Lyn Julius
Last Jews of the Arab World

Lyn Julius - Last Jews of the Arab World

- Well, good evening everybody from a very chilly London. I hope you are keeping warm wherever you may be. And it’s a great pleasure to be back on Lockdown University. So my topic tonight, is the last Jews of the Arab world. It is 55 years since the Six Day War broke out, and Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, had dramatic repercussions on the few thousand Jews still living in Arab countries. And so I thought it would be fitting, to devote this lecture to these Jews, especially since they’re often forgotten when the Six Day War is discussed. Of the close to 1 million Jews, living in Arab countries, in 1948, the vast majority had already left in the 1950s and 60s. They left for Israel on the dramatic airlifts from Yemen and Iraq. They left from North Africa by air and by ship, and they left mainly on foot from Syria and Lebanon. But some 75,000 Jews still remained. And these tended to be the wealthier Jews. They had more to lose by leaving, even before the Six Day War, Jews in Syria and Iraq had their movements restricted, and had to carry special ID cards. Nevertheless, Jews in Arab countries kept their heads down and went about their business quietly, until the outbreak of the Six Day War turned their lives upside down. And they bore the brunt of the vindictive Arab reaction to Israel’s victory. Yet they were not Zionists, or else they would’ve left a long time before. In almost all Arab countries, there were demonstrations and anti-Jewish riots. Jews were effectively hostages.

The vast majority fled either legally or illegally in the aftermath of the war, bringing communities established since biblical times to the brink of extinction. Regardless of the outcome of the war, the Jews were doomed. If the Arabs defeated the Israelis, nothing would have stopped them from humiliating Jews in Arab countries. If the Israelis won the war, the Arab states would get their revenge, on their Jewish minorities, accusing them of being a fifth column. And this is what happened. And it tests the principle that the Arab states were not anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist. Three months after Israel’s victory, on the 22nd of September, 1967, the World Islamic Congress issued the following statement, sanctioning attacks on Jews. The Congress is convinced that Jews living in Arab countries do not appreciate the kindness and protection, that Muslims have granted them, over the centuries. The Congress proclaims that the Jews who live in the Arab states and who have contact with Zionist circles or the state of Israel, do not deserve the protection and kindness, that Islam grants to non-Muslim citizens, living freely in Islamic countries. Islamic governments must treat them as enemy competence. In the same way Islamic peoples must individually and collectively boycott them, and treat them as mortal enemies. Let’s now look at each community, in turn. As you may know, I am the co-founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.

And recently we held two zoom sessions, examining the post ‘67 backlash. I interviewed Jews living in these countries at the time, and I’m proud to be sharing, some of the material with you today. And I will now share my screen. We’ll start with Aden, which is at the southern tip of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, right next to Yemen. Now since 1839, Aden was a British colony, with a very different history from Aden, sorry, from Yemen, being a British colony. In 1948, it had 8,000 Jews, but all but 150 fled when riots broke out in December, 1947, just after the UN partition plan was passed for Palestine. And in December, 1947, a Jewish school was burnt down, and 87 Jews were killed. And what complicated matters further, for the Jewish community was the fact that the Adenese wanted independence from the British. Arala Lewis, who I interviewed for Harif, was eight years old and remembers that relations between Arabs and Jews, even before the '67 war were uneasy. And in this clip I’m about to show you Arala recounts, how the headmaster of the Salim Jewish School, Abraham Marks, helped gather all the Jews together into a Jewish owned hotel. And in London, Barnett Janna, Lord Janna, managed to secure British passports, for those who wanted to settle in Britain. The picture you see on the screen is actually the mass grave of the 87 Jews who were killed in 1947. And there’s the memorial with the list of names. So I will just start the clip.

