Month: June 2015

‘Seeds of conflict’ could sow confusion

 Kibbutz pioneers ‘did not understand’ Arabs

 A documentary to be broadcast tonight on PBS blames the conduct of Jewish pioneers in a particular incident in 1913 for the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Lyn Julius offers an alternative perspective in the Times of Israel, claiming the programme obscures a history of persecution of Jews by Arabs in Palestine.

One day in 1913, a group of Arabs stole some
grapes from the vineyards of Jewish pioneers in Rehovot. An altercation
followed, leaving one Arab camel driver and one Jewish guard dead. The
incident marked an irrevocable break between Jews and Arabs in
Palestine, and planted the seeds of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Far-fetched as it may sound, this is the theory advanced by a one-hour PBS documentary, ‘Seeds of Conflict,’
shown in the US on 30 June. Grievances between different communities,
once happy to mingle in coffee houses, were allowed to fester, the
programme argues, and the conflict soon took on the proportions we know
today. 

Those most to blame for ruining the hitherto
idyllic relationship between Jews, Muslim and Christians, it claims, are
the young Ashkenazi Jews of the Second Aliyah, who came to the land of Israel fleeing Czarist pogroms.

Seeds of Conflict, (preview here)which the
film-makers say was made in consultation with a number of experts,
insists that, according to the Arabic press and complaints of the time,
these Jews showed ‘no understanding of the ways of the Arab inhabitants’
— unlike the earlier Jewish inhabitants in Palestine, who were Sephardi
and spoke Arabic.

The so-called Old Yishuv was indeed composed of Arabic-speaking Jews who
had settled in Tiberias, Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed, boosted by 15th
century refugees from the Spanish Inquisition.

But life for these Jews was neither secure nor
prosperous, and they subsisted on charitable handouts from abroad.
Crucially, they had to ‘know their place’ under Muslim rule. From time
to time, the Arab inhabitants made the Jews ‘understand their ways’ —
which could consist of bloody pogroms. For instance, in 1834, the
Palestinian Arabs of eastern Galilee took advantage of a regional war
between Egypt and Turkey to attack their Jewish neighbours in Safed and
strip them of everything they had — clothes, property, homes. Jews were
beaten to death, sometimes by their own neighbours, synagogues destroyed
and holy books desecrated.

The 1929 Hebron massacre targeted mainly members of the Old Yishuv, not the new Zionists from Russia.

The small Sephardi community of Palestine was
so abased under Muslim rule that a contingent of Ashkenazi followers of
the ‘false Messiah’ Shabbetai Zvi, seeking refuge in Jerusalem in 1700,
refused to put up with the humiliations suffered by the Sephardim. “The
Arabs behave as proper thugs towards the Jews…” one wrote. Jews could be
slapped by passing Muslims, have stones thrown at them by small
children, be banned from riding a horse — a noble animal — and suffer
all manner of degradation as second-class ‘dhimmis’.

Jews were not allowed to worship freely at
their holy places. The Mamluks forbade them from treading beyond the
seventh step on the staircase to the burial place of the Patriarchs in
Hebron. “Nothing equals the misery and suffering of the Jews of
Jerusalem”, wrote Karl Marx. “Turks, Arabs and Moors are the masters in
every respect.” To be a dhimmi was to be continually reminded of Islam’s supremacy over Judaism and Christianity.

In truth, it could be argued that the breakdown of the traditional dhimmi
relationship was one of the root causes of the Israel-Palestine
conflict. Perhaps the decisive incident took place, not in 1913, but in
1908, when the Hashomer Hatza’ir pioneers of Sejera dismissed their
Circassian guards — who protected their settlement against Bedouin raids
— ­ and replaced them with Jewish guards. For the Jews, this was an
ideological statement of self-sufficiency. But for the neighbouring Arab
fellaheen, they had crossed a red line. They had reneged on their part of the bargain: the dhimmi, who was not allowed to bear arms, should always look to the Muslim for protection.

