To coincide with the anniversary of the sinking of the Egoz, Israel’s parliament has passed a law commemorating the immigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel, JNS reports:
Monument to the Egoz dead in Ashdod, Israel: 43 died when the boat capsized in January 1961
The proposal, submitted by Shas Party chairman and lawmaker Yinon Azulai, stipulates that a special national day will be observed annually on the 23rd of Tevet, which usually falls in mid-to-late January.
Knesset Member Aryeh Deri of the Shas Party hailed the parliament’s approval. “This is an important day and the closing of a circle for the proud Moroccan community. The time has come for the State of Israel to remember and honor our dear parents and grandparents, who risked their lives to immigrate to the Land of Israel and to continue there the traditions and heritage of their ancestral home,” he said.
He later on added on X that he was “proud and delighted” that the motion had passed.
The date of commemoration marks the sinking of the ship Egoz on Jan. 11, 1961, whose 44 Jewish passengers from Morocco—half of whom were children—had drowned.
It was illegal at the time for Moroccan Jews to emigrate from the country. The Mossad leased the vessel for the purpose of smuggling Jews out of Morocco and bringing them to Israel. Before it sank in the Mediterranean Sea, the ship had made 11 successful ventures, bringing 40 to 50 immigrants per trip, according to the Center for Israel Education.
The national day will include a special session of the Knesset, a dedicated conference and educational activities within the education system, the legislative body stated on its website.
Israel’s decision to recognise Somaliland has elicited interest in the country’s past Jewish links. The Times of Israel reports (with thanks: Nancy):
There are no Jews known to be living in Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991. However, the territory can claim some interesting footnotes in Jewish history — beyond Israel’s move last week to become the first country in the world to recognize it as a sovereign state — even if it doesn’t yet have a Chabad House for Jewish tourists.
Located on the Horn of Africa, Somaliland sits at a historic crossroad of commerce and migration linking Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Middle East. The territory once played host to small communities of Jewish merchants from across the Red Sea, and today remains home to a mysterious tribal clan that claims to be descendants of ancient Jewish ancestors.
“This is a story that is not well-known and hasn’t been widely documented,” said Asher Lubotzky, senior research fellow at the Africa-Israel Relations Institute. “Only a few pieces of evidence have been uncovered to piece it all together.”
Archival documents show that several hundred Jews from Yemen moved to Somaliland nearly 150 years ago, crossing the Gulf of Aden to live in northern coastal cities such as Berbera and Zeila, Lubotzky said.
After the Ottoman Empire consolidated control over Yemen in 1872, the country’s Jewish community saw new opportunities for freedom open up after years of living as dhimmis, an inferior legal status for non-Muslims. The new regime allowed Yemeni citizens to migrate more freely, and following the opening of the Suez Canal several years earlier, in 1869, the Red Sea was becoming a major global crossroad and trade route.
In the wake of the recent terror attack in Sydney, a delegation of 15 senior Muslim leaders from the United States and Canada visited Israel to express solidarity with the Jewish people and publicly oppose antisemitism and religious extremism, according to Ynet News.
Jewish and Muslim leaders meet during the Ohr Torah Center visit
The visit during Hanukkah was organized by the Ohr Torah Interfaith Center (OTIC), part of the Ohr Torah Stone network, and brought together Muslim and Jewish leaders for a series of meetings, site visits and public events focused on interfaith cooperation and the role of religion in confronting violence and hatred.
“In the shadow of the Sydney attack, this visit underscored a critical truth: we cannot spend all our time only fighting terror,” said Rabbi Dr. Aharon Ariel Lavi, managing director of OTIC. “While confronting extremism is necessary, it is far more strategic and hopeful to invest in cultivating allies. This week has been about strengthening relationships with courageous Muslim partners who are willing to stand publicly against antisemitism, religious violence and the abuse of faith.”
