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The root of the
Arab-Israeli conflict
and
the path to peace
Jaime Kardontchik
November 1st, 2024
2
Introduction
The persecutions and pogroms suffered by the Jews in the Arab countries, from
Northern Africa to the Middle East, before and during the 20th century, and the almost
one million Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, have been ignored and deleted
from the books and the conscience, both in the Western and in the Arab world.
My book corrects the wrong perspective, which focuses on the anti-Semitism in
Europe in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, and ignores no less
difficult conditions and persecutions that the Jews in the Arab countries went through
at that time. Setting the record straight is not an arid intellectual exercise, since how
the Arab world saw and behave towards the Jews in its midst for centuries, determined
its view towards Zionism and the birth of the Jewish State in 1948. And the way that
one sees the birth of the State of Israel in 1948 will shape his/her opinion of everything
else related to the Arab-Israeli conflict today.
From Mecca in the Arabian Peninsula, and from the 7th century and on, Arabs began
a conquest and colonization of vast territories, capturing the whole Middle East and
North Africa. At the beginning of the 20th century, this Muslim-dominated world saw a
mounting pressure for self-determination of non-Muslim minorities trapped in their
midst, or – at a minimum – their desire to achieve basic equality of human rights.
These aspirations were crushed. Examples abound: the Armenian and Assyrian
genocides in 1915, the massacre of Assyrians in 1933 in Iraq, the persecution of Copts
in Egypt. Only the Jews were able to fulfill their right to self-determination, but this right
has been questioned by the Arab and Muslim world, through multiple wars, political
isolation, and economic boycotts.
The history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is presented today, in the media and academia,
mainly from the perspective of the Arab colonizers. This book presents the other side
of the coin: the Jewish perspective of the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs.
***
The book comes in an English edition (which you have here) and also in a Spanish
edition, titled “La raíz del conflicto árabe-israelí y el camino hacia la paz”.
There is also a separate edition geared toward high-school teachers and students in
the US, titled: “Ethnic Studies in K12 schools: The Jewish module”.
For the general public, I recommend “The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the
path to peace”, in its English or Spanish editions.
The three editions are available at Amazon in eBook (Kindle, Tablet, Phone) and
printed (paperback) formats.
Finally, there is a Hebrew edition of this book for people living in Israel, titled:
3
Preface
This book does not intend to deal with all the issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict:
it only concentrates on the basic issues of it. But I am convinced that once the reader
understands the origin and essence of the conflict, then all the other pieces of the
conflict can be understood and the path to true peace will be possible.
The audience for this book is general: Gentiles and Jews, Arabs and Israelis. The
reader can be a student just starting high school or an adult. This great variety
determined the style of the book and the form: a series of nine lessons or chapters,
generously illustrated.
The first lesson explains the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The second lesson
describes the social and political circumstances in Europe and in the Arab countries
that fueled the mass migration of Jews at the end of World War II, giving rise to the
birth of the State of Israel. The third lesson is a webinar by Dra. Einat Wilf, former
political adviser to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres. It explains why all
efforts to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians have failed so far. This
webinar was organized by the Jewish Federation of Palo Alto, California, in April 2022.
The fourth lesson provides a bird’s eye view of the struggles of survival of non-Muslim
minorities in the Middle East. The fifth lesson is a brief 5-page summary of 3,500 years
of Jewish history, which also familiarizes people with terms such as "Sephardic,
"Mizrahi," and "Ashkenazi" Jews. The sixth lesson is a round table with the
participation of young leaders from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Syria, Morocco
and Israel, Jews and Arabs. This roundtable was organized by the Jewish Federation
of Sacramento, California, in November 2021. The round table symbolizes the need
for dialogue and inclusion to achieve real peace between Jews and Arabs. The
seventh lesson is how I see a possible path for the resolution of the conflict. Lesson 8
refers to the massacre of Jews in Israel on October 7th, 2023, and the reaction of the
Islamic world. Lesson 9, “The day after: Back to the 242”, indicates the path forward,
toward the resolution of the conflict. An “Epilog” closes the book.
Jaime Kardontchik
Silicon Valley, California
November 1st, 2024
4
Contents
Lesson 1 5
The Islam doctrine and the Jews
Lesson 2 20
Why the State of Israel came into being: Zionism
and the birth of Israel
Lesson 3 39
The Israeli-Arab conflict: Seminar by Dr Einat Wilf
Lesson 4 67
Context: Saturday and Sunday people
Lesson 5 78
A brief history of the Jews: Sephardi, Mizrahi and
Ashkenazi Jews
Lesson 6 106
The Abraham Accords: Enabling dialog and
Inclusiveness
Lesson 7 135
It is time to move on
Lesson 8 150
October 7th 2023 – the massacre of Jews in Israel
Lesson 9 156
The day after: Back to the 242
Epilog 168
The conflict in a nutshell
The antisemitism of the Left
About the author 172
5
Lesson 1
“Hebrea nací y Hebrea quero morir” [*]
[*] “I was born a Jew and I want to die a Jew” (original words in
Ladino, the common language spoken by Sephardi Jews)
Words said by Sol Hachuel, a seventeen Jewish girl, before
being beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam.
City of Fez, Morocco, year 1834
6
The Islam doctrine and the Jews
Figure 1: President Biden at a press conference with South Korean president
Moon Jae-in on May 21, 2021, responding to a reporter’s question about the
Israeli-Arab conflict. Recording time: 18:51 minutes.
“Let us get something straight here. Until the region says unequivocally that
they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state,
there will be no peace”. This was President Biden’s straightforward response to a
reporter’s question following the latest conflagration between Israel and Hamas in May
2021.
The Muslim opposition to an independent Jewish State in the biblical Land of Israel
(aka Palestine) is rooted in the religious teachings of Islam. Since the 7th century, as
Arabs conquered vast lands in their expansion from Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, to the
whole Middle East and the Mediterranean countries in Northern Africa, a doctrine was
developed whose basic tenet was, and still is: lands conquered by Muslims belong
to the Umma (the Islamic Community) and cannot be surrendered. Never. Non-
Muslim residents in these lands can, at best, achieve the status of “dhimmi” – if they
are “People of the Book” (Jews and Christians). Members of other religions were less
fortunate: for them the options were conversion, expulsion or death.
The “dhimmi” status was formally bought by paying a special tax (“jizya”) that granted
personal security (protection from the mob) and basic religious autonomy in return for
constant submission. Submission was expressed in a variety of ways. Dhimmis could
not testify against a Muslim in a court of law. Murderers of dhimmis were rarely
punished, as they could justify their acts by accusing the victims of blasphemy against
7
Islam. The case of a Pakistani Christian woman, Aasiya Noreen, is well known: In
2010 she was convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court and sentenced to death by
hanging. Public degradation and humiliation of dhimmis was commonplace. At times
and places, dhimmis were required to wear special badges (yellow for Jews) and were
barred from riding horses, considered too noble for dhimmis, and restricted to using
donkeys. The threat of violence, individual or collective, against “dhimmis” was always
present, and oftentimes actually implemented as a reminder of their inferior status.
Just to indicate a few modern events prior to the establishment of the State of Israel:
In June 1-2 1941, a pogrom in Baghdad, Iraq (also known as the Farhud or “violent
dispossession”), ended with over 180 Jews killed and around thousand Jewish homes
destroyed. In November 5-7 1945, a pogrom started in Tripoli, Libya, and quickly
spread to neighboring cities: at least 130 Jews were killed and hundreds of Jewish
homes were pillaged or destroyed, including nine synagogues. In December 1947, in
Aleppo, Syria, anti-Jewish riots resulted in some 75 Jews murdered and several
hundred wounded. Ten synagogues were destroyed.
The “dhimmi” condition in the Islamic world, a state of constant legal, social and
psychological submission, is often ironically hailed as an example of benign
“tolerance” of the Islam towards the Jews.
Jews lived in the Middle East – and not only in the Land of Israel – well before the
Arab conquest of these lands in the 7th century. The Jewish community in Iraq had
existed for 2,500 years, since the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 586 BCE and
forcedly exiled the Jews to Iraq (then Babylonia). Jews lived in Aleppo and Damascus,
Syria, for more than 2,000 years. A large Jewish community lived in Libya for more
than 2,000 years (the Jewish revolt in Cyrenaica (Libya) against the Roman Empire
in years 115-117 CE is well known.).
The Jewish communities in Iraq, Libya and Syria - 150,000 Jews – were eradicated in
just three years, between 1949 and 1951, dispossessed and expulsed, ethnically
cleansed. They were a civilian and defenseless minority. They were absorbed by
Israel. And so was the fate of the Jews in Yemen, who lived there centuries before the
birth of Islam: 50,000 Yemenite Jews were airlifted in 1949-1950 to Israel, after having
endured the harshest aspects of Islamic “dhimmi” practices, including the forced
conversion to Islam of Jewish minors, reimposed in the 1920’s. In 1948 there were
around 300,000 Jews in Morocco. Today, there remain only 2,000. Most of the
Moroccan Jews sought refuge in Israel: The State of Israel is home today to about half
a million Jews of Moroccan descent.
In the 20th century, in less than one-generation time, 870,000 Jews living in the Arab
countries – from North Africa to the Middle East – were ethnically cleansed. No one in
the West wants to mention nor talk about the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries:
it is a cause of discomfort and does not fit the predetermined ideological conceptions
and frameworks.
Jews are “dhimmis”. In the Western world every human being has inherent human
rights. “Dhimmis” have no inherent human rights: they are given limited rights by
the Muslim rulers at the rulers’ discretion and these rights can be taken away at any
time and place. Jews are expected to be submissive and behave as “dhimmis”,
8
otherwise their fate is to be expelled or killed. This doctrine is inculcated to children in
the Islamic world, and what is taught to kids from young age is difficult to erase. It
stays as such unchanged (“the Hamas doctrine”) or rationalized in or merged with
Western-palatable ideologies (“Israel as a colonial-settler enterprise” or “the right of
return”).
Recommended reading:
An account of the life of the Jews in Muslim lands since the times of the 7th century
Arab conquest till modern times can be found in the book:
Martin Gilbert: “In Ishmael’s house: A history of Jews in Muslim lands” (2010
edition)
Note: Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) was a prolific Jewish-British historian. He is best
known for being the official biographer of Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister
during World War II.
9
Appendix 1.1: The Jews in Morocco at the end of the 19th
century
Nomenclature:
Bilad al-siba: areas run by tribal authorities, generally rural and mountainous areas
Bilad al-makhzan: areas under central government control, generally centered around
large towns or cities
For the fate of the Jews in the bilad al-makhzan, the urban centers, of Morocco, see
Lesson 2, Appendix 2.1
Every Jew in the bilad al-siba belongs body and soul to his master, his sid. If the Jew’s
family had been established in the country for many years, then he belongs to the sid’s
property as an inheritance under the rules of Muslim law or Imazighen custom. If he
had personally settled in the area where he now lived, then immediately upon arrival
he must have been designated as ‘someone’s Jew’. Once this dependence is
acknowledged, he and his posterity are forever bound to the master he had chosen.
The sid protects his Jew against strangers as one would one’s own property. He
exploits him, as he pleases, as one would one’s own estate. If the Muslim is astute
and thrifty, he treats his Jew sparingly and takes no more than the interest on this
‘capital’ – demanding only an annual payment based on the season’s profit. He is
careful not to demand too much for he does not want to impoverish his Jew. On the
contrary, he will facilitate his path to fortune, for the richer the Jew, the more profitable
he is. He does not harass his family, nor appropriate his wife or daughter so that he
does not try to escape enslavement by fleeing. In this way, the property of the sid
increases from day to day, like a wisely administered farm.
If, however, the master is reckless and prodigal, he will use out his Jew like the
squandering of an inheritance. Were he to demand of him exorbitant sums, the Jew
would claim not to have them. The sid would then take his wife hostage, secluding her
in his house until the Jew pays and then, before long, new demands would be made
resulting in renewed brutality. The Jew leads the poorest and the most miserable
existence, unable to earn a cent without it being wrested from him. Even his children
are taken away from him, and finally he himself is led to the market-place, put up for
auction and sold – as is practiced in certain parts of the Sahara but not everywhere.
Or else he is ransacked, his home is destroyed and he and his family are driven away
naked. Some villages can be seen were a whole quarter is deserted; the astonished
passer-by learns that there was once a mellah [a Jewish quarter] there and that the
sids had one day, by concerted action, stripped their Jews of everything and then
evicted them.
Nothing on earth can protect a Jew against his master – he is at his mercy. If he wishes
to absent himself temporarily, he must obtain the master’s permission, which will not
be withheld, since it is necessary for Jews to travel for trade purposes. But under no
10
circumstances whatsoever might he take his wife and children with him; his family
must remain under the sid to guarantee his return. Were he to wish to marry his
daughter to a stranger who would carry her off to his region, the fiancé would be
compelled to purchase her from the master at any price the latter may see fit to
demand. The ransom will vary according to the young man’s fortune and the maiden’s
beauty. In Tikirt I saw a pretty Jewess who came from Warzazat. The husband paid
400 francs to be allowed to take her away, an enormous sum in a mellah where the
richest man possesses a maximum of 1,500 francs.
However enslaved he may be, the Jew can free himself and leave the region if his sid
gives him permission to ransom himself, but more often than not the sid turns down
his request. If ever he does consent, it is because the Jew, as a result of business
dealings, has held the better part of his fortune beyond the master’s reach. In such a
case the latter fixes the price of the ransom, either collectively for the whole family or
individually, for each member of the family. The amount demanded is the greater part
of the Jew’s presumed wealth. Once the deal is concluded and the ransom paid the
Jew is free. He moves out with his family unhindered and goes off to settle wherever
he sees fit. If he does not wish to give the amount demanded or is unable to do so, or
if all offers are deliberately rejected and he is nevertheless determined to leave at all
costs, there remains but one option – to run away! Advanced preparations are made,
carried out with the utmost secrecy. On a dark night he creeps out stealthily followed
by his family, while all are asleep and, unseen, he proceeds to the village gate. Pack
animals and an escort of Muslim strangers await him. They mount the animals, they
leave, fleeing post-haste. Running at night, hiding during the day, avoiding inhabited
places, choosing circuitous and forsaken routes, they quickly reach the edge of the
‘bilad al-makhzan and there, at last, they can breathe easily. They are completely safe
when they arrive in a big city.
The fugitive Jew is in mortal danger. As soon as the master hears of his escape, he
sets out in pursuit of him and if he catches up with him, he slays him as he would a
thief who had made off with his goods. If the escape is successful, the Jew and his
descendants for several generations to come will avoid approaching his former place
of residence even at a distance. He will keep at least three or four days’ distance away
and even then he will be worried. I have seen Jews of over fifty, whose father had run
away from Mahamid al-Ghuzlan before they were born, consider as perilous for them
to approach Tanzida and Mrimima, where they could, so they said, encounter
Berabers and be captured by them. Wherever a sid finds his Jew or his offspring, he
lays his hands on them. There are tales of Jews whose ancestors had run away and
who, over eighty years later, where taken back in chains to the region of their ancestors
by the descendent of their master.
This right sometimes gives rise to strange occurrences. Once, two rabbis from
Jerusalem arrived in Dades to collect contributions. As they crossed the market-place
a Muslim pounced on them crying, ‘These are my Jews, I recognize them. Forty years
ago, when they were young, they ran away with their father. At long last, Allah has
restored them to me! Praised be to Allah!’ The poor rabbis protested that their families
had lived in Jerusalem for ten generations, they themselves had never left the Holy
Land previous to this visit and wished to Heavens that they had never left at all! ‘May
11
Allah curse your thief of a father! I swear that I recognize you and that you are my
Jews’. Carrying them back to his region, he only agreed to free them for a price of 800
francs paid for them by the community of Tilit.
