab countries.

The not-so forgotten Jews of Marrakesh

Death knell sounding for Jews of Marrakesh

What really happened to the Middle East's Jews?

Barry Rubin of the Gloria Research Center makes the very important point that, on the rare occasions when Jewish refugees of the Middle East are mentioned as in this Reuters piece, the treatment they suffered is rationalised as an 'understandable backlash' to Israel's creation. In fact, had Israel never existed, Jews and Christians would still have been 'ethnically cleansed' from Arab countries (with thanks: Jerusalem Posts) :

"Uh-oh! It's Israel's sixtieth birthday and that means articles on Israel in the news media and, in turn, that may often mean something between inaccuracy and slander.

I've been conditioned by now to know what to expect. Let's try a test. Read the following headline from a Reuters story, and guess the theme. Ready? Here we go:

"Israel's Advent Altered Outlook For Middle East Jews."

My assumption was that the headline implied a story saying: everything was fine for Jews in the Arab world and Iran until Israel was created and that fact was responsible for forcing them to leave. The article itself isn't that bad, does include material to the contrary, and doesn't directly blame the destruction of these communities on Israel's creation. Yet still this is an implication, no doubt, that many readers will take away from the text. Consider this formulation. The article states: "The 1948 war at Israel's creation, which forced some 700,000 Palestinians to flee their homeland, hardened Arab attitudes to deep-rooted Jewish minorities across the Middle East."

Get it? First the Palestinians flee and then the Arabs get angry at the Jews. Up to then the Jewish minorities are "deep-rooted" which implies they were well accepted and secure.

A couple of paragraphs down the article continues:

"Israeli statistics show more than 760,000 Middle Eastern Jews had moved to Israel by 2006, with more than 40 percent arriving in the first three years of the state's existence."

So let's summarize:

Step 1: Palestinians become refugees

Step 2: Arabs are angry. (Can you blame them?)

Step 3: They take it out on the Jews or at least these Jews "moved," a word used for when you get a new job, load up the U-Haul and head across town.

In other words, the sins of Israel's creation include both Palestinian Arabs and Middle Eastern Jews becoming refugees, rather than it involving a de facto population transfer with an equal cost to both sides, and in which only the deliberate creation of permanent refugee status for Palestinians by their own leaders and Arab states produced prosperity on one side and ongoing problems for the other.

What this concept also leaves out, at least in part, is:

• Centuries'-long discrimination against Jews, ranging from the mild to the violent, including forced conversions at times, a problem Moses Maimonides was dealing with nine hundred years ago. Of course, as in Europe, there were long periods (certainly in Iraq and Egypt, for example) in which Jews fared very well. This is not to say that all Jews lived terribly among their Arab neighbors but clearly this was a major factor in their lives. A strong current of anti-Semitism in Islam long preceded the origin of Zionism.

  To be fair the article does say:

  "In the past, Moroccan Jews were considered subordinate to Muslims and discrimination was widespread. Every city has its Mellah, the poorest quarter to which Jews were once confined. Their residents were the first to leave when they could." And it mentions that "Over 120,000 [Iraqi Jews] were flown to Israel after 1948 when government persecution intensified.

• Rising Arab nationalism which was not all or mostly, in contrast to what the article seems to argue, due to Zionism or Israel's creation. Even the secular nationalist movements had a strong tinge of Islam also, certainly so in North Africa, which made it hard to believe that Jews would be welcome in the future regardless of Israel.

It should be noted that Christians, too, have been pushed out of the Arab world and often treated badly, though their treatment varies widely among different countries. Indeed, leaving aside Egypt, the proportion of Christian emigration approaches that of Jewish emigration. There is a serious problem with intolerance in Arabic-speaking countries and a dominant "secular" nationalism (with some exception for Syria and Lebanon) that in fact discriminates against non-Muslims. Even if Israel had never been created, a high proportion of Jews would certainly have left or been forced to leave.

• No mention of major violent incidents like the 1941 pogrom in Baghdad or a massacre a few years later in Yemen. Nor does it mention that Yemeni Jews had to flee their homes a few weeks ago to avoid being murdered or kidnapped. Or is there the story of how Jews tried to escape Syria, Iran, and other places, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Nor does it include the executions of Jews in Iraq, a trauma which shattered the remaining post-1948 community there.
  
  
• The stress of being a dhimmi, meaning the need to shut your mouth and keep a low profile, again parallel to the deformations of Jewish life in Europe. But the article quotes Jews in Morocco (no anti-Semitism) and Iran (everyone is treated ok) who clearly cannot speak honestly.

For example, in Iran several Jews were arrested as spies without evidence and tortured while some historic synagogues were recently bulldozed out of existence. Don't these people really feel scared? Of course, these interviews are like asking people in Iraq a decade ago what they thought of Saddam or finding out that everyone was just delighted with Stalinist Russia, things journalists in those times actually did do.

Now to be fair the article, as I said I've seen much worse, does state: "Hundreds of thousands of Jews were displaced. Some migrated voluntarily from mainly Muslim countries to the newly proclaimed Jewish homeland. Others were forced out by dispossession, discrimination or violence. Thousands stayed on."

Clearly, the great majority, however, were forced out. What percentage stayed on? Less than one-tenth.

A key problem with the currently accepted narrative on Middle East history can be seen in a little two-line statement of fact:

"Conflict in Palestine in the 1930s made life harder for Egyptian Jews, as militant nationalist groups became active."

This relates the rise of militant nationalism to the conflict. Certainly, this was a factor (I wrote a whole book on it, The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict), but militant nationalism was due to far more than just the Palestine conflict. And this doesn't even mention the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s, seeking to transform Egypt into an Islamist state. It was first and foremost a response to conditions at home and to the kind of society that Arab activists wanted to build. As such, it is parallel to revolutionary, Communist, fascist, and nationalist movements in Europe and other places, all of which existed without Israel as a catalyst.

Those two lines are a very powerful theme today: everything Arabs or Muslims do is merely a response to what Israel (or the West) does and not an expression of their own beliefs and goals. This robs others of their history, under the guise of humanitarian egalitarianism, and puts the blame on others for everything that happens.

Here's another example:

"Jewish emigration accelerated after Israel attacked Egypt in 1956 and economic pressures mounted at home."

While there is some truth in the statement the "economic pressures" was the fact that the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled all non-Egyptians, not only Jews but large numbers of Greeks and others, due to xenophobia and militant nationalism.

Even in tiny phrasing choices--admittedly a matter of judgment but the judgments almost always go in the same direction--are certain assumptions present. Consider this phrase: "Iran, seen by Israel as its deadliest foe...." But since the issue here is Iranian Jews why not write: "Iran, which views Israel as its deadliest foe...." From which direction, after all, does the aggressive view come?

