Month: April 2014

From Egyptian diva to cleaning lady

The Al-Kuwaity brothers sacrificed fame and fortune in Iraq for a kitchenware shop in the poorest quarter of Tel Aviv. Zohra el-Fassia,who used to sing for the King of Morocco, was reduced to shuffling about in her dressing gown in a tiny Israeli flat. Now The Times of Israel tells the story of an Egyptian-Jewish diva, Souad Zaki, who became a cleaning lady in Israel to make ends meet. Unusually,  Zaki’s Muslim husband came to live with Zaki, a proud Zionist, in Israel. (With thanks: Orna)

TEL AVIV — Most people have heard of Egyptian sultry siren Umm Khultum,
the greatest female Arabic singer in history who dominated Middle
Eastern stages and airwaves from the 1930s to the 1970s and still enjoys
widespread acclaim. However, though she too was a prominent singer of
popular classical Egyptian music leading up to the 1952 Egyptian
Revolution, the same cannot be said of Souad Zaki.

Had
political realities been different, Zaki may have become an
international singing sensation like Umm Khultum, who picked Zaki to
co-star in the hit 1945 film “Salamah.”
But as nationalism and anti-Semitism took hold in Egypt, Zaki, a proud
Jew and Zionist, left her birthplace and privileged status behind for
the life of a struggling immigrant in the young Jewish State. 

Thus, just as Zaki’s star was rising in Egypt, she became a cleaning lady at a bank in Tel Aviv.

In the wake of the recent Egyptian
Revolutions, there has been renewed interest in famous female Jewish
singers from Egypt. Music fans have been reintroduced to Layla Mourad,
the voice of the 1952 Revolution. Mourad, who was of Iraqi-Jewish and
Polish-Jewish descent, reportedly converted to Islam for her husband, or
career — or both.

From diva singer to working single mother: A photo of Souad Zaki with her 5-year-old son taken right before they left Egypt for Israel. (Courtesy of Moshe Zaki)

From
diva singer to working single mother: A photo of Souad Zaki 

with her
5-year-old son taken right before they left Egypt for Israel. 

(Courtesy
of Moshe Zaki)

Faiza Rushdi,
an Egyptian-Jewish singer who, like Zaki, moved to Israel, came to
broad Israeli public attention over a decade ago when her daughter Yaffa
Tusiah-Cohen staged a one-woman show titled, “Ana Faiza,” about their
difficult mother-daughter relationship. (The story was followed up in a
2002 documentary film by Sigalit Banai, called, “Mama Faiza.”)

But of the three great female Jewish-Egyptian singers of the 20th
century, only Souad Zaki has been all but forgotten by all but the most
diehard Arabic music fans. For this reason, Zaki’s son Moshe, a
psychologist from Haifa, was pleased to meet with The Times of Israel to
recount his mother’s unusual life story.

Read article in full

The Jewish divas of the Arabic music scene 

Only 90 doomed Jews still in Yemen

This Sky News Arabic report on 26 April clearly blames antisemitism for the demise of the Jewish community of Amram, now reduced to three families. (Via MEMRI; with thanks: Lily)

The Jews of Yemen, now reduced to 90, will soon join the roll call of extinct Middle Eastern Jewish communities, Ari Soffer reports in Israel National News. Spare a thought for them on Holocaust Memorial Day:

 At the start of the twentieth century Yemen’s Jewish community
numbered approximately 60,000. But today, after centuries of
anti-Semitism which peaked in the last century, the community stands at
less than 90.

Most Yemeni Jews left the country in the twentieth century, during
the region-wide campaign by Arab states to ethnically-cleanse their
Jewish minorities, many of whose presence in those countries had
predated the Arab conquest and the emergence of Islam by centuries.

In all, approximately one million Jews from Arab countries were
either expelled or forced to flee due to anti-Semitic persecution. Many
of them and their descendants currently reside in Israel, and account
for more than half the Jewish population there.

But even the small number of Yemeni Jews who remain in the Middle East’s poorest country are slowly disappearing.

On April 26, Sky News Arabic aired a program on the last Jews of Amran province in western Yemen. The program was translated by MEMRI (the Middle East Research Institute).

