Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Survey of the situation of Jews in Arab states before Israel was reborn

From JTA, reproduced in various Jewish newspapers in August 1947:

Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Commemorating when the Arab countries decided to persecute their Jews

From JPost last July:

February 17 will be the national day of commemoration for Jewish refugees of Arab countries, according to a bill authorized on Sunday by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.

The bill, proposed by MK Shimon Ohayon (Likud Beytenu), states that an official date will be held to honor the 850,000 Jews who were forced out of or fled homes in Arab countries in the mid-20th century.

Ohayon chose February 17 because it was the day in 1948 when the Arab League approved a law for member states to place sanctions against their Jewish population.

The MK also sent a letter to Arab League Secretary-General Dr. Nabil el-Araby Sunday, saying his organization should “accept historic accountability for the humiliation, the suffering and the losses incurred by innocent Jewish victims of the Arab world’s declared war on the State of Israel.”

“As a matter of law and equity, the Arab League must assume full responsibility for ensuring rights and redress for Jewish refugees, the direct result of the collusive actions,” he added. “This is an important element of any future peace and reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.”

I cannot find direct reference to this decision in the February 17, 1948 meeting of the Arab League.They did decide on "political, military, and economic measures to be taken in response to the Palestine crisis, including withholding petroleum concessions and other possible sanctions against countries aiding the Zionists."

However, it does appear that this was when a draft plan to persecute Jews did get realized. This draft plan was written in 1947 and was approved by Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia by January:

The Arabs made no secret that they were threatening Jews in Arab countries during the debates before the UN partition vote in 1947. Heykal Pasha, the Egyptian delegate, said, “The United Nations ... should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Moslem countries. ... If the United Nations decided to partition Palestine they might be responsible forvery grave disorders and for the massacre of a large number of Jews.”

The New York Times reported on the dangers faced by Jews in Arab countries in May, 1948:

It is clear that this was a coordinated effort by Arab countries, using the excuse that it would be a popular uprising against local Jews.

In the end, 99.5% of Jews were ethnically cleansed from their homes in Arab states.

Lots more information in this publication by Justice for Jews in Arab Countries.

Israel Matzav: The real Naqba of 1948

Jewish v. Palestinian Refugees Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/tv/video-picks/jewish-v-palestinian-refugees/2013/08/14/ | The Jewish Press

You think you really know about the Palestinian refugees? This short animated clip covers the story of how they became refugees and why they have stayed that way. It also shows the history of Jewish refugees from Arab lands — a story that’s been ignored.

Egyptian documentary on Jews of Egypt might be pretty honest

Al Ahram has an exclusive preview of a new film, four years in the making, called "The Jews of Egypt" - and it describes  how they were expelled.

While many Egyptians routinely deny that Jews were expelled from their country, the preview here seems to show pretty definitively that they were indeed methodically thrown out.

Cairo - Muslim Brotherhood: Egyptian Jews Should Return To Egypt

Cairo - A senior Muslim Brotherhood official called on Jews who immigrated to Israel from Egypt to return to Egypt and leave Israel to the Palestinians, Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on Friday.

Senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood offcial Essam el-Erian said in an interview to television station Dream TV that every Egyptian has the right to live in Egypt, and Egyptian Jews living in Israel were contributing to the occupation of Arab lands, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm.

“Egyptian Jews should refuse to live under a brutal, bloody and racist occupation stained with war crimes against humanity,” Erian said.

“Why did [former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel] Nasser expel them from Egypt?” Erian asked in the interview.

Several online newspapers reported in October that Some 1.7 million documents – purportedly containing details about the assets of Egyptian Jews in the 1940s, 50s and 60s – were seized by Egyptian security services just before they were exported to Israel.

A report in the Egyptian government- owned Al-Ahram daily newspaper holds that the “Jewish documents,” packed in 13 cartons, were confiscated by Egyptian authorities ahead of them being “smuggled” out of the country from Jordan.

Jews who lived in now long-gone or moribund Jewish communities in the Arab world have recently made headlines as Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon launched a campaign to have them recognized as refugees.

He said any property owned by these Jews from Arab countries – some of whom left in 1948, some throughout the 1950s, and others just after the Six-Day War of 1967 – must be included in discussions for compensation of refugees.

Ultimately, Ayalon argued, they should be considered refugees, just as Palestinians who fled during those years are – a controversial position that even some immigrants to Israel and their descendants dispute.

The deputy foreign minister said in October that he had no knowledge of the supposed documents that had been confiscated by Egyptian authorities.

Israel already has all the documentation it needs, he said.

WSJ: When the Arab Jews Fled A new movement insists that the founding of Israel created more than one set of refugees

Fortunée Abadie is still haunted by the day in 1947 when mobs stormed the Jewish Quarter of the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo, shortly after the United Nations vote that laid the groundwork for the creation of Israel.

Aleppo, a city where Jews and Muslims had lived together for centuries, exploded with anti-Jewish violence. Mrs. Abadie, now 88, remembers watching attackers burn prayer books, prayer shawls and other holy objects from the synagogue across the street. She heard the screams of neighbors as their homes were invaded. "We thought we were going to be killed," she says. The family fled to nearby Lebanon. Mrs. Abadie left behind all she had: clothes, furniture, photographs and even a small bottle of French perfume that she still misses, Soir de Paris—Evening in Paris.

Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

A group of Yemenite Jews, newly arrived to Lod, Israel, in 1948 after being airlifted en masse.

The Abadie family's story is moving from the recesses of history to a newly prominent place in the debate over the future of the Middle East. Arab leaders have insisted for decades that Palestinian refugees who fled their homes following Israel's creation should be allowed to return to their former homes.

Now Israeli officials are turning the tables, saying the hardships faced by several hundred thousand exiled Arab Jews, many forced from their homes, deserve as much attention as the plight of displaced Palestinians. "We are 64 years late," says Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister. "The refugee problem does not lie only on one side." Mr. Ayalon, whose father is an Algerian Jew, led a U.N. conference last month sponsored by Israel and dubbed "Justice for Jews From Arab Countries."

Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, an estimated 850,000 Jews lived in the Arab world. In countries across the Middle East, there were flourishing Jewish communities with their own synagogues, schools and communal institutions.

Life changed dramatically by 1948 as Arab governments declared war on the newly created Jewish state—and on the Jews within their own borders. At the U.N., an Egyptian delegate warned that the plan to partition Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Palestinians, "might endanger a million Jews living in the Muslim countries."

Arab Jewish Life Before - and After - 1948

View Slideshow

Wedding of Mamus and Dora Rumani in Benghazi, Libya, circa 1955.

