Point of No Return

French TV spotlights history of Iraqi Jews

bataween | Posted on 30 January 2026 | No Comments |

France’s international TV channel, France 24 broadcasting in English, has cast a rare spotlight on the history of the Jews of Iraq. Interest in the subject has been sparked by a court case, heard in Paris on 19 January, concerning the non-payment of rent for the French embassy in Baghdad to the Jewish Lawee family which still claims to own it. (With thanks: Boruch)

In this clip, journalist Shirli Sitbon explained the background to the case of Beit Lawee, which became the French embassy in Baghdad after the Jewish owners were forced to flee. The case has attracted unprecedented mainstream publicity in the New York Times and Le Figaro.

Forced out by discrimination and violence in Iraq, 135,000 departing Jews were stripped of their citizenship and abandoned their property. However, Beit Lawee remained officially the property of the family, who rented the building to France. The French government ceased to pay rent to the family on its embassy in Baghdad when the Ba’ath party took power in 1969. The Lawee family have sued for unpaid rent in a French court: the result of a Paris hearing on 19 January is expected next week.

Scholar Omar Mohammed has a particular interest in Iraq’s Jewish heritage, although he is not Jewish himself. Mohammed explained that the Jewish community was one of the most ancient in the region and contributed greatly to Iraq. The country had a diversity of peoples and religions – Christians, Sabeans, Yazidis, Mandaeans, but there are now no more than five Jews. Diversity should be accompanied by inclusion in order to foster tolerance and coexistence, he said.

See video in full

More about Beit Lawee

Harif will be interviewing Lawee descendant Philip Khazzam about the case on Tuesday 3 February at 7:30 pm UK. For Zoom details write to info@harif.org

Sephardi scholar David Abulafia has died

bataween | Posted on 30 January 2026 | No Comments |

David Abulafia, emeritus professor of history at the university of Cambridge, has died aged 76. Professor Abulafia, whose grandfather was born in Morocco, had an impeccable pedigree of ancestors which included kabbalists and advisers to the kings of Spain, before the Inquisition forced the family to leave. He was a pioneering maritime historian whose research on medieval Mediterranean trade, in Sicily, the Balearic Islands and the Levant, led him to write acclaimed books such as a history of the Mediterranean across time entitled The Great Sea and The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans. Obituary in The Telegraph (with thanks: Michelle):

David Samuel Harvard Abulafia was born on December 12 1949, the son of Leon Abulafia and his wife Rachel, née Zafransky. His father was a Sephardic Jew whose ancestors had migrated to Galilee from Spain on the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 and lived for generations in Tiberias. David’s paternal grandparents, both from Jewish merchant families, met in Morocco.

David’s parents had settled in Twickenham by the time of his birth. “South of the Thames, many of the Jews were spread out,” Abulafia recalled in an interview with the Jewish Telegraph. “We went to an Ashkenazi synagogue and I often found that a barrier because, although I was familiar with the tunes, there were differences. Being Sephardi, I felt I was a minority within a minority and I still feel like that.”

After St Paul’s School he read history at King’s College, Cambridge, and then embarked on a PhD on the history of Sicily. He was fascinated by the influence of Jews on Mediterranean culture – “from 11th-century Jewish merchants to 16th-century Sephardi naval officers, they have played a disproportionate role” – and felt emotionally connected to the region through his ancestors: he recalled the overwhelming effect of “walking through Toledo and going into a museum and seeing a key which belonged to the Abulafia family”.

Read article in full

Profile in the Jewish Telegraph

Terrors of a Baghdad winter, 57 years on

bataween | Posted on 29 January 2026 | No Comments |

Fifty-seven years ago this week, nine innocent Jews were among 14 people executed in Baghdad as ‘spies for Israel’. Other Jews were arrested but released, after an agonising wait for their families. Writing on Facebook Daoud Karkoukli recalls the atmosphere at the time and his young sister’s bravery when their father was about to be arrested for a second time:

*The front page of the* Al Jumuhuriya newspaper showing the executied so-called spies for Israel in January 1969

“Fifty-seven years have passed, yet the memories of that Baghdadi winter never leave me. More than a quarter-century later, the child within me still looks to the sky every evening, praying to the Almighty to have mercy on his father.