The report revealed how the province, once a thriving center of Jewish life, now consists of just three families.

The rapid decline of the community is blamed largely on Houthi rebels, a Shia Muslim separatist group
fighting to secede from the Sunni-majority country. Interviewees
explain how Houthi rebels have systematically scapegoated Jews in the
region, both for religious reasons and due to the community’s perceived
loyalty towards Sana’a.

But Sunni Islamists linked to Al Qaeda have also been responsible for anti-Semitic attacks on Jews in the country, including
the murders of Jewish schoolteacher Moshe Nahari in 2008, and of
community leader Aaron Zindani in 2010. Both of their families
subsequently fled to Israel.

One of the experts interviewed on the program predicted that “within a
few years, nothing will remain of Yemen’s Jewish community.”

Indeed, by now that grim assessment is undisputed, but the question is why it has happened with so little media attention.

According to Jewish rights activist Lyn Julius, the relative silence
of the Jewish leadership regarding the plight of Yemeni Jewry was
necessary in order to avoid attracting even more hostile attention
towards them – particularly as most have chosen to leave for Israel.

“The demise of this 3,000-year-old community is very sad,” said
Julius, who co-founded Harif, the Association of Jews from the Middle
East and North Africa. “But I can understand why the leadership has been
silent – the exodus of the last Jews of Yemen has required
discretion.”

“There is the sensitive issue of the 70 or so still in Sana’a.
Hopefully they too will see they have no future and leave,” she adds,
sadly mindful of the highly dangerous situation in which they live.

While most of the few Jews remaining in Yemen at the turn of the
century have fled the country altogether as a result of this toxic
cocktail of violence and intimidation, some – including Yemen’s Chief
Rabbi – opted instead for the relative safety of the capital.

Yet that has been little better, as the dwindling number of Jews
offered “protection” by the government there are forced to live in a
state of virtual siege – and face the constant terrifying specter of
eviction from their last outpost of relative security.

In a rare interview last year Rabbi Yahya Youssef Salem detailed the miserable conditions of Yemen’s remaining Jews.

Rabbi Salem explained how even in Sana’a he was forced to cut off his
peyot (sidecurls), traditionally grown long by Yemenite Jews, as a
result of regular harassment by local Muslims.

“They took our homes, our land, our cars – they even took my historical library!” he lamented, referring to the Houthis.

And so, as this ancient Jewish community joins the tragic fate of so
many others in the Middle East, soon all that will be left is yet another memorial day.

Read article in full

The Dove Flyer film flies high

The Dove Flyer, a film by Nissim Dayan, based on the book by Eli Amir,has been wowing the Israeli public. Over 60,000 have flocked to see it on general release at cinemas around the country. Beyond all expectations, the film will recover its 9 million shekels’ cost, and even stands to make a profit.


Daniel Gad plays a boy who takes on adult responsibilities


Here is a review by Nozz:

“This is a fairly straightforward, authentic-looking story about how the Jewish community of Iraq, having been part of the local society for two and a half millennia, was hustled out– somewhere between expulsion and rescue– after Iraq found itself on the losing side of Israel’s War of Independence. (Iraq has no border with Israel, but sent troops anyway.) 

The story is shown through the eyes of a boy who sees previously hidden political activism and attitudes among his family and friends come to light, for better or worse, as the crisis develops and he is forced to take on adult responsibilities. Daniel Gad, as the boy, is too old– or at least too big– for the part. We’re forced to mentally subtract a few years from his appearance. The period scenery, on the other hand, looks good except that there can be no very broad outdoor photography because there is too much modernity in contemporary Israel where the shooting took place. 

The film is almost entirely in Arabic; among the audience, those who know the language took delight in some salty and picturesque phrases that were lost in translation. Based on a novel and evidently filmed with the novelist’s cooperation (he has a cameo), the film seems to take care to touch on several different angles within the political and social scene– friendships between Jews and Muslims, the communist movement that was active during the same period, the assimilationist option extending even to conversion, the Zionist movement, the arrival of Arab refugees from Palestine, and the cultural influence of the West. For those unfamiliar with the experience of Jews in the world of Islam, it’s an interesting picture and it suggests an important added perspective on today’s tensions.”