CLIP BEGINS

• Father had a lucky escape. He was in his shop with my uncle, when two terrorists entered, carrying a gun and a knife, and he demanded money and threatened to kill them. My uncle who fought with the IDF, in the 1956 Sinai campaign wrestled with them and tried to disarm them, and then soon left and fled. Just before the Six Day War, the poisonous propaganda of against the Israel, and against the Jews encouraged the to incite the locals. Screamed on the radio, “kill the Jews. Don’t waste time looting. Everything will come to you anyway. Don’t make the same mistake you did in 1947, kill the Jews.” In contrast to 1947, there was no mass killing in this time. And that’s because of continuous British military surveillance. And then patrol. However, plots and property belonging to Jews were set on fire. Water pipes feeding Jewish homes were ruptured, were destroyed, leaving us without any water. And due to the fact that the British were preparing to pull out of Aden, unknown to us, in September that year, the Aden community in the UK, along with the Board of Deputies, were liaising with the British government. And Pilot General was also very much involved to arrange for a plane to fly us out of Aden. Mr. Abraham Marks the last headmaster of of Aden, of the Jewish school, was very active in that. And he had, proper arrangements for our evacuation. It became impossible for the British to extend their protection to the individual Jewish families, which were scattered all over the four streets. So they were collected, gathered by the military, one by one, family by family, and transported out of Crater into- Into a hotel belonging to a Jewish family.

There was also another nearby building, which with the Jews. The Jews left with nothing. The hand luggage, we’re leaving everything behind, the two buildings were guarded around the clock by armed soldiers. We stayed in the hotel for about a month, five weeks, in which, during which time, the flames and smoke from a prestigious Jewish owned store and a hotel above it was set on fire, and it made the owner was staying with us, break down in tears. Also, during that time, a brave rabbi returned to Crater and armed vehicle, and managed to save many from different which are now in Israel. We were actually in the hotel, when the Six Day War broke out. When Arabs continued to burn properties, but they cannot get to us because we were guarded by the British soldiers. Mr. Marks was sent from the UK, from London to Aden, to obviously our evacuation. So in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night, on the 18th of June, the Jewish community, which numbered about 150, were including and my family were transported in convoy, by the British to Nearfield where a plane was waiting for us, a British we left aided at midday. And for fear for being shot down, we played by the detour, which involved a stop over in Iran. As we disembarked the Iranian who were greeted by chance from the Iranians. Israelis good, Israelis good.

• We move on to Tunisia, where riots also broke out. And the great synagogue in Tunis was set on fire. And the Bokobsa Boukha, kosher wine factory, producing the famous fig brandy was destroyed. And I have here a rare piece of footage, showing the, hopefully showing the riot, if I can find it. So Silver Haun witnessed the burning of the great synagogue in Tunis. His mother ran to escape the mob. “To my disappointment, I saw some neighbours pointing out to the mob, Jewish stores and cars to be burnt,” he recalls, “when you are a target for oppression, even when not openly state sponsored, you don’t see any peaceful future for you and your kids. You don’t have much choice, than to try and leave the country. When my parents made this choice in October, 1967, we couldn’t take more than one suitcase and 50 dinars, necklaces or anything in gold was confiscated, at the point of departure. We closed our apartment door, leaving everything in it. President Bourguiba came on TV, to strongly condemn the riots. He promised to punish the perpetrators and make restitution, but it was too little, too late.” Most fled to France. Within a year, only about seven or 8,000 Jews remained in the country. The great synagogue remained shuttered until the government restored it in 1996. It’s open to visitors now, but is seldom used for religious services. We now move on to Libya where there were also riots. The Jewish population had suffered murderous pogroms in 1945. And again in 1948, almost 200 Jews were killed. After the Six Day War, the Jewish population, now only 7,000, was again subjected to pogroms. King Idris following international pressure, transferred part of the Jews to an old military fort, Camp Gorge and sought a way to expel all the Jews as soon as possible, issuing temporary travel documents. For the majority, who did not have an Italian or British passport. Other people say that he wanted to evacuate them for their own safety because the Libyan police could not ensure their safety.