In the case of tribes that are democratically organized such as the Beraber for
example, every Jew has a different master. In tribes governed by a despotic chief such
as the Mezgita and the Tazderwalt, the Jews all belong to the sheikh and have no
other sid but him. In places which a have a sheikh but whose authority is limited – in
Tazenakht, among the Zenaga – the Jews must pay him an annual tribute, and may
not move away without paying him a ransom. They belong nonetheless to a particular
master who has common rights over them.
The region where I saw the Jews being the most mistreated and miserable, was in the
Valley of Wad al-Abid, from Wawizert to Tabia. There I found Jewesses who had been
sequestered by their master for three months because their husbands had not been
able to pay up a certain sum. The local custom fines a Muslim 30 francs for the murder
of a Jew. He owes them to the sid of the dead man and is given no other penalty or
damage. In this region the Jews do not indulge in trade, for as soon as they earn
anything it is snatched away from them. They cannot be jewelers through lack of
capital and so they are all cobblers. Treated like animals, fate has turned them into
wild and fierce creatures.
Excerpt from the book “Reconnaissance au Maroc, 1883-1884” by Charles de
Foucauld, published in Paris in 1888, (English translation: Paul B. Fenton and David
Littman, “Exile in the Maghreb”, pages 270-273)
Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916) was a French soldier, explorer, geographer,
ethnographer, Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg (Imazighen)
people in Northern Africa. He was canonized by the Catholic Pope Francis in 2022.
Lexicon
Bilad al: lands of
Imazighen (plural of Amazigh): inhabitants of Northern Africa before the Arab conquest
of these regions (or their descendants), who converted to Islam.
12
Appendix 1.2: The Jews of Iran in the 19th century
1839: Persian Jews given choice: Convert or die
By David B. Green
[Published in the Haaretz newspaper, March 19, 2013]
March 19, 1839, is the date that the Jews of Mashhad, Persia [Iran] were given the
choice of converting to Islam or dying, in an event that came to be known as the
“Allahdad”, meaning “God’s Justice”.
The ultimatum was preceded by an attack by an angry crowd on the neighborhood
where the city’s Jews resided, during which nearly 40 Mashhadi Jews were killed.
Following that, the rest of their 2,400 or so brethren publicly accepted Islam – although
most continued to practice their Judaism surreptitiously.
Jews had only resided in Mashhad – in the far northeastern corner of Persia, and today
Iran’s second-largest city – since 1746, when Nader Shah, the empire’s king, moved
his capital there and ordered 40 Jewish families to accompany him.
Mashhad was already a major object of Shi’ite pilgrimage and was known for the piety
of its population, which did not welcome their new Jewish neighbors. Nonetheless,
those Jews, who were confined to a ghetto-like neighborhood on the city’s outskirts,
created a community, developed trading ties with other towns in the region and
eventually with their immediate neighbors too, and grew to some 200 families.
The Allahdad began, as such events usually do, when rumors began to spread that
the city’s Jews were mocking the Muslim religion, and on a holy day, no less.
The public appealed to their religious leaders, who turned to the town’s political leader,
who granted the crowd permission to vent their wrath on the Jews. They invaded the
Jewish quarter, attacked homes and business, burnt books, and destroyed the
synagogue. Thirty-six Jews lost their lives that day.
The physical violence was followed by the demand that the surviving Jews convert.
The community capitulated to the demand and its members became “Jadid al-Islam”
– new Muslims. They took on Arabic names, began to publicly embrace the rituals of
Islam, including making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
At the same time, in a manner very similar to that of the crypto-Jews during the
Spanish inquisition, they also secretly continued to live as Jews. They gave their
children second, Hebrew, names, they fed the unkosher meat they openly bought to
their animals and carried out shehita (kosher slaughter) surreptitiously. They also
established clandestine synagogues in their basements.
They reproduced by hand the sacred Hebrew books that had been destroyed during
the Allahdad, and used them to continue teaching their children Torah. They even
found a way to avoid having their children intermarry with non-Jews, by marrying them
13
off to other members of the community while they were still very young, age 9 or 10,
so that when inquiries came from the city’s Muslims, they could say their children were
already spoken for.
Only after the ascent of Reza Pahlavi, the father of the last shah, to power, in 1925,
and the start of a period of social liberalization, which included freedom of religion, did
the crypto-Jews who still lived in Mashhad return to openly practicing their faith. That
period lasted until 1946, when anti-Jewish riots erupted in Mashhad yet again. At that
point, the city’s Jews began to leave en masse. They went either to Tehran, where
they constituted a distinct community, served by ten “Mashhadi” synagogues, or left
Iran altogether.
Today, all the descendants of the Jews of Mashhad are outside their native land. Most
can be found in Israel, and there is a large contingent in New York – in Kew Gardens,
Queens, and in Great Neck.
***
Lexicon
Mashhad: city in northeast Iran
Shi’ite: an adherent of the Shia branch of Islam
Kosher: (of food, or premises in which food is sold, cooked, or eaten) satisfying the
requirements of Jewish religious law.
Shehita: slaughtering of certain mammals and birds for food, following the rules of
Jewish religious law
Torah: the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
En masse: all together, as a group
Shah: king. A royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian
monarchies
***
David B. Green is a longtime writer and editor at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Additional reading:
Hilda Nissimi, “Memory, Community, and the Mashhadi Jews during the Underground
Period”, Journal of Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol 9, No 3 (Spring – Summer,
2003, pp. 76-106), Indiana University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4467657
Hilda Nissimi is a Professor at Bar Ilan University, Israel
14
Appendix 1.3: The pogrom in Bagdad, Iraq, year 1941
“Farhud – violent dispossession – an Arabicized Kurdish word that was seared into
Iraqi Jewish consciousness on June 1 and 2, 1941. As the Baghdadi Jewish
communities burned, a proud Jewish existence that had spanned 2,600 years was
abruptly incinerated.
As a nine-year old, I, Sabih Ezra Akerib, who witnessed the Farhud, certainly had no
understanding of the monumental consequences of what I was seeing. Nevertheless,
I realized that somehow the incomprehensible made sense. I was born in Iraq, the
only home I knew. I was proud to be a Jew, but knew full well that I was different, and
this difference was irreconcilable for those around me.
That year, June 1 and 2 fell on Shavuot – the day the Torah was given to our ancestors
and the day Bnei Israel, the Sons of Israel, became a nation. The irony of these two
historical events being intertwined is not lost on me. Shavuot signified a birth while the
Farhud symbolized a death – a death of illusion and a death of identity. The Jews who
had felt so secure, were displaced once again.
We had been warned trouble was brewing. Days earlier, my 20-year old brother,
Edmund, who worked for British intelligence in Mosul, had come home to warn my
mother, Chafika Akerib, to be careful. Rumors abounded that danger was coming.
Shortly after that, the red hamsa (palm print) appeared on our front door – a bloody
designation marking our home. But for what purpose?
Shavuot morning was eerily normal. My father Ezra had died three years earlier,
leaving my mother a widow with nine children. I had no father to take me to synagogue,
therefore, I stayed home with my mother, who was preparing the Shavuot meal. The
rising voices from the outside were at first slow to come through our windows.
However, in the blaze of the afternoon sun, they suddenly erupted. Voices – violent
and vile. My mother gathered me, my five sisters and youngest brother into the living
room, where we huddled together. Her voice was calming. The minutes passed by
excruciatingly slowly. But I was a child, curious and impatient. I took advantage of my
mother’s brief absence and ran upstairs, onto the roof.
At the entrance of the open courtyard, at the center of our home, stood a 15-foot date
palm. I would often climb that tree. When there was not enough food to eat, those
dates would sustain us. I expressed gratitude for that tree daily. I now climbed that
tree and wrapped myself within its branches, staring down at the scene unfolding
below. What I saw defied imagination.
On the narrow dirt road, 400 to 500 Muslims carrying machetes, axes, daggers, and
guns had gathered. Their cries – Iktul al Yahud, Slaughter the Jews – rang out as
bullets were blasted into the air. The shrieks emanating from Jewish homes were
chilling. I hung on, glued to the branches. I could hear my mother’s frantic cries
“Weinak! Weinak!” (Where are you?) But I could not answer, terrified of calling
attention to myself.
15
Amidst the turmoil, I saw our landlord sitting by our door, wearing his distinctive green
turban. He was a hajji, considered a holy man because he had made the mandatory
pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Demanding, raging men were remonstrating
with him, and then, inexplicably, they moved on. For some reason, our home was left
undisturbed. Only later were we told that our landlord had explained to the men that a
widow with nine children lived inside and had asked for his protection. Kindnesses
abound when least expected, and for this I thanked G-d.
The horrors continued to unfold. The killing of men and children and attacks on Jewish
women were rampant. Four doors down – at the home of Sabiha, my mother’s good
friend – a Muslim emerged carrying what appeared to be a bloodied piece of meat.
We learned afterwards that Sabiha had been killed and mutilated. My mother’s
sorrowful refrain would later ring out: “Sabiha! They attacked her! They cut her throat!
They mutilated her!”
At the same time, Jews were scampering over the roofs, running for their lives. If not
for the looting taking place below, more would have been murdered. No authorities
came to help; barbarism ruled. All the anger and jealously that had been pent up over
centuries erupted in these horrific moments. Neighbors with whom we had shared a
nod, a smile – and even attended their sons’ circumcisions – had metamorphosed into
sub-humans intent on annihilation.
And then, the fires started. Houses were being torched amidst the cries of their
destroyers. Black smoke ascended towards the heavens. The putrid smell of smoke
filled my nostrils – together with the smell of burning flesh. I will never forget those
smells.
How long was I up there – one hour, two hours? I finally jumped down onto the roof,
running into my mother’s arms. Shaking, she slapped me – a slap of love.
We later learned that after leaving Dahana, these teeming masses of men, joined by
others, went on to rampage the other impoverished neighborhoods, later making their
way into the wealthier districts. The red hamsa signified their targets. All along
Baghdad’s main Rashid Street, Jewish shops that were closed for Shavuot were
broken into and robbed. What the mob couldn’t steal they destroyed. The multitude of
synagogues lining the streets were equally ravaged – sifrei Torah [the books of the
Bible] going up in smoke. The destruction was absolute and relentless.
On June 2, the second day of the Farhud, an eerie calm descended. Again, I ran
upstairs and climbed the tree. In the distance were airplanes buzzing and bombs
dropping. The British, who had camped on the outskirts of town as our communities
burned, were finally moving into the city and reclaiming what had so tragically gone
awry. But for the Jews of Baghdad this was too little, too late. What had been
witnessed and experienced during those 24 hours would ring the death knoll for Iraqi
Jewry. Many of us now understood that after 2,600 years, it was time to move on.”
16
Source:
The personal story of the pogrom survivor, Steven Acre, was published in the AMI
Magazine, August 3, 2011, and can be read in its entirety at:
https://www.mikecohen.ca/files/steve-acre-farhud-article.pdf
A short video with Steve Acre describing the events can be seen at:
https://ms-my.facebook.com/USCSFI/videos/steve-acre-was-9-years-old-on-june-1-
1941-when-armed-mobs-of-civilians-police-an/335358522048576/
17
Appendix 1.4: The Egyptian Jews in the 1940’s
“A deep sudden yearning for a land of her own enveloped Inbar [a Jewish teenager].
Early in her life she had discovered that though she was born in Egypt and her family
had been there for fifteen generations, because she was Jewish she could not obtain
Egyptian nationality. Only 5 percent of the one hundred thousand Egyptian Jews had
Egyptian nationality, the rest, though they had been born in Egypt, were either
apatride – with no nationality – or had a foreign nationality from one of their ancestors.
‘So how did those 5 per cent obtain their Egyptian nationality?’ Inbar asked her father
once.
‘These are mainly the very rich people, who obtained it through bribery’, he responded
sadly. ‘Whenever I have applied for citizenship – and as you know, our family has been
in Egypt for more than fifteen generations – I have been told that I would have to proof
we have been here since the nineteenth century. But unfortunately, the Ottoman
Empire, which ruled Egypt then, did not hold any registry of births in Egypt for the
minorities, so it has been impossible to prove, and the authorities have known it all
along. It was just a way to tell us we are not wanted as citizens, being Jews. We can
stay here as ‘welcomed guests’, but not as citizens. We’re dhimmi – the protected –
but not equal.’
At school, Inbar sometimes watched with envy the Egyptian, English and French girls
in the class. They have a country of their own, a culture of their own, a definite identity
– not like me, she reflected with a sinking heart. Who am I? What am I? … I live in
Egypt, yet I’m not an Egyptian. So, what am I?”
(Chapter 1, “In the Shadow of the Pyramids”)
Excerpts from the book “From the Nile to the Jordan”, by Ada Aharoni
Ada Aharoni – born in Cairo, Egypt – was a teenager when she was forced to leave
Egypt with her family in 1949, with nothing else than one suitcase and twenty Egyptian
pounds. Her father’s license to work had been revoked and the family’s assets
confiscated. After a short period in France, Ada Aharoni emigrated to Israel in 1951.
Ada Aharoni is a writer and poet. She published 32 books, including historical novels,
biographies, poetry collections and books for children. She has a PhD from the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Ada Aharoni taught Literature at the University of
Haifa, Israel, and at universities abroad, including the University of Pennsylvania.
18
The colonization of the mind
At the end of the XIX century the situation of the Jews, the discrimination, persecutions
and pogroms they suffered in Europe and in the Arab-Muslim countries were of similar
intensity. In some respects, the situation of the Jews in some Arab countries was much
worse, because their discrimination was institutionalized, legalized, and socially
accepted and internalized by all, including both the Muslims and the Jews.
In the words of the Jewish French historian Georges Bensoussan, from his book “Jews
in Arab countries: The great uprooting” (published by Indiana University Press in year
2019):
“… This picture [the situation of the Jews in the Muslim countries at the end of the 19th
century] can only be understood by accepting that it is the culmination of the long
practice of dhimma, the protected status accorded to Jewish and Christian infidels,
that was developed during Islam’s first century. This long experience of submission
fashioned a form of alienation difficult to render clearly discernable to those very
people who internalized it. It became necessary to learn to survive within the tight
confines of a domination that was neither the Hell some claimed, nor the Paradise that
others said it was. It was an ordinary world in which codified violence kept everyone
in his place, at the risk, otherwise, of bloodshed.”
The situation of the Jews at the end of the 19th century in the vast Islamic lands
extending from Morocco in the West to Iran and Yemen in the East, varied from place
to place. It was worst in countries that lacked central governance, where local
excesses were common and rarely scrutinized and reported by external observers.
Access to these places were often difficult, but the occasional reports shared the same
gloomy picture, as described earlier by Charles de Foucauld in year 1888, regarding
the situation of the Jews in the rural areas of Morocco, or the following description
about the situation of the Jews in Iran, that appeared in a report by the French Alliance
Israelite Universelle, in year 1903 (cited in Bensoussan’s book, page 12):
“… Mistreated, chased like wild beasts, and systematically subjected to exceptionally
harsh conditions, they have ended up resigned to their sad fate and they now find their
situation entirely natural; they have become accustomed to lowering their heads while
the storm rages. Thus, any pride or dignity has disappeared, and ignorance has done
the rest.”
Or, as described in some occasional notes about the Jews in Iran, that appear in the
remarkable book “Persia and the Persian Question” by Lord George N. Curzon,
published in year 1892 (volume 1, page 510), written while he was working on a six-
months assignment in Iran, as a correspondent for the London newspaper Time:
“Throughout the Mussulman countries of the East these unhappy people [the Jews]
have been subjected to the persecution that custom has taught themselves, as well
as the world, to regard as their normal lot. Usually compelled to live apart in a Ghetto,
or separate quarter of the towns, they have from time immemorial suffered from
disabilities of occupation, dress, and habits, which have marked them out as social
pariahs from their fellow creatures.”
