Information and links about the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees
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Danny Ayalon (photo: Ariel Jerozolimski) Point of No Return can hardly contain its excitement: on the day that direct Middle East peace talks are due to restart, an Israeli foreign minister has at last given Jewish refugees the profile the issue deserves. Read More »
Alarmed by Prime Minister Erdogan’s rhetoric and shaken by the Flotilla incident, Turkish Jews are also being targeted for an economic boycott. No wonder many of them are getting out while they can. Ynet News reports: About a week ago, Turkish Jews invited about 200 Muslims to break the Ramadan fast at the main synagogue in Istanbul. Read More »
Sir Martin Gilbert Another ‘lachrymose’ and ‘one-sided’ version of the history of Jews in Muslim lands, concludes Avi Shlaim in his FT review of Sir Martin Gilbert’s new book, In Ishmael’s House . Read More »
First Iraq claimed back the Jewish archives now being restored in the US; now it is demanding the return of a Torah scroll from Israel. The scroll, the tourism ministry charges, was smuggled illegally out of the country in the mayhem following the toppling of Saddam in 2003. Read More »
Essaouira in Morocco, home to Israeli-born Noam Nir Israeli-born Noam Nir has lived in Morocco for ten years. He is a one-man barometer of relations between Morocco and its Jews. Read More »
In his review for The Guardian of Sir Martin’s new book, Liberal rabbi David Goldberg is at pains to qualify the broad sweep of Arab antisemitism uncovered by Sir Martin with references to the Spanish Golden Age and how Zionism ‘fuelled’ anti-Jewish Arab anger and violence, while reproaching the author for failing to come to conclusions of his own. Read More »
Fareed Zakaria With thanks : Eliyahu With hardly any Jews left in Lebanon and even fewer prepared to worship openly, this blog has always warned that the renovation of the Beirut synagogue would be exploited for its PR value. Read More »
A rogue Arab publisher moved quickly to turn Shmuel Moreh’s memoirs into a book Professor Shmuel Moreh has been taking the Arab world by storm with his amusing and engaging memoirs, published on an Arabic website. A translated instalment has now featured in Haaretz. Read More »
The announcement that direct talks are set to resume next week between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has set off a volley of the usual articles in the world’s press, branding the settlements and Israeli intransigence as the main obstacles to peace. Read More »
RESTON, Va. (JTA) — Former U.S. senator George Allen said he believed denying his Jewish past helped cost him re-election in 2006. (With thanks: Eliyahu) Allen, who lost the Virginia seat in a razor-close election to James Webb, spoke Thursday for the first time of the fallout from the controversy of his denying his Jewish past. Read More »
Lebanon took a very small step last week permitting Palestinians to work , except in certain professions. But they are still a long way from being granted full civil rights. Read More »
Rare photograph of Renee Dangoor in 1947, the year she was crowned Miss Baghdad As bombs continue to wreak their havoc in Iraq, a wave of nostalgia harking back to a more settled era appears to have swept over the country. Read More »
In her review for The Evening Standard of Martin Gilbert’s new book, Marina Benjamin, the daughter of Iraqi Jews, finds the Ashkenazi author less than comfortable with his material. She reproaches him a failure to take the stories of those she (irritatingly) calls ‘Arab Jews’ ‘with a pinch of salt’ – as if they would be inclined to exaggeration. Read More »
The Franji synagogue, Damascus The 2,000 year-old Jewish communities of Syria and Lebanon ( 30,000 and 14,000 in 1948) have always been intertwined, as has the history of the two countries. Here’s a timeline tracing their decline to less than 50 Jews in each country today. Read More »
With allegations of ‘ethnic cleansing’ hurled liberally by The Guardian at Israel, Medusa thought it was time to focus on the real victims of ethnic cleansing in the Middle East – the Jews. Writing on CiF Watch, she spotlights the story of the Jews of Iraq. Read More »
(Photo: Zion Ozeri )Yemenis take pride in their Jewish past – but live Jews are the object of hostility and contempt. If Arab culture has ‘negative undertones’ in Israel – a controversial statement – try the undertones of being a Jew in an Arab country. Poignant article in The Economist about the last of the Jews of Yemen. Read More »
Studying the book in Tunisia, 1958 At long last, Sir Martin Gilbert’s new book In Ishmael’s House: A history of Jews in Muslim lands puts the history of Jews in Arab countries, Iran and Turkey, within reach of the ordinary man and woman in the street. Read More »
Rivka has just arrived with her family from Karachi, Pakistan. They brought only the 30 kg they could take with them. One of 4,000 children now being schooled in Dimona, she sings a song in a mixture of Hebrew and her native tongue. Today Rivka is probably an ‘old-timer’ with grandchildren in the IDF. Read More »
The renovated Maghen Abraham synagogue (Y Frog) (With thanks: bh) The Lebanese Jewish community has almost been wiped out through persecution, but you would never guess it from this gushing article in Haaretz , celebrating the ‘tolerance’ represented Read More »
