Julius HB_HB.qxd 24/10/2017 15:08 Page 1 The British-born daughter of Iraqi– U UPROOTED Who are the Jews from Arab coun- Jewish refugees, Lyn Julius graduated tries? What were relations with in International Relations from the Muslims like? What made Jews P University of Sussex. Her work has leave countries where they had appeared in the Guardian, Jewish been settled for thousands of R News, Ha'aretz, Standpoint and years? What lessons can we learn Huffington Post, among other media. from the mass exodus of minorities O from the Middle East? Lyn Julius answers all these questions and more in Uprooted. O Jews lived continuously in the Middle East and North Africa for almost 3,000 years. Yet, in just 50 T years, their indigenous communities outside Palestine almost totally E disappeared as more than 99 percent of the Jewish population fled. The Lyn Julius provides a riveting account of a fascinating, D same process is repeating with but disgracefully overlooked subject. Anyone who Christian and other minority com- Front Cover really wants to understand the Middle East, Israel Top: 1940s Egyptian film star 'Camelia', and world history, should read it. munities across the Middle East. real name Liliane Levy Cohen. Eliot Before the Holocaust Jews in Elisofon/LIFE picture collection/ Getty Tom Gross, former Jerusalem correspondent, How 3000 Arab countries constituted 10 percent Images. Sunday Telegraph, and Guardian contributor of the world’s Jewish population, Bottom: Refugee arriving in an Israeli and now over 50 percent of Israel’s Years of tent camp from Iraq, 1950. Jews are from Arab and Muslim countries, mostly refugees or their Back Cover Jewish descendants. 'No Return' stamp issued to Jews leaving L The book also assesses how well Iraq. Y Civilisation these Jews have integrated into Israel and how their struggles have N in the Arab been politicised. It charts the growing clamour for recognition, redress J World and memorialisation. How can their cause contribute to peace and U reconciliation between Israel and Vanished the Muslim world? L Overnight I U S VALLENTINE MITCHELL ISBN 978 1 910383 64 3 LYN Catalyst House 920 NE 58th Avenue 720 Centennial Court Suite 300 JULIUS Centennial Park Portland Elstree WD6 3SY, UK OR 97213-3786, USA VALLENTINE www.vmbooks.com VALLENTINE MITCHELL MITCHELL ISBN 978 1 910383 64 3 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page i UPROOTED 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page ii 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page iii Uprooted How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilisation in the Arab World Vanished Overnight Lyn Julius VALLENTINE MITCHELL LONDON • PORTLAND, OR imprint page_Layout 1 18/10/2017 23:01 Page 1 First published in 2018 by Vallentine Mitchell Catalyst House, 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 720 Centennial Court, Portland, Oregon Centennial Park, Elstree WD6 3SY, UK 97213-3786 USA www.vmbooks.com Copyright © 2018 Lyn Julius Foreword © 2018 Tom Gross British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: An entry can be found on request ISBN 978 1 910383 64 3 (Cloth) ISBN 978 1 910383 65 0 (Ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: An entry can be found on request All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, reading or otherwise, without the prior permis- sion of Vallentine Mitchell & Co. Ltd. Printed by Clays Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page v Toleration is not the oppositeof Intoleration, but is the counterfeitof it. Both are despotisms. Thomas Paine,The Rights of Man Dedicated to my parents, Bertha Bekhor and the late Maurice Bekhor, Jewish refugees from Iraq, and to the memory of my friend Névine Rose (née Savdié), a Jewish refugee from Egypt. 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page vi 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page vii Contents A Note on Terminology viii Foreword: A People Ignored ix Introduction xiii Preface: First the Saturday People xvii 1 Over a Millennium before Islam 1 2 The Myth of Peaceful Coexistence 24 3 The European Colonial Revolution 48 4 The Legacy of the Nazi Era 79 5 A Virulent Nationalism 100 6 What Came First: Anti-Semitism or Anti-Zionism? 119 7 Jewish Refugees: Forgotten No More? 148 8 ‘My House is your House’ 169 9 Mizrahi Wars of Politics and Culture 196 10 Myths, Lies and Omissions 223 11 The Quest for Justice for Indigenous Peoples 242 Appendices 263 Bibliography 323 Index 327 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page viii A Note on Terminology Ashkenazi:Jews from medieval Germany and northern France. The term has now come to refer to Jews of central and eastern European descent. Mizrahi: modern Hebrew term deriving from Edot Ha’Mizrah, Jews from the East. It denotes ‘eastern’ or ‘oriental’ Jews who have been settled in the Middle East and North Africa since Biblical times. It also refers to the Jews of the greater Babylonian diaspora (present-day Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and the southern ex-Soviet republics). Nowadays it also encompasses Jews from Yemen, the Indian subcontinent and Ethiopia – any Jew who is not Ashkenazi. This book uses ‘Mizrahi’ as a catch-all, although the term is technically inaccurate when describing North African (Maghrebi) communities since these are geographically westerly (Morocco is to the west of much of western Europe). Sephardi:literally, Spanish.Jews expelled from Spain (Sefarad) and Portugal after 1492. Most Middle Eastern and North African communities are now mixed Sephardi and Mizrahi. The term is often used to describe any community that is not Ashkenazi.‘Sephardi’ also means following the broad traditions of Sephardi Judaism. 00-Prelims_Layout 1 9/20/2017 4:54 PM Page ix Foreword A People Ignored It is not surprising, given the sheer scale of the Holocaust and its sadism, that it has dominated contemporary discourse among Jews and others. But while the extermination of European Jews has rightfully (though belatedly) generated a great deal of study and research, the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of the Arab world has been all but ignored. This ignorance extends to policymakers at the highest level. Some journalists at leading news outlets, as well as politicians I have spoken to, have expressed surprise when I have even mentioned that Jews lived in sizeable numbers in the Middle East before Israel’s independence. In fact Jews have lived in what is now the Arab world for over 2,600 years, a millennium before Islam was founded, and centuries before the Arab conquest of many of those territories. In pre-Islamic times, whole Jewish kingdoms existed, for example Himyar in Yemen. Up until the seventeenth century, there were more Jews in the Arab and wider Muslim world than in Europe. In Baghdad, in 1939, 33 per cent of the population were Jews making it at the time, proportionately more Jewish than Warsaw (29 per cent) and New York (27 per cent). Jews had lived in Baghdad since the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Today only five Jews reportedly remain there. Before they were driven out en masse, the Jews of the Arab world, like Jews in Europe, were often important figures in their societies. The first novel to be published in Iraq was written by a Jew. Iraq’s first finance minister was a Jew, Sir Sasson Heskel. The founder of Egypt’s first national theatre in Cairo, in 1870, was a Jew, Jacob Sanua. Egypt’s first opera was written in 1919 by a Jew. Many of the classics of Egyptian cinema were directed by Jews and featured Jewish actors. The pioneer of Tunisian cinema was also Jewish (he was one of the first in the world to film underwater sequences), as was Tunisia’s leading female singer. The world bantamweight boxing champion was also a Tunisian Jew and so were many other leading boxers and swimmers – including Alfred Nakache, the Algerian swimming champion who later survived Auschwitz. (Hundreds of Jews died in Nazi camps set up in Libya and some other Libyan Jews were deported to Bergen-Belsen.)