Israel terrified of Gazans’ nonviolent mass actions

86 thoughts on “Israel terrified of Gazans’ nonviolent mass actions”

1. To put it mildly, the Israeli security bosses were running around crazy with their preparations for the big confrontation that they’d expected today.
   I think that that’s much more interpretation on your part than fact. I think you need to read, and better understand, the title of Amos Harel’s piece and the first paragraph:
   Israel’s concern about a possible scenario involving Hamas marching masses of civilians to the fence separating the Gaza Strip from the western Negev is not based on a vague hunch. It is founded on intimate knowledge of the intentions of the Islamist organization’s Gaza leadership, and it requires thorough and detailed preparations on the part of the Israel Defense Forces.
   Harel called it a “win-win” situation for Hamas. If Israel fires on the Palestinians and kills many women and children, then the IDF is seen as brutal. If the IDF doesn’t fire, and they succeed in breeching the fence, then the IDF is seen as weak. This is the situation that IDF commanders were facing, and I don’t think they were “running around crazy”. They made preparations, based as much as possible on the use of non-lethal weapons. (And by the way, my understanding is that those artillery were to fire teargas.)
   As it turns out, the situation was not a win-win for Hamas. They were big losers. They initially called on 40,000 to show up, then raised that number to 50,000. In the end only 5,000 showed up, and most of those were shcool children who got the day off and were brought out by Hamas. For one who chortles regularly about the popularity and discipline of Hamas, this must be a great disappointment. To blame the low turnout on the rain is, frankly, a joke, for it suggests (if all the claims about the IDF’s brutality are true) that these people care more about getting wet than they do about getting shot for the sake of the Fatherland.

2. I won’t say anything further about JES’s comment, except to note his use of the word: “Fatherland” If that doesn’t tell you where JES and his ilk are coming from, nothing will.

3. Thanks for a great article. If the Palestinians’ own elected leaders can’t help them overcome their (very large) problems, who else will?
   The answer is that we are all looking the other way – much like we did regarding Germany vs their ‘others’ 1933-1939.
   Some of us Brits still regard the shoot-down at Amritsar as a very necessary response to ‘restive natives’- see:
   http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article383052.ece
   but for those of us who care about our history, it was a shameful episode.
   I just wonder, if ‘Israel’ survives* for another century, the future generations will feel the deep shame that just a few of us Brits do.
   Amritsar started Ghandi off.
   regards
   Richard
   * if ‘Israel’ survives – I am talking like Ahminejad does – not the ‘pushing the Jews into the sea’, but the disintegration of a disgusting government, and the creation of a real multi-racial democracy in the very, very small space between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river.

4. I’m sure you have seen the Movie, “Battle of Algiers”. After all of that violence, the Algerian masses took to the streets and that’s what finally persuaded the French to leave. I think I would have preferred to see a movie about how somebody organized all of those people.
   Saul Alinsky used to teach that he was transforming riots into a force for peace by organizing communities to take political power and control of their lives. Cool!
   Bob Spencer

5. I think what this shows is that Israel is quite wisely taking steps to prevent a mass breach of the Israeli border, also known as an “invasion.”
   I was waiting for Helena to once again enter her cheerleading routine for Hamas, an organization that is as racist as she is.
   But as JES points out, it was an absolutely pathetic turnout, Anyone with any “journalistic” integrity would acknowledge that Hamas came out the loser here. But Helena has some pathological need to bash Israel and praise the group that has the protocols of the Elders of Zion as a primary source of their charter. It is just so sad that Helena’s hatred and prejudice clouds here ability to write honestly.

6. Richard,
   “Fatherland”, or reference to a male progenitor of the nation, comes from the Palestinian and Arab national movements, not from me and my “ilk”. From Mahmoud Darwish, “Lover from Palestine”:
   Your words were my song
   I tried singing
   But winter replaced the spring
   Your words, like the sparrow, flew away
   Like the sparrow who left our doors
   After you
   Our mirrors broke-sorrows engulfed us
   We picked the splinters of sound
   And only learned to lament the Fatherland
   Zionists refer to the “Motherland” (moledet). This certainly does not mean
   It seems that there are two possibilities in referencing the land as progenitor of a nation.
   If I had said “Palestein uber alles”, for example, you might have a point. But I suggest that, in future, you constrain yourself to the substance of my statements rather than spurious inferences about me and my “ilk”.