The film will be shown in London on 12 May at Cadogan Hall. Tickets £50 benefit the Babylonian Heritage Center, Israel. Tel 0207 730 4500

How the Shoah affected N. African Jews

Libyan Jews returning from Bergen Belsen camp



Tonight is the start of Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel. Awareness is growing that the Holocaust not only affected European Jews, but also communities in North Africa. If they were largely spared, it is because the Nazis ran out of time.

Here is a detailed account of the impact of the Holocaust on North African Jews on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website.


The Jews of North Africa were relatively fortunate because their distance from German concentration camps in central and eastern Europe permitted them to avoid the fate of their coreligionists in Europe. They were also fortunate not to have had to live under German rule. The Germans never occupied Morocco or Algeria. Though they briefly occupied Tunisia from November 1942, after the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria, until May 1943, the Germans never had the time or the resources to subject Tunisian Jews systematically to the measures implemented in areas under direct German rule in Europe.

Nonetheless, attacks on Jews and Jewish property by local European antisemites and native Muslims, which had taken place before the war in all three countries (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia), continued unhindered by the Vichy authorities.

Even before World War II, the French government had set up internment camps in the French Pyrénées region to hold Spanish Republicans who had fought against Franco’s fascist rebels in the Spanish Civil War, persons suspected or convicted of political crimes, and Jewish refugees who had sought refuge from Nazi Germany in France.

After the armistice with Germany was signed, Vichy authorities sent foreigners (including Jews) who had volunteered for and fought in the French army against the Germans in 1940 and foreign Jewish refugees to work camps in Algeria and Morocco. Upon their arrival, the Jewish refugees received aid from local Jewish committees, as well as from the Joint Distribution Committee and the HICEM, an international Jewish migration organization. These organizations also tried to obtain visas and organize travel to the United States for the refugees.

The Vichy administration sent other Jewish refugees to camps in southern Morocco and Algeria to work as forced laborers on the pan-Saharan railroad line. There were approximately thirty camps, including Hadjerat M’Guil and Bou-Arfa in Morocco and Berrouaghia, Djelfa, and Bedeau in Algeria. Conditions were extremely harsh for the over 4,000 Jewish labor conscripts working on the railroad.

Read article in full

Henna customs of Jews of Yemen

Jewish bride and groom in Yemen

 Yemenite Jews shared with Muslims the custom of painting the hands of brides, but the Jews practised three distinct patterns. One survives to this day among the Habbani Jews of Moshav Bareqet in Israel. From specialist blogger Eshkol Hakofer: (with thanks: Michelle)

The use of henna among both Yemenite Jews (known as Temanim
in Hebrew) and Muslims is described in the travelogues of a number of
European writers (Niebuhr, 1772, pp. 65-66; du Couret, 1859, pg. 213;
Saphir, 1866, pg. 81), and it is mentioned by Yemenite Jewish scholars
as well (Saliḥ, 1779, 2:127; Qarah 1827).

But we still haven’t heard anything about henna patterns (Jewish
or non-Jewish)! The earliest record that I’ve seen of henna patterns in
Yemen comes from Freya Stark, an indefatigable British explorer (and an
incredibly brave woman who travelled alone through the Arabian deserts
and Central Asia at a time when few women dared do so).

She published a series of popular books on her travels, and
included some descriptions of henna patterns that she saw (1936, pp. 47,
213):

[At a wedding in Makalla]: The palms of [the women’s] hands [were]
reddish brown with heavily scented henna and oil and painted outside in
a brown lacework pattern, like a mitten.

[In Tarim]: [The Sultan’s 10-year-old daughter] stood gazing at
me, shy and gorgeous, her little hands done in lace patterns and wheels
of indigo with henna tips; her hair in seventy-five plaits at least,
fluffed out on her shoulders in curls.

Amazingly, Stark also includes a photograph of a woman’s hennaed hands (with the paste
on), taken in the late 30s in the Ḥaḍramaut. She describes how the
pattern is made “by an artist who lets a thin thread of the paste drip
from her forefinger, guiding it into patterns as it does so” (1938, pg.
180).