Yes, the Baghdad sky was overcast and the night air was piercingly cold. Time has transported me back to January 1969. I had just finished my primary education at the Menachem Daniel School and joined the Frank Iny Secondary School (known today as Al-Nizamiyah). On the morning of January 27th, I woke to the sound of my mother’s sobbing. She was weeping over the execution of 11 Jews in Baghdad and Basra. She wept for those whose lives were snuffed out and whose bodies were hung on gallows in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square and Basra’s Umm al-Broom.

At the same time, she lived in terror over the fate of my father, who had been arrested days earlier by the Ba’athist intelligence services. This was part of a frenzied campaign led by the henchmen of the Ba’ath regime, who had seized power in 1968. They tightened the noose around 3,000 Iraqi Jews—stripping us of telephone services, banning us from government employment, closing university doors in our faces, and severely restricting our movement both inside and outside Iraq.

For several weeks, we tried in vain to trace my father, who had been “kidnapped” in Baghdad. We eventually learned—after paying massive bribes—that he was being held in Basra. Our days were miserable; I would drag my feet to school in the morning and return at noon, only for my mother, my younger sister, and me to lock ourselves behind closed doors until the following day.

In the evenings, I would sit before the television watching the “execution bulletin.” At the end of the news broadcast, the announcer would read a list of names of those to be executed at dawn the next morning! It was a pitch-black period of history, and I searched the sky for a savior to release my father from his captivity.

God answered the prayers of that young child. My father returned—gaunt and pale—without uttering a single word about the “arts of torture” he had endured. But our joy was short-lived. Only a few days passed before another intelligence branch knocked on our door (and there was no shortage of different intelligence branches in those bygone days) to arrest my father once again. Before they could take him, my six-year-old sister stood up to those “ravens of the regime.” She screamed in their faces: “You will not take my father from me! He is mine, and he is innocent!” That image will never leave me as long as I live.

May God have mercy on those assassinated by the hand of treachery and executed without guilt, solely for being Jewish. May they rest in peace.”

Jews murdered by the Iraqi regime (David K Bassoon)

Arrest of Iranian Jews is ‘a mistake’

bataween | Posted on 29 January 2026 | 1 Comment |

It was bound to happen: as the regime blames ‘foreign states’ and the Mossad for inciting the protests in Iran, Jews would be arrested. The community, always anxious to show its loyalty, says the arrests are ‘a mistake’:

*Homayoun Sameh Najafabadi, the Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament*

Several members of Iran’s Jewish community have been arrested in recent days, purportedly on suspicion that they were involved in the recent mass anti-regime protests, Hebrew outlets reported on Tuesday.

The community has reportedly denied any connection to the demonstrations, saying the arrest of the Jews was a mistake. Iranian Jewish leaders are involved in efforts to have the detainees released, sources close to the community said, according to Kan and Israel Hayom.

The community is trying to show total loyalty to the regime, the sources added.

Read article in full

Time to stop feeding the crocodile intent on killing you

bataween | Posted on 28 January 2026 | 1 Comment |

The leftwing kibbutzniks on the Gaza border who were kind to their Arab neighbours had their generosity repaid with death. The 7 October was a rude awakening for many Israeli Ashkenazim, who had projected their liberal values on Gazans. Coming from an Arab country, Yehuda Meitav’s family was always more sceptical; Mizrahim sent out warnings for decades that compassion is exploited as weakness. Meitav now worries about the Ashkenazi-dominated diaspora. Powerful post on Facebook (with thanks: Michelle):

There is an old folktale called The Crocodile and the Old Woman. A woman lives by a lake. A small crocodile appears. It is weak, so she feeds it. As it grows, it needs more. She keeps feeding it. It becomes stronger, bolder, less afraid. One day it eats her. The moral is simple. Compassion does not change the nature of a predator. It only makes it stronger.