Jews began fleeing—to Israel, of course, but also to France, England, Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. Yemen was home to more than 55,000 Jews; in Aden, scores were killed in a vicious pogrom in 1947. An airlift dubbed "Operation Magic Carpet" relocated most Yemenite Jews to Israel. In Libya, once home to 38,000 Jews, the community was subjected to many brutal attacks over the years. In June 1967, there were anti-Jewish rampages; two Jewish families were murdered—one family clubbed to death—and schools and synagogues were destroyed, says Vivienne Roumani, director of the documentary "The Last Jews of Libya." "We were there for centuries, but there is no trace of Jewish life," she says.

Among the Jews forced out of their homes was my own Egyptian-Jewish family, departing on a rickety boat in the spring of 1963. Egypt had once been home to 80,000 Jews. My parents, both Cairenes whose stories I chronicled in two memoirs, were especially pained at leaving a country they loved, without being allowed to take money or assets.

Within 25 years, the Arab world lost nearly all its Jewish population. Some faced expulsion, while others suffered such economic and social hardships they had no choice but to go. Others left voluntarily because they longed to settle in Israel. Only about 4,300 Jews remain there today, mostly in Morocco and Tunisia, according to Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a New York-based coalition of groups that also participated in the U.N. conference.

Many of the Palestinians who fled Israel wound up stranded in refugee camps. Multiple U.N. agencies were created to help them, and billions of dollars in aid flowed their way. The Arab Jews, by contrast, were quietly absorbed by their new homes. "The Arab Jews became phantoms" whose stories were "edited out" of Arab consciousness, says Fouad Ajami, a scholar of the Middle East at Stanford's Hoover Institution. "We are talking about the claims of the Palestinians," he says. "Fine, but there were 800,000 Arab Jews, and they have a story to tell."

Palestinians bristle at the effort to equate the displacement of Arab Jews with their own grievances. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, says Mr. Ayalon "opened up a can of worms for political purposes" with the U.N. conference. She says that Israeli officials are trying to use a "forced and false analogy…to negate or question Palestinian refugee rights." The Palestinians, she says, "have nothing to do with the plight of the Jews or other minorities who left the Arab world." Still, Dr. Ashrawi recently proposed that Arab Jews should also have a "right of return" to the countries they left.

At the U.N. conference, Mr. Ayalon called Dr. Ashrawi's suggestion to have Jews return to Arab countries "totally ridiculous." Mr. Ayalon and the Israeli government are pushing ahead with efforts to raise the profile of Arab Jews. Israel has pledged to establish a national day in honor of Arab Jews and build a museum about their lost cultures. Mr. Ayalon has decided to make the Arab-Jewish refugees part of any negotiations, which has never been the case before. Looking ahead to a settlement, he would like to see both Palestinian and Jewish refugees compensated by an international fund. Meanwhile, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Ron Prosor, has called on the U.N. to research the refugees' history.

Mrs. Abadie attended the conference with her son Elie, now a physician and rabbi who leads Congregation Edmond J. Safra, a Manhattan synagogue attended by Lebanese and Syrian Jews. Until 1947, Syria had an estimated 30,000 Jews living in Aleppo and Damascus. But like Mrs. Abadie, many departed in the wake of the violence that left 75 dead and synagogues in ruin.

The Abadies were refugees twice. After leaving Aleppo, the family ended up in Beirut, Lebanon. For a time, life was good in the cosmopolitan city. But by 1970, the climate had turned hostile. Armed militants appeared in the streets. Rabbis, including Elie's father, Abraham, had their pictures posted in the city's mosques, identifying them as "Zionist-Jewish leaders," an act the family took as a death threat. The Abadies decided once again it was time to move.

Some Jewish refugees, like Sir Ronald Cohen, find hope in the new initiatives to call attention to Arab Jews. Mr. Cohen, a London-based businessman, was a student at a French Catholic school in Cairo in 1956, friendly with his Muslim and Christian classmates. His father owned an import-export firm that specialized in appliances, and "Ronnie," then 11, loved to visit him and play with the radios.

Then in October 1956, Israel, France and England waged war against Egypt over the Suez Canal. Mr. Cohen's parents pulled him out of school after another Jewish boy was injured. His mother, a British citizen, was placed under house arrest. His father's business was "sequestered"—effectively taken from him—and he wasn't welcome at his own office. In May 1957, the family left on a plane bound for Europe. Mr. Cohen still remembers his father crying on the plane. "There is nothing left here," he recalls his mother saying. "It is all over."

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jews continued to pour out of the Muslim countries. When Desiré Sakkal and his family left Egypt as stateless refugees in 1962, he says, "there were very few Jews left." Stranded in Paris in a hotel, Mr. Sakkal's little brother was diagnosed with cancer, and he still remembers how his parents went to the hospital every day. The brother died a year later in New York, at the age of 10. Mr. Sakkal went on to found the Historical Society of Jews from Egypt, which seeks to recall the life left behind.

The Six-Day War of June 1967 brought some of the most violent anti-Jewish eruptions. As Arab countries faced defeat by Israel, they turned their rage on their own Jewish residents—what remained of them. In Egypt, Jewish men over 18 were rounded up and sent to prison. Some were kept for a few days. Others, like Philadelphia Rabbi Albert Gabbai, a Cairo native, remained imprisoned for three years. Rabbi Gabbai was only 18 when he was thrown in jail, along with three older brothers. He still remembers the cries of his fellow prisoners—Muslim Brotherhood members who were being tortured—echoing through the jail. He and his brothers feared that they were going to be killed. After three years of "despair," he says, they were driven to the airport and escorted to an Air France AF.FR +2.80% flight.

Mr. Cohen, who left Egypt in 1957,grew up to become a pioneer in European venture capital and private equity. In recent years, he has worked to develop the Palestinian private sector. He believes that the focus on Jewish-Arab refugees could spur the Arabs and Israelis toward peace. "There are refugees on both sides, so that evens the scales, and I think that it will be helpful to the process," he says. "It shows that both sides suffered the same fate."

Write to Lucette Lagnado at lucette.lagnado@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared October 12, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: When the Arab Jews Fled.

"Jews of Egypt" film causes uproar in Arab world

From Al Arabiya:

“Jews of Egypt,” an Egyptian documentary film that records the life of Jews in Egypt before their departure from the country in the 1950s, has stirred controversy after it was screened in a film festival in Cairo.

Amir Ramsis, director of the film, was accused of promoting normalization of ties with Israel through attempting to gain the audience’s sympathy for Jewish Egyptians, currently seen as Zionists by many Egyptians.

“Those accusations are absolutely groundless,” Ramsis told Al Arabiya. “Those who think the film promotes normalization either did not watch it or analyzed it very superficially.”

It is very obvious, Ramsis explained, that the documentary is against Israel and against normalization.

“The film showed how Jewish Egyptians were against the creation of Israel before the July 23, 1952 Revolution and that many Egyptian anti-Israeli institutions were actually led by Egyptian Jews.”

Ramsis noted that the purpose of the film is to set straight many of the misconceptions Egyptians have about Jews.

“Many people do not distinguish between being Jewish and being Israeli or Zionist. Many Egyptians automatically consider Jews enemies.”

