I am a forgotten Jew.
My roots are nearly 2,600 years old, my ancestors made landmark contributions to world civilization, and my presence was felt from North Africa to the Fertile Crescent -- but I barely exist today. You see, I am a Jew from the Arab world. No, that's not entirely accurate. I've fallen into a semantic trap. I predated the Arab conquest in just about every country in which I lived. When Arab invaders conquered North Africa, for example, I had already been present there for more than six centuries.
Today, you cannot find a trace of me in most of this vast region.
Try seeking me out in Iraq.
Remember the Babylonian exile from ancient Judea, following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE? Remember the vibrant Jewish community that emerged there and produced the Babylonian Talmud?
Do you know that in the ninth century, under Muslim rule, we Jews in Iraq were forced to wear a distinctive yellow patch on our clothing -- a precursor of the infamous Nazi yellow badge -- and faced other discriminatory measures? Or that in the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, we faced onerous taxes, the destruction of several synagogues, and severe repression?
And I wonder if you have ever heard of the Farhud, the breakdown of law and order, in Baghdad in June 1941. As an AJC specialist, George Gruen, reported:
In a spasm of uncontrolled violence, between 170 and 180 Jews were killed, more than 900 were wounded, and 14,500 Jews sustained material losses through the looting or destruction of their stores and homes. Although the government eventually restored order... Jews were squeezed out of government employment, limited in schools, and subjected to imprisonment, heavy fines, or sequestration of their property on the flimsiest of charges of being connected to either or both of the two banned movements. Indeed, Communism and Zionism were frequently equated in the statutes. In Iraq the mere receipt of a letter from a Jew in Palestine [pre-1948] was sufficient to bring about arrest and loss of property.
At our peak, we were 135,000 Jews in 1948, and we were a vitally important factor in virtually every aspect of Iraqi society. To illustrate our role, here is what the Encyclopedia Judaica wrote about Iraqi Jewry: "During the 20th century, Jewish intellectuals, authors, and poets made an important contribution to the Arabic language and literature by writing books and numerous essays."
By 1950 other Iraqi Jews and I were faced with the revocation of citizenship, seizure of assets, and, most ominously, public hangings. A year earlier, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Sa'id had told the British ambassador in Amman of a plan to expel the entire Jewish community and place us at Jordan's doorstep. The ambassador later recounted the episode in a memoir entitled From the Wings: Amman Memoirs, 1947-1951.
Miraculously, in 1951 about 100,000 of us got out, thanks to the extraordinary help of Israel, but with little more than the clothes on our backs. The Israelis dubbed the rescue Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.
Those of us who stayed lived in perpetual fear -- fear of violence and more public hangings, as occurred on January 27, 1969, when nine Jews were hanged in the center of Baghdad on trumped-up charges, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis wildly cheered the executions. The rest of us got out one way or another, including friends of mine who found safety in Iran when it was ruled by the Shah.
Now there are no Jews left to speak of, nor are there monuments, museums, or other reminders of our presence on Iraqi soil for twenty-six centuries.
Do the textbooks used in Iraqi schools today refer to our one-time presence, to our positive contribution to the evolution of Iraqi society and culture? Not a chance. 2,600 years are erased, wiped out, as if they never happened. Can you put yourself in my shoes and feel the excruciating pain of loss and invisibility?
I am a forgotten Jew.
I was first settled in what is present-day Libya by the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Lagos (323-282 BCE), according to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus. My forefathers and foremothers lived continuously on this soil for more than two millennia, our numbers bolstered by Berbers who converted to Judaism, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fleeing the Inquisition, and Italian Jews crossing the Mediterranean.
I was confronted with the anti-Jewish legislation of the occupying Italian Fascists. I endured the incarceration of 2,600 fellow Jews in an Axis-run camp in 1942. I survived the deportation of 200 fellow Jews to Italy the same year. I coped with forced labor in Libya during the war. I witnessed Muslim rioting in 1945 and 1948 that left nearly 150 Libyan Jews dead, hundreds injured, and thousands homeless.
I watched with uncertainty as Libya became an independent country in 1951. I wondered what would happen to those 6,000 of us still there, the remnant of the 39,000 Jews who had formed this once-proud community -- that is, until the rioting sent people packing, many headed for the newly established State of Israel.
The good news was that there were constitutional protections for minority groups in the newly established Libyan nation. The bad news was that they were completely ignored.
Within ten years of my native country's independence, I could not vote, hold public office, serve in the army, obtain a passport, purchase new property, acquire majority ownership in any new business, or participate in the supervision of our community's affairs.