I was born into a Mizrahi family. My father was Tunisian and my mother was Yemenite. Later in my life I was moved into a kibbutz, a world that was mostly Ashkenazi, many of them Holocaust survivors. That gave me a rare vantage point inside Israel. I grew up between two Jewish worlds, the Middle Eastern and the European. Two histories, two traumas, two ways of understanding danger, trust and survival.

My parents came from Arab countries. They lived among Muslims for generations. They knew the language, the psychology, the codes, the smiles and what hides behind them. They did not hate Arabs, but they did not romanticize them either. They understood how honor, power, religion and fear operate in that world.

The European Jews came from a different story. They came from Enlightenment Europe, from socialism, from universalism, from the belief that people are basically the same everywhere. That worldview shaped the kibbutzim, the peace movements and the idea that if you show goodwill, you will receive goodwill back.

That difference still lives inside Israel. It is not about being better or worse. It is about having lived in different civilizational realities.

The communities most devastated on October 7 were border kibbutzim. Left leaning, peace oriented, humanitarian. These were people who drove Gazans to Israeli hospitals, raised money for them, gave them work, created joint projects. They believed they were building bridges. They believed goodwill would be returned with goodwill.

What many did not see was that while they were feeding, the crocodile was growing.

After October 7, we found the maps, the lists of names, the layouts of homes, the notes saying where the children sleep, where the dog is, who to kill first. This was not rage. This was intelligence gathered patiently over years. That information came from access, trust and proximity. From the very openness meant to create peace.

That is taqiyya in practice. Smiles, cooperation and dependency used to prepare slaughter.

Mizrahi Jews warned about this for decades, not out of hatred but out of memory. They knew that in the Middle East, power is respected, not goodwill. Weakness is not met with compassion. It is exploited.

October 7 forced even the most idealistic Israelis to confront this. Many of the same people who once believed in absolute coexistence now say they no longer trust what stands across the fence. The crocodile showed its teeth.

What worries me now is not only Israel. It is the Jewish diaspora in the West. New York, London, Sydney, Paris. Many still see the world through European lenses. They assume everyone plays by the same moral rules. They assume radical Islam is just another political opinion. They assume tolerance will be returned with tolerance.

Meanwhile the crocodile is swimming among them.

You see it in the street intimidation, the open calls for violence, the mobs, the targeting of Jewish neighborhoods and institutions. You see it in politicians who appease it for votes, whether it is Mamdani in New York or the Mayor of London. You see it even among Jews who believe they are being virtuous while helping empower something that despises them.

The old woman thought she was being kind. In truth she was feeding her own executioner.

I am not claiming absolute truth. I am sharing what a Mizrahi child raised among Ashkenazim learned by standing in both worlds. October 7 was not just an attack. It was a revelation of what happens when you mistake a crocodile for a neighbor.

Maybe it is time, in Israel and in the diaspora, to stop feeding it.

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Why Holocaust education has failed

bataween | Posted on 27 January 2026 | No Comments |

Today, 27 January 2026, is Holocaust Memorial Day. It’s an occasion to reflect that Holocaust education has been a failure in the face of rising antisemitism. It does not take account of continuity between Nazi and Islamised antisemitism, argues Lyn Julius in her Substack column:

There have been strenuous efforts to play down the Mufti’s legacy of Nazi-inspired antisemitism

This year, on Holocaust Memorial Day, educators are wringing their hands in despair. Eighty years of Holocaust education have failed, they lament, as antisemitism skyrockets. The numbers of UK schools observing HMD has plummeted, while a minority insist on also commemorating the Gaza ‘genocide’.

How has it come to this?

The problem with Holocaust education is that it is stubbornly Eurocentric. It is necessary to understand the connection, often erased for reasons of political correctness, between the Nazis, their Arab sympathizers and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the 1930s, Arabs were active collaborators with the Nazis. The Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, played a leading role in inciting the genocide of Jews. Despite strenuous efforts to downplay it, his legacy of Nazi-inspired antisemitism inspires the Palestinian cause today.