Ramsis said the film does not seek to embellish the image of Jews either, but basically to “present the truth as well as his own point of view.”

Ramsis said that the people he interviewed in the film were either Jews who still live in Egypt or who are currently residing in Europe.

“Egyptian Jews were apprehensive about taking part in the film because they were afraid they would be hunted down by State Security at the time of Mubarak. They were actually given clear instructions not to make any media appearances.”

Egypt Independent has a review:

The film is a history lesson, not simply for these fascinating and important details, that have slipped out of popular memory. It is a history lesson in its stories. The stories they tell are of an Egypt that is almost unrecognizable.

Even if we suppose that these depictions of smooth religious harmony are laced with nostalgia, we cannot escape the fact that Egypt has lost something. Not only has it lost a part of its history, but these are stories of an Egypt far less closed in on itself than it is today, far more open, respectful and integrated.

It is a tale of history that is a decline. A fraying of social fabric, as mistrust enters into the interactions between neighbors. From a way of living where to be Jewish was inconsequential to social relations, to the way that being Jewish became an accusation.

Ruth Browning interviewed her grandmother, Julie Gresh, before the onset of Alzheimer’s. She speaks about her now in the film, she says, to ensure her grandmother’s place in the history of Egypt’s Jews. In one sense, this is indeed a history of Egypt’s Jews. It is also a chapter of Egypt’s history, a forgotten one, just as it is a forgotten part of Jewish history generally.

The story of Jews in the Middle East does not fold smoothly into a Jewish narrative of oppression, and many Egyptian Jews can trace their families’ arrival in Egypt to an escape from persecution, whether from pogroms or the Spanish Inquisition. The history of the Jews in Europe has been told such that it becomes the history of all Jews, and it is a deeply politicized narrative, its folds influenced by Zionism, such that the history of the Jews without a homeland is simply one of persecution, and that Israel offers a solution to that perennial condition.

The Jews of Egypt tell a different story. So different was this story that, even for those who did not oppose Israel for political reasons, it simply did not resonate or speak to them. As a French journalist, the daughter of an Egyptian Jew, says: “It did not occur to the family to go to Israel. That was a place for oppressed Jews, so it wasn’t for us.”

...The stories become darker. There’s the story of the officer who arrives at night, giving an entire family a number of days within which to leave their country. And these are stories also of resilience — the man who says to the officer, “I am more Egyptian than you,” the one who challenges the officer at his door not to “challenge the patriotism standing before him,” or the one who answers the officer’s suggestion that he leave to Israel with, “No, why don’t you go to Israel.”

While no one in the film talks about being expelled from their country, they were compelled, and even coerced, into leaving. And on doing so, they had to sign a paper that stripped them of their Egyptian identity and obliged them never to return.

Grinsman, who, after being imprisoned for three years for refusing to leave, was later forced to sign the document, and put on a ship. He was expelled, he says, not really for being Jewish, but for his socialist activism. Forced to sign that document, one respondent comments wryly that it is easier for Israelis to get into Egypt than it is for Egyptian Jews.

While the film seems to be important for Egyptians to watch, it definitely seems to ignore the anti-semitism that was an undercurrent in Egypt and other Arab countries well before Zionism. Relatively speaking, the Jews of Egypt were in better shape than those in Europe, but they were never as fully integrated into Egyptian society as they are portrayed here. As Joseph Abdel Wahed wrote:

But even as child, I understood that Jews were second-class citizens. Signs in the street read: El yahud kalb el arab, "The Jews are the dogs of the Arabs." At school, my best friend Menyawi turned to me and said with a half-smile, "One day, all the Jews will have their throats slit." An older Muslim man advised that if I was threatened in the streets, I should say: Ana Muslum, M'wahed billah, "I am a Muslim and believe in one God."

I'm also not convinced that the Jews in Egypt in the 1940s were uniformly anti-Zionist as the director says. No doubt some were, but he clearly didn't interview any Egyptian Jews who now live in Israel.

Here's the trailer:

On Jewish Refugees From Arab Lands

I’ve been reading The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible. It’s a really great book and a full review is forthcoming. Something struck me as I was reading the book that is relevant to Israeli politics. In light of the UNGA I thought I would share my observations.

One of the biggest obstacles to peace in Israel is purportedly “the refugee problem”. Thousands of Arabs were displaced from their homes during the wars of 1948 and 1967. They hope to return to their homes which are now occupied by Israel. Those thousands of refugess have morphed into millions of refugees over the years.

In The Aleppo Codex, we learn one particular Jewish community in an Arab country, Aleppo Syria. As in many Arab countries, the Jews of Aleppo Syria dated back to Second Temple era over 2000 years ago. There were many ancient Jewish communities in Arab lands. Unlike the regular persecution threat to life that Jews experienced in Europe, many Jews in the Arab lands thrived as members of society. It is fascinating to read about a completely different social experience in the Arab lands than my personal history and heritage from the European lands.

That all changed when the State of Israel was born. In response to the Jewish state, many citizens of Arab countries rioted and made life very uncomfortable for the Jews living in those countries. Although no one was killed in Aleppo, the Jews felt unsafe and had to flee. The same thing happened in other Arab countries. The Jewish homes were looted and Jews were forced to leave.

This got me thinking. Why is this never mentioned? The Palestinian refugees are not the only people who lost their homes when the State of Israel was granted to the Jewish people. All the Jewish communities in the Arab countries lost their homes as well! The entire Syrian community of Brooklyn and Deal, NJ is a big refugee camp. The Persian community of Los Angeles are a giant refugee camp too! And there are many others.

My point is quite simple. Yes, it is true that many Arabs lost their homes in 1948 and 1967. But hundreds of thousands of Jews lost their homes as well.

This means two things. Thousands of years of wandering has taught our people how to pack up and start over somewhere new. Not everyone is capable of doing this. Preventing people from starting over with [false] hope that they will get their homes back from half a century ago is a form of tyranny. It also means that any conversation about refugees “returning” should begin with a modest proposal that the Jews who were ousted from Arab lands get their homes back as well.

Like I said, the book is excellent. Check out The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible and stay tuned for the full review.

In doing a little research for this post I came across this site: http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com. Check it out.

New Israeli advocacy campaign spotlights Jewish refugees from Arab countriesProject seeking to correct ‘historic injustices’ of 1948 strikes a nerve in Arab media

A Foreign Ministry advocacy campaign set to be launched online this week —  “I am a refugee” – seeks to raise awareness about Jewish refugees from Arab countries at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.

“It is time to correct a historic injustice and deal with the Jews who were forced out of Arab countries,” reads the campaign’s Facebook page, which had garnered 38,000 likes at the time of writing.

The project, spearheaded by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, focuses on the personal stories of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, termed “a little-known refugee group” by the ministry, who were expelled from their homes and their countries, without their belongings, by their rulers.