The article could easily have drawn a parallel between the Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians. Both were refugees but the Jews rebuilt their lives rather than nursing grievances and pursing violence for decades. Moreover, one could say that their sufferings and claims balance those of the Palestinian Arabs. None of these arguments--very commonplace in discussion of these issues among Middle East-origin Jews--are presented.

Again, I don't mean to exaggerate the problems with this article, which does at least present the issue and some of the points that should be made. But it also shows weaknesses in dealing with Israel, some of the assumptions on which the contemporary hostile narrative is based.

Read article in full

'Baghdad twist' recalls family's hair-raising escape

Montreal filmmaker Joe Balass has an unusual Mother's Day gift for his mom: Baghdad Twist, a bittersweet memoir of her family's tumultuous times in Iraq. The Montreal Gazette reports that the film tells the story of the family's hair-raising escape through the mountains of Kurdistan:

These are times Valentine Balass would sooner forget, but it does provide her son with some fascinating, if not harrowing, insights into a previously dark chapter in his family's history.

Balass's documentary Baghdad Twist, opening Mother's Day at the NFB Cinema, will also be quite an eye-opener for others in the dark about life in one of the world's most troubled regions. Using vintage Super 8 footage and faded stills from the mid-1960s, Balass has his mother, off-camera, recount a hair-raising odyssey that brought their family to Montreal from Baghdad.

Making life much more dicey for the Balass clan in Baghdad was the fact they were Jewish. She recalls that the Jewish community of Iraq had been thriving up until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. But what was once a community of 180,000 had dwindled down to 10,000 to 12,000 by the early 1950s, due in large part to a climate of accusations implying Iraq's Jews were traitors and, as a result, fear of arrest and worse among the Jews.

By the 1960s, the Jewish population of Iraq had fallen off significantly more, yet the Balass family tried to maintain a sense of normalcy: "Because you can't live all your life in mourning," Valentine reasons.

That attempt at normalcy is depicted in footage from a wedding reception, where guests don their smartest duds and their bravest faces and attempt to do the dance craze sweeping the rest of the world at the time: the twist.

Not exactly giddy times, however, and they were soon to get much worse. Following the Six Day War of 1967 - pitting Israel against Syria, Jordan and Egypt - Iraq's Jews were more targeted than ever.

There were arrests, based on trumped-up charges of spying, and there were public hangings of Jews in the streets of Baghdad. Valentine remembers that people were in a state of jubilation, singing and dancing while the executions were being carried out.

Balass's dad was detained three times for no specific reason, but after he was let out on bail following the last arrest, Valentine was taking no chances. She took charge and made plans to bolt Baghdad quickly with her husband, three kids and other family members.

Leaving everything in their Baghdad home intact, so as not to arouse any suspicion, this group of 12 fled, at enormous risk, to the Kurdish north of Iraq. From there, they slipped into Iran, then made their way to Israel before ending up in Montreal in 1970 - with pretty much only the clothes on their backs.

Read article in full

Squaring up to a fight over the 'other refugees'

Moroccan-born Sephardi community activist Sylvain Abitbol from Montreal is up to the challenge of putting the case for the Jewish refugees from Arab countries, he tells David Suissa in the Jewish Journal of LA (with thanks: Sabby):

"To this day, Arab countries and the world community have refused to acknowledge these human rights violations or provide compensation to the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to abandon their homes, businesses and possessions as they fled those countries.

"But activists like Abitbol are fighting back, all the way to the White House and the U.S. Congress. Abitbol, the first Sephardic Jew to lead the local Jewish Federation in Montreal and now co-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, connected with this movement a year ago when he joined the board of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC). Together with other organizations like the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) and the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), the movement, which is officially called the International Rights and Redress Campaign, toiled for years in obscurity.

"A few weeks ago, they hit the jackpot. That's when the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed the first-ever resolution to grant recognition as refugees to Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. House Resolution 185 affirms that all victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict must be treated equally, which means it will now be official U.S. policy to mention "Jewish refugees" whenever there is mention of Palestinian refugees in any official document.

"It's a huge victory, but only a beginning. The United Nations and the world media are the next fronts in this battle for Jewish justice. Abitbol, a sophisticated man in his mid-50s who's fluent in French, English, Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish, has no illusions about Israel's precarious image in the world. But he's far from being a cynic. He's passionate about fighting for the rights of Jewish victims, and he is also a Jewish refugee (from Morocco). Yet he hardly acts like either a refugee or a victim.

"Over tea at my mother's house, he reflected on the major influences of his life. One of the things that stuck with me was something Abitbol said he learned early in his career, when he was in sales. Abitbol, who has two engineering degrees and is chairman of an innovative software company called uMind, calls the technique "listen and adapt:" You adapt your strategy and your communication to the values of your audience.
He gave me a fascinating example. While in Dubai recently on business, an Arab businessman confronted him on the situation in Israel. Abitbol, seeing that the man was a devout Muslim who believed that everything comes from God, gently explained -- in Arabic -- that if Israel has survived so many wars over 60 years, maybe it's because it is "Inshallah" (God's will). Abitbol got the other man's attention.

Same thing when he spoke recently at a United Nations conference in Geneva on the subject of Jewish refugees. Directly facing representatives of Arab countries, he used the language of indignation and human rights that Arabs have used so successfully against Israel for so many decades, only this time it was on behalf of Jews.

Of course, he added that there is one major difference: Jews didn't put their 850,000 refugees in squalid camps so they could have a powerful image on the evening news. They helped them resettle, so that one day, one of them would learn five languages and fly to Geneva to speak up on their behalf.

Read article in full

How Iraq went to war on its Jews

Read this unusual first-hand account of Iraq's 1948 war on its Jews by John Ough, a Canadian serviceman, in the National Post:

"When Israel was born in 1948, the government of Iraq decided things looked safe enough to go to war. A small war. And I was there to watch it happen.

"Protected from the newborn Zionist enemy to the west by an expanse of wild, roadless desert, the Iraqis looked around for closer, more convenient, foes to fight. They found them behind the commercial counters of Iraq's financial institutions, administration offices and other places of business — the harmless, peaceful, Jewish business clerks who kept the wheels of Iraq's national commerce turning in efficient fashion. In a gesture of pan-Arab solidarity, Iraq's government decided to banish these Jews and their families to the newly established State of Israel — which, itself, the Iraqi army was planning to help obliterate, eventually.

"At once, the airport in Basra — Iraq's second city — became the scene of bewildered Jewish innocents lined up with the single suitcase each was allowed to carry. They watched Iraqi customs officers examine their few belongings during a rough search, usually ending with the contents of any jars, bottles or toothpaste tubes being squirted over the whole jumbled-up mess. Then they were piled onto Israel-bound planes and told never to come back.

"They were the lucky ones.