But the Libyan police took the families to Tripoli Airport, and they would not actually be safe, until they were out of the country. 'Cause eight members of the Luzon family in Benghazi were murdered by an officer who came to their door. And another 10 Jews were killed in the riots. All Jews were expelled and their property, including their bank accounts, were expropriated by the government. They were only allowed to take a few suitcases, and very little money. And the first groups arrived at Rome’s Fiumicino airport around the 20th of June. Almost always at night in Alitalia planes, crammed full, with many more passengers than the seats available. And the credit for this goes to employees of Alitalia itself. Recently a ceremony was held in Rome, to acknowledge belatedly, the role that the airline played to rescue the Jews. Gina Malaka Bublil was 19 years old, and living in Tripoli, the capital, her mother called her at work to tell her that thousands of people had taken to the streets, rioting and burning Jewish properties. It was too dangerous for her to return home. One of the British engineers in the company she worked for, Brian Foreman, agreed to hide her, in his home. From her hiding place, she watched the fires consume her father’s warehouse. She returned home after a month in hiding. An officer told Gina’s family that they would be evacuated, on the day that they left armed soldiers put Gina and her family on an airport bus, which then stopped in the middle of the desert. Sensing danger, Gina ran out to call for help at an nearby gas station. The bus conductor was holding the phone. After struggling with him, she snatched the phone out of his hand, and called the British engineer who had hidden her. And this is what happened next.

• My husband would laugh at this, 'cause I can’t find my way out of the paperback. I mean, I am so bad in orienting myself. I keep getting lost and thank God for the navigators. But I was able to actually say exactly where we were. And I said, you have to pass a gas station, you have to pass the Shai shop. And the buses pulled over on the side and so forth. And all I said in English, I said, “come quickly, come quickly, come quickly. We are in danger, we are in danger.” And I repeated it three times. I didn’t even basically even wait for the answer. And I heard him saying, “we’re coming, we’re coming.” So I hang up and I turn around, and the door is in front of me and I want to leave. But now three Arab men are blocking my way. And as they’re coming towards me, I start to myself, oh my, I bet this one, I have to run. So I push my way through with my elbows, through the three men. And I just run like, you wouldn’t believe. It was hot, it was, you know. And so I keep running, running, running nonstop. I didn’t even bother when I passed by the Shai shop to slow down because that would create suspicious. You know, I just kept running and I got to the bus. And where do I see now? I see a bus with a huge pool of gasoline underneath it. The driver outside and the conductor running after, you know, ran behind me. And my family was inside, so I didn’t want to provoke any, you know, panic. So I didn’t want to tell 'em what was going on. I just let them sit inside. And then a few minutes are passing. And in the meantime I could see people with donkeys, and farmers going back to their farm. 'Cause we were out in the, you know, farm area country.

And people come in and one guy start saying, “Yahud, Yahud,” you know, Jews, Jews. And of course more Arabs are coming, and the muezzin is calling for the prayer, for the morning prayer. And they come in and all of a sudden I see these two jeeps. I don’t know what to do. So I’m following the driver who has a packet of matches in his hands, because I figure our life is sitting, in that box of matches. So he turns around, I turn behind him, I’m staring at the matches. By that time, I kind of was really out of, I dunno if you call it the courage or, I was starting to lose it, so to speak. But I knew that if there was one thing I could do, at last, was to follow the matches. Because the matches were going to determine if we’re going to live or die. So I followed the matches, and eventually I see two Jeeps come. It was Brian Foreman and his friend John. And they took one look, they’re both mechanical engineers. They take one look and we say, “oh my, we have to be out of here.” They grab only a few of our suitcases, because they couldn’t take everything. They basically physically yanked my parents out, because they were so frozen with fear. They put them in the two Jeeps. And we take off to the airport, and of course, on the way they tell me that the bus was at any minute would have blown up. And we arrive at the airport, they harass us some more.

