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Jewish residents of Arab countries
were brutally expelled or killed.
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16
May 17 s 2007
ention crowds roaming
the streets, attacking Jews,
confiscating their property
and expelling them and thoughts
immediately go to the Holocaust.
Mention Middle Eastern families
becoming refugees and Palestinians
quickly come to mind.
Joseph Wahed knows how people
think about these things, but he wants
them to think harder. He wants them
to know his story and the story of the
more than 800,000 Jewish refugees eth-
nically cleansed from Arab countries.
"Middle East Jews were killed and
brutally expelled:' Wahed, co-founder
of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the
Middle East and North Africa) said
during a visit to the area as a guest
of the Jewish Community Relations
Council of Metropolitan Detroit. "But
it's not a well-known story because we
do not go out and commit suicide in a
cafe in Cairo:'
The numbers are striking. In 1948,
when Wahed was a 12-year-old boy
in Cairo, 80,000 Jews lived in Egypt.
Today, there are fewer than 50. The
once-flourishing Iraqi Jewish com-
munity that gave us the Babylonian
Talmud and Maimonides numbered
135,000 in 1948, but none remain. The
more than 850,000 Jews who lived in
nine Arab countries in 1948 number
fewer than 5,000 today. Ninety-nine
percent of the indigenous Jewish com-
munities no longer exist.
"Our story encompasses the very
essence of Jewish life Wahed said of
the religious, economic and political
persecution they suffered. Now retired
after serving as chief economist for
Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, he
speaks with passion about his experi-
ence as well as the joy and tragedies of
Jewish life under Arab and Muslim rule.
"It's a myth that between the eighth
and 12th centuries Jews and Arabs
lived in paradise together': he said,
calling it a "gross misinterpretation
of the facts:' He says as "dhimmi,"
Jews were second-class citizens. While
Muslims rode horses, Jews rode don-
keys to denote their inferior status;
and Jews also paid a special tax to
ensure their safety and show their
subservience. Periodic attacks also
occurred on Jewish communities in
Andalusia (parts of today's Portugal
and Spain) and North Africa.
Myth Continues
But another, more contemporary myth
riles Wahed, namely that the persecu-
tion of Jews in Arab lands stems from
Israel and Zionism. On the contrary,
Wahed says the problems predated
Israel and were due to Arab national-
ism, the struggle against European
colonialism and the rise of Islamist
groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
Bombs started exploding in the Jewish
parts of Cairo in 1945, but the Jews
didn't leave. "We should have fled:' he
said, with the benefit of hindsight.
Wahed remembers the crowds
roaming the streets shouting,
"Slaughter the Jews" and "The Jews
are our dogs!" He solemnly quotes the
words of Azzam Pasha, the head of
the Arab League, that the war against
Israel "will be a war of extermination
that will be likened to the Mongolian
army and the Crusades."
"I remember that day as now:' he
said. "It is so vivid in my memory. I
was scared to death. Our doorman told
me, `If you are in the streets, tell them,