"The more unlucky ones, those with large amounts of money, had their fortunes confiscated. To forestall any possibility of later arguments, they were publicly hanged in the city centre in front of thousands of cheering onlookers and clicking cameras.

"During the following months, business and bank transactions became a comedy of errors, owing to Iraq having so few capable employees left. But the operation was nevertheless declared a complete success. To prove it, for a dinar or two, one could buy a set of photographs of the hangings, including close-ups of still strung-up moldering faces of dead millionaires.

"Having won that battle, the Iraqis then decided to send an armed expeditionary force in the general direction of Israel, so that they might at least arrive in time to tag along behind the soon-to-be triumphant Egyptian and Syrian troops and share in the glory of the planned victory parades in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

"As troop transport was limited, it was decided the bulk of the rank and file would have to march bravely along the constantly shifting desert tracks that crossed the then roadless miles between Baghdad and Damascus.

"The trouble was the rank and file weren't too good at marching. Or even walking. Few had ever worn heavy footwear before. And certainly not the old, ill-fitting, secondhand army boots with which the recruits were outfitted from hopelessly jumbled-up piles cast off by who knows what colonial force. Many a poor date-palm lad answered the call to duty, only to be handed either two left-foot or two right-foot boots --or, if lucky enough to get one right and one left, would probably find they were of differing sizes.

"It was especially painful for the young rural folk of the Shatt-al-Arab region, where generations of treading the extremely soft mud of the river banks had led to the evolution of splayed feet. Suddenly, these poor recruits were ordered to cram their flat feet into warped, ill-fitting boots and march toward Israel with a military gait."

Read article in full

Happy Birthday all round!

Today Israel is celebrating its 60th anniversary. It's a magnificent achievement. Israel has grown from nothing to be a leader in so many fields. For the Jews of the Middle East, Israel was their refuge, the country which gave many of them full citizens' rights for the first time.

Point of No Return is also celebrating. It's been three years since this blog was set up (with the help of Joseph Alexander Norland) and we have clocked up almost 107,000 hits - 50,000 in the last six months. In the last five years, thanks to the Herculean efforts of the Justice for Jews from Arab Countries campaign, awareness has grown - especially among Israel's friends - of the plight of the Jews from Arab countries and Iran, and our story has penetrated the mainstream US media such as The New York Times. At the beginning of April, the US Congress adopted a resolution calling for Jewish refugees to be treated equally with Palestinian refugees. This was a major breakthrough.

In Europe it is a different story. The political and academic elites remain ignorant or in thrall to propaganda. Press and media coverage of Israel's 60 years has been distorted by the juxtaposition of the Palestinian 'nakba' alongside the story of Israel's miraculous birth - as if Israel was created at the expense of Palestinians.

Almost nothing has been said or written about the 'nakba' of almost one million Jews of the Middle East, 'ethnically cleansed' by state-sanctioned anti-Jewish decrees and their ancient communities destroyed. Tales of 'native' Palestinians evicted from their homes are invariably contrasted with the stories of Israeli 'interlopers' from Europe. Sometimes the Israelis profiled on the BBC 'came' from Yemen or Morocco, but, while no effort is usually spared to describe in graphic detail how Palestinians were expelled, there is no hint that the grandparents of Israeli Jews of Arab origin fled for their lives while the mob screamed 'Ytbah al-yahud'.

It is unfair that Israel’s quiet absorption of 600,000 of these refugees should not be news, while the grievances of an equal number of Palestinians –whose ‘refugee’ status in defiance of precedent and morality remains unquestioned 60 years on – have been kept alive and are given undue prominence.

In England, advocates of Israel's case have promoted the rights of Palestinians, in the belief - bolstered by opinion polls - that if Israel treated the Palestinians more fairly, Israel would be viewed in a more positive light. But this strategy is itself based on a one-sided and distorted understanding of the Middle East conflict in which the suffering and rights of half of Israel's Jews - victims of Arab Muslim antisemitism - are overlooked. Such distortions confirm Arab opinion in its sense of victimhood, and the prospects of peace and reconciliation recede even further.

So on this anniversary, we celebrate that much has been done, but much still remains to be done, in the name of truth and justice.

An Iraqi Muslim at a Passover seder

An Iraqi Muslim taking part in a Passover seder in the USA finds it stirs in him memories of how Jews were regarded in his Baghdad childhood. Sarmad Ali writes in The Wall St Journal:

"A few weeks ago, I flew to Michigan to join my close friend’s family in celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover. It was my second time going to a Seder and it again stirred memories of how Jews were regarded in Iraq in my childhood.

"The first night we had a fairly big table with a dozen people or more. My friend’s grandfather sat at the head of the table and led the readings, asking others, including me, to recite some passages from a Passover booklet. When a reference to the Euphrates River came up, I leaned over to point it out to my friend. “These are my people,” I whispered, chuckling. The reading was punctuated with jokes and questions as we went around the table telling the story of how the Jews were slaves and then left Egypt. I found that part interesting. (...)

"Before coming to New York in the summer of 2004, I had never heard of any Jewish holidays, nor had I met any Jewish people. By the time I was born, there were no Jews left in sight in Baghdad. The handful of elderly Iraqi Jews who surfaced in Baghdad after the U.S. invasion, whose stories were reported in Western media, seem to have survived in Iraq all those years either by hiding their identity or by being just too old or secular for Saddam’s government to worry about.

"The only mental images of Jews that I could think of growing up in Baghdad came from Egyptian movies; for example, about an Egyptian-trained intelligence agent who infiltrated Israel during former Egyptian president Jamal Abdel Al-Nasser’s era, or a television series that showed a synagogue with black-clad rabbis that depicted prophet Mohammed’s era in the Arab peninsula surrounded by Jews hatching conspiracies against Islam.

"When I was in college in Baghdad, my concept of Jews narrowed to Israeli soldiers carrying machine guns as shown on Iraqi news channels. During the Palestinian intifada or uprising, the Iraqi channels showed footage of Israelis killing Arabs and destroying Arab villages. Some of the footage accompanied patriotic songs about liberating Jerusalem. The Jews were portrayed as vicious people who were behind every war and catastrophe in the Middle East. Even the word yehudi, which in Iraqi dialect means a Jew, came to most frequently describe a mean and vicious person.

"In the old part of Baghdad, where I spent 25 years, my grandparents sometimes talked about how in the old times in Iraq Jews and Muslims like themselves co-existed. By “old times” they meant way before the Baath Party took power in Iraq and before the Jews were forced to leave.

