The full story of the ethnic cleasing of Jews in the Arab countries. JEWS IN IRAQ Under British rule, which began in 1917, Jews fared well economically, and many were elected to government posts. This traditionally observant community was also allowed to found Zionist organizations and to pursue Hebrew studies. All of this progress ended when Iraq gained independence in 1932. In 1941, after Rashid Ali overthrow the Iraqi goverment in 1941 with the help of Hajj Amin Al Husseini. They installed a Nazi puppet goverment. The first thing Rashid Ali and Husseini did, was order a pogram of Jews, where 187 Jews were massacred. This is exactly what would have happened, if the Arabs would have won the 48 war. This is what Israel's army prevented in 48. On June 1st and June 2nd of 1941, hundreds of Iraqi Arabs brutally attacked Iraqi Jews in the towns of Al Rusafa and Abu Sifyan. Jews were killed randomly, women and children were raped in front of their relatives, babies crushed, houses set on fire, looting was everywhere. On June 2,1941: Policemen, soldiers and slum dwellers from Al Karkh entered the scene, and participated in the killing and the looting everywhere. Reports vary official Iraqi reports mention 187 killed, JEWS IN IRAQ AFTER 1948 In 1950, Iraqi Jews were permitted to leave the country within a year provided they forfeited their citizenship. A year later, however, the property of Jews who emigrated was frozen and economic restrictions were placed on Jews who chose to remain in the country. From 1949 to 1951, 104,000 Jews were evacuated from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah; another 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran. In 1952, Iraq's government barred Jews from emigrating and publicly hanged two Jews after falsely charging them with hurling a bomb at the Baghdad office of the U.S. Information Agency. With the rise of competing Ba'ath factions in 1963, additional restrictions were placed on the remaining Iraqi Jews. The sale of property was forbidden and all Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards. After the Six-Day War, more repressive measures were imposed: Jewish property was expropriated; Jewish bank accounts were frozen; Jews were dismissed from public posts; businesses were shut; trading permits were cancelled; telephones were disconnected. Jews were placed under house arrest for long periods of time or restricted to the cities. Persecution was at its worst at the end of 1968. Scores were jailed upon the discovery of a local "spy ring" composed of Jewish businessmen. Fourteen men-eleven of them Jews-were sentenced to death in staged trials and hanged in the public squares of Baghdad; others died of torture. On January 27, 1969, Baghdad Radio called upon Iraqis to "come and enjoy the feast." Some 500,000 men, women and children paraded and danced past the scaffolds where the bodies of the hanged Jews swung; the mob rhythmically chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to all traitors." This display brought a world-wide public outcry that Radio Baghdad dismissed by declaring: "We hanged spies, but the Jews crucified Christ." (Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, p. 34). Jews remained under constant surveillance by the Iraqi government. Max Sawadayee, in "All Waiting to be Hanged" writes a testimony of an Iraqi Jew (who later escaped): "The dehumanization of the Jewish personality resulting from continuous humiliation and torment...have dragged us down to the lowest level of our physical and mental faculties, and deprived us of the power to recover.". In response to international pressure, the Baghdad government quietly allowed most of the remaining Jews to emigrate in the early 1970's, even while leaving other restrictions in force. Most of Iraq's remaining Jews are now too old to leave. They have been pressured by the government to turn over title, without compensation, to more than $200 million worth of Jewish community property. (New York Times, February 18, 1973). JEWS IN LIBYA Today, no Jews are known to live in the north African nation of Libya. Like Egypt and Algeria, massive pogroms decimated the once-thriving Jewish communities in the 1940s. From 1941-1942, great waves of persecution washed over Libya. Jewish property in Benghazi was pillaged and 2,600 were sent into the desert to a forced labor camp, where 500 perished. On November 5, 1945, a horrendous bloodbath ensued in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. According to New York Times reporter Clifton Daniels: 'Babies were beaten to death with iron bars. Old men were hacked to pieces where they fell. Expectant mothers were disembowelled. Whole families were burned alive in their houses.' Several hundred Jews died in the attack. In June 1948, rioters murdered another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. Thousands of Jews fled the country after Libya was granted independence and membership in the Arab League in 1951. (Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times). After the Six-Day War, the Jewish population of 7,000 was again subjected to pogroms in which 18 were killed, and many more injured, sparking a near-total exodus that left fewer than 100 Jews in Libya. When Col. Qaddafi came to power in 1969, all Jewish property was confiscated and all debts to Jews cancelled. Although emigration was illegal, more than 3,000 Jews succeeded to leave to Israel. When the British legalized emigration in 1949, more than 30,000 Jews fled Libya. At the time of Colonel Qaddafi's coup in 1969, some 500 Jews remained in Libya. Today, no Jews are believed to live in Libya. JEWS IN EGYPT By 1897 there were more than 25,000 Jews in Egypt, concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria. In 1937 the population reached a peak of 63,500. Friedman wrote in "The Myth of Arab Tolerance", "One Caliph, Al-Hakem of the Fatimids devised particularly insidious humiliations for the Jews in his attempt to perform what he deemed his roll as "Redeemer of mankind", first the Jews were forced to wear miniature golden calf images around their necks, as though they still worshipped the golden calf, but the Jews refused to convert. Next they wore bells, and after that six pound wooden blocks were hung around their necks. In fury at his failure, the Caliph had the Cairo Jewish quarter destroyed, along with it's Jewish residence, in". In 1945, with the rise of Egyptian nationalism and the cultivation of anti-Western and anti-Jewish sentiment, riots erupted. In the violence, 10 Jews were killed, 350 injured, and a synagogue, a Jewish hospital, and an old-age home were burned down. The establishment of the State of Israel led to still further anti-Jewish feeling: Between June and November 1948, bombs set off in the Jewish Quarter killed more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. 