During their stay, the delegation met with senior rabbis and Muslim leaders, toured communities near the Gaza border, including Kibbutz Kfar Aza and the Nova festival site, and held discussions on the ethical responsibilities of religious leadership. They also visited the Holocaust Museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot and met with officials from Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
The Iranian regime has always practised a calculated balancing act towards its Jews, appeasing its antisemitic base while trying to avoid international scrutiny for its violations of the community’s human rights. A month ago, Janatan Sayeh wrote this report for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), pointing out that, since its 12-Day war with Israel in June 2025, the Iranian regime has been re-directing hostility towards its own Jewish citizens. With mass demonstrations now spreading across the country, it remains to be seen whether the regime will intensify its persecution of an imagined Jewish ‘fifth column’:
Homayoun Sameh represents the Jewish community in the Iranian parliament
Tehran’s clerical regime claims it is hostile to Zionists, not Jews, but its renewed abuse of Persian Jews exposes that as a lie. The early years of the Islamic Republic were marked by systematic persecution of a Jewish community that has been resident in Iran for centuries. Later, the regime put on a more tolerant façade. That has winked out of existence in the aftermath of this summer’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Israel.
For years, the regime showcased the country’s small Jewish population as a propaganda tool to deflect accusations of antisemitism and to whitewash its attacks on Israelis and Jewish sites abroad.
The regime’s treatment of Iranian Jews was always a calculated balancing act, meant to appease its antisemitic base while trying to avoid greater international scrutiny. But after the Twelve Day War in June, and repeated failures to strike Jewish targets in Europe, Tehran has redirected its hostility toward its own Jewish citizens. In just its latest act of cruelty, the New York Times reported on November 6 that the Islamic Revolutionary Court has sentenced a 70-year-old Iranian-American Jew, who has been held in Tehran’s Evin Prison since July, to two years in prison for the crime of visiting Israel 13 years ago to attend his son’s bar mitzvah.
Without consequences or outside pressure to stop it, the regime could revert to the same violent persecution and executions of Persian Jews that marked the early years of the Islamic Revolution.
Before the regime took power in 1979, Iran’s Jewish community numbered as many as 120,000 people. The Islamist revolutionaries quickly executed prominent Jews after seizing power, and the purge drove most of the rest into exile, leaving fewer than 8,000 today. The persecution never stopped, and by 2000, 17 Jews had been executed on fabricated espionage charges.
The regime later sought to project tolerance. In 2003, the so-called “reformist” President Mohammad Khatami visited Tehran’s Yousef Abad Synagogue. That year, the Expediency Council amended Article 297 of the 1991 Islamic Punishments Act to grant equal blood money — the compensation an offender’s family must pay to a victim’s family — to Muslims and non-Muslims, including Jews.
A Jewish antique dealer, Salem Hamdani, arrested for selling antiques allegedly stolen from the Damascus National Museum, has been freed, the Jerusalem post reports. He is one of six Jews remaining in Syria. (With thanks: Nancy)
Salem Hamdani at his market stall
A Jewish man detained in Syria for allegedly selling stolen antiquities was freed after 20 days in prison, with Syrian authorities determining that the charges filed against him had no valid evidence to justify the imprisonment.
Salem Hamdani, a Jewish merchant from Damascus, was charged with allegedly selling antiquities stolen from Damascus’ National Museum, something that, according to Yeshiva World News, was done without concrete evidence.
Joe Jajati, a friend of Hamdani, confirmed the news in a social media post, writing that “justice has prevailed and the truth has been found.” The post also praised the Syrian government for pursuing a “fair and transparent legal process.
Jajati also assured that Hamdani was “treated with respect and dignity during his time in prison,” a fact that Hamdani confirmed during his 20-day detention.
The incident raised the alarms among the small Jewish community remaining in Syria, with many believing that Hamdani’s detention was due to his Jewish identity and not because of real criminal offenses.
The Jerusalem Report has this interview with two Arab influencers, one Iraqi and one Yemeni. Both deplore the destructive effects of terrorism on their home countries and refuse to hate Israel.
When 20 living Israeli hostages were finally returned from Gaza last month, Ghaith Al-Tamimi, an Arab influencer from Iraq now living in London, felt the same surge of emotion as millions of Israelis.
“I went through these things, I understand the suffering,” he told The Jerusalem Report. A former political prisoner in Iraq, Al-Tamimi knows firsthand what it means to be tortured behind bars. His empathy also stems from a tragedy closer to home. In 2006, his brother was kidnapped, likely by al-Qaeda, and the family has not heard from him since. “I was born and raised in a country where there is killing, oppression, and abductions, so I, more than anyone else, can feel the agony and the pain of the Israelis waiting for their loved ones to come home,” he said.