David Nissan of Roslyn, N.Y., helped his seven-year-old son recite from the Hagadah Shel Pesach during a seder for Iraqi Jews at the Congregation Bene Naharayim, in Queens in 2003. (Photo: Associated Press)

"My grandfather was especially nostalgic about those old days, when people from different religious backgrounds co-existed peacefully in Iraq. He used to tell me stories about how the store around the corner from my house used to be owned by Jews or how that neighborhood’s houses with heavy old wooden doors and basements were inhabited by Jewish families before they were expelled from Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, my grandfather, who died in the mid-1990s, always referred to some neighborhoods by their old names, the ones he grew up with during the British mandate. Those names were less familiar to me and my generation. For instance, he used to say that, “so and so happened today in the Christian Quarter,” or he would ask me to go buy him cigarettes “from the Jewish Quarter.” I had no context for those names and had to ask him where they were in relation to other things.

"In Saddam’s Iraq, where I grew up and spent most of my life, even whispering words such as “Jew” or “Israel,” if not used in a derogatory way, could get a person in trouble. In fact, the only times people pronounced words such as “Jew,” “Jewish” or “Zionist” were in a demeaning sense."

Read article in full

Arabic website launched: The origins of the Jews

An Arabic-language website on the origins of the Jews has just been launched by the American Jewish Committee. Daniel Pipes welcomes this much needed innovation:

"When I lived in Cairo in the 1970s, I conducted a little experiment: What, using only Arabic-language sources, could I learn about Jews, Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish culture, and the like? The paucity of resources stunned me; basically, the best way to learn about these subjects was to read between the lines of antisemitic tracts.

"It is therefore with delight that I read today that the American Jewish Committee, under the directorship of Yehudit Barsky, has launched a new website, Asl Al-Yahud ("origins of the Jews"), that deals in Arabic with these subjects, with an emphasis on the history of Jews in Arabic-speaking lands. As a press release explains,

The website offers information about Jewish lifecycle events, holidays and religious practice. The website also contains a timeline of Jewish history, audio and graphic components, and a special section for users to submit questions. An Asl Al-Yahud staff member will answer the questions, in Arabic, allowing users to comfortably interact in their native tongue. The content was created originally in Arabic by Ephraim Gabbai, a descendent of the Iraqi Jewish community. The site is visually authentic to Middle Eastern design and highlights cultural practices shared by Muslims and Jews from Arabic-speaking nations around the globe.

Why Jewish refugees are key to Israel's legitimacy

Israel's 60th anniversary has been the occasion for special media attention but also, regrettably, the dissemination of distortions and libels. The press is guilty by omission of suppressing and inverting the truth: rather than Israel 'ethnically cleansing' the Palestinians, it is Arab states which have 'ethnically cleansed' the indigenous Jews of the Middle East.

The forgotten Jewish refugees are key to dispelling several widespread myths. These are eloquently tackled in recent articles by Barry Rubin, Maurice Harris and Ami Isseroff.


Myth: The flip-side of the creation of Israel is the dispossession of the Palestinians.

Professor Barry Rubin writes in Global Politician about an AP report by Karin Laub: "This is the modern equivalent of the blood libel, which held that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood for the Passover matzoh. But if that myth is too exotic for people remember that its “secular” equivalent was responsible for even more anti-Semitic persecution. That was the idea that any Jewish prosperity was based on the blood-sucking of Christian peasants or of society at large.

In this case, Israel is said to have murdered, ethnically cleansed and otherwise persecuted the Palestinians. Therefore, nothing it does can be good, no achievement of itself counts, and it has no right to self-defense. Obviously, such claims are often greatly diluted but nonetheless rest on this basis.

"The Laub article is a systematic restatement of this thesis. To begin with, it is extraordinarily long for an AP article, 1,724 words. If this isn’t a record for an AP dispatch, it must be up near the top. Obviously, this is a message that the AP editors are especially eager to convey: that everything Israel has is at Palestinian expense.

"That this is a lie can be explained on many levels but at least two must be presented here. First, why is this measure applied only to Israel , and certainly only to Israel on an existential basis? It is well-known, certainly, that Germany has taken responsibility for Nazi crimes, and also there are applications for reimbursement of Jewish property seized in eastern Europe during the Nazi period.

"Yet most countries are founded on expropriation, often of Jewish property. For example, Oxford University , where recently debates were conducted calling for Israel’s destruction, was started on property stolen from Jews expelled in 1290. Far more recently, many Arab states received a huge infusion of capital from the expropriation of Jewish property after Israel ’s creation. Does France ’s or Britain ’s or Belgium ’s independence day require discussion of colonial depredations? We don’t read articles that Japan ’s independence day is blighted by Chinese or Korean suffering, though the Japanese did engage in mass murder of those people. What about the fact that every country in the Western Hemisphere is based on the suffering of the indigenous natives? Or even in the case of Russia, given Czarist and Soviet behavior? In no case, however, is far worse behavior said to have poisoned any other country’s very existence."

Myth: The only fair solution is one secular, democratic state.

Maurice Harris, a Jew of Moroccan origin and a 'progressive', writes in Register- Guard (A place to call Home - registration required):

"In recent years, however, the progressive rallying cry has shifted from “End the occupation” to “Dismantle Israel,” and that’s disturbing. Often I encounter people who argue that the best solution to the conflict is for Israel to cease to exist as a Jewish homeland, and for it to be replaced by a single, secular democratic state in all of Palestine. Why would anyone be opposed to a multi-ethnic democracy, after all?

"This solution is unjust because it upholds only one set of human rights — the rights of the individual — but it denies the right of small and vulnerable peoples to safety and self-determination.

"Ask the Kosovars if they’d like to reunite with Serbia, or the Pakistanis if they’d like to return to the status of being a religious minority in a greater India. Justice for human beings involves two sets of rights: the right of the individual to be accorded full citizenship within his or her country under the rule of law, and the right of peoples — especially small and vulnerable peoples — to self-determination through collective autonomy.

"The “one-state solution” would turn the clock back to before World War II, when Jews were condemned to always be a minority group wherever they lived, and when democratic states failed to save them from mass murder.

"It’s also worth noting that the kind of multireligious secular democracy that these advocates want to see replace Israel is a type of state that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the Middle East. Their solution would create a secular democracy in the one part of the Middle East where there is a concentration of Jews, thus disempowering Jews as a group, while leaving more than 20 other states throughout the region that officially enfranchise Islam or Arab national identity as part of their constitutions."

I should add that the fall of the Ottoman empire empowered largely Sunni Muslim Arab elites, while the political rights of non-Arab Kurds, Assyrians and Berbers were ignored.

Myth: Israel is a European colonial settler state which deprives the indigenous people of their political rights.

Maurice Harris continues: "This argument ignores the fact that a large percentage of the world’s Jews are not European at all. Mizrahi, or “Eastern” Jews, have lived in large numbers as minority members of Middle Eastern countries for centuries, and until recently, Mizrahi Jews made up the majority of Israel’s Jewish population. Many progressives I’ve spoken with were totally unaware that Mizrahi Jews even existed, or that most Mizrahi Jews are people of color.

