Lyn Julius
The Exodus of Jews from the Arab World
Lyn Julius - The Exodus of Jews from the Arab World
- Well, good evening everybody from London and thank you very much indeed for joining me. My subject today is the Exodus of Jews from the Arab world, or perhaps I should say the Exodus of the Jews from the Arab world ‘cause there aren’t very many left. This is a neglected aspect of Jewish history that has been ignored, falsified, and distorted compared to the more familiar Palestinian refugee problem. Not many people know about it. Yet I believe that the Jewish refugees are at the heart of the Middle East conflict. Until the 17th-century, there were more Jews in what is now the Arab world than in Europe, well, the Arab and the Ottoman world, I should say, than in Europe. Arab cities had significant proportions of Jews. Until their Exodus, Jews were the largest ethnic group in Baghdad, making up a third of the city’s population. Baghdad was proportionately more Jewish than Warsaw or New York. So important were Jews to the economy that the market shut down on the Sabbath in Baghdad. However, the Jewish presence came to an abrupt end in a generation and a half with the mass Exodus of these Jews after 1948. The Exodus is often linked to the creation of Israel as if Israel was the cause of the Exodus. But as I shall try and demonstrate the root causes of the Exodus probably go much deeper and go back well beyond 1948. But in 1948 or soon afterwards, the fact that two sets of refugees emerged from the Arab-Israeli conflict means that the Palestinian refugees are not the only victims.
And I do believe that if there is ever to be peace, we need to appreciate that an exchange of roughly equal populations took place, refugee populations took place within the Middle East. After World War II, Jews from the Arab world only constituted 10% of the global Jewish population. But after the death of 6 million European Jews in the Shoah, today, Middle Eastern, North African Jews form about half the population of Israel. And this, of course, has implications for a political solution to the conflict. So this is the region that I will be talking about from Morocco in the far West to Yemen in the far East, or I should say southeast at the tip of Saudi Arabia. A word about terminology, Jews from the Arab world are often referred to as Sephardim or Mizrahim. Often the terms are used interchangeably. Sephardi strictly speaking means from Sepharad from Spain after the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, Sephardim fled West to Northern Europe, to Holland, Hamburg, and England. And they are the Western Sephardim. Others went South and East and joined existing communities around the Mediterranean basin and in the Levant. And they are the Eastern Sephardim. The word Mizrahim is a relatively recent Hebrew term and it refers to Jews who never left the Middle East. And in fact, there are original Mizrahi communities in North Africa as well. And it really refers to any Jew who is not Ashkenazi or from Europe. But some people use the term Sephardi to refer to religious practise according to Sephardi halakha, in which case, all non-Ashkenazi Jews are Sephardi. Now that I have confused you about terminology, let’s begin at the end.
The communities of the Arab world became extinct when almost a million Jews were driven out or otherwise fled. This was a larger number than Palestinian refugees who left Israel and it was the largest number of non-Muslim refugees until the Exodus of Christians from Iraq after 2003 following the American invasion of Iraq. The numbers of Assyrian Christians have gone down from a million and a half to 200,000. The numbers of Jews declined more dramatically in the Middle East and North Africa than the numbers of European Jews during World War II. Without, of course, the same tragic consequences. The Exodus of the Middle East and North African Jews did not end in genocide unlike in Europe, most of the Jews got out alive. And of course, the big difference was that they had somewhere to go because Israel had been established in 1948. But it has to be said that hundreds of Jews did die, usually as a result of mob violence. And here you can see the very dramatic ethnic cleansing in the second graph there. So 99% of Jews no longer live in the Middle East and North Africa. So this chart shows you how the numbers in 1948 and today compare. And you’ll see that communities which had hundreds or tens of thousands of Jews, you can now count them on the fingers of one or two hands. And some communities have no Jews at all. For instance, Algeria, for instance, Libya, Iraq only has three Jews, whereas it had 150,000 in 1948. I’ve included Jews of Iran even though Iran is not an Arab country. And Iran was not at war with Israel in 1948.
It was only in 1979 when the Islamic Republic was declared that there was a mass Exodus from that country as well. From a hundred thousand Jews, their numbers have gone down to about 8,000 or some people even say 5,000. And there is also a decline from Turkey, which again is not an Arab country and did not declare war against Israel in 1948. The other thing you notice from this chart is how very old these communities are. They go back to many centuries before the common era, well before there were any Arabs and a thousand years before Islam. The Jews of Iraq like to call themselves the Babylonian Jews. Why? Because they go back to the Babylonian Empire. As you know, the king took the Jews as slaves from Jerusalem and they settled in the land of the two rivers. And there they wept when they remembered Zion. And some of them did go back to Jerusalem. 70 years later they were allowed to go back by the Persian King Cyrus. But most of them decided to stay on. And they were in continuous residence in Iraq, what is now Iraq, for 2,600 years up until about 50 years ago. Now, the Jews were one of a patchwork of indigenous peoples together with Berbers, Copts, Yazidis, Assyrians, Zoroastrians, and all were subjugated by the Arab conquest. So to talk about Jews of the Arab world is to actually fall into a semantic trap. It’s more accurate to talk about Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, they go back to biblical times. And the region has almost as much Jewish history as the land of Israel itself. There were some 17 biblical figures who were buried in the region and five biblical Prophets.
And one of those is the Prophet Ezekiel. And here is a photo showing the priests writing out blessings or prayers for visiting pilgrims arriving at Ezekiel’s tomb. And in its heyday, there were about 5,000 Jewish pilgrims who had come and visit around the time of Shavuot or between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And on the right, you see a detail of the Hebrew inscriptions surrounding the burial chamber of the tomb of Ezekiel. Now, if you look at this picture at the bottom here, you see that the shrine has been transformed completely and has become a Shi'ite shrine or mosque. And in fact, the original burial chamber of the tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel, is a tiny part of this new mosque. And this new mosque was only built in the last five or six years. And if a Jew turned up and asked to visit, I think the chances are he would be turned away because this is now a Muslim holy site. And this is a metaphor for what has happened to Jewish heritage all over the Middle East. This is a synagogue in Baghdad. It was a Shamash synagogue and it’s now a shop. These two towers were built on top of the Jewish cemetery in Tripoli, in Libya. The synagogue of Elijah the Prophet just outside Damascus, in Syria, is now a ruin. It was bombed in the Civil War in 2014. The Magen Avraham Synagogue in Beirut was actually restored, but it was never opened. And in fact, it probably never will be opened. For the simple reason that there are very few Jews left, and they certainly don’t want to identify themselves as Jews. So the community actually doesn’t really exist.
But it was restored really to give the impression that Lebanon was a pluralistic society with freedom of religion for all different sects. Now, this is interesting 'cause this synagogue in Alexandria, which is actually the largest synagogue in the Middle East, was restored with funds from the Egyptian government. And this picture was taken at the inauguration of the synagogue, which took place I think just before the coronavirus hit in 2020. But what’s interesting about this picture is the only people who were invited to the inauguration were government officials. So you see the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, they’re all there represented in this picture. The one thing that’s missing really is any Jews. And the Egyptian government is not really interested in Jews, not interested in reviving the Jewish community. All they really want is to attract tourism. So much so that Jews from Egypt organise their own inauguration ceremony. And about 180 of them turned up for a very moving ceremony. But of course, that was probably the first and last time that this synagogue will ever echo to Jewish prayers. The exception to all this is probably Morocco, where the king has spent a lot of money restoring Jewish sites, Jewish quarters, and Jewish cemeteries. And this is Bayt Dakira in the city of Essaquira in Morocco, it used to be a synagogue, but the name Bayt Dakira means house of memory. And it is a frank admission that the Jewish community is but a memory even in Morocco. And despite strenuous efforts to predict a revival, the indigenous community will probably die out within a generation or two, not as a result of persecution, but simply because the young people are moving away and not coming back. So these renovated sites are really exceptional.
On the one hand, Arab states mostly want to erase the history of their Jews, and on the other hand, they lay claim to Jewish heritage. And this document is a sample from a collection that’s known as the Iraqi Jewish Archive. When the Americans invaded Baghdad, they found this collection of documents that used to belong to the Jewish community in Baghdad, but was actually stolen by Saddam Hussein and stored in the basement of the Secret Police headquarters. And by a fluke, the collection was actually shipped to America for restoration. And what happened next was that the Iraqis immediately demanded that it be returned to Iraq. Why? Because they consider this sort of thing their national heritage. So in a way, the dispossession of the Jews is still going on today. You know, that they can’t even claim what is rightfully theirs. So what was the relationship between Muslims and Jews? This is a very, a sort of burning issue if you like, because you often hear it said that before the creation of the state of Israel, Jews and Muslims got on very well and there was a great deal of harmony and peace between the two groups. But this isn’t entirely true because the Jews had been there for such a long time, they influenced the environment and in turn, the environment influenced them leading to a kind of spiritual and cultural symbiosis. Judaism and Islam are very close, the languages are very close. Here you see Muslims and Jews in Morocco praying for rain.
And both Jews and Muslims worshipped at saints’ tombs, for instance. at its height, the relationship, you know, was extremely fruitful. And Jews flourished under Muslim rule. In Al-Andalus in Spain, I mean this is often held up as the symbol of such a wonderful flourishing of intellectual and creative thought, and culture, cultural interaction. The Golden Age in Spain is held up as a symbol of Muslim tolerance of Jews and Christians. And without doubt, the period between the 10th and the mid-12th-century was a unique age of intellectual brilliance. And there were royal advisors, Jewish royal advisor like Samuel ha-Nagid, philosophers like Bahya ibn Paquda, poets like Ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi, Moses ibn Ezra. And they all thrived. And courtiers clustered around Ḥasdai ibn Shaprut, who was a physician and diplomat at the court of the 10th-century caliph ‘Abd ar-Rahman. And this was an age when Jews often combined Torah scholarship with professions such as medicine. And this was the hallmark of the Sephardi who managed to contribute to society at large while maintaining their distinct religious identity. The greatest of all was probably Maimonides who became physician to Saladin, Sultan of Egypt. But people who promote the myth of Islamic tolerance usually fail to point out that there was a horrific massacre of Jews by Muslims in 1066. And some 3000 Jews are reckoned to have died. And Maimonides’s family was forced to flee Cordoba in Spain by fanatical fundamentalist Muslims called the Almohads. And they ruled for over a hundred years. Indeed, Maimonides himself was thought to have converted to Islam, but he found refuge in another corner of the Muslim world, Egypt. And that’s where he became physician to Saladin.
But it also has to be said that Jews did thrive under Christian kings in Spain who were great patrons of science, art, and philosophy. And there was an archbishop in Toledo called Archbishop Raimundo, who led a team of translators, which included Arabic-speaking Christians, and Jewish scholars, and Muslim madrasa teachers, and monks. And they translated many works usually from Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek into Latin and later Spanish. But symbiosis was not the same as coexistence, which assumes an equality in the relationship. Jews were not equal and they had to be reminded of their failure to convert to the ultimate religion of Islam. They were dhimmis. And that meant they had to wear special clothing, they could not make a show of their wealth, their synagogues had to be lower than mosques. They were unequal under the law and they had to pay a special tax, which was really buying the protection of the ruler in case of trouble. So it was a bit like a protection racket. Now, the dhimmi status was not always strictly applied, it really depended on the ruler of the day, but by and large Jews were inferior and they had few rights. So I will read you a short passage from my book, actually, which is “Uprooted” to illustrate the dhimmi status. “In a similar way to their Ashkenazi counterparts in mediaeval Europe, Jews in Morocco were debarred from certain occupations by the Islamic guilds. As in Europe, they perform certain necessary economic functions like money lending and associated tasks. One such associated tasks like metalworking, which were deemed reprehensible or unlucky by the non-Jewish majority.
The Jews were given the most menial of tasks and one such job assigned to them was the salting of the decapitated heads of executed captives. In Yemen, the job of cleaning the sewers was done by a subcast of Jews. In Egypt today, the Christian Copts are the rubbish collectors. In 20th-century Iraq, Christians also did menial jobs in conformity with their lowly status like cleaning septic tanks. The small Sephardi community of Palestine was so based on the Muslim rule that a contingent of Ashkenazi followers of the false Messiah, Shabbetai Zevi, seeking refuge in Jerusalem in 1700, refused to put up with the humiliation suffered by the Sephardim. 'The Arabs behaviours proper thugs towards the Jews,’ one wrote. In Palestine, Jews were not allowed to worship freely at their holy places. The Mamluk rulers forbade them from treading beyond the seventh step on the staircase to the burial place of the patriarchs in Hebron. ‘Nothing equals the misery and suffering of the Jews of Jerusalem’, wrote Karl Marx. Turks, Arabs, and Moors are the masters in every respect. To be a dhimmi was to be continually reminded of Islam supremacy over Judaism and Christianity. Of course, Jews performed an essential function as a commercial go-betweens and could and did rise to lofty positions as courtiers, sarafs, that’s treasurers, and merchants. Some were fabulously rich like Haim Farhi, but like him, these Jews could just as quickly fall into disfavour.
Farhi had his nose cut off and his eye gouged out by a treacherous Ottoman governor and was subsequently assassinated.” And this is Haim Farhi with a patch on his eye. And he is presenting a petition on behalf of the man who’s kneeling in front of the qadi, the local governor. So the dhimmi status, as I mentioned, was not always strictly applied, but it meant that the status of the Jews really was precarious because they just did not know what the future would bring. It all depended on the ruler of the day. All this changed quite dramatically in the 19th-century with the advent of the European colonial era. ‘Cause the Western powers started increasing their influence in the Ottoman Empire, which was really in decline. The Sikh ban of Europe. And the Western powers insisted on equality primarily for the Christian minority, but also for the Jews. And the dhimmi status was abrogated in 1856 in the Ottoman Empire. However, in parts of the Muslim world that were not under Ottoman rule, the dhimmi rules were still applied, for instance, in Yemen until 1950, until the great Exodus from there, in Persia or Iran until 1925, and in Morocco until the French protectorate was established in 1912. But the colonial era was really looked, you know, considered a golden age for the Jews, although it was quite brief, it only really lasted from the end of the 19th-century till about the 1940s. But alongside the increase in the powers of the West in the Middle East and North Africa, there was a group of well-meaning French Jews who decided to bring Western education to the Jews of the Muslim world, not just the Jews of the Muslim world, but primarily. And so they set up a network of schools. And up until then, the Jews had only received a religious education in the Talmud Torah. But for the first time, they were taught maths, and science, and languages. And women, girls were educated for the very first time.
And this created an absolute revolution in the Muslim world. 'Cause a middle class started to emerge. And when the British, and the French, and the Italians set up their colonies, and their protectorates, and their mandates, the Jews were in an excellent position to basically become the backbone of the colonial administrations. And Jews began to dominate trade, and banking, and commerce. And also they became prominent in the arts. And so you find that almost all the musicians in Iraq, for instance, were Jews. And that wasn’t because they were any better than Muslims at playing music. It was because it was religiously prohibited for Muslims to learn or play music. And they were prominent singers, and actresses, and directors. And on the front cover of my book, I’ve got Camelia, I dunno if you can see that. The picture on the top right-hand corner. And her real name was Liliane Levy Cohen. And she made about 30 films in the 1930s and '40s. She died tragically young in a plane crash. Rumour had it that she was King Farouk’s mistress, and he had her done away with for his convenience. But that’s probably just a conspiracy theory. Layla Murad, bottom left, one of the great divas of the Arab world. Her music is still very popular today in Egypt, but nobody knows that she was Jewish. And Salim Halali, another great musician from Algeria. But the colonial era actually came to an end with the rise of anti-Semitism. There was a form of colonial anti-Semitism that people don’t really talk about very much. But for instance, the colonial powers were very happy to exploit the Jews for their talents, their skills, their languages. But they didn’t really accept them. And except in Algeria, they didn’t give them citizenship. In Algeria, the Jews actually did acquire French citizenship. But that created another problem, which is that the white settlers in Algeria or the pieds-noirs resented the Jews because they had French citizenship. And of course, the Muslims resented them because the Muslims did not have French citizenship.
And Edouard Drumont was the parliamentary representative for Algiers. He was a virulent anti-Semite. He led the campaign against Dreyfus in France, and he was the author of this tract, “La France juive” and he incited a huge amount of anti-Semitism in Algeria. And of course, the peak of anti-Semitism was reached during World War II when the pro-Nazi Vichy regimes were established in North Africa. And they began to implement really the first steps towards the final solution. There was another form of anti-Semitism that arose at this time. If you heard Professor Stillman yesterday, he traced the advent of Western anti-Semitism, which came in the form of blood libels into the Middle East. And then after that, the protocols of the elders of Zion became very popular and was translated into Arabic in 1925. Then we had Nazi anti-Semitism that again became very influential in the Middle East and inspired some of the Arab nationalist parties that began to emerge in the 1930s. And this is the emblem of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which may remind you of something. And this party actually still exists today in Lebanon and Syria. And these nationalist parties wanted independence for the Arabs but at the exclusion of anyone who was not Arab and even not Muslim. And so minorities like the Jews were gradually kind of shunted to the margins and eventually expelled. And there was another form of anti-Semitism that arose at this time, and that was the anti-Semitism of Islamism. Now, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt.
And he too was inspired by Nazism. And what’s so interesting about the Muslim Brotherhood is that they wanted to reestablish the Caliphate, which had come to an end with the end of the Ottoman Empire. And to them, the Jews were the very epitome of evil because the Jews represented everything they hated most. They represented modernity, and change, and women’s rights, and minority rights, and they wanted the Jews to be put back in their place as dhimmis. And they incited a lot of violence against the Jews and the Copts in the 1930s. They were the sort of grandfather movement for all these Islamist groups that you see today, like Hamas, like al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, ISIS, et cetera. And their legacy is still very much, their anti-Semitic legacy is still very much with us today. There was a three-way alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Germans, who financed many of the activities, and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. He was an anti-Semite before he was an anti-Zionist. He married anti-Jewish verses from the Koran with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Jews. And his activities were also financed by the Germans. “Mein Kampf” was translated in Iraq. Well, several editions were produced. One of the earlier ones was published in Iraq. And of course, all this had quite an effect. In 1939, Haj Amin al-Husseini found refuge in Iraq where he lived for two years and he incited against the Jews of Iraq for the two years that he lived there. He backed a pro-Nazi coup in April 1939. The coup was unsuccessful because the British came in and defeated the pro-Nazi government. The Mufti was sent into exile, ended up in Berlin as Hitler’s guest. And there he had his famous meeting in November 1941, and he asked for permission to exterminate the Jews in his sphere of influence.
But before he got to Berlin, he’d incited a terrible pogrom, which I think you’ve probably heard about, called the Farhud, which means forced dispossession. The Jews of Iraq had never experienced anything like it. At least 180 Jews were murdered. There was terrible rape, terrible looting. And many survivors of the Farhud actually were reminded of it by the 7th of October, which was almost a carbon copy of this event. And actually this event, the Farhud, sounded the death knell for the Jews of Iraq because within 10 years they had almost all left fearing another Farhud. So the Holocaust actually had quite an impact on Jews from the Arab world, something that isn’t very well known. The Nazis were in control of Tunisia for six months in 1942. And some Jews in Libya were sent to Bergen-Belsen. And here you see them returning at the end of the war. The big question is what came first, anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism? As you can see from this picture, which is of a pogrom that took place in Fez, in Morocco in 1912. Obviously, there were antisemitic riots, and massacres, and episodes well before this creation of Israel. And the Farhud I mentioned occurred seven years before the creation of Israel. And when you look at the plight of other minorities in the Middle East and North Africa, for instance, the Yazidis, the Copts, the Assyrian Christians, the Armenians, all these people did suffer persecution, and yet they had no Israel of their own. So fast forward to 1948, Israel is declared, and two days later, the New York Times ran this headline, “Jews in Grave Danger in All Moslem Lands. Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia Face the Wrath of Their Foes.”
And this article was warning about certain measures that the Arab states were going to take against their own Jewish citizens. And remember, these Jews had nothing to do with the conflict in Palestine. They were non-competent and they were not even Israeli. But the Arab League declared war against Israel, as we know. The first, the Arab War of Independence. Sorry, the First War of Independence, the Israeli, sorry, the 1948 War of Independence. And they drafted a law which actually discriminated against their Jewish citizens, and they considered that all their Jewish citizens were members of the Jewish minority of the state of Palestine. This is absolutely key because that meant that if you were a Jew, you were considered to be an enemy alien, even though you were not an Israeli. And Zionism became a criminal offence. And therefore, you could be arrested, you could be tried, and you could even be executed for Zionism. The problem was how do you define Zionism? Was it being in possession of a tallit, a prayer shawl, with a Magen David on it? You know, and sometimes the accusations were absolutely absurd. If you were smoking, you could be arrested for sending secret smoke signals to the Zionists. There was a backdrop of violence in many countries, and riots broke out in Bahrain, in Syria. And the threat of violence was also very real.
And these Jews that lived in Arab countries were effectively hostages to the first Arab-Israeli war, pressure built up to such an extent that Israel decided to mount rescue missions. And this picture shows you the Jews of Yemen who were airlifted to Israel and on eagle’s wings, or I think it was called Magic Carpet. And these Jews actually were not afraid when they saw the plane. They were not afraid to board it because they thought God himself had sent the plane to take them to Israel. 'Cause they’d read it in the previous weeks parashah. Jews in Iraq were also hostages, were not allowed to leave, except that pressure built up to such an extent that the Iraqi government decided to allow them to leave legally for one year between 1950 and 1951. But they were issued with this document, which was Laissez Passer. And on the left-hand side, you see a stamp that says “One way, no return.” So it was a de facto expulsion, you’re not allowed to come back. And we find the same thing happened in Egypt. And in particular in 1956 after Suez, Jews were also expelled. Not only those of British and French nationality but even those of Egyptian nationality. They too were issued with Laissez Passers, which said “One way, no return.” Of course, all this was accompanied by mass dispossession. Jews had to leave their property, their businesses, their homes, their synagogues behind. And some Jews in Egypt were very wealthy and they left substantial mansions. For instance, this one here, which became the Swiss ambassadors’ residents. And it is astonishing how many ambassadors’ residences in Egypt were once owned by Jews. For instance, the Russian, the Pakistani, the South Korean, the German, the Canadian, the Dutch embassies, sort of our ambassadors residences, not embassies. And Tahrir Square, this is a list of all the Jewish-owned properties surrounding the main square in Cairo. So what happened to these Jews?
Well, they’re so desperate to leave, most of them, that 650,000 went to Israel, 200,000 went elsewhere to the West. But the ones that went to Israel basically doubled the population overnight. And Israel was a very poor country at the time and didn’t have the resources, didn’t have the accommodation, the jobs, or even the food for these people. And so they were put in tent camps or ma'abarot. And these ma'abarots slowly turned into towns and cities. And many cities, like for instance, Darot, started life as a tent camp. And the conditions were extremely tough. It was very, very difficult for the newcomers. This is a wedding invitation of a couple who got married in a hut, in a tent camp. But what happened to those Jews who stayed on? Well, there was a small remnant who stayed in Iraq, about 3000 Jews. Now, these, of course, were not Zionists otherwise they would’ve left earlier, but they actually had to endure a reign of terror towards the end of the 1960s. There were public hangings in the main square in Baghdad. The Jews were not allowed to leave. Eventually, they were smuggled out. Most of these Jews were smuggled out by the Kurds through Northern Iraq and over the border into Iran. And I’ve got relatives who actually made that journey. But there is a sort of silver lining to this story. And in fact, most Jews would agree that it was a blessing that they were displaced from the Arab world. And some of them have done extremely well.
Like for instance, Yuval Noah Harari, the author of “Sapiens”. Bernard Henri Levy, well, Harari was from a family from Lebanon, Bernard Henri Levy born in Algeria, Claudia Roden, born in Egypt, She’s a famous cookery writer. Patrick Drahi, a great philanthropist in France. Claude Tannoudji was a Nobel Prize winner, originally from Morocco. And Jerry Seinfeld, who’s wife, no, his mother I think came from Syria. So it is a happy ending. However, I think the whole story is so important to understanding the Middle East today. It is the missing piece of the puzzle. And there is a need for the Jewish refugees to be recognised, their issue to be recognised as an injustice. And they need to be taken into account in any peace process. I mean, this was ethnic cleansing, not to put too fine a point on it. And in the light of the 7th of October, I think we can agree that Hamas just wanted to finish the job by destroying the only sort of concentration of Jews still left in the Middle East. So on that note, I will finish. I’m very happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much.
Q&A and Comments:
[Host] So Stewart says, as of 2017, according to the Economist, no Arab country has gone to the lengths of Morocco to revive its Jewish heritage. The country has restored 110 synagogues and has the Arab world’s only Jewish museum. More than 50,000 Israelis visit Morocco annually.
Yeah, all that is absolutely true. And we should be grateful to the king of Morocco who’s invested so much into Jewish heritage. But the Jewish population of Morocco is only 1% of what it was. And it recedes year by year as the young people leave. So it’s one thing to restore a Jewish heritage. And of course, it’s very useful to have that because it attracts tourism. And as you say, 50,000 Israelis visit Morocco every year, or they did before the 7th of October. But I think we need to remember that Morocco is sitting on a volcano. The king has a lot of opposition. The Islamist party used to be the biggest party in the Moroccan parliament. And in the 1970s, there were several attempts to get rid of the monarchy. So I think if the king goes, you know, so do the Jews. So it’s a bit of a precarious situation. Aubrey Lowenstein, we were taken to the synagogue in Alexandria several years ago, just by sheer luck, our taxi driver’s father used to be a cleaner at the synagogue, and he used to accompany his father onto the synagogue as a little boy. He called the synagogue and they let us in.
The old lady who took us in was over 90 and told us there were nine remaining Jews left. And she was the youngest. They all lived within the synagogue compound and were so old and frail, I would imagine they’d all be dead by now. We could not get over how beautiful the synagogue was, so beautifully and meticulously maintained. These old people could not possibly keep the synagogue up, physically or financially. Well, actually, the community in Alexandria was very clever. And they actually sold off all their synagogues except for this one. And I think one other. And therefore, they managed to accumulate enough funds to maintain the communal property. But of course, you are right, there won’t be many Jews left. I think the total number in the whole of Egypt is about 9, 8, 8, well, it’s under 10 anyway, so there is really no community left. Sorry, Jas, can’t scroll down for some reason.
Q - [Host] Don’t worry. So Michael says, did the Swiss or somebody else compensate the Zuckerman’s for the Swiss ambassador’s house in Cairo?
A - I don’t think it was up to the Swiss to, I don’t know, actually. I really don’t know that. I would think it is probably down to the Egyptian government to compensate the Zuckerman’s because they actually seized it, and they probably let the Swiss move in. So maybe it had nothing to do with, you know, the Swiss didn’t owe anything to the Zuckerman’s. It was really the Egyptian government. How could the philanthropists have had enough money to help others if forced to leave with nothing? Oh, you mean people like Patrick Drahi? Well, he became very successful in France. He made enough money to become a philanthropist. So, I mean, but you do get these stories, you know, that people did leave with nothing and yet managed to make money. You know, you could think of several examples. There’s a lovely story of an Egyptian Jew who asked us to lay a wreath on Nasser’s tomb, Nasser being the president who was responsible for the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews.
And he laid these flowers on Nasser’s tomb with a note that said, thank you Nasser for expelling me because if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t now be a millionaire. But of course, that’s the exception to the rule. There aren’t that many people who made a lot of money after. And in fact, it was a terrible experience for a lot of families. Families were broken, many heads of families in particular actually died soon after their uprooting. This is a sort of documented fact. So, you know, it wasn’t all plain sailing at all. Gerald Arbus says, if you visit the old town of Essaouira, a number of houses with old locks on the door, they claim that Jews lived there before and they were giving descendants still a period of time to reclaim the house before the locks were to be removed. Yes, I’ve heard that, in Morocco, I’ve heard that whole streets are sort of locked up waiting for their Jews to return. And it’s a sort of strange situation because all this property is sort of frozen, you know, and until a solution is found, you know, and Jews are compensated or you know, their properties restituted to them, all this property will probably remain locked up. Sorry, my family’s story. Is that what you’re asking? Well, my family are from Iraq, actually, they left as refugees in 1950. They came to Britain, whereas 95% of the Jews of Iraq actually went to Israel where they are now the third-largest community of Jews in Israel. And they’re very well integrated, pretty successful. Sorry, Monica, many Jews. Sorry, I can’t quite read this Jas?
[Host] Yeah, I’m here, sorry, I’m confused where you’re up to. ‘Cause I’m very-
Monica Goodwin, many Jews.
[Host] I don’t have that. I’ve just got love that you are bringing attention to this part of history.
Oh gosh, yeah. Can’t see that.
[Host] Oh, here we go. Many Jews guaranteed fellow Jewish Exodus.
Oh, right, yes. I think that’s a reference to the fact that for instance, Jews who came to Britain were asked, were told to produce a letter of guarantee from a relative or someone who would vouch for their sort of financial, what do you call it, independence, if you like. You know, that they had enough money to survive and not be a burden on the state. So that was actually, certainly the British government insisted on that sort of thing. I know we had to vouch for some who people left Iraq in 1970, say they weren’t going to be a burden on the state. Sorry, what comes after Monica?
Q - [Host] So Ron says, thank you. How can this story be more widely told? Does Israel try to spread this information to promote a greater understanding?
A - Well, my organisation Harif is trying very hard to spread the story. We’ve been going for nearly 20 years trying to raise awareness of the story. I’m afraid Israel has woken up very late to the importance of this story. But I would ask you all to do your bit actually to, you know, to raise awareness that there is this other set of refugees, actually more numerous than the Palestinian refugees and still waiting, you know, to be acknowledged. And, you know, it is just so important. I’m afraid Israel for a long time treated the Jews as returning to their ancestral homeland as Zionists and not as refugees seeking a haven. And that’s been the problem. I mean, they did it for the best of motives. You know, they didn’t want to drive a wedge between different communities. They wanted people not to look to the past, but to, you know, to rebuild their lives in Israel. And I can see why they didn’t want this story told. But we can now see with the amount of misinformation that that is, you know, so prevalent all over the world, you know, that people think that Jews are white colonists from Europe, you know, they don’t realise that they were refugees. You know, I mean, it’s so important to tell this story in my view. But, you know, there is something you can do. And you know, only yesterday I sort of put out a plea for people to write letters to their MPs or their parliamentary representatives drawing attention to the Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Sorry, what’s next?
[Host] So you’ve got a couple of lovely comments. Thank you very much for an interesting talk. Thank you for all your interesting educational talks, have learned so much. Then another one, thank you for a beautiful, informative lecture. I love your voice. It makes it easy for us, not-native speakers to understand even better.
Thank you. I thought it was going to say it sends me to sleep or something like that.
[Host] No, not at all. And then Yona says what you just now said about the three, the king of Morocco in his faction doing anything to further its view of Jews, e.g. in terms of early and middle education.
Well, yeah, he is been very good about Holocaust education, which is now being taught in schools. You know, I think that is great. And Morocco, you know, is one of the signatories of the Abraham Accords, you know, in a way they are a model for other Arab countries to follow. But I have to say this about popular feeling in Morocco is still very anti-Jewish. You know, most people, obviously, take the side of the Palestinians. There is a quite a sort of historical tradition of anti-Semitism. And I did mention events like the Fez Pogrom of 1912. You know, that was not a rare occurrence in Morocco. In fact, Morocco has the worst record for pogroms, anti-Jewish pogroms. So, you know, while the king is still around, yes, things are hopeful, things are positive, he’s made changes. He’s very brave in many ways to be, you know, bucking the trend. You know, he has tried to educate people about the Holocaust. I wish he would also educate people about the Exodus of Jews, because of course, this is passed over in silence. You know, it’s all kind of assumed that the Jews left of their own free will and not as a result of any kind of violence or persecution.
Q - [Host] The next one is Serena, in the view of the Farhud, is it true that October the seventh was the worst massacre since the Holocaust?
A - Well, I think, as I said, those who survived the Farhud had a sense of deja vu when October the seventh occurred, because it’s a classic Arab pogrom, you know, in the sense that the same sort of mutilation, rape, you know, looting burning, you know. And not just the Farhud, I mean, I’ve spoken to people from Algeria and they say, well, when they had episodes like this, it was the same sort of modus operandi. That if you look at accounts of the Hebron pogrom of 1929 in Palestine, also same sort of thing, you know, the same way of going about the pogrom, if you like, the murders, and the mutilation, and the rapes. So, you know, there is a pattern, you know, I mean, some people say, oh, well, it’s just what Jews experienced in Eastern Europe. And it’s quite possible as well. But I mean, there is a sort of Arab tradition of pogroms and the Farhud is one and the 7th of October is just the latest example. Yeah.
[Host] The next one I think are just comments. But let me have a look. So it says, I’ve just lost it. Rhonda says, many years ago we went to the old synagogue in Cairo, we had to dodge sewerage and we gingerly walked on bricks. Thankfully, we were rewarded and no one fell in. The synagogue was special to visit. Upon the visit, I was taken by the smiles and the humour. Thank you for a fantastic lecture.
Oh, thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, there are a few synagogues in Cairo. Some of them look absolutely amazing and some of them have been restored, I think most recently, the Benezra Synagogue, which is in Old Cairo. And that was where the Geniza was found, you know, the Cairo Geniza. And that, apparently, you know, it’s one of the newly renovated synagogues in Cairo.
Q - [Host] Phil says, to what extent were North African Jews affected by the Holocaust under the Vichy government?
A - Well, yes. I mean, this is pretty much unknown. I did give a lecture just on that subject, actually, I think it was the very first lecture I gave to Lockdown University. So apart from the Farhud, which actually was caused by Nazi incitement, you know, insightful broadcasts on radio Berlin preceded the Farhud. And of course, the involvement of the Mufti and the pro-Nazis, that was definitely a Holocaust event. Apart from that, the Vichy French were in power in Algeria, in Tunisia, and in Morocco during the war, or from 1940 onwards. And they began implementing what was known as the Statut des Juifs, which were a series of anti-Jewish laws. In Algeria, the Jews were actually deprived of their French citizenship and the Vichy French started drawing up inventories of Jewish property with a view of sort of confiscating it. But they never got that far. In Tunisia, the Nazis actually occupied the country for six months from November 1942. And they sent about 5,000 Jewish men to labour camps. And there were rumours that there were going to set up gas chambers as well, because the person in charge of the Nazi occupation of Tunisia was none other than Walter Rauff, who was the inventor of the gas van and responsible for hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered in Eastern Europe.
But thankfully, it didn’t happen because the Allies managed to conquer North Africa and push the Nazis back. In Libya, the Italian fascists were in power, and they brought in racist laws as early as 1938. Libya had several rather nasty camps. There was a camp called Giado, where 2000 Libyan Jews were sent, and about a quarter of them died of starvation and of disease. So that wasn’t very, very pleasant. They had a terrible time of it. The Libyan Jews, and as I mentioned, some Libyan Jews of British nationality were actually deported to Bergen-Belsen, although I don’t think many of, they were mostly used as in prisoner swaps. Not that many of them seemed to have died. They mostly survived. But obviously, the conditions were terrible in Bergen-Belsen. Morocco is an interesting case because there is this myth that the Moroccan king saved the Jews and prevented them from being deported. But actually, there was never a plan to deport the Jews. And one thing that’s not well known is there were labour camps on Moroccan soil. And Jews, thousands of Jews were interned in some of these camps. Again, the conditions were terrible. They were mostly European Jews but some Moroccan Jews did end up in these camps. But that’s something that’s not very well known.
[Host] Amazing. So we’ve got time for one more question.
[Lyn] Yeah.
Q - [Host] And the last question is, how does one get in touch with Harif?
A - Harif, yeah, H-A-R-I-F. So that’s my organisation, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. We have a website, which is www.harif, H-A-R-I-F, .org. We run regular Zooms, Zoom events, so you know, wherever you might be in the world, you can subscribe to our mailing list, and join our events, and it’s all for free. Also have a blog called Point of No Return, which has thousands of articles and is updated daily. And you can get to that by clicking on news on the Harif website. And please do subscribe to that too. And thank you very much indeed for all your questions and for listening.