The desk was manned by Arab people. And this one agent comes to us and looks at our tickets, and he says, “Bublil family, you’re not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to be here,” in other words, this was a very carefully planned, between the people who lived with, worked with the airline, and the drivers. And we don’t know who else. So they take our suitcases, they, you know, take all this stuff out, this strip out my grandmother. It was a long story. But anyway, eventually we get on the plane, and just as the plane closes the door, I start screaming. I said, “stop, stop, stop!” Because I counted the members of my family, and I realised that my uncle was missing.

• Right, well, the end of that story is that, she finds the uncle surrounded by airport workers, spitting on him and insulting him. And she actually physically drags the uncle, back to the plane, and he gets on board. So Gina later settled in in the US, and she set up an organisation called JIMENA, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East, and North Africa, in California. And that organisation fights for the rights of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. The Exodus left fewer than a hundred Jews in Libya. All their property was sequestered when Colonel Gaddafi took power in 1969. Moving on to Egypt. During the first three days of the Six Day War, the Egyptian media claimed victory. And Egyptians did not know their army had been tranced. They thought their troops were at the gates of Tel Aviv. Rumours spread that thousands of Israeli prisoners were being shipped to Cairo by train to be paraded for all to see. But Egypt had caught no more than a handful of Israeli POWs. However, they soon found a solution. Rami Mangoubi, who you see on the right, was 12 at the time. He writes, “on the first day of the war, at a quarter to five sharp, we heard a knock at the door. We opened two policemen in civilian clothes, wanted my brother Sammy. For 10 minutes at the station. He followed them. Sammy Mangoubi was sent to the Abu Zaabal camp. His family went through agony, waiting for his return. The 10 minutes turned into three years and 10 days. In the absence of Israeli POWs, Egyptian Jews were paraded as Israeli POWs. Those Jews who had foreign citizenship were summarily put on boats out of the country. About 400 Jews between the ages of 17 and 60 were imprisoned. One was in his eighties. Those were the Egyptian citizenship and the stateless were kept for two or three years in jail. The bread that the prisoners were given was dirty, and contained sand, cigarette butts and nails. Many were tortured or sexually molested, some committed suicide after their release.

Rami Mangoubi has set himself up as a spokesman for his brother, Sammy. Sammy went on to become a brilliant engineer in Israel, and he won the Israel Prize. The device on the screen is called a- The prisoners dug a hole in the ground in their cell, and they devised this contraption to heat up food. I would not be surprised if it was Sammy, who came up with the idea. And you can read the full story of Sammy’s imprisonment by Rami. In my book, "Uprooted.” The celebrated author, André Aciman, who you see it on the left, was also expelled from Egypt in 1967. He writes, “about a year before we were expelled, we lost everything. They took all our assets and our money, and nothing belonged to us anymore, except the furniture and the rugs and the cars. Although, my father had to share the cars with government officials.” So moving on to Lebanon, Jewish migration from Lebanon, which accelerated in 1964, reached epidemic proportions after the 1960, 1967 war, due to fears of impending riots. And 90% of the Jews left. Rabbi Elie Abadie, who may be familiar to you as he is now the senior rabbi in the Gulf States and lives in Dubai. Rabbi Elie Abadie and his family left Lebanon in 1971. And this was the second time that the Abadie family was forced to flee. They escaped from Syria after deadly riots in 1947. So this is Rabbi Abadie telling his his story. Just one second.

• Oh, the Jewish community was extremely terrified because of that, because that’s always happened and still happens even nowadays, even in the most western democracies, where if Israel does something, the Jewish community suffers. It’s being attacked, killed, badmouthed, demonised, whatever it is. And so it happened there also. But again, I must say that the Lebanese government maintained those protests very well encircled. And as far as I know, no Jewish home or business or synagogue was, was looted during that time. But of course, after that war, the exodus of Jewish families from Lebanon was completely sped up, so to speak. Every family, every week we would see 3, 4, 5, 6 families leaving Lebanon, because they came to the realisation that there was no future for the Jewish community there. If the Six Day War did not do it, in a sense, there will be another conflict in the horizon that he will do it, and what really did it was, was the moment that Arafat and his guerrillas were forced into Lebanon by the Arab League after Black September, September, 1970, as you know, the Civil War in Jordan, between King Hussein and Arafat, and and his guerrillas, they were expelled from there. No Arab country would receive them, knowing who they were. So Lebanon, as the tiniest Arab country, mostly Christian in makeup, was forced by the Arab leagues to accept them. And the moment they came again, the protests, the rallies against Israel would, we would see them in the street with Kalashnikov’s, with and they would destroy things on their way. And then the Jewish community. So that was in the seventies, they knew that that it’s time to leave. And I would say probably 90% of the Jewish community left by then, and then when the Civil War came, 1974, more people left. We left in 1971.