"I sometimes hear the comment made that Mizrahi Jews were doing just fine under Islamic rule and had no need of a state of their own. The truth is that while Jews fared better overall historically under Islamic rule than Christian rule, they still faced periodic pogroms, expulsions, special taxes, and other forms of religious humiliation and persecution under Islam.

"And like their European brethren, Mizrahi Jews also faced potential annihilation during World War II. For example, when the Nazis conquered Morocco, they deported several thousand Jews to rural concentration camps. Had the Allied invasion of Morocco taken place later than it did, Moroccan Jews may not have survived. And in 1941, the Mufti of Jerusalem, a key Palestinian leader, signed an agreement with Mussolini planning for the extermination of the Jews living in Palestine should the Axis forces defeat the British there.

"In fairness, there were also heroic Muslims who took great risks to protect Jews from the Nazis. But the overall condition of Mizrahi Jews was precarious and disempowered. As in Christian Europe, Jewish safety and survival under Muslim rule ultimately depended on the good will of the leaders of the moment. After 1948, Islamic governments began persecuting Mizrahi Jews sharply, and most of them fled. More than 800,000 Jews, including my grandparents and mother, became refugees, most resettling in Israel. These refugees are rarely mentioned in the Israeli-Palestinian debate."

So Jews deserve a homeland. Why does it have to be in Palestine?

"Jews are not a foreign infection in the Middle East," writes Maurice Harris. " Jews are an unusual people in that we’ve been spread out thinly in many parts of the world, where we’ve lived continuously for centuries. The Mizrahi part of our population is indigenous to the Middle East, and the rest of our people have deep roots there. Except for deserted places, every place in the world is somebody’s home, so sending Jews to have a homeland outside of Palestine would still have created issues of conflict and compromise with some native population. Palestine was the only part of the world where Jews had an historical connection.

Myth: The Palestinian refugee problem can only be solved when the Arab-Israeli conflict is solved.

Ami Isseroff of the Zionation blog sets the Palestinian refugees issue in context: "Along with about 700,000 Arab Palestinian refugees, the war instigated by the Arab states in 1948 eventually created about a million Jewish refugees. A few were Palestinian refugees thrown out of Jerusalem and Hebron and Kfar Etzion. The others were Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries. Yet there is no Jewish refugee problem, because all those refugees were absorbed into Israel or the United States or other countries. They did not wait for a solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, the coming of the Messiah, the perfection of the unified field theory, the demonstration of the Higgs boson or any other such wished-for but unlikely event.

"Likewise, there is no problem of Indian or Pakistani refugees any more, though the creation of India and Pakistan in 1947 generated millions of refugees. In fact, there is no conflict that has generated permanent refugees. The reluctance of the Arab states to seek a humanitarian solution for the Palestinian Arab refugee problem is understandable. They want to use the problem, and the misery of the refugees, as a weapon in the war against Israel. That does not explain the silence of everyone else, from Israeli government spokespersons, to those with genuine humanitarian concerns for the refugees, to peace groups like the J Street lobby, to US presidential hopefuls. All of the economic aid that the quartet is showering on the Palestinian Authority will avail nothing, as long as the horrendous pockets of misery in the camps are sustained."

At last, Middle Eastern Jews make New York Times

This generally fair and nuanced Reuters report on the plight of Middle Eastern Jews, picked up by The New York Times to mark Israel's 60th annversary, is long overdue. However, dhimmified Jews still living in several Arab countries and Iran dilute the message of displacement and persecution. (With thanks: a reader)

SIDON, Lebanon (Reuters) - A ruined cemetery lies by the sea in Sidon, the worn Hebrew inscriptions on the headstones a reminder of Lebanon's once-thriving Jewish minority, which has all but vanished since the state of Israel emerged 60 years ago.

The graveyard sits in wasteland across the road from an unstable mountain of garbage piled over rubble collected from buildings destroyed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

"The Israeli troops came and looked after the cemetery," recalled Mohammed al-Sarji, a Sidon environmentalist and film-maker. "After they left in 1985, it was neglected."

The 1948 war at Israel's creation, which forced some 700,000 Palestinians to flee their homeland, hardened Arab attitudes to deep-rooted Jewish minorities across the Middle East.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews were displaced. Some migrated voluntarily from mainly Muslim countries to the newly proclaimed Jewish homeland. Others were forced out by dispossession, discrimination or violence. Thousands stayed on.

Israeli statistics show more than 760,000 Middle Eastern Jews had moved to Israel by 2006, with more than 40 percent arriving in the first three years of the state's existence.

Over the last six decades of Middle East tension, Jewish communities have dwindled to insignificance in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Yemen, but cling on in countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and non-Arab Iran and Turkey.

Iran, seen by Israel as its deadliest foe, hosts 22,000 to 25,000 Jews, down from at least 85,000 before the 1979 Islamic revolution, when many went to the United States. Today, it is the biggest Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel.

Morris Mottamed, who formerly held the Jewish seat in Iran's parliament, noted that post-revolutionary turmoil and economic factors had prompted emigration among other minorities too.

Discrimination was not behind the Jewish outflow, he argued, adding that Iranian Jews enjoyed freedom of worship, education and travel. Their numbers had been stable for five years.

"I'm sure in future also there will be a very strong community of Jewish people in Iran," Mottamed told Reuters.

Asked about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map," he said he disagreed with it.

The United States says such hostility to Israel creates a threatening atmosphere for Iranian Jews. It also says they and other minorities suffer discrimination. Tehran denies this.

Morocco, which has warmer ties with Israel than most Arab countries, was home to around 400,000 Jews before 1948.

But after waves of migration, fewer than 4,000 remain, the residue of a 2,000-year history of peaceful, if unequal, cohabitation interspersed with episodes of bloody repression.

In the past, Moroccan Jews were considered subordinate to Muslims and discrimination was widespread. Every city has its Mellah, the poorest quarter to which Jews were once confined. Their residents were the first to leave when they could.

A Jewish cemetery, community centre and restaurant were among targets of Islamist suicide bombers who killed 45 people in Casablanca in 2003. But such violence against Jews is rare.

"There is no anti-Semitism in Morocco," Simon Levy, 75, who chairs the Moroccan Museum of Judaism in Casablanca, told Le Soir daily. "There is a growing Islamist sentiment, and the Muslim has this certainty he is better than everyone else."

But Morocco remains Levy's home: "I made my choice long ago to stay in this country as a Moroccan, like my ancestors."

Tunisia's 2,000 Jews live in harmony with their Muslim neighbors, reflecting the policy of its secular government.

"We are doing our best to teach our children the Jewish religion as Muslims learn their religion," said David Didoshim, headmaster of a Jewish school on the island of Djerba.