By June 1967 the die was cast. Those of us who had remained, hoping against hope that things would improve in a land to which we were deeply attached and which, at times, had been good to us, had no choice but to flee. The Six-Day War created an explosive atmosphere in the streets. Eighteen Jews were killed, and Jewish-owned homes and shops were burned to the ground.
I and 4,000 other Jews left however we could, most of us with no more than a suitcase and the equivalent of a few dollars.
I was never allowed to return. I never recovered the assets I had left behind in Libya, despite promises by the government. In effect, it was all stolen -- the homes, furniture, shops, communal institutions, you name it. Still worse, I was never able to visit the grave sites of my relatives. That hurt especially deeply. In fact, I was told that, under Colonel Qaddhafi, who seized power in 1969, the Jewish cemeteries were bulldozed and the headstones used for road building.
I am a forgotten Jew.
My experience -- the good and the bad -- lives on in my memory, and I'll do my best to transmit it to my children and grandchildren, but how much can they absorb? How much can they identify with a culture that seems like a relic of a distant past that appears increasingly remote and intangible? True, a few books and articles on my history have been written, but-- and here I'm being generous -- they are far from best-sellers.
In any case, can these books compete with the systematic attempt by Libyan leaders to expunge any trace of my presence over two millennia? Can these books compete with a world that paid virtually no attention to the end of my existence?
Take a look at The New York Times index for 1967, and you'll see for yourself how the newspaper of record covered the tragic demise of an ancient community. I can save you the trouble of looking -- just a few paltry lines were all the story got.
I am a forgotten Jew.
I am one of hundreds of thousands of Jews who once lived in countries like Iraq and Libya. All told, we numbered close to 900,000 in 1948. Today we are fewer than 5,000, mostly concentrated in two moderate countries--Morocco and Tunisia.
We were once vibrant communities in Aden, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and other nations, with roots dating back literally 2,000 years and more. Now we are next to none.
Why does no one speak of us and our story? Why does the world relentlessly, obsessively speak of the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars in the Middle East -- who, not unimportantly, were displaced by wars launched by their own Arab brethren -- but totally ignore the Jewish refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars?
Why is the world left with the impression that there's only one refugee population from the Arab-Israeli conflict, or, more precisely, the Arab conflict with Israel, when, in fact, there are two refugee populations, and our numbers were somewhat larger than the Palestinians?
I've spent many sleepless nights trying to understand this injustice.
Should I blame myself?
Perhaps we Jews from Arab countries accepted our fate too passively. Perhaps we failed to seize the opportunity to tell our story. Look at the Jews of Europe. They turned to articles, books, poems, plays, paintings, and film to recount their story. They depicted the periods of joy and the periods of tragedy, and they did it in a way that captured the imagination of many non-Jews. Perhaps I was too fatalistic, too shell-shocked, too uncertain of my artistic or literary talents.
But that can't be the only reason for my unsought status as a forgotten Jew. It's not that I haven't tried to make at least some noise; I have. I've organized gatherings and petitions, arranged exhibitions, appealed to the United Nations, and met with officials from just about every Western government. But somehow it all seems to add up to less than the sum of its parts. No, that's still being too kind. The truth is, it has pretty much fallen on deaf ears.
You know that acronym -- MEGO? It means "My eyes glazed over." That's the impression I often have when I've tried raising the subject of the Jews from Arab lands with diplomats, elected officials, and journalists -- their eyes glaze over (TEGO).
No, I shouldn't be blaming myself, though I could always be doing more for the sake of history and justice.
There's actually a far more important explanatory factor.
We Jews from the Arab world picked up the pieces of our shattered lives after our hurried departures -- in the wake of intimidation, violence, and discrimination -- and moved on.
Most of us went to Israel, where we were welcomed. The years following our arrival weren't always easy -- we started at the bottom and had to work our way up. We came with varying levels of education and little in the way of tangible assets. But we had something more to sustain us through the difficult process of adjustment and acculturation: our immeasurable pride as Jews, our deeply rooted faith, our cherished rabbis and customs, and our commitment to Israel's survival and well-being.
Some of us -- somewhere between one-fourth and one-third of the total -- chose to go elsewhere.
Jews from the French-speaking Arab countries gravitated toward France and Quebec. Jews from Libya created communities in Rome and Milan. Egyptian and Lebanese Jews were sprinkled throughout Europe and North America, and a few resettled in Brazil. Syrian Jews immigrated to the United States, especially New York, as well as to Mexico City and Panama City. And on it went.