Al-Tamimi grew up in a devout Shi’ite family in Baghdad, where he was taught to hate Israel and view Zionists as “devils. “But then I began to connect with Jews and Israelis and realized that the ‘devil’ is not that bad. I started to ask, ‘Why should I hate Israel?’” he said.
Ghaith al-Tamimi (credit: Courtesy)
His questioning came at a high cost, however. As head of the Iraqi Center for Diversity, an organization that promotes coexistence among religions, he became a target of Islamist groups.
“At one point, my house was blasted because of my views,” Al-Tamimi said.In 2015, he was forced to leave Baghdad after facing harsh persecution for rejecting Iranian figures, the influence of their militias in Iraq, and ISIS.
Now based in London, the 44-year-old, who is also a Shi’ite cleric, has emerged as one of the most outspoken Arab voices defending Israel and condemning extremism.
With more than 400,000 followers on X, he regularly challenges Iran and its proxies, not hesitating to denounce the terror group Hamas.
Al-Tamimi’s posts are often blunt and fiery. In one, he backed the assassination of Abu Obaida, the spokesman of Hamas’s military wing.
In another post, he wrote: “Hamas and those who side with it – may they go to hell. Shame and disgrace to those sympathizing with them until the day of judgment.He also condemned the terror attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, declaring: “Hatred and terror against Jews do not discriminate between a Zionist, an Israeli, or a Jew. Everyone is a target of racist terrorism, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying or deceiving. I stand in solidarity with British Jews and the people of Israel.
His support for Israel is unusually direct for an Arab public figure, a position that has made him a pariah among many Arabs and Muslims. He has also paid a heavy personal price for his convictions.
“The most recent attack was in 2023 when my car was bombed while I was in Iraq going home from my office,” he recounted. He said it was due to his friendship with Israeli academic Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was held hostage by militias in Iraq and returned to Israel in September. That was the last time he visited Iraq. Al-Tamimi is furious about what he sees as biased Western and Arab media coverage of the war in Gaza. “They did manipulations and showed only the things they wanted to show, focusing on Hamas’s narrative and ignoring the Israeli side,” he said, singling out the Qatar-sponsored Al-Jazeera network for spreading anti-Israel propaganda.
But his greatest ire is reserved for Iran.“They should go. This destructive regime must be dismantled,” he said. “Otherwise, it will continue to control countries like my own – Iraq – and raise a new generation of radical militias and proxies across the region, including the West Bank and Gaza.
“Don’t be afraid of a Palestinian state that will never be established,” he added. “It’s only a left-wing illusion. Even in Europe, some countries don’t really believe in it and allow pro-Palestinian protests to divert attention from their own internal problems and political tensions. Your real fear should be Khamenei.
With 1.3 million followers on X, Yemini activist Ali Al-Bukhaiti takes a pragmatic approach toward Israel and the region’s conflicts, which are grounded in political reality rather than emotion.“I recognize Israel’s right to exist within 1967 borders; but Israel, for its part, should recognize the rights of Palestinians on these same lines and accept a solution to the Palestinian cause,” he told the Report.
Ali al-Bukhaiti (credit: Courtesy)
Al-Bukhaiti pushes back against hardline Palestinian extremists, arguing that armed struggle has failed to advance their interests so far.
“Armed resistance doesn’t serve the Palestinian interest, since Israel is stronger,” he said, urging Palestinians to adopt peaceful means instead.
Now living in the UK, where he was granted political asylum in 2019, Al-Bukhaiti once served as a spokesman for the Houthi movement. He broke with the group after it seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.“The Houthis are a terror group committing crimes against the Yemeni people,” he said emphatically. “They claim to support the Palestinians, but I said from day one that their actions would not help. Their missile attacks harmed Israeli citizens and disrupted daily life and airport flights; but overall, the damage to Israel was very small compared to what the Yemenis suffered.
In one post, he compared Hamas in Gaza to the Houthis in Yemen, writing that “Gazans are controlled by a terrorist group (Hamas) that presents itself as a national liberation movement, just like the Houthis in Yemen.In another post, he contrasted life in Israel with conditions in Yemen: “The situation of Arab citizens in Israeli towns and cities like Nazareth is far better than that of Yemenis under Houthi rule.”
Got $1 million to spare? A luxury pied-à-terre in Jerusalem could be yours – and you might even recognise the neighbours. The Syrian-Jewish and East coast US Sephardi community is being enticed to buy apartments in two tower blocks planned for central Jerusalem, according to the Times of Israel:
An artist’s impression of the Jerusalem tower blocks being marketed to Syrian Jews in the US
A company representing a US-based Jewish community has purchased two entire residential towers under construction in central Jerusalem in a deal believed to be one of the largest private real estate transactions in Israel’s history.
OP Jerusalem, based in Brooklyn, New York, has acquired 200 luxury apartments under construction near the Mahane Yehuda market, in order to market them to the Syrian Jewish community overseas.
The total value of the deal could be as much as NIS 1 billion ($270 million), according to one estimate given in Hebrew media.
“The idea of the project is to create a hub in Israel for our community,” which consists primarily of Syrian Jews from Brooklyn and Deal, New Jersey, Elliot Shelby, OP Jerusalem’s co-head of sales, told The Times of Israel.
The target market includes other groups of Sephardic origin, such as Moroccan and Persian Jews, as well as Syrian Jews in Panama and Mexico, Shelby said. But sales are open to everyone, including Ashkenazi Jews, and about 25% of apartments are being purchased by people from “outside the community,” he noted.
“The only rule is, no gefilte fish allowed,” Shelby joked.
Since 7 October, the small Jewish community in Morocco has been unsettled and keeping a low profile. Israeli tourists are staying away. Many Moroccans firmly object to normalisation. But Morocco still remains one of the more hopeful examples of ‘coexistence ‘ in the Muslim world. Informative feature in the German medium DW:
The Pinto synagogue, restored in Essaouira (Photo: Claudia Mende)
Jews are an essential part of society. They have thus created a special connection between Morocco and Israel,” Moroccan historian Jamal Amiar told TelQuel magazine.
For a long time, the country struggled to officially recognize this special connection. It was not until the 2011 constitution that Jewish culture was recognized as an enriching element of Morocco’s identity, along with the traditions and language of the Amazigh, who were often referred to as Berbers in the past.
“For us, it is normal for Jews, Christians and Muslims to live together,” says Brahim Dargha, a man in his forties who works as a driver, in an interview with DW.
Dargha is a Muslim from the Rif Mountains, a marginalized region in northern Morocco. He lives with an Israeli friend in Casablanca, he says, proudly emphasizing his own Amazigh heritage. “We, the Jews and the Amazigh, are the original Moroccans; the Arabs only came later,” he says.
The first Jews arrived in Morocco in ancient times after the destruction of the Jewish temple and mingled with the native Amazigh. After the Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Christian kingdoms from the Moors at the end of the 15th century, many Jews from Spain sought refuge from persecution in Morocco. King Mohammed V, who ruled the country at the time, protected the country’s Jewish minority during the Second World War, after the Vichy regime instituted anti-Jewish laws. He treated the Jews like his own subjects and resisted their extradition from Morocco. (The role of the king has been disputed by historians – ed)
But over the years, relations between different communities have not always been conflict-free. There have been attacks on Jews, including the pogroms in the 1940s and the terrorist attacks carried out by suicide bombers on Western and Jewish institutions in Casablanca in 2003 — however, a form of coexistence has developed.
The Jewish community in Morocco has been unsettled since October 7, 2023, the day of the attack by militant group Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and others, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza. Israeli tourists are now staying away.
Direct flights between the two countries, which had been in place since the signing of the Abraham Accords and the establishment of official diplomatic relations in 2022, have been canceled again. Since the normalization agreements, Morocco had been popular with Israeli tourists. Around 200,000 visited the country per year.
Today, the Jewish community is torn between its Moroccan homeland and its Jewish identity. There have been no documented attacks on Jewish citizens to date, but someone did spray paint “Death to the Jews” on the wall of a kosher restaurant in Casablanca.
Some Jews are afraid, while others emphasize that Jews live more safely in Morocco than in Europe.
Many prefer to remain silent.
“I’m not saying anything,” says the saleswoman at a speciality delicatessen in Casablanca, which sells kosher wines, snacks and fish products.
Over 2025, Point of No Return published 372 posts, bringing the total number to 7,649. This year the blog marked 20 years since it was established to gather documentation on Jews from Arab and Muslim countries and the forgotten Jewish refugees.
The year was a particularly eventful one. It saw great military successes in Israel’s war with Iran and its proxies, and the release, by the year’s end, of almost all the hostages held in Gaza.
In March, hopes that the oldest Gaza hostage, Shlomo Mansour, 85, had survived, were dashed when his body was returned to Israel. But his case has served to raise awareness of a previous massacre, the 1941 Farhud pogrom in Iraq, which Mansour had survived as a three-year-old.
The year is ending with the Bondi Beach massacre as antisemitism rises to terrifying levels in the West. Jews who lived in Arab countries are experiencing a sense of déjà vu.
Abraham Hamra, whose family came as refugees to the US from Damascus in the 1990s, says his family fled a country where Jews were restricted in their movements and their professions, their passports stamped Mussawi, the perpetrators of violence never punished. On arrival in the US, he marvelled at the freedoms which allowed Jews to walk freely wearing their kippot and Stars of David. “Who would have believed that 50 years later, he declared, the same type of hatred that led to the ethnic cleansing of 850,000 to a million Jews from Arab countries and Iran would follow me to the US and transform into a social justice movement?”
As far as Syrian Jews are concerned, however, the year ends with a glimmer of hope: the al-Sharaa regime is trying to build bridges with the Jewish community. It has authorised the establishment of the Jewish Heritage Foundation. The Foundation’s first task is to register sites of Jewish heritage and draw up a list of Jewish properties seized by the Assad regime.
Henry Hamra, a Syria-born Jew who stood in the local Damascus elections.
Good news on the advocacy front: In September 2025, JJAC released the findings of a five-year study evaluating lost property and assets across 11 countries, including Iran, amounting to $263 billion at today’s values. The findings were presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Two Congress members are proposing a bipartisan resolution to designate 30 November as ‘Jewish Refugee Day’ in the US.
It’s been a bad year for Iranian Jews.The regime has periodically accused them of being a fifth column working for Israel, although it has now released all those it arrested at the time of the June 2025, 12-day war.
It’s been a good yearfor:
Levana Zamir and Haim Taib, two Mizrahi Jews who were both chosen to light Israel’s Independence Day torches.
Doda Bahra who left Yemen for Israel. Four Jews remain there.
We’d like to thank all our regular readers and those who kindly tipped us off about interesting articles, and hope you’ll continue to follow us in the new year, whether you are a casual visitor, or are subscribed to our daily newsletter, Instagram or Facebook.
Wishing you happy holidays and all the best for 2026.
Arab states have condemned the massacre of Jews on Bondi beach, but they have not mentioned Jews, Hanucah, or antisemitism, according to this Media Line opinion piece:
During the Bondi massacre, Arsen Ostrovsky was injured by a bullet which grazed his scalp
If investigators confirm the attackers’ ideological motivations and ties to the Islamic State, it will fit a familiar pattern of extremist violence. What is already clear, though, is that the reactions from the Muslim world and the political left in the days afterward matter as much as the investigation itself.
Qatar, which presents itself as a regional mediator, condemned the brutal attack—but failed to say plainly that Jews were under assault. Israel’s neighbor, Egypt, with which Israel has just signed a major gas deal, followed with similar language.
Australia did see condemnations from Muslim institutions, but most avoided naming either the target or the motive. The Australian National Imams Council and the Council of Imams NSW “unequivocally condemn[ed] the horrific shootings in Bondi,” saying that “acts of violence and crimes have no place in our society” and urging Australians to “stand together in unity, compassion, and solidarity.” The language was earnest but incomplete: It never mentioned Jews, Hanukkah, or antisemitism. The same pattern appeared elsewhere. The Alice Springs Islamic Mosque called the shooting “completely against Islamic teachings” and stressed that Islam “forbids the killing of innocent people,” condemning violence in general terms while sidestepping the antisemitic nature of the attack.
These omissions matter. When condemnations erase the Jewish identity of the victims and the antisemitic nature of the crime, they drain the attack of its meaning—and make it easier for the next one to happen. Silence becomes permission, signaling impunity to Muslim extremists and supremacists who read the moment as an open season on Jews.
This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, of the Middle East and North Africa, documenting the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution.
Point of No Return
Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries
One-stop blog on the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees - updated daily.