The arrival of the young Zionist pioneers,
with their socialist vision of a brave new world, threatened to overturn
the existing pecking order. Yet many Arabs benefited from the influx of
European Jews. As the Jews toiled to drain the swamps and make the
desert bloom, waves of Arab immigrants flooded in from neighbouring
countries, eager to take advantage of the jobs and prosperity created.

The program’s creators say that 1913: Seeds of Conflict
dispels a number of myths and is ‘an admittedly arbitrary glimpse that
captures the Palestine of a hundred years ago’. But to substitute a tale
of ‘European colonialists’ invading Palestine in order to trouble a
multiculturalism of mythical equality would be to indulge in dangerous
revisionism.

Read article in full

Egypt-Israel talks signal warm-up

One week after Egypt said it
would return its ambassador to Israel after a three-year hiatus, top
diplomatic envoys from the two states met Sunday for talks in Cairo to
discuss the deadlock on the Palestinian front and security issues facing
the region. Relations between the two countries are warming up, for the first time in four years. The Times of Israel reports:

While
specific details from the confab were under wraps, the Israeli Foreign
Ministry said it was “pleased” with the outcome of the talks and that
the two countries see “eye to eye” on a number of issues, the NRG news
site reported. The session was believed to be the first between senior
Israeli and Egyptian figures in Cairo since 2011. 

Israeli diplomats were said to be satisfied
with Cairo’s plans to maintain its tough stance toward the Hamas group,
which rules the Gaza Strip, despite recent media reports signalling an
easing of restrictions on the Palestinian enclave.

Foreign Ministry director Dore Gold and
Egyptian diplomats hashed over topics such as Iran’s nuclear program,
growing Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, Cairo’s foreign
policy toward Hamas and a possible re-launch of peace talks with the
Palestinians — in the first powwow of its kind between the two nations
in four years.

Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister Osama
al-Majdoub made it abundantly clear to Gold that Cairo views the
Palestinian deadlock as “the heart of the conflict in the region,” and
stressed the importance of restarting high-level negotiations between
Jerusalem and Ramallah, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said, according to
Reuters .

“It is the Arabs’ central problem, and its solution is a basic condition to reaching stability in the region,” al-Majdoub said.

Egypt’s position regarding the Palestinian
issue remains “unchanged” and solutions to promote the peace process
were “at the top of the agenda” during the consultations, he added.

Israeli officials noted that recent reports
regarding the removal of Hamas from Egypt’s list of terror groups
reflected a “tactic” rather than a change in overall strategy, and that
Cairo’s outlook on regional developments is closer to Israel’s than
expected.

“In Israel [we] speak Hebrew, in Egypt [you]
speak Arabic, but when discussing regional challenges, both countries
speak the same language,” Gold told his Egyptian hosts, according to
NRG.

Hazem Khairat (YouTube screenshot)

Hazem Khairat (YouTube screenshot)

Official relations between Jerusalem and Cairo
have been relatively warm since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi rose to
power. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “deeply welcomed”
Egypt’s appointment of its new ambassador to Israel, Hazem Khairat.

Cairo’s last ambassador to Israel, Atef Salem, arrived in the Jewish state in October 2012. He was recalled soon after, in the wake of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza.

In the unrest that followed the ouster of
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013, Israel
reduced the number of its diplomatic staff posted to Cairo, but it has
begun building up its presence in the city more recently in light of the
relative calm.

Read article in full

A potted history of the Jews of Sousse

 The bloody massacre of 39 people, mostly tourists, in the Tunisian resort of Sousse has prompted this piece of research into the Jews of Sousse. At its height, in 1951, the community numbered 6, 400 souls. Very few Jews, if any, remain – having migrated to Israel or France. Tunisia’s Jews once numbered 100, 000. Via Harissa.

 Sousse Casino
 

Sousse is a port and fishing center, near the city of Kairouan (in the center of Tunisia).