The Mufti helped stage a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941 and incited the anti-Jewish massacre known as the Farhud, making no secret of his wish to exterminate the Jews in his sphere of influence. As Hitler’s guest in Berlin, the Mufti obtained Hitler’s blessing to manage the destruction of MENA Jews, raised SS units of Muslim troops and broadcast poisonous anti-Jewish propaganda. For reasons of realpolitik, he was never tried at Nuremberg for war crimes, though he could have been.

The Mufti was, according to the scholar Matthias Kuentzel, the lynchpin of the Nazis’ great war against the Jews and the Arabs’ small war against Israel. Nazis fought alongside Arabs in the 1948 war and Nazis became military advisers to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt. Nasser used Israel as an external threat in order to unite the Arabs into a single political entity.

The moral architecture of Palestinianism was erected to dehumanise and delegitimise Zionists. This was the work of the Soviet Union’s Zionologists in the 1950s. Inversion was the name of the game: Israelis were the new Nazis intent on genocide. (In reality, most Arab states and the Palestinian leadership never abandoned their objective of wiping out Israel, physically or demographically. ) Ethnic cleansing was what the Israelis had done to the Palestinian refugees. (In reality, it is what Arab governments had done to their Jewish citizens, driving out 99 percent.) Apartheid was supposedly practised by the Jewish state. (In reality, it is how Islamic law treats its women, its subjugated Jews and minorities).

Also in the 1950s, through the writings of the ideologue Sayyid Qutb, Islamized antisemitism, influenced by European ideas of Jewish conspiracy and control, became entrenched in the Muslim Brotherhood’s philosophy. Palestine is the central focus of their campaign to rebuild the caliphate. Hamas is none other than the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its ideology has been to spearhead the destruction of Israel through terrorism. Its aim has always been genocidal – a never-ending series of October 7 massacres.

The only books translated from Arabic by the Islamic Republic of Iran were by Sayyid Qutb. The Ayatollahs do not attempt to conceal their ultimate aim: to perpetrate a second Holocaust while denying the first.

Because of a lack of western understanding of antisemitism in the Muslim world, Arabs are misleadingly portrayed as “innocent bystanders” to the Holocaust who “paid the price” for a European problem through the creation of Israel. In fact, many were sympathisers and collaborators with Nazism.

Israel was the solution, not the cause of antisemitism in the Middle East and North Africa. But Israel is barely mentioned by Holocaust educators.

Holocaust education needs to teach about the direct link between Nazism and the genocidal ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its offshoots like Islamic State and Hamas.

Lessons cannot be learned if the Holocaust is viewed in a vacuum, divorced from its impact on politics today.

Read article in full

On 27 January, Iraqi Jews also recall Baghdad hangings

bataween | Posted on 27 January 2026 | No Comments |

Today, 27 January, is Holocaust Memorial Day. Iraqi Jews are mourning the millions of Jews and others murdered by the Nazis. But they are also remembering the innocent Jews executed on trumped-up charges by the regime on 27 January 1969. Here is the speech delivered on Shabbat 31 January 2009 at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Montreal by Morris Abdulezer, Past President of the Synagogue: (With thanks: Irene)

Of the nine Jewish ‘spies’, four were under the legal age for execution. A tenth, Jamal Hakim, also underage, had a Jewish father.

“On this Shabbat we assemble here to remember and recall the memory of the nine individuals whose lives ended on the 8th of Shevat 40 years ago. They were murdered just because they were Jews living in Iraq.

Even though this day marks the 40th anniversary of this event we must not forget that at least another 42 Jews, four of whom were women, were hanged and or murdered thereafter. In addition to those killed there were many more that were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured but subsequently released – and scarred for life.

To start, I would like to mention the names of those nine individuals indicating their age, profession and from which city they came from.

I would also like to mention that those of them whose ages were said by the court to be 20 or 21, were in fact younger (as young as 17 – ed). The court forced this lie in order that they could be prosecuted and hanged.