Among Yemenite Jewish communities, however, I have seen records of
three main types of henna patterns, each of which appears to be
distinct from the types of patterns practiced by the neighbouring Muslim
communities (at least according to Stark).

The first, common among the Habbani Jews of the Ḥaḍramaut, is
characterized by a wide circle around the entire palm, sometimes with a
dot in the centre. The fingers are then painted with broad stripes, and
the fingertips are hennaed solidly.

This pattern was in fact continued after the Habbani Jews
immigrated to Israel, and it’s still done even today among Jews of
Habbani descent (living mostly on a moshav called Bareqet) — the only
Jewish henna patterning technique to really survive into the present
day.

The second type was practiced among the various villages of
central and north Yemen, consisting of rows of dots, usually clustered
in triangles, diamonds, or quincunxes, between stripes across the
fingers and back of the hand. Some brides in Israel continued this
tradition into the 80s but as far as I can tell, it has essentially
disappeared today.

The third, the most elusive and the most elaborate, was practiced
by the Jews of San‘a. It is described extensively by several Yemenite
writers, including ‘Amram Qorah (1954), Yosef Kapah (1961), and Yehuda
Levi Nahum (1962).

I summarize their description on my website:
it was essentially a four-step process. First, the hands and feet were
covered with henna, which was left on for a few hours and then washed
off. The next day, a professional artist known as a shar‘e drew
designs on the skin in molten wax (the pain being explained as symbolic
of the pain of marriage… Lovely). After that, henna was applied over the
wax and left on overnight. The next day, the henna was removed and the
hands and feet covered with a mixture of ammoniac and potash (shaḍḍar),
which was rubbed off after an hour — this turned the henna a deep
greenish-black, while the areas protected by the wax retained their
orange shade.

There were variations on this technique — sometimes the wax was
applied directly on the skin before any henna; sometimes the overnight
henna was skipped and they put the shaḍḍar right after the wax.
But overall, it must have been stunning to see, especially with the
additional ornamentation that was added in black (from a gall ink called
kheṭuṭ), yellow (from turmeric,

hurud), and blue (indigo, nil).

Read article in full:

Egyptian antisemitism quite recent

Samuel Tadros

Antisemitism in Egypt is of comparatively recent vintage, given that intellectuals and politicians who sympathised with Jews and even Zionism  were not so rare. Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Samuel Tadros sees antisemitism as a reaction to modernity in this must-read essay for American Interest:(with thanks: Eliyahu)

That anti-Semitism and its accompanying conspiracy theories are deeply embedded in Egyptian Islamist discourse is no surprise for those familiar with Egypt or Islamism, though familiarity does not lessen one’s astonishment at the bizarre and convoluted nature of the claims made in these and other stories. Perhaps more startling to outside observers is the prevalence of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories among Egypt’s non-Islamists, including its self-described liberals and even its Christian minority. Anti-Semitism is not only a dominant discourse in the country, but is rather the only common worldview shared throughout its political spectrum and among all levels of Egypt’s political class.

Given its widespread appeal and the fact that it elicits little disapproval among Egypt’s intellectuals and politicians, let alone its ordinary citizens, observers are not entirely at fault in assuming deep historical roots for the phenomena. Such assumptions, however, are misguided. Not so long ago, Egyptian intellectuals and politicians were not only, not anti-Semites; many of them were philo-Semites and even exhibited pro Zionist sentiments. In the 1920s it was not uncommon for a leading Egyptian intellectual to proclaim “the victory of the Zionist ideal is also the victory of my ideal.”

How has Egypt reached such a universal consensus on the existence of a Jewish conspiracy, with the only disagreement being on the question of who are its pawns? Why is Egyptian culture so drenched in anti-Semitism? And what are the ramifications of such an all-pervading belief on the country’s foreign relations and its future trajectory? To begin to answer those questions, one has to start by identifying the forms that anti-Semitism takes in Egypt and its foundations.

Read article in full

Racism has been worse on the left

Yemenite Jewish refugees: political primitives?