 The Jews appear to have settled in Sousse in the 7th century, before the Arab conquest. Until
the capture of the city by the Almohades in 1158 (extremely devout
Muslims whose influence extended far beyond
North Africa to Spain), the community flourished economically and
culturally
. Many Jews were then engaged in commerce and trade.

 Tunisia’s main export – clothing- was largely under the control of Jews in the city. The
Almohades, who ruled the city from 1159, offered the Jews a choice between
conversion to Islam or death, which caused the  cultural,
economic and spiritual collapse of the community.
Accordingly, many Jews converted while others fled the country or were martyred.

Sousse centre and shoreline

Under the Hafsids (1228-1524), Jews were allowed to return to live in the town. Many converts returned to Judaism. The majority of them settled in a separate area  known as the “Jewish
quarter” where they took up their economic activities once more.

In the 15th century, the Jews of the city were spiritually led by Rabbi Isaac B. Sheshet (nicknamed the Ribesh) and Rabbi Simon B. Benati
Duran.

In the 17th century, the Jews of Livorno (Italy) arrived in Sousse where
they were known under the name “Grana”, from the Arab name of Leghorn-Gorna.
Despite the tension between the wealthy, new  Grana community and the
local native community (Tounsa), there was no separation between the
two until 1771,  when the Grana established their own community
with its own institutions.

From 1899, there was a single chief rabbi for all of Tunisia;the first was Rabbi Nathan Abergil.

At that time, the community was composed of about 100 families, among them famous Dayanim (religious judges) and many Torah scholars, such as Rabbi Shlomo
Assuna.

 The French protectorate was established  in
1881 and brought to Tunisia a degree of modernization and French cultural integration: the Jewish community was a beneficiary. 

 The Alliance Israelite ( “Kol Israel Haverim”) opened  schools for
boys and girls in the city:  they learned French and other
subjects in addition to religious studies.

In 1916, the  “Terakhem Zion” association was founded by influential men of the community. They included David Tubiana and Sober Baraness.

Early history (French)

Modern history of  Sousse after 1916 (French)

Why did it take 74 years to mark Farhud Day?

Writing in a number of news media, Edwin Black asks why it took so long to establish International Farhud Day, marked for the first time this year on the anniversary of the bloody pogrom in Iraq. The crushing weight of the Holocaust, the minimisation or ignorance of the role of the Mufti of Jerusalem, and the scepticism of the politicising media all contributed to the marginalisation of the Iraqi-Jewish Kristallnacht :

 From left, Shahar Azani of StandWithUs, Israeli Ambassador David Roet,
Malcolm Hoenlein of the President’s Conference holding the proclamation,
historian author Edwin Black, Avi Posnick of StandWithUs, Rabbi Elie
Abadie of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries and Alyza Lewin of the
American Association of Jewish lawyers and Jurists, at the United
Nations on International Farhud Day.

First, persecution of Jewish victims in
Arab countries did not conform to the established line of study that
followed the classic Holocaust definition, as archetypically expressed
by the USHMM’s mission statement: “The Holocaust was the
state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European
Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.” Note
the pivotal word “European.” This geographic qualifier left out the
Jews of Iraq as well as their persecuted coreligionists in North Africa,
where some 17 concentration camps were established by Vichy-allied and
Nazi influenced Arab regimes.

Second, because the persecution of Jews
in Arab lands during WWII and their forced exodus was considered beyond
the thematic horizon, the type of well-financed and skilled scholarship
that has riveted world attention on the Holocaust in Europe, generally
by-passed the Sephardic experience. Certainly, the overwhelming blood
and eternal sorrow of the Holocaust genocide was experienced by European
Jewry. But their deeply tragic suffering, including that endured by my
Polish parents, who survived, does not exclude the examination of other
groups. Years of focus on the plight of Gypsies, Jews in Japan, and
other persecuted groups proves that. Undeniably, a solid nexus clasps
the events of the Middle East, roiling in oil, colonialism, and League
of Nations Mandates, to a European theatre brimming with war crimes and
military campaigns.