It was at the heel of that because right after the Black September, the picture of my father and the other two rabbis of the of Lebanon was plastered all over the mosques in Lebanon, in large posters with a caption saying, “these are Zionist agents that are helping Israel.” And that picture also appeared in a very important magazine in Lebanon with a whole article about the activities of these Zionist agents. Of course, most of they said was not true. But you know, if you live in an Arab country with your picture, with that caption, you’re basically a target for assassination, with impunity, unfortunately. And so, of course, the three rabbis, including my father, hid at home for several weeks until again, the government kind of guaranteed their safety as much as they could. But my mother took that article and took that picture, sent it to my oldest brother who had already left to Mexico, because looking for a new life as it was known, you know, and even before the 1967. And it took six months for Mexico to accept us because we were refugees in Lebanon. We could not leave Lebanon to any country, because no country will accept us, because we were refugees and will have to accept us as refugees and to resettle us. Of course, no country wants to do that. But Mexico, my brother, became kind of financially responsible for us, for Mexico to accept us. And finally, six months later, Mexico accepted us. We received the news on the eve of Passover. Eve of Passover, as you know, at that time there was no texting, WhatsApp phone calls or anything like that. A phone call was extremely expensive. But we received a telegram at Telex.

And you know, the Telex you had to pay at that time per letter, not per word. And that was also expensive. So it was a very, very short telegram saying basically, welcome to Mexico, your papers are ready. So I remember as a child at that time, we celebrated Passover Seder, not by saying where you, you know, we have the custom to ask where you coming from? in Arabic, we say from Egypt, Where you going? We say to Yom Yerushalayim, to Jerusalem. That evening in my family it says where you coming from? From Lebanon going to Mexico. That was our liberating centre. And it was truly a momentous occasion because again, we felt prisoners, not because we were mistreated, so to speak, I must say, but because we couldn’t go anywhere, we couldn’t leave the country. And yet now we were able to leave. So for us, it was a liberation. That Passover had a different meaning for us than every year. And that’s the story in Lebanon.

• Right, so we move on to Syria. Following the 1967 war, curfews were imposed and the 5,000 or so Jews were confined to their homes. For eight months, the police would prowl around looking for people to arrest and throw into prison. The Jews were deprived of many basic civil and human rights. And their every move monitored by the secret police. It would be another 25 years before the remnant of the Syrian Jewish community would be allowed to immigrate. One witness recalls, “after the Six Day War, many Jewish workers were laid off, leaving them with no income. Many are literally starving to death. The Syrian government distributes weapons to the mob. And from time to time, they’re on riot in the Jewish quarters, threatened Jewish lives, taking anything they can. To avoid outside interference, the Syrian government published false reports on the supposedly good conditions for Jews.” Into the picture enters a remarkable woman, who had no previous connection with Syrian Jews. She was an Ashkenazi music teacher living in Toronto. And here she is, Judy Feld-Carr. Miss Judy, as she was nicknamed by Syrian Jews, became involved in their plight when she learnt from a Jerusalem post report that Jews had been killed while trying to escape Syria, in 1972. She managed to contact a Jew in Damascus and began sending religious books. Then she received a letter from three rabbis in Aleppo. “Please help get us out of here.” From then on, she embarked on a secret mission. She raised money to ransom individuals. She rescued sick Jews, Jews who had been jailed, and brought them out of Syria. Possibly the worst case was that of the Suede brothers who were abducted, I think from Italy and were jailed incommunicado for years. Schlomo Suede had his fillings extracted by his jailers as they were supposedly being used for sending secret signals to the Zionists. Ms. Judy also got precious artefacts out of Syria.