Seth Frantzman , opinion editor at the centre-right Jerusalem Post, jumps ship in order to sound off on Israeli racism in the Forward, a centre-left publication. Racism, he argues, has always been more virulent on the left. What about Mizrahi racism towards others , one may ask. In the last analysis, however, the state itself has overridden  individual objections and prejudice to open its doors  to Jews  of all backgrounds and circumstances.  It cannot be faulted for that.

Since the 1950s, this legacy of ethnocentrism has haunted Israel. When the philosopher Hannah Arendt visited Israel in 1961, she described her fear of Jews who “looked Arab but spoke Hebrew,” calling them “an Oriental mob.” In 1981, singer Dudu Topaz castigated non-Ashkenazi Jewish voters as “chachachim,” a derogatory term. In 1983, Shulamit Aloni lambasted Sephardic Shas supporters as “barbarous tribal forces.” Shmuel Schnitzer, a journalist, described in 1995 Ethiopian Jews as “thousands of apostates bearing disease.” Noted author Amos Elon pondered in 1953 what effect Moroccan Jews’ “uncontrolled fertility would have on the Jewish people’s genetic robustness,” and in a 2004 interview he was still claiming that “political primitiveness” came from immigrants to Israel.

This narrative of what Ehud Barak called a “villa in the jungle” has cast an immense shadow over the ability to confront racism in Israel. Stereotyping against citizens who are not considered European-origin “sabras” has been an integral part of the left and right, but ironically in Israel, it has been particularly virulent on the left. Ari Shavit states without compunction in his 2013 book “My Promised Land” that “many Oriental Jews are not aware of what Israel saved them from, a life of misery and backwardness in an Arab Middle East.” 

Read article in full http://forward.com/articles/196719/israel-s-uncomfortable-history-of-racist-enginee#ixzz2zgz25x1G

Going to law to recover the archive

 The books and documents ready packed for shipment from Iraq to the US in 2003

If you are following the controversy over the Iraqi-Jewish archive, you could do worse than follow the website called Docex. This specialises in exploring the legal issues surrounding captured documents, cultural property, etc.This entry looks into the possiblity of using the US court system to prevent the return of the archives to Iraq.

The ongoing controversy over the Iraqi Jewish Archives (discussed in other contexts hereherehere, and here) — which were found in Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in 2003, brought to the United States for preservation, and are currently on display at the National Archives — appears fairly straightforward: should they or should they not be returned to Iraq?

The U.S. government is planning to return the archives to Iraq next year, but there is significant opposition. An online petition and letters from Sen. Schumer and other members of Congress
to Secretary of State John Kerry demand that the United States not
return them.  Separately, Iraq has indicated it may be willing to negotiate to allow them to stay longer — but still temporarily — in the United States.

This post (the first of several on the debate) explores another
potential forum for the controversy: a U.S. court. Could a lawsuit
prevent the return of the archives and/or challenge Iraqi government
assertions of ownership?

The short answer is that the chances of formally blocking the return of
the archives to Iraq by court order are slim, but there is a navigable
path to persuading a U.S. court to adjudicate legal ownership over the
archives.  While litigation is often a poor method of dispute
resolution, the Iraqi Jewish archives may present a scenario in which a
court’s careful balancing of the property rights of individuals with the
sovereign rights of Iraq and a fact-intensive examination of the
history, the law, and the documents could be uniquely valuable.

Read entry in full

” All (upper) middle class:” Egyptian Jews

 The Israeli resort of Eilat, where those attending a May Congress on the Jews of Egypt will be able to combine a holiday with a conference

 An Italian historian with a fresh approach to Egyptian Jewry  will feature among the presenters at a conference on the Jews of Egypt in the holiday resort of Eilat next month:

“We’re all middle class now” -or even upper middle class – might best describe Egyptian Jews up to their mass exodus in the 1950s – even if they did not have money or status.

According to an Italian historian, Jews in Cairo and Alexandria identified as ‘upper bourgeois’ in culture, leisure and family values, behaviour and self-image.  