After the 1941 Farhud and during the
subsequent years Husseini was on Hitler’s payroll, the Mufti of
Jerusalem toured European concentration camps and intervened at the
highest levels to send European children to death camps in occupied
Poland rather than see them rescued them into Mandate Palestine. In his
diary, Husseini called Adolf Eichmann “a rare diamond.” What’s more, the
tens of thousands of Nazified Arabs who fought in three Waffen SS
Divisions in the Balkans and across all of Europe, were fighting for a
Palestine and a greater Middle East Arab cause that hinged on Jewish
extermination and colonial upheaval. When I wrote The Farhud in 2010,
the focus was on excavating the details of a forgotten pogrom and a
forgotten Nazi alliance. Only in recent years has a renewed trickle of
excellent scholarship yielded gripping new research into the Arab role
in the Holocaust. For example, there is Islam and Nazi Germany’s War,
which The Wall Street Journal reviewed as “impeccably researched.” A
second book, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East,
by (Barry Rubin and… – ed) meticulous Arab and Turkish culture researcher Wolfgang Schwanitz,
was published by Yale University Press. There are several excellent
others.

Third, critics say, that many of the
leading Jewish newspapers and wire services, now vastly more politicized
than they were in the prior decade, did not devote sufficient space and
informed knowledge to the topic. Moreover, some these critics suggest
that in recent years, the Jewish press seemed to have marginalized the
atrocity and its aftermath as a political discussion. “When former
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was doing his 2012 campaign for
Jewish refugees from Arab lands,” asserts Lyn Julius of the British
organization HARIF – Association of Jews from North Africa and the
Middle East, “hardly a day went by when certain Jewish or Israeli
newspapers did not politicize the matter, or suggest Israel was
exploiting the issue for political gain.”

In that vein, the day before the June 1,
2015 UN event, one prominent Jewish newspaper published an article on
the Farhud, which included this observation: “Now, Jewish organizations
and the Israeli government deploy it [memory of the Farhud] frequently
to support their claims for refugee recognition on behalf of Middle
Eastern Jews.” Before the UN ceremony, three different irate members of
the audience showed me this article on their tablets, and the consensus
of disdain was expressed by one Sephardic gentleman who objected, first
quoting the newspaper with derision: “‘Deploy it frequently to support
their claims for refugee recognition on behalf of Middle Eastern Jews?'”
and then adding, “They would never say such a thing about the European
Kristallnacht!” The complainers were equally astonished that this
prominent article made no mention of the Mufti of Jerusalem. They felt
the complete omission of Husseini’s involvement and the marginalization
of their nightmare was typical of the roadblocks they had encountered
during their decades-long struggle for recognition of their anguish.

But on June 1, 2015, yes, 74 inexcusably
years late and, yes, not an hour too soon, after waiting for thirty
minutes beneath a gaggle of umbrellas in the torrential rain at a narrow
admittance gate on First Ave, and then into a packed hall at the UN,
attended by diplomats from several countries, human rights activists of
various causes and key Jewish leaders from a communal spectrum, in an
event broadcast worldwide live by the UN itself, the stalwarts of Farhud
memory gathered to finally make the proclamation of International
Farhud Day — and made it loud and clear. In doing so, they made history
by simply recognizing history.

Read article in full

Egyptian TV series slammed as anti-Israel

 Episode 4 of Haret al-Yahud. You can view other episodes here

The Israeli embassy in Cairo initially welcomed Egyptian Ramadan TV soap opera Haret al-Yahud as projecting a more positive image of the Jew (although the series misrepresents all Jews as rich, for example). Later, it criticised the series for its attacks on the state of Israel. Egyptian Jews have also been critical. Report by AFP:

 The series initially won praise from Israel whose embassy in Cairo
said it was pleased to see “for the first time, Jews represented
according to their true nature, as human beings”.