Yosef (not his real name), who escaped Iran to become a decorated combat soldier for the Israel Defence Forces, tells his remarkable story. His first few days were haunted by nightmares that he was being pursued by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Read More »
It has been nearly 60 years since Daniel Khazzoom left his native Baghdad — but the memories remain sharp and painful. Now he has collected them in a newly-published book, J Weekly reports: “The most painful part about writing was writing about Iraq,” Khazzoom said of the land where he spent the first 18 years of his life. Read More »
Far be it for this blog to wade into the controversy over the plan to build the ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque in Manhattan. Read More »
View of Sana’a, the capital of Yemen This Yemen Post article reveals how Muslims in Yemen used to treat Jews before their great migration: they wanted to keep them apart, easily distinguishable, locked up in their ghetto, and in a state of ‘psychological instability’. Read More »
Something has been troubling blogger Yaacov Lozowick lately: it’s the failure of foreigners ( in this case Germans) in Egypt, and serious western publications, such as The Economist, to point out the all-pervasive antisemitism in Egypt. Read More »
Of the five photographers sent out to Libya by the organisation representing Libyan Jewry in Israel, Or Shalom, three have been jailed – the latest being Rafael Haddad , who was released last week in a blaze of publicity. Read More »
Radio Netherlands has a more informative account than AFP of Libyan Jewish leader Raphael Luzon’s recent groundbreaking visit to Libya. But there is something disturbing about Luzon’s brushing aside the terrible tragedy of his family’s murder (’It happens everywhere in the world’). No, Mr Luzon, bad things do not just happen . Read More »
The black-clad orthodox Chabad emissaries in Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey feel safer than in European countries (although people in Turkey are noticeably cooler towards them since the Gaza war of 2009). Read More »
Long live peaceful coexistence! The Arab cultural war against the Jews is raging in music festivals and at weddings parties. Magdi Abdelhadi of the BBC reports: The popular Tunisian singer Saleem Bakkoush has been forced to cancel a concert at the annual Carthage festival, after a video surfaced showing him performing at a synagogue. Read More »
A Jewish blogger has been banned from an internet forum for posting information about ancient Israel’s history and the Jewish people in the Middle East. Aharon Cohen, who runs an Arabic language site called Yahoodi1. Read More »
The drive to register the assets of Jews from Arab Countries and Iran, launched last week by the Israeli Ministry of Pensioners’ Affairs , is the key to truth and reconciliation. Read More »
Israeli citizen Rafael Haddad who was freed from Libyan prison in a secret deal(Photo by: Daniel Bar-On) A tourist who was photographing Libyan Jewish buildings has finally been released from a Libyan jail: his family can breathe again after five anguished months. Read More »
The Arabic satellite TV channel al-Hurra ran a report at the end of July about the groundbreaking magazine Israel-Kurd . Israel-Kurd magazine, a publication which aims to build a cultural bridge between Israel and the Kurds of Iraq, is very popular in Kurdistan. Read More »
Just when we all thought that the Jewish character of the shrine of Ezekiel was safe , news reaches Point of No Return that the ancient tomb of the Biblical prophet at al-Kifl, south of Baghdad, is still the object of controversy. Read More »
Benjamin Kerstein Fascinating post by foreign correspondent and analyst Michael J Totten, currently on a fact-finding mission to Israel and the West Bank. Totten meets Benjamin Kerstein, who tells him some little-known home truths about Israeli society – a society of traumatised refugees, ‘the greatest collection of nightmares on earth’. Read More »
Arab sympathy for Hitler may have been understandable when the Arabs were fighting British and French colonialism, but there is no excuse for it now – argues liberal columnist Iman Al-Quwaifli in the Saudi newspaper al-Watan. Read More »
Ex-Israeli ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel thinks that the conviction for fraud of the elusive Jewish community leader Carmen Weinstein after a trial conducted in absentia could have been rigged to cover up a similar case involving two Egyptian MPs. Read More »
Information collected in censuses instigated by the great 19th century philanthropist and traveller, Sir Moses Montefiore, about Jews living in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt (Alexandria), is being made public for the first time. The data will be of interest to descendants and to historians and geneaologists. Read More »
Why does the Left have a blindspot when it comes to justice for Jewish refugees from Arab Countries? You would have thought they would speak up for the rights of the victims of aggression, the displaced and dispossessed, but no – they swallow lies Read More »
Jewish refugee girl, photographed by the celebrated Robert Capa It doesn’t happen very often that the media spotlight turns to Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. It’s even more rare for a whole hour to be devoted to the subject. Revelation TV’s programme last Thursday on Jewish refugees was thus a double cause for celebration. Read More »
