Comments on: sympathy issue

By: Shmuel

Shmuel — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:44:30 +0000

Actually Carnas, I think you are the one with some reading trouble. Both tree and I have written that there were Nazi symapthisers in the Arab world, but that the causes were not innate anti-Semitism, but a reaction to Zionism, coupled with anti-British feeling and aspirations. As for episodes of anti-Jewish violence in 18th-19th-century Iraq (or Syria for that matter), these can hardly be cited as proof that Jews and Arabs would be incapable of coexistence in a 21st century Middle-Eastern state. If we are looking to history (in a contextual rather than anachronistic fashion, of course), the periods of tolerance and coexistence in the Arab world far outweigh those of intolerance and anti-Jewish violence. You are suggesting that the Jewish communities of the Arab world would have been destroyed anyway, even if there were no Zionism or Israel, due to some innate European-style Muslim/Arab hatred toward Jews. To the extent that historical experience should be taken into account, it has in fact shown exactly the opposite.

By: potsherd

potsherd — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:02:05 +0000

Like the Nazi regime in India that expelled all the Jewsish communities who had been there for centuries?

What? No?

By: Chaos4700

Chaos4700 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:52:22 +0000

…you haven’t answered my question. How many Jews were being thrown into death camps in the Middle East, carnas?

By: carnas

carnas — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:46:29 +0000

Since I’m assuming you people can read (although apparently not very well), you’re invited to educate yourselves about the Farhud in Iraq. It kinda ruins all your nice stories about how things got bad only after 1948, or how there was no Nazi-style antisemitism in the Arab-speaking world. Oh, and there were pogroms in Iraq in the 18th and 19th centuries – I’m assuming that’s because the Iraqis were clairvoyant and already protesting the establishment of Israel two hundred years later.
link to en.wikipedia.org
“Antisemite propaganda was broadcast routinely by the local radio and Radio Berlin in Arabic. Various anti-Jewish slogans were written on walls on the way to school, such as “Hitler was killing the Jewish germs”.

By: Tuyzentfloot

Tuyzentfloot — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:57:24 +0000

Morocco has seen considerable emigration of people to europe, jewish as well as not jewish.

By: tree

tree — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:46:12 +0000

Thanks. I’ll have to add it to my neverending reading list, if and when it comes out in English. Unfortunately, my reading list will probably take me at least the next fifty years to complete. Or, on the other hand, maybe it is fortunate.

By: Shmuel

Shmuel — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:43:04 +0000

One striking piece of information that Michael mentions a number of times, and I assume to be true, is that a full quarter of the population of Baghdad in the early 40s was Jewish – the highest percentage of Jews in any Arab city. The effect of their departure on the character and life of the city must have been incredible. All the more so if we consider the important role of Jews in the commercial, professional and intellectual life of the city. Michael describes this change with the symbolic observation that “once the Jewish Sabbath was a part of the lives of all Baghdadis – Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

By: Shmuel

Shmuel — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:29:10 +0000

Thanks for the information, tree. As I said, Michael’s book is a novel – rooted in his own experiences and knowledge, but fiction nonetheless. I don’t know if it is being translated (pub. in Hebrew last year), but it is a wonderful book. It tells the story of a Jewish tv producer/presenter in Saddam’s Iraq, between the two Gulf wars. He is both privileged (a close friend of the head of the Mukhabarat) and particularly vulnerable, and lives a life filled with moral dilemmas and rationalisations.

By: tree

tree — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:16:25 +0000

From the various sources that I have read about the influx of Arab Jews into Israel, those who might have been dissatisfied in Israel were actually hurt by the Israeli Law of Return, which grants immediate citizenship status to any Jew arriving in Israel. Thus the newly arrived Jews were not granted refugee status, but were rather instant citizens of Israel, and had therefore given up their citizenship in their former countries. Also, according to Hanna Braun, here, Israel imposed a high tax on travel abroad at that time, and this further complicated any attempt to return to former countries. As I said elsewhere, my recollection is that most, if not all, Arab countries have publicly stated that they are open to any Jew who wishes to return to their country of origin. In some instances, such as Morocco, this stated policy is actively pursued. I don't know about the circumstance in any other country, but I believe that when the I/P conflict is justly resolved, both the reception of Jews in the Arab countries, and the interest of Arab Jews in returning to those countries will greatly improve.

By: tree

tree — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:54:53 +0000

Shmuel,

I haven’t read Michael, but I have read Nissim Rejwan’s “The Last Jews in Baghdad”, as well as Shiblak’s “The Lure of Zion”, and other books and articles on the Iraqi Jews, including contemporaneous writings by Rabbi Elmer Berger. My impression is that in the aftermath of the war, Iraq put restrictions on Iraqi Jews, such as disqualifying them for government service and the like, making life more difficult for the Jews there. Of course, the restrictions on Iraqi Jews were mild compared to the extremely punitive restrictions put on the non-Jewish Palestinians who managed to remain in Israel during that timeframe. And also mild in comparison to the US’s internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, which was only 10 years prior. But the exodus was not ordered by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Jews were not expelled.

The Iraq government’s original position was to prohibit Iraqi Jews from emigrating to Israel, and it was only under considerable pressure from the US
(both governmental pressure and that from US Jewish interest groups) and Britain that Iraq relented and allowed Iraqi Jews to register to request to leave, with the stipulation that they must agree to give up their Iraqi citizenship in return for permission to leave for Israel. Zionists were put in charge of maintaining the lists of those Iraqi Jews who so chose. Shiblak’s book is rather detailed and quite fair, I think, letting no one off the hook. I’d recommend it, as I would anything by Berger.