[lit-ideas] Jewish communities in the ME
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:35:21 -0700 (PDT)
--- Stan Spiegel <writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> "Will you provide
> evidence that 22 Arab countries are "virulently
> Jew-hating?" Omar asks.
>
> Yes Omar:
>
> I can provide evidence that they are Jew-hating.
> Check how many Jews live in
> those 22 Arab countries. Every single Jew -- every
> one -- has been evicted,
> thrown out or killed. There are simply no Jews in
> any of those countries.Not
> one.
First, it is not true that: "there are simply no Jews
in any of those countries." And while the communities
have shrunk severely after the establishment of
Israel, it is not true that they have all been been
"evicted, thrown out or killed." Again, we see that
false claims are being made with a straight face, and
the other side - i.e. me - is supposed to do the work
of checking the facts. The temptation is strong to
tell Stan to do the Googling for himself, but then one
is not sure that he would know how to do it, so here
are some links. This is on the Egyptian Jewish
community:
http://www.bh.org.il/Communities/Archive/egypt.asp
There is only about a 100 Jews living in Egypt today.
Previously, there was a community of about 80 000,
about a half of whom left at Israel's independence,
and most others after Israel's attack on Sinai in
1956. About 2500 were expelled following the Six-Day
War. We may conclude then that the cause of their
leaving/expulsion was not some inherent Arab or Muslim
anti-Semitism, but Egypt's conflict with Zionism.
On the Syrian community:
http://www.metimes.com/2K1/issue2001-24/reg/syrias_jewish_community.htm
Syria's Jewish community still numbered 4,500 people
in 1992, when "the government lifted travel
restrictions on Jews." Apparently, there is no more
than about 200 today. However, it does not look like
they were forced to leave, but rather that they wanted
to.
On the Iraqi community:
http://wjc.org.il/communities/jewish_communities_of_the_world/middle_east_and_northern_africa/iraq.html
The Iraqi Jewish community numbered 150 000 in 1947.
Emigration to Israel was actually prohibited until
1950, when the ban was lifted. In 1951, the Jewish
Agency and the Israeli government "succeeded in
airlifting approximately 110,000 Jews to Israel in
Operations Ezra and Nehemiah. " Thus, they have not
been "evicted, or thrown out, or killed."
It's not clear how many of them remain today - perhaps
several thousand - but we have a report from April
2003 (of course, it wasn't widely publicized) saying
that "Muslims save Baghdad's Jewish community centre
from looters."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/13/1050172477659.html
On Iran's Jewish community:
http://www.iran-e-sabz.org/news/jewish1.html
"Iran's Jewish community, although it has dwindled
over the decades, remains the Middle East's largest
outside Israel." Today it numbers about 25 000
thousand.
On the Morrocan community:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/195E8EFB-4FA1-446E-A283-74269901092D.htm
"Morocco's Jewish community, which once numbered more
than 200,000 people, now consists of about 4000 who
live mainly in large cities such as Dar al-Baida
(Casablanca)." The others left for all kinds of
resons, such as the fact that the Jewish Agency was
paying the Morrocan king per head for every Jew who
emigrates for Israel. However, even today "Moroccan
Jewish emigres, even those with Israeli citizenship,
freely visit friends and relatives in Morocco.
Moroccan Jews have held leading positions in the
business community and government."
www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/morocjews.html
Incidentally, the Morrocan Jewish community leader has
condemned the assassination of Shaikh Yasin as "an act
of bestiality," and spoke about "the incredible
arrogance of Sharon." (More anti-semitism, of course.)
More generally, to use the relative small numbers of
Jews in ME countries today as evidence of pervasive
anti-semitism in these cultures is problematic on
several counts. First, the large Jewish communities
that were living there quite comfortably previously,
before Israel was established - how come they were not
anti-semitic then ? Second, the reasons for their
leaving included ideological ones -those who genuinely
wanted to live in the "Jewish state," unlike the
resident Zionists - economic, and so on. Third, while
some Arab states did prosecute / expel Jews after
1947, these were state policies that were largely the
response to the conflict with Israel and to Israel's
attempts to de-stabilize the Arab countries
internally. (Israel also wanted these Jews to
emigrate, and did it all it could to make their
position there more difficult, sometimes by
Mossad-staged terrorist actions.) Can we use the
policies of the European states during World War II as
evidence of deeply ingrained European anti-Semitism ?
I would think not, though in a debate with
contemporary Zionists nothing is impossible. We are
also told that the percentage of the Jews in the US
today is small - does this constitute proof of
pervasive American anti-Semitism ?
O.K.
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