For decades, media coverage of the refugee issue in the Middle East has focused almost exclusively on the plight of the Palestinians, so today represents something of a milestone: a report on Jewish refugees from Arab countries on the BBC website, pegged to the conference currently taking place in London organized by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC).
But, as the excellent Point of No Return blog observes, much of the short report is devoted to the comments of the BBC’s Arab Affairs Analyst, Magdi Abdelhadi, casting doubt upon the issues being raised at the conference:
The BBC’s Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi says the subject is highly controversial as the numbers of Jews who left, and the conditions under which they left, are disputed.
He says one undisputed fact is that Jews were part of Arab societies for centuries, where they were fully integrated in their societies, until Israel was established.
Some left because they were Zionists, others because of growing hostility towards them after the Arab-Israeli wars in 1948 and 1967, and there were also those who were encouraged to leave by the new Israeli state, our analyst adds.
He says not all of them went to Israel - many went to France and America, where some of them still feel very passionately about the Arab cultures they grew up in.
Let’s start with Abdelhadi’s assertion about the “one undisputed fact.” Whenever I hear someone talking about the charmed life lived by Jews in Arab countries, I am always reminded of a story about my Iraqi Jewish grandfather. Living in London during the 1950s and 1960s, he would often play Shesh Besh - backgammon - with his Arab business associates. He was a pretty accomplished player, but he would invariably lose these contests.
One day, my father asked him why this was. “You’re such a good player, Dad,” he said, “but when you play these fellows, you always lose - and you look like you’re not playing properly. Why?” Shrugging his shoulders, my grandfather responded, “They like to win.”
This anecdote neatly symbolizes the psychology of Jews who lived in Arab societies. Implicit in the rolling of the dice and the clacking of circular pieces along the board was an understanding: my grandfather had to behave like a Jew in Baghdad, even though he was in London. That meant not taking advantage of access and influence, not getting ideas above his station, understanding that if he was to preserve his place among this group of men, he had to remember that he was a Jew and they were not.
The historian Bernard Lewis once remarked that the fortunes of Jews in the Arab world never descended to European depths, but they never rose to European heights either. Abdelhadi’s “undisputed fact” is eminently disputable and disprovable. Living in societies largely untouched by liberal ideas of equality and rights, Jews were frequently reminded of their subservient position. And much of the time, there was more than just a game of Shesh Besh at stake.
In Baghdad in June 1941, for example, a pogrom known as the farhud, instigated in part by antisemitic broadcasts in Arabic on Badio Berlin, ripped through the Jewish community for two days. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, the beginning of a decade of persecution which ended with their near-complete expulsion from the country. Jewish communities from as far west as Libya and as far east as Yemen can tell similar stories.
The number of Jews dispossessed from the Arab world is not in dispute, as Abdelhadi claims, nor is there any real controversy about their treatment, painstakingly documented through oral testimonies, scholarly articles and archival documents. What this all proves is that - as Resolution 242 acknowledged 40 years ago - the Palestinians are not the only refugees in the Middle East and theirs are not the only demands to be discussed in negotiations. The Jews of the Arab world may, as Abdelhadi says, feel passionately about the Arab cultures in which they grew up, but they haven’t received any compensation, much less recognition, for what they lost.
Imagine the BBC having an Israeli or even a non Israeli Jew reporting on a conference on Arab refugees.
Magdi Abdelhadi’s notion of facts under dispute is also laughable. Which historical facts are not “under dispute.”
To some people (antisemites of course) even the Shoah is “under dispute.”
Why is a denial of violation of rights of Jews from the Mizrach any less a sign of antisemitism?
Besides, if Jews in Arab countries had it so good why is that so many of them vote for the most right wing parties in Israel?
Magdi Abdelhadi has got some reading to do on this topiec.
Zvi Yehuda writes about the farhud:
From the information we possess we can discover the way in which the rioters were organized. The organizers assembled the mob at a certain place, divided them into groups and gave them specially-defined tasks. These facts were certainly known to the pro-British Iraqi authorities and to the members of the government Committee for Investigating the Events of June 1-2, 1941. Yet these chose to determine that the riots were spontaneous in order not to embarrass the new government, which had been formed under British auspices, in opposition to Islamic national-religious circles of great influence at the grass-roots level. As may be learned from similar sources on incitement and attacks against the Jews, these circles habitually fanned the flames of hatred against the Jews in Iraq and urged that harm be done to the Jews as long as it seemed to them that the Jews were infringing the rules of ‘protection’ (the dhimma) and the inferior status that Islam decreed for them as a condition for their existence in a Muslim state.
@shriber@
#why is that so many of them vote for the most right wing parties in Israel?#
probably also because of Mapai integration politics, which did not respect the way of life of Jews who came from Arab countries. There was a good Israeli musical film Casablan, showing the kind of prejudices in Israeli society at the time against Jews coming from Morocco.
Herut gave the Misrachim “Kavod”. Besides many Jews from Iraq voted for leftwing parties, because they came from a leftwing tradition.
