Jews of Arab Countries, Refugees in 20th Century

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

"June 17, 2020 was Jewish Refugees Day, when we remembered the fate of 850,000 Jewish refugees forced out of Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century. Communities dating back 2,500 years were destroyed.

At the United Nations, UN Watch's Hillel Neuer asked Algeria, Egypt, Iraq and the others: “Where are your Jews?”

                                               

     A Synagogue on Jerba, off Tunisia 

                             Inside a Tunisia synagogue  

With the Palestinians demanding half of what was left of our Jewish Homeland, promised at the end of WWII, we should remember that the Jews of these places were forced out by the Arab countries because of Israel,  tiny that is was, was created after 2,000 patient years of waiting.  Jews had gone there to live after being forced out of their own country by the Romans. 

                            Great Synagogue of Tunis

                                   Jewish Algerian family

Algeria's Jews had lived there before 70 CE, and possibly were there with the Carthaginians who came here with them.  Carthaginians settled in today's Tunisia, shown above in purple between Algeria and Libya.   A settlement was founded in Carthage by Phoenicians in N. Africa, possibly the biblical Tarshish, in 200 CE, but were then already long-established in the area.  The Jewish cemetery of the Roman Period had 3,000 tombs in Carthage, , a seaside suburb of Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, which is known for its ancient archaeological sites. Founded by the Phoenicians in the first millennium B.C.E, it was once the seat of the powerful Carthaginian (Punic) Empire, which fell to Rome in the 2nd century B.C.E Today it retains a scattered collection of ancient baths, theaters, villas and other ruins, many with sweeping views of the Gulf of Tunis.  Jewish proselytization was apparently active in the 3rd and 4th centuries.  The community declined due to persecution after the conquest by Justinian, the Byzantine emperor (527-65) in 535.  The Talmud mentions various scholars from Carthage. Some Berber tribes had converted to Judaism.  When the Roman Empire became Christian, Jews suffered.                                                                  

 Spain's 1492 decree against Jews caused many to flee to Algeria.  It became the center of Sephardi life and produced some notable scholars.  In the 16th century under Turkish rule, Jews were treated well.  By 1804, mob violence attacked Jews.  French occupation in 1830 gave the land new spirit and by 1870 the Cremieux Decree conferred French citizenship to Jews.  With Moslems now there, violent anti-Jewish outbreaks happened in the late 1800s.  France fell in 1940 in WWII and the Vichy government introduced anti-Semitic laws, and Germans occupied the land from 1942-3 and of course Jews suffered. 

                                             
                                   Jew of Algiers of the past

30,000 Jews were living in Algiers in 1961.  When Algiers attained independence in 1962, 135,000 Jews, almost all of them, emigrated to France, with about 10,000 going to Israel.  By 1990, 600 remained in Algeria mostly in Algiers which has a synagogue and a communal center.  There is no Jewish community left in Algeria today.

Last Jew in Egypt keeping heritage alive

Egypt's history with Jews should be the oldest, from 18th to 16th centuries BCE during the Hyksos dynasty.  Jews, before they were Jews, were living there for 400 years of which most was spent in slavery.  Moses at age 80 freed them in about 1311 BCE in the Exodus.  Jews have lived in Egypt on and off for ages.  In 1948, war in Israel's beginnings, many Jews were placed in concentration camps and attacks were made on Jewish homes.  A great emigration of Jews in Egypt occurred and their number dropped from 90,000 in 1947 to 30,000 in i1955.  Nasser expelled many Jews from Egypt.  Most left in following years and in 1966, 2,500 remained with 1,800 in Cairo and the others in Alexandria.  In 1967 during the 6 Day War, male Jews were arrested and the others emigrated.  By 1990, 240 remained.  In 2010, I believe one woman was there.  A Syrian man I know who thought his mother had been a hidden Jew was in Egypt and tried to go to a synagogue but failed.  They were closed.  

In 2016, an article in an Egyptian periodical contained a quote from Magda Tania Haroun (the president of Cairo's Jewish community) which seemed to imply that there were only 6 Jews remaining in the entire country, all of them women over age 65. However, a subsequent article in another periodical clarified that she was specifically referring to the Jews remaining in Cairo (where she is based) and that there are a further 12 Jews in the city of Alexandria, whose spiritual leader is Ben Youssef Gaon. With the death of Magda's mother, Marcelle Haroun, at the age of 93, in July 2019, left only five Jews in Cairo.

                                              

 Iraq's city of Ur is where Abraham came from. Iraq had been Mesopotamia.   Their Jewish population by 1991 was 150, chiefly in Baghdad, where one synagogue still operated.  The history of the Jews in Iraq is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BC. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities.

IBRAHIM YOUSSEF SHALEH, the leader of Iraq’s Jewish cmty 370

(photo credit: REUTERS) 

During 2013, What happened in the Arab countries was in effect, ethic cleansing.  While the Nakba is marked every year with demonstrations and wide coverage, the Jewish disaster does not merit any public or media notice. It was the Farhud, the riots against Jews in Iraq.  This was in the Jerusalem Post.  During Shavuot, Iraqi Jews will commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the “Farhud” – the riots that took place on Shavuot, June 1-2, 1941. In the riots reminiscent of Kristallnacht in Germany, 179 Jews were murdered, hundreds more wounded and much Jewish property looted.

In the 20th century, Iraqi Jews played an important role in the early days of Iraq's independence. Between 1950 and 1952, 120,000–130,000 of the Iraqi Jewish community (around 75%) reached Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.

The religious and cultural traditions of Iraqi Jews are kept alive today in strong communities established by Iraqi Jews in Israel, especially in Or Yehuda, Givatayim and Kiryat Gat.  According to government data as of 2014, there were 227,900 Jews of Iraqi descent in Israel, with other estimates as high as 600,000 Israelis having some Iraqi ancestry.  Smaller communities upholding Iraqi Jewish traditions in the Jewish diaspora exist in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, Canada, and the United States.

THE ATTACKS against the Jews in Arab lands occurred even before the establishment of the State of Israel. In Iraq they began with discrimination in the areas of the economy, education and public life. Afterwards, Arab nationalism ignited the fires of rioting against the Jews, which came to a peak in the farhud of 1941.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Messages From A Syrian Jew Trapped in Egypt, by Nadene Goldfoot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iraq