The campaign calls on the Jewish descendants from Arab countries to upload videos, text, documents, and pictures to the Facebook page in order to tell the story that is an “inseparable part” of the establishment of the State of Israel.

“The time has come to correct an ongoing historical injustice affecting half the population of Israel,” Ayalon said, according to the ministry. “We started 64 years late, but it’s not too late. For the sake of true reconciliation with our Palestinian neighbors, the issue of the Jewish refugees must be resolved.”

Between 1948 and 1952, the Foreign Ministry says, approximately 850,000 Jews from Arab countries became refugees. Some 600,000 found refuge in Israel, while the other 250,000 fled to Europe or the US.

Registration of Jewish immigrants from Iraq at Lod Airport, May 1951 (photo credit: GPO)

The launch was originally planned to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York at the end of the month.

But news of the campaign hit a nerve in the Arab world, and Arabic media has already paid the advocacy project sizable attention.

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member, wrote in an article that was published in several Arabic media outlets that Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries are not “refugees” because they left for “their ‘homeland’” of their own volition. She called it “deception and delusion” that Jews would see themselves as “uprooted” from their Arab homelands.

Ashrawi also accused Israel of working for years, in conjunction with key members of the US Congress, to debunk UN Resolution 194 — which calls on the two sides to find a suitable, peaceful solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. “The [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date…” the resolution states.

Ashrawi claims no Jewish refugees from Arab countries

In an article published over the weekend in a number of Arab media outlets, PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi claimed that there is no such thing as Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

In an article published in a number of Arab media outlets, Ashrawi, who is also an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said that the "claim that Jews who emigrated to Israel, which is supposed to be their homeland, are 'refugees' who were uprooted from their homelands…is a form of deception and delusion."

She explained: "If Israel is their homeland, then they are not 'refugees'; they are emigrants who returned either voluntarily or due to a political decision."

...

"Arab Jews were part of the Arab region, but they began emigrating to Israel after its establishment," Ashrawi, argued. "They did so in accordance with a forethought plan by the Jewish Agency to bring Jews from all around the world to build the State of Israel."

Ashrawi did, nonetheless, acknowledge that "some Arab countries at that time were ruled by tyrannical regimes."

But, she noted, "all citizens, regardless of their religion, were subjected to suffering. Jews were not singled out, although there had been some suspicious incidents of persecution or individual violence [against Jews] to encourage them to emigrate [to Israel.]. The emigration of Jews was a voluntary act that was influenced by factors of pressure and temptation by Zionist movements and the Jewish Agency."

Ashrawi called for drawing a distinction between Arab and Jewish refugees.

Zionist gangs, she said, "forced Palestinians out of the land that had belonged to the Palestinian people for thousands of years, while Jews voluntarily and collectively left."

Ashrawi also voiced hope that Jews would be allowed to return to Arab countries. She claimed that Iraq and Morocco have welcomed the return of Jews.

"We expect the Arab countries to welcome the return of their Jewish citizens in the context of democratic regimes that respect pluralism," Ashrawi stressed. "From a legal perspective, the first right - before compensation - is the right of return of the refugee to his/her original homeland."

President Hussein Obama also wants to send Jewish refugees back to Arab countries.

But Ashrawi is totally wrong. Here is Yossi Ben Aharon, a former Director General of the Prime Minister's office.

Over the years, Arab and Palestinian spokesmen have presented a strong case regarding the plight of the Palestinian refugees. They have argued that the Palestinians are the original owners of the land, the Jews were foreign invaders who took it by force, and as a result, the Palestinian refugees became the innocent victims of the Arab-Israel conflict. Hence, they insist on the "right of return" of the Palestinians to the land and properties they left in 1948.

This narrative ignores another aspect of the story. Shortly after the November 1947 Partition Plan was passed by the UN, a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms took place in several Arab countries. By May 1948, the situation of Jews in these countries became untenable. The Arab invasion of Israel triggered a massive movement of populations in opposite directions. Jews fled to Israel and Arabs fled to the countries bordering on Palestine. In making their case, the Arabs have consistently refrained from acknowledging the mass exodus of some 800,000 Jews from Arab countries. Jewish communities had lived in the Arab world long before the advent of Islam - and before the Arabs gained their identity as a people.

SUCCESSIVE governments of Israel have embraced a proposal to conduct a survey of Jewish property which was confiscated by Arab governments, or left behind by Jews who were expelled or who emigrated to Israel. The idea is to prepare a dossier for negotiations on the refugee issue and addressing possible claims for restitution by both sides.

In fact, the United Nations colluded in the Jews' expulsion from Arab countries.

While it is known up to 850,000 Jews left Arab countries after the post-war division of the Palestine mandate, the group is holding a news conference to highlight a rediscovered Arab League "draft law" that suggests a pan-Arab conspiracy was at play.

The new assessment comes just ahead of a major Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis, Md., where the rights of millions of descendants of up to 600,000 Palestinian refugees of the Arab-Israeli conflict will be discussed -- but not the rights of Jews squeezed from Arab countries.

Without the inter-Arab draft, the measures individual Arab states took against their Jewish citizens may not have been so widespread, the researchers will say. Only 8,000 Jews remain in 10 Arab countries today that once hosted many more.

"We will show that the various state sanctions in Arab countries did not occur haphazardly, but were the result of an international collusion organized by the League of Arab States at the time to set in place a blueprint for the denationalization of their Jewish nationals, the sequestrations of their property and the declaration of Jews as enemies of the state," Mr. Cotler said.

He said he and his research colleagues will also present evidence showing the United Nations failed to investigate the matter, in part because an Arab League representative ran the agenda at one of its key debating chambers.

"It is now clear the United Nations has played a singular role in expunging the whole question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries on the Middle East agenda for the last 60 years," Mr. Cotler said.

Yet another 'Palestinian' lie by Ms. Ashrawi....

JPOST: Arabic website changing perceptions about Jews and Judaism: Gabbai is passionate about maintaining the culture and traditions of Jews from Arab countries

Ephraim Gabbai is exuberant. The New York-based rabbi is describing an email conversation in Arabic he just concluded with someone in war-torn Damascus.

Gabbai is confident he has had a positive impact in toning down his interlocutor’s initial hostility toward, and misunderstanding of, Judaism.

Similar exchanges with other Arabic speakers have led to additional questions and more extensive online conversations.

“There is a thirst for information, knowledge about Jews,” says Gabbai.

An Arab journalist who writes for one of Yemen’s top papers wrote to Gabbai about a neglected Jewish graveyard in Aden. They corresponded frequently, discussing, among other topics, the rich history of what was once the largest Jewish community in the Arab world.

The nexus is Asl al-Yahud (Origins of the Jews), an Arabic- language website Gabbai created under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee four years ago. Asl al-Yahud – www.aslalyahud.com – is a growing resource in print, photographs and video about Judaism, and the history of Jewish communities in Arab countries.

