Year: 2019

Hanucah lighting is held in Kurdistan

For the first time, a Hanukiah was lit at the tomb of the Prophet Nahum at al-Kosh in Kurdistan, as reported by i24 News. The lighting took place on the last day of the festival. Yet there are no practising Jews in Kurdistan and no community to speak of, other than the descendants of 400 families with Jewish roots, all of whom are now Muslim. One assumes that the ceremony took place as a symbol of defiance towards Da’esh (IS), which had reached within 11 miles of the tomb before being defeated, and enables Kurdistan to show off its pluralism. The decision to hold the ceremony could also be linked to the renovation of the tomb of Nahum. 


Some had traveled from Israel, but the majority came from the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan to come together to light the Hanukkah candles, which celebrate the miracle of the cruse of oil that lasted for eight days.

 “It’s the first time we are celebrating Hanukkah in Iraqi Kurdistan,” one of the organizers Ranj Cohen said.

Cohen, an Iraqi Kurd, registered his association with the authorities and plans to complete the renovation of the prophet Nahum’s tomb so as to hold services there on Saturdays.

He hopes to have all readied early next year. 

For the time being, the small congregation distributes sweets and chocolate-iced cakes as they hope for better days in Iraq, and especially in Kurdistan.

 In 2015, when IS still occupied a third of Iraq and the territory of the self-proclaimed “caliphate” bordered the majority-Muslim autonomous region, the local authorities appointed a representative of the Jewish community to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. 

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Egypt registers 13 Jewish artefacts as protected antiquities

The restoration of the Nebi Daniel synagogue in Alexandria has been greeted with rejoicing and gratitude. But this is the price Jews are paying for the preservation of their heritage: according to this article in Egypt Independent, the Egyptian government has declared ‘protected’ 13 artefacts. This means that it is starting to nationalise  moveable communal property that might

 have been restored to its Jewish owners.  (With thanks: JIMENA)



A Torah scroll in the Nebi Daniel synagogue (Photo: Nebi Daniel Association)

The Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt has approved registering 13 artifacts, including Torah scrolls, candlesticks and lanterns, belonging to synagogues in Alexandria and across Egypt’s governorates, in preparation for listing them under the Antiquities Protection Law.

Mohamed Mahran, head of the Central Department of Jewish Antiquities at the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, said that the move to approve registering the pieces as antiquities represents the first of its kind.

In a conversation with Al-Masry Al-Youm, Mahran said that specialized scientific and technical committees had submitted a list of 500 pieces from 13 different Egyptian synagogues, including the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria.

The Permanent Committee for Antiquities then approved the selection of 13 artifacts from the list.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities approved the selected artifacts in accordance with established regulations, Mahran noted, adding that the pieces handpicked for antiquity status under the Antiquities Protection Law are over 100 years old and have a specific history.

The Council recommended that the remaining 487 pieces be preserved in preparation for further study and scientific research. The pieces came from a group of around 6,000 total artifacts examined by scientific and technical committees, which included academic professors specializing in archaeology and experts from the Ministry of Antiquities.

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Arab states are claiming the heritage of their expelled Jews

Blaming Israel for the exodus: rebuttal to Sky News

In the fourth of a series*, CAMERA Arabic takes Sky News Arabic to task for spreading unsubstantiated allegations that Israel caused the exodus of Jews from Arab countries. Many of these are stapes of Arab propaganda, but in refuting them the original piece does refer back to some useful links and sources. 



Iraq

Regarding the series of attacks against Iraqi Jewish targets, all carried out in Baghdad between April 1950 and June 1951, their perpetrators and their influence on the Jews’ exodus, all are a matter of a heated historical debate to this day. Apart of the usual “Israel did it” allegation, always a classic of Arab mainstream propaganda that has recently been promoted by “critical theorists” and “new historians”, other more probable suspects have been floated, either by interested parties or scholars.

Among the suspects are Iraqi nationalists (based on the only recorded admission of two perceived culprits ever made), Muslim Brotherhood Islamists, as well as local Jews who – albeit members of the Zionist underground – were operating outside Israeli directives.