Dr Dario Miccoli, a historian from the Ca’Foscari University in Venice, will expound on the ‘bourgeois’ identity of Egyptian Jews at the Fifth World Congress of the Jews of Egypt in Eilat, Israel on 12-14 May 2014.

Congress president Levana Zamir said of Dr Miccoli:”finally a researcher, who  is not Jewish, has managed to formulate the ‘bourgeois characteristics’ of this vibrant, cosmopolitan community of Jews from Egypt until the mid-1950s. This community no longer exists but is dispersed all over the world, except when it gathers from time to time at world congresses such as that being held in Eilat.”

At the Congress Dr Miccoli will present his book “Histories of the Jews of Egypt: an imagined bourgeoisie, 1880s – 1950s”, soon to be published in the UK by Routledge.

Among other topics the Congress will discuss is “All you wanted to know about compensation to the Jews of Egypt and other Arab countries”. A huge amount of communal and private property was left behind when Egyptian Jews fled. Only 14 of a community of 80, 000 remain.

For more information on the Congress (12 -14 May, Eilat) please click here.     

Mimouna Club braves ostracism

 The Mimouna Club in front of the Jewish Museum in Casablanca



To mark the end of the festival of Passover tonight, Moroccan Jews will celebrate the Mimouna. This unique symbol of Jewish-Arab connection, when Muslim neighbours brought pancakes and other leaven into Jewish homes, is now the name of a club started by Moroccan Muslim students. Of course, if Moroccans have anything to do with Jews and Israel, they run the risk of stigmatisation and ostracism, as Aomar Boum remarks in this Tablet article. See my comment below. (with thanks: Michelle) 

 The Club is called Mimouna, after the traditional Moroccan Jewish post-Passover celebration welcoming the return of leavened bread. For Moroccan Jews, Mimouna signifies the promise of redemption and the hopeful return of the messiah. Israel recognized it as a national holiday in 1966; the Mimouna Club contends that the observance deserves a place in Moroccan culture and society, as a celebration of ethnic diversity.

Today, it has foundation status and chapters in Fès, Rabat, Tetouan, and Marrakech.

In December, I met a few members of the foundation in Rabat, where they were preparing to launch a cultural caravan, a 300-mile traveling roadshow about Moroccan Judaism. I asked them why they care about a topic that could potentially bring them nothing but stigma and social rejection. Almost all of them highlighted how little Moroccan youth know about their history and how significant it is for their compatriots beyond the walls of university campuses to embrace Morocco’s cultural diversity.

 For many Moroccans, particularly younger ones, the country’s Jewish story is part of the past and has no place in post-independence society. “How could we have a club about Moroccan Jews many of whom occupy Palestinian lands today?” one Mimouna critic in Casablanca whispered to me during a visit I made in 2010. It was an attitude I knew well from my anthropological and ethnographic research on Moroccan Jewish communities—but the social pressure on me as a professional ethnographer was minimal compared to the pressures the student members of Mimouna face.

A few acknowledged their frustration and anxiety about being ostracized just because of their interest in learning about Moroccan Judaism—really, about Moroccan history. Recently, the name of one of the Mimouna club members was listed in a public document published online by the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization with Israel, alongside names such as André Azoulay, an adviser to King Mohammed VI; Driss El-Yazami the president of the National Human Rights Council; and Berber, or Amazigh, activists, some of whom have contact with Israeli institutions, citizens, and other public organizations.

 But when I spoke to these students in the course of completing work for a book on the monarchy, Jews, and Holocaust politics in Morocco, I was surprised to find that their interest in the history of Jewish-Muslim relations emerged from their own lives. The majority of them were born and raised in Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech, and Fès and knew their hometowns had complex histories. Elmehdi Boudra, the co-founder of the club at Al-Akhawayn—who subsequently went on to earn a master’s degree in coexistence and conflict from Brandeis—talked to me about how he never knew, growing up in Casablanca, about the longstanding relations between Jews and Muslims in the old city.