The show is openly anti-Zionist, however, and the Israeli embassy
later criticised what it described as a “negative turning point” in the
series and “attacks against the state of Israel”.

The soap is being aired during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, considered television peak season in Egypt.

More than 80,000 Jews lived in Egypt before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 marked the start of an exodus.

Today only a few dozen, mostly elderly women, remain in Cairo and Alexandria.

With the many wars waged between Egypt and the Jewish state and the
anti-Semitism they generated, Jews were either expelled or pressured to
leave the Arab world’s most populous country.

The plot revolves around the love story of Aly, a Muslim officer in
the Egyptian army fighting in the 1948 war, and his Jewish neighbour
Leila, an elegant francophone saleswoman working in one of Cairo’s
upscale department stores, which were owned by influential Jewish
businessmen.

It stars Jordanian actor Eyad Nassar and Egyptian actress Menna Shalabi.

“We discover Egypt at a different time,” said Rana Khalil, 23, an
enthusiastic viewer of the series, sitting in a posh Cairo cafe.

“The characters are elegant and well-dressed. I am also learning a lot about Judaism,” she added.

The show highlights the political upheavals that shook the
flourishing Jewish community, particularly bombings targeting Jewish
businesses which it blames on the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamist movement has been the target of a sweeping crackdown
since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief who has since become
president, ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

One scene shows Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna encouraging
supporters to stage attacks, saying: “The war is not only in Palestine.
Jihad here is no less important than it is there”.

Sisi has pursued closer ties with Israel than Morsi, who had promised
a tougher stance towards its neighbour without calling into question
peace agreements.

The television series has however faced criticism from Egyptian Jews.

Magda Haroun, the chief of Egypt’s tiny remaining Jewish community,
pointed out historical errors including religious practices presented in
the series.

She also denied that Egyptian communists supported Zionism as the show suggested.

Albert Arie, 85, was also disappointed.

The Jewish former communist activist, who converted to Islam to marry
his Muslim wife, had taken part in a campaign against cholera in the
Jewish quarter back in 1947.

He explained that unlike the characters in the series, residents of the district “were among the poorest Jews in the world”.

“I asked myself: ‘What is this crap?'” Arie said, speaking in French,
and suggested that the show would have been more credible if it had
been shot in one of the Cairo neighbourhoods inhabited by middle class
Jews.

“The set makes no sense. It shows rich houses while Haret al-Yahud
was a jumble of alleys, with old houses and houses that collapsed,”
recalled Arie, who was jailed for 11 years for his activism.

Despite the inaccuracies, however, he acknowledged the fact that the
series showed “a positive image of the Jew, who is no longer a bastard”.

Read article in full 

New York Times article(with thanks: Lily)

Muslim-Jewish love story sends sparks flying (NPR)

 Egyptian series does not call for normalisation 

BBC tells Libyan Jewish refugee’s story

 With thanks: JIMENA

It’s progress of sorts: the BBC has decided to show both sides of the story in its examination of the repercussions of the Six-Day War.

ThisWorld Service Witness programme (10 minutes – downloadable MP3) tells the story of Liliana Serour, a 19-year Libyan Jew now living in Israel. In June 1967,  she was caught up in terrifying riots in Tripoli. Crowds screamed ‘kill the Jews’. “You could see the hatred in their eyes,”says Liliana. The family received threatening ‘phone calls 20 times a day. Her father’s high-level contacts with the government could not save them.

Despite the BBC’s valiant efforts to show balance, the equivalence between a Palestinian Arab ‘refugee’ and a Jewish refugee from Libya collapses: Israel soldiers allowed the Palestinian family to move back to Jerusalem, while Liliana’s family, together with some 4, 000 others, was forced out of Libya for good, because the government could not assure their safety. Today there are no Jews in Libya.