–David Heskel Barukh Dallal 20 yrs old a student from Basra
–Sabah Haim Dayan 25 yrs old a university student from Basra
–Fouad Gabbay 35 yrs old a forwarding agent from Basra
–Naim Khedouri Hilali 21 yrs old a student from Basra
–Charles Raphael Horesh 45 yrs old a commission agent/ rep from Baghdad
–Jacob Gourdgi Namerdi 32 yrs old an employee of BOAC from Basra
–Heskel Saleh Heskel Saheyek 20 yrs old a student from Basra
–David Ghali Yedgar 21 yrs old a student from Basra
–Ezra Naji Zilkha 60 yrs old a merchant from Basra

As we know, the history of the Jews of Iraq is rich with tradition, spanning thousands of years of cohabitation with the Arabs in the region that we call the Middle East. Though there were many times in our history that the Jews were persecuted for their religious beliefs in many parts of the world, one period culminated in the persecution of Jews living in Iraq: starting with the Six-Day war, it ended in 1973 after the majority of the Jews had escaped.

Many of us here today including myself, along with many close friends and family members, can remember the terror-filled days, months, and years, following the Six-Day War in 1967.

As Jews, we were denied basic access to communication when our ‘phone lines were cut, denied access to universities, we were unable to work, and denied travel to outside of Iraq.
At first, all of this we reluctantly accepted, and managed our lives without.

However in 1968 the government under President Hassan Al Bakr, with Saddam Hussein as his right hand henchman and deputy, decided to begin a campaign of terror and killing against the Jews of Iraq.

At that time, we numbered close to 2500, living mainly in Baghdad and Basra. This campaign of scare tactics included random abductions, posting secret agents in front of our residences and businesses, interrogations, seizing of assets, businesses and homes.

Then, in the fall of 1968, the government rounded up a dozen Iraqi Jewish males from Baghdad and Basra, and jailed them under false pretenses, accusing them of being Israeli spies. These innocent men were tortured then put through a televised mockery of a military trial, which culminated in nine of them being publicly hanged, one acquitted and two others were sent to Basra to face another trial and then were hanged on August 25, 1969 in Basra.

I can recall precisely how terrified and confused we were throughout the entire trial and, more precisely, the night of January 26 when the guilty verdict was announced by the military judge. We did not believe that the sentence of death by hanging would be carried out because the whole court process did not make sense, from the defendants who were not allowed to appoint their own lawyers, to the stories and accusations that were outrageous and full of lies, where the defendants were being asked to bear witness against each other.

We waited in fear, praying and trusting in our Jewish faith and hoping for pressure to come at the last minute from the international community to end this mockery.

Even when, on the eve of January 27, the authorities called on our chief Rabbi, Hakham Sassoon Khedoori, to send a person to prison to help with the prayers, this too was done in a way that indicated their evil ways and their lack of a sense for justice. While reading Shema Yisrael to the prisoners, this individual was pushed, and with a rifle pointed at him, was ordered to read in Arabic and not in Hebrew, all the while with the victims standing under the gallows crying and pleading that “we are innocent”.

However, on the morning of January 27 1969 the reality set in and nine innocent Jews were killed. Many of us were on our way to our daily activities when we heard the news, and we immediately went back to the so called safety of our homes.

There were a total of 13 men hanged in the public square called Saht el Tahrir (this ironically means Liberation Square). 9 of them were Jews, executed without even the dignity of having their faces covered. With a sign on their chest saying Yehudi or Jasus (Jew or Spy), all this was done with celebration and jubilation on the part of the people of Iraq.

There was live TV coverage and announcements that the day of execution be declared a holiday for all Iraqis to rejoice. Hundreds of thousands were out in the street dancing in front of the hanging corpses without any show of remorse, respect, or value for these human lives.

This picture will remain implanted in my memory, and the only way I can describe it to you is to compare it to a scene of savages celebrating in a barbaric and horrible way. Just like what we would see in a Hollywood produced movie.

The campaign of terror continued thereafter, with many Jews taken from their homes to be jailed, tortured, murdered or prosecuted in similar forms of mock trials, with some never to return to their families. They simply just disappeared.