For instance, the Keta of Damascus, a mediaeval manuscript, which apparently, was smuggled out in a shopping bag. And you can see the full programme we did with Judy Feld-Carr, the full Harif programme, I think it was the 28th of July, 2020, on the Harif YouTube channel. Over 3,000 Jews were allowed to leave Syria in the 1990s. And the story of Judy Feld-Carr is told by Harold Troper in a book called “The Ransom of God,” “The Ransom of God.” So we now move on to Iraq, which is possibly the worst, the worst case for the Jews. The Baʿath party, sorry, the Baʿath, yeah. The Baʿath party took its revenge on the roughly, sorry, 3,500 Jews in Baghdad in 1967. There were sacked from their jobs, they were banned from university. They had their bank accounts frozen and their telephones cut off. Above all, they could not leave. After a show trial, nine Jews were executed, on the 20th, sorry, the 27th of January, 1969, on trumped up spying charges. Four of them were under the legal age to be executed. Soon afterwards, Israel, Iran, then friendly to Israel, and the Kurds reached a deal to enable some 2000 Jews to be smuggled out through Kurdistan to freedom. And here is an extract from a film which Harif commissioned from Sephardi Voices UK. And it was shown for the very first time last week.

• There were people going, you know, in when we have a feast or whatever, or henna, they go, you know, of happiness. And they were giving out sweets to everybody, you know, like it’s a very, very happy day. And I went into the girls’ rooms, and the girls were laughing and whatever, and they went to see the dead bodies. And they dragged my friend, my Christian friend with them. I could see she didn’t want to go, but she was very, very scared she had to go. So they went, and when they came back, it was very, very scary, they were, I couldn’t imagine people from university, and behave in such a savage way. They were really even imitating. “Did you see this one? How his head was,” and whatever. So we went back home and that was a black day.

• Pesach of 1969 in the Chol HaMo'ed, which is the bit in the middle, in between the festivals. My father went to visit friends of his, in their office. They were his clients as well, but they were friends. He did not work during the period. Anyway, we were on that day, we were at my grandmother’s house. And the secretary came to my grandmother’s house, and wanted to see my mother, and she said to her, “I’m sorry to tell you, they came.” “They,” we did not need to know who they were, “they.” “They came for the boys and they took them.” The interesting thing about my father’s imprisonment, was he never talked about it. There was a testimony of one of the prisoners who was with my father, his name was Saeed Herdoon.

• They took me to prison, which is really not a prison. It’s because the place they took us, it’s not a prison belonging to government or to the army, or any official body in the country. It’s belong only to Saddam Hussein. We were three in this room, in this cell, six by six feet. We couldn’t even sleep on our back. We used to sleep on our side because there is no space for three of us to sleep in this… Food was terrible. One time a day, early in the morning, they used to take us to the bathrooms. The bathroom was full of human dirt, and they used to put us some bricks to walk on it, because the dirt was so high. The food was once a day, they used to, two soldier, they used to bring rice and soup in a bucket. The rice, they used to serve it by their hands. The reason they took us, we don’t know. The reason they let us go, also, we don’t know. It is just to complete the play. The innocent will go out and the criminal they hang him.

• So there was absolutely, absolutely nothing to look for, but zero except for running away. So we were expecting it, but you hope you never hear it like a major operation. You just hope that it won’t happen. But you know that it’s in the offing. So one day he brought us back and it was, I remember the day very well. I remember the room very well when he asked us to come in, and, you know, with blunt face, he said, “we have two hours in this house and we will be gone.”