Gina Waldman: I escaped with my life

Jews are our cousins, say Kurds

 Did you know that Shimon Peres was a Kurd? Seth Frantzman, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, found much sympathy for Israel when he visited Kurdistan. Here is his report, published in The Forward:

The tomb of Nahum…hard to find (photo: Haaretz)

Writing for an Israeli newspaper, flying over territory held by ISIS
to a Muslim country in the heart of the Middle East could create
difficulties. “Don’t worry, they love Israelis here,” Huff told me. He
asked if I could bring along a prayer book. I had also been in touch
with an organization called Shevet Achim, which helps children with
life-threatening heart problems by flying them to Israel for treatment.
“Can you bring us Polycose, a dietary powder? There is an extremely
malnourished child who needs it,” their local volunteer asked. So we had
two large canisters with giant Hebrew writing on them, and I couldn’t
stop thinking how odd it would look at customs: a Jewish prayer book,
and some canisters full of white powder.

On the ground in Kurdistan. all fears were allayed. Old
peshmerga
fighters cradling AK-47s reminisced about the 1960s, when Israel helped them in the war against Saddam Hussein.

“My
uncle went to Israel through Iran in the 1960s to be trained. Israelis
came here to the mountains to help us,” one told me. There is a warm
affinity for Jews among many Kurds. “Did you know that in most Muslim
countries Jews could not carry weapons and had to wear a distinctive
‘Jewish’ dress ( a sign of dhimmitude – ed),” a Kurdish professor from Syria living in Erbil noted.
“Jews in Kurdistan carried weapons and dressed like us and had the
tribal names of our tribes.” One Kurdish fighter was convinced there is a
mountain named Peres in Kurdistan that proves Shimon Peres is Kurdish.
“Israel is a brave country fighting all the time against the enemy; they
are in everyday war and they are like us, except we have been fighting
since before 1948 for our independence,” another Kurdish officer
explained.

Overlooking the Nineveh plain, with its yellowish parched
grasslands that fan out around the large city of Mosul, which is held by
ISIS, is the ancient Christian village of Al-Qosh. Before 1948 there
was a Jewish community here and a synagogue with the prophet Nahum’s
grave. After passing through a checkpoint to get into the village, we
inquired about its location, but people seemed uninterested in helping
us locate the building. Although recent reports claimed that the tomb is
“in danger from ISIS,” the fact is, the Jewish heritage faces danger
only from neglect. After 2008 a corrugated metal roof was built over the
ancient brownstone structure whose roof is caved in. A Hebrew
inscription is mounted on one wall. Rubble and barbed wire adorn the
place. The old Jewish quarter is easily identifiable by the houses left
in ruins nearby. Looking for the grave and being sent in circles on the
hot day, I joked to our Kurdish colleague from Duhok, “Even the prophet
Nahum couldn’t find his own tomb.”

It reminded me that all is not what it seems in Kurdistan and
Iraq. Here was a Christian village whose residents seem nonplussed by
tourists looking for a Jewish site, and here was a large Muslim nation
of millions with a keen interest in Jewish heritage. In Erbil we met an
Arab professor from Mosul whose family chose to stay and live under
ISIS. One of the professor’s close friends on Facebook is a Jewish
academic. “ISIS uses religion as a mask, but we must all relate to each
other as people first,” the professor said. Even bookshops in Erbil sold
history books on the Jews of Kurdistan with a small Star of David on
them. Biographies of Golda Meir were also on offer.

Many Kurds asked us why Jews who left Kurdistan don’t come back. A
former government minister from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told
us: “In some places there is anti-Semitic propaganda, but not in
Kurdistan. Even if we critique the policy of Israel, you cannot confuse
Jewish people and the politics of Netanyahu.” Back with the
peshmerga
, sitting under the scorching sun 30 kilometers from Mosul, a
50-year-old officer boasted to us that he had killed two ISIS fighters
with his Soviet-made AK-47. “We are proud to have journalists from the
U.S. or Israel here. You are our cousins.”

