Month: August 2017

Recalling the Baghdadi music of India

In the cosmopolitan culture of the 1930s, the Baghdadi Jews of India had  their own record labels: the Iraqi-Jewish tunes performed by the oud player  Isaac David even found their way into Bollywood musicals.  In 2009, Sara Manasseh, a Mumbai-born ethnomusicologist, put together 15 tracks on an album called Shir Hodu. Fascinating interview in the Scroll magazine (with thanks: Dominique)

The dulcet ring of the oud is impossible to miss on the soundtrack of Yahudi,
Bimal Roy’s unlikely Bollywood historical made in 1958 about the
persecution of Jews in ancient Rome. The background score, composed by
Shankar and Jaikishan, has a vaguely Middle Eastern feel to it and as
the plot twists and turns, it often falls to the versatile Arabian
stringed instrument to signal the swirling emotions. As massacres are
ordered, betrayals ensue and Dilip Kumar falls in love with Meena
Kumari, the oud sobs, sighs and sings to enhance the mood on screen. It
could easily have descended into kitsch. Perhaps the reason it didn’t
was the fact that the man plucking the strings, Isaac David, was well
acquainted with Middle Eastern music.

David was Jewish himself
and in the early years of the last century, he had polished his art by
playing with an ensemble in Mumbai that recorded four discs of Iraqi
Jewish tunes for the Hebrew Record label.

Some of those tunes can be heard on a collection called Shir Hodu: Jewish Song from Bombay of the ’30s, which
offers a fascinating reminder of the city’s cosmopolitan heritage.
Released in 2009, the 15 archival tracks on the album have been
painstakingly put together by Sara Manasseh, a Mumbai-born Iraqi Jewish
ethnomusicologist who now lives in London. During the 1930s, Mumbai was
“a musical kaleidoscope”, Manasseh says in her liner notes, and the
pieces included music and Jewish prayer chants in Hebrew.

In 2012, Manasseh explained the historical and theoretical context of this music in a book titled Shbahoth – Songs of Praise in the Babylonian Jewish Tradition: From Baghdad to Bombay to London.

Mumbai
has long been home to three distinct Jewish groups. The largest is the
Bene Israel, who believe that their ancestors were shipwrecked off the
Alibaug coast in 175 BCE. From the nineteenth century, Iraqi Jewish
traders – Manasseh’s ancestors – fleeing religious persecution began to
settle in the commercial capital. This group came to be known as the
Baghdadis. In the 1930s, a small number of Jews from Kochi, whose
ancestors had arrived in Kerala in the 10th century BCE, also lived in
Mumbai.

Both the Bene Israel and the Baghdadis had vibrant musical
traditions in the 1930s. The Bene Israeli repertoire was in Marathi,
drawing its themes from the Psalms and other Biblical sources. Among the
prominent community musicians was Nathan Solomon Satamkar, a dashing
silent movie actor whose family established two musical schools to
provide instruction in such instruments as the sitar and the dilruba,
Manasseh said.

To Mumbai’s ears, the music of the Baghdadis must have seemed far more exotic. Shir Hodu includes
tracks by Silman Museri, whose group included “dancing girls who would
balance candelabras on their heads”, Manasseh said in an email
interview. Also popular was Mnashi Abu Moshe, a blind singer who
sometimes entertained at parties thrown by Manasseh’s grandparents. “He
would sing popular Arabic songs from Baghdad, and also improvise
songs…about people who were at the party,” Manasseh said. “My
grandmother would sit by him and tell him who was there.”

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Yemenite festival attracts thousands

Visitors will be flying in from New York and Los Angeles to attend this year’s Timanyada, a celebration of Yemenite Jewish culture and music in Eilat – the biggest yet. The Jerusalem Post reports:

 

 

HaMori Hazaken, a tribute to the strict religious teacher to which young Jewish boys were sent in Yemen. 

