Remembering a disappeared world

This week we remember a disappeared world: that of the Mizrahim, the Jewish communities of the Arab (and Persian) speaking world, annihilated in the 40s and in the 60s. It is not yet an established observance: the State of Israel instituted it in 2014, following decades of campaigning.

The criminals that perpetrated those barbarities were Muslim fundamentalists and Arab nationalists, many of which were Nazi sympathisers. Not one of these criminals has paid for inciting the mob, and leading them, or allowing them to murder, rape and rob unharmed Jewish men, women, and children. It is a Nuremberg trial that still has to take place.

The number of Jewish families uprooted and expelled from those Countries outnumbers that of the Palestinian refugees. The goods looted and damaged, the spoliation is more than double of the most generous estimation of Palestinians’ losses. And bear in mind that Palestinians lost their lives and goods because of a war. Not declared by Israel, by the way. The Jewish communities in North Africa, Persia, Yemen and the like, had been attacked, and murdered, in time of peace. They were not external enemies. They were living in these countries from time immemorial, well before the Islamic religion was born. And yet, they had been treated as enemies and invaders.

Hundreds of Jews were massacred in Iraq in the 1940s, by a Nazi brainwashed mob. Isn’t it ironic? The Nazi ideology is supposed to be racist, and Arabs are not European. Yet, there were Nazi Arabs. 180 Jews killed, 240 wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses looted and 99 Jewish houses destroyed. That was in Baghdad only. Tell me that it is because of Israel, which was yet to be born.

It defies logic, I know. But someone really does maintain that Jews in Arab lands had prospered and done well and that then, unfortunately, at a certain point, Israel was born, and made the Palestinians suffer; so, because of Arab solidarity, that idyllic coexistence between Muslim and Jews came to an end… Because of course, Arab solidarity expresses itself by harassing the Jews. I really don’t get how someone can be so racist and so stupid to justify massacres in the name of solidarity.

Shall I go on? Violent pogroms in Tripoli, Lebanon, in November 1945. Synagogues assaulted, Jewish women raped, young children slaughtered. Again, well before the establishment of the State of Israel. That was Arab nationalism. The delusion of building a totally Arab and Muslim nation, with no room for religious minorities. The same reason that led the population to assault the Jewish neighbourhood in Aleppo, Syria, in 1947. Nothing to do with Israel.

Even in Afghanistan, in the 1930s, a Nazi sympathiser government, forbade Jews to ride horses and to walk in the shadow of mosques. Subsequently, they banished the Jews from all professions, with the only exception of shoe polishing. These people have a taste for symbols, haven’t they? Again, what has Israel, or Zionism, to do with that? Nothing!

The end of these centuries-old Jewish communities, the wave of persecutions and pogroms, had nothing to do with the opposition to Zionism and/or to the politics of the Israeli government. It was only because of hate and intolerance, because of the will to put an end to the lives of thriving and cultivated minorities. Thanks to the high level of literacy, and independence of women, they were perceived as threats by despotic and fanatic rulers. All men, not by chance. That hate was a rabid mixture of nationalist frustrations and delusions of Islamic grandeur, and it caused the end of the Mizrahi communities. In their delusion of religious and national uniformity, these Arab leaders could not bear the existence of communities of different cultures, or different religions, in their midst.

I belong to the first generation of Jews born after the reunification of Jerusalem. I did not live, say, in Northern Africa prior to the 60s. Therefore I cannot really say I know what that Mizrahi civilisation, that had been annihilated, was like. I have only heard stories. And I can tell you this story.

Once Sara and I were busy with the Passover cleaning, which as you can imagine is quite a serious matter under my wife’s rulings. I had my arms literally full of pots and dishes, and I bumped into an elderly couple, members of the Coptic community of the town, and our neighbours. We have never talked before, although we were aware of our different faiths. Like many Coptic families living in our city, they came from Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan.

I cannot forget that look in their eyes, in that moment. They were surprised, painfully surprised. I felt a remote fear coming to the surface. “Are you…. leaving?” the elderly man fearfully asked me, with his thick accent. Remember, that was a man whom I had never talked before. He could not contain his fears.

These were eyes full of terror. These were the eyes of a refugee.

Someone who had been forced to leave the country, where he and his family had lived for centuries. Someone who had been uprooted by violence and had seen his neighbours turning into enemies. Someone who knew by experience that, literally, first they came for the Jews, and then, in Arab countries, for Christians like him.

With all these things in mind, and my arms full of pots and pans, I tried to be reassuring for that man and for his wife, and I said slowly. “Oh no… “ I said, “you know… Pesach”. And then they both smiled with a sigh of relief. “Oh yes”, they said in their language, “yes …Pasca!”

So there you go. That was the civilisation uprooted by Muslim fundamentalists and Arab nationalists. Non-Jews who know and respect the Jewish laws and traditions, friendly acquaintances across the religious differences, reciprocal knowledge and respect. How ironic that the only place in the whole Middle East where Jews exist and live side by side with Muslims is, nowadays, only Israel. Perhaps that is the real reason why Muslim fundamentalists and Arab nationalists cannot tolerate the existence of such a State. Which we should all be thankful for.

I will say something really bold to conclude. I think the whole of humanity should be thankful to Israel, for preserving the memory of a unique civilisation and honouring the martyrs of a terrible series of massacres, and tragedies, that the rest of the world still has to acknowledge.

May the memory of the martyrs become a blessing. and let us say Amen.

Brighton & Hove Reform Synagogue, 2 December 2017