Read article in full :

Turkish Jews host iftar meal

The Turkish Jewish commmunity has been hosting an iftar dinner (the meal that ends a day of Ramadan fasting) in the newly renovated synagogue at Edirne in north-western Turkey. What this article does not tell you is that the Edirne community has a splendid new synagogue, but just one Jew. The Daily Sabah reports:

The iftar meal (Dogan News agency)

Turkey’s Jewish community hosted an iftar dinner for hundreds of Muslims
in the Great Edirene Synagogue, also known as Kal Kadosh Ha Gadol, in
the northwestern city of Edirne on Monday.

Around 250 people were hosted at the dinner during which an exhibition
of Jewish clothes and dresses from the Ottoman era took place and a
choir from the Culture and Tourism Ministry performed hymns of Turkish
Sufi music.

The dinner was announced by İshak İbrahimzadeh, leader of the Turkish
Jewish community. Reported on June 3, he said: “We are preparing a
special event on June 22. It will start with an exhibition of Jewish
clothes and dresses from the Ottoman era. A choir from the Culture
Ministry will then sing hymns to be followed by an iftar dinner. Our
community in Istanbul will join their fellow citizens at the dinner. We
are also planning another iftar outside the synagogue.”

The community also organized another iftar dinner for around 700 people
on Sunday. Regarding the organization, İbrahimzadeh indicated that the
community has been holding iftar dinners for 15 years in Istanbul and
said: “This year, we opened the Great Edirne Synagogue with the General
Directorate of Foundations. We could not thank the people of Edirne
enough. So we thought about how to deal with this issue and felt that
sharing this iftar dinner, contributing to their iftar, was the best way
of presenting our thanks. We thank all of them very much.”

Warm relations between the Turkish state and the Jewish population in
the country are good despite an article published in The New York Times
alleged before that the Turkish state promotes anti-Semitism in the
country with many Jews deciding to go to Spain where a law of return has
recently been passed. In a statement that the Turkish Jewish community
made to Daily Sabah following the publication of the article, the
community rejected the claim of pressure from the state and pointed out
that freedom of expression should not be an excuse to make
generalizations and does not reflect the opinion of the whole community.

Read article in full 

When Jews mark Ramadan

1942: Radio silence in Nazi-occupied Tunis

When the Nazis directly occupied Tunisia in November 1942, they turned the Great Synagogue in Tunis into a giant warehouse for radios confiscated from their Jewish owners. 

So as not to offend their Italian fascist allies, the order did not affect  Jews of Italian citizenship. For this reason too, the Nazis did not implement a systematic deportation of Jews to death camps, although Jewish males were sent to labour camps. From the Documentation Center of North African Jewry:

“December 12th, 1942 – Walter Rauff (the Commander of the SS in Tunisia)
wrote: “Today began the confiscation of all the Jews’ radios, except
those of the Italian Jews. The procedure was carried out smoothly, with
the help and support of the French police. The confiscated items were
put at the German forces’ disposal.”

“December 13th, 1942 – Clement Houri (a Tunisian Jew
who kept a diary during the German occupation) wrote: “I brought my
radio to the synagogue, and it was clear to me that the Germans were
taking the most attractive and lightest radios for themselves. Going
into the synagogue with the radio that I had brought with me was a very
difficult experience. The whole room was filled with radios of all
shapes and sizes, of all makes… and whoever came in was not sure if this
was the Great Synagogue on Paris Avenue or a huge department store.”


  More details at thesite of the Documentation Center of North African Jewry during WWII

More about Walter Rauff, SS commander in Tunisia


Moroccan Miri’s cultural revenge?

Is Miri Regev, Israel’s minister of culture of Moroccan origin,  striking back at Israel’s Ashkenazi-dominated elite in what Israeli newspapers have called the country’s ‘culture wars’?  Disparaging comments by predominantly left-wing writers, artists and actors about the country’s predominantly Mizrahi Likud supporters, created a storm. While the left-wing Independent fears Regev’s threats to cut arts funding to ‘defamatory’ works are political censorship, centre-left commentator Ari Shavit (below) pens  a surprisingly scathing critique of Israel’s elites.