19
This alienation of the Jew in the Muslim world, this internalization of the subjugation,
was a unique experience of the Jews in the Muslim countries, not shared by the Jews
in Europe. The liberalism experienced in Western Europe during the 19th century,
which spread to Eastern Europe as well, at least in the cultural domain, led to the
flourishing of a rich Jewish literature and of Jewish movements for social and political
emancipation. On the other hand, the centuries-long oppressive dhimmi-condition in
the Muslim world, reduced the Jewish expression to the religious sphere only. As the
only allowable form of expression of the dhimmi in the Muslim world, religion was
oftentimes instrumentalized to justify the calamities that descended upon them
I categorize the colonization of the mind – the acceptance and internalization of
submission as a natural state – by the Jews living in the Muslim countries, as one of
the worst forms of oppression. In this sense, the Jewish experience in the Muslim
world was similar to the centuries-long experience of the Black people in the Southern
states of the US.
On the other hand, this should not be held as a criticism of the Jewish communities in
the Arab lands, since the alternative to submission was pogroms and death. Migration
to other lands were only a path open to a few, the rich who had the means and the
connections to obtain foreign visas, but not to the masses. This hopeless situation
changed in 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel.
***
Lexicon and note
Colonization of the mind: In sociology, a colonial mentality is the internalized attitude
of ethnical or cultural inferiority felt by people as a result of colonization, that is, them
being colonized by another group. It involves internalized negative views about
oneself.
I shared a personal glimpse of this oppression, “the colonization of the mind”, in an
article I published years ago. Here it is:
“… In 1981 I moved [from New Jersey] to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina: I had
gotten a job at the Physics Department of North Carolina State University. I still
remember today the eerie feeling of sadness I felt when I first came to Raleigh and
saw the rows of empty houses and a few black people walking with seemingly no
purpose in the abandoned streets of the city …” [“In memory of Sandra Bland – A
young black woman”, published in the Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2015]
20
Lesson 2
21
Why the State of Israel came into being: Zionism and the
birth of Israel
At the beginning of the 20th century anti-Semitism was rampant and Jews found
themselves persecuted and unwanted everywhere. In the Arab world, from North
Africa to the Middle East, the Jews suffered the chronic condition of “dhimmis”, a status
of legal, social and psychological submission to the Muslim majority accompanied by
bursts of physical violence. On top of this, the surge of nationalism in the Arab
countries found the Jews as an easy target for scapegoating, rioting and pogroms [see
Appendix 2.1]. In Europe, anti-Semitism was deeply entrenched in the masses as a
result of centuries of anti-Jew indoctrination and hatred spread by old Christian
teachings and libels. Oftentimes the ruling classes incited the mobs against the Jews
to provide a scapegoat for the misery of the masses. Discrimination was endemic and
pogroms against the Jews were widespread [see Appendix 2.2].
A small group of Jewish intellectuals came to the conclusion that the problem needed
a radical solution: the return of the Jews to Zion (the Land of Israel) and the
reconstitution of the Jews as a normal people in their own land. A trickle of ideologically
motivated Jews (the “Zionists”) began returning to the Land of Israel, then a neglected
far away province of the Ottoman Empire.
Life was extremely difficult for the Zionists: they came to the Land of Israel to become
farmers, but swamps were usually the only places available for them. Diseases like
malaria became common. They were poor and their previous experience in
agricultural work was nil. They came up with an original solution: a system of collective
socialist communes (“kibbutzim”) was founded to survive and support each other. The
first kibbutz, Degania, near the Sea of Galilee, was founded in 1910 by a group of ten
men and two women:
Figure 1: Miriam Baratz tending cows at kibbutz Degania. Miriam was 21 when
she joined a dozen men and women to found the kibbutz in 1910 (Photo from
Wikimedia Commons)
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/baratz-miriam
22
Other Zionists were more inclined towards a bourgeois lifestyle: On April 1909 several
dozen families gathered on sand dunes next to the Mediterranean Sea and declared
the foundation of a new neighborhood, which became with time the city of Tel-Aviv:
Figure 2: The founding of Tel-Aviv in 1909 (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
In 1936, a mere 27 years after the founding of Tel-Aviv, the Israeli Philharmonic was
born, giving its debut concert in Tel-Aviv under the direction of the legendary maestro
Arturo Toscanini. Many of its musicians had just barely escaped the nightmare of Nazi
Europe. The inaugural concert took place in an improvised under-construction
“concert-hall”:
Figure 3: Maestro Arturo Toscanini during the inaugural concert of the Israeli
Philharmonic, in Tel-Aviv, December 1936, shaking hands with violinist
Bronislaw Huberman, the founder of the orchestra (source: Felicja Blumental
Music Center Library/Huberman Archive).
The Zionists were a small bunch of idealistic people in pursue of a dream.
23
Their dreams would not had become true if the worst of their nightmares would not
had become a reality: the rise of Nazism – with hundreds of thousands of desperate
Jews fleeing Europe – and the ethnic cleansing of the Jews in the Arab countries –
with another half million Jews arriving to Israel from Northern Africa and the Middle
East. America did its part, by closing its gates to immigration when the Jews most
needed it.
Figure 4: In May 1939 the ship St Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, to La Habana,
Cuba, carrying 937 passengers, most of them Jewish refugees. They had been given
entry visas to Cuba, but upon their arrival to La Habana, Cuba’s government refused
to allow the ship to land. The ship continued to Miami, Florida. The passengers begged
US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, for sanctuary. They were refused. They also
applied to land in Canada, but its prime minister refused. The ship went then back to
Europe. More than two hundred of its Jewish passengers perished then in
concentration camps. In 2012, the United States Department of State formally
apologized to the survivors of the ship. In 2018, the Canadian prime minister Justin
Trudeau issued a similar apology (Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
On the eve of World War II, on May 23 1939, the British issued a policy statement
known as the “White Paper”. The new British policy limited the Jewish immigration to
Palestine to 15,000 per year for the next five years (the official quota being 10,000
Jewish immigrants per year, leaving an additional 5,000 per year for special
humanitarian circumstances). World War II was on the offing and the British Empire
24
wanted the support of the Arab world. The European Jews got trapped inside Europe
when they most needed an escape route.
Figure 5: Desperate attempts organized by the Jewish people to save Jews from Nazi
Europe. One of them is shown in the photo above: In an illegal operation (in the eyes
of the British), the ship Parita, carrying 850 Jewish refugees, lands on a sandbank off
the Tel Aviv coast on August 1939 (Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum). Many Jews who arrived illegally on Israel’s shores during World War II were
transported by English authorities to detention centers on the Mediterranean island of
Cyprus. The British detained a total of some 50,000 Jewish refugees in these detention
centers. Approximately 2,000 children were born there and around 400 people died
during their internment. Finally, in 1949, with the end of English rule and the
establishment of the State of Israel, the detention centers were closed and the
refugees were received by Israel.
November 29, 1947: UN partition resolution 181
On that day, the United Nations General Assembly approved the partition of the land
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea into two states, a Jewish State
and an Arab State. The Jews accepted the UN resolution. The Arabs rejected it. A few
hours later, pogroms against the Jews irrupted in the streets of Aleppo, Syria, and
Aden, southern Yemen, as a warning message and presage of what would happen to
the Jews in the Arab countries, if the Jews in Palestine dared follow up with the UN
resolution and proclaim an independent Jewish state. [See Appendices 2.3-4]
25
Or, in the words of Dr Heykal Pasha, the representative of Egypt at the Ad Hoc
Committee of the UN on Palestine during the November 24 1947 session, before the
final vote on the partition resolution: “Would the members of the UN place in certain
and serious danger a million Jews in the Arab countries, simply in order to save a
hundred thousand in Europe or to satisfy the Zionist dream?”, adding that “the
Egyptian delegation was giving the world fair warning.”
May 14, 1948: Israel declares independence
With the British gone, the Jews declared independence in May 1948. The gates of
Israel were finally opened for a massive influx of Jewish refugees from Europe and the
Arab countries. Jews in dire distress had finally a place where they could go to
and be unconditionally accepted.
The Independence War
The Arab states did not accept Jewish independence and invaded the nascent state.
The situation was initially quite bad for the Jews and no one expected them to win the
war. On the first night of Israel’s Independence, Egyptian planes bombed Tel-Aviv. In
just one of the frequent air bombings of Tel-Aviv, on May 18 1948, a 50-pound
fragmentation bomb killed 41 and wounded an additional 60 persons. Women and
children were among the 41 killed when the crowded Tel Aviv bus terminal was strafed
[1]. A few weeks before, in April 1948, a convoy of nurses, doctors and medical
students set out for the Hebrew University, located on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. They
were assaulted by Arab militia: 75 Jews perished in the attack. In May 1948, four
kibbutzim in Gush Etzion, next to Jerusalem, were completely destroyed and about
130 Jews – who had surrendered – were summarily executed, women and men.
It was a bloody war that extended for a whole year.
Jews had nowhere to flee, so they stayed put, fought, and got their State.
***
Reference
[1] Associated Press, reported in the May 20, 1948, edition of The Palestine Post
newspaper.
Note: The word “strafed” was used in The Palestine Post report. The word means
“attacked repeatedly with bombs or machine-gun fire from low-flying aircraft”.
26
The ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the Arab countries
In less than one-generation time, about 870,000 Jews were expelled from the Arab
countries, their properties confiscated and converted into refugees. The majority of
these Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel, as shown in the map below:
Figure 6: The numbers in the map show the number of Jews who were expelled from
each Arab country and sought refuge in Israel between 1948 and 1972. Iran (not an
Arab country) recognized Israel in 1950: 25,000 Jews from Iran emigrated to Israel in
1950-1951 (source: Martin Gilbert, “In Ishmael’s House: A history of Jews in Muslim
lands”, 2010 edition)
The above map and the numbers cannot convey the scope of the tragedy of the Jewish
refugees from the Arab lands. The massive ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the Arab
countries has been systematically hidden and erased from the public memory in the
Western world.
27
Figure 7: Yemenite Jews airlifted to Israel in 1949-1950 (Photo from Wikipedia
Commons)
Between June 1949 and September 1950, 50,000 Yemenite Jews were airlifted to
Israel, closing more than 2,000 years of Jewish life in the Arab peninsula. In Yemen,
some of the harshest aspects of Islamic dhimmi practices had been reimposed in
1922, including the rule that Jewish children who became orphans before they were
fifteen were forcibly converted to Islam [Ref 1, pages 157-158]. The airlift of the
Yemenite Jews in 1949-1950 was preceded by riots: in Aden, at the Southern tip of
Yemen, a Muslim mob attacked the Jewish Quarter in December 1947: 82 Jews were
killed and 106 Jewish-owned shops were destroyed. A synagogue and Jewish schools
were burned to the ground [Ref 1, pages 209-210].
“In Yemen, a nineteenth-century decree for the forcible conversion of Jewish orphans
was reintroduced in 1922. The conversion of a dhimmi orphan to Islam had always
been considered a meritorious act. This followed the belief that every child, whoever
his parents, was born into the fitra, or innate disposition, which was taken to mean
that he was born a Muslim. … For seven years the decree was rigorously
implemented. When it was re-promulgated in December 1928, twenty-seven Jewish
orphans were forced to convert to Islam within four months.
On 3 January 1929 [in] the capital of Yemen, Sanaa, … two young orphans, brother
and sister, agreeable looking, were snatched away from their mother in full view of the
Jewish population, despite the cries of the desperate family. The Jews got together
and collected a sum of money in order to buy back the children. But this was in vain.
The Quran prohibits Muslims from accepting money in order to prevent a conversion.”
(From Martin Gilbert’s book, pages 157-158)
28
Figure 8: Iraqi Jews airlifted to Israel in 1951 (Photo by Teddy Brauner, Government
Press Office, Israel)
Decades long persecution of the Iraqi Jews culminated in 1951. In that year, 130,000
Iraqi Jews were airlifted to Israel. The Iraqi government stripped the Jews of their Iraqi
citizenship as a condition for allowing them to leave the country. Then, the Iraqi
Parliament secured the passing of a law whereby the assets of all the Jews who
renounced Iraqi citizenship were frozen and put under the Iraqi government control.
2,500 years of Jewish life in that piece of land, since the times of the Babylonian
Empire – and preceding by thousand years the Arab conquest in the 7th century CE –
came to an abrupt end.
Israel was born as a nation of refugees, who came to its shores because they
had nowhere else to go. They came with nothing, except for their bare hands
and traumatized minds.
Reference
[1] Martin Gilbert: “In Ishmael’s house: A history of Jews in Muslim lands” (2010
edition)
Further reading:
Carole Basri, “The Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: An Examination of Legal
Rights – A Case Study of the Human Rights Violations of Iraqi Jews”, Fordham
International Law Journal, Volume 26, Issue 3, 2002:
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol26/iss3/6/
(The paper can be downloaded for free)
29
Appendix 2.1: The Jews of Morocco caught between the
French and the Arabs
I casually opened Martin Gilbert’s book “The Atlas of Jewish History”. On page 80
there is a map titled “The Jews of Morocco”. Part of it is shown below:
Figure A.1: Partial view of the map “The Jews of Morocco” in Martin Gilbert’s book
“The Atlas of Jewish History”, 1993
The map shows the towns where Jews lived in Morocco. Small inserts indicate some
painful events, many of them occurring at the beginning of the 20th century: pogroms
in Debdou (1875), Taza (1903), Settat (1903, 1907), Casablanca (1907), Fez (1912).
One caught my curiosity: it happened in Casablanca, a city well known in the West (at
least since the movie by the same name, from 1942, starred by Humphrey Bogart). An
insert laconically reads:
“1907: 30 Jews killed, 200 women, girls and boys abducted, raped then ransomed”.
A quick search using Google gave me the following eyewitness account [1]:
“1907 Cataclysmic destruction and pillage of Casablanca Mellah [Jewish quarter]”
On 1 August, a band of about 100 Kabyles [a Berber ethnic group centered mainly in
North Africa] helped by some Arabs from the town, attacked the port dock-yard,
derailed a small train, killed nine Europeans, and destroyed a large part of the
30
installations. An immediate panic spread in the town; it was a premonition of things to
come. Tuesday and Wednesday were days of indescribable suspense …
The [French] cruiser ‘Galilee’ appeared offshore on Thursday, 3 August. Its arrival
spread a little calm in the town and until the following Tuesday, the situation seemed
less alarming … Suddenly it changed. In the night of Monday to Tuesday, because
either the ‘Galilee’ had received the order to bombard the town or because Moulai-
Amin, the uncle of the Sultan, feeling overwhelmed, asked the protection from the
French cruiser, the Europeans were warned at two in the morning to go in haste to
their Consulates. At 5 am a picket of 75 sailors disembarked. You know the sequel:
the Makhzen’s [Moroccan] soldiers fired on them; they [the French sailors] crossed the
town leaving a number of corpses behind them, arrived at the French consulate and
gave the signal for the bombardment to commence.
With the first cannon shot, as if the Arabs were only waiting for this sign, the soldiers
of the Makhzen rushed into the Mellah, followed by the whole population, and started
the pillage. The 5,000 to 6,000 men who were waiting at the gates penetrated the
town, spread out thorough the Mellah [the Jewish quarter] and the Medina [the city],
robbing, looting, raping, killing and burning, and during three days sowed terror
throughout the town, until the French troops disembarked. Not a house, not a family,
not a person was spared. There are only five to six Jewish houses that remained intact
because they were situated near the consulates. The Kaiseria, the quarter of the
Jewish merchants, with more than 500 shops, was burned down; nothing but ruins
remain. From one end to the other, without any exception, the Mellah was sacked:
doors and windows smashed, furniture and contents gone; all has been cleaned out,
demolished; our schools have been reduced to pieces; the benches and desks
smashed, the equipment, the money stolen, the books burnt. At the Talmud-Tora
[school], where my assistant, Mr. Soussana lived, everything was destroyed. Mr.
Soussana was very ill: they took everything away from him, even his mattress and his
nightshirt; he was left naked on his iron bedstead … all the synagogues, except for
two small oratories, have been sacked, the silver stolen and the hekal (altar)
desecrated. To the honor of our co-religionists, the sepharim [Scrolls of the law] were
saved. Everywhere there is desolation and devastation. One wouldn’t believe that men
could have destroyed so much, but rather that the city had been the victim of a
cataclysm.