The crisis between Israel and Turkey has led dozens of wealthy Jewish families in Istanbul to consider purchasing luxury apartments in the Tel Aviv area, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported Wednesday. Read More »
Raphael Luzon (pictured) has long expressed his wish to take his aged mother to visit Libya before she dies, and light a candle for eight relatives murdered in Benghazi in 1967. This AFP report does not mention them. Neither does it mention that Khadafi never kept his promise to compensate Libyan Jews for their lost property. Read More »
Scene from the Book of Esther from the frescos of the Synagogue of Dura-Europa in Syria (mid-3rd Century CE) The Arab world is busy denying its ancient Jewish history, but eagle-eyed tourists may stumble across some real gems. Read More »
(Photo: Flash 90) Hearts will sink to learn, according to Israel National News , that the Palestinian leadership want a new state of Palestine in the West Bank to be as judenrein as the majority of other Arab states. Read More »
Karmel Melamed, then a toddler, with his father, before their departure from Iran It was the cruel execution of their relative Ebi, a young man of 30, which caused Karmel Melamed and his family to flee Iran. Without personal experience of the random brutality of the Ayatollahs’ regime, the Melameds might still be living in Iran today. Read More »
Photo: Cecile Masson A North African Jew is behind a new movement of French Jews who wish to revert to their original, ‘Jewish-sounding’ names: their forefathers had been persuaded by la Republique , exerting its usual pressure on newcomers to assimilate, to change their names after World War 2. Read More »
After years of neglect, a new department set up by the Ministry of Pensioners’ Affairs to manage the legal claims of Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern descent who lost their property when they left countries throughout the region has begun collecting information. Read More »
Israel’s new initiative to set up a ministerial office to collate Jewish claims, reported in YnetNews among others, has raised a storm of controversy and alarm in the Arab media. Read More »
A tiny remnant of Jews lives in constant fear in Yemen The Yemen press says that Lea married a Muslim willingly, but her brother Yahya, who has been frantically searching for her, is convinced that she was abducted. Read More »
The plot thickens….! The leader of Egypt’s minuscule Jewish community, octogenarian Carmen Weinstein (pictured), is reported to have fled Egypt for the US after being sentenced to three years in jail for fraud. Read More »
Yemen’s supreme court on Saturday upheld the death sentence against a man convicted of killing a member of the country’s small Jewish minority, a judicial source told AFP. Read More »
Mossad’s retired general Eliezer Jeffrey gives this remarkable interview to the Israel-Kurd magazine. He hopes to become Israel’s first consul in Kurdistan. Read More »
Many academics have hitherto given a free pass to the Arab Middle East, dressing up its collaboration with the Nazis as pragmatic ‘anti-colonialism’. But leftist and liberal conventional wisdom has been unravelling in the face of irrefutable evidence that Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred was, and remains, ideological. Read More »
Huda Noonoo, Bahrain’s Jewish ambassador to Washington A local human rights group plans to appoint a Jew and a Baha’i to monitor the parliament and municipal elections in Bahrain later this year, the Dubai news service Zawya reports. Read More »
Shas leader Eli Yishai, and (in the background) Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (Ariel Jerozolimski) Interesting piece by Peggy Cidor in the Jerusalem Post tracing the rise, from its local Jerusalem roots, and fall, of the orthodox Sephardi party Shas. Read More »
Volunteer guides in training at the Anne Frank exhibition in Fez Moroccans have never heard of Anne Frank. Now all that is changing, with an exhibition in Fez about the famous Jewish diarist from Amsterdam, intended to combat Holocaust denial. Read More »
The Jewish Chronicle follows Fiyaz Mughal’s comment piece, launching the interfaith group Faith Matters ‘ booklet highlighting the role of Muslim heroes who saved Jews, with a couple of letters in its 16 July issue. Read More »
In the light of the crumbling relationship between Israel and Turkey, Eli Avidar, writing in the Jerusalem Post, pleads for Israel to re-evaluate its relations with the Kurdish people for whom Israel’s 130,000 Jews of Kurdish descent have affection and regard. In recent decades, the Kurds undoubtedly did much to assist Jews escaping from Iraq. Read More »
The Sha’ar Shamayim synagogue in Adly St, Cairo Whatever the true facts of the case, the conviction for fraud of the Egyptian-Jewish leader Mrs Carmen Weinstein has to be seen against the background of increased media antisemitism and hostility to the Jews of Egypt. Read More »
Round 2 in the controversy over Righteous Muslims, the subject of a new booklet by the UK-based interfaith organisation, Faith Matters, highlighting the actions of individual Muslims who saved Jews during the Holocaust.Last week on the weblog Harry’s Place I commended Faith Matters for highlighting the role of Righteous Muslims. Read More »
While we’re on the subject of the Nazi influence on fundamentalism in the Arab and Muslim world, Daniel Pipes has a review in Commentary (subscription required) of Jeffrey Herf’s book Nazi propaganda for the Arab world. Read More »