“The website is advancing understanding of Judaism for Arabic speakers,” says Gabbai. He single-handedly manages the site’s content, and also runs a related Facebook page, in Arabic, where much of the conversation occurs.

Gabbai is passionate about maintaining the culture and traditions of Jews from Arab countries. His parents are active members of the aging Iraqi Jewish community in Israel. His mother’s family came from Iraq, and his father was one of the last Jews to leave Egypt. Gabbai was born in Israel, and after growing up in New York and New Jersey, he attended Yeshiva University.

The Arabic website project is a synergy of Gabbai’s personal mission and AJC’s pioneering inter-religious work, addressing one of the greatest interfaith challenges of the 21st century – Jewish-Muslim relations. Asl al-Yahud is purposely apolitical. It does not take on the contentious, divisive political issues that dominate discourse about the region, nor does it offer specific guidance on advancing Muslim-Jewish relations.

But recalling the historical interactions of Jews and Muslims over the centuries is a key to deepening understanding of Judaism among Arabs across the Middle East.

“Islamic sacred texts sometimes lend themselves to negative interpretations of Judaism,” says Gabbai. Given the views of Jews that may permeate mosques and school curricula in Arab countries, the Asl al-Yahud journey faces enormous roadblocks. “This website is not expecting visitors to have positive attitudes. We have to overcome initial assumptions.”

Gabbai believes it is important to explain Judaism through the use of Arabic-language sources and the teachings of renowned Jews who lived in Arab lands. He excerpts on Asl al-Yahud the works of Sa’adya ben Joseph al-Fayyumi, the 10th century Egyptian-Baghdadian scholar who translated the Hebrew Bible into Arabic, Maimonides, and other legendary rabbinical scholars and thinkers. “We are explaining Judaism from a Middle East vantage point,” says Gabbai.

Online conversations with inquisitive Arabs – whom he is unlikely ever to meet in person – occupy some of Gabbai’s time most working days, but he finds each encounter intriguing and energizing.

During the Islamic Holy Month of Ramadan, visitors from Egypt and Saudi Arabia accounted for some 36 percent of the web traffic. “Saudis tend to have more informed questions,” says Gabbai. Some Saudis access the site to check on what they are taught in their own schools in the kingdom.

The Arabic website offers detailed historical information on lost or extant Jewish communities in Iraq, Kurdistan and Saudi Arabia, and soon will include sections on Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen.

“Videos are vitally important to conveying the story and explaining Jewish rituals and religion,” says Gabbai. Before Passover, he made a short film with Arabic narration on making matzo. A Yemeni Jewish woman described the ingredients and process as she produced the unleavened bread. The famed Ben-Ezra synagogue, home of the Cairo Geniza, was featured in an informational video on the design and rituals of synagogues in the Arab world.

Separate but related to Asl al-Yahud, Gabbai also leads a congregation in New York City, some of whose members are Arabic-speaking Jews. On a recent evening, he helped coordinate an Iftar dinner attended by 100 Jews and Muslims, another initiative to create a place where adherents of the two religions can share and learn from each other. “If we respect each other we will build a better future,” says Gabbai.

He is innately hopeful and optimistic, key attributes for any inter-religious work, and even more so regarding Muslim attitudes towards Jews. And, that is important. For what Gabbai and Asl al-Yahud are doing can potentially, over the long term, change some Arab perceptions of Judaism and Jews. It’s a long, arduous journey that Gabbai has embarked on. But each day the online conversations give him more incentive to proceed.

AISH: What Happened to the Jews of Arabia? A story that should make every Jew shudder. by Sara Yoheved Rigler

Did you know that Saudi Arabia once hosted a thriving Jewish community? For almost a thousand years (three times longer than the Jews have been in America), Jews lived in the oases of Teyma, Khaybar, and Yathrib (later known as Medina), in the northern Arabian Peninsula. According to Dr. Hagai Mazuz, an Orientalist specializing in Arabic language, Islam, and Islamic culture, “The Jewish community of northern Arabia was one of the largest ancient Jewish communities in the history of the Jewish people.”¹

They were powerful and wealthy. They were respected by the local Arabian tribes for their religion, culture, erudition, and literacy. They built castles on mountaintops and developed productive plantations. They had military prowess, horses, and advanced weaponry. And they were almost totally annihilated in the short span of a few years.

Their story should make every Jew shudder.

The Jews of Medina were divided into three groups: The Banu Qaynuqa were blacksmiths, weapon wrights, and goldsmiths. The Banu Nadir had date plantations. The Banu QurayUa were wine merchants. These groups often quarreled. Sometimes the hostility among them broke out into actual fighting.

When Mohammed fled from Mecca in 622, he went to Medina. At first, he entered into an alliance with the Jews. He studied in their study halls and adopted many of their customs into his incipient religion (e.g. not eating pork). But when, after two years, Mohammed could not convince the Jews to accept him as a prophet and convert to his religion, his attitude turned toward open hostility. He instructed his friends to murder and decapitate Ka’b Ibn al-Ashraf, a renowned Jewish poet and chief of the Banu Nadir (date farmers tribe), and ordered his followers, “Kill every Jew you can.” ²

Mohammed then besieged the Banu Qaynuqa (blacksmith tribe), knowing that the other two Jewish tribes would not come to their aid. Although the Banu Qaynuqa were proficient warriors, the lack of food and water due to the siege weakened them to the point of surrender.

Stop the story here! If I were reading a Hollywood screenplay that developed like this, I would reject it as unrealistic and absurd. Here the protagonist, Mohammed, has openly declared his intention to kill every Jew. And he has started his killing campaign with the grisly beheading of the head of the date famers tribe.

Is Jewish unity such a bitter pill that Jews would rather swallow cyanide?

Mohammed’s forces at that point were weaker than the combined Jewish forces would have been. Why didn’t the date farmers and the wine merchants unite to break the siege and save the blacksmiths? How could they sit on their hands and let their brethren perish? Even if they hated their fellow Jews, surely they should have realized that uniting in order to eradicate the murderous Mohammed’s forces would be in their long-term self-interest. And these are supposed to be smart Jews? With a sneer, I would toss this screenplay into the wastebasket.

History, however, is less sensible than Hollywood. The other two Jewish tribes did nothing to save the Jewish blacksmiths. After the surrender, Mohammed wanted to slaughter the vanquished tribe, but his ally Abdullah Ibn Ubayyy prevented the massacre, and instead they were exiled to Edri (now in Jordan).

Mohammed confiscated their considerable assets. Strengthened by captured Jewish wealth, one year later Mohammed turned his attention to the next Jewish tribe, the date growers. To ensure that the tribe of the wine merchants would not come to the rescue of their fellow Jews, Mohammed made an alliance with the wine merchants.

Click here to receive Aish.com's free weekly email.

This is crazy! The reviewer in me, who has rejected many a far-fetched plot, cannot abide this one. The Jewish wine merchants must have drunk their own stock and become totally plastered to ally themselves with a sworn enemy of the Jews against their own people. Is Jewish unity such a bitter pill that Jews would rather swallow cyanide?

Related Article: On the Same Team

Mohammed’s forces laid siege to the strongholds of the Jewish date farmers in 625. Like the previous Jewish tribe, they succumbed to the siege. Again Abdullah Ibn Ubayyy intervened, and instead of slaughtering the vanquished Jews, Mohammed exiled them to the city of Khaybar, which, according to Muslim tradition, was inhabited by descendants of the Jewish priestly tribe.

Three years later Mohammed conquered Khaybar, the wealthiest city in northern Arabia. Because the Muslims did not know agriculture, Mohammed permitted most of the Jews to live as dhimmis, officially second-class citizens who had to pay exorbitant taxes. Eventually the second Caliph banished the Jews of Khaybar, in obedience to Mohammed’s policy that permitted no religion other than Islam to be practiced in Arabia.

Back in Medina, the wine merchant tribe had only two years to relish their position as the sole surviving Jews. Then, in 627, Mohammed, with 3,000 soldiers, laid siege to their fortress. The Jewish tribe had only 450 trained warriors. Because Abdullah Ibn Ubayyy had died a few months before, the Jews knew that no one would intercede on their behalf. The leader of the besieged Jews proposed that they either convert to Islam or, similar to Masada, kill their own women and children to prevent their being ravished and enslaved, and then fight the Muslims to the death. The Jews rejected both options and offered to surrender and leave Medina.

Mohammed rejected their offer. The vanquished wine merchants tribe, who had twice refused to help the other besieged Jewish tribes, suffered the worst fate. The children were sold as slaves; the women were given to the victorious soldiers “for the Muslims to use,” and the men (except for three who agreed to convert to Islam) were decapitated in the marketplace. According to Muslim tradition, the blood of the decapitated Jews flooded the marketplace of Medina.

A large, powerful, affluent Jewish community was destroyed in just three years. Was it destroyed by Mohammed’s forces or was it destroyed by its own divisiveness?

Our sages say that the Holy Temple was not destroyed by the superiority of the Roman forces. It was destroyed by sinat chinam, senseless hatred among Jews.

“Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Apparently the Jews of Arabia did not learn from our tragic history.

How many times will we have to play this re-run?

---

1. “Massacre in Medina,” Segula Magazine, issue 3.
2.  Ibid. Dr. Mazuz, who is a Senior Advisor to the Gatestone Institute, based his article, “Massacred in Medina” on exclusively Muslim sources.

Almost the Entire Arab World Is Now Judenrein

Jews lived all over the Middle East and North Africa for thousands of years, and they lived among Arab Muslims for more than 1,000 years, but they’re almost extinct now in the Arab world. Arabs and Jews didn’t live well together, exactly, but they co-existed five times longer than the United States has existed. They weren’t always token minorities, either. Baghdad was almost a third Jewish during the first half of the 20^th century. Morocco and Tunisia are the last holdouts. In Tunisia, only 1,500 remain.

What happened? What changed? Islam didn’t happen all of a sudden, nor did the arrival of Arabs in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and North Africa. Both have been firmly in place since the 7^th century. A far more recent cascade of events transformed the region, and for the worse: the occupation of Arab lands by Nazi Germany and its puppet Vichy France, the Holocaust, post-Ottoman Arab Nationalism, Israel’s declaration of independence, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As a consequence of all that, rather than the Arab invasion or the rise of the Islamic religion, almost the entire Arab world is Judenrein now. And since the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic regime in Iran, relations between Arabs and Jews are worse than they were at any time during the entire history of either.

Yet 1,500 Jews hang on in Tunisia. The ancien Ben Ali regime kept them safe, as has Tunisia’s relatively tolerant and cosmopolitan culture. But what will become of them now that Ben Ali is in exile and his government is overthrown?

I met with Haim Bittan, the chief rabbi of Tunis. My colleague Armin Rosen joined me, as did our fixer and translator Ahmed Medien.

“You should say something to the rabbi in Hebrew,” Ahmed told Armin. Armin is Jewish and speaks a bit of the language of Israel. “It will make him happy.”

The three of us met the rabbi and his assistant in an office behind an enormous synagogue in central Tunis. I wanted to take a picture of the synagogue, but the police wouldn’t let me. They’re worried someone might bomb it. I found one on Wikipedia, though.

Armin took Ahmed’s advice and greeted the rabbi and his assistant in Hebrew. Their faces lit up. It was an interesting moment. There were five of us in that room. Three Jews, one nominal Christian (me), and one nominal Muslim (Ahmed). For the first time since Armin arrived in the country, he wasn’t the token Jew in the room.

“How has the situation here changed for the Jews of Tunisia,” I said, “since the fall of Ben Ali?”

“Nothing has changed,” the rabbi said. “It’s the same situation since Ben Ali’s fall.”

“This is a country ruled by an Islamist government,” Armin said. “Do you feel that presents any problems for the Jewish community?

“There’s no problem between the government and the Jewish community,” the rabbi said.

“But I have seen photographs of Salafists with their black flag in front of the synagogue here intimidating people,” I said. “Was that a one-time event, or are you worried they might become increasingly dangerous?”

“They don’t bother me,” the rabbi said. “They lived with us before. That incident was their business, not ours.”

What kind of answers were these?

Ahmed, our Tunisian translator and fixer, had a question of his own for the rabbi.

“Does it bother you that some people want Islamic law in the constitution?” he said.

“There’s no problem at all,” the rabbi said, “because the constitution is not written.”

“He doesn’t want to answer,” Ahmed said quietly to Armin and me as he leaned back in his chair.

I’m not even sure why the rabbi agreed to be interviewed. He answered almost all of our questions this way, as did his assistant. They answered as though the entire Arab world would judge them for what they said and pounce if they uttered a peep of complaint. They reminded me of citizens of police states who are asked on the record what they think of the government.

I didn’t want to get them in trouble or give them the third degree, but I needed something other than packaged boilerplate answers, so I chose a question that couldn’t be easily dodged. The rabbi’s assistant wore a black yarmulke or kippah on the top of his head, which marked him out as an obvious Jew, and I addressed my question to him.

“Do you walk around, either of you, on the street wearing the kippah?”

He vigorously shook his head. “We don’t,” he said. “People might think we’re Zionists and we don’t want that, so we wear a hat.”

They had at least one problem then. They felt the need to be closeted, at least on the street. That’s never a good sign.

Christians don’t have to hide the fact that they’re Christian. Everyone in Tunisia who so much as glanced at me surely assumed I’m a Christian (that is, if they gave the matter any thought in the first place) since I look European. Nearly all were perfectly friendly.

They were perfectly friendly to Armin, as well. His complexion makes him look ethnically ambiguous. He could be Hispanic, Arab, Italian, Israeli. He could be many things. He received no more and no less hospitality than I did. But what if he walked around wearing a kippah or a necklace with a six-pointed star? The rabbi’s assistant wouldn’t dare.

It’s hard to say, though, how much trouble Armin actually would have faced had he done that. Israelis can and do visit Tunisia. They can do so on their own passports. They don’t have to use second passports from a country like Britain or the United States the way Israeli visitors to Lebanon do.

And here’s the thing: when you visit Tunisia you have to produce your passport a lot.  You have to produce your passport every time you check into a hotel. You have to produce your passport to rent a car. You have to show your passport to police officers and the national guard at checkpoints. (That happened to me a number times.) So Israelis—not just Jews, but Israelis—can and do wander around all over Tunisia and announce to the police and to the staff at hotels, airports, and car rental offices that they’re Israelis. And supposedly they don’t experience any problems.

I’m not sure what to make of it. I’d like to report that the Jews are doing just fine, but if that’s the case, why were the rabbi and his assistant so cagey? And why wouldn’t they go out in public looking like Jews? Ahmed didn’t even blink when Armin told him he’s Jewish, nor did he mind in the slightest that Armin and I have both been to Israel. Ahmed, though, is a well-educated tri-lingual professional, and his own views of the Arab-Israeli conflict are, shall we say, unconventional compared with those of his neighbors.

Armin asked the rabbi why Libya and Algeria are entirely free of Jews while Tunisia is not.

“Jews in Tunisia don’t have any problems living with other people,” the rabbi said. “In the other countries they did.”

And that’s all he had to say about that.

“But a lot of Tunisian Jews did leave and go to Israel,” I said. “Why did they leave while you stayed?”

“Only a few Tunisian Jews went to Israel,” he said, “but they went for economic reasons. Maybe they didn’t have a lot here and they wanted to go there for the economic opportunities. Those who had good lives here stayed.”

Such cautious answers! Move along, nothing to see.

He might have answered differently had I not been a reporter, but who knows? There’s always a chance he has internalized what he’s saying to keep his stress level down, but I don’t think so. I can’t psychoanalyze the man, but his tone of voice and body language suggested he was extremely reserved and not entirely sincere in what he was saying.

“What’s the Jewish community’s view on relations between Tunisia and Israel?” Armin said. Tunisia had low-level diplomatic relations with Israel during the 1990s, but Ben Ali severed those relations during the Second Intifada. “There’s talk of banning normalization with Israel in the constitution.”

“That’s a matter for the government to decide,” the rabbi said, “not the Jewish community here.”

“But the Jewish community surely has an opinion,” Armin said.

I understand that he has to be careful, but we wanted the truth even if we couldn’t quote him. “You can answer off the record,” I said. “I’ll turn my voice recorder off if you want.”

He didn’t want me to turn off the recorder, but he understood that I didn’t like his evasiveness so he gave me a better answer.

“If Tunisia normalized relations with Israel,” he said, “then the Muslims here might bother Jews. So we would rather Tunisia not have normal relations with Israel.”

That was an on-the-record response. So at least he was willing to acknowledge the potential for trouble for Tunisia’s Jews.

I don’t mean to suggest that they’re oppressed and that the chief rabbi of Tunis answered questions with a gun in his back. I do not believe they are oppressed. At least I’m unaware that they are oppressed. But it’s hard to be a minority anywhere in the world. And it has been so hard to be a Jew in the Arab world lately that there are almost none left.

The rabbi can’t be entirely wrong. Tunisia’s Jews are not prisoners. They’re free to leave if they like. They can visit Europe without any problems. They can visit Israel without any problems. Since they can visit Israel, they can make aliyah and receive citizenship automatically upon arrival. All a Tunisian Jew has to do if he wants to permanently relocate to Israel is buy a one-way ticket to Tel Aviv for 200 dollars. That’s less than an average month’s salary, so coming up with the money wouldn’t be hard.

Even if it’s more difficult to live as a Jew in Tunisia than the rabbi and his assistant let on, it’s possible to live there as a Jew. More than a thousand do so voluntarily. That’s something. Isn’t it?

I wanted to know if Tunisian Jews and Muslims socialize with each other or if they live entirely separate lives. Do they visit each other’s houses? Do they hang out in cafes?

The rabbi’s assistant answered by shaking his head.

*

It’s always a good idea to talk to minorities in the Middle East. They see things at a different angle from everyone else. The Jews I met in Tunisia, though, had no more to say about the revolution, the new government, or where Tunisia is heading than they did about their own circumstances. They were too cautious to say much of anything. 

Perhaps the Christians could help. They have fewer reasons to be wary than Jews. Christians are having a hard time in lots of Arab countries, but in most places they live in a multicultural paradise by comparison.

Tunisia’s Christians, though, aren’t Tunisians. They’re foreigners. The number of Christian Tunisians is apparently almost zero. Nearly all are Europeans and sub-Saharan black Africans. There are quite a few churches around—and they’re full on Sundays, too—but you won’t find many Arabs inside.

Armin and I spoke to Father John MacWilliam, a Catholic priest and missionary with the White Fathers movement. He’s from Great Britain and spent years in the inferno of Algeria before moving to Tunis.

“Is it true that most Christians here aren’t Tunisians?” I said.

“I’m British,” he said, “and I’m Christian, but most Tunisians, 99% or more, are Muslims, at least officially. If you go to any church on Sunday, all the people are foreigners.”

“There isn’t even a little community of indigenous Christians here,” I said, “like the Copts in Egypt? What happened to them?”

“By the 15^th century there were no indigenous Christians living in this part of North Africa,” he said.

They all converted to Islam. Judaism, though, kept a toe hold in the country, a toe hold it still has. Most Tunisian Jews are the descendents of Berbers, the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa before Arabs invaded in the 7^th and 8^th centuries. Two-thirds of Tunisia’s Jews live on the southern island of Djerba, a part of the country that is still more Berber and less Arabized. (Djerba, by the way, is the famous island of Homer’s Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey.)

Father MacWilliam moved to Tunis from Algeria, where he lived for thirteen years.

“Were you driven out?” I said, but he shook his head. “No? You were there during all that trouble? I know a lot of Christians were killed.”

By “trouble” I was referring, of course, to the Algerian civil war in the 1990s when radical Islamists waged a ferocious terror insurgency that killed more than 100,000 people.

“It was a black decade,” he said. “How many hundreds of thousands of people were killed, I don’t know, but only a very small proportion were Christians. In the Catholic church there were 19 altogether killed. Most people know about the six monks in Tibhirine. Four of my congregation in Tizuzu were killed. There were others. It was difficult, but in other ways it was enriching because we were there helping. I opened libraries and supported university students. A lot of foreigners left, a lot of embassies closed, a lot of companies left. The Catholic church didn’t leave. We stayed. When things get difficult you don’t leave your friends.”