But the looting, the fire is nothing. Chased out of their homes, the Jews scattered in
all directions, around the precincts of the consulates, particularly the French consulate.
There were battles between the Arabs and Europeans besieged in their consulates.
Suffering heavy loses, the Arabs fell on the weakest: the Jews. A veritable man-hunt
began. The Jews hid themselves in caves, under rubble, in empty tanks. Families lived
for three days under straw, without food. The men were pursued and beaten with
truncheons or stabbed; the women raped when there was time, or abducted with their
children. Horrible scenes took place. The narrative from the mouths of the victims
themselves is hair-rising …
Following my three-day investigation, I have made the following estimate which the
authorities consider is most probably correct: 30 dead, some 60 wounded, of which 20
31
seriously; an unlimited number of rapes (I dare not question the families nor would
they dare to admit it), more than 250 young women, girls, children abducted …
Letter (15.8.1907) from Isaac Pisa, head of the Casablanca Boys’ school to the
President of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, AIU, Paris.
Note:
Alliance Israelite Universelle, AIU: A Paris-based Jewish organization founded in 1860
to safeguard the human rights of Jews around the world. It became particularly active
in promoting education by funding Jewish schools and teachers throughout the Muslim
world. In its origin, it was a non-Zionist organization promoting the integration of Jews
in their countries of residence.
Reference
[1] David Littman, “Jews under Muslim Rule – II: Morocco 1903-1912”, reprinted from
The Wiener Library Bulletin, 1976 vol XXIX, New Series Nos 37/38 by the Eastern
Press Ltd., London and Reading
The events in Casablanca and the pogrom on the Jews were also reported by the US
newspapers. On August 9, 1907, the heading of “The Herald Democrat”, a Colorado
newspaper, reads “Casablanca Lies in Ruins – Moors Pillage Jew Quarters”, and
the report begins with a short description of the pogrom:
32
Appendix 2.2: Pogroms against the Jews in Eastern Europe
at the beginning of the 20th century
Figure A.2: Partial view of the map “Pogroms 1871-1906” in Martin Gilbert’s book “The
Atlas of Jewish History”, 1993 (page 75). Date next to a city name indicates the year
were a large pogrom occurred in that city.
Due to the present war in Ukraine, you can easily identify some cities in the map:
Minsk (the capital of Belarus), Kiev (Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine), Kishinev (Chisinau,
the capital of Moldova), Odessa (the main port city of Ukraine). These are all cities
where pogroms were perpetrated against the Jews between 1871-1906. The pogroms
were quite widespread: they included also cities like Lodz (Poland) in the West,
Rostov-on-Don (Russia) in the East and Simferopol (Crimean Peninsula) in the South.
They were all included in “The Pale” (marked on the map by a thick black borderline),
the region of the then imperial Czarist Russia where Jews were restricted to live.
The Kishinev pogrom (1903)
According to official figures, 51 were reported dead – 49 of them Jews – and 74
seriously wounded. Horrifying eyewitnesses of rapes were reported. More than 1,500
shops and houses were plundered or destroyed.
33
The horrors and destruction in Kishinev were no different from what had happened in
other cities at that time, in Odessa (1871), Kiev (1881), Minsk (1905) and in many
other towns in Eastern Europe. The difference was in the reaction of the Jewish
intellectuals. The Jewish poet Haim Bialik was at the scene of the slaughter in
Kishinev. With the scenes still fresh in his mind he wrote (in Hebrew) and published
weeks later his now famous poem “In the city of slaughter”. The long poem begins
with:
Arise and go to the city of slaughter, into its courtyards,
And with your eyes you will see and with your hand you will touch on the fences,
And on the trees and on the stones and on the painted walls,
The clotted blood and dried brains of the dead.
But then Bialik goes on in his poem into a sharp criticism of the past passivity of the
Jews, who had accepted for generations this suffering in silence and calls them to take
their destiny in their own hands, instead of letting others mold their lives.
I will let no tear fall from your eyes,
I will make hard your heart and will not permit a sigh.
And why would they beg me [God]? Speak to them and they will roar!
Raise a fist against me and let them demand a retribution for the shamed,
The shame of all the generations, from the first to the last,
And the sky will explode and my chair will crumble under their fist.
34
Appendix 2.3: The pogrom in Aleppo, Syria, December 1947
“In November 1947, the United Nations issued its “Partition Plan for Palestine”, calling
for a complicated division into a separate Jewish state and the Arab state of Palestine.
Arabs throughout the Middle East and North Africa went on rampages in protest. With
historical perspective, many observers now conclude that these were not spontaneous
eruptions of rage but rather mass insurgencies orchestrated by the Arab governments
and police forces.
Mobs estimated at up to a hundred thousand people stormed Aleppo’s Jewish quarter
for days, breaking windows and destroying Jewish-owned business and homes. My
grandparents hid in the basement with their children Margo, Ralph, Joe, Morris, and
Edgar. When they heard a crowd of rioters break into the house, they snuck out and
ran to the Armenian neighborhood, where a Christian man whom my grandfather knew
through business gave them refuge for a few days until the hostilities ebbed.
My father’s brother Joe, who was twelve years old at the time, told me: “When they
divided Palestine to grant the State of Israel, Arabs in Syria revolted against those
decisions and against the Jews. They went to every shul [Jewish school], every place
they knew of as a Jewish congregation, and they took everything out of it and burned
it – the Torahs [Bible], the prayer books, everything. Our house was in the center of
town. We were the only people (in the neighborhood) that had a one-family house,
and it was very well known that it was a Jewish family that owned it. Our house was
one of the only family houses that were burned in that neighborhood. As they were
burning everything, they went into the house, took the drapes, dipped them in gasoline
and burned them.”
When the rampage ended, the Armenian man whose family they were staying with
went to the house to assess the damage. Though the house had not burned to the
ground, it was damaged enough to be temporarily uninhabitable. My grandparents and
their five children salvaged some belongings and moved in with their mother’s sister
Eugenie and her family in another part of town, sharing her small apartment for five or
six months while their home was being repaired.
Dozens of Jews in Aleppo were killed in the riots, and more than two hundred Jewish
homes, shops, and synagogues were destroyed – including my grandparents’
neighborhood synagogue and the adjoining school that my father had attended and
where his younger siblings now studied.”
[Excerpts from the book “Farewell, Aleppo” by Claudette E. Sutton, 2014]
Claudette E. Sutton is a writer and editor. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
“Farewell, Aleppo” is the captivating story of her father and his family, Jews who had
lived in Aleppo, Syria, from time immemorial.
35
Appendix 2.4: The pogrom in Aden (Yemen), December 1947
Jews of Aden recall the pogrom sparked by UN vote on Palestine
Partition plan
By Ofer Aderet
[Published in the Haaretz newspaper on November 30, 2016]
“It’s terrible to make this comparison, but fewer people were killed in the Kishinev
pogroms than were killed in Aden. Perhaps if we’d had a Bialik, our memory would
look different.”
Figure A.3: Arabs set alight a Jewish school for boys in Aden, Yemen, during a
demonstration against the UN partition of Palestine, on December 19, 1947. Credit:
AP
Shimon Sasson, 84, of Tel Aviv, was 15 when the riot broke out in the port city of Aden.
It happened just after November 29, 1947, the date in which the United Nations
approved the partition plan for Palestine, paving the way for the founding of the State
of Israel.
Shimon Sasson (credit: Tomer Appelbaum)
“I heard the report on the UN vote on the radio with my family at home in Aden,” Sasson
told Haaretz this week. “Afterword we went downstairs and told everyone who’d
36
gathered outside the house who had voted for [at the UN General Assembly], who
against, and who had abstained. There was cheering.”
But the joy was premature and replaced very shortly with alarm. “What happened was
totally unexpected and hit us out of nowhere,” wrote Ovadia Tuvia, a Jewish Agency
representative, describing the pogrom against local Jews to his superiors in Eretz
Israel.
Today, November 30, Israel observes the Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion
of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran, an official Memorial Day established by the
Knesset two years ago.
In Aden, which at the time was a British colony and today is part of Yemen, there was
an ancient community of Jews numbering around 5,000 people, who lived alongside
the local Arab population. The rioting began on December 2, 1947 and lasted three
days. “On the night of December 2, the Arabs started to burn Jews’ cars in the street,”
Sasson recalled. “The next day they invaded our neighborhood. The streets were
totally empty. We threw bottles at them.”
A day later Arabs started to torch Jewish stores, businesses, and homes. “A few
families fled their homes and ran to our house, which was in the middle of the
neighborhood. I opened the door and took in five families,” whose names he still
remembers.
The Jewish leaders asked the British for help. In response, they sent a unit of Bedouin
policemen under British command. “That’s when the disaster started,” Tuvia wrote.
“The hooligans started to loot Jewish stores. The policemen stood aside and smiled.
Another minute and you could see them assisting in the looting and pillaging.”
The British declared a curfew. “I didn’t know what a curfew was, so I went up on the
roof to see what was happening in the street. I saw a soldier there with a rifle. I ducked
and he shot at me.” The bullet didn’t hit him, but hit a 15-year-old girl who had found
refuge in his house. “The bullet hit her in the head. She died on the spot,” he said.
“There was great turmoil in the house.” They had to wait three days until they could
put the body out for burial in a collective grave.
“Any Jew who called out for help or who went up to the roof to put out the fires in his
house or to escape it was greeted with a hail of bullets,” wrote Tuvia, who had been
born in Aden in 1920, immigrated to Palestine and returned in 1945 to organize Aliyah
to the soon-to-emerge state. “The mad cries in the Jewish neighborhood tore the
heavens. All the Jewish homes were pockmarked with bullet holes. One house was
burned. Dozens of bodies fell, one after the other.”
Gavriel David, who was an infant at the time, lost his grandfather, Yihye, in the riots.
His recollections are based on the stories he heard from relatives. “Eighty-seven Jews
were shot, slaughtered and burned to death. My grandfather was shot in the head by
a sniper,” he said. “He didn’t die on the spot. He bled all night at home.” Yihye was
evacuated to a hospital the next day, but died of his wound.
After three days, when the British army finally came into the Jewish quarter, the rioting
stopped. “On Friday morning they went out to collect the dead,” Tuvia wrote. “A truck
37
went from street to street to collect them. Every home brought down its dead to the
middle of the street and Yemenite refugees buried them in a collective grave, with no
funeral and no ceremony. The streets were filled with crying and wailing.”
Thirty days after the riots the Aden Jewish Association in Eretz Yisrael held a memorial
for those murdered, in the community’s synagogue at 5 Lilienblum Street in Tel Aviv.
There, the community issued a call for the Jewish Agency and the country’s institutions
to do all in their power to bring Aden’s Jews to the holy land.
Five years ago, a small museum was set up in the synagogue to document the
community’s history; it contains testimonies, documents, artifacts and photographs.
One corner of the museum is dedicated to the pogrom. A memorial pamphlet lists the
names of the 87 people killed in the rioting.
“The Aden community lost 87 people because of the declaration of the Jewish state.
Their only sin was the founding of the State of Israel,” said Sasson. A few months after
the state was declared, he made Aliyah alone. His mother, who was heavily pregnant,
and his sisters joined him afterward. His father remained in Aden until 1967, when the
British withdrew from the territory.
There were those left behind in Aden, Sasson said. “Not everyone hurt during the
disturbances was located in the end,” he said. “There were those who disappeared
and were never found. To this day we don’t know where they are.”
Prof. Michael David, director of the Skin Department at Beilinson Hospital, and the
brother of Gavriel David, is angry at the state for not preserving the memory of those
murdered in the disturbances.
“When they mark November 29 in schools, they don’t talk about this pogrom, which
was directly connected,” he said. “It’s terrible to make this comparison, but fewer
people were killed in the Kishinev pogroms than were killed in Aden. Perhaps if we’d
had a Bialik, our memory would look different,” he said, referring to Haim Nahman
Bialik’s famous poem, “In the City of Slaughter,” written after the Kishinev pogroms in
1903.
***
Lexicon
Bialik: Jewish poet, who witnessed the pogrom in Kishinev (today the capital of
Moldova, next to Ukraine, in Eastern Europe) and wrote a poem, “In the City of
Slaughter”, in memory of the slaughtered Jews.
The Jewish Agency: An organization founded in 1929 to promote the immigration to
Israel
Aliah: Hebrew name for immigration to Israel
Eretz Israel: Hebrew name for the Land of Israel (aka Palestine)
Knesset: the name of the Israeli Parliament
Beilinson Hospital: a hospital in central Israel
38
Appendix 2.5: The forgotten refugees
“If someone wants to understand what is going on in the Middle East, they have to
understand the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.
Buried beneath the headlines of the Middle East conflict is the forgotten story of the
region’s indigenous Jewish communities. In 1945 one million Jews lived in the Middle
East outside of the Palestine Mandate. Within a few years only a few thousand
remained. The ancient Jewish quarters of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad were once
vibrant buzzling centers. Today they are silent.
This is the story of the thousands who fled their homes, who endured in refugee camps
and who today quietly carry the memory of a destroyed civilization.”
Thus begins the 49-minute documentary narrated by Jewish refugees from the Arab
countries. You can watch the full movie clicking on the hyperlink:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHuo0Bw3tgQ
(“The forgotten refugees” was produced and directed by Michael Grynszpan)
39
Lesson 3
“The war of return”
40
The Israeli-Arab
Conflict
Seminar by Dr
Einat Wilf
Editor: Jaime Kardontchik
41
Preface
The Congregation Beth Am of Los Altos Hills, and the Jewish Community Center of
Palo Alto, both in the Silicon Valley, California, hosted on April 10, 2022, a 40-minutes
Seminar with Dr Einat Wilf titled “The Essence of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and
the Path to Lasting Peace”. The Seminar was followed by a 40 minutes Q&A session.
The video of the Seminar and the following Q&A is available at:
https://vimeo.com/699880975
The clarity of the ideas presented in this Seminar is outstanding. Hence, I decided to
transcript it in writing, to reach wider audiences. My transcription is based on the
original video. I apologize for any omissions and mistakes that I could have generated
during the transcription.
About Einat Wilf:
Born and raised in Israel, Dr Wilf was a former policy advisor to Shimon Peres, a Nobel
Peace laureate. She was a member of the Israeli parliament from 2010 to 2013, where
she served as the Chair of the Education Committee and a member of the influential
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Dr. Wilf earned a B.A. from Harvard, an MBA
from the INSEAD institute in France and a PhD in political science from the University
of Cambridge, and she served as the Goldman Visiting Professor at the Georgetown
University.
Jaime Kardontchik, PhD (Physics)
Silicon Valley, California
April 22, 2022
42
43
Introduction
Rabbi Jeremy Morrison
Congregation Beth Am
Good morning, and it is great that you have all joined us today. As the senior rabbi of
Congregation Beth Am, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Einat Wilf as our
speaker this morning. She will be talking to us from Israel about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and the path to lasting peace. I want to thank the Beth Am Jewish and Israel
advocacy committee and the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center for co-
sponsoring today’s program. I also want to thank Congregation Kol Emet,
Congregation Beth Ami and the Jewish-Israeli Advocacy Committee [JIAC] for their
contributions to this event.
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Jeff Carmel
Beth Am JIAC
Thank you, Rabbi. As Rabbi Morrison mentioned, today’s program is brought to you
by Beth Am’s Jewish and Israeli Advocacy Committee, whose mission is to mobilize
support for the security of the State of Israel, to counter the alarming growth in anti-
Semitism and promote respect for Jews in the United States and beyond. To this end,
we educate congregants through emails and inspirational speakers, such as Dr. Wilf,
as well as to provide timely alerts to take action as events warrant.