The festival held annually in Eilat has grown from a small event serving
a few hundred to a massive cultural event that attracts thousands of
people, with some people even booking flights from New York and Los
Angles just to attend.

This year, Yemeni culture will be celebrated with Yemenite costumes, traditional foods, and a special Shabbat custom called Ghala. Ghala,
which is essentially a Yemenite version of the American potluck dinner,
a community event in which each person brings his or her own food and
the group shares each others’ treats.

Read article in full

Arabic site throws light on synagogue funding controversy

 The pan-Arab publication Al-Monitor has thrown some light on the controversy surrounding who should pay for repairs to the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria. According to one report, the tiny Jewish community was legally responsible. But the Egyptian government has decided that it would be unfair for the 13 Jews (the figure quoted in the article is exaggerated) to bear the burden (with thanks: Boruch).

Former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass told Al-Monitor that
Eliyahu Hanavi is one of the biggest synagogues in the Middle East, and
it is characterized by its unique architecture. The ceiling of the
women’s prayer room collapsed in January 2016 due to bad weather. At
that time, the Ministry of Antiquities formed a committee — led by
Mohamed Mahran, the head of the Central Administration for Antiquities
under the ministry and responsible for preserving Jewish heritage — to draft a plan to restore and protect the temple.

Magda Haroun, the head of the Jewish community in Egypt, has fought
many battles to preserve Egypt’s Jewish heritage, including one to
renovate temples — 10 historical ones remain — and turn them into
tourist sites. The walls of the temples have been weakened through
deterioration due to lack of funding for maintenance.

The Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue will be renovated at government expense (Photo: AFP)

The Ministry of Antiquities has suffered from low budgets and has
therefore not been of help. Haroun, an anti-Zionist, opposed accepting
foreign funding on the grounds that most Jewish associations abroad that
might be interested in donating such funding are groups supportive of
Israel.

The funding to renovate Eliyahu Hanavi became somewhat controversial
when on July 5 Saeed Helmy, the head of the Ministry of Antiquities’
Islamic, Coptic and Jewish Monuments Department, pointed out that
Article 30 of Law No. 117 (1983), on antiquities, and amendments to it
in Laws Nos. 3 and 61 (2010) state that the Jewish community,
being occupants, shall bear all renovation costs for synagogues. Some
have therefore argued that the Ministry of Antiquities footing the bill
for renovation of Eliyahu Hanavi is a violation of the law.

According to the statute, the head of the Jewish community in Egypt —
for the time being Haroun — is in charge of the maintenance and
renovation of Jewish temples, whereas Egyptian churches and the Ministry
of Awqaf (or Religious Affairs) are in charge of renovating historic
churches and mosques. Maintenance and renovation have in the past been
funded by foreign Jewish figures and organizations given the small and
declining number of Jews in Egypt. Today only six Jews live in Cairo, and another 19 are thought to reside in Alexandria.

In 2015, the Ministry of Awqaf called on the Cabinet to amend Article 30,
which the ministry considered to be unjust. The ministry cannot cover
the project renovation costs, often in the millions of dollars, which
are based on decisions and recommendations of the Ministry of
Antiquities. Thus, the Ministry of Awqaf argued that its role be
restricted to providing funding to hire Muslim preachers (Christians are
responsible for their own), while the renovation of mosques becomes the responsibility of the Ministry of Antiquities. Article 30, however, remains in force.

The Ministry of Antiquities does not receive an allocated share of
the state budget. Rather, it is provided funding from revenues from Egyptian antiquities
expositions and tourism at shrines and museums. After the January 25
Revolution (2011), revenues dropped due to the decline in tourism
resulting from the security situation.

In July, the Ministry of Finance decided to allocate 1.27 billion Egyptian pounds
(about $70 million) for eight renovation projects, including the
Alexandria synagogue. The others were the Greek-Roman Museum, Mohammad
Ali Beshbara Palace, Baron Palace, King Farouk Rest House, Kassan
Palace, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and the Giza
Plateau.