The community was jolted when an al Qaeda suicide bomber attacked a Djerba synagogue in 2002, killing 21 people.

Yet Hayim Haddad, a Jewish resident, said no Jews had left the island afterwards. "All the people know how much we are attached to our country Tunisia, whatever happens," he added.

Tunisian Jews numbered 100,000 until the North African country won independence in 1956. Most then moved to France.

Conflict in Palestine in the 1930s made life harder for Egyptian Jews, as militant nationalist groups became active.

Israel's advent in 1948 and the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 added to their difficulties. In 1948, there were bomb attacks in Jewish areas and some Jews were killed in riots.

Jewish emigration accelerated after Israel attacked Egypt in 1956 and economic pressures mounted at home.

Many Jewish residents were entrepreneurs without Egyptian citizenship who opted to leave after the government nationalized their businesses and seized their wealth. Some were held in detention centers and coerced into leaving the country.

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Critique by Barry Rubin

Who are we exactly? ask Iraqi Jews in Israel

Iraqi Jews in Israel took a long, hard look at themselves in the first ever academic conference on the topic held at Tel Aviv University at the end of April. Here is a summary of a Haaretz report (with thanks: Linda):

The first academic conference of its kind examining the integration of Iraqi Jewry in Israel was held over two days last week at Tel Aviv University. The conference sought to define the Iraqi Jew’s identity: was it ‘Iraqi-Israeli’, ’Arab Jew’ or ‘Mizrahi’ (oriental)? The head of the Academic organizing committee was Sasson Somekh, emeritus professor of Arabic literature at the university.

Dr Uri Cohen, initiator and producer of the conference, said that the idea to hold the conference came up to him after attending a conference at the Van Leer Institute about the Yekim (Jews from Germany).

Dr. Sylvia Kedourie from London was the only guest speaker from abroad. The subject of her talk was 'The savage separation: the Jews of Iraq.'

Esther Meir-Glitztein of Ben Gurion University said that of all the Mizrahi communities the Iraqi Jews were the most successful and middle class. This was partly because they had good schools in Iraq, and partly because they had refused to live on the periphery of the country, but settled in the Tel Aviv area. Moroccan and Yemenite Jews were subsequently sent to border development towns.

Professor Habiba Fidaya ( the granddaughter of Rabbi Yehuda Ftaya), a poet and researcher into modern Jewish culture from Beersheva University, objected to all communities being lumped together as ‘Mizrahim’, which happens whenever there is oppression. They have different voices and channels, just like the different voices on the panel which makes it hard to define what is specifically Iraqi. Yet she explained that she can live with the cultural space being defined as Iraqi since it includes folklore, music, food etc .

Professor Sami Smooha, a sociologist from Haifa University and candidate for the Israel Prize, said that he did not care much about this dichotomy of identity, but is deeply concerned about the growing gap between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi community in Israel.

The discussion ranged over the Israeli-Arab-Jewish-Iraqi identity controversy. One person said he did not consider himself Iraqi, but from Iraq. Another man got up and said: ” I was born in Prague. But after two days of conference on the Iraqis I too miss Baghdad.”

Read article in full (Hebrew)

Letters to the press, published and unpublished

You, like me, may be finding your blood-pressure rising fast with the tide of lies and distortions washing over the British press in the run-up to Israel's 60th anniversary. Most disheartening is the almost complete silence on the 'ethnic cleansing' of Jews from Arab lands. Where the campaign for Jewish refugees is mentioned, it is misunderstood. Joel Plasco's letter in the left-leaning Independent is one chink of light in the darkness, but The Economist has refused to publish any letters refuting the distortions in its 10th April article on Congress's adoption of resolution HR no.185 on Jewish refugees.

Published:

Sir: While I, like many liberal-minded Jews, believe in a just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Johann Hari's rewriting of history (Opinion, 28 April) ignores one very important fact which has been overlooked in just about every article which I've read concerning the forthcoming 60th anniversary of the State of Israel. While there were certainly injustices perpetrated against some of the displaced 800,000 Arabs, where is the discussion of the fate of the 600,000* Jews turned out from across the Arab world?

The reason why there is no discussion is simple. Unlike the vastly rich Arab nations which have deliberately maintained the refugee status of the displaced Palestinians for 60 years in order to use them as a political bargaining chip, the struggling nascent Israel welcomed in a similar number of poverty-stricken refugees. The apparatus of the state was turned to ensuring that these refugees became full members of Israeli society, and the descendants these Sephardi Jews today make up about 50 per cent of Israeli society.

A good way to judge the moral fibre of a society is how it treats the least privileged of its own. Perhaps Mr Hari should use this as a starting point. The squalid refugee camps across the Arab world, contrasted with the integrated members of Israeli society.

Joel Plasco
London NW10

*850,000 is the truer figure

***

Not published:

The article entitled “Let There be Justice for All: America's Israel Lobby Scores Another Questionable Victory” ( April 10, 2008 print edition) unfortunately does not live up to high journalistic standards to which, no doubt, The Economist aspires to.

This article misrepresents the spirit and intent of the US Congressional resolution affirming rights for Jews displaced from Arab countries. The Resolution is not about “restitution for Jewish refugees” but rather seeks to establish a fundamental principle: there were two refugee populations created as a result of the longstanding dispute in the Middle East and both have to be addressed in any just and credible Middle East peace process.

Neither the mass violations of human rights, nor the displacement of over 850,000 Jews from some 10 Arab countries have ever been adequately addressed by the international community. Your article perpetuates this historical injustice by inaccurately stating: that: “…Arab attitudes to them (Jews) soured in the wake of Jewish immigration to Palestine and the later creation of Israel”.

In fact, Jews have been an indigenous people in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region for more than 2,600 years – fully 1,000 years before the advent of Islam. Centuries before the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews in Arab countries faced persecution – decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt and Syria (1014, 1293, 1301), Iraq (854, 1344) and Yemen (1676); mass murders of Jews took places in Fez (1465); Libya (1785); and in Algiers (1805 – 1830). The Economist has now joined others who seek to expunge this narrative from the history of the Middle East. .

The article refers to the work of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) and cynically refers to the “power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington”. In fact, unconnected to Israel and certainly not a ‘lobby’, JJAC is an international human rights coalition of 77 Jewish communities and organizations in 20 countries.

The bi-partisan support for Resolution 185 is not the result of any lobby; rather it reflects the overwhelming consensus of the US House of Representatives on the need to restore law and equity to the deliberations on Middle East refugees. Only in this fashion, can we begin to move from truth to justice; then to reconciliation; and then to peace, between and among all peoples and states in the region.