• We got to the north in the evening, it was pouring down with rain. And the taxi driver stops the car, in the middle, in this village. And he said, “right, you’re here.” “What do you mean we’re here? It’s dark, there’s no light, there’s nothing,” you know. “I don’t know, I was told to dump you here, to stop. You’re getting out.” Out of nowhere, out of the dark, this Peshmerga guy, Peshmerga are the Kurdish fighters, you know, heavily armed and with a little, I think he had a torchlight. We, could see something, you know, we could see, so still pouring down, and he says, “what are you guys doing here?” And we said, “well, you know, we are Jews. We are trying to escape. And we were told that this is here, somebody will meet us and will take us across the border.” He said, “there’s nothing scheduled for tonight. You know, there’s been, there’s been no one coming through this way since since September.

• I just remember so clearly these moments, that screams at me. I remember these guys when we stopped at checkpoints and they would push these machine guns on inside the, for extra effect, inside the car, and ask my father to get off the place. And my father would go out, and you can see him how anxious he is and we’re sitting in the car and the film plays in my mind, on and on and on until we reached the Kurdish enclave.

• He went out and he came back and he said, "we can cross using mules, but I can only command three mules.” So my mother said, you know, “how do we do it on three mules? There are five of us.” So, I said, “look, we want to get out, we want to get across the border now. You three ladies go on the mules, so on the three mules, and Maurice and I will walk,” and about half an hour into this, bullets start to fly around. So we went on the floor in the mud, all five of us, and the two Peshmerga guys as well. And then they said, “look,” you know, I said, “are we, follow,” he said, “no, no, no, we’re going back.”

• We had a very rough ride because instead of being nine people journey, we had, we are now 22, in the same car, it’s the same sort of pickup car, for like a cattle, we were packed there. And that was very, again, I was, I remember the thoughts in my mind saying, “I want to be back, I want to go home. I want to go home, I can’t take that, I cannot take any more of this. I cannot look in the valley, and it’s the valley of death,” the car was, we were 20 people in the car, 22 people, we were packed one on top of the other. There was no lights. The cars had to drive completely in darkness. The valley is down there, no barriers, no nothing. You could see the odd lorry down in there. And I don’t want, I cannot take any more of this. And I was so angry for being put into that position. Eventually we made it.

• Well this is the third night now, we are in this house, a Jeep came in, and we all huddled in all five of us. And the guy who was driving couldn’t speak a word Arabic. And we thanked the senior guy, you know, we thanked for his hospitality and all that. And he said, he wished us luck. And he said, “don’t forget us when you go out, in the big wide world.” And you know, we’d gone for about an hour and fifteen, hour and a half, something like that. And you know, we got to this place where there was a little border, you know, a little barrier. And the guy got out, lifted the barrier, and drove through and took us to the first village in Iran.

• We had gone to the north of Iraq, as I was saying, we used to spend our summers there, and one day we got a knock on the door, and it was the security service. They suggested we ought to pack up all our things, and go with them, which we did. So we were taken in a van as they put it down to Erbil, to the police station, so when we arrived there, who should we see? Oh, so many Iraqi people, Jews, I should say. So many Jews, friends of the family, they were all taken, they were trying to escape, really and truly, we were the only family that were not trying to escape. But that doesn’t matter. The next day we were all driven in vans, whoever was in Erbil in the police station to Baghdad. And we were put in the hall of the Bahai’s. So we were 136 people in this particular hall, where we spent 17 days and we were finally released on the eighth of Rosh Hashanah of 1970.

• My father and my husband went to prison for 15 days as well, for no fault of their own.

