Recalling the Jewish Nakba in the 'Middle East', W2
(Top) Some 80 people heard the harrowing stories of refugees from Egypt, Libya and Iraq. (Middle) Tom Gross and Michelle Huberman. (Bottom) Refugee from Iraq Nadia Nathan holds the award presented on Harif's behalf by Tom Gross to Rosemond Nissan for her work with refugees. (Photos: Gili and Niran)
If they want Islamic banking, crave Lebanese mezze at the dozens of restaurants and kebab houses, or hanker for a hookah pipe, the cognoscenti head for the Edgware Road, W2, in London. Here the hijab-clad women and Arabic signage make you feel, for all the world, that you are in the Middle East.
And so it was a trifle daunting - but also appropriate - that Sunday's event concerning the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, Harif's The Jewish Nakba:remembering Jewish refugees from Arab countries, should have been held in the heart of London's Levant.
The police, however, were taking no chances. Guests had to brave a ring of steely officers on entry to the hotel, going through airport-style security so tight that some bona fide latecomers were turned away. The organisers were not allowed to advertise their meeting lest the expression Jewish Nakba appearing on a hotel screen might incite some hothead with a kebab skewer to go on the rampage.
The date chosen was deliberate: 15 May was Nakba Day for the Palestinians, but it was also an opportunity to tell the world about a second Nakba - the mass displacement of almost a million Jews from the Arab world.
Before an audience of 80 people, Jewish refugees told their harrowing stories. Colette Littman was forced to flee Egypt in 1956 after days of listening to the mob screaming Ytbah al yahud in the streets of Cairo below her apartment.The family's cook Omar was found sharpening a kitchen knife: what was he doing? she asked him. 'Getting ready to kill the Jews', came the reply.
Colette left with only the clothes she was wearing and her suitcase was ransacked at the airport. Not only did Egyptian Jews face an uncertain future in exile, but they underwent the emotional trauma of seeing their communities destroyed and their families scattered to the ends of the earth.
Elia Meghnagi left Benghazi in Libya in 1958 to study abroad. His early memories are of brawls between Arab and Jewish youths. As a stateless student in England, he was forced to support himself. Later, he arranged for his family to join him, but they had to leave all their property and belongings behind. They quietly slipped out, leaving the table set as if for a meal so as not to arouse the neighbours' suspicions. Back in England, visiting the Libyan embassy in order to regularise his status, Elia narrowly escaped being bundled into a plane and forcibly returned to Libya.
Edwin Shuker's family had lived in Mesopotamia - now Iraq - for 2,700 years. One of five thousand Jews still left in the country after the mass exodus of 1950 -51, Edwin witnessed the noose tightening around the community's necks in the sixties, when Jews had to carry yellow identity papers. Then came the horrific hangings of 1969, when a mob half a million strong picknicked under the corpses of nine innocent Jews suspended from the gallows in the main square. Edwin's family had to leave like thieves in the night, abandoning 2,700 years of history behind them.
Dr Saul Zadka, academic, author and journalist, who described himself as a 'refugee at heart', gave an incisive political analysis of the refugee issue. The two cases were quite different. Some 100,000 Palestinian 'refugees' belonging to well-to-do families left the country a year earlier with their money and belongings with every intention of returning when the Jews had been crushed. A million Arabs, many of them hostile to Israel, lived as full citizens with more rights than any of their fellow countrymen in Arab states. Jews in Arab lands were loyal citizens, yet were rewarded with murderous riots in Iraq, Libya and Aden before the creation of Israel. It was a hopeful development that the US Congress had passed a resolution in 2008 demanding parity between Jewish and Palestinian refugees, but the Israeli government was still doing too little, too late. Dr Zadka himself distributed a statement to the audience demanding that Jewish refugee rights be recognised and compensation for property many times more valuable than Palestinian losses, as the Jews were big city dwellers while the Palestinians were largely poor farmers who supported the invading armies.
Following a showing of the 15-minute short version of the film 'Forgotten Refugees', the international relations expert Tom Gross said that the Jewish refugee issue was in many ways the single most important issue on the Middle East agenda. " In theory Borders can be agreed and Jerusalem can be divided, but there is no answer to appeasing the feelings and demands of Palestinians and their supporters regarding the so-called 'right of return' - apart from making them aware of the suffering and the loss of the refugees of the Jewish Nakba, " he said. Yet few knew about it - and he seriously doubted if Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague had even heard of it. As far as Israel advocacy was concerned, no session at the 'We believe in Israel' conference taking place that day dealt with the topic. As for the press and media, they were mesmerised with the Palestinian Nakba to the exclusion of other news and other refugees.