Stanley A. Urman
Executive Director
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries

Your coverage of the encouraging vote by America’s House of Representatives in support of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries was one more positive step in the never ending struggle for the Jewish people to find justice and fairness. Your conclusions however need fine-tuning. It is incomprehensible that Jews fleeing threats, terror, murder, inequality under the law and loosing all their assets should be viewed as having fewer rights only because they found safe haven.

The presentation for the vote in the US Congress was a showing of third party concern for Jewish rights that has not happened since the Nuremburg trials and the UN vote that led to the creation of the State of Israel. In fact there was no official support from Israel for this bill and it was not lobbied for on its behalf by the traditional Israel lobby referred to. Israel’s position on this issue is a continuation of its longstanding lesser appreciation for its Jewish citizens from Arab countries. This, although today these Jews and their descendants make up the majority of Israel’s population, and Arabic is a second official language. The “two- sided” refugee problem in the Middle East was created by one side when all the Arab countries attacked the newly- created Israel, and then let their local Jewish populations suffer their wrath after a humiliating loss.

No one is using this issue as an attempt to lessen any claims by the Palestinian refugees. Instead it recognizes that no peace will ever be achieved without the ultimate endorsement of the Arab countries, which even Arafat recognized as the reason for his ultimate 'no'. Through their behavior following the creation of Israel, the Arab nations de facto achieved a population exchange within the region and vastly improved Israel’s chances of survival as a Jewish state - a population exchange just like the ones between Greece and Turkey and later between India and Pakistan that were essential to lasting peace. This population exchange, no doubt, is the most promising argument for the ultimate acceptance of Israel and peace by the Arabs. The widespread, well-documented and important Jewish presence in the Arab world dates back over 2,500 years, long before the advent of Islam and surely it has every right to remain, and in peace. However both the Palestinian and the Jewish refugees deserve full and equal recognition of their losses. To call the rights of the Jewish refugees a right-wing issue is deplorable at best.

David E R Dangoor
President
The American Sephardi Federation

Update: the following letter was finally published in the Economist of May 10.
I was surprised to read that the "Israeli lobby" was responsible for passing resolution 185 (April 12). In fact, for many years, it refused to be involved. Furthermore, compensation was not the key part of this resolution, another important factor you got wrong.

All we wanted was to tell our story because, for 60 years, the media talked exclusively on the Palestinians. There was virtually nothing on the brutal expulsion of nearly one million Jews from the Arab world and Iran. No trial; no jury; no justice. Human rights organization did not call attention to this crime against humanity. The UN did not convene the Security Council to censure the Arab countries. The Church and British Academics and Unions did not ask for divestment from these countries nor did we receive any financial help from the UN, like the Palestinians did.

"Who was fighting for my rights?", I asked. I was 12 years old, living in Cairo when the Arab League said, in May 1948: "This will be a war of extermination that will be likened to the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades" The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini exhorted Palestinian Arabs to "kill all (Palestinian) Jews". They lost the war and since then, have been crying to the world that they are the victims. Give me a break!

The Middle East conflict created not one, but two refugee populations. It's unfair to talk about one group to the exclusion of the other.

Joseph Abdel Wahed
Co-founder of JIMENA
Moraga, Ca. USA

You got it all wrong in your coverage of U.S. Congressional Resolution 185, recognizing the nearly 1 million indigenous Jews exiled from 9 Arab countries and Iran. Your characterization that the passage of this resolution was due in large part to the "Israel lobby" ignores the history of this movement.

I know first hand because my husband started Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA), six years ago. It was begun by a handful of people who, through stint of passion, dedication and hard work, forged it into a grass works organization. JIMENA partnered with the Justice for jews from Arab Countries organization, and others, to support this legislation because their story of exile and loss was never told by the media. The "Israel lobby" had nothing to do with it.

Also, the resolution was about RECOGNITION not simply restitution, although anyone with a sense of fairness would acknowledge the Jewish refugees have a right to restitution, too, since the Arab countries stole their homes, schools, hospitals, community centers, businesses, and bank accounts, totaling billions in today's dollars. But these Jewish groups aren't driven by a demand for restitution. They want their voices to be heard and their stories told.

Finally, I am baffled why the press continues to call the Palestinians "refugees," a title that inexplicably applies to not only the original refugees, but their children and grandchildren -- 60 years later. We know they don't live in tents, most of them own their homes and businesses, even if they still receive welfare aid from the U.N., totaling nearly $14 billion since 1950! What more restitution could they deserve than that! Plus, must everyone be reminded they are the ones who started the war against Israel in 1948. If they had chosen the path of peace, they would be celebrating their 60th year of independence, like Israel.

Kathi Twomey Wahed
Moraga, CA

Your editorial on Congress’s passing of a resolution on Jewish refugees gets it wrong on several counts:

The resolution is not an abuse of power by the ‘Israel lobby’. It is not about restitution to Jewish refugees from Arab Countries and Iran, but recognition. This is not a zero-sum game: Jewish rights do not detract from Palestinian rights. Both must be addressed.

Few know that there were more Jewish refugees than Palestinian Arab refugees. The Jews lost assets worth twice as much. It is neither right nor fair that the international community should see the Israel-Arab conflict only as a story of Palestinian victimhood and dispossession. The Congressional resolution tries to redress the balance.

While we are all too aware of the injustices committed against the Palestinians, Israel has been penalised in the court of world opinion because it has not politicised the issue of the Jewish refugees, most of whom it absorbed successfully at huge cost but with little fuss. With their descendants, these refugees today constitute half Israel’s Jewish population.

Neither is the resolution a stumbling block to peace. There needs to be a proper reckoning with the past. The Arab world continues to deny its responsibility for causing its ancient Jewish communities to flee. In that sense, unveiling the truth about the more than 800,000 Jews driven out of 10 Arab countries contributes to, rather than detracts from, the peace process.

Lyn Julius
London

Jewish refugee's UN address was the highlight

At the 7th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March, ami took notes as she listened her way through the usual diatribes against Israeli 'apartheid' and Islamophobia. The veteran UN campaigner David Littman spoke about Islamic judeophobia. But for ami, the highlight of the session - and what made it all worthwhile - was Libyan-born Gina Waldman's poignant intervention on behalf of the million Jews made refugees from Arab countries (via Harry's Place):

"Now, on 26th March, there is the opportunity to redress the balance. Several NGOs express their anxiety that the upcoming Durban II conference on Racism should not be hijacked by the antisemitic hatefest which wrecked Durban I. The Special Rapporteur (SR) has given his assurance he will not allow this to happen.(..)

"The showpiece intervention comes from David Littman, on behalf of an obscure org called the Association of World Education. Littman is a veteran campaigner at the UN, (who happens to be married to my heroine Bat Ye’or) with something of the Dennis Skinner about his delivery style. The previous day, his mike was cut after 23 seconds, on his first mention of Tibet. Today, his allotted 3 minutes is stretched to 12, thanks to the constant points of order from Egypt, Palestine and Iran, but today he is allowed to carry on until he is finished.