Born and raised in Israel, Dr Wilf served as an intelligence officer in the Israeli Defense
Forces and was a former policy advisor to [Vice Prime Minister] Shimon Peres. She
was a member of the Israeli parliament from 2010 to 2013, where she served as the
Chair of the Education Committee and a member of the influential Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee. Academically, Dr. Wilf earned a B.A. from Harvard, an MBA from
the prestigious INSEAD institute in France and a PhD in political science from the
University of Cambridge, and she served as the Goldman Visiting Professor at the
Georgetown University.
45
Most importantly, she is without doubt one of Israel’s most articulated, thoughtful, lucid
and captivating speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the moral issues that
arise from it. Having heard Einat speak on numerous occasions, I guarantee that by
the end of today’s webinar, we will all have a far better understanding of the conflict,
its sources and its possible solutions.
Einat, on behalf of the more than three hundred and fifty registrants for today’s
program: Welcome!
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Einat Wilf
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for this kind introduction, and I promise
that what I am going to do today is let you know what the conflict is all about and how
to solve it. That’s it. You will be done and you will know.
I want to share with you a little bit as to how I even began to think about the conflict,
my personal journey and how I came to the conclusions that I am going to share with
you. I grew up in Israel, I grew up in Jerusalem. I was very much part of what politically
is traditionally known in Israel as the Israeli Left, Israeli’s Peace Camp, a member of
the Israeli’s Labor Party. As a young adult I voted for [Prime Minister] Itzhak Rabin,
later for [Prime Minister] Ehud Barak, and as a member of the Israeli Peace Camp, I
very much supported what through the eighties and the nineties was the main idea
associated with the Israeli Peace Camp, which was this very simple equation known
as “Land for Peace”. The idea of this simple equation was that Israel has a path to
peace and the path to peace is based on “Land for Peace” as a formula. Which land?
The land that Israel captured as the result of the Six Day 1967 war: the Sinai Peninsula
in the South, the Golan Heights in the North, and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
in the center.
Why was it necessary to come up with this formula? As I am sure you know, after
Israel was established, after the war of 1948-1949, none of Israel’s neighbors was
willing to make peace with it. All what Israel’s neighbors were willing to do was to sign
cease fire agreements. So, when people speak about the pre-1967 borders, there
were never any borders: those were cease-fire lines, which the Arab countries
surrounding Israel – Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt – made clear that they were
cease fire lines in an ongoing war. The message was that the battle of 1948-1949 may
be over momentarily or temporarily, but basically this is a cease fire in a far bigger and
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ongoing war of these Arab states, Arab countries, against the establishment of the
Jewish state of Israel.
So, Israel had no peace when it was born. But after the really amazing victory in 1967
and the capture of all these lands, which really tripled the size of Israel, just as you get
a sense of the proportion, the sense was that Israel has now territorial assets that it
can exchange for peace with its Arab neighbors.
For a while the “land for peace” seemed to be a very successful formula. This was the
basis for the peace agreement with Egypt, Israel’s largest foe. Basically, Israel signed
a peace agreement with Egypt and in exchange gave Egypt the Sinai Peninsula that
was more than twice the size of Israel. We can have a very interesting discussion as
to whether what we have or had with Egypt was peace, but we officially signed with
Egypt a peace agreement and handed over the entirety of the territory of the Sinai
Peninsula.
The ninety nineties were really a decade for the “land for peace” formula. This was
also the decade of the Rabin government and of Ehud Barak. We negotiated with Syria
over the Golan Heights, we signed a peace agreement with Jordan, when Jordan gave
up its territorial claims to the West Bank, and, of course, the highlight of the nineties
were the Oslo Accords, where Israel negotiated directly with the Palestinians, with the
Palestinian Liberation Organization, with Yasser Arafat, with the Palestinians, over the
future of the West Bank and Gaza.
The ninety nineties come to a pinnacle in the year 2000, when Ehud Barak – the head
of the Labor party, the head of the Israeli Peace Camp – goes to Camp David. Camp
David is symbolic: this is where Israel negotiated the peace agreement with Egypt. He
goes to Camp David to meet with Arafat and to negotiate a final peace agreement over
the future of the West Bank and Gaza. When Ehud Barak – who was clearly elected
on a platform of making peace based on the “land for peace” formula – when he goes
to Camp David, he puts on the table a far-reaching proposal, something that was not
on the table before, certainly not directly with the Palestinians. His proposal addressed
everything that we were told were the obstacles to peace and the things that the
Palestinians wanted.
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The occupation
We were told that the obstacle to peace is the occupation: Palestinians wanted to end
the military presence of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. On the table the proposal
was that the Palestinians were going to have a fully sovereign state, an independent
sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza, thereby ending the occupation. Israeli
was going to retreat, there was not going to be a military presence. So, ending the
occupation was part of the proposal.
The settlements
What was the other obstacle we were told was the obstacle to peace? Settlements.
So, the State of Palestine, the sovereign independent State of Palestine was going to
have no settlements. Settlements were either to be removed and dismantled, or
exchanged for equivalent land. So, the independent, sovereign State of Palestine was
going to end the occupation and have no settlements. So, two obstacles removed.
Jerusalem
Then, what were we told? Jerusalem. Jerusalem was going to be divided: the Jewish
neighborhoods to Israel, the Arab, secular, neighbors to Palestine and, then, the
question of the Old City: the one square kilometer, which I fondly refer to it as “the
insanity center”, that one square kilometer was also going to be divided. Holy sites,
we sometimes forget how far-reaching the proposal was, the Holy sites within the Old
City were going to be divided between Israel and Palestine. So, if we were told that
Jerusalem is the problem, an obstacle to peace, that was also taken care in the
proposal. So, check, check, check.
All the Palestinians had to do was say “yes”. And they would have had an end to the
occupation, a sovereign state, no settlements, capital in East Jerusalem, including the
Holy sites. They only had to say “yes”. What do they do? They walk away. Arafat walks
away.
49
OK. You might say walking away is a negotiating tactic. You know, that happens. Fair
enough. But Arafat walks away – and by the way, eight years later, in 2008, Abu Mazen
[Mahmoud Abbas], the heir of Arafat, walks away from a similar proposal by [Prime
Minister] Ehud Olmert. Arafat walks away, and Abu Mazen later walks away, to no
criticism from his own people. If this is the Palestinian aspiration you would expect, at
least, someone to write an op-ed, a small NGO to be established, something, to say:
“Are you crazy? We could just have everything we wanted. Go back there into the
negotiating room and get us our state”. But there are no such voices. And I know that
sometimes people say: “Oh, you know, it is because you cannot criticize in this society,
Palestinian society is not democratic.” Look at Russia today. People are holding signs,
people are protesting, and the stakes there are much-much higher. Palestinian society
has never been as oppressive as Russia, and yet, you see protests in Russia. You did
not see protests against Arafat walking away among the Palestinians. Arafat, and later
Abu Mazen, walk away. They walk away to no criticism from their own people. Meaning
that, by walking away they fulfill what their people wanted.
And, what follows is bloody murder. What follows, especially after Arafat walks away,
is a three-year campaign misnamed “the second Intifada”, a campaign of butchery,
massacre and terrorism. Some of you might remember the incinerated buses, entire
families blown to bits for having a Seder [Passover celebration and meal] in a hotel,
or from going to get pizza in Haifa. And this campaign, a butchery, is taking place in
Israel’s cities: in Tel-Aviv, in Haifa, in Be’er Sheva. Not in the settlements, you know,
as they say: “the problem is the settlements and the occupation in the West Bank”.
That is not where this campaign of butchery is taking place.
And a lot of Israelis, going through that – myself included – are asking a very simple
question: “What do the Palestinians want?”
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What do the Palestinians want?
What do they want? Because, clearly, a Palestinian State that ends the occupation,
with no settlements and a capital in East Jerusalem, is not what they want. Or, you
could say that they want that, but there is something that they want much, much more.
There is something that they want so much more, that they are willing to walk away
from all that – for that other thing. What is that other thing? And, what my co-writer [of
our book] Adi Schwartz – a senior editor of the Haaretz [newspaper] – also a member
of the Israeli Peace Camp, also believing in the “land for peace”, and what myself
realize, is that the answer was staring us in the face. Palestinians have told us all along
what they wanted. We just did not listen. Or when we did listen, we kind of explained
it away. We did not take it seriously. What did the Palestinians want more than a state,
more than ending the occupation, more than no settlements, more than Jerusalem?
They told us: “From the river, from the Jordan River, to the Mediterranean Sea,
Palestine will be free [of Jews]”. They have always claimed, as their absolute top
priority, the establishment of an Arab Palestinian State with no state for the Jewish
people in any borders whatsoever.
And that goal, which to the credit of the Palestinians, they have been pursuing
consistently for over a century – that goal has not changed. And, unfortunately there
has not been a moment where that goal has changed. The means of pursuing that
goal have been different and in our book “The war of return”, we focus on one of these
means, the so called “Right of Return”, which if you read the book is neither “right” nor
“return”, but merely a mechanism and an idea established by the Palestinians,
following the war of 1948, in order to insure that the war never ends and that the idea
of a sovereign Jewish state in even part of the land remains unacceptable and,
hopefully in their view, something that you can undo. And this has been the goal.
An irreconcilable conflict
When Adi and I were doing our research for the book [“The War of Return”], we came
across a remarkable analysis of the conflict by the British Foreign Minister after World
War II, Ernest Bevin. If you know anything about Ernest Bevin – a friend to the Jewish
people and to Zionism he was not. But Ernest Bevin, in explaining to the British
Parliament in 1947 why Britain is reneging on the mandate that they received from the
League of Nations to establish a Jewish State, basically giving back the mandate to
the heir of the League of Nations, to the United Nations, he said the following: “His
Majesty, the government has come to the conclusion that the conflict in the land is
irreconcilable”. He calls it irreconcilable. He goes on to detail, saying that there were
two people in the land, Jews and Arabs. That there was no question that there are two
people, two nations in the land. They are not religions. Jews and Arabs. Two distinct
collectives. And he goes on to detail what the top priority is for each one of these
collectives, for the Jews and for the Arabs. And he calls it a point of principle. And this
is “the top priority”. He says, for the Jews the point of principle, the top priority, is to
establish a State. The Jews want a State. He says, for the Arabs the top priority, the
point of principle, is to prevent the Jews from establishing a State in any part of the
land. Notice how he defines the conflict. And this is the definition to the present day
and has been the best predictor for the behavior of the two sides from 1947 to the
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present. He basically says: “Look: the Jews want a State. Period. The Arabs want the
Jews not to have a State”. Notice that he is not saying that the conflict is “the Jews
want a State, the Arabs want a State, and they cannot agree on the borders and it is
difficult to figure out how to divide the land”. No. He really zeroes in in why the conflict
is irreconcilable: because the Jews want a State and the Arabs want the Jews not to
have a State. This is, by definition, something that is irreconcilable. Everything else
you can divide. You can divide the land, you can divide the resources, you can have
all kinds of economic and security arrangements. But the one thing that you cannot
divide, the one difference that you cannot split is between the idea that the Jews want
a State and the Arabs want the Jews not to have a State. It is simple as that. In that
sense, the conflict is incredibly simple. Now, notice that what I have said right now
does not in itself bare any judgement. It does not say that one side is good and the
other side is bad and that this is a battle between good and evil. You can believe that
the idea of a Jewish State in any borders is truly a horrific, unjustified idea.
You can truly believe that the idea of a Jewish State in any border is in itself an
injustice, which is generally the Palestinian world view. But that does not change the
nature of the conflict. The nature of the conflict still remains the battle between those
who want a Jewish State, generally the Jews, and, generally, the Arabs who want the
Jews not to have a State. Regardless of whether you can think that the motivations of
one side or the other are just or unjust, but this is the essence of the conflict. And this
is why it is irreconcilable and this is why it has lasted for a century.
Now, how do we move from here? If this is the essence of the conflict, how does it
end? And it actually ends in one of two ways. Quite simple. Either those who support
a Jewish State will forgo their top priority, or those who believe that there should not
be a Jewish State in any borders would forgo their top priority. That’s it. That is how
we get to a lasting peace. Either the Jews forgo their desire for a sovereign State, in
essence, they say, “you know, it is not worthy, there are other places to live, we are
out of here”, or, the Arabs decide that they are willing to let a Jewish State exist, in
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some borders. That is the only one of those two ways that the conflict ends. Truly
resolved. Sometimes they say that the conflict is between Jewish Zionism and Arab
anti-Zionism. For the conflict to end, either the Jews forgo their Zionism, the Jews
forgo their desire for a sovereign State, or the Arabs forgo their anti-Zionism, Arabs
forgo their belief that a Jewish State should not exist in any borders whatsoever. That’s
it. In the absence of one of these two outcomes the conflict continues. And in many
ways, one can argue that the conflict has been a century-long battle of mutual
exhaustion, where the Arabs are trying to exhaust the Jews into giving up on their
aspirations for a State and for maintaining that State, and the Jews are trying to get
the Arabs to forgo their aspiration for them not to be a Jewish State. That’s it. And we
have been engaged for more than a century in this battle of mutual exhaustion.
We are winning
And the reason that this has been going on for a century is that both sides see
indications that they are winning: Jews look at their achievements, the establishment
of their State, their various military victories, the prosperity of the State, the peace
agreements, the Abraham Accords (and we will talk about them in a few minutes), and
they say: The Arab world is finally coming to terms with the existence of the Jewish
State. Hence, we can see the end of the conflict.
But the Arabs on the other side see it differently: No, the Jewish State is weak, Jews
are arguing, young Jews abroad are renouncing Zionism, so we are seeing more and
more Jews forgo their aspirations for a Jewish State. The world is calling the Jewish
State an apartheid, the world is mobilizing in order to put an end to the Jewish State.
So, we are winning.
And we only have to exhaust the other side.
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So, this is where we are. This is what brings the conflict to an end. And, as I said, both
sides believe that time is on their side. Just yesterday, someone tweeted “The Zionist
experiment is not going to last for more than twenty years, it is showing its
weaknesses, it is showing its contradictions. It is not going to last.” And I have to say
that, from their perspective, it is an entirely rational world view.
After we published the book, initially in Hebrew, Adi and I had many, many meetings
with Western journalists and diplomats, especially those from countries who are
funding UNWRA, the agency that constantly fuels the Palestinian world view that Israel
is temporary. And we keep on telling them: “Look, you think that you are funding some
social services, but from the Palestinian perspective, every dollar that you are giving
to UNWRA is a dollar Palestinians believe is a vote of support, on behalf of the West,
to their belief that Israel is a temporary experiment destined to end in the near future”.
And they say: “Oh, that’s not. The Palestinians know that it is a delusion, they
understand that there is not going to be a return inside the sovereign State of Israel –
which is what the Palestinians demand – so, you know, it is not going to happen. It is
a delusion”. And we always tell them: Give the Palestinians the respect of believing
and taking them at their word and that from their perspective and understanding of
History, they are not delusional. They are opening a map, they see seven million Jews
existing among half a billion Arabs, near one and a half billion Muslims, most of them
continuing to be hostile to the idea of a Jewish State in any borders. And they, not
irrationally, conclude that time is on their side. Which is why the traditional comparison
of Palestinians is to “colonizers”: We are like the French in Algeria, like the Crusaders
– a state that lasted eighty-eight years, or more if you do not include Jerusalem.
Recently they compared us to the Americans in Afghanistan. From their perspective,
we are a foreign people, foreign colonizers who came to a land to which we had no
connection, no historical affinity, no cultural connection. Stole the land, took it from
people to whom it belonged and, therefore, like all foreigners, we – the Jews in Israel
– are destined to leave, if we meet enough resistance and violence. This is the
dominant narrative, not just among the Palestinians but in the Arab world. And, as I
said, it is not delusional and it is not something plucked from thin air
What do we have on our side? Why, by and large, I am more optimistic these days
than I have been for quite some time? Because I do see for the first time ever, the
emergence of an alternative world view and narrative regarding Israel’s position in the
region.