 Miriam “Miri” Regev , a former Brigadier-General and IDF spokeswoman, was born in Kiryat Gat in 1965 to Moroccan-Jewish parents.  Revital Madar (a Tunisian-Israeli writer in Haaretz), has argued that Miri Regev had faced discrimination within the Likud
hierarchy due to the fact that she is a Moroccan woman, “whose forthright
behaviour is perceived as being stereotypically Mizrahi.” But Ms Regev has also defended the rights of lesbians and gays in the IDF. Despite the left’s attempts to stereotype her as a cultural fascist, she seems to revel in her unpredictable ‘difference’.

The (UK) Independent states:  

Miri Regev, the hard-right Israeli Minister of Culture, has accused
the country’s artists and performers of being “tight-assed” hypocrites
after they raised vocal objections to her policies, which many consider a
threat to freedom of expression.

Ms Regev’s remarks, aired in a television interview, were
the latest escalation in what Israeli newspapers are calling a “culture
war” between the government and much of the country’s predominantly
left-wing artistic community.

Ms Regev, a reserve
brigadier-general who formerly served as the chief military censor,
alarmed many artists after she took office in May by saying she would
cut government funding to those who harmed the army or contributed to
“defamation” of Israel.

She followed this with threats to
cut funds for an Arab-Jewish children’s theatre after its founder, the
Arab Israeli actor Norman Issa, refused to perform with the Haifa
Theatre at a settlement in the occupied West Bank on grounds of
conscience. The settlements are considered by the international
community to be illegal.


Israeli Minister of Culture Mire Regev
 

Israeli Minister of Culture Miri Regev

 

“Ms Regev cut funding this week to the Arabic-language
al-Midan theatre, which has been staging Parallel Time, a controversial
play about the prison life of a Palestinian who killed an Israeli
soldier. Her office said the decision was made after the director of the
play, Bashar Morcos, told a culture ministry official that he
identified with the killer. However, Mr Morcos denies this and is
threatening to sue Ms Regev over the claim.

“Also this
week, the Jerusalem International Film Festival dropped a film about
Yigal Amir, who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and is
serving a life sentence, after Ms Regev threatened to withdraw funding.
According to a deal struck with the culture ministry, the film is to be
screened out of the festival schedule at a private theatre.”

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Ari Shavit writes in Haaretz:

” Instead of leading Israel in a mature, responsible way to a different future, the center-left sank into a toxic swamp of dejection, querulousness and disapproval. Lost is the joie de vivre. Gone is the daring with which it faced reality. An oppositionist obsession, sterile and bitter, gradually became a spiteful maliciousness, which is very hard to break out of.

So anyone who thinks one strong man or another will save the center-left in the next elections is mistaken.

Anyone who thinks that a sharper ideology (on the one hand) or a blurrier ideology (on the other hand) will do the trick, is delusional.

Of all people it was the artists, with their intense expressions, who exposed what the soft-spoken politicians are trying to hide.

The center-left is ill. On the one hand, it is beset with cannibalism that leads it to devour itself while delighting in its leaders’ slaughter. But on the other hand its hatred of others distances most Israelis from it. On the one hand, it is incapable of real soul-searching and accountability for its past mistakes and failures. On the other hand, it is incapable of offering a convincing, inspiring vision.

 The obsessive, constant preoccupation with bashing Bibi, the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, the successful and the heartland Israelis makes the center-left irrelevant. It does not convey love of man or radiate love of Israel. Nor does it bring to the national table new ideas or inspiring new proposals. All it does is gather in the shouters’ corner and the whiners’ alley, which long ago lost all trace of appeal and effectiveness.”

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A dose of Neanderthal realism

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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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Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries

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forgotten Jewish refugees - updated daily.