Hawass told Al-Monitor, “The listed Jewish temples
in Egypt amount to 10, nine of which are in Cairo, including the Adly
Street Synagogue [or Sha’ar Hashamayim] and Ben Ezra Synagogue, while
Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue is in Alexandria. The Ministry of Antiquities
is equally interested in Jewish, Pharaonic, Islamic and Coptic
antiquities as part of Egypt’s cultural heritage.” Prayers are still
occasionally conducted at Adly Street and Eliyahu Hanavi as well as other synagogues not listed by the Ministry of Antiquities for historic preservation such as the Ezra Synagogue in Cairo.

Hawass said that misunderstanding of Article 30 is responsible for
the funding controversy surrounding Eliyahu Hanavi. Preserving
antiquities is primarily the responsibility of the Ministry of
Antiquities. He explained that in the absence of worshippers from a
community or their inability to bear the renovation costs, in this case
the Jewish community, the Ministry of Antiquities is supposed to assume
responsibility for preserving historical structures. By Hawass’
accounting, the number of Jewish worshippers in Alexandria stands at 18
elderly women and one man, Youssef Bin Jaoun. The last time prayers were
held in Eliyahu Hanavi was in 2012.

Hawass asserted that this is not the first time the Ministry of Antiquities has renovated a synagogue at its own expense. The Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue
was restored in 2010 with ministry funding. The government refused to
take donations from the Israeli government for the project.

Read article in full

A flawed view of Mizrahi history

This Haaretz article by Ron Cahlili misleads by positing an idealised view of ‘Mizrahi’ history under Muslim rule. The oriental Jews, he says,’chose’ to side with European Colonialism and Zionism: how much better might matters have been had they not have been so foolish. How absurd of them to want to escape from their status of precarious ‘dhimmi’ inferiority!  

Inside a Tehran synagogue.

“Dhimmi” is a deceptive term. On the one hand it implies an inferior, controlled civil and religious status, but it also defines the Jewish (and Christian) populations as religious minorities that are due protection. Yes, there were still some incidents of violence and oppression and harassment, but the system also enabled coexistence, shared culture, language, innovations and great achievements in philosophy, religious jurisprudence and other fields. One can certainly say that the current Jewish world would look completely different were it not for the innovations and changes wrought by Mizrahi Judaism, long before the Ashkenazim were born.

The entry of a foreign entity into this delicate fabric of relations – first in the form of Christian-European colonialism and later by Jewish-European Zionism – essentially undid it. At first, most of the Jews in the Muslim world chose to side with colonialism and turned a cold shoulder to the longtime Muslim neighbor, which the neighbor perceived as ingratitude; and at a later stage, right after David Ben-Gurion’s 1941 “One Million Plan,” and the acknowledgement that Zionism needed Mizrahi Jews to realize its vision, many Jews once again chose (or were forced to) turn a cold shoulder to the Muslim patron. The latter also began to dream of a separatist nationalism, and couldn’t abide the repeated insult from its loyal subjects, and began attacking and plundering and also expelling the Jews of Arab lands to their new homeland.

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Ceremony marks first airborne evacuation of Iraqi Jews

Operation Michaelberg was the first attempt to use aircraft  secretly to evacuate Jews from Arab countries to mandate-era Palestine. Shlomo Hillel, now 94, describes the nail-biting episode in detail in his book Operation Babylon: sent by the Mossad back to Iraq without notice and with no real idea of where they might land the ‘plane, Hillel had to pretend to be a member of the flight crew to evade the attention of the British authorities. The Jerusalem Post covers the 70th anniversary celebrations (with thanks Lisette, Ruth and Imre):

 Shlomo Hillel: led operation

Seventy years after the Mossad LeAliya Bet’s Operation Michaelberg brought 100 Iraqi Jews to British
Mandate 
Palestine by air, Israelis who were on the flight marked
the anniversary together, at the site of the former Atlit Detention
Camp.