With such a small community totaling less than 2,500 at that time, and with the death of these nine Jews that were hanged, along with the many others incidents that followed, the impact on our small community was enormous.

With 51 killed, and another 100 plus imprisoned and tortured, every individual and family was touched not once but several times by this reign of terror.

The Jews of Iraq, and all Jews from all countries around the world, must never forget this terrible time of horror and fear.

Today, and every day we must give our thanks to Hashem for what we have, our trust in our faith, our families, our community, our safety and our freedom, and we must never forget those who were executed on that horrible day in 1969 along with all the many others who faced similar tragic end thereafter.

On 8th of Shevat 5769, we commemorate the memory of those nine individuals who were slain, whose lives were stolen.

We must always remember because the reality is that it could have been any one of us living there during that terrible time who could have suffered a similar and tragic fate. ”

More about the Baghdad hangings

US Sephardi Jews view Israel as lifeline

bataween | Posted on 26 January 2026 | No Comments |

Sephardi Jews in the US are at only one remove from the persecution experienced by their parents. This explains why so many were alarmed at the election of Zohran Mamdani as New York mayor. For them, Israel functions as a lifeline. Simone Saidmehr reports for the The Forward :

The Shaare Zion, primarily Syrian, synagogue in Brooklyn

Sephardic Jews are very Zionistic, because the state of Israel changed our lives,” Cohen said. “A lot of Jews from Morocco were saved by the fact that they were able to go to Israel. The same was true for Iranian Jews, Egyptian Jews, and so on.”

According to the study, conducted for JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, 31% of Mizrahi Jews and 28% of Sephardic Jews in the U.S. hold Israeli citizenship, compared with just 5% of Ashkenazi Jews. And 80% of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews say they feel somewhat or very emotionally connected to Israel, compared with 69% of Ashkenazi Jews.

Mamdani has been outspoken in his criticism of Israel and identifies as anti-Zionist. He has repeatedly stated Israel does not have a right to exist as a Jewish state, but rather “as a state with equal rights.” An Anti-Defamation League report from December that 20% of Mamdani’s administrative appointees have ties to anti-Zionist groups.

Those positions land poorly in these communities where, for many, Israel functioned as a lifeline. Ralph Betesh, a 22-year-old Syrian Jew from Midwood, described the Syrian Jewish community in New York, the city’s largest Sephardic community, as “super, super pro-Israel.” Before the election, he said, “In every Syrian group chat, they were sending things like, ‘Please everyone, go register to vote. This is crucial. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime election,’” Batesh said. “Even in shul, they would urge people to go vote.”

The primarily Syrian congregation Shaare Zion in Brooklyn, one of the largest Sephardic synagogues in North America, sent a letter to congregants before the High Holidays stating that to attend services, one must show proof of voter registration. While the synagogue did not endorse a specific candidate, the letter warned of “a very serious danger that can affect all of us.”

For Yisrael Cohen-Vásquez, a 21-year-old Lebanese, Iranian, Spanish, and Moroccan Jew who grew up in Buenos Aires and moved to New York at 13, the intensity of the reaction is rooted in the proximity of persecution. “The pogroms that happened to us are as recent as the 1990s,” he said. “This is not generational trauma. This is my parents’ trauma that I grew up listening to.”

Michael Anwarzadeh, an Iraqi Jew from Manhattan, expressed a similar view. “We understand, Iraqis, what having someone who is anti-Jewish in power means,” he said. “I can say that because my parents lived through it. I grew up listening to them, and I learned those lessons.”

Cohen-Vásquez is particularly alarmed by Mamdani’s recent decision to the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lift restrictions on boycotts of Israel. “All these policies that are being changed are exactly what was introduced to Mizrahi communities in the ’70s and ’80s,” he said. “These were the indicators, the litmus tests, for the beginning of the pogroms.”

Beyond concerns over antisemitism and Jewish safety, Cohen-Vásquez said his family’s experiences “whether Lebanese, Argentinian, or Iranian” have also made him deeply skeptical of Mamdani’s “socialist policies.”