• There were people-

• Right, so, that’s quite a story. I’m sure you’ll agree. I think it must be said that the nine Jews who were executed in the public, in the main square in Baghdad were not the only Jews to be executed by the regime. There were over 40 Jews who, who were jailed and presumed, and never seen again. So presumed they died in jail. So my last community that I will talk about is Algeria, ‘cause it’s generally thought, that 130,000 Jews left Algeria in 1962, when the country became independent after the Algerian war. But I was contacted by a Jew who actually stayed on in Algeria, hi name was Benay Ben Hamu. And this is what he told me. “My family sided with the Algerians in the late 1950s, when the FLN asked all the Jews to choose between the Algerians and the French. There were only about a thousand Jews in Oran. My father was well loved in the city. We thought that nothing would happen to us. But in 1965, Islamists spread rumours about Jewish spies working for the Mossad. At school, I used to be bullied, because of my Jewish origins. People would ask me explanations for the suffering of the Palestinians. Everybody in the neighbourhood knew we were Jewish. The synagogues and graveyards had been vandalised. In 1967, when war broke out in Israel, my father’s Algerian friends advised him, to leave the country before it was too late. That is how, in a rush, I left my beloved city of Oran. I never saw it again.”

And this is the great synagogue of Oran, which has been converted into a mosque. So over the following decades, the Jewish communities of the Arab world would continue to dwindle. And here is the chart, which may be familiar to you, 'cause I trot it out quite often, showing that communities that had tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Jews in 1948, are now down to single digits, or to no Jews at all. And in fact, there are no Jews in Algeria or in Libya. And at the last count, I think there were three Jews in Syria. So the very last Jews to get out, were the Jews, were three families from Yemen. But actually those families have not left the Arab world. They were given sanctuary in the UAE, thanks to the good officers of Rabbi Elie Abadie, who you saw earlier, only six remain in Yemen. Please do spare a thought for the man on the left. He is Levy Salem Majak. And he was jailed on trumped up smuggling charges, and is in failing health. So far, no sign that he will be released in the near future. So on that note, I’m very happy to, to answer questions if you have any. Thank you for listening.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Question from Colin Leche. “Were the Jews in Lebanon '67, were they kicked out without taking their assets with them?”

A: Well, yes, there were Jews in Lebanon as I explained. And they all, and most of them left, they actually did manage for the most parts to take some assets with them. I think the problem was when you leave in a hurry, you always, you can undersell your assets. And, often, you know, people do abandon property as well. I think things got even worse in the 1970s, for those Jews still remaining in Lebanon, because by then a civil war had broken out. There were bombs flying, and people were desperate to leave. And so I would’ve thought that a lot of them would’ve left their assets and property behind.

Thank you, Adrian. He appreciates my talk and book, thank you. And he’s managed to improve the next fifth edition of his book, “Israel Chronology,” due to be published by the end of January, 2023. That’s nice to know, thank you.

Q: “Why did the Lebanese not go to Israel? Did they not want to or were they not allowed to by the Lebanese government?”

A: Well, I have to say that maybe half the Lebanese Jewish population, which numbered about 14,000 in the 1950s did go to Israel. But you often find that those Jews who were still living in Arab countries did not go to Israel. You know, they often had connections outside Israel, and they preferred to go to other places. It was not a question of the Lebanese government not allowing them to go to Israel. I mean some did go to Israel, obviously not directly, through a third country perhaps. Of course there were quite a few who were smuggled out to Israel by the Mossad. But generally speaking, those who left later didn’t go to Israel.

And I think I’ve answered your question, Arnold, about the Jews in Morocco hopefully.

Q: “Can you say something about the Jews, from Arab lands that came to the UK?”

A: Well actually a lot of those Iraqi Jews who you saw in the film did end up in the UK and they, but some did go to Israel as well. And it was quite an interesting time because I remember meeting some of these Jews who escaped illegally through Kurdistan. And in fact, my cousin Lizette made that journey, through Kurdistan and I’d never met her before. It was the first time, you know, I was 15, I’d never met her in in my life, and she came and stayed with us. So that was really nice.

Q: “Jews of Afghanistan?”

A: Yes, it was a very small community, the Jews of Afghanistan. I think there were only about 5,000 altogether. So you are doing very well Hindi, if you actually met two, there is a community in New York, I believe, but a lot of them would have gone to Israel.

Are there any other questions?

• [Lauren] I think that’s it. Thank you so much for another outstanding presentation.

• Oh, well thank you very much Lauren. And thank you everybody for listening.