7. Bob,
   At around the time that “Battle of Algiers” appeared in the US, I had the pleasure of taking a course with the Moroccan historian Abdullah Laroui. I recall that at one point he discussed the film and the actual Battle of Algiers, and that his analysis was quite different. He maintained that it was not the resistance in Algiers that convinced the French to leave Algeria, as they were able to maintain control of the cities and towns. Rather, it was their inability to control the countryside that made their defeat apparent. After all, control of the countryside – for the productive value of the land – was the reason behind their colonization in the first place.

8. JES, I often appreciate your comments here. But I don’t see why you feel so motivated to mock this nonviolent mass action. You’ve said numerous times that you want the occupation to end, completely. But when those of your neighbors who are living under occupation start organizing mass nonviolent actions, you want to belittle their efforts. Why? Perhaps because you fear their goals are different than yours. Which may well be largely true. But still, your mocking seems quite counter-productive, and tells us a lot more about you than about your neighbors in Gaza.
   If Hamas wants to bring 500,000 onto the streets of Gaza, they certainly can, as we have seen numerous times. This time, it seems clear they didn’t undertake a full mobilization. Possibly because of the weather. Possibly because, having done the recon work of watching and analyzing the IDF’s preparations, they decided that doing that recon was enough, for now. Possibly because they are planning many other things, and will file away the more extensive “human chain” or other form of mass nonviolent street action in Gaza for another day.
   Re France/Algeria, I think the most appropriate comment was the one I recently heard from the veteran French/Israeli author Sylvain Cypel, who said the turning point came when the French do-gooders shifted from talking about “peace with Algeria” to talking about “End the occupation!”

9. If Hamas wants to “end the siege” then the solution is relatively simple. Stop firing missles into Israel. Hamas is not encouraging “non-violent resistance” to end the siege. They are encouraging occasional propaganda and public theater to generate sympathy that would allow them to continue their VIOLENT campaign while Israel is not permitted to respond.
   After stopping rocket fire, they can then 1) agree to recognize Israel, 2) foreswear their genocidal campaign and 3) agree to abide by existing agreements.
   The bar has been set so remarkably low for them, and yet they still can’t clear it.
   And why do you continue to make excuses for Hamas? How about saying “Gee, my fault. I’ve been fawning over and kissing up to Hamas so much that maybe I greatly overestimated their ability to lead a mass rally. Maybe I should objectively look at a situation rather than make excuses for a group just because they harbor prejudices that mirror my own. Better yet, maybe I should get over my Judeophobia entirely!”

10. I don’t see where I was “mocking” the demonstration – certainly no more than you ware “mocking” the IDF (or “security bosses”, as you call them) by saying they were “running around crazy”. I merely pointed out that the “mass demonstration” was a failure for Hamas, not for the Palestinian people.
    Actually, I see a very rational explanation for why this demonstration failed. I think it was simply because most Palestinians in Gaza realize that – unlike their earlier “bustout” into Sinai – they really don’t have much to look for in crossing into Israel.
    Imagine the refugee from Isdud. What would happen if he or she arrived in Ashdod, even accompanied by a half a million fellow Gazans? He or she would find a city where 200,000 people now reside and not the house and bustan that he or she could simply walk home to. Most Gazans have been there and seen this over the past 40 years.
    Returning to Laroui, perhaps it is time that the Palestinians realize that things will not miraculously return to the way they once were, and that they need to think about planning toward the future rather than making futile statements – such as mass demonstrations of 5,000 teachers and school children – about the past.

11. Not that control of the countryside could not be maintained, but that it could not be maintained at an acceptable financial, material, and public relations cost, particularly vis-a-vis France’s relationship with the US. In 1959-61 the French re-established control of the countryside without recourse to the grotesquely genocidal methods of 1840-48, using the first air-land warfare paradigm. The distances involved were immense, the number of men engaged limited (ca. 30,000 French, 15,000 rebels) compared to the population as a whole. Yet the largely successful pacification promised nothing but further unrest at a later date, as in ’45, and a centralized Jacobin state could, at that point, order the cessation of French military activity (late ’61) and the end of the war, knowing full well that the end of any French presence would be the outcome.
    There really isn’t much of a parallel with Israel, because Israelis have a nationalism of their own, and the Mediterranean at their backs. I would submit to any Europeans who regard Israel as a colony that they are implying that the ovens of Auschwitz are the true homeland of the Jews, and “Auf’n Priptschek” the national anthem of Heaven.