On behalf of Harif, Tom Gross presented an award to Mrs Rosemond Nissan, who had devoted 33 years to helping refugees from the Middle East at World Jewish Relief. Michelle Huberman spoke of what tools could be used to promote Jewish refugees: she unveiled Harif's new Mezuzah campaign, recalling the stolen Jewish homes in Arab lands - every activist's must-have accessory.
As they stepped back out on to the Edgware Road, the ex-refugees in the audience went away fired up with renewed enthusiasm to tell their stories. Indignant Israel advocates prepared to vent their outrage at this neglected issue in letters to the editor - and the hungry simply went off in search of a hummus and pitta in London's 'Middle East'.
If they want Islamic banking, crave Lebanese mezze at the dozens of restaurants and kebab houses, or hanker for a hookah pipe, the cognoscenti head for the Edgware Road, W2, in London. Here the hijab-clad women and Arabic signage make you feel, for all the world, that you are in the Middle East.
And so it was a trifle daunting - but also appropriate - that Sunday's event concerning the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, Harif's The Jewish Nakba:remembering Jewish refugees from Arab countries, should have been held in the heart of London's Levant.
The police, however, were taking no chances. Guests had to brave a ring of steely officers on entry to the hotel, going through airport-style security so tight that some bona fide latecomers were turned away. The organisers were not allowed to advertise their meeting lest the expression Jewish Nakba appearing on a hotel screen might incite some hothead with a kebab skewer to go on the rampage.
The date chosen was deliberate: 15 May was Nakba Day for the Palestinians, but it was also an opportunity to tell the world about a second Nakba - the mass displacement of almost a million Jews from the Arab world.
Before an audience of 80 people, Jewish refugees told their harrowing stories. Colette Littman was forced to flee Egypt in 1956 after days of listening to the mob screaming Ytbah al yahud in the streets of Cairo below her apartment.The family's cook Omar was found sharpening a kitchen knife: what was he doing? she asked him. 'Getting ready to kill the Jews', came the reply.
Colette left with only the clothes she was wearing and her suitcase was ransacked at the airport. Not only did Egyptian Jews face an uncertain future in exile, but they underwent the emotional trauma of seeing their communities destroyed and their families scattered to the ends of the earth.
Elia Meghnagi left Benghazi in Libya in 1958 to study abroad. His early memories are of brawls between Arab and Jewish youths. As a stateless student in England, he was forced to support himself. Later, he arranged for his family to join him, but they had to leave all their property and belongings behind. They quietly slipped out, leaving the table set as if for a meal so as not to arouse the neighbours' suspicions. Back in England, visiting the Libyan embassy in order to regularise his status, Elia narrowly escaped being bundled into a plane and forcibly returned to Libya.
Edwin Shuker's family had lived in Mesopotamia - now Iraq - for 2,700 years. One of five thousand Jews still left in the country after the mass exodus of 1950 -51, Edwin witnessed the noose tightening around the community's necks in the sixties, when Jews had to carry yellow identity papers. Then came the horrific hangings of 1969, when a mob half a million strong picknicked under the corpses of nine innocent Jews suspended from the gallows in the main square. Edwin's family had to leave like thieves in the night, abandoning 2,700 years of history behind them.
Dr Saul Zadka, academic, author and journalist, who described himself as a 'refugee at heart', gave an incisive political analysis of the refugee issue. The two cases were quite different. Some 100,000 Palestinian 'refugees' belonging to well-to-do families left the country a year earlier with their money and belongings with every intention of returning when the Jews had been crushed. A million Arabs, many of them hostile to Israel, lived as full citizens with more rights than any of their fellow countrymen in Arab states. Jews in Arab lands were loyal citizens, yet were rewarded with murderous riots in Iraq, Libya and Aden before the creation of Israel. It was a hopeful development that the US Congress had passed a resolution in 2008 demanding parity between Jewish and Palestinian refugees, but the Israeli government was still doing too little, too late. Dr Zadka himself distributed a statement to the audience demanding that Jewish refugee rights be recognised and compensation for property many times more valuable than Palestinian losses, as the Jews were big city dwellers while the Palestinians were largely poor farmers who supported the invading armies.
Following a showing of the 15-minute short version of the film 'Forgotten Refugees', the international relations expert Tom Gross said that the Jewish refugee issue was in many ways the single most important issue on the Middle East agenda. " In theory Borders can be agreed and Jerusalem can be divided, but there is no answer to appeasing the feelings and demands of Palestinians and their supporters regarding the so-called 'right of return' - apart from making them aware of the suffering and the loss of the refugees of the Jewish Nakba, " he said. Yet few knew about it - and he seriously doubted if Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague had even heard of it. As far as Israel advocacy was concerned, no session at the 'We believe in Israel' conference taking place that day dealt with the topic. As for the press and media, they were mesmerised with the Palestinian Nakba to the exclusion of other news and other refugees.