Yes, what you wrote is very true. As you said many of the voters felt more comfortable with the tradional political programs the right presented, than with the “egalitarian” visions of the leftist parties. Here they were no different from those working class people who voted for Reagan in the US in 1980.
However, among these “egalitarian” visions was the belief that the Jews and the Arabs could at some point make peace and co-exist.
Many Mizrahi Jews felt that this view was another one of the pie in the sky dreams of the Mapai bloc.
I remember speaking to a number of educated Mizrahis who thought that I was naive when I suggested that peace with the Arabs could in time become a reality.
Here is a video presentation of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands:
http://cojs.org/VIDEO/zionism/libya.html
I’d like to post here a comment that I tried to post on the Engage website without success.
“’And why not? If Jews can today live in Germany, after six millions were butchered by the German Nazis, what is really the problem for them to live in the Arab world, where such horrific crimes were not committed ever?’” Haim Bresheeth
“Because firstly Arab states and societies would have to admit culpability in driving out Arab Jews in the first place, never mind being the world’s current repository of formerly European antisemitic discourse.” Zkharya
I agree with Zkharya’s view that Germany underwent a revolutionary change since the Nazis were in power which is not in evidence in the Arab Muslim world.
Even Haim Bresheeth’s acknowledges it when speaks of “German Nazis” as opposed to the non-Nazi Germans of today. Haim like so many anti-Zionists is making his comment in bad faith.
Still, even if life in the Galut were a paradise the Jews like other nations would still have the right to live in their country and determine their own future.
Life is not a paradise, either in the Galut or in Israel and it doesn’t look like it about to become paradisiacal any time soon.
In any case, Mr. Bresheeth’s comments are almost delusional.
Germany has changed, but what had forced it to change was the utter destruction the allies visited on the country during WW2. After the war the Germans wanted to present themselves to the world as a tolerant nation and one of the ways they did it was by ostentatiously reaching out to the Jewish community.
None of these conditions is present in the Arab world which as Zkharya has said is the home of some of the most antisemitic regimes which disseminate Nazi like anti-Jewish propaganda.
If life for Jews was never ideal in the Arab world (they were never treated as equals) could anyone imagine the Muslims welcoming them back with open arms and offering them equality under the law?
THis article on Msulim antisemitism should be required reading:
“‘Anti-Semitism inherent in Islam can only be eradicated’” By SAM SER
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1213794275309&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The article is a review of a book by Andrew Bostom:
“The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism”
Bostom himself is quoted as saying:
” WHILE SEARCHING for the roots of jihad, Bostom found the roots of Islam’s Jew-hatred. More often than not, they were intertwined.
“As I was putting the first book together, I came across Ahmad Sirhindi,” he explains. “He was an Indian Sufi who was enraged by the reforms of Moghul Akbar, who abolished the jizya [poll tax]. This enraged the orthodox ulema [scholars], one of the chief representatives of whom was Sirhindi. Amongst his virulent tracts against the moghul he says, ‘Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.’ Now, this is a 16th-17th century anti-Hindu ideologue, and there’s no evidence that he ever had contact with a Jew. So I was like, ‘Where on earth did this come from?’”
Bostom looked first to the Koran for an explanation.
“When I put together the Koranic verses on the Jews,” he continues, “they read like an indictment, prosecution and conviction. It was virulently anti-Semitic. Going into the hadith and the histories of Muhammad - where his assassination is attributed to a Khybar Jewess, for example - only strengthened this conviction.
“So when I juxtaposed that with the notion that there was no theological anti-Semitism in Islam, it was stunning. It’s just so in-your-face that to claim that the foundational sources don’t create anti-Semitism or aren’t inherently anti-Semitic… it’s absurd.”
Forced conversions, rapes, pogroms, the wholesale slaughter of Jews in North Africa during the Almohad invasions of the 12th century and innumerable other incidents catalogued in The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism attest that this Jew hatred was more than a literary holdover of Muhammad’s contempt for the Jews for rejecting his prophecies. Bostom also makes it plain that, with common motifs spanning from North Africa to India, from the eighth century to the 21st century and from Sunnis to Shi’ites and Sufis as well, anti-Semitism cannot be explained by cultural influences but is, in fact, inherently Islamic….”
Read the whole article.
I have read all of th above. I learnt a few things. I am not sure if I agree with most of what was said. In particular surely the North African part was no where near what was described above. Am I right that Morocco has a Jewish minister in the cabinet? I understand that Bahrain’s representative in the UN is Jewish. I would like to remind every one of the Golden Days of Al Andalus when Arabs and Jews had the greatest long peiod of cooperation and harmony. The Jews in that perioud had all of the opportunities and all the success in many fields in the state which was both Arab and Muslim and lasted almost 8 centuries. In the Spanish controlled territories of Morocco I understand there is no doubt that Jews and Arabs live in harmony and mutual respect. I dare say that there were the state of affairs in Palestine in the early days before the European Jews started to arrive. I have not heard of Arab persecution or hatred of Jews in early Palestine Hisham