12. I think that non-violent mass protests, such as the Indian people succeeded with, will be the most important tool the Palestinians can use in the future for both the Gaza and West Bank to confront the unlawful occupation of their lands.

13. Non violent action could have been used to good effect in the 1990s but Hamas instead chose a 10 year suicide bombing campaign which eventually destroyed the Israeli peace movement, an essential partner in any non-violence campaign.
    This post makes me increasing perplexed by Helena’s real beliefs – does she believe in a two independent states for Israel and Palestine? If so, why does she oppose the PLO/PA/Israel mutual recognition, continually laud Hamas’ military prowess, continually endorse Hamas’ refusal to recognise Israel and continually support, by implication, Hamas’ fundamental, religious, absolutist covenant?
    Does she favour Hamas over the secular PLO because she herself is a member of an absolutist religious movement?
    If Helena’s preference is for a “one state” solution subsuming Irsael into Palestine why doesn’t she have the courage of her convictions and just say so?

14. bb, ask her directly. I’ve done so before and it’s almost comical how she refuses to give a straight answer.

15. There is no guarantee, nor even much probability, that ending the rocket attacks would end the siege. Violence against Israel has dropped to a very low level in the West Bank and it hasn’t resulted in much dismantlement of the apparatus of occupation. The most impressive rollback of Israeli power by Palestinians was the disengagement from Gaza, and it was won by violence.
    Americans and Israelis live in countries founded by violent political movements. The idea that somehow the Palestinians are unique moral lepers because they use violence is contemptible.

16. JES must be a translator, working on Ahmadinejad’s speeches–I searched several sites for translations of the poem, and they all translate it as ‘homeland.’

17. Regarding the Battle of Algiers analogy: it is a mistake to remove the war from its historical context. The “Cold War” had the effect of making imperialist powers sensitive, on occasion, to the excesses of colonialism. There was in France a very strong opposition, politically principled and with deep roots in the working class, to the war. Public opinion in western countries was much more influenced by collectivist, communitarian ideas, the Trade Unions were much stronger than they are today.
    The situation in modern Israel is quite different: public opinion seems inured to government actions which breech not only law and morality but common sense. There are daily reports of children being killed; every week dozens of Palestinians are murdered in targeted assassinations or military operations conducted sloppily and without fear of consequences.
    As to international opinion, that is no longer considered of importance: modern democracy has developed techniques of marginalising vast demonstrations and mass protests, to the point that apathy has become a fad. It is unlikely, however, that there is a country on earth in which 90% of the citizenry are not equally opposed to the foreign policies of the United States and Israel.
    Partisans of the the current zionist project delude themselves if they believe that their government is not going to have, firstly to change its ways and, secondly, to make substantial amends for the enormous harm that it has done.
    Now, as to Hamas, it is no more an extremist religious movement than the coalition ruling Israel, rather less so in fact. Its survival, in the face of international tactics that one imagines would, had they been employed against Israel, have caused the collapse of its economy is an indication of its popular support. Some of its tactics will succeed, others will fail, as Gaza stands alone.
    Zionists have no reason to feel proud of the suggestion, evidenced in the rather small turnout for a pacific demonstration, that the people of Gaza regard the IDF as a force so crazy that it might very well have taken the opportunity to massacre large numbers of demonstrators. The sad truth is that they were probably being more realistic than the Hamas idealists who believed that a crowd of unarmed women and children would have been seen as anything more than an easy target for the IDF.
    After all, every day in south Lebanon cluster bombs explode and innocents die because Israel refuses to help humanitarian groups discover and defuse these child killing munitions.

18. Dave Bowman,
    I’m not a professional translator. However, I could give you lessons in using Google. Just enter the words “Darwish Fatherland”. Here’s the first translation that comes up:
    http://www.jehat.com/Jehaat/en/Poets/MahmoudDarwish1.htm
    As I said to what’s his name earlier, you might want to try looking at the substance of my post, rather than trying to deal with a spurious issue.