54
The peace agreements that Israel made with Egypt and Jordan did not fundamentally
alter the Arab narrative regarding Israel, that Israel is a foreign colonial, Western
outpost in the region to which it has no connection and, therefore, will one day
disappear. This is why the so-called peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan were
really better understood as non-aggression pacts: there were barely any diplomatic
relations, no tourism, no economic relations, no warmth. Egypt and Jordan continued
to be promoters of anti-Israeli resolutions in the international bodies. Egypt remained
the number one producer and promoter of anti-Semitic content in Arabic to the Arab-
speaking world. And for decades Israelis were told that this is peace. This is what
peace looks like in the Arab world. As long as the conflict with the Palestinians
continue, this is the best that you can hope for.
The Abraham Accords
And then came the Abraham Accords with the Gulf states and later with Morocco: the
UAE, Bahrain and Morocco. And those countries went all in. Immediate warm
diplomatic relations, tourism, economic relations. My tweeter feed is full with every day
news about a new agreement signed between Gulf countries and Morocco and Israel,
in the fields of education, and space, and agriculture. They went all in. Within days of
signing the Abraham Accords they changed their books, which tells you that you
change your books after you sign the peace agreement, not before. And really
everything is in one word: Abraham.
You could not think of a better word to flip the narrative. If the dominant narrative in
the Arab world remains still that Israel is a foreign, colonial implant in the region, to
which it has no connection and, therefore, is a temporary presence that will be ousted
with enough resistance, patience and violence, then there is no better single word than
to flip it by saying “Abraham”.
55
When you say “Abraham” you are acknowledging the Jews as kin, you are
acknowledging the Jews as people with a history in the region, not as foreigners, but
as people who belong, who have a deep, seeded, historical and cultural roots in the
region. That their very identity as a people is wrapped up with the Land of Israel. And
you can convey all of this by saying “Abraham”.
I am under no illusion that this has become the dominant narrative in the Arab world.
I will say this: when this will become the dominant narrative in the Arab world – does
not have to be exclusive – but when it becomes the dominant narrative – this will be
the day that we will have peace. Everywhere. Because that is what the fundamental
conflict is about. The fundamental conflict is not about – and has never been – about
occupation or settlements, and not even about Jerusalem. It has always been about
the Arab, and even broadly the Islamic world view, that a Jewish State in any borders
in the region is an abomination, a gross injustice and something that, therefore, needs
to be made to disappear, by any means: wars, terrorism, international condemnation,
violence, “return”. Whatever to get rid of this abomination which is the Jewish State.
This is what the conflict is about. And for the first time ever in the history of the conflict
we finally have a confident Arab and Muslim narrative that says the opposite.
After the Abraham Accords were signed, I became part of the Abraham Accords Group
and I ended up with part of this group in almost a mirror image of what you hear among
some young Jews in the West. They said: “We feel we have been lied to about Israel
and Zionism and we want to understand”. I ended up giving a lecture and talk about
Zionism, to young Emiratis, Bahrainis, Moroccans. Following that, I published an op-
ed with two young Emiratis, a man and a woman, that opens with the following line:
“We are a proud Muslim, a proud Arab, and we see no contradiction between that and
also being Zionist.” They actually said: “We are Zionists”, they did not try to avoid that
word. They said: “We see no contradiction between the proud Muslim and Arab identity
and between support for the right of the Jewish people to a sovereign State in at least
part of their ancient homeland.” So, for the first time we have a pro-Zionist, pro-Israel,
56
Arab position that recognizes Israel as a country that reflects an indigenous people, a
people that have a deep historical and cultural connection to the land. And one of the
most amazing developments, one that helps me make a very powerful point, is that as
soon as the Gulf countries and Morocco became favorable towards Israel, they also
became favorable towards Jews. And, you know, as a result of the ethnic cleansing of
Jews from the Arab world, there are not many Jews in the Arab countries, but the UAE,
Bahrain and Morocco are now going out of their way to show how much they want to
celebrate Jewish life in their country. And they are not celebrating dead Jews. They
are celebrating living Jews. My tweeter feed is full of Bahrainis and Emiratis, and
Moroccans, holding celebrations of Jewish holidays with local Jews or Jewish ex-pats,
and it helps me make the following point:
Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism
In the West today, quite a few are trying to claim that anti-Zionism is not against the
Jews. You know, as long as the Jews are against Zionism, we love Jews and that anti-
Zionism is just an ideology, about Israel. Now, I can split those hairs: anti-Zionism does
not always necessarily have to be anti-Jewish. This is in theory. Except that in practice
it always is. Every country, society, party, campus that have turned virulently anti-
Zionist, in short order were hostile to Jewish life. So, when the Arab world made anti-
Zionism a central tenet, within a short order it had no Jews. And those are Jews that
pre-existed the Arab and Islamic conquest of the 7th century. The Soviet Union, as
soon as it became anti-Zionist and made anti-Zionism a central tenet, it became a
place that was hostile to Jews, and where Jews left as soon as they could. I could go
on: Corbyn’s Labor Party [in the UK], certainly American [universities] campuses.
When you make anti-Zionism a central tenet of who you are as a country, as a society,
whatever the theory is – you are not a welcoming place for Jews.
And now, we are seeing the opposite: we are seeing that when Arab countries are
embracing Israel, are embracing Zionism, understanding the historical connections
between the Jewish people, the people of Israel and the Land of Israel, they also
become welcoming and warm places for Jewish life. This is a very instructive example
of the very deep connection between being warm towards Israel and Zionism and
welcoming and being warm towards a prosperous Jewish life.
Conclusion
As I said, we are still stuck in the middle of this conflict. Fundamentally, it is a very
simple conflict between Jewish Zionism and Arab anti-Zionism. Obviously, I would like
this conflict to end not by Jews forgoing their State, but the Arabs forgoing their
mobilization against the Jewish State. When that happens, I believe it will be the
simplest negotiation. We will have a Jewish State living next to an Arab Palestinian
State, but not before much of the Arab world – certainly the Palestinians – forgo the
notion that having a Jewish State in any borders is some kind of abomination to which
they must dedicate their lives to erase. And I will say this: in order to bring about that
eventuality, sooner rather than later, we must make it clear to Palestinians and to the
57
Arab world at large that if their goal is “from the River to the Sea”, if their goal is no
Jewish State in any borders whatsoever, they will not have our sympathy and support.
Not that of the West. But, if they finally adopt a path of having an Arab Palestinian
State next to Israel, rather than instead of Israel, they will find everyone rushing to
support them in that constructive cause.
So, thank you, and I will be very happy to discuss any ideas and questions.
Further reading:
The following book is recommended:
Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, “The war of return: How western indulgence of the
Palestinian dream has obstructed the path to peace” (2020 edition)
58
A few added notes by the editor:
Palestinian refugees
”Return of refugees” is not an absolute right. There were many wars in the 20th century
in Europe and Asia, with millions and millions of refugees. The policy adopted by the
world in general and the United Nations in particular was the resettlement of refugees
in their new countries: for many reasons this policy was the humane thing to do. The
alternative was to encourage false illusions, instead of rebuilding their lives, and
recurrent wars “to settle accounts”. This policy made even more sense in the
Palestinian case, since many of the original Palestinian refugees as a result of the
1948 war were not refugees but internally displaced persons: most of the refugees at
the end of the 1948 war found themselves in refugee camps in the West Bank and
Gaza, the land allocated to the Palestinian State. No one complained about the Arab
states’ occupation of the West Bank (by Jordan) and Gaza (by Egypt) from 1948 to
1967.
The Palestinian refugees became an exceptional case compared to the policies
adopted regarding refugees in other wars in the world, due to the pressure exerted by
the Arab states that did not want to accept the existence of an independent Jewish
state in their midst. Their demand to the return of the original 700,000 Palestinian
refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants – amounting today to several
million Palestinians – to within the Israeli pre-1967 armistice borders was de-facto a
continuation of the war with Israel by other means (the “war of return”) with the same
desired effect: the eradication of the Jewish State by eliminating the Jewish majority,
returning the Jews to their previous status as a “tolerated” minority in Arab lands
(“dhimmis) at best or their physical liquidation or expulsion at worst. This is the end
result, irrespective of whether one drapes it in the language of the centuries-old
reactionary religious Islam doctrine about the status of the Jews in Arab-conquered
lands (“dhimmis”) or in the new terminology of the “progressive” international Left,
which defines Israel as “a settler colonial project”.
Jewish refugees
At the beginning of the twentieth century almost one million Jews lived in the Arab
countries, from North Africa to the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of Jews had
been living there for more than two thousand years, well before the 7th century Arab
conquest of these lands. Many others dated from the time of the expulsion of the Jews
from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century or before.
The dislocation of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries was total: in less than one
generation-time 870,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab countries, their
properties confiscated and converted into refugees. The majority of these Jewish
refugees – 608,799 refugees total – were absorbed by Israel: 129,539 from Iraq,
35,802 from Libya, 266,304 from Morocco, 8,523 from Syria, 52,518 from Tunisia,
50,619 from Yemen, 37,395 from Egypt, 24,067 from Algeria, 4,032 from Lebanon
Is the humiliation, loss, death, dispossession and ethnic cleansing suffered by
870,000 Jews in the Arab countries less valid?
59
Furthermore: The Palestinian refugees were a result of being in a war zone and in the
middle of armed hostilities. Violence against the Jews, their killing and displacement
was also part and parcel of this war. For example, during the initial stages of the war,
in April 1948, a convoy of nurses, doctors and medical students set out for the Hebrew
University, located on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. They were assaulted by Arab militia:
75 Jews perished in the attack. In May 1948, four kibbutzim in Gush Etzion, next to
Jerusalem, were completely destroyed and about 130 Jews – who had surrendered –
were summarily executed, women and men.
On the other hand, the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries were civilians far away
from an armed conflict, who were violently dispossessed and ethnically cleansed from
vast lands extending from North Africa to the Middle East, just for being a defenseless
and vulnerable minority in the midst of a Muslim majority led and inspired by a
reactionary medieval Islamic doctrine about “dhimmi” people.
In recent years, it is gaining recognition among the international community that a
lasting peace between Israel and the Arab countries will have to include a just
resolution of the claims of the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries. [1]
Reference
[1] Martin Gilbert: “In Ishmael house: A history of Jews in Muslim lands” (2010, edition).
See chapter 21, “The search for recognition”, pages 325-334
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Appendix 3.1: The Clinton parameters
In June 1967 a war between the Arab countries and Israel was triggered by the sudden
blockade imposed by Egypt to Israel’s maritime navigation through the straits of Tiran,
in an intent to cut the economic ties between Israel and Asia. The war pitted Egypt,
Syria and Jordan against Israel, and its effects are felt till today. The main results of
this war were: Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, Syria lost the Golan
Heights, and Jordan lost the West Bank.
In November 1967 the United Nations Security Council adopted the resolution 242
that set the principles for the resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Arab
countries.
The implementation of the 242 got a good start with the Egypt-Israel peace treaty
signed in 1979. The next step was expected to be a peace treaty with Jordan.
However, in a surprise move, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
signed in 1993 the Oslo Accords, bypassing Jordan, who lost the West Bank to the
PLO. This approach (nowadays called “the 2-state solution”) enjoyed a short-lived
Golden Age in the late nineties: three Nobel Peace prizes were awarded. However, it
soon hit its first reality check when in 2000 the PLO rejected the peace proposal
presented by President Clinton, known as “the Clinton parameters”. Since then, this
approach took a steep downturn from which it never recovered.
In his autobiographic book, “My Life”, published in 2005, President Clinton described
the last weeks of the failed attempt to reach an accord between Israel and the PLO:
December 23 [2000, a few weeks before leaving office], was a fateful day for the
Middle East peace process. After the two sides [Israelis and Palestinians] had been
negotiating again for several days at Bolling Air Force Base [in Washington, DC], my
team and I became convinced that unless we narrowed the range of debate, in effect
forcing the big compromises up front, there would never be an agreement. Arafat [the
Chairman of the PLO] was afraid of being criticized by other Arab leaders; Barak
[Israel’s Prime Minister] was losing ground [in the polls] to [the opposition leader]
Sharon at home [a few weeks before the coming elections in Israel]. So I brought the
Palestinian and Israeli teams into the Cabinet Room and read them my “parameters”
for proceeding. These were developed after extensive private talks with the parties
separately since Camp David [meetings held in July 2000]. If they accepted the
parameters within four days, we would go forward. If not, we were through.
I read them slowly so that both sides could take careful notes. On territory, I
recommended 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank for the Palestinians with a land swap
from Israel of 1 to 3 percent, and an understanding that the land kept by Israel would
include 80 percent of the settlers in blocs. On security, I said Israeli forces should
withdraw over a three-year period while an international force would be gradually
introduced, with the understanding that a small Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley
could remain for another three years under the authority of the international forces.
The Israelis would also be able to maintain their early-warning station in the West Bank
with a Palestinian liaison presence. In the event of an “imminent and demonstrable
threat to Israel’s security,” there would be provision for emergency deployments in the
West Bank.
61
The new state of Palestine would be “nonmilitarized,” but would have a strong security
force; sovereignty over its airspace, with special arrangements to meet Israeli training
and operational needs; and an international force for border security and deterrence.
On Jerusalem, I recommended that the Arab neighborhoods be in Palestine and the
Jewish neighborhoods in Israel, and that the Palestinians should have sovereignty
over the Temple Mount/Haram and the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall and
the “holy space” of which it is a part, with no excavation around the wall or under the
Mount, at least without mutual consent.
On refugees, I said that the new state of Palestine should be the homeland for
refugees displaced in the 1948 war and afterward, without ruling out the possibility that
Israel would accept some to the refugees according to its own laws and sovereign
decisions, giving priority to the refugee populations in Lebanon. I recommended an
international effort to compensate refugees and assist them in finding houses in the
new state of Palestine, in the land-swap areas to be transferred to Palestine, in their
current host countries, in other willing nations, or in Israel. Both parties should agree
that this solution would satisfy United Nations Security Council Resolution 194.
Finally, the agreement had to clearly mark the end of the conflict and put an end to all
violence. I suggested a new UN Security Council resolution saying that this
agreement, along with the final release of Palestinian prisoners, would fulfill the
requirements of resolutions 242 and 338.
I said these parameters were nonnegotiable and were the best I could do, and I wanted
the parties to negotiate a final status agreement within them. After I left, Dennis Ross
and other members of our team stayed behind to clarify any misunderstanding, but
they refused to hear complaints. I knew the plan was tough for both parties, but it was
time – past time – to put up or shut up. The Palestinians would give up the absolute
right of return; they had always known they would have to, but they never wanted to
admit it. The Israelis would give up East Jerusalem and parts of the Old City, but their
religious and cultural sites would be preserved; it had been evident for some time that
for peace to come, they would have to do that. The Israelis would also give up a little
more of the West Bank and probably a larger land swap than Barak’s last best offer,
but they would keep enough to hold at least 80 percent of the settlers. And they would
get a formal end to the conflict. It was a hard deal, but if they wanted peace, I thought
it was fair to both sides
Arafat immediately began to equivocate, asking for “clarifications.” But the parameters
were clear; either he would negotiate within them or not. As always, he was playing
for more time. I called Mubarak [the Egyptian president] and read him the points. He
said they were historic and he could encourage Arafat to accept them.
On the twenty-seventh, Barak’s [Israeli] cabinet endorsed the parameters with
reservations, but all their reservations were within the parameters, and therefore
subject to negotiations anyway. It was historic: an Israeli government had said that to
get peace, there would be a Palestinian state in roughly 97% of the West Bank,
counting the swap, and all of Gaza, where Israel also had settlements. The ball was
in Arafat’s court.
62
I was calling other Arab leaders daily to urge them to pressure Arafat to say yes. They
were all impressed with Israel’s acceptance and told me they believed Arafat should
take the deal. I have no way of knowing what they told him, though the Saudi
ambassador, Prince Bandar, later told me he and Crown Prince Abdullah [of Saudi
Arabia] had the distinct impression Arafat was going to accept the parameters.