Wherever we settled, we put our shoulder to the wheel and created new lives. We learned the local language if we didn't already know it, found jobs, sent our children to school, and, as soon as we could, built our own congregations to preserve the rites and rituals that were distinctive to our tradition.
I would never underestimate the difficulties or overlook those who, for reasons of age or ill health or poverty, couldn't make it, but, by and large, in a short time we have taken giant steps, whether in Israel or elsewhere.
I may be a forgotten Jew, but my voice will not remain silent. It cannot, for if it does, it becomes an accomplice to historical denial and revisionism.
I will speak out because I will not allow the Arab conflict with Israel to be defined unfairly through the prism of one refugee population only, the Palestinian.
I will speak out because what happened to me is now being done, with eerie familiarity, to another minority group in the region, the Christians, and once again I see the world averting its eyes, as if denial ever solved anything.
I will speak out because I refuse to be a forgotten Jew.
Adapted and updated from an essay originally written in 2003.
I am Nican Tlaca.
I am Mexican, "Central American", and "Native American".
I m separated by borders placed here by foreigners from Europe.
I am the Olmec Civilization that began in 2300 BC
with a calendar going back to 3114 BC.
I am Teotihuacan, a city larger than Imperial Rome at its height.
I am the Toltec Civilization, the Mayan Civilization, and
the Mexica Civilization, from which Mexico takes its namesake.
95% of my people were killed by Europeans within 100 years of their arrival.
Those of us that have survived were enslaved economically and culturally.
Today, we are becoming the majority again.
If I were Jewish I would be standing up for my Jewish People.
But I am Mexican, and this is my continent, and the blood of my people is in every layer of this continent's soil.
I am Nican Tlaca and I refuse to go extinct.
Sometimes you just have to move on. Of course the Arab world doesn't want the refugees from their attacks on Israel to "move on". They keep these poor people locked up in camps for 6 decades and tell them not to "move on". The US had to move on after Vietnam, France and England after their loss of empire. Germany & Japan after their defeat. All moved on with less territory under their rule than they started with. Only the Arab world refuses to move on. Arab pride is the drug that keeps this conflict going.
Nothing anyone write can change it.
An important objective of Operation Susannah (The Lavon Affair, 1954) was to poison relations between mainstream Egyptians and the 50,000 Jews who had remained in Egypt after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Resulting in the expulsion of the Jews by Egypt.
Operations similar to Shoshana had been primed elsewhere in the Middle East where large Jewish communities existed. The most important of which little is known even today took place in the early 1950s in the British-controlled Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq.
It was in lraq that lsraeli agents went after American (US Library) and Jewish targets wounding and killing innocent bystanders near Baghdad's Shemtof Synagogue. Predictably, requests for exit visas started pouring in and within a year, Iraq's largest and most important non-Moslem community --over 120,000 Jews-- relocated in Israel.
85,000 had already registered to leave (in return for relinquishing their citizenship and property) BEFORE the Shemtof the bombing, making the charge they were motivated by the bombing moot - and the rest of your post is similarly flawed.
Less than 2 years ago, in just three bloody weeks over Christmas 2008 and the incoming year of 2009, the Israeli Defense Forces killed over 900 civilians in cold blood in Gaza. They subsequently tried to discredit a UN Fact Finding report that uncovered war crimes and crimes against humanity. Just a few weeks ago, the IDF killed nine civilians on a boat in international waters. That has also been declared a war crime.
The obvious point is that if, God forbid, a stranger raped and killed your daughter, would that entitle you to rape and kill his child?
Jews always measure time based on proximity to Christmas.
Perhaps you know a Jew, Colin? Perhaps not.
Here's what UN insiders have to say about how fairly Israel is treated in the UN and UN reports:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/hmp49/israel-flotilla-raid-viol_n_735447_61374550.html
Something to do with a clever shot in the dark going badly off target ...
As for UN insiders, they are all of the same opinion: state-sponsored assassination of Palestinian civilians or any civilians is a war crime deserving of severe punishment by the ICC.
Is JJAC’s campaign likely to benefit Mizrahi/Sephardic Jews who suffered property losses when they left the Arab world? Is this even its intent? An “even exchange of populations and property” would leave claimants on all sides with nothing, except perhaps the possibility of seeking compensation from an international fund that does not yet exist. In fact, few efforts have been made over the decades by Israel or Jewish organizations to press for Mizrahi/Sephardic property compensation. This comes in marked contrast to efforts to obtain compensation, restitution, and reparations for European Holocaust survivors and heirs. In fact, individual ex-Arab Jews have on occasion sought compensation or restitution on their own, usually by appealing to Arab and foreign courts. Some in Israel have even sued their own government to force it to act on their behalf; one such case is before the High Court of Justice at this time. Throughout, however, no largely compensation has been paid, nor has any party pushed hard for Mizrahi/Sephardic compensation. Even now that JJAC and others are raising the issue of ex-Arab Jews, they, too, refrain from raising specific demands for compensation.
Because the Arab regimes that did this are still in power, unlike Germany, which had a little regime change you may have heard of.
"July 1954, Israeli Military Intelligence network of Egyptian Jews [ ] to launch "Operation Susannah" -- to fire bomb Alexandria post office, United States Information Agency offices in Cairo and Alexandria, the Cairo train station, and several movie theaters in Cairo and Alexandria. The saboteurs - - today we would call them terrorists, especially if they were Arabs or Muslims acting against Israel or the United States - - were apprehended and brought to trial in December 1954.”
"1975, the four told their story publicly on (Israeli)national television” “ Israeli government acknowledge that they had been trained and directed by the Israeli army. Aviezer Golan explained that their actions did not constitute treason against Egypt because
The foursome -- like all the other heroes of 'the mishap' -- were born and brought up in Egypt, but they never regarded themselves -- nor were they ever regarded by others -- as Egyptians. . . .They were typical members of Egypt's Jewish community with shallow roots. The Jews reached Egypt during the second half of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth. . . .[T]hey could not read or write Arabic, spoke no more of the language than necessary for the simplest daily needs. Egypt's Jews could have been considered Zionists -- or, to be more precise, 'lovers of Zion.'[3] "
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/beinin.html
1:29 10-9
Let's try to remember who was responsible fore the Holocaust and at some point maybe recognize that Arabs (particularly the Muslims) did not have a thing to do with it.
"Stanford explains????!..
WOW!
Sometimes I forget that I'm a debating with those entirely innocent of any academic knowledge whatsoever. this was good reminder.
I think the main point is to draw attention to the need for Israel to exist.
Although we see now that Jews have been accepted into the societies into which they escaped, especially after World War II, prior to this, the villification to which they were subjected was for the most part harsher than any other people's plight.
Although the placement of Israel may be contentious, and their actions since 1948 may be deplorable, there is an inalienable need for Israel to exist.
The expulsion of Jews by Arabs was an outrage. The internment of American Japanesse during WWII was an outrage. There is however, a psychological understanding of both.
The invasion by Zionists was less violent and more stealth like, than Pearl Harbor. However, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, is one of the worst in history.
Pogrund argued had the same spiele:
"While recognizing that “it is clearly unfair from the victims’ point of view for Israel to give automatic entry to Jews from anywhere while denying the ‘Right of Return’ to Palestinians who fled or were expelled in the wars of 1948 and 1967, and their descendants”, he claims that it is not unique to Israel: “The same has happened in recent times, often on far greater scales, in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, India and Pakistan, to list but a few parallel situations.”
Again, this argument deliberately ignores the fact that no European country recognizes the right of ‘ethnic kin’ to return at the expense of its indigenous population. That the Law of Return in Israel recognizes the rights of all Jews to citizenship – even if they and their ancestors for millennia never set foot in the territory – and denies the same right to all Palestinians who are not citizens already – even if they and their ancestors were born there – is without parallel. No other country practices such policies, not even South Africa under apartheid.
What about the forgotten Palestinian's?
and there is no such "right" of return. A country can decide which immigrants can become citizens. But no country is obligated to accept the return of descendants of those who began a war against it at its birth.
Nowhere in international law is there any reference to a forced "right" of return for such individuals. And UN Resolution 194 does not even contain the word "right" when referring to such refugees, nor does it reference the descendants of such refugees.
"July 26, 1946 The bombing of British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel, killing 91 people — 28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish, and 5 others. Around 45 people were injured.
1946 Railways and British military airfields were attacked several times.
October 31, 1946 The bombing by the Irgun of the British Embassy in Rome. Nearly half the building was destroyed and 3 people were injured.[21]
July 25, 1947 The Sergeants affair: When death sentences were passed on two Irgun members, the Irgun kidnapped two British sergeants and threatened to kill them in retaliation if the sentences were carried out. When the threat was ignored, the hostages were murdered. Afterwards, their bodies were taken to an orange grove and left hanging by the neck from trees. An Improvised Explosive Device was set. This went off when one of the bodies was cut down, seriously wounding a British officer.[22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence
Yes, we NEVER hear about the forgotten Palestinians at HP.
Sounds like you ancestors are truly the "chosen people"
Care to let us know what illustrious group you belong to?
And what your point is?
A comment often made is that Arab countries have no obligation to assimilate Palestinian refugees, even if a family has lived in the host countries for generations. It turns out, there is a UN document, the 1951 "Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees," which states in Article 34, titled "Naturalization,":
"The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees. They shall in particular make every effort to expedite naturalization proceeding and to reduce as far as possible the charges and costs of such proceedings."
http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.pdf
This seems to be pretty clear, no? You would think that Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, in keeping Palestinians in camps for over 60 years, are in clear violation of international law.
Fortunately the UN specifically excludes UNRWA recipients from this agreement - and only Palestinians are UNRWA recipients .According to the above document, descendants of refugees are not refugees, making the UNRWA exclusion even more significant.
This all came to light reading the following article, which describes an Israeli program in the 1970s, within a decade of the 1967 war, to move Palestinians out of the refugee camps and into their own homes. More than 10,000 Palestinian families were moved out of the camps. The article tells an interesting story of how that program was subverted.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=52&x_article=960
Now maybe you'd like to prove a single word on that page false?
Can't do it? Didn't think so.
"Truthiness is what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support."
-Stephen Colbert
The main premise of the book, of course, is the attack on the Liberty was absolutely intentional, which I have been saying (for twenty years).
I gave you the link to the pages in Scotts book, for him to write that and fail to see how it places the fault with CENTCOM shows how clueless he is. He comes to a contrary conclusion DESPITE the facts he himself states.
I have repeatedly given you the link to the CIA report, released under FOIA in 2006, which states that OUR transcripts of a conversation between Israel helicopter pilots show that even after the attack, Israelis still thought it was an Egyptian ship.
How I saved Syria's Jews
Haviv Rettig, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 23, 2006
In 1972, Toronto high school music teacher Judy Feld Carr came across a news article in The Jerusalem Post that told of the tragic deaths of 12 young Syrian Jewish men who ran across a minefield while attempting to flee Syria across the Turkish border.
"I saw the article and I couldn't get over it," Carr recalled last week in a phone interview with the Post 34 years after that fateful publication. The daughter of an independent-minded fur trader from Sudbury, Ontario, she could not sit helpless while Syria's Jewish community suffered. "So my late husband and I decided we had to do something about it." And she did. Spectacularly. Over the next 28 years, Carr masterminded from her Toronto home an international smuggling operation, complete with elaborate secret codes, meetings overseas with foreign agents and extensive bribes for Syrian officials, which rescued 3,228 Jews from persecution.
And Israel has killed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians trying to hold on to land they stole in the war they started and in trying to control Lebanon.
We see here how the Israelis deny the suffering of the people they incarcerate.
Again this nosesniscal fairyl tale.
Historical record-ownership--- Ottoman Empire,, British Jordan, Israel,
I don'rt see where Palestinain Arabs ever owned, controlled or adminsitred W. Bank. Except never, of course.
There's no question Arabs who live in W. Bank want to have their own state. They can call it what they want-- Palestine, Islamic Republic of Mars, Gazastan or whatever.
And they may get their wish - upon negotiations with the State of Israel.
And if they learn to behave, they may one day do just that.
But it is not guaranteed by any means.
there are more than 1.5 million Jews originally from Arab countries in Israel,"
"If the Jews had not been subject to an exodus, the Palestinians wouldn't have been either,"
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/08/12/81570.html
This is a quote from an academic journal, which in turn is quoting a speech given at the UN. Moreover, I was allowed to post it several months ago in a different context.
It directly addresses the subject of the blog.
How can this now possibly be a violation of community standards?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Arabs threatened expulsion and worse even before the 1947 vote at the UN
http://www.meforum.org/263/why-jews-fled-the-arab-countries
"COORDINATING A PROGRAM OF EXPULSION
In a key address before the Political Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on November 14, 1947, just five days before that body voted on the partition plan for Palestine, Heykal Pasha, an Egyptian delegate, made the following key statement:
The United Nations . . . should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Moslem countries. Partition of Palestine might create in those countries an anti-Semitism even more difficult to root out than the anti-Semitism which the Allies were trying to eradicate in Germany. . . If the United Nations decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for the massacre of a large number of Jews.
Particularly noteworthy is that although Heykal Pasha spoke at the United Nations in his capacity as a representative of Egypt, he continuously mentioned the Jews "in other Muslim countries" and "all the Arab states," suggesting a level of coordination among the Arab governments.
Jews were only one third of the population of Palestine in 1948. That year, Zionists took two thirds of Palestine by force. In 1967 they took the rest.
Gaza is one of the most crowded places on earth, a virtual open air prison.