19. Bevin, would you care to substantiate the statement:
    It is unlikely, however, that there is a country on earth in which 90% of the citizenry are not equally opposed to the foreign policies of the United States and Israel.
    It’s real nice to talk about the trade unions, and “communitarian ideas”, and to have all these warm thoughts about that great bastion of intellectual and political avant-gardism in the 1950s and 60s. Fact is, it was pure, cold calculation that convinced the French to leave Algeria, and it had to do with the fact that, in the late 20th century, they just didn’t need large tracts of land to grow grain the same way they did in the mid-19th, and certainly not enough to continue fighting a costly war over.
    I have to agree with Eurosabra. I have seen many argue that Zionism is a form of colonialism with the little, tiny difference that it doesn’t have a metropolitan. Well, lack of a metropolitan is a very large difference between the current situation in Israel and that in Algeria.

20. I mean, among many of the bizarre elements of the French in Algeria was the 1961 reincarnation of the Jews of M’zab as “French”. Exempt from the Decret Crémieux of 1870 by M’zab’s later conquest, they had retained “statut personnel Mosaic”, meaning they were neither Muslim Algerian subjects, nor French citizens, in a word, dhimmis, at a time when Muslim Algerians had the right of immigration to France, they did not. When it became apparent that a Muslim Arab-nationalist Algerian movement was going to deport them as non-Muslim Mozabite non-Algerians, they magically became “French” by decree of the government, despite being stateless and non-Francophone in language. Unlike Tunisian and Moroccan Jews, who were equally non-citizens under those protectorates and who had to turn to Israel for refuge, South Saharan Jews were adopted by a non-Jewish homeland for its own inscrutable reasons. From indigenous Jews to metropolitans, at the stroke of a pen.
    Israel did the same thing, transforming those Jews made stateless by Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Iraq into Israelis, as an “ingathering of the exiles”.

21. Meanwhile, there was all this talk of “non-violence” and whether Israel would retaliate with force.
    Well, it turns out there was violence, but not from the Israelis. While Helena is praising a failed Hamas rally and mocks the “security bosses” running scared, the Palestinians were once again raining terror down on the residents of Sderot.

22. I mean, among many of the bizarre elements of the French in Algeria was the 1961 reincarnation of the Jews of M’zab as “French”. Exempt from the Decret Crémieux of 1870 by M’zab’s later conquest, they had retained “statut personnel Mosaic”, meaning they were neither Muslim Algerian subjects, nor French citizens, in a word, dhimmis, at a time when Muslim Algerians had the right of immigration to France, they did not. When it became apparent that a Muslim Arab-nationalist Algerian movement was going to deport them as non-Muslim Mozabite non-Algerians, they magically became “French” by decree of the government, despite being stateless and non-Francophone in language. Unlike Tunisian and Moroccan Jews, who were equally non-citizens under those protectorates and who had to turn to Israel for refuge, South Saharan Jews were adopted by a non-Jewish homeland for its own inscrutable reasons. From indigenous Jews to metropolitans, at the stroke of a pen.
    Israel did the same thing, transforming those Jews made stateless by Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Iraq into Israelis, as an “ingathering of the exiles”.

23. “…every day in south Lebanon cluster bombs explode and innocents die because Israel refuses to help humanitarian groups discover and defuse these child killing munitions.”
    On the contrary, Israel deliberately and systematically carpeted southern Lebanon with millions of the deadly things AFTER the cease fire was agreed upon and signed. They clearly did not want to leave off their efforts in Lebanon without giving Lebanese children the gift that keeps on killing.

24. Joshua: To clarify, I don’t have a problem with islamic fundamentalism of the type practised by the shiite Iranian revolution or the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood as I see it as an unavoidable stage in enforced economic modernisation. It took Christianity two or three centuries to make this transition and Islam is only at the start of its “reformation” in historical terms.
    That’s a long winded way of saying I don’t have a problem with Helena’s sentiments, although I do like to challenge her apparent illogicalities from time to time. Further, I don’t agree myself with a preference for a “one Palestinian” state but believe it is a legitimate position to hold and argue from.
    What I don’t get is the dissembling and most of all I don’t get how someone who professes to hold Quaker and pacifist beliefs continually eulogises Hamas and Hizbollah militarism and condones the religious absolutism of the Hamas covenant?
    In the absense of Helena clarifying her beliefs I can only put it down to the Quakers, Dissenters, Pilgrims et als distinguished history as the Calvinist fundamentalist religious vanguards of the protestant reformation who did so much to help create that great reforming protestant capitalist state, the US that gives us so much trouble today!