Allegedly, the Iraqi Zionists initiated several attacks after the only fatal attack, the Messouda Shemtob synagogue bombing of January 1951, was already carried out (they were certain that the synagogue attack was the work of the Muslim Brotherhood).

 This was done to prove the innocence of their fellow underground members, arrested by the Iraqi authorities shortly after the synagogue bombing. At that point most Iraqi Jews were already registered for emigration, so Israel didn’t even have an interest in rushing them out of Iraq.

Moreover, two independent commissions found no connection between Israeli intelligence and the events: the first secretly assembled in 1960 by David Ben Gurion’s instructions; the second  as a part of a libel lawsuit filed in 1977 by a former intelligence agent against an Israeli journalist. Eventually, the trial concluded in 1981 with the journalist apologising and retracting his accusations as a part of a settlement.
Currently, the theory about Israeli involvement in the bombings relies heavily on quite oblique pieces of evidence, none of which can be considered substantial:

• The Iraqi official “investigation”, which brought about the arrest, torture and trial of two Zionist underground members, Yosef Ibrahim Basri and Shalom Saleh Shalom. Both were convicted of the synagogue bombing** and were eventually executed; however, despite having found large amounts of hidden weapons as a result of the two’s arrest, the Iraqi authorities were never able to draw a plausible connection between them and any of the attacks, or between them and the Israeli authorities.

A common belief among the Iraqi Jewish community that such involvement existed. Notably, it only became widespread and subsequently faced unrelated hardships.

Unfounded estimates of UK and US diplomats and intelligence agents, accusing Israel of responsibility for the events. A single British report explicitly refrained from questioning Basri and Saleh’s trial, stating there was “no reason to suppose that the trials were conducted in anything but a normal manner”, notwithstanding it being a trial of Zionists conducted by an Arab regime in the early 1950s.

Alleged similarities between the 1950-1951 Baghdad attacks and the 1954 Cairo and Alexandria ones which lay at the heart of the Lavon affair (see more under Egypt below), despite the fact that the latter never targeted Jews.

• An analysis of the Israeli interest in speeding up the Jewish exodus from Iraq. Israeli historian Moshe Gat has pointed out that the main advocates of this analysis base it on distorted dates and statistics.

In conclusion, to unconditionally assign responsibility for the attacks to the Israeli government, as Sky News Arabia did, reflects absolutely no fact checking on the reporter’s behalf.

Yemen 

 The first intelligence-related Israeli operations in Yemen date back to the mid-1960s, when Israel sought to interrupt the Egyptian intervention in the Yemenite civil war by providing weapons and funding to the side who fought the Egyptians. This happened more than a decade after Operation On Wings of Eagles (“Magic Carpet”), which was completed in 1950 – notably, before the Mossad even existed as an intelligence agency that was permitted to operate independently outside Israel.

 Admittedly, some researches suggest that Israel, not oblivious to the humanitarian crisis some Yemenite Jews were facing, secretly colluded with Yemen’s monarch, influencing his decision in favor of allowing Jews wishing to depart his kingdom to do so. However, this can’t possibly be considered a conspiracy of Israeli intelligence agents to “sow strife and unrest” in Yemen. All the more absurd is the suggestion that the political turmoil, economic difficulties and antisemitic hostilities of the late 1940s – generally perceived as the immediate factors which drove the Jews of the Kingdom of Yemen and the Aden British Protectorate to leave for Israel – are a part of such a conspiracy. This has no historical basis whatsoever.

 Egypt 

The identities of most of the 1950-1951 Iraq bombing perpetrators are still unknown. In contrast, an examination of the Egyptian case leaves little doubt that those who orchestrated what the Sky report referred to as “bombing attacks targeting Jewish businesses” – a series of deadly attacks which targeted Jews in Cairo in 1948 – belonged to ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, agitated by Egypt’s losing war effort against Israel. Not a single English or Hebrew source seriously debates the possibility that Israel, still waging its War of Independence at the time of attacks, would divert its limited resources to engage in such an operation, killing dozens of Egyptian Jews in the process. Additionally, it is unclear why the Sky report mentioned the attacks in the context of Gamal ‘Abd an-Nasser’s rule, since he led the military coup against King Farouq only in 1952.