On the twenty-ninth, Dennis Ross met with Abu Ala [a leading member of the
Palestinian delegation], whom we all respected, to make sure Arafat understood the
consequences of rejection. I would be gone. Ross would be gone. Barak would lose
the upcoming election to Sharon. Bush wouldn’t want to jump in after I had invested
so much and failed.
I still didn’t believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake.
...
We passed up Renaissance Weekend again that year so that our family could spend
the last New Year’s at Camp David. I still hadn’t heard from Arafat. On New Year’s
Day, I invited him to the White House the next day. Before he came, he received Prince
Bandar and the Egyptian ambassador at his hotel. One of Arafat’s younger aides told
us that they had pushed him hard to say yes. When Arafat came to see me, he asked
a lot of questions about my proposal. He wanted Israel to have the Wailing Wall,
because of its religious significance, but asserted that the remaining fifty feet of the
Western Wall should go to the Palestinians. I told him he was wrong, that Israel should
have the entire wall to protect itself from someone using one entrance of the tunnel
that ran beneath the wall from damaging the remains of the temples beneath the
Haram. The Old City has four quarters: Jewish, Muslim Christian, and Armenian. It
was assumed that Palestine would get the Muslim and Christian quarters, with Israel
getting the other two. Arafat argued that he should have a few blocks of the Armenian
quarter because of the Christian churches there. I couldn’t believe he was talking to
me about this.
Arafat was also trying to wiggle out of giving up the right of return. He knew he had to
but was afraid of the criticism he would get. I reminded him that Israel had promised
to take some of the refugees from Lebanon whose families had lived in what was now
northern Israel for hundreds of years, but that no Israeli leader would ever let in so
many Palestinians that the Jewish character of the state could be threatened in a few
decades by the higher Palestinian birthrate. There were not going to be two majority-
Arab states in the Holy Land; Arafat had acknowledged that by signing the 1993 peace
agreement with its implicit two-state solution. Besides, the agreement had to be
approved by Israeli citizens in a referendum. The right of return was a deal breaker. I
wouldn’t think of asking the Israelis to vote for it. On the other hand, I thought the
Israelis would vote for a final settlement within the parameters I had laid out. If there
was an agreement, I even thought Barak might be able to come back and win the
election, though he was running well behind Sharon in the polls, in an electorate
frightened by the intifada and angered by Arafat’s refusal to make peace.
At times Arafat seemed confused, not wholly in command of the facts. I had felt for
some time that he might not be at the top of his game any longer, after all the years of
spending the night in different places to dodge assassins’ bullets, all the countless
63
hours on airplanes, all the endless hours of tension-filled talks. Perhaps he simply
couldn’t make the final jump from revolutionary to statesman. He had grown used to
flying from place to place, giving mother-of-pearl gifts made by Palestinian craftsmen
to world leaders and appearing on television with them. It would be different if the end
of violence took Palestine out of the headlines and instead he had to worry about
providing jobs, schools, and basic services. Most of the young people on Arafat’s team
wanted him to take the deal. I believe Abu Ala and Abu Mazen also would have agreed
but didn’t want to be at odds with Arafat.
When he left, I still had no idea what Arafat was going to do. His body language said
no, but the deal was so good I couldn’t believe anyone would be foolish enough to let
it go. Barak wanted me to come to the region, but I wanted Arafat to say yes to the
Israelis on the big issues embodied in my parameters first. In December the parties
had met at Bolling Air Force Base for talks that didn’t succeed because Arafat wouldn’t
accept the parameters that were hard for him.
Finally, Arafat agreed to see Shimon Peres on the thirteenth [of January 2001] after
Peres had first met with Saeb Erekat. Nothing came of it. As a backstop, the Israelis
tried to produce a letter with as much agreement on the parameters as possible, on
the assumption that Barak would lose the election and at least both sides would be
bound to a course that could lead to an agreement. Arafat wouldn’t even do that,
because he didn’t want to be seen conceding anything. The parties continued their
talks in Taba, Egypt [at the end of January 2001, after Bill Clinton left office]. They got
close, but did not succeed. Arafat never said no; he just couldn’t bring himself to say
yes. Pride goeth before the fall.
Right before I left office [on January 20, 2001], Arafat, in one of our last conversations,
thanked me for all my efforts and told me what a great man I was. “Mr. Chairman,” I
replied, “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.” I warned
Arafat that he was single-handedly electing Sharon and that he would reap the
whirlwind.
In February 2001, Ariel Sharon would be elected prime minister in a landslide. The
Israelis had decided that if Arafat wouldn’t take my offer he wouldn’t take anything,
and that if they had no partner for peace, it was better to be led by the most aggressive,
intransigent leader available. Sharon would take a hard line toward Arafat and would
be supported in doing so by Ehud Barak and the United States. Nearly a year after I
left office, Arafat said he was ready to negotiate on the basis of the parameters I had
presented. Apparently, Arafat had thought the time to decide, five minutes to midnight,
had finally come. His watch had been broken a long time.
Arafat’s rejection of my proposal after Barak accepted it was an error of historic
proportions. However, many Palestinians and Israelis are still committed to peace.
Someday peace will come, and when it does, the final agreement will look a lot like
the proposals that came out of Camp David and the six long months that followed.
64
The Old City of Jerusalem
Map of the Old City of Jerusalem showing its four quarters (Muslim, Christian,
Armenian and Jewish), as well as the location of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish
shrines. The Old City occupies and area of about ¾ by ½ square miles, that is, 0.375
square miles (Photo from Wikipedia)
According to President Clinton’s proposal, the Muslim and Christian quarters would be
part of the Palestinian state, and the Armenian and Jewish quarters part of Israel. The
Palestinians would have sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram (Dome of the
Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque), and the Israelis would have sovereignty over the Western
Wall (Wailing Wall). Any work or excavation around the wall or under the Mount would
need the mutual consent of both parts.
The Israelis accepted President Clinton’s proposal. The Palestinians did not.
65
Appendix 3.2
A different history of displacement and loss
By Matti Friedman
[Published in the newspaper Times of Israel, May 15, 2012]
“There is more than one way to look at the commemoration of 1948’s Palestinian
defeat and dispersion.
On May 15, many in the Arab world and elsewhere mark the Nakba, or the
“Catastrophe”, mourning the displacement of the Palestinian Arabs during the 1948
war with Israel. This year, as always, the commemoration will obscure the collapse at
the same time of a different Arab society that few remember.
I have spent a great deal of time in the past four years interviewing people born and
raised in Aleppo, Syria. Some of these people, most of whom are now in the eighties,
are descended from families with roots in Aleppo going back more than two millennia,
to Roman times. None of them lives there now.
On November 30, 1947, a day after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into
two states, one for Arabs and one for Jews, Aleppo erupted. Mobs stalked Jewish
neighborhoods, looting houses and burning synagogues; one man I interviewed
remembered fleeing his home, a barefoot nine-year-old, moments before it was set on
fire. Abetted by the government, the rioters burned 50 Jewish shops, five schools, 18
synagogues and an unknown number of homes. The next day the Jewish community’s
wealthiest families fled, and in the following months the rest began sneaking out in
small groups, most of them headed to the new state of Israel. They forfeited their
property, and faced imprisonment or torture if they were caught. Some disappeared
en route. But the risk seemed worthwhile: in Damascus, the capital, rioters killed 13
Jews, including eight children, in August 1948, and there were similar events in other
Arab cities.
At the time of the UN vote, there were about 10,000 Jews in Aleppo. By the mid-1950s
there were 2,000 living in fear of the security forces and the mob. By the early 1990s
no more than a handful remained, and today there are none. Similar scripts played out
across the Islamic world. Some 850,000 Jews were forced from their homes.
If we are to fully understand the Israel-Arab conflict, the memory of these people and
their exodus must be acknowledged – not as a political weapon, a negotiating tactic
or as part of a competition about who suffered more, but simply as history without
which it is impossible to understand Israel and the way the Arab world sees it.
Everyone knows the Palestinian refugees are part of the equation of Mideast peace,
and anyone who is interested can visit a Palestinian refugee camp and hear true and
wrenching stories of expulsion and loss. Among the Jews expelled by Arabs, on the
other hand, one can find few who think of themselves as refugees or define themselves
by their dispossession. Most are citizens of Israel.
66
Of the 20 families in my fairly average Jerusalem apartment building, half are in Israel
because of the Arab expulsion of Jews, and this is representative of Israel as a whole.
According to the Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola of Hebrew University,
though intermarriage over two or three generations has muddled the statistics, roughly
half of the 6 million Jews in Israel today came from the Muslim world or are descended
from people who did. Many Arabs, and many Israelis, consider Israel a Western
enclave in the Middle East. But these numbers do not support that view.
These Jews have shaped Israel and are a key force in the country’s political life. They
also make Israel very different from the American Jewish community, which is
overwhelmingly rooted in Europe. They are a pillar of Israel’s right wing, particularly of
the Likud party. They maintain a wary view of Israel’s neighbors – a view that has been
strengthened by the actions of the Palestinians but that is rooted in their own historical
experience and in what might be considered an instinctive understanding of the
region’s unkind realities.
The legacy of their exodus in the countries they left behind is harder to detect, but it,
too, is significant.
In many Arab towns and cities there is an area where Jews used to live. In some cities,
like Cairo [Egypt], this area is still called ‘harat al-yahud’, the Jewish Quarter.
Reporting there several years ago I found people who could show me the location of
a certain abandoned synagogue, which they knew by name. A man who once showed
me around Fez, Morocco, knew exactly where the old Jewish neighborhood, the
‘mellah’, had been, though there was not a single Jew there and had not been for
many years. There are remnants like this in Aleppo [Syria], Tripoli [Lybia], Baghdad
[Iraq] and elsewhere. The people who live in or around the Jews’ old homes still know
who used to own them and how they left; this extinct Jewish world might have been
forgotten elsewhere, but millions in the Arab world see evidence of it every day.
As I have reported this nearly invisible story, it has occurred to me that we often hate
most the things or people that remind us of something we dislike about ourselves, and
that here lies one of the hidden dynamics of the Israel-Arab conflict. It is one papered
over by the simple narrative of Nakba Day, which posits that a foreign implant
displaced a native community in 1948 and that the Palestinian Arabs are paying the
price for the European Holocaust. This narrative, chiefly designed to appeal to
Western guilt, also conveniently erases the uncomfortable truth that half of Israel’s
Jews are there not because of the Nazis, but because of the Arabs themselves.
Israel is not as foreign to the Middle East as many of its neighbors like to pretend, and
more than one native community was displaced in 1948. If many in the Arab world
insist, as they do each Nakba Day, that Israel is a Western invader that must be
repelled, it is a claim that belongs to the realm not only of politics but of psychology –
one that helps repress their own knowledge that the country they try to portray as alien
is also the vengeful ghost of the neighbors they wronged.”
***
Matti Friedman is a journalist and author. Born in Toronto and based in Jerusalem,
his work appears regularly in the New York Times, The Atlantic and Tablet.
67
Lesson 4
Context: Saturday and Sunday people
68
First the Saturday people
Suppose a man leaps out of a burning building – and lands on a bystander in the street
below. The burning building is supposed to be Europe, the jumper is the Jew, and the
unfortunate bystander the Palestinian Arab. This metaphor for the Arab-Israeli conflict
was apparently coined by writer Isaac Deutscher and has been approvingly cited by
the late polemicist and author Christopher Hitchens.
Whilst it is a striking image, this analogy is, of course, inherently problematic. It
propagates the assumption that Jews came from Europe to displace innocent natives.
Now try a different analogy. Imagine that the building is actually situated in the Middle
East, a short distance from a homestead by the sea originally settled by the Jews.
Some 3,000 years ago and until recent times, the Jew inhabited the main house
alongside other indigenous residents in the Middle East. The homestead was seized
by the Romans in 70 CE and most of its residents dispersed. An occupier arrived in
the seventh century, and took over the whole region. In the twentieth century arsonists
set fire to the main building, forcing the Jew to jump out of the window. “First the
Saturday people, then the Sunday people” [1]: Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldean
Christians, Maronites, Copts, also jumped for their lives. And not just the Sunday
people: Mandaeans, Yazidis and ‘heretical’ and sectarian Muslims have been jumping
out of the windows too. The difference is that the Jew found refuge in the embattled
homestead, his original abode. Populating it continuously through 2,000 years, Jews
never surrendered its title.
More than 99 per cent of Jewish residents have fled from the Arab world in the last
sixty years. Some 650,000 went to Israel and 200,000 to the West. Their exodus took
two forms: those better equipped with foreign passports and connections generally
engineered their private exits, mainly to Europe, Australia, or the Americas. Together
with a minority of ideological Zionists, the rest went to Israel. Although the diaspora
remains overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, over 50 per cent of Israel’s Jews today are
Mizrahi or Sephardi refugees from Arab and Muslim countries or their descendants.
Mass refugee movements have been a feature of conflicts in the first half of the
twentieth century: upwards of fifty-two million people have been displaced. The Arab-
Israeli conflict is no exception. However, the root causes of the mass displacement of
the Jews predate the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it may be argued that the inability of
Arabs and Muslims to accept Israel belongs in deep-seated cultural, religious and
ideological prejudice.
The twentieth century produced 135 million refugees as a consequence of the self-
determination of peoples through violence. Population exchanges were common in
the twentieth century – roughly equal numbers of Jews from the Middle East and North
Africa, and Palestinian Arabs swapped places. There were also exchanges of
refugees between Greece and Turkey, India and Pakistan, and Greek and Turkish
Cyprus, not forgetting the mass migration of ethnic Germans and others in the wake
of the Second World War.
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However, while all these refugee populations have been absorbed in their new
countries, only the Palestinian Arabs are still, according to the UN, considered
refugees and allowed to pass on their refugee status to succeeding generations ad
infinitum. Their leaders have constantly kindled the vain hope of a ‘Right of Return’ to
Palestine in their hearts, even though most were not born there and some had been
resident for no more than two years [2]. Arguably, these refugees have been
deliberately deprived of civil rights in their adopted countries in order to remain a
standing reproach to Israel and a weapon in the decades-long Arab and Muslim
struggle against the Jewish state.
***
The above is an excerpt from the Preface of the book “Uprooted: How 3,000 years
of Jewish civilization in the Arab world vanished overnight”, by Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius is the daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees who fled Iraq in 1950.
Notes
[1] See next section: “Religious intolerance or national oppression?”
[2] Lyn Julius refers here to the 2-year residence clause to qualify as Palestinian
refugee: it was explicitly added so that a certain number of people displaced by the
Arab-Israeli 1948 war could qualify as being Palestinian refugees, even if they had not
resided in Palestine for long. The UNHCR protocols refer to “refugees” as “persons
that left their habitual residence under duress”, usually war. The concept of having
been an “habitual resident” in his/her country of origin is used repeatedly as a
qualification for refugee status, with “habitual residence” being defined as “the place
where a person resided on an ongoing and stable basis.” The added “2-year
residence” re-defined, or clarified, the meaning of the condition “habitual residence”
for Palestinian refugees.
Putting this in historical context: the Jews were not the only people who begun
repopulating Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century. There was also an influx
of other people, seasonal laborers and skilled workers, pouring from neighboring Arab
countries, as a result of the increased economic activity in Palestine brought by the
Jews. The “2-year” clause was meant to include these other newcomers, who – with
the break of hostilities between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries in 1948 –
many of them were relabeled as “Palestinian refugees”.
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Religious intolerance or national oppression?
“An occupier arrived in the seventh century, and took over the whole region. In
the twentieth century arsonists set fire to the main building, forcing the Jew [in
the Arab countries] to jump out of the window. “First the Saturday people, then
the Sunday people”: Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldean Christians, Maronites,
Copts, also jumped for their lives. And not just the Sunday people: Mandaeans,
Yazidis and ‘heretical’ and sectarian Muslims have been jumping out of the
windows too. The difference is that the Jew found refuge in the embattled
homestead, his original abode. Populating it continuously through 2,000 years,
Jews never surrendered its title.”