"Littman reiterates his call for the UN to condemn all calls to kill in the name of God or any religion. He lists among those who have justified such calls, Al-Ahzar Grand Sheik Muhammed Sayyed Tantawi and others such as Bin Laden. This prompts an apoplectic objection by Egypt who declares he will not stand for having this revered Sheikh mentioned in the same sentence as Bin Laden. Costea in the chair simply thanks Egypt, and deadpan, hands the floor back to Littman.

"He enumerates the Judeophobia in the educational material of schools in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Syria and Iran, none of which has ever been covered in reports of the SR nor any UN body or UNESCO. He refers to texts available on MEMRI, PMW and CMIP.

"The real star of this number is Chair Doru Costea. He remains steadfast in the face of calls to him by the interjectors to silence the speaker. Egypt objects to his being allowed to speak as he has in last year’s session “insulted” the Council. Costea declares that as long as the speaker is accredited, he will not silence him, and in measured but forceful tones reminds the delegates that we are here to listen to views we may disagree with, and the appropriate remedy for anyone who takes issue with views he disagrees with, is via the right to reply.(...)

The most powerful, poignant and eloquent intervention of the conference: This Jewish refugee from Libya for the first time got to tell her story and that of the one million Jews driven out, like herself, of the Middle East.

The final 36 resolutions were the usual array of notes, encourages, urges etc, with four condemning Israel (still, only two more than Myanmar). A really wishy-washy one on Darfur, and some good ones on abuse of rights against women and children.

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The Shoah is not just an Ashkenazi story

The Holocaust experience of North African Jewry - including the deportation of several hundred Libyan Jews to Bergen-Belsen - is gradually coming to light, writes Haim Sa'adon of the Ben Zvi Institute in Ynet News.

In February 1968 members of Kibbutz Regavim assembled at the community's culture hall to listen to the testimonies of those members who came to Israel from North Africa.

"The truth is we know very little about the war years in North Africa," the meeting's moderator opened. "Anything you tell us will be new to us and anything you tell us is important. Please forgive the fact that our questions will be influenced by the reality we know. That is, that we might try to force on North Africa the terminology we know so well from eastern Europe."

From a 40-year perspective, the testimonies heard in that meeting did not reveal any unknown historical facts. But in 1968 they constituted a startling revelation for those who perceived the Holocaust as an exclusively "Ashkenazi" story.

Various public struggles launched in recent years have raised awareness to what North African Jews had endured during World War II and in the years that preceded it.

These include the public discussion regarding the Jewish assets in the Muslim world; the struggle conducted by international Jewish groups for restitutions for lost property; the efforts of descendents of North African communities to win a place in the nation's collective memory; the special efforts put forth by the US government to commemorate the Holocaust; the new research approaches to the Holocaust; and the opening of archives from the period that have so far remained restricted.

The story of North African Jews has until today remained absent from Israeli public discourse regarding World War II and the Holocaust. This might have been the result of the conception that they fared better than European Jews.

But this perception ignores the suffering of Jews who lost family members in labor and detention camps; who were forced to deal with a cruel and brutal reality that included forced labor of children, confiscation of property and other plights; who were forced to wear the yellow Star of David and who in many cases were deported to concentration camps in Europe, from where several hundreds of them (from Libya) continued to their death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

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Bahrain naming of Jewish envoy 'not official yet'

Reports that Bahrain is to break two taboos at once by appointing a female Jewish ambassador to the US, turn out to be premature. The candidate herself, Huda Noonoo, is at pains to stress that nothing is official yet, according to an AP report carried in the International Herald Tribune :

"Huda Nono, legislator in the all-appointed 40-seat Shura Council, would only confirm she is among those considered for the post and referred further queries to the foreign ministry in Manama.

"I am one of the contenders," Nono, a mother of two and the second Jewish member in the legislature's upper chamber, told The Associated Press. "Nothing is official yet."

Yasmina Britel, press officer for the Bahraini embassy in Washington, said Nono is "one of the nominees," and that King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa would make the official appointment at an unknown date. Britel says this "could be tomorrow" or "in six months."

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Iranian Holocaust denial must be taken seriously

As Israel prepares to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, the German scholar Matthias Kuentzel warns chillingly that Iranian Holocaust denial, a central plank in an Islamist looking-glass world where reality is myth and myth is reality, will lead to total war - unless it is taken seriously. (Via Engage)

"My first proposition is the most obvious: Holocaust denial is motivated by antisemitism and its direct purpose is to contribute to the destruction of Israel. The Iranian leaders, however, do not at all regard themselves as antisemites. “We are friends with the Jewish people”, stated Ahmadinejad when he spoke at Columbia university last year. Moreover, the 25,000 or so Jews in Iran represent the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country.

"Anyone who looks closer, however, will soon discover that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is steeped in an antisemitism not found in any state leader since World War II. Ahmadinejad does not say “Jews” are conspiring to rule the world. Instead he says, “Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.” “The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural, and media sectors.” “The Zionists” fabricated the Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists thrive on war and hatred. Everywhere they exist there is war.” The pattern is familiar. He invests the word “Zionist” with exactly the same meaning Hitler poured into “Jew”: the incarnation of evil. Anyone who makes Jews – whether as “Judas” or as “Zionist” – responsible for all the ills of the world is obviously driven by antisemitism. He must want to eliminate Israel, as the “germ of evil”, in order to “save” the world.

"In this regard, in his opening speech to the conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Manucher Mottaki left no doubt: if “the official version of the Holocaust is called into question,” Mottaki said, then “the nature and identity of Israel” must also be called into question. If, however, the Holocaust did occur after all, then – per Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric – Israel has even less of a reason to be in Palestine, but should be transplanted instead to Europe. One way or another, the result is the same: Israel must vanish.

"The elimination of Israel, the demonisation of Jews and Holocaust denial – these are the three elements of an ideological constellation that collapses as soon as one of the elements is removed. "

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The House did the right thing on Jewish refugees

Congressman Jerrold Nadler

The US House of Representatives did the right thing when it adopted resolution HR no.185 which urges equal treatment for all refugees from the Middle East. One of the resolution's sponsors, Congressman (D-NY) Jerrold Nadler, explains why in Cutting Edge News. ( With thanks: Women's lens)

"While the plight of Palestinian refugees is well known throughout the world and has been a major element in every Arab-Israeli peace plan and negotiation, the plight of these Jewish refugees is rarely mentioned these days. Nevertheless, numerous international agreements pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict have been codified with the rights of the Jewish refugees in mind. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, passed on November 22, 1967, after the Six Day War, calls for a just settlement to the refugee p