That perspective, he added, has often left him feeling misunderstood when sharing his views with Ashkenazi peers. “I feel like I had to defend myself and explain my family story,” Cohen-Vásquez said. At the same time, he said he was heartened by conversations with non-Jews in New York who had immigrated from socialist countries and, as he put it, “got it.”

“I felt more seen and understood by the Dominicanos and the Puerto Ricans in Washington Heights, and by African American communities in Harlem and Queens, than by Ashkenazi Jews.”

While Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews emphasize their deep attachment to New York, many describe a relationship shaped by repeated displacement and hard-earned lessons about how quickly safety can erode. “When you talk to anybody in our community now, you say, ‘Okay, where would you go?” Aaron Cohen said. “What’s your plan B? What’s your plan C?’”

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Another Jewish cemetery is destroyed in Libya

bataween | Posted on 25 January 2026 | No Comments |

The memory of Jewish life in Libya has been further erased with the demolition of a Jewish cemetery in Derna, on the Mediterranean coast in Cyrenaica. Report in JNS (with thanks: Nancy):

Before and after photos of the Derna cemetery, Libya (Photos: Or Shalom)

(JNS) – A Jewish cemetery in the eastern Libyan city of Derna has been demolished due to construction work at the site, the head of an Israeli center for the preservation of Libyan Jewish heritage said on Thursday.

Scores of graves believed to have once been at the site were destroyed over the last couple of weeks, said Pedhazur Benattia, chairman of the Or Shalom organization in Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv.

He shared video footage of the site with the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

”There is nothing left there now,” Benattia told JNS, adding that such destruction was standard practice in the country.

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Gaddafi bulldozed Jewish cemetery into the sea

Jews and Kurds face common threats

bataween | Posted on 23 January 2026 | No Comments |

Jews and Kurds affirmed their solidarity in London last week as the Kurdish enclave in north-eastern Syria was overrun by regime forces. Both peoples share a history of persecution, displacement and genocide, writes Lyn Julius on Substack:

*Jews and Kurds at a meeting organised by the Jewish-Kurdish network in a UK parliamentary committee room on 19 January 2026*

The young man stood at the back of a parliamentary committee room and tearfully pleaded for Israel to save his family. They were in Rojava, the Kurdish enclave in north-eastern Syria. Reports were filtering out of abductions and massacres as Syrian regime forces swept across the Kurdish-held territory. Islamic State prisoners had been released from jail and there was no knowing what destruction they would inflict.

The occasion at the UK parliament was an event attended by Jews and Kurds to focus on cooperation between these two Middle Eastern non-Arab minorities. Both peoples are indigenous, predating by several centuries the Arab conquest which had converted the Kurds to Islam and subjugated the Jews as dhimmis. Both peoples have clung on to their language and culture through thick and thin.

At the end of WWI, there were high hopes, with the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire, that Assyrians and Kurds would enjoy an autonomous enclave, if not a homeland of their own. But only the 1917 Balfour Declaration, with its commitment for a home for the Jews, was endorsed at the 1920 San Remo conference and written into the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

A century later 30 million Kurds are still spread across four nations – Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. After 2003 and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Kurdistan came closest to achieving autonomy, but has to fend off pressure from Tehran and Baghdad. The Jewish state has been embattled since the day it was declared.

In the 1960s Israel sent advisers and weapons to the Kurds in Iraq. In return, the Kurds helped smuggle 2,000 desperate Jews out of the country.

Both Kurds and Jews have faced persecution, displacement, genocide and the jihadist exterminationist threat. In 2014, when ISIS was on the rampage in northern Iraq, Jews stood with Kurds and Yazidis. Since the 7 October attacks on southern Israel, Kurds have joined Jews to demonstrate their solidarity.

The dominant narrative in the West assumes that only Arabs are entitled to political rights, while the Kurdish demand for self-determination is ignored. Zionism – Jewish self-determination – is demonised. But as this latest display of solidarity in a parliamentary committee room showed, Jews stand with Kurds and Kurds stand with Jews. May they turn solidarity into political action.

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How the West betrayed the Kurds (Tom Gross)

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