On behalf of Harif, Tom Gross presented an award to Mrs Rosemond Nissan, who had devoted 33 years to helping refugees from the Middle East at World Jewish Relief. Michelle Huberman spoke of what tools could be used to promote Jewish refugees: she unveiled Harif's new Mezuzah campaign, recalling the stolen Jewish homes in Arab lands - every activist's must-have accessory.
As they stepped back out on to the Edgware Road, the ex-refugees in the audience went away fired up with renewed enthusiasm to tell their stories. Indignant Israel advocates prepared to vent their outrage at this neglected issue in letters to the editor - and the hungry simply went off in search of a hummus and pitta in London's 'Middle East'.
In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, which absorbed most of these Jewish refugees, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.
ReplyDeleteThis website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what they once were. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.
(Iran: once an ally of Israel, Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism -
The Oslo accord is null and void! r5
ReplyDeleteA scathing indictment of the world nations at large
The Arab-Palestinians Charters explicitly states that they want the State of Israel for themselves and the Jewish people destroyed.
The Arab-Palestinians actions to date has proven that they do not want peace.
Why is the liberal left and many of the world nations are fantasizing and deluding themselves that the Arabs want peace.
People of the world wake up and realize what is their ultimate mission, eliminate the unbelievers.
If the world at large does not wake up now they will be next.
It already has started, take off the blinders, open you eyes and look around.
No entity in the world will force a solution on Israel.
They forced and or were complicit to the Final solution in WWII with the Holocaust and the extermination of over 6 million Jewish people, men women and children.
Where were the worlds nations outcry, threats and objection when over 6 million
Jewish people were being exterminated by the Nazis, men women and children?
They were silent.
Where was the world nations when the Arab countries persecuted and expelled over a million Jewish families and their children from their countries who lived there for
over 2,500 years, many died due to hardship and starvation. The Arabs confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and Real Estate about 6 times the size of Israel (75,00 sq. miles - 120,400 sq. km.), valued in the trillions of dollars?
Where is the world nations today? Why do they ignore when thousands are slaughtered by Muslims throughout the world every month.
Today and since 1948. Israel is being threatened with annihilation, the Arabs educate their children to commit terror and violence against Israel, glorify suicide bombers and terrorists, they name streets after them and pay monthly payments to their families.
When Israel defends itself from destruction, suicide bombers, thousands of missiles, violence, etc, by the Arabs, every country has something to say, threaten Israel and
meddle in its business.
This is the time when nations of the world must mind their own business and stay out of Israel’s internal affairs. Only then there will be a possibility of peace.
NEVER AGAIN!!!
YJ Draiman
Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is Jewish territory - No annexation is required
ReplyDeleteIf anything it may need to be re-incorporated or re-patriated.
Let me pose an interesting scenario. If you had a country and it was conquered by foreign powers over a period of time. After many years you have taken back you country and land in various defensive wars. Do you have to officially annex those territories. It was always your territory and by retaking control and possession of your territory it is again your original property and there is no need to annex it. The title to your property is valid today as it was many years before.
Annexation only applies when you are taking over territory that was never yours to begin with, just like some European countries annexed territories of other countries.
YJ Draiman
Jews hold title to the Land of Greater Israel even if outnumbered a million to one.
The fact that more foreigners than Jews occupied the Land of Israel during certain periods of time does not diminish true ownership. If my house is invaded by a family ten times larger that mine does that obviate my true ownership?
Do you know the Rothschild family purchased about 20,000 acres of land in the Golan Heights and Syria. The deed are in the hands of the Israeli government. There are more and similar purchases that have not been disclosed to the public.
Israel must rebuild all 58 Synagogues destroyed by the Jordanians and the Arabs in the old city of Jerusalem as soon as possible.
YJ Draiman
Any Israeli leader promoting the uprooting of Jewish Towns, Villages or Settlements is a traitor to the people of Israel. Any Jewish leader authorizing the uprooting Jews from their homes in Greater Israel should be prosecuted for crimes against the Jewish people and ejected from office permanently.
Under all the Treaties and agreements after WWI and the 1920's. It states: Jewish people have the right to settle and live anywhere in the Mandate for Palestine.
Throughout history, Jewish people have been persecuted and uprooted from their homes and lands in the world at large.
Now that the Jewish people have returned to their ancestral lands and are resettling it. Thus it is the ultimate crime against the Jewish people to uproot them from their own homes in the Jewish homeland by a Jewish government.
YJ Draiman.