25. Joshua: To clarify, I don’t have a problem with islamic fundamentalism of the type practised by the shiite Iranian revolution or the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood as I see it as an unavoidable stage in enforced modernisation being imposed from the outside by neutral economic imperatives. It took Christianity two or three centuries to make this transition and Islam is only at the start of its “reformation” in historical terms.
    That’s a long winded way of saying I don’t have a problem with Helena’s sentiments, although I do like to challenge her apparent illogicalities from time to time. Further, I don’t agree myself with a preference for a “one Palestinian” state but believe it is a legitimate position to hold and argue from.
    What I don’t get is the dissembling and most of all I don’t get how someone who professes to hold Quaker and pacifist beliefs continually eulogises Hamas and Hizbollah militarism and condones the religious absolutism of the Hamas covenant?
    In the absense of Helena clarifying her beliefs I can only put it down to the Quakers, Dissenters, Pilgrims et als distinguished history as the Calvinist fundamentalist religious vanguards of the protestant reformation who did so much to help create that great reforming protestant capitalist state, the US that gives us so much trouble today!

26. “those Jews made stateless by Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Iraq”
    I’m sorry, Eurosabra, when did this rmoval of citizenship take place? I know for a fact that Moroccan Jews enjoyed Moroccan citizenship after independence, and that a small Jewish population remains there (many left after the Agadir earthquake in the 1960s rather than in response to political events) as is the case in Tunisia. And that in Iraq the government endeavoured to stop Jews leaving rather than expelling them. And when, incidentally, did the FLN threaten to deport Algerian Jews?

27. “I would submit to any Europeans who regard Israel as a colony that they are implying that the ovens of Auschwitz are the true homeland of the Jews, and “Auf’n Priptschek” the national anthem of Heaven.”–Eurosabra
    That’s just it, as Ahmadinejad is keen on pointing out, this is ultimately a European derived problem. From the perspective of Iranian Jewry, as well as the original position of Orthodox Jewry, the notion of Zionism is contrived as a justification for the mass invasion and occupation of Palestine by displaced Europeans of the Jewish faith. And it was the chief catalyst for Arab Jews leaving their ancestral Arab homelands. Not so in Iran. I know, I’ve been there. Have any of you?

28. From the perspective of Iranian Jewry…
    Mark, are you an Iranian Jew, or an American tourist who (like thousands of others) has visited Iran? I think its a little ambitious for you to speak for ‘Iranian Jewry’ on the basis of a single passport stamp!!! 🙂

29. I agree with Vadim, particularly since the vast majority of Iranian Jews have left Iran.
    I would also ask if Mark is an Orthodox Jew, and exactly which sects of Orthodox Jewry argue as he has.

30. ‘In the event, only a reported 5,000 did’
    According to Ynet, turnout was actually around 20,000. The ‘5,000’ figure only applies to Beit Hanoun.

31. Morocco is the great exception, of course, because it only removed the citizenship of native Jews once they expressed a wish to emigrate, and a remnant community remains, this is mainly a reflection of the strength of the monarchy, and the legitimacy that a continuing presence of “court Jews” retains because of the personal patronage of H.M. The King. Dhimmitude, really, in its classic form, although stripped of its disabilities because Sharia is not the only law.
    Iraq’s government violated the provisions of its own constitution at the time to seize the property of the few Jews who attempted to remain. If that is “trying to persuade them to remain”, it was diligent indeed.
    Mick, so you think that the Palestinians and Algerian Jews left on vacation? Post-1967 rioting drove out the few Algerian Jews who remained, leaving only an aged community of a few hundred. One of the problems with the lack of accountability is that it leaves states tremendous deniability–so I’ll trade you l’exode for al-Nakba. Never happened, right? Actually, the evacuation of the Jewish community of Constantine is a case in point–pressure was applied to them to emigrate in the form of armed attack, causing them to develop a self-defense underground, long before the FLN could influence or threaten any other community. You can read the FLN leaflets threatening rape that were distributed in the mellahs in 1962, if you can find an Algerian Jewish family in France that took them along. So, yes, it was policy, although enacted at the local level and with virtually no paper trail.

