Victimized Again: The Jews of Arab States and the June 1967 War

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 660, November 28, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Much has been written about the historical marginalization of the 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab states in the wake of the 1948 War. Few know that the June 1967 War played a similar role in accelerating the final demise of these historic communities. It is high time the international community rectified this longstanding injustice by ensuring that these refugees are fully compensated for their suffering and stolen property.

Fifty years after the June 1967 War, the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem released scores of classified files related to this historic event. While most deal with the war and the events that led to its outbreak, some address the predicament of the Jewish communities in the Arab states during and after the war. The picture that emerges is one of pogroms and persecution, at times orchestrated by the government, at times through spontaneous eruptions that occurred with the tacit support of the authorities.

This maltreatment occurred in almost all Arab states, though the level of violence differed. In Tunisia, Morocco, and Lebanon, for example, the authorities protected the Jews from the rampaging mobs, while in Syria and Yemen, there were isolated attacks on Jews. The most severe persecutions occurred in Libya, Egypt, and Iraq. Israel refrained from any direct public action so as not to give credence to the depiction of these Jewish communities as fifth columns serving the Jewish state’s interests. Covertly, however, through its Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Brussels, Ankara, and Lisbon embassies, the Israeli Foreign Ministry acted on behalf of these communities.

The American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the UN, and Jewish communities in the West were also enlisted to help out with protest gatherings and media publicity about the Jewish predicament in the Arab states. According to the documents, the Arab regimes tried to conceal the Jews’ persecution from foreign eyes, to deny any governmental involvement in the violent acts that were exposed, and to impose strict censorship so as to ensure that such acts were not publicized.

Egypt

Before the June 1967 War, some 6,000 Jews still lived in Egypt. On the first day of the war, when it transpired that the Egyptian air force and most of the airfields had been destroyed, President Nasser ordered the arrest of 600 Jewish men aged 16 to 70 in Cairo and Alexandria, among them the Alexandria chief rabbi, Haim Douek. The detainees were severely abused. They were beaten regularly and denied food and drink, especially in the initial days of their detention.

All detainees, it should be noted, were law-abiding citizens who were not involved in any illegal activity. They were sent to a number of prisons, including the notorious Abu Zabel, where they suffered three years of ongoing abuse that left post-traumatic impact on some of them to this day. They were released through the intervention of a number of countries, notably Spain, Italy, and France, on condition that they leave Egypt directly from prison, having been warned that harm would be visited upon their Egyptian family members were they to speak about their sufferings in prison. Ovadia Yerushalmi, a native of Cairo who was among the Jewish detainees and is now a pensioner living in Israel, recently published a book (in Hebrew) entitled The Long Five Minutes. In it he revealed for the first time, after 50 years of silence, the story of the Jews of Egypt from 1967 to 1970 within the prison walls and amid arrests and persecution.

Iraq

In June 1967, Iraq’s Jewish community numbered some 3,000, most of them in Baghdad and Basra. Immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities, about 70 Jews were arrested. They were released many months later after their families paid hefty bribes to the authorities and senior officials.

Along with the arrests, the authorities instilled fear and anxiety in the Jewish community. Jews were forbidden to sell their property or engage in commerce. Their residential telephones were disconnected, and their freedom of movement in Baghdad was curtailed. Many Jews locked themselves in their homes for fear of violent attacks à la the June 1941 Farhoud, in which hundreds of Jews were massacred by their rampaging Arab neighbors who also looted and destroyed their properties. As a result of the 1967 persecution, many of the remaining Iraqi Jews emigrated to Israel.

Libya

There were about 4,000 Jews in Libya at the time of the war. In June 1967, violent anti-Jewish demonstrations were held in Tripoli and Benghazi, leaving 18 dead and dozens wounded. Jewish stores were looted and burned, as were synagogues and residences. Numerous families locked themselves in their homes until their food began to run out.

The newly released files show that the pogroms were carried out on orders from the government, which wanted to put an end to the Jewish presence in Libya. The government accused the community of treason and supporting the “Zionist entity.” Many Jews were threatened by telephone and about 100 Jews were put in detention camps, supposedly to ensure their safety.

Fortunately for the community, the Italian government was enlisted to help with its rescue. Most of its members fled to Italy by air with only a suitcase and a small amount of cash. Despite its covert promise to the Libyan authorities, the Italian government asked Jerusalem to help with the absorption of these refugees, and indeed many of them came to live in Israel. Their arrival was hushed up by the censors so as not to jeopardize the remaining Jews’ departure from Libya. Ultimately only 100 Jews were left in the country, and they emigrated in the subsequent years. All Jewish properties in Libya were confiscated and are yet to be returned to their rightful owners.

Epilogue

The 1967 War led to the emigration of thousands of Jews from Arab states as a result of persecution, imprisonment, murderous attacks, cancellation of citizenship, expulsion, and expropriation of property. A small number left out of admiration for Israel’s astounding victory.

Sadly, as in 1948, the suffering and distress of the Jewish refugees of 1967 has not received its due attention, either in Israel or in the world at large. Moreover, the looted property of these refugees has become part and parcel of the ongoing saga of the 1948 Arab plunder of Jewish property, which is now estimated at about $400 billion. The Israeli government and the international community at large must therefore ensure an adequate compensation for this property, whether as an integral part of a future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement or as an agreement in its own right to redress a grave historical injustice.

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Dr. Edy Cohen is author of the book The Holocaust in the Eyes of Mahmoud Abbas (Hebrew).

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Now is the time to fight for Jewish refugees By LYN JULIUS 08/02/2012 Contrary to recent misleading press reports, no Jew seeks a “right of return” to Arab states.

Some years ago, a daughter of the wealthy Jewish Castro family from Egypt heard Anwar Sadat’s widow Jehan deliver a talk in New York. Congratulating her afterwards, the Egyptian Jewess exchanged pleasantries with Mrs. Sadat. “But you must come back to visit [Egypt] and to show it to your children,” Mrs. Sadat said, adding the traditional Egyptian courtesy, beti betak – “my house is your house.”

Little did she appreciate the irony, but Jehan Sadat’s presidential villa had literally belonged to the Castro family, which was expelled by Nasser in 1956. Observers of the Middle East conflict frequently talk of trampled Palestinian rights, but suffer from a blind spot when it comes to the mass dispossession of a greater number of Jews across 10 Arab countries.

Few Jews lived as opulently as the Castros, but all over the Middle East and North Africa, Jewish homes, shops and businesses were seized or sold for well under market value as fearful Jews fled or were forced out. Communities predating the Islamic conquest by 1,000 years have been driven to extinction.

Economist Sidney Zabludoff estimates that there were 50 percent more Jewish refugees than Palestinian Arab refugees, and that they almost certainly lost 50% more in assets and property. While the world is fixated by Israeli building in a (Jewish-owned) Jerusalem suburb, nobody reproaches Arab states for seizing Jewish land and property in Baghdad, Cairo, Tripoli and Damascus, estimated by the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries at five times the size of Israel itself.

Two years ago this month the Knesset quietly passed a bill stipulating that the Israeli government must include Jewish refugee rights, notably compensation, in all future peace talks.

MK Nissim Ze’ev (Shas) proposed the law, inspired by a 2008 US Congress resolution.

When the time comes to discuss “final status” issues, the Israeli government will be committed to upholding the rights of 850,000 Jews scapegoated as Zionists after 1948 and driven from their homes. In the meantime, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon is spearheading a campaign to raise the public profile of Jewish refugees. His team is preparing a report on the issue. And on the second anniversary of the passing of the Knesset law on 21 February, we can expect to hear a lot more about Jewish refugees.

Before any talk of compensation, however, Arab League states must recognize their culpability for creating the Jewish refugee problem.

All too often, the issue is met with disbelief or denial. If it is acknowledged, wild counterclaims for compensation are made. Arabs blame the exodus on the Zionists, or rationalize it as a justifiable backlash to the creation of Israel. The myths are peddled that Jews and Muslims lived together harmoniously before Zionism, or that Jews were better treated in the Muslim world than in the Christian.

Arab propaganda and Israeli silence have conspired to make the world believe that the Palestinians are the victims of an Israeli injustice.

By restoring Jewish refugees to the picture – they and their descendants make up 52% of the Jewish population of Israel – it becomes clear that two sets of refugees, in roughly equal numbers, exchanged places in the Middle East.

Although no Jew would today consider himself a refugee, justice for the Jewish refugees, for which there is no statute of limitations, is a moral imperative. It is not simply a matter of compensation for stolen assets and property.

Jews hundreds of miles away from the battlefield suffered state-sanctioned discrimination, violence and abuse simply for being Jews.

Palestinian refugees, on the other hand, were caught up in a local war launched by their own leadership.

Jewish refugees could help achieve peace by acting as a counterweight to the Palestinian “right of return.” Even the “moderates” of the Fatah camp cling to their demand for the Arab refugees of 1948 (their numbers have ballooned to more than four million because, uniquely, refugee status is passed on to their descendants ) to return to what is now Israel.

The Palestinian “right of return” amounts to the destruction of Israel by demographic means and the de facto creation of two Palestinian states, one in the West Bank, and one in place of Israel.

In contrast, Jewish refugees were successfully resettled in Israel and the West. The Palestinian refugee problem, perpetuated by UNWRA, the United Nations Works and Relief Agency, could be resolved at a a stroke if the Jewish model of resettlement were followed. Palestinian non-absorption in Arab host countries is an abuse of human rights. It is not only counter-intuitive, it is inhumane.

Contrary to recent misleading press reports, no Jew seeks a “right of return” to Arab states.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman categorically denied that the Israeli government supported such a demand. Firstly, there is no precedent for a return. The seven million Hindus and Muslims who swapped places in the Indian- Pakistani war of 1947 constituted a permanent exchange. So did the Greeks expelled from Turkey and Turks driven from Greece after the end of the First World War.

Secondly, apart from the upheaval generated by a further mass migration, a Jewish “right of return” to countries poisoned by anti-Jewish hatred is unthinkable. Wild horses would not drag three generations of Jews, permanently integrated in Israel and the West, back to lands that are neither hospitable nor safe. The Arab Spring has only made anti-Semitism worse.

And if one set of refugees can’t return, neither should the other.

The Jewish refugees are the key to understanding the bigotry against non-Muslim minorities which drives the conflict with Israel as long as fascism holds sway over the Arab world, its grip strengthened by the Arab Spring.

As the plight of Copts and Assyrians shows, the native Jews would have been victimized even if Israel had not existed. They were the first to suffer ethnic cleansing, but they will not be the last.

Israel’s failure to fight for the rights of Jewish refugees has been a catastrophe of public diplomacy – one that the government is at last trying to remedy after 60 years of neglect. Danny Ayalon’s ministry is expected to make recommendations for recognition and redress for Jewish refugees. He is launching an official PR campaign and will be instructing Israeli embassies around the world to bring up the issue with their counterparts. Watch this space.

The writer is a co-founder of Harif, a UK association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.

Our Nakba

• At the end of January every year, a humble memorial service is held at the Babel Judaism Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, in memory of the Martyrs of Iraq - 80 Iraqi Jews who since the establishment of the State of Israel were executed by hanging, died in torture or while escaping to Israel. Jews have experienced similar difficult tragedies in other Arab countries. In Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, and Egypt - after the establishment of the Jewish state - Jews lost their lives in retaliation for Israel's victories over Arab armies in the battlefield.  
• On the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel, there was a horrifying anti-Jewish atmosphere in all Arab countries, accompanied by inflammatory anti-Jewish declarations, including from the podium of the United Nations. The Jews were forced to flee and emigrate from every Arab country, while leaving behind all their personal and communal possessions. From a population of approximately one million Arab Jews, nowadays very few Jews reside in Arab countries.  
• The horrible human tragedies experienced by the Jews in Arab countries - their catastrophe - is almost forgotten; it is not properly taught in schools, it is not discussed in the media and it is not marked either nationally or within UN institutions. Very few people in the world are aware that approximately half of Israel's population originates from Arab countries, where Jews have lived for thousands of years.  
• Arab propaganda has wisely concealed the chapter of population exchange conducted between Israel and the Arab countries during Israel's War of Independence. It repeatedly claimed the "right of return" for Palestinian Arabs who fought Israel. Simultaneously, Arab propaganda has succeeded to ingrain the notion that Israeli Jews "have come from Poland and Germany," while the "Palestinian Nakba" is the only disaster that took place upon the establishment of the State of Israel.  
• Israel must place the issue of Arab Jews on the agenda, as a main part of the history of the Israeli people in their country. The sooner we rectify the injustice, the better.
  
  The author was an ambassador and deputy director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

הנכבה שלנו

התעמולה הערבית הצליחה: ממלחמת הקוממיות זוכרים בעיקר את מנוסת הפלסטינים ולא את הפוגרומים ביהודים. עוד לא מאוחר לשנות את המצב

צבי גבאי | 1/2/2012 16:44

תגיות: תעמולה ערבית

 כמדי שנה, בסוף ינואר, נערך במרכז מורשת יהדות בבל באור יהודה טקס אזכרה צנוע להרוגי המלכות בעיראק. 80 יהודים מסרו את נפשם מיום הקמתה של מדינת ישראל. הם הוצאו להורג בתלייה, מתו בעינויים או תוך כדי בריחתם לישראל. 

טרגדיות דומות וקשות חוו היהודים בכל מדינות ערב: אלג'יריה, תוניסיה, לבנון, לוב, מרוקו, מצרים, סוריה ותימן. יהודים רבים שילמו בחייהם על יהדותם לפני קום מדינת ישראל, ולאחר הקמתה איבדו את חייהם כנקמה על ניצחונותיה של ישראל את צבאות ערב בשדות הקרב. 

ערב הקמת מדינת ישראל שררה אווירת אימים אנטי-יהודית בכל מדינות ערב, והיא לוותה בהצהרות אנטי-יהודיות מתלהמות, גם מעל לבימת האו"ם. בעקבותיה באו התנכלויות קשות מצד השלטונות ופגיעות אישיות וחומריות מצד ההמונים. 

כל אלה אילצו את יהודי ערב לברוח ולהגר מכל מדינות ערב, תוך השארת רכושם הפרטי ורכוש קהילותיהם מאחור. כיום נותרו במדינות ערב יהודים בודדים מתוך אוכלוסייה שמנתה כמיליון נפש עם קום המדינה. 

האסון שלנו לא מוזכר

מעטים הם הזוכרים את הטרגדיות האנושיות הנוראות שחוו היהודים במדינות ערב. אסונם כמעט נשכח, לא נלמד כראוי בבתי הספר, לא נדון בתקשורת, לא מצוין באופן ממלכתי ולא מדובר במסגרת מוסדות האו"ם.

כמחצית אוכלוסיית ישראל מוצאה במדינות ערב, שבהן חיו יהודים במשך אלפי שנים, אך מעטים בעולם יודעים על כך. התעמולה הערבית השכילה להעלים מהשיח הבינלאומי את מסכת חילופי האוכלוסין

שהתרחשה בין ישראל לבין מדינות ערב במהלך מלחמת הקוממיות. היא חזרה וטענה ל"זכות השיבה" לערביי פלסטין שנלחמו בישראל, וחלקם נס על נפשו מחשש שיבולע לו. 

במקביל הצליחה התעמולה הערבית לנטוע בקרב ציבור רחב בעולם את התפיסה שיהודי ישראל "באו מפולין וגרמניה. . ."ואילו "הנכבה הפלסטינית", שהתרחשה באשמת הערבים בלבד, היא האסון היחיד שהתרחש עם קום המדינה. 

האשמה עלינו

העיוות ההיסטורי של המציאות הדמוגרפית והמדינית נוצר באשמתנו. ישראל - גם הממשלה וגם ארגוני היהודים יוצאי מדינות ערב - חייבת להעלות את סוגיית יהודי ערב על סדר היום כחלק מרכזי מההיסטוריה של עם ישראל בארצו.

יש לפעול לארגון טקס אזכרה ממלכתי למאות הקורבנות היהודים שנפלו במדינות ערב. חובה ללמד את המורשת של יהודי ערב בבתי הספר. בד בבד, יש להעלות את סוגיית יהודי ערב מעל לבימות העולם.

בעקבות לחצי ארגונים יהודיים בחו"ל וקבלת החלטה בקונגרס האמריקאי, נחקק בכנסת לפני שנתיים, ב-22 בפברואר 2010, חוק למתן פיצוי לפליטים יהודים מארצות ערב במסגרת תהליך השלום. אין כל ספק שזהו צעד ראשון בכיוון הנכון, אך יש להמשיך לקדם את החוק כדי להשיג פיצוי לרכוש היהודי הרב שהושאר במדינות ערב.

סוגיית יהדות ערב הוזנחה בישראל מסיבות לא מובנות במשך זמן רב מדי. ככל שנקדים לתקן את העוול, כן ייטב.

הכותב היה שגריר וסמנכ"ל משרד החוץ 

בואו להמשיך לדבר על זה בפורום אקטואליה של תפוז אנשים- 

The Mideast refugees you never hear about

Exiled in New York, stripped of everything he once owned, Leon Lagnado ached with nostalgia for the Cairo of the 1940s, the exciting and endlessly promising city of his youth. He was one of history's victims - in this case, the rancorous history of the Middle East.

In Cairo last week, another stage in that story unfolded when gangs of thugs stormed the Israeli embassy while Egyptian soldiers stood by without interfering. Israel had to beg the United States to beg the Egyptians to rescue six Israeli security guards trapped by the mob. Finally, the Egyptian soldiers did their duty.

It was a humiliating moment for Israel. It was also a dismaying event for everyone who cherishes pleasant feelings about the great city Lagnado once knew. In the 1940s, Cairo was sometimes called the most cosmopolitan city in the world. From the start of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th, it was tolerant in outlook and multiracial in population, incredible as that seems in 2011. Today, it's a grim monoculture.

Lagnado was a prosperous Jewish businessman who socialized with British officers and French merchants. Christians, Muslims and Jews often lived in the same buildings. Their children studied and played together. Lagnado, who liked to gamble, was once invited to join King Farouk at poker. In those days, 80,000 Jews lived in Cairo. It was Lagnado's home and his family's home, until suddenly it wasn't. After the founding of Israel, Egyptians decided that their Jews had to go home, though many of them had never known any home but Egypt.

The Egyptians began acting like 1930s Nazis. They confiscated Jewish bank accounts and fired Jews from government jobs. They withdrew professional status from Jewish doctors, engineers, lawyers and teachers. In 1960, the military governor of Cairo published an article praising the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and its account of Jews conspiring to rule the world. The Egyptian government distributed throughout Africa a pamphlet, Israel, the Enemy of Africa, slandering Jews as thieves and murderers.

There were pogroms, riots and synagogue burnings as well as racist propaganda. Still, the Lagnados were so optimistic that they stayed 'till 1963. That year, when the six of them were finally forced to leave, they were allowed to take 26 suitcases and $200, the financial limit imposed by the government.

Lagnado died an unhappy pedlar of neckties on the streets of Manhattan, having never learned American ways. We know his melancholy story because in 2007 his daughter, Lucette Lagnado, a Wall Street Journal reporter, erected a lovely monument to him in the form of her book, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. (She recently brought out a second memoir, The Arrogant Years, about herself and her mother.)

The expulsion of the Lagnados was a tiny part of a pattern stretching across the Middle East. In reaction against Israel, one country after another - Iraq, Algeria, Iran, Yemen, etc. - decided it could no longer tolerate Jews. Across the region about 800,000 became refugees. Many ended up in Israel. The rest scattered around the world. Their existence is no secret, but they are seldom talked about except in nostalgic books such as Lucette Lagnado's. There's no separate UN agency for them, as there is for Palestinian refugees. No one describes the expulsions as "ethnic cleansing," though that's what they were.

The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, which tries vainly to obtain compensation from the rich Middle East countries, has estimated that Jewish property confiscated by governments would be valued now at $300billion. The land that the Jews were forced to leave behind amounts to about four times the size of the current state of Israel.

They lost more than their property when they were forced out. They lost a culture, a shared way of life. Most of them were Sephardic Jews whose lives in Arabia stretched back millennia. This doesn't bother Arab nationalists, like the hooligans who stormed the embassy in Cairo. They believe their cause is righteous, and they persuade the gullible everywhere to sympathize.

From a certain angle, it sometimes appears that in recent times humanity has been trying to teach itself tolerance. For several generations, many major cities have recreated themselves according to a new ideal of pluralism. But at the same time the Middle East has been moving backward, toward monoracial, one-religion communities. And it is there that millions of citizens are fighting for democracy, perhaps with no more than a sketchy idea of what that word means.

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca