Lyn Julius
The Extinction of Jewish Life in the Arab World

Lyn Julius | The Extinction of Jewish Life in the Arab World | 07.01.21

- Morning, Judy. Morning, Lyn How are you?

• Yes, everything’s fine. How are things?

• Good, thank you. Busy, working.

• Yes. Oh gosh. Dunno how you do it.

• I’m hoping to come to England soon, to fly to England soon.

• Excellent, yeah.

• Yeah.

• It would be lovely to meet.

• Absolutely, yeah. I look forward to that. So, I’m waiting for the embassy to be open so that I can renew my American visa.

• Right, gosh.

• See, yeah. We’re off to Israel actually on Sunday, having moved mountains to get there.

• Oh, fantastic.

• Yeah, I have-

• So…

• Yeah.

• Do you have to go into quarantine in Israel?

• No, we just have to wait for our test results, which should take a day or two, so it’s not too bad. And we’re only going because we’ve got children there. Otherwise they wouldn’t let us in. But we had to produce mountains of paperwork and I had both boys, both of my sons queuing up at different offices this morning at the crack of dawn. But we managed it in the end.

• Well, lots, a lots look forward to.

• Yeah. I can’t wait, can’t wait.

• Well, thank you very, very much for joining us today, and we are looking forward to hearing about the extinction of Jewish life in the Arab world.

• Great, okay. Well, thank you very much, Wendy.

• Good, over to you. Thanks, and I’ll take good morning or good evening or good afternoon to everybody all over the world. For me, good morning.

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

• Okay. Right. Well, good afternoon as it’s afternoon in London, and thank you very much for inviting me, Wendy, and thank you Judy, and thank you Trudy. As Wendy said, the subject today is the extinction of Jewish life in the Arab world. Now, this is a neglected aspect of Jewish history. I feel that it’s been ignored, falsified, and distorted. Up until the 17th century, there were more Jews in what is now the Arab world than in Europe. Arab cities had significant proportions of Jews, and 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. I’ll just share my screen now. Okay.

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 show the root causes of the Exodus go much deeper and go back, well, before 1948. 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 East and North African Jews known as MENA Jews form about half the population of Israel. So this is the region I will be talking about, from Morocco in the far west to Yemen in the far east or southeast. First of all, 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, Spain. After the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, Sephardim fled west to northern Europe to Holland, Hamburg, and England. They are the Western Sephardim. Others went south and east and joined existing communities around the Mediterranean basin and in the Levant, they are the Eastern Sephardim. Mizrahim refers to Jews who had never left the Middle East. It is a recent Hebrew term, meaning Easterners, and usually 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 religious law Halakah, in which case all non-Ashkenazi Jews are Sephardi. Now that I have thoroughly 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. The numbers of Assyrian Christians have gone down from a million and a half to about 200,000. The numbers of Jews have declined more dramatically than the numbers of European Jews during World War II, without of course the same tragic consequences. The Exodus of the MENA Jews did not end in genocide. Unlike in Europe, most of the Jews did get out alive, but it has to be said that hundreds did die, usually as a result of mob violence.

This chart shows you how the numbers in 1948 and today compare. You will see that communities which had hundreds of thousands, or tens of thousands of Jews in 1948. Well, you can now count them on the fingers of one or two hands, and you’ll note that some communities are completely extinct, such as in Algeria and in Libya. And we are pretty close to extinction in Yemen and in Iraq. I’ve included the Jews of Iran, even though Iran is not an Arab country. There was a modern Exodus from that country too. But it took place 30 years after the main Exodus from Arab countries. And that was when the Shah of Iran was overthrown, and he was replaced with the Islamic Republic of Iraq, of Iran, sorry, in 1979.

From a hundred thousand Jews in Iran, the numbers have gone down to 8,000 or even fewer. The other thing you notice about these communities is how very old they are. They go back to the first, second or third centuries before the common era. And well before there were any Arabs a thousand years before Islam. And the oldest community is the 6th Century community of the Jews of Iraq. Now, the Jews were one of a patchwork of indigenous peoples, together with Berbers, Copts, Yazidis, Assyrians, Zoroastrians, all were subjugated by the Arab conquest. So to talk about Jews of the Arab world is in a way to fall into a semantic trap. It’s more accurate to talk about Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.

So these Jews really go back to biblical times. And the region has almost as much biblical history as the land of Israel itself. In fact, the Jews of Iraq do not call themselves Jews of Iraq. They are Babylonian Jews because the community has its roots in the Babylonian exile. When King Nebuchadnezzar took Jews from Jerusalem as captive slaves. And of course they sat down by the rivers of Babylon and wept for Zion. And in fact, many of them did return to Jerusalem 70 years later when King Cyrus allowed them to do so. But many also chose to stay, and they stayed in continuous residence in that part of the world up until about 50 years ago. Some, 17 biblical figures are buried in the region, and five biblical prophets. And one of those is the prophet Ezekiel.

Now Ezekiel’s Tomb is situated about two hours south of Baghdad. When there was a Jewish community in Iraq, it was an extremely popular pilgrimage site. And about 5,000 Jews would come and visit around the time of Shavuot, and also between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And on the left you see a picture of the scribes who would stand outside the shrine and write down blessings or prayers for the visiting pilgrims. And on the right you see a detail of the Hebrew inscriptions that surround the actual burial chamber. Now, as far as we know, those inscriptions are still there, but they might well be removed sometime soon because slowly but surely, the Jewish character of this place has been changed. And look at it now.

The Jewish shrine has been completely dwarfed by this vast Shiite Mosque. And the Shiites don’t talk about Ezekiel anymore. They talk about some other prophet from the Koran. If a Jew were to turn up and say he wanted to visit the tomb of Ezekiel, the chances are he wouldn’t be allowed in. And this in a way, is what’s happened to Jewish heritage across the region. It’s been converted to other purposes, or it’s been allowed to decay or crumble to nothingness so that people will say that Jews never even lived in this region. In fact, this is a synagogue.

This is the Shamash synagogue in Baghdad, which is now a shop. These are the tower blocks that were built on the site of the Jewish cemetery in Tripoli in Libya. The shrine of Elijah, the prophet at Jobar just outside Damascus in Syria, has been flattened, as you can see in the Syrian civil War. Now, some synagogues have actually been restored. For instance, the Magen Avraham synagogue in Beirut, Lebanon has been restored to its former glory, and the restoration was paid for by expatriate Lebanese Jews. But the synagogue has never actually been opened since the restoration was complete. The community does not exist anymore. And one wonders why, really, this renovation work was done.

I think it is simply to show that Lebanon once was a pluralistic society incorporating many different religions and sects. The Nebi Daniel Synagogue in Alexandria Egypt was recently the subject of renovation. And in fact, the government spent $4 million renovating this synagogue, which is actually the largest synagogue in the Middle East. And here you see the assembled officials who were there for the inauguration in December, 2019. Now, the one thing that’s remarkable about this is there are no Jews present, or rather, I think there were three Jews who live, you know, part of the local community and they probably represent about 50% of the community. But apart from that, this was a very official affair hosted by the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism in Egypt. So I think the message they’re trying to give really is they’re not really interested in Jews, they’re not interested in reviving this synagogue as the centre of Jewish life. They’re only interested in tourism.

In fact, Jews who actually were from Egypt and were born in Alexandria, organised their own inauguration in February of last year, just before the Coronavirus crisis hit. 180 of them turned up and they had a very emotional visit. They had a service in the synagogue. But it’s probably the first and last time this synagogue will ever be, will ever echo to Jewish prayers. The exception to this is Israeli in Morocco, where the king has actually invested a great deal of money in preserving Jewish sites, restoring Jewish synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. And here you see Andrew Azoulay, who is the advisor, the Jewish advisor to the King of Morocco. And he is being photographed at the inauguration of Bayt Dakira in Essaouira in Morocco.

Now, this is a museum, but it was a synagogue. And again, this was open to much fanfare just before the Coronavirus crisis hit. Now, the name of this museum, Bayt Dakira tells you quite a lot ‘cause Dakira means memory. And it is a frank admission that the Jewish community in Morocco really is becoming just a memory. And despite strenuous efforts to revive, or to predict a revival of the Moroccan Jewish community it’ll 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. And the numbers stand at about 1,500 Jews at the moment. Now, the Jewish presence has all been erased with the exception of these few synagogues, which I showed you.

But there’s another problem which we’re now faced with, and that is that Arab states want to hang on to their Jewish heritage, to what Jewish heritage they have, and they treat it as part of their own national heritage. So this is a sample of a collection of Jewish documents and artefacts that were actually discovered in a flooded basement by the Americans in 2003. And this collection of, of Jewish documents was, was actually stolen by Saddam Hussein from synagogues and community offices and stored in the basement of this building. It was the Secret police headquarters.

The Americans dropped a bomb on the building. The bomb did not explode, but it burst the water system and flooded the basement and including all the documents. So feeling rather guilty, the Americans decided to ship this whole collection of thousands of documents to America to be restored. And this is where the collection is today, only the Iraqis want it back. They say this is their heritage. And this is something which we are up against at the moment, that Jewish heritage is really being claimed as part of national heritage. Another example is the communal records in Egypt, the birth, circumcision, marriage and death records are inaccessible to Egyptian Jews, who now obviously live outside Egypt. And there is an organisation which has been trying for about 15 years to try and gain access to these records without much success.

So let’s look at the relationship between Muslims and Jews during the 14th centuries that they lived side by side. Because Jews had been in this region for such a very long time. They influenced the environment and in turn, the environment influenced them, leading to a kind of spiritual and cultural symbiosis. And here you see Muslims and Jews praying for rain in Morocco. And this is really something quite unique. There were other forms of symbiosis. I mean, one was the language that Jews spoke, Judeo-Arabic, which, which was actually spoken by more Jews than any other language. And what’s more remarkable is that the language was used for religious scholarship and later translated to Hebrew. It’s something which didn’t happen in the Ashkenazi world. Yiddish was not used to write sacred commentaries or texts.

And certainly Maimonides wrote his commentaries in Judeo-Arabic for the most part. So the golden age, I mean, is this the foremost example of the Muslim Jewish symbiosis. And it has been projected as an example of cultural interaction and a golden age, if you like, in mediaeval Spain under Muslim rule. And it’s also held up as a symbol of Muslim tolerance of Jews and Christians. Some people even think of it as a multi-faith utopia. But this is probably to impose 20th century values on an era where these values did not apply. But without doubt, the period from the 10th to the mid 12th century was a unique age of intellectual brilliance. Royal advisors like Schmo Hakit Hanagi, philosophers like Bakia Ibn Bacuda, poets like Ibn Gabi Rhoel, Yehuda Yalevi, Moshe Ben Ezra, thrived. Courtiers, clustered around, Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, who was a physician and diplomat at the court of the 10th century Khalif, Abdul Rakman.

This was an age where Jews often combined Torah scholarship with professions such as medicine. And that was the hallmark of the Sephardim who managed to contribute to society at large while maintaining their distinct religious identity. The greatest of all religious scholars was Maimonides who became physician to Saladin, Sultan of Egypt. And so, of course, all this is attributed to the tolerance of Muslim Spain. But in fact, this period was short-lived and Spain broke up into , or warring principalities. People who promote the myth of Islamic tolerance usually failed 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 life was always insecure.

And this was certainly the case for Maimonedes, whose family was forced to flee Córdoba by Muslim fundamentalists, the Al Mohas, Indeed Maimonedes, was thought to briefly converted to Islam, but he did find refuge in another corner of the Muslim world, Egypt. And he became physician to the Sultan of Egypt, Saladin. Another myth is that this kind of intellectual brilliance did not exist in Christian Spain, but actually it did. And in fact, Christian kings were great patrons of science, art and philosophy. There was a team of translators in the city of Toledo, which was set up by an archbishop called Archbishop Raimundo. And he led this team and they consisted of Arabic speaking Christians, Jews, teachers from the Muslim madrassas and monks. And they translated many works usually from Arabic, Jewish and Greek into Latin and later Spanish. And the work was continued under the Christian King, Alfonso the 10th of Castile, known as 'the wise’.

But symbiosis is not the same as coexistence, which assumes that an equality in the relationship, Jews and Christians were allowed to practise their religion, but they were not equal. And they needed to be reminded of their failure to convert to the ultimate religion because they had a special status. The Dhimmi status. And the Dhimmi status meant that at times they had to wear special distinguishing clothing. They could not build synagogues higher than mosques. They were unequal under the law. They didn’t have the same rights as Muslims. They had to pay a special tax. And this was actually the essence of being a Dhimmi. And to be a Dhimmi you had to subcontract your right to self-defense to the rule of the day. In return for this tax, the ruler had to protect you. The question is protect you from what?

And I think one has to assume that there was always a possibility of mob violence directed against the Jews. And although the Dhimmi rules were not always uniformly applied, life was quite precarious, and you never knew what the future would bring. So I will read you a little extract from my book, if I may. My book, ‘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 performed certain necessary economic functions like money lending and associated tasks like metalworking, which were deemed reprehensible or unlucky by the non-Jewish majority. The Jews were given the most menial of tasks.

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 sub-cast of Jews. In Egypt today, the Christian are 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 abased under Muslim rule that a contingent of Ashkenazi followers of the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi seeking refuge in Jerusalem in 1700, refused to put up with a humiliation suffered by the Sephardim. ‘The Arabs behave as 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 Marks. Turks, Arabs, and Moors, are the masters in every respect. To be a Dhimmi was to be continually reminded of Islam’s supremacy over Judaism and Christianity.

Of course, Jews performed an essential function as commercial go-betweens and could and did rise to lofty positions as courtiers, serafs, 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 here he is, Haim Farhi. You see his nose is missing and his eye has a patch on it, and apparently his ears are also missing. So this was the situation in the 19th century, which was actually the nadir, I think, of Jewish life, certainly in the Ottoman Empire.

But there soon occurred a complete revolution, and it was really driven by the European powers, the Western powers, who wanted to increase their influence in the Middle East and North Africa. And these European powers wanted equal rights for the minorities, principally the Christian minority. And they put pressure on the Ottoman Empire. And in 1856, the Dhimmi rules were actually abrogated. Now this was certainly the case in the Ottoman Empire, but the Ottoman Empire did not extend as far as Morocco, for instance, where the Dhimmi rules stayed in place until 1912. And the Ottoman Empire did not control Yemen.

The Dhimmi rules there stayed in place up until, well, well into the 20th century. And in Iran also, which was an outside Ottoman control, the Dhimmi rules remained until 1925, when the first Shah took power. So this revolution, really, was helped along by a group of well-meaning French Jews who were enjoying the fruits of emancipation in France and wanted to help their brethren, mainly in Muslim lands. Now, the Jews in Muslim countries had up until then only received a religious education in the Talmud Torah. But this group of French Jews set up the Alliance Israeli Universal, which was a network of 200 or more schools across the Muslim world, but also in the Balkans.

And this network of schools would have a revolutionary effect because for the first time, these Jews were being given a Western education, which would equip them for the modern era. And girls were educated for the first time, which was extremely important. So these Jews were taught science, they were taught maths, and they were taught languages. So when the colonial powers established their mandates and their protectorates, a Jewish middle class had begun to emerge and would become the backbone of these colonial administrations. Jews became very prominent in trade, in banking. They were great entrepreneurs, and they were the interface with Europe and the West. And they introduced things like the cinema, the railways, and many things. And in the early 20th century, there was a Jewish finance minister in Iraq, called, Sir Sassoon Eskell. And there was also one in Egypt called Cattaui Pasha. And Jews took an important part in running the country under the British mandate in Iraq.

For instance, they were in charge of the postal service, the transport service. And as I say, they were very prem prominent in trade and banking. But this is usually the era that Jews who were born in Arab countries remember best. And to them, they look back with nostalgia at this era because life was so much more comfortable, you know. And they had servants and the food tasted better and everything was was great. But in fact, it was a very short, very brief era. It lasted maybe from the beginning of the 20th century up until the 1940s. Jews were very prominent in the arts during this era. And here you see some examples of famous musicians and actors or actresses.

Top right is a famous actress, stage name, Camelia. And I’ve got her on the front cover of my book. And her real name was Liliane Levy Cohen. And she made about 30 films in the space of about three years in Egypt, which was really the Hollywood of the Middle East. Sadly, she died very young. She was killed in a plane crash. And rumour had it that King Faruk, sort of, caused the crash because it was convenient to get rid of her. But that’s probably just a conspiracy theory. Bottom left, you see Layla Murad, who was really the diva of the Egyptian cinema and a great singer. And people to this day still, you know, play her music, but they have no idea that she was Jewish. Al Kuwaiti brothers, famous musicians in Iraq, where almost all the musicians were Jewish.

Of 250 musicians in the Baghdad radio orchestra, only three were Muslim. And that was not because the Jews were any better at playing music, it was because a Muslim, an Imam had declared a ban on Muslim’s learning or playing music. But all this changed quite soon with the rise of antisemitism. Now, antisemitism took several forms. One was colonial anti-Semitism, which isn’t really talked about very much. But in Algeria for instance, there was a large population of white settlers who were virulently anti-Semitic, and there were anti-Semitic because the Jews in Algeria had actually been given French citizenship. And there were certain incidents in the 19th century against the Jews. There was a great deal of incitement against them.

In fact, the Jews were really caught between two stools. They were caught between this white population who resented them for having French citizenship and the Muslim population who, you know, who resented the Jews because they were no longer Dhimmis and no longer behaving as Dhimmis. And in fact there was simmering resentment between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world because the Jews had done so well under the colonial administration, and they were so far ahead of the Muslims in terms of education and achievement. And this, I do believe is one of the factors behind the conflict we see today in the Middle East, The pamphlet or manifesto you see on your screen, ‘La France Juive’, was written by Drumont, who was actually the MP, the representative for Algiers.

And he took a leading role in the Dreyfus affair. As you know, Dreyfus was the Jewish captain who was unfairly or wrongly accused of betraying France. Now, the colonial powers, or the French, in this case, did give French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria, but they did not extend French citizenship to the Jews in Tunisia or in Morocco. And in fact, the British did not give citizenship to Jews under their control. Although there was a small number, there were a small number of Jews who did enjoy European citizenship because they rendered services to the European powers, or they were involved in trade, or they were honorary consuls, or something like that. But the vast majority did not have European citizenship.

And in fact, they found themselves increasingly, if you like, betrayed by the European powers, because instead of protecting the minorities, the European started appeasing the majority. And so you got instances where anti-Jewish demonstrations and riots would break out, and the forces of law and order would take hours to turn up and quell the riots. And of course, the ultimate example betrayal by the colonial powers was what happened during World War II when the Vici governments were in place, as I tried to describe in my last lecture. And they began to really put into practise the first stages of the final solution by stripping the Jews of North Africa of their rights. And of course, the worst example, perhaps, of the European powers failing to protect the Jews was the farhud in Iraq in 1941 when the British army was actually at the gates of Baghdad and could easily have entered the city to stop the rioting and the killing.

But they failed to do so because they didn’t want to appear to be interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Another form of antisemitism that arose at this time was that associated with Arab nationalism. In the 1930s, Arab nationalist parties, influenced by Nazism began to emerge. And here you see the emblem of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which may remind you of something. These parties… There was another party called the Bath Party, of course, which still exists today. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party exists in Syria and Lebanon today. And these parties were sort of blood and soil parties that began, really, based on language, a commonality of language and culture. They wanted to establish a pan-Arab state, but they effectively excluded minorities from political life and marginalised them and eventually ushered them towards the exit.

Another form of antisemitism arose at this time, and this was the antisemitism of Islamism, which I talked about in my last lecture. Islamism, we hear a lot about today, we hear about the Islamic movements, Islamist movements, of Al Qaeda, for instance, Islamic State, Hamas, et cetera. But all these groups really have their ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna, the gentleman in the fez. And he was very strongly influenced by Nazism. He admired Hitler. Antisemitism was really at the core of his movement, not only because he was alarmed at what was happening in Palestine and the rising tension between Jews and Muslims.

But because the Muslim Brotherhood saw Jews as the epitome of evil. They hated the Jews because they represented everything that was anathema to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood wanted to reestablish the caliphate that had come to an end with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. But the Jews represented modernity, they represented civil rights, women’s rights, and this the Muslim brotherhood abhorred. And they were prepared to use violence in order to bring about a new world order in which the Jews were reverted back to their Dhimmi status. And during the 1930s, the Muslim Brotherhood did incite riots against the Jews and the Copts in Egypt. The other party in this three-way alliance was of course the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini. Now, Haj Amin Al-Husseini was an anti-Semite before he was an anti-Zionist. And he too began inciting hatred against the Jews all over the Arab world, culminating in the the horrendous massacre I mentioned the farhud in Iraq of 1941.

The third party in this alliance was the German ambassador in Iraq, Fritz Grobba, who was busy intriguing and trying to increase German influence in the region. And he actually paid, he financed the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and also the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti concocted a new sort of ideology, if you like, which drew on European ideas of Jewish power and conspiracy. And this was something quite alien to Islam because under Islam, Jews were defeated. They’d been defeated by Mohamed in the seventh century. They weren’t very important anymore, and they weren’t a threat. But these European ideas penetrated the Middle East, and they made out that the Jews wanted to control the world. The Mufti claimed the Jews not only wanted a homeland in Palestine, but in North Africa as well, and had to be fought at all costs.

In 1939, he found himself exiled in Baghdad in Iraq. He spent two years there, and he never ceased to try and overthrow the pro British government there. The result was in April, 1941, the pro-Nazi coup. The Mufti and his acolytes made an alliance with the Nazis. Although the British army managed to defeat the Iraqis and drive out the Mufti and his acolytes, they’d already laid the groundwork for the terrible massacre I mentioned. The farhud of 1941, in which perhaps 600 Jews died. We will probably never know the truth. The Mufti ended up in Berlin. This is his famous meeting with Hitler, and he made it known that he was quite prepared to exterminate the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa.

This wasn’t just a pragmatic alliance against the colonial powers. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I think the Mufti would’ve gone the whole hog and exterminated every last Jew from the Middle East had the Nazis emerged victorious. The Holocaust, of course, as I explained in my last lecture, did have an impact on Jews in North Africa, the Middle East. And here you see the Tunisian Jews being marched off to labour camps with their pick axes and shovels during the six months that the Nazis controlled Tunisia in 1942. And likewise, the Jews of Libya, about 870 of them were deported to Bergen Belsen towards the end of the war and used in prisoner exchanges. And here you see them coming back in a railway carriage to Tripoli. The question is, what came first, anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism?

I think I’ve given you enough examples of antisemitism predating the state of Israel. Here is an example of a riot or pogrom that occurred in Fez in Morocco, which actually has quite a good reputation, nowadays, for tolerating the Jews. But in fact, if you look at the historical record, they have quite a few incidents, quite a few pogroms, especially towards the end of the 19th century. And if you look at the plight of the other minorities in the Middle East and North Africa, the Copts, the Yazidis, the Assyrians, all these minorities did suffer persecution, and yet they had no Israel of their own. So this points to some kind of dysfunction or intolerance, you know, inability to tolerate difference in Arab/Muslim society.

So fast forward to 1948, the state of Israel is declared. And on the 16th of May, 1948, two days after the state of Israel was declared, this article appeared in the New York Times. It was by a man called Mallory Brown. And it said that the Jews were in grave danger in all Muslim lands. And, in fact, Mallory Brown wrote the following. He said, there are indications that the stage is being set for a tragedy of incalculable proportions. And he cited the text of a draught law by the political committee of the Arab League. Now we have a copy of this document. We don’t know when it was drafted, it did not become law, but individual Arab governments did use it as a blueprint for passing state sanctioned laws against their own Jewish citizens.

And you will see that if you read this law, the law says that all Jewish citizens will be considered as members of the Jewish minority of the state of Palestine. In other words, the Jewish citizens of these states are being scapegoated as enemy aliens. But unlike in World War II, when, say, German or Austrian citizens were interned as enemy aliens, we’re talking about citizens, Jewish citizens who actually had Iraqi or Egyptian or Syrian passports, and they were citizens of their countries. There were not citizens of Israel, but nevertheless, the Arab states began this campaign of discrimination and persecution against their Jewish citizens. So this involved freezing bank accounts and extorting money, and most of all, Zionism would become a crime, which meant that you could be arrested, you could be imprisoned, and you could even be executed for being a Zionism.

But how do you define Zionism? I mean, Jews in Iraq for instance, wore wrist watches, being perhaps, a little more affluent than the general population. And they were accused of sending secret signals to the Zionists. And if you read the wording of the middle paragraph, it actually exonerates people who are anti-Zionist from any kind of discrimination. But how do you define anti-Zionism? And this is the problem. Now, these Jews were considered as hostages to the first Arab-Israeli war. There was a backdrop of rising violence against them. Riots broke out in several Arab countries. Pressure built up to such an extent that these Jews just wanted to leave.

They were absolutely desperate. And so Israel mounted rescue operations to save these Jews. And here you see Yemeni Jews, who, plane were sent to pick them up and take them to Israel. And Airlifts were also organised in Iraq. And the these Jews in Yemen were actually fearless. They got on the plane without fear because they’d read in the previous weeks parasha, God’s words, ‘I bore you on Eagle’s wings and brought you to myself.’ And so they thought God himself had sent these planes to take them to Israel. During the one year that Iraqi Jews were able to leave, they were issued with this document here, which is a laissez passer. And the stamp on the left hand side says, one way, no return.

So these Jews is effectively being expelled. And an even more dramatic expulsion occurred in Egypt in 1956, when some Jews were given barely 24 hours to leave. These Jews were also dispossessed of their property and sent out of the country with just 20 pounds in their pockets. There was a group of very wealthy Jews in Egypt who had residences such as this one here, which became the Swiss Embassy in Cairo. And in fact, it’s astonishing when you consider how many embassies in Cairo used to be Jewish homes. For instance, the Pakistani embassy, the South Korean Embassy, the Swiss Embassy, the German embassy, the Canadian Embassy, the Dutch Embassy, and many others. What happened to… and Tahrir Square, there were many many Jewish owned properties around it.

I took this from a Hebrew article in the Hebrew press, and it has a list of all the properties here on the right. What happened to these Jews? Well, 650,000 out of 850,000 went to Israel. Israel didn’t have the accommodation for them. It was a very poor country. And so it put them in tents or ma'abarot, and some of these tent camps lasted for years. The conditions were absolutely atrocious. You can see another picture here. Here’s an invitation to a wedding in hot number 10 of this couple. Now, what happened to the Jews who remained in Arab countries in 1969? There was a terrible event, and that was nine Jews were hanged on trumped up spying charges. In fact, about 50 Jews died during this period, out of a population of about 2000 Jews who were still living in Iraq. And in Egypt, about 300 Jews were arrested and imprisoned, as so-called, Israeli prisoners of war.

And some were imprisoned for years and unspeakable things happened to them in prison. So there is a silver lining to this story. Despite all the difficulties and the suffering, Jews from the Arab world have integrated very well into Israel. And here you see the Israeli ministers in the current cabinet with Moroccan roots. And of the nine women ministers in the cabinet, these three have Iraqi roots. In fact, one appears twice because she’s half Iraqi and half Moroccan. And many Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews have actually excelled in their new countries. And here are just some examples.

And on that note, I will leave it there and be very happy to answer questions. Can you read out the some questions? Sorry, sorry, I’m having a bit of trouble here.

Q&A and Comments

• [Judi] No worries. So it says from Colin, in Jerusalem, ‘It is reported Israeli government in the next five years is to spend 22.6 billion on the Israeli-Arab sector.’ Yeah, it’s quite a long thing.

Q: So why has the Israeli English language press, like the Jerusalem Post, remain silent? A: Well, yes, I mean the Israeli-Arab sector obviously needs the money, but if you’re making a comparison with Jews from Arab countries, well, I mean, the money ought to come from the Arab states who stole the property and assets from Jews from Arab countries. I think that is the real issue, isn’t it? So I wouldn’t begrudge the Arab Israelis having money spent on them, in that sense. But obviously there is a case for Jews from Arab countries to be given compensation. Sorry, Judy, can you read out another question?

• [Judi] Where is your man that’s sitting next to you?

• He always disappears when I need him most. Actually I’ve got it now, it’s okay, I’ve got it. Sorry.

• So we’ve got Eileen just asking, just saying that the Spanish acquisition began in August, 1942 and not in… In 1492, not in 1493.

• Did I say 1493? Apologies. Okay, 1492 it is. Okay.

Q: And why are there any Jews in Arab countries? A: Good question. Well, why are there still Jews in Arab countries, I think you mean. Very few Jews still left there, maybe 4,000 out of a million. They’re always going to be, you know, the last of the Mohicans. They’re always going to be those Jews who want to be buried where they were born. And I think that is the question, you know.

The question is why do Jews do remain? You know, there are always going to be the odd Jew who wants to remain. But the big question is why did so many have to leave? Why was this massive ethnic cleansing, I think? So compensation goes both ways, says Henry Miller. Yes, I agree with you there. And in fact, there has been a proposal, in fact, it was President Clinton who proposed an international fund to compensate refugees, Palestinian refugees, and Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Q: Is there any data on how many Arab descendants have Jewish DNA? A: Good question. Over the years there… I mean we have reason to believe many, many, Jews converted to Islam. Obviously there is no data. I did come across one statistic that said in Yemen there were maybe 50,000 Arabs who had Jewish roots. And yes, so Arlene, just one second.

Lawrence, can you help me?

• [Lawrence] What’s wrong?

• I can’t scroll down this… Sorry. Yeah, sorry. Technical expert to the rescue.

• What happened?

• No, just, can you just scroll down? Yeah, okay. That’s great. So when the Arab… This is up from Arlene.

Q: When the Arab right of return is brought up about Israel, why is there so little knowledge of how Jews were removed from the former Ottoman Empire? A: Good question, Arlene. This is, well, I think the Jewish refugee question is the answer to the Arab right of return. Whenever the Palestinians talk about their right of return, we have to talk about the Jews. And of course the Jews do not want to return because these countries remain as hostile as they were when the Jews left. So I think the answer is no right of return for the Palestinians and no right of return for the Jews. Let there be recognition that there was a permanent exchange of refugee populations.

And Adrian Banks says there are hardly any Jews left in India either, But that could be the theme for another lecture. Yes, thank you. Making more work for me. Sorry, I’ll just try and scroll down.

• [Man] Just scrolling it darling.

• Yeah, scroll.

• [Man] You have to just go like that.

• Okay, all right.

Q: So how many Jews live in Turkey at its height? A: There were about a hundred thousand Jews in Turkey. Today they say about 12,000, maybe fewer. Yeah, Rochelle says 15,000. I think there are probably fewer than that, because year by year they dwindle. You know, obviously the climate is not very favourable to them and the young people are leaving.

Ah, Esther, she was born in Tangiers, growing there was marvellous. You see, they look back on with nostalgia at this period. Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt that life was marvellous for you in Tangiers, but would you go back and live there? I don’t know.

Q: When was the synagogue in Beirut renovation work completed, asks Lilly? A: It was 2014.

Q: Where in the US are the Iraqi relics and are they available for public viewing, M. Bender? A: Yeah, the Iraqi relics, or, they’re known as the Iraqi Jewish archive. They’re being stored, I think, in Washington. They had been on public view. In fact, there was a sort of roving exhibition that went round to various venues over the last 10 years. But there aren’t any exhibitions at the moment. And in fact, I think there are discussions about whether the Iraqi Jewish archive will return.

Q: In Morocco when was the photo of Jews and Muslims praying for rain taken together? A: I’m afraid I can’t tell you that because there was no date on the photo, but it obviously is quite old.

Q: What is Judeo-Arabic? Is it Hebrew and Arabic script or the other way around? A: Yes, it’s the other way around. It is a dialect of Arabic written in Hebrew letters. Now the dialect has certain Hebrew words in it. It has some French or Turkish words. It’s a bit like Yiddish in that it’s incorporated foreign languages.

Have I read ‘My Father’s Paradise’, describing Jews who were sequestered by geography and spoke Aramaic. They had great relationships with Arab neighbours until the foundation of Israel, says Ellie Strauss. Yes, I have read My Father’s Paradise. It’s about a Kurdish family in the north of Iraq in Kurdistan. It is quite a nostalgic book, but not everything in the garden was rosie. There was the aunt of the writer, I think, it was the aunt of the writer was actually abducted by her nanny or something, that something rather nasty happened there. So it wasn’t all wonderful.

Q: So what’s the relationship between Judeao-Arabic and Ladino, asks Gita? A: Well, Judeo-Arabic is like Ladino in that it is a Jewish language, like Yiddish is a Jewish language, but there isn’t actually a relationship between the languages themselves. I mean, Ladino is based on Spanish, mediaeval Spanish, and Judea-Arabic is based on Arabic.

• [Judi] Don’t worry, don’t worry, Lyn.

• Yeah, no, that’s all right, sorry.

The beaches, the weather and being young with my siblings and family was exceptional. We were saved from the Holocaust by being in Morocco. We moved in 1961 when Morocco became independent. And the French and the Spanish left, says Esther. Yes, I’m sure you had a wonderful childhood. You were saved from the Holocaust by being Moroccan. I’m not so sure about that as I tried to explain in my last lecture. I think you were saved by Montgomery being victorious at el-Alamein, the battle against Rommel. I think it would’ve been a matter of time before the Jews were, you know, the final solution was applied to Jews in Morocco.

So I think I’ve come to the end here of the questions. Is that right? All the comments you have.

• You have.

• Right, okay.

• Thank you, Lyn. That was excellent. Wonderful presentation.

• Thank you.

• Thank you, thank you, thank you. Gosh.

• [Lyn] It’s a pleasure.

• What a history, and it continues.

• Yeah, absolutely.

• Certainly in Israel and see what a prominent role they’re playing the government, as you pointed out.

• Yeah, I think in Israel they’ve made their mark, you know, not just in politics now, but in the culture and the food, the music, you know, Israel is a Middle Eastern in all senses.

• Definitely. I should imagine that there’s been a huge impact globally.

• Yeah. I mean you can’t a bagel and a salt beef sandwich in London anymore, but you can get falafel and Pita.

• Well, thank you, thank you very much. I just wanted, and thank you Judy, for always being there and for facilitating the questions. Before we jump off, I just want to remind everybody that we have Robert Fox in about 45 minutes. We’ll be talking about current affairs and where we are right now. So I urge you all to listen to him. He’s very, very interesting BBC reporter. Well, thank you very much, Lyn. And we’ll see you again soon.

• Yeah, okay.

• Thank you to your husband for being such a staying husband.

• [Lawrence] Wendy, I show her something once…

• He’s not very patient, he’s not.

• Come and say hello to us.

• Yeah, come and say hello.

• [Lawrence] Yeah, I’m shy.

• He’s shy, he’s suddenly shy.

• This is teamwork, and we are all doing our best.

• [Lawrence] I put together slides for Lyn. That’s my teamwork.

• That’s right. He wants to stay off, off, off stage yet.

• Well, a million thanks.

• No, thank you for having me.

• The level is… We are such a high level, I have to say that content and the presenters are all brilliant, but the actual platform itself is a casual platform. We’re casual. So, you know, you don’t need to be shy. We’ll see you next time.

• See you next time. Thank you very much.

• Thanks a million. Thanks to everybody for joining us. Take care. Bye-bye.

• [Lyn] Bye.