2,000 Jews were arrested and many had their property confiscated. Rioting over the next few months resulted in many more Jewish deaths. Between June and November 1948, bombs set off in the Jewish Quarter killed more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. Jews. In 1956, the Egyptian government used the Sinai Campaign as a pretext for expelling almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscating their property. Approximately 1,000 more Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps. On November 23, 1956, a proclamation signed by the Minister of Religious Affairs, and read aloud in mosques throughout Egypt, declared that "all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state," and promised that they would be soon expelled. Thousands of Jews were ordered to leave New York World Telegram). By 1957 it had fallen to 15,000. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, there was a renewed wave of persecution, and the community dropped to 2,500. By the 1970s, after the remaining Jews were given permission to leave the country, the community dwindled to a few families. JEWS IN MOROCCO In June 1948, bloody riots in Oujda and Djerada killed 44 Jews and wounded scores more. That same year, an unofficial economic boycott was instigated against Moroccan Jews. In 1956, Morocco declared its independence, and Jewish emigration to Israel was suspended. In 1963, emigration resumed, allowing more than 100,000 Moroccan Jews to reach Israel. In 1965, Moroccan writer Said Ghallab described the attitude of his fellow Muslims toward their Jewish neighbors: The worst insult that a Moroccan could possibly offer was to treat someone as a Jew....My childhood friends have remained anti-Jewish. They hide their virulent anti-Semitism. A whole Hitlerite myth is being cultivated among the populace. The massacres of the Jews by Hitler are exalted ecstatically. It is even credited that Hitler is not dead, but alive and well, and his arrival unclean. They lay claims to all his belongings, and if he is unwilling, they employ force...The Jews live in outside the town in dark dwellings like prison cells or caves out of fear...for the least offense, he is sentenced to outrageous fines, which he is quite unable to pay. In case of non-payment, he is put in chains and cruelly beaten every day. Before the punishment is inflicted, the Cadi[judge] addresses him in gentle tones and urges him to change his faith and obtain a share of all the glory of this world and of the world beyond. His refusal is again regarded as penal obstinacy. On the other hand, it is not open to the Jew to prosecute a Muslim, as the Muslim by right of law can dispose of the life and the property of the Jew, and it is only to be regarded as an act of magnanimity if the Jews are allowed to live. The Jew is not admissible as a witness, nor has his oath any validity.". By 1948 there were some 270,000 Jews in Morocco. In an atmosphere of uncertainty and grinding poverty, many Jews elected to leave for Israel, France, the United States, and Canada. Jews in Yemen In 1922, the government of Yemen reintroduced an ancient Islamic law that decreed that Jewish orphans under age 12 were to be forcibly converted to Islam. In 1947, after the partition vote, Muslim rioters, joined by the local police force, engaged in a bloody pogrom in Aden that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes. Aden's Jewish community was economically paralyzed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. Early in 1948, looting occurred after six Jews were falsely accused of the ritual murder of two Arab girls. (Howard Sachar, A History of Israel). Finally, nearly 50,000 traditionally religious Yemeni Jews, who had never seen a plane, were airlifted to Israel in 1949 and in 1950 in Operation "Magic Carpet.". Since the Book of Isaiah promised, "They shall mount up with wings, as eagles". The Jewish community bordered "The Eagles" contentedly; to the pilots consternation some of them lit a bong fire aboard, to cook there food. JEWS IN TUNISIA Jews suffered once more in 1956, when the country achieved independence. The rabbinical tribunal was abolished in 1957, and a year later, Jewish community councils were dissolved. In addition, the Jewish quarter of Tunis was destroyed by the government. Anti-Jewish rioting followed the outbreak of the Six-Day War; Muslims burned down the Great Synagogue of Tunis. This caused massive immigration of Jews. JEWS IN ALGERIA During the war for Algerian independence from France in the 1950s and early 1960s, Algerian nationalists carried out violent attacks on Algerian Jews. After the French left, the Algerian authorities issued a variety of anti- Jewish decrees, including the imposition of heavy taxes on the Jewish community. Nearly all of Algeria's 160,000 Jews fled the country. All but one of Algeria's synagogues were seized and turned into mosques. JEWS IN SYRIA There were 17,000 Jews in Syria in 1948, a community dating back to biblical times. Anti-Jewish pogroms erupted in the Syrian town of Aleppo in 1947. All of the local synagogues were destroyed, and 7,000 of the town's 10,000 Jews fled in terror. The government then enacted legislation to freeze Jewish bank accounts and confiscate Jewish property. By the 1950s, just 5,000 Jews remained in Syria, subjected to harsh decrees; they were banned from emigrating, selling their property, or working in government offices, and were compelled to carry special cards identifying them as Jews. For the next decades, Syrian Jews were, in effect, hostages of a hostile regime. They could leave Syria only on the condition that they leave members of their family behind. Thus the community lived under siege, constantly under fearful surveillance of the secret police.