Westerners who live in Arab countries are often treated better than locals. They’re given a certain amount of latitude and liberty that governments sometimes think would be dangerous if enjoyed by everyone else. I’ve never worried that secret police would arrest me, for instance, if I insulted the president at a cafe. I don’t want to be tailed or spied on in my hotel room, of course, but if they bug my phone, at the end of the day, what are they going to do? The worst an Arab police state will do to me is arrest me, interrogate me, throw me out of the country, and put me on a blacklist. Citizens in oppressive Middle Eastern countries worry the police will show up at their house with a blowtorch and pliers, that their children will go missing, that they’ll be tortured to death.

The people I need to worry about most in the Middle East are criminals and terrorists. Foreigners were right to leave Algeria during the 1990s. They were singled out for destruction along with liberals, artists, feminists, intellectuals, cosmopolitans, teachers—basically anyone who didn’t precisely fit the description of an ultra-conservative Salafist nutjob. So it’s rather extraordinary that only 19 Christians were killed during that time.

My hat is off to Father MacWilliam. When things get difficult you don’t leave your friends. That’s what he said. But if I was in Algeria while Salafists were hacking thousands of people to death with machetes, I would have left. Almost anyone would have left. Maybe MacWilliam is a better person than I am. Maybe he’s nuts. Maybe he’s both. Either way, he grit his teeth and stayed through an unspeakable bloodbath.

Tunisia must feel like Switzerland by comparison. Christians in Tunisia have it pretty good. They have a few restrictions placed on them, but they can basically do whatever they want, partly because as foreigners and they’re subject to less social pressure. What if they weren’t foreigners, though? What if they were Tunisians? Would they be second-class citizens like the Christians of Egypt?

Probably not. The Jews aren’t. They clearly face a great deal of social pressure, but 1,500 live there by choice. And they’re equal under the law, at least on paper. Those facts right there are extraordinary even if the Jews do have to hunker down nervously amongst themselves.

The question is: how long can they last? Will they still be there in 100 years? Perhaps Father MacWilliam could safely address that question more directly than the rabbi.

“People here talk a lot about the religious extremists who are against the liberal values of other parts of the society,” he said. “But we have religious freedom. Religious freedom is important to Tunisians. This is a country with a long history as a civilization. Tunisians are proud of the fact that it’s a country with a multitude of civilizations. And since independence it has developed human rights. On the issue of women’s rights, for instance, Tunisia is more advanced than other Arab countries.”

It’s true. Women and men have been equal under the law in Tunisia for decades. Ninety-five percent of Egyptian girls reportedly have their clitoris removed when they’re young, but female genital mutilation doesn’t even exist in Tunisia. Wikipedia has a page that lists the percentage of FGM incidence by country and Tunisia doesn’t even appear next to an asterisk.

Ahmed, my fixer, told me a Salafist group brought Egypt’s notorious Jew-hating creepjob Wagdy Ghoneim to Tunis. The man proposed Tunisia start cutting off little girls’ clitorises and the entire country freaked out. Human rights activists sued him just for bringing it up.

But what about the Jews? I had an awfully hard time getting straight answers. How are things really going these days? I asked Father MacWilliam about it directly. He, at least, eschewed sugar-coating.

“I don’t know the Jewish community here,” he said. “There are Tunisian Jewish families who have been here for centuries. Their synagogue, of course, is protected. It functions, but I think they keep a fairly low profile. There’s an amalgam of what is Jewish and what is Israeli. Many Arabs assume that anyone who’s Jewish is also Israeli and Zionist and is oppressing the Palestinians and so on. That doesn’t make it easy for somebody who’s Jewish to openly be known as Jewish. They are probably a more oppressed minority.”

*

But how oppressed are the Jews, really? It’s so hard to say. I can’t very well report that they’re oppressed when I have no more evidence for that than you’re reading here in this article. I also can’t say they’re perfectly fine because they say they’re perfectly fine. Not when the rabbi and his assistant were so reluctant to say anything. I’ve been in this business a long time. I know how people behave in interviews when they’re nervous. And those two were nervous.

I did meet one Tunisian Jew, though, who spoke a little more freely. His name is Jacob Lellouche and he owns a kosher restaurant called Mamie Lily (after his grandmother) in the posh Tunis suburb of La Goulette. 

Ahmed took me and Armin there for dinner. Armin and I were both surprised to discover that we were the only non-Muslims having kosher Jewish food for dinner that night. Nearly all Lellouche’s customers are Muslims. Why? “Because Tunisia’s Jews are used to eating this food at home,” Lellouche said. The place was packed, too. We had to wait almost an hour for a table.

Armin asked if his restaurant business has changed since the revolution. Has it gotten better or worse?

“My clients here are the same,” Lellouche said. “A lot of Tunisians come here, and some people come from France also. But this isn’t a touristic place.”

“So,” Armin said, “is there some appreciation then among Muslim Tunisians for the country’s Jewish culture?”

“I’m not only the owner of this restaurant,” Lellouche said. “After the revolution I created the first cultural Jewish association. It’s called Dar al-Dekra, the house of memory. Ninety percent of the association’s members are Tunisian Muslims. The civil society sustains the Jewish community. An Arab Tunisian association whose name translates to ‘I’m Free and I Work for My Country’ is here tonight to write a communiqué, a press release.”

Lellouche says his business is doing okay. That’s good, especially with the post-revolutionary economic depression. But how are Jews faring in general after the fall of Ben Ali? Are they doing better or worse?

“I wouldn’t say better,” he said. “We have to live our lives and make our place in this country. That’s all. We have to keep our culture in Tunisia’s memory. We are its guardians. Our association will create the first Jewish museum in Tunisia.”

He says he believes Jews will always remain in Tunisia. Not only are the Jews not enjoying their last days in the country, there won’t ever be any last days. Maybe he really believes that. Maybe he only wants to believe it. Maybe it’s even true, but we shouldn’t assume it. Muslim-Jewish relations are in the abyss. What will happen if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict heats up again or if the mushrooming Salafists go on a rampage like they did next-door in Algeria?

“Was it possible,” Armin said, “to have an organization like yours before the revolution?”

“It was difficult,” Lellouche said, “because Mr. Ben Ali, our last president, instrumentalized the Jewish community. He wanted to project an image of tolerance and say to France and America that the Jews still live here because he wants them to live here. But I don’t think that was true. We don’t have problems with the society, though perhaps there is some trouble now with the Salafists.”

Salafists haven’t threatened Lellouche or his restaurant, but mobs of them have been wrecking havoc in several parts of the country since the revolution, and they rhetorically declared war on “the Jews” a number of times.

“Last week,” Lellouche said, “they held a demonstration in Tunis on Habib Bourguiba Avenue. They called for the killing of Jews.”

“Were they referring to Israel, to you, or to both?” I said.

“This is the third time they called for the murder of Jews,” he said. “The first time, we thought they were speaking about Zionists. And the second time, we thought they were speaking about Zionists. After the third time, though, it was clear that they meant the Jews.”