Lyn Julius, ““Uprooted: How 3,000 years of Jewish civilization in the Arab world
vanished overnight”
Joel Veldkamp, a director of the “Christian Solidarity International” organization, had
an interesting observation [1]: at first sight one could interpret that we are dealing here
with a problem of religious intolerance in the Islamic world. This is not the case.
According to Veldkamp, referring to the Armenian genocide in 1915:
“Today, we have become used to thinking of religious persecution as, by definition, an
attack on religious freedom. Yet the twentieth century’s worst instance of anti-Christian
persecution – the Armenian genocide – did not fit the “religious freedom” category so
neatly. The architects of the genocide were not, after all, trying to keep Armenians
from worshipping Jesus, building churches, or reading the Bible … They were trying
to exterminate a Christian people (whether practicing or not) that they had long held
in subservience but had come to see as a threat to their power.”
The second example provided by Lyn Julius, the Assyrians, is perfectly clear,
especially for Jews. The Jews know who the Assyrians are: they are not a religious
community. In the peak of their hegemony, the Assyrians forcefully exiled the Jews to
Mesopotamia in 721 BC, after they conquered the kingdom of Israel, marking the
historical beginning of the Jewish diaspora. The Assyrians are an ancient people, not
a religious community. Assyrians speak a native language commonly known as
Assyrian, neo-Aramaic, or Syriac. It is a pre-Arabic language that derives directly from
Aramaic, the ancient lingua franca of the Middle East. Assyrians are overwhelmingly
Christian: They were the first people that adopted Christianity (in the first century CE.),
well before the Christian religion was adopted in Europe. As in the case of the Jews
and the Armenians, the Assyrians became another non-Muslim minority in the lands
conquered by the Muslim expansion after the 7th century. The Assyrians suffered their
own genocide during World War I in the hands of the Muslim Ottoman Empire: around
275,000 Assyrians were killed in 1915. Another massacre of the Assyrian people
occurred later in Iraq, in August 1933, when over 100 Assyrian villages were destroyed
and looted, and an estimated several thousand Assyrians were killed. The accounts
of this latter massacre were horrific. One was given by the Patriarch of the Assyrian
Church, Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII (published close to the events, on February 1934)
[2]:
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“The inoffensive population was indiscriminately massacred, men, women and
children alike, with rifle, revolver, and machine gun fire … Priests were tortured and
their bodies mutilated. Those who showed their Iraqi nationality papers were the first
to be shot. Girls were raped and women violated and made to march naked before the
Arab army commander. Holy books were used as fuel for burning girls. Children were
run over by military cars. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were flung in the
air and pierced on to the points of bayonets. Those who survived in the other villages
were now exposed day and night to constant raids and acts of violence. Forced
conversion to Islam of men and women was the next process. Refusal was met with
death.”
The Assyrian people are today dispersed over the whole world. Their total number is
around 3-5 million. Their largest communities are in Iraq, Syria, the United States,
Sweden and Germany.
The massacre of the Assyrian minority in Iraq, in August 1933, occurred only a few
months after Iraq had obtained independence. The implications for the then Jewish
minority in Palestine had the Jewish leaders worried [2]. Eight years later, in 1941,
over 180 Jews were murdered in a pogrom in Baghdad. Then, in 1948, Iraq
participated in the invasion of the Arab armies in their intent to eliminate the nascent
Jewish State.
The Muslim colonizers
From Mecca in the Arabian Peninsula, and from the 7th century on, Muslims began an
expansion and conquest of vast territories, extending from the Middle East in the north,
to North Africa in the west. Many minorities became suddenly entrapped and
embedded in the new Muslim-dominated world. Some of these minorities disappeared
over time, following a process of forced Islamization. Others put a high value on their
history, and kept on for centuries their cultural traditions, language, and religion, in
spite of the pressure and oppression of their Muslim colonizers.
In the next section, we will go back to the Jews, who suffered the successive
colonization of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs.
References
[1] Joel Veldkamp, “The persecution of Armenian Christians is not just a religious
freedom issue”, October 3, 2023
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/10/the-persecution-of-armenian-
christians-is-not-just-a-religious-freedom-issue
[2] Paul A. Isaac, “The Urgent Reawakening of the Assyrian Question in an Emerging
Iraqi Federalism: The Self-Determination of the Assyrian People”, Northern. Illinois
University Law Review 209 (2008)
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/niulr/vol29/iss1/4/
72
Palestine and the Jewish Diaspora
The Jews occupied a unique geographic position in the Middle East: they lived in a
strategic place, the transit point between three continents, a coveted place for all the
large imperial powers of the time. They had a unique philosophy: the Jews worshiped
one and only one God, declared this God to be invisible and, on top of it, proclaimed
that there were no other gods. This only brought on them the ire of all the imperial
powers of the time, like the Greeks and the Romans, who worshiped a variety of
multiple idols. And they had a unique history: “Remember that we were slaves in
Egypt”, parents told to their children during the Passover meal, from time immemorial.
This is central to the Jewish ethos. What other people would include in their primordial
mythos that they descended from slaves? This did not sit well with the great powers
of that era, for which slavery was a very profitable endeavor, vital for their economy.
All this – unique geographic position, unique philosophy, and unique history – put the
Jews at odds with their surroundings. The result was that they lost their territorial
center through frequent wars and became dispersed. Most historians set the origin of
this dispersion (the Jewish Diaspora) in the years 66-73 CE, during the Jewish revolt
against the Roman Empire, that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem. However,
the true catastrophic event for the Jewish people was their last revolt against the
Roman Empire, in years 132-136 CE, known as the Bar Kokhba Revolt, for the name
of their leader. In this last rebellion, 985 villages in Judea were destroyed and around
580,000 Jews perished. [1]
Figure 4.1: Judea under Bar Kochba rule (132-136 CE)
After the Jewish rebellion in Judea was crushed, the Romans barred the remaining
Jews from living in Jerusalem, and merged the Roman provinces of Syria and Judea,
under one unified province, renamed “Syria Palaestina”. The name “Palaestina” refers
to an ancient people, the biblical “Philistines”, who used to dwell in times past at the
coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and were often at odds with the Jews. Having just
eliminated the Jews of Judea physically, it seems that the Romans decided to
eliminate also the name Judea from the maps. However, since then, the name
“Palestine” stuck in all the Western literature as the land (or former land) of the Jews.
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After the destruction of Judea in the 2nd century CE, the center of Jewish life in
Palestine moved from the mountainous region of Judea to the Galilee, what is now
northern Israel. In the course of several centuries the Jews in Galilee created two
monumental works that shaped for centuries the life of the Jews in the Diaspora: the
Jerusalem Talmud and the Aleppo Codex.
The “Jerusalem Talmud” was originally written by rabbinic sages in Tiberias, a
town by the Sea of Galilee, in the 4th century (a century later, a second version of
the Talmud, known as the “Babylonian Talmud”, was written by the Jewish center in
Babylon, today Iraq). The importance of the Talmud cannot be understated: with the
Jewish State gone and Jews living under foreign occupation in Palestine, or in foreign
lands in the diaspora, the rabbinic sages pondered the question of how to preserve
Jewish life in such conditions. The answer was the Talmud: an encyclopedic
compilation of myriads of examples and teachings covering all the subjects of Jewish
life, from Jewish customs, to religious and civil affairs. The Talmud became for
centuries the main source of Jewish survival in the Diaspora: Jews in the Diaspora
followed the Talmud for guidance in everything related to earthly and spiritual affairs.
Figure 4.2 shows a page of the “Jerusalem Talmud” found in the geniza of the Ben
Ezrah synagogue in Fustat, Egypt. (Remember the name “Fustat”: we will find it again
when talking about the “Aleppo Codex”).
Figure 4.2: A page of the “Jerusalem Talmud”, found in the “geniza” (storage room) of
Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Egypt.
The Aleppo Codex – a special text of the Bible– was written in Tiberias around 930
CE. It became the most authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible, followed by the Jews
in the Diaspora.
Written Hebrew only uses the consonants: vowels are not printed. If you check the
archeological remains of ancient Hebrew texts written two thousand years ago in the
Land of Israel, you will not find vowels in these texts. No one needed them, because
Jews lived then in Israel, Hebrew was quite natural to them, and it was clear to all how
to read and pronounce the words in the sacred texts, even if no vowels were indicated
in them. If you check the Sacred Scrolls of the Bible today in any synagogue over the
world, there are no vowels either written in the text. So how come, Jews so far apart
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in time and space, today in New York, in Buenos Aires, in London, in Moscow and in
Jerusalem, preserved for 2,000 years the phonetics of the Hebrew language and
manage to read and pronounce the words in the Bible with such uniformity during the
long centuries of dispersion in the Diaspora?
The answer can be found in Tiberias, the city at the shores of the Sea of Galilea. The
Jewish sages in Tiberias came to the help of their brethren in the Diaspora: they
meticulously added the vowels to all the words in a copy of the Bible, and not only
vowels but also diacritical marks so people would know how to pronounce each word
with the correct stressed syllable, and thus, the Aleppo Codex was born.
Figures 4.3 and 4.4 show the difference between a standard Bible text you can find
today in a synagogue and the biblical text as it appears in the “Aleppo Codex”:
Figure 4.3: text in a standard scroll of the Bible. For example, the last word in the text
(fourth row, to the right) is the word “Israel” in Hebrew. Notice the absence of vowels,
or any marks above and below the word “Israel” or any other word in the text.
Figure 4.4: To the right is shown a paragraph of the Aleppo Codex. To the left, the
word “Israel” that appears in the paragraph is reproduced and magnified. The vowels
in the word “Israel” were added below the letters. In addition to the vowels, the Aleppo
Codex includes diacritical marks for the correct pronunciation of the words.
The Aleppo Codex circulated between the Jewish communities in the Middle East (see
Figure 4.5 and accompanying text, and reference [2].) The movement from Tiberias to
Jerusalem in year 1030, may be related to a major earthquake along the Jordan Valley,
in 1033, which might have damaged Tiberias. The movement from Jerusalem to Egypt
was related to historic events in the region: The book had been caught by the Christian
Crusaders, during their military expeditions in 1095-1291, and was redeemed by the
Jewish community in Egypt by paying a ransom. Fustat, the city in Egypt where the
Aleppo Codex was moved to after it was retrieved from the Crusaders, had an
important Jewish community: The Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides
(1138-1204) lived in Fustat.
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Figure 4.5: The travel history of the Aleppo Codex (early dates are approximate)
The book was later moved from Fustat to Aleppo, in Syria, in year 1375. The
movement of the “Aleppo Codex” from Fustat to Aleppo, may be related to the
deterioration of the conditions of Jews (and Christians Copts) in Egypt during the rule
of the Mamelukes. It is known that severe persecution and attacks against non-
Muslims happened in 1354, close to the date when the “Aleppo Codex” was moved
out of Egypt.
The Jewish community in Aleppo had the book for almost 600 years (hence, its name
“Aleppo Codex”), until the pogrom in 1947, when the synagogue where it was kept
was burnt. During the exodus of the Jews from Syria, following the pogroms in Aleppo
(1947) and Damascus (1949), the book disappeared and, somehow, found its way to
the recently born state of Israel, and it is now kept in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Figure 4.6: The “Aleppo Codex”, presently kept in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem
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References
[1] These numerical figures were provided by the Roman historian Cassius Dio (born
150, died 235 CE), in his History of Rome, 69.14.1-2, cited in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt
[2] Travelogue of the Aleppo Codex
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/hebrew-bible/travelogue-of-
the-aleppo-codex/
Lexicon:
“Geniza”: storage area in a Jewish synagogue designated for the storage of worn-out
Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics, prior to proper cemetery
burial.
The “Cairo Geniza” is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments that
were kept in the geniza of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Egypt. These
manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Spanish
Jewish history between the 6th and 19th centuries CE, and comprise the largest and
most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.
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Appendix 4.1: Herodotus on Palestine
Herodotus (484-425 BC), a Greek historian and geographer, mentions the name
“Palestine” several times in his book “History”, usually in conjunction with Syria:
“Thence they went on to invade Egypt, and when they were in Syria which is called
Palestine, Psammetichos king of Egypt met them; and by gifts and entreaties he
turned them from their purpose: and as they retreated, when they came to the city of
Ascalon in Syria, …
(Note: “Ascalon”, also known as “Ashkelon”, a city in southern Israel, at the coast of
the Mediterranean Sea. Ashkelon is known in the Bible as the place where Delilah, a
lady from Philistine, cut Samson’s hair, draining thus the source of his strength)
However, in another place Herodotus is more specific, differentiating Palestine from
Syria, and identifying Palestine along the coast of the Mediterranean, and in the path
between Syria and Egypt:
“These Phoenicians dwelt in ancient time, as they themselves report, upon the
Erythraian Sea, and thence they passed over and dwell in the country along the sea
coast of Syria; and this part of Syria and all as far as Egypt is called Palestine.”
(Note: The “Erythraian Sea” is known today as the “Red Sea”)
This places “Palestine” at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in the biblical
place where the “Philistines” lived (and the Philistines, as Phoenicians left behind
in the southern strip by the Mediterranean Sea, in their wandering from the Red Sea
to Lebanon, where they finally settled):
Reference
Herodotus, “History”, translated from Greek by G. C. Macaulay (New York, 1890)
https://archive.org/details/HerodotusHistory
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Lesson 5
79
A Brief History of the Jews: Sephardi, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews
How to compress 3,500 years of “History of the Jewish People” in a few pages, for
students in a compulsory “Ethnic Studies” course in California’s K12 schools?
First things first: do not let an ignorant, posing as an “educator”, confuse you: Jews
are not divided between the “oppressed” American Jews of Sephardi or Middle
Eastern origin (whose status in California schools is being upgraded lately to “Jews of
color”) and the “white” “oppressing” American Jews of Ashkenazi or European origin.
Who are the Sephardi Jews?
Historically, the Sephardi Jews were for centuries the “aristocracy” of the Jewish
people in the Diaspora, due both to their higher cultural as well as economic status.
The first Jews that settled in America were Sephardi Jews, back in year 1654. They
settled in New Amsterdam, what is today part of Manhattan, New York.
I happen to read fluently Ladino, the daily language of the Sephardi Jews: the classic
Spanish Literature course I took in High-School in Buenos Aires, included reading
original works by Spanish writers and poets from the 14th and 15th centuries. Theirs
was the daily language spoken by the Jews in Spain, before they were expulsed in
1492, creating the Sephardi Diaspora (“Sepharad” is the Hebrew name for “Spain”). A
few years later, in 1496, Jews were expelled from the adjacent Portugal. Jews whose
origin can be traced back to Spain and Portugal are called collectively the Sephardi
Jews. The Ladino Jewish songs and melodies are beautiful and share the sensuality
of the old Spanish culture.
Sephardi Jews had also their great scholars, like Maimonides and Spinoza.
Maimonides was a physician and philosopher. He was born in 1138 in Cordoba, Spain,
which at that time was under Muslim rule. He evaded forced conversion to the Islam
by fleeing to Egypt, where he served as personal physician of Saladin, the first sultan
of Egypt. His most notable philosophical writing was “The Guide for the Perplexed”,
written in Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet. Baruch Spinoza, born in Amsterdam,
Holland, in 1632, came from a family of Portuguese Jews that fled the Spanish
Inquisition. He made a living working on microscope and telescope lens designs,
collaborating with the famous physicist Christian Huygens. His most notable work is
his philosophical treatise “Ethics”.
Closer to our times, we have Noble Prize Physicists like Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and
Serge Haroche. Cohen-Tannoudji was born in Constantine, Algeria. His family had
moved to Algeria in the 16th century after having fled Spain during the Inquisition.
Cohen Tannoudji won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Serge Haroche was born in
Casablanca, Morocco. He came from a Jewish family with mixed Sephardi and
Ashkenazi origins. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2012, for his work
on the fundamentals of Quantum Mechanics. His experiments succeeded in bringing
alive the famous “Schrodinger cat”.