As for Nasser, his direct responsibility for the many thousands of Jews forced out of Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s is undeniable.

Furthermore, while Nasser himself publicly rejected the “anti-Semite” label and insisted that he opposed Zionism alone, in practice his official policies and propaganda did next to nothing to distinguish the two. In other words, even if Nasser himself wasn’t openly anti-Semitic, his regime definitely was.


Marcelle Ninio, who was involved in the Lavon Affair. 

What was the contribution of Israeli policy to the Egyptian decision-making process that produced the mass persecution of local Jews? Indeed, the 1954 espionage affair and 1956 Suez crisis, to which Israel was responsible, has considerably worsened the relations between the Jews of Egypt on the one hand and the Egyptian government and Muslim majority on the other.

However, these Israeli moves never intended to encourage Jewish immigration: the Lavon affair attacks were conceived as false flag, and Operation Musketeer/Sinai Campaign of 1956 had strategic objectives that went far beyond the concerns of Egypt’s small Jewish minority.

It is also debatable to what extent local Jews would be persecuted had Egypt not been in a conflict with Israel. Judging by the fate of Egypt’s Greeks, Copts, Armenians, Italians and Levantine Christians under Nasser’s nationalist regime, all ethnic and religious minorities who lived in the country for generations and were never involved politically with a foreign power hostile to Egypt, it seems very likely that Jews would have been targeted nonetheless, in one way or another.

Once again we’re amazed at how most Arabic-speaking media outlets, purporting to present themselves as “Western” via their brand names, engage in the same kind of baseless, hateful propaganda that (non-Western) Middle Eastern media channels have perfected, often at the order of their local governments.

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*See part 1part 2part 3

** In fact Basri and Salah were charged only with throwing the last three bombs, not the synagogue bombing. (Gat p 179)

How the ‘James Bond’ of Iraq made his escape in 1951

The name’s Mordechai. Mordechai Ben-Porat. Profile in the Jerusalem Report of the 96-year-old ‘James Bond’ of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, the mass airlift of 120,000 Iraqi Jews between 1950 – 52. Despite Ben-Porat’s exploits in the Zionist underground, the article should also have credited the equally aged Shlomo Hillel, a Mossad agent posing as an Englishman, who negotiated the airlift with members of the Iraqi government. It cost 12 dinars to airlift each Jew out of the country. The money was raised mainly by the Joint American Distribution Committee. (With thanks: Lily, Imre and Sami)

It was a hot night in June 1951. Summer’s daytime roasting heat had somewhat abated, but it was still hot. Running for one’s life, hoping to escape a country that sought his life, did not help. Heart pounding, the man’s sweat quickly evaporated into the dry desert air.

As instructed by Israel’s precursor to today’s intelligence agency, Mossad, the undercover shaliah of Mossad LeAliya Bet crouched behind a berm at the end of the runway. It was almost 1:30 in the morning. Head shaved by a gaoler and with two broken teeth, his body ached from recent blows; his battered face was swollen.



Mordechai Ben-Porat: tortured in jail

Making his way through a swamp to the hiding place, he was covered in mud. After more than two years of work posing under numerous false identities – including Habib, Zaki, Nissim, Salman, Nouri, Noa, Dror – his cover was blown.

A commercial plane full of passengers taxied to its place for takeoff. Pausing to flash its lights, the signal was given.

Dashing out, exposed and in the open, Mordechai Ben-Porat raced to the aircraft’s tail where, he was told, a rope would be dangling.

He would have to climb to freedom – if it was there, that is – and if the secret police did not appear, if the pilot and crew did not panic, if he had the strength to shimmy up the thin and prickly cord.

 Arrested three weeks prior, he had been chained and brutally tortured for information. Subjected to beatings, nakedness, sleeplessness, innuendo and threats, his cell mates – murderers and thieves – were sympathetic. His tormentors were compelled to relent only when a Muslim attorney, Yousif Fattal, convinced a judge to grant him bail, including a little extra for the magistrate.

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Jews not only lost property, but a share in national assets

Press reports that an official evaluation of  property and assets lost by Jews fleeing Arab countries amounts to $150 billion have prompted this piece by David A Dangoor in the Jerusalem Post. This staggering amount  counters the myth that Jews in Arab countries were backward, poor and uncivilised. But Dangoor believes that Jews not only have claims to private property,  they have a moral claim over the national assets subsequently squandered by Arab states on terrorism and corruption.

David A Dangoor: moral claim

The news that the Israeli government is finally tackling this issue, not as a talking point but as an issue with practical ramifications, is extremely welcome and overdue.

 While the considered research, facts and figures are in cold black and white, they bring color to our story and history, one largely unknown or overlooked in Israel and the wider Jewish world for too long.

 They also provide much needed push back against the regrettable canard that the Jews from Arab lands were backward, uncivilized, uncultured and poor, and that they had little of substance in the lands from whence they fled.

The Jews of the Arab world, like any other Diaspora, constituted a mixed population in terms of economic status, but when they were given the opportunity, they contributed massively to all walks of life in their nations of origin until this all came crashing down due to a series of unprecedented discriminatory, legal, economic and social measures taken against them in the middle of the last century.

 In fact, the issue of redress should not just be limited to private and communal assets lost. A cursory reading of history would have demonstrated that had the Jews been allowed to stay, they would have had the benefit of their share of the national assets of the countries they were forced to leave.

 As elsewhere, Jews contributed far beyond their numbers and would dictate and assist the economies and societies of which they were a part.

When they were forced out, many of these countries descended into chaos and subsequently failed economies.

 If they had remained, Jews would have contributed to making those assets work for the welfare of their countries of origin and their peoples. Instead, these national assets were largely wasted on corruption and terrorism.
Thus, the exiled Jews also have a moral claim to a share of that wasted wealth.

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Let’s show communal solidarity on 30 November

Philanthropist calls for archive to lead to better relations

Storm topples Beirut cemetery wall and damages graves

A severe storm has toppled an old wall and several graves at the only Jewish cemetery in the Lebanese capital,  Jewish News reports.

 The cemetery in Beirut’s Sodeco district, which dates back to the early 1820s, is the city’s only Jewish cemetery and has been closed to the public for many years.

 Heavy rain and strong winds toppled the cemetery’s stone wall, which fell on to several graves and sent some headstones crashing down.

 The fallen gravestones with Hebrew writing on them could be seen from the main street where the wall had collapsed.

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According to AFP (French),  Nagi Georges Zeidan, a volunteer who keeps watch over Lebanon’s Jewish heritage, says that at least four headstones were damaged.

He identified three of them: that of Lucie, daughter of Sasson Machal (died 1942), Moussa Khayat (died 1938) and Isaac Chama (died 1948).

Zeidan reports that the skeletons are still in their coffins but these need to be retrieved from  the rubble. He called on the authorities to intervene. 

Nebi Daniel synagogue restoration is complete

According to Times of Israel, Egypt has announced that renovations to the Nebi Daniel synagogue in Alexandria have been completed. The synagogue floor features a glass window to allow visitors to see traces of an earlier synagogue on the site. A group of Egyptian Jews hopes to celebrate a ‘synagogue-warming’ with a trip to Alexandria in early February.

The renovations cost approximately $4 million, paid by the Egyptian government,  (Alec) Nacamuli (of the Nebi Daniel Association)  said, adding that Egypt turned down an offer by the Nebi Daniel Association to raise funds.

Egypt’s Jewish community, which dates back millennia, numbered around 80,000 in the 1940s, but today stands at fewer than 20 people. The departure of Egypt’s Jews was fueled by rising nationalist sentiment during the Arab-Israeli wars, harassment, and some direct expulsions by former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

 Egypt and Israel signed a landmark peace treaty in 1979 and have since maintained formal diplomatic relations. But public opinion in Egypt has largely remained hostile to the Jewish state.

 Only four or five septuagenarian and octogenarian Jews currently reside in Alexandria,  Nacamuli  said. The city used to house 12 synagogues, but most of them were sold over the years to support the Jewish community there, and its infrastructure and institutions, he said.

 Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani visited the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue last Friday, the ministry said in its statement.

The Egyptian government maintains an interest in preserving Egypt’s antiquities –“whether they are Pharonic, Jewish, Coptic, or Islamic,” the statement said.

 
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Mayor of Casablanca attends Hanucah lighting ceremony


With thanks: Michelle

For the first time, a Hanukiah was lit in Casablancain Morocco in the presence of the Mayor of the city to mark the Jewish festival of Hanucah. Some 700 were present in the hall to witness the event, which was reported on Moroccan TV.

 However, the ceremony took place behind closed doors. One wonders what might have happened had the Hanucah candles been lit in the public square, as it is in many cities in the West.

It is not so long ago since lighting the Hanukiah was an occurrence so natural in Morocco that it did not attract media attention.

Here are the children of the Alliance Israelite school in Tangiers lighting the Hanucah candles in 1966.

Wishing you חנ שמח  and for those who are celebrating it, a Merry Christmas!



Chabad report

Over 30,000 sign a petition protesting conduct of Sarah Halimi case

Now that a French appeal court has confirmed that the murderer of Sarah Halimi will not stand trial owing to his being under the influence of  cannabis, over 30,000 people and counting have signed a petition addressed to the French Minister of Justice. (With thanks: Michelle)


“Many questions remain unanswered, and this is not acceptable.

When justice is not done, or when it is willfully unjust, we must not do nothing. Justice is everyone’s business.

These are our questions to Madame Beloubet, Minister of Justice, among others:

– the time it took the BRA (Counter-terrorism Brigade)  to get to the scene (it took nearly four hours for the police to arrive, and the BRA was alerted soon after) but there was no road traffic. Can we have an explanation?

– If the assassin was capable of climbing across two windows on the front of the building, one cannot say that he was “unbalanced”! How do psychiatric experts explain this?

– Why did the police stay in the building for more than forty minutes (26 policemen behind Madame Halimi’s door) without trying to intervene?

– Who are the psychiatric experts?

– The author’s flagrant anti-Semitism is the root cause of his act. What do you think, Madame Beloubet?

– Are you aware that the Jews of France feel humiliated?

And there are many other questions that we will ask Madame Beloubet, Minister of Justice !

ASK FOR JUSTICE FOR SARAH HALIMI”

 THANK YOU FOR SIGNING AND SHARING THIS PETITION.

More about the Halimi case

Jewish claims are worth $150 billion, Palestinians demand restitution

The story broken by Israel Hayom that Jewish refugees from Arab countries lost some $150 billion in assets and property has now been picked up by other media. Al Monitor, for instance, interviews Geula, a refugee from northern Iraq in 1948 :

As Geula tells it, one day the family patriarch left the keys to their home with a Muslim neighbor and asked him to continue to tend the family’s vineyards and orchards, where they grew grapes, peaches, and other fruits.

The family then set off for Baghdad. Before leaving the country, they were forced to hand over all their remaining possessions, including cash and jewelry.

Geula remembers hearing people say, “Bring a bucket and demand that all the women of the family put their jewelry in it. If any of them takes their time about it, rip the earrings from their ears and the rings from their fingers.”

She further remarked, “Then they put us in a room, ordered us to undress, and checked to make sure that we didn’t hide any money or jewelry in our clothes. We arrived in Israel with just the clothing on our backs. That’s all.”

 The legislation had two purposes: to ensure that Jews from Arab lands and Iran were compensated for the property they left behind and to counter demands by Palestinian refugees who left their homes in 1948 and 1967 to receive compensation for property that they left behind.

Accordingly, in a conversation with Jewish leaders in the United States in January 2014, Martin Indyk, US envoy to peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, said that in addition to compensation for Palestinian refugees, any framework agreement would also include the right to compensation for Jews who left their homes in Arab lands.

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Mahmoud Abbas addressing the 74th session of the UN

Palestinians have the right to claim restitution for their loss of natural resources due to the Israeli occupation, the
United Nations General Assembly has said, according to  the Jerusalem Post(with thanks :Vicky)



It approved by 160-6, with 15 abstentions an annual resolution called “Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including east Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources.”

 It is one of 17 annual pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli resolutions the UNGA has approved this month. The UNGA is slated to vote on at least two other such texts this month.

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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.

Point of No Return

Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries

One-stop blog on the Middle East's
forgotten Jewish refugees - updated daily.