The hundreds of guests who attended the event on Wednesday night also
included family members of the rescued Jews and aliya activists who had
been involved in their immigration.

An aircraft of the same model as the one they traveled on to the Lower
Galilee village of Yavne’el in 1947 featured at the ceremony. Earlier
this year, the Curtiss C-46 Commando transport aircraft was brought to
Israel from Alaska, and restored.

The Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites, which brought the
plane to Israel with the support of the Jewish National Fund USA,
intends to turn it into an interactive display that will tell the story
of the immigration to visitors to the Clandestine
Jewish Immigration Information and Research Center, which is located at
the site of the former British detention camp.

“I am excited this evening, here in the Atlit refugee camp, as I was 70
years ago when I landed in the plowed field at Yavne’el,” said former
Aliya Bet agent Shlomo Hillel, 94. Hillel led the operation, which was
the first to bring Jews to British Mandate Palestine
illegally via the air.

Immigrants told their children and grandchildren the story of their
immigration to Israel. The operation was complicated and dangerous,
carried out under the noses of the Iraqi authorities, and landing in
Palestine in violation of British White Paper restrictions.

The Iraqi-born Hillel made aliya in 1934 with his family, at age 11. In
1946, he flew to Baghdad on an Iraqi passport and remained there for one
year.

After Operation Michaelberg, Hillel visited Baghdad again in 1950 to
negotiate the mass immigration of the Jews of Iraq, 120,000 of whom were
airlifted to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah between 1950 and
1952. On these trips, he disguised himself as either
a Frenchman or an Englishman. The airlift was made possible through the
cooperation of Iran.

Read article in full

Algerian Jews may receive German compensation

 Robert Blum, 91, was an Algerian-Jewish schoolboy forced to leave his French school during WWII. Algerian Jews were stripped of their French nationality, professionals lost their jobs and many businesses were seized. Now, owing to efforts by the Claims Conference, 25,000 Algerian Jews may be about receive compensation from the German government, just as Moroccan and Tunisian (and evenIraqi)Jews have done. (It is notable that Berlin is being held accountable for Jewish persecution, not the French government, even  though Algeria  was under direct Vichy control.) The Times of Israel reports (with thanks: Lily, Imre):

Jewish tailors in Algeria. White-colour workers lost their jobs during WWII. (Courtesy: JIMENA)

Algeria, under the control of Vichy France at
the time, was introducing a series of anti-Semitic laws which stripped
Jews of their French citizenship, barred Jewish children from public
schools, and prevented Jewish doctors, lawyers, pharmacists and other
professionals from working in their trades.

Now the Conference on Jewish Material Claims
Against Germany, also known as the Claims Conference, is making the case
to the German government that it should compensate Jews who were in
Algeria at the time of the Shoah.

“It was obviously not like the camps in
Poland, but it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t persecution — and on that
basis we believe that people are entitled to compensation,” said Greg
Schneider, the executive vice president of the Claims Conference.

There were approximately 130,000 Jews in
Algeria during World War II, and it is estimated that about 25,000 of
them are still living — mostly in France, Schneider said.

As far as Blum remembers, being kicked out of
the government school wasn’t so bad — he just had to go to a different
school nearby, where all the students and teachers were Jewish. The
Jewish school was not far from the French school, so he could still
spend time with his old schoolmates.

“Nothing terrible happened,” he says. “It’s
true that Jewish students were kicked out, but at the same time,
separate schools were organized for them. There was no animosity between
the Jewish and Catholic students.”

But historians say the bigger picture was
bleaker. During the war, the quota for Jewish students in both primary
school and high school in Algeria was lowered from 14 percent to 7%,
according to Jean Laloum, a historian who specializes in contemporary
Jewish history in North Africa at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche
Scientifique in France.

“It was catastrophic for parents that their
children had no future because they couldn’t go to school. It was the
worst of the measures,” said Laloum.

In addition, after Algerian Jews were stripped
of their French citizenship in October of 1940, the quota for Jews who
could work as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, midwives, architects, and
in other professional fields was lowered to 2%. Many Jewish
professionals lost their jobs.

Jewish businessmen were also targeted after
anti-Semitic laws were introduced to transfer property that was owned by
Jews to non-Jewish businessmen.

For example, in July of 1942, an Algerian law
barred Jews from operating drinking establishments, which included both
cafes and bars, Laloum said.

In addition, Jewish real-estate and businesses
in Algeria were often taken away and transferred to Aryans. The homes
where Jews lived were not seized, but their commercial properties were
often targeted, said Laloum.

Blum says that this actually almost happened
to his aunt and uncle. They were arrested under fraudulent allegations,
imprisoned and sent to court in Lyon, France. Luckily, the court in Lyon
dismissed the case after finding the allegations absurd and his uncle
was freed, he said.

“There were people who wanted to take
advantage of the situation to seize shops and businesses that belonged
to the Jews,” Blum said. “But then the court cases didn’t hold any
water, and the cases were annulled.”

But according to Laloum and Schneider, many Jews in Algeria did lose their properties and businesses.

“Jewish property was confiscated, I think it was common,” Schneider said.

In addition to economic difficulties,
historians say that there were alsolabor campsin southern Algeria
during the war, and some of the prisoners were Jewish, although Laloum
did not know how many Algerian Jews may have been sent to these labor
camps.

The prisoners in these camps had to break
stones and build roads under the hot sun and the conditions were so
severe that some prisoners died, Laloum said. While most people were
sent there because they opposed the regime or because they were
communists, a “certain number of Jews were imprisoned in these camps
because they were Jewish,” Laloum said.

In recent years, the Claims Conference has
successfully persuaded the German government to expand the eligibility
for compensation for more Jews who lived through the Holocaust.

Most recently, the German government agreed to
compensate Jews who had been in hiding for at least four months during
the Holocaust, while previously the criteria called for at least a year
and a half, Schneider said.

Jews from the town of Iasi, in Romania, have
become eligible for compensation since this past July. The German
government even provides some funds to Jews from the former Soviet Union
who never lived under Nazi occupation — such as those who survived the
siege of Leningrad and those who fled from the war together with other
Soviet civilians.

More markedly, the German government has
recognized the persecution of Moroccan and Tunisian Jews but has not
done so for Algerian Jews — even though Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria
were all similarly under the control of Vichy France during WWII.

In Morocco — unlike Algeria — Jews did not
lose their citizenship and their property was not seized, Schneider
said. Still, Germany recognized that Moroccan Jews suffered from fascist
persecution because some were forced to move into historic Jewish
districts, called mellahs, which were similar to ghettos. These mellahs
were not fenced off or locked, but they were Jewish neighborhoods
nonetheless. German law recognizes forced residence as a type of
persecution, Schneider said.

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Egypt seizes ‘Jewish’ items from Saudi smuggler

Controversy centres over a haul of ‘Jewish antiquities’ seized by the Egyptian authorities from a Saudi ‘smuggler’. At least one item appears to be a modern forgery. Report in the Times of Israel (with thanks: Boruch):

A collection of 18th century Jewish items was
seized from archaeology smugglers by Egyptian authorities late last week
in a joint operation between the Hurghada Ports Authority and the
Egyptian Ports Antiquities Unit of the Ministry of Antiquities. 

 This ‘find’ has aroused suspicion: it uses a modern typeface and its sentences make no sense.

The smugglers attempted to move six Jewish artifacts via the Red Sea resort city of Hurghada. According to a report in AhramOnline,
Ahmed Al-Rawi, head of the Central Administration of Seized Antiquities
Unit at the antiquities ministry, said the seized loot was discovered
in the possession of a Saudi citizen. Al-Rawi said the finds were
authenticated in accordance with law 117/1983. 

Included in the trove was a cane with a handle carved in stone which depicts a bearded man wearing a yarmulke.

Additionally, five stone reliefs engraved with
texts written in Hebrew and other Jewish decorative elements were
discovered, according to a Facebook post from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

An additional find in the seized collection
was a 29-page Hebrew book described by the Egyptians as “the
commandments of Judas Iscariot,” one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. This
item was not dated to the 18th century and its typeface points to a much
more modern provenance.

Read article in full

Iraqi Jews were leading promoters of cinema

This article by the Iraqi journalist Mazin Latif in the Arabic medium Al-Gardenia explains how Iraqi cinema was pioneered by Jews in the first half of the 20th century. With thanks to Edwina R. for her translation from the Arabic.

An outdoor cinema

Until the late seventies, cinemas
in Iraq were landmarks in Baghdad  and a marketplace
of culture and communication in all intellectual, social and literary fields.
The role of the cinema in Iraq has a long history and the Jews of Iraq  could serve as a conduit for the arts in
Baghdad and other Iraqi cities because of their contact with European
civilization, culture and knowledge of western languages. The Jews were
interested in importing movies and setting up movie theatres. Jews had control
of Columbia, which later changed its name to the Iraqi Film Company.  Ezra Sudai and his brothers founded this
company,  specialising in American films.
The company owned several theatres in Baghdad, including Roxy cinema, Broadway cinema,
Baghdad cinema, Metro cinema and al-Rashid cinema.

The Baghdad Cinema Company was founded in 1934 by four Iraqi Jews as a joint
stock company with a capital of 34,310 Iraqi dinars. The first film was
screened in Iraq on the night of July 26, 1909 in Dar al-Shifa, next to
al-Karkh. Two years later, the Abkhana area saw another showing by a Jewish
merchant specialising in the import of machines named ‘Blocky’.

The first cinemas in Baghdad were
outdoor cinemas. The outdoor film performances were organised in many cities by
the British information service with a 16-mm mobile projector.

In 1920, another
dealer established Cinema Central in Hafiz al-Qadi district. It later changed
its name to Rafidain.

The cinemas began to open in the Thirties of the last century. The Central
Cinema was the first film theatre opened in Al-Ammar, Baghdad by a member of
the Jewish community. It set a precedent. It helped encourage other investors
to walk through the door. The Royal Cinema was opened in Baba al-Agha, the
Iraqi cinema in al-Midan square, Al-Rashid cinema and al-Zawra cinema in the
Al-Senak area opposite the al-Mabrouh cafe.

The performances were widely
attended by Jewish youth, and weekly screenings by families. Although some
local newspapers opposed the establishment of such entertainment centres
because foreign films did not take into account the ‘social traditions’ of
Iraqi society, they continued to attract increased demand from the general
public at the time.

The ornate al-Zawra cinema

In 1937, Ghazi cinema was built  at the eastern gate by Shaul and Kamel Goubi,
‘Beit Ezer’. This hall was  known for its
grandeur and splendour; it was built on the ruins of a military barracks; two
statues of the gods of beauty were erected. The cinema presented the
masterpieces of international cinema, such as Gone with the Wind, Sand and
Blood and Beautiful Swimming Pools. In the 1940s the eastern gate housed a
complex of cinemas. In the evenings, intellectuals would queue in front of the
ticket windows in their European suits and women in their Parisian garb would
wait for their husbands to buy tickets. (…)

The Royal cinema, Bab al-Agha, Baghdad

The first film to be shot in Iraq was ‘Alla and Issam’ in 1948, the film whose script
and songs were written by Anwar Shaul. He was a translator for William Tell of
the works of the poet Sheridan. It was directed by Studio Baghdad, funded by
the Sudai brothers. It was an unqualified hit.

‘Daily Sage’ database propagates Sephardi tolerance

A website  has been launched to propagate the teachings of Sephardi rabbis before they are lost to orthodox Judaism. A  few weeks ago, a lecture on homosexuality by Rabbi Joseph Dweck, senior rabbi of Britain’s Sephardi community, sparked a storm of outrage from fellow rabbis.

The ‘Dweck Affair’ pointed to a fundamental difference in approach, pitting an inward-looking, sectarian, dogmatic ‘Haredi’ approach against a more open Sephardi attitude engaged with the contemporary world. Many religious Sephardim have absorbed ‘Haredi’ norms and their rabbis are often the product of Ashkenazi yeshivot where the works of Maimonides are not necessarily found on the bookshelf.

It is to heal this divide in Israel, no less than in the diaspora, by making the words of Sephardi sages more accessible, that an online database was created called A Daily Sage’.

Haham Hayim Keissar from Yemen

 
According to website founder Eli Bareket:

‘Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish identity, as seen through the
writings and teachings of the Sephardi sages, is at a critical tipping
point. These tolerant voices have tremendous value for the entire Jewish
people and the need for them to be heard and shared is more pressing
than ever before.

‘Judaism centered on social values ​​- morality, ethics, humanity.
All these are “gifts” that should be shared with all of Israeli
society, so that the heritage of Eastern Jews is not restricted to
Sephardim only, and it can become a structure of cross-ethnic identity,
creating a common non-sectoral basis that includes Israeli society as a
whole.


The Daily Sage
has 500 pages and hundreds of sources from the writings of
Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish sages. The project aims to feature 1,000 Sages over the next four years. The website is currently in Hebrew but the first 100 Sages are being translated into English.

.

Ben Yair: ‘Give E. Jerusalem properties to Arabs’

The government should expropriate disputed properties in the Sheikh
Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem and give them to Arabs living in
them, The Jerusalem Post has reported former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair as saying. Ben Yair claims that an exchange has already taken place, with Jews given ‘double compensation’, as they are able to sue for restitution, as well as  living in Arab property in west Jerusalem.  But this is not always the case. Additionally, the Israeli courts have always protected the rights of the Arab tenants, except where these have failed to pay rent.

Ben-Yair,
whose family owned properties in the neighborhood before 1948, was
speaking from the house of the Shamasneh family, who are under threat of
eviction and supposed to leave their home on Sunday.

“If the Israeli government would have acted
decently toward all its residents, including you [the Arab residents],
it would have appropriated the properties in the neighborhood [from
their Jewish owners who lived there before the War of Independence] and
given these properties to the Palestinians who live there today,” said
Ben- Yair, who served as the attorney-general under prime ministers
Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu from 1993 to 1997.

“My
family and the family of my cousin who were forced to leave the
neighborhood in January 1948 got properties of Palestinians refugees on
Jaffa Road and in the Katamon neighborhood in west Jerusalem,” he added.

“They were worth much more than the properties that we left in Sheikh Jarrah.”

Ben-Yair
said if Israel will conduct land registration in Sheikh Jarrah, he
would demand that the ownership of the building that his family had
would go to the Arabs who live in it today.

“The
current Israeli law that enables double compensation only for Jews for
[lost] properties in east Jerusalem from the times before 1948 is
unjust,” he said.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that the Bailiff’s Office issued an
order to the Shamasneh family to leave the house it has been living in
by last Wednesday, following a Supreme Court ruling from 2013.

After
appealing to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, the family received a
five-day extension that will expire on Sunday. The family is now
carrying out a legal battle along with activists to prevent the
eviction.

Eyal Raz, an activist opposing the eviction, told the Post that the family’s lawyer, Sai’id Ghalia, plans to appeal to the magistrate’s court once again on Sunday.

These
kind of evictions happen in cases where Arabs are living in properties
owned by Jews from before 1948, who were forced out when Jordanian
seized eastern Jerusalem. Under Jordanian rule, these properties were
under the jurisdiction of the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property, and
Arab refugees, mainly from the Jerusalem area, were housed there.

Since Israel reunified the city in 1967, legal disputes have been taking place over some of these properties.

Read article in full

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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.