Boudra was also inspired by one of the group’s early mentors, Simon Lévy, a renowned linguist of Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Spanish, a political dissident, and former director of the Jewish Museum of Casablanca who also played major role in Moroccan politics since Independence as one of the leading figures of the Party of Progress and Socialism founded by Ali Ya’ta. Another student, Sami Gaidi, described how he went to school in Rabat with Moroccan Jews with whom he remained in touch; a third, Myriam Mallouk, talked about how she was hosted by a Moroccan Jewish family while studying law in France.

In 1998, in a famous Le Monde Diplomatique article titled “Israel-Palestine: A Third Way,” Edward Said responded to Arab critics after his call for seeking communication with Jewish partners in an article that he published for al-Hayat newspaper in June 1998. Said called on Arabs to engage Jews in a responsible conversation including understanding the Holocaust. “When I mentioned the Holocaust in an article I wrote last November, I received more stupid vilification than I ever thought possible; one famous intellectual even accused me of trying to gain a certificate of good behaviour from the Zionist lobby,” Said wrote. “Of course, I support Garaudy’s right to say what he pleases and I oppose the wretched loi Gayssot under which he was prosecuted and condemned. But I also think that what he says is trivial and irresponsible, and when we endorse it, it allies us necessarily with Le Pen and all the retrograde right-wing fascist elements in French society.”

 Mimouna has taken the challenge to heart. In 2011, the club attracted international attention after its members organized a conference on the record of Morocco’s King Mohammed V during World War II, when he resisted orders from the Vichy government to deport Jews living inside the kingdom. For the students, the point of organizing a conference on the Holocaust was to educate their fellow Moroccans about a period when refugees from Europe—many, though not all, Jewish—found shelter in Morocco before the Allies landed at Safi and Casablanca in late 1942.

 It was, one of them told me, a first step—“which is listening to the other and building a trustworthy relationship and a responsible discussion.” Speakers at the conference included a Holocaust survivor—a first for an Arab university. Within Morocco, Khalid Soufyani and other members of the anti-normalization movement argued that the conference undermined the Palestinians and their fight against Israeli occupation. Even Sion Assidon—a Moroccan Jew and former political dissident, critic of Zionism and Israel, and proponent of the BDS movement—harshly critiqued the club for what he saw as implicitly advocating normalization of relations with Israel.

 A year after the Holocaust conference, 16 members of the club took a trip to Israel, where they had a firsthand experience of daily encounters between Jews and Muslims—and the realities of the conflict in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Ramallah and other places. They were also able to meet different generations of Moroccan Jews in Israel and the West Bank.

The trip was organized in collaboration with Kivunim, a New York-based gap-year program created by Peter Geffen, the founder of the Heschel School on the Upper West Side. Geffen took the students to Jerusalem and Ramallah—and to Ashdod, where they visited a statue to Hassan II that stands in a city park. These young students reflected on the complexities of the conflict as their minds and emotions struggled to bridge the distance between Yad Vashem, Deir Yassin, the Haram al-Sharif, and the Western Wall.

Despite the anxieties of the experience, they cherished meeting in person Israelis and American Jews as well as Palestinian Arabs, Christians, and Muslims. When I asked a student if he regretted making the trip after it attracted public criticism, he replied with confidence. “No, I do not regret the trip,” he told me. “I developed a strong friendship with Israelis and Palestinians who work together as we speak now for a possible, just, and peaceful world. It is tough. But the fact of seeing Israeli women standing between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian worker gives me hope.”

 Read article in full

 My comment: The Mimouna club should be applauded for taking risks to build bridges between the two communities.They have been brave enough to arrange a trip to Israel; they have had to fend off accusations of normalisation with Israel. But I am uneasy about the kind of Israel they were taken to see. It is an Israel which confirms the Arab version of history – a version which sees Palestinians as victims. At the same time, it confirms the myth that Moroccans saved Jews during WW2. I bet that these young people were told nothing about Arab antisemitism.

 I am further uneasy that Boum quotes, of all people, Edward Said. Arabs should acknowledge the Holocaust so as not to be bracketed with far right fascists, he said. A bizarre and disingenuous argument.

Pro-Jewish students suffered antisemitism

Holocaust conference has its dangers 

Aomar Boum: A market without Jews is like bread without salt

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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.

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