32. After reading Helena’s piece and the responses, cannot argue for or against.
    Seems that the loss of lives on a daily basis is forgotten. The ratio is 1:300 is that acceptable ?
    Scoring points is not the issue, this is not hard ball, peoples’ lives is at stake.
    Both sides are victims, the ratio speaks volume in who has the upper hand in solving this issue and how much longer could both sides, more so on the Israeli side, act as victims while in reality they are denying the other to live as equals in the 21st century, in a land that no doubt they both will share for a long time.
    From history we can learn, but reenacting history on a people who had nothing to do with the Holocaust is shameful, to say the least.
    Two thirds of israelis wants a solution with Hamas, I wonder how many of the commentators live inside this painful conflict ? we have nothing to lose and all the time to debate.
    Why are the Jewish people leaders in human rights fights and not so when it comes to the ones that they are first hand responsible for their plight, are they truly a free people in there promised land or a proxy for a foreign power?
    Are they pschysofranic or they will suffer to the end of the victim mentality?
    Israel is the biggest loser in this conflict, Ehud Olmert stated this to his people if a solution is not reached. The israeli society will disintegrate, already there is a big wave of exodus from Israel westward.
    What is the solution ? the blood shed needs to end, it is one thing to flex ones muscle and twist arm as is the case with the israeli lobby in the U.S. it is something else to look in the mirror be truthful and humane.
    Cornering and black labeling is not the solution, it will backlash if not sooner later.
    Let our motto be at once: change and finding solution, Obama and Clinton campaign headers.

33. “in Iraq the government endeavoured to stop Jews leaving rather than expelling them.”
    It was only after years of very heavy pressure from the Zionists that the Iraqi government opened the borders for one year for Jews to emigrate, and one of the conditions of emigration was that they gave up their Iraqi citizenship. This does not seem unreasonable given that it was well understood and acknowledged that they were emigrating in order to become citizens of an enemy state. Other conditions of emigration – specifically the requirement that they turn over their money and property to the State – were, in my view, not at all reasonable or fair, but Jews were not singled out for this. I know many Iraqi Muslims who, for example, have had even their gold jewelry as well as money confiscated at the border when they left. Supposedly they were to get it back if they return within a set period of time, but we all know how that kind of thing goes.
    Iraqi Jews who had their property and money confiscated by the State should certainly be compensated (however, that should in no way be hooked into compensation and reparations for Palestinians, who unlike the emigrating Jews, did not leave their homes willingly to become citizens elsewhere).
    Jews who chose to remain in Iraq were not stripped of their citizenship, and at the moment I cannot think of any Arab country that stripped citizenship from Jews who did not emigrate.

34. There is very important point largely ignored by commentators here.
    The Jews around the world are seduced by many generous offers by State of Israel and its very strong supporters.
    Asking any one of you what you do if you get same offer to go to any country with full support and help even they can prepared for you fake passports and all the document if needed to help to flee you country?
    Please answer this?
    Off course most of the immigrants who are in this discussion if you yourself why you immigrated?
    The answer will be for better life and money, so not just Jews immigrated , any religious, ethnic or colour people will thinks and will immigrate if there is good offer for them to start better life.

35. So, Eurosabra, you accept that your statement that Jews were expelled from Morocco and left stateless is false (does “dhimmitude in its classic form” involve equal citizenship rights and the exercise of parliamentary and governmental membership as has been the case with Moroccan Jews since independence?). I take it by your silence on the matter that you accept you were also wrong about Tunisia. Shirin has dealt with the Iraqi situation.
    Do I think that Palestinians and Algerian Jews left on vacation? No, the Palestinians were driven from their homes by military terror at a mass level, fulfilling a long held Zionist dream of transfer. The vast majority of Algeria’s Jews left before independence, in a movement which was as unplanned and unexpected as the general exodus to Europe. They were fearful for their future in the new state, doubtless, and I would not minimise their suffering, but this is not analogous with the Palestinian situation; they wre not expelled at gunpoint nor were they rendered stateless.
    I was in Constantine last month and it doesn’t have mellahs, it’s a Moroccan word. The key event in motivating the Jewish exodus was undoubtedly the killing of the Jewish singer Cheikh Raymond in Constantine in 1961, but it was not the FLN who carried out this killing but a radical Islamist group. I suspect the same is true of the leaflets of which you speak (have none of them been republished?) In any case, you cannot proclaim that a local initiative not practiced elsewhere is “policy”, and while I realise that logic is not your strong point your view that the absence of evidence constitutes evidence would not hold up in court. Incidentally, the station master at Constantine presented me with a CD of the complete works of Cheikh Raymond, indicative no doubt of the bestial hatred of all things Jewish which lurks within the Algerian heart.

36. Well Mick,
    It is interesting how Shirin has dealt with the Iraqi situation. Knowing many, many former Iraqi Jews, I question how “willingly” most Iraqi Jews left their homes, or how unthreatened they felt about doing so. This is particularly so for those who experienced the Farhud of 1941 and arrests and executions in the late 40s and early 50s. This was a community that pre-dated the Arab conquest and, to this day, has an emotional tie to the land.
    Further, the fact that
    Jews who chose to remain in Iraq were not stripped of their citizenship, and at the moment I cannot think of any Arab country that stripped citizenship from Jews who did not emigrate.
    exactly parallels the status of Arabs who chose to stay in Israel.
    I would also question your statement that
    No, the Palestinians were driven from their homes by military terror at a mass level, fulfilling a long held Zionist dream of transfer.
    This is on two counts. Very few would argue (and those who do would be hard put to prove) that all the Palestinians who fled did so as a direct result of Jewish actions. Moreover, the blanket generaliztion that transfer was a “long held Zionist dream” fulfilled by the flight of those Arabs, is simply unfounded in fact.
    BTW, I think that mellah is not a Moroccan word. I believe that it comes from the Ottoman term millet. Further, historically there was never a contradiction between the terms of dhimmitude and holding high office.

37. JES,
    I, too, know and have known many Iraqi and “former” Iraqi Jews. One difference between you and me, of course, is that a significant proportion of the Iraqi Jews I have known were those who chose to stay in Iraq. Some of them were friends of ours in Iraq. I also know a number of “former” Iraqi Jews, some of whom are living in Israel, including Israel-born, more of whom found they did not want to remain in Israel and who left there for Europe, or the United States. One interesting thing among all of them is the degree to which even the second and third generation “former” Iraqi Jews feel strong ties and a strong pull to Iraq.
    The issue is not whether Iraqi Jews felt threatened or unthreatened. Of course they felt threatened, and if they didn’t feel threatened by their fellow Iraqis, the Zionist underground made certain they felt good and threatened, including by killing a number of them. It is questionable given the pattern ofOf course, you know that since it has been well-publicized and admitted to in Israel by at least some of the perpetrators of those atrocities.
    Your apparent attempt to equate the situation of Palestinians with the situation of the Arab Jews is insulting, and nothing short of absurd, and does not deserve further comment.

38. There is a very interesting documentary about three “former” Iraqi Jews living in Israel. It is called “Forget Baghdad”. I recommend it. It was made by an Iraqi whose father was a Communist in Iraq. Much of the membership of the Iraqi Communist party was Jewish (in fact, many of the government actions against “Jews” were not against Jews at all, but against Communists who happened to be Jews, but that is another subject), and his father used to reminisce and wonder about his Jewish former comrades who had left for Israel. So, he decides to try to locate them. He fails to locate his father’s former comrades, but he does end up with a very good and interesting film centered on three “former” Iraqi Jews in Israel.
    I first saw this film at the Arab Film Festival a number of years ago, and I have since obtained a copy of my own. Netflix has it now, I believe. For anyone who is interested in the subject, it is worth seeing. (I have sent a copy of it to a friend of mine in Israel who is a first-generation Israel-born Iraqi Jew, and who has promised to send me home-made Iraqi sweets from his mother in return.)

39. …and if they didn’t feel threatened by their fellow Iraqis, the Zionist underground made certain they felt good and threatened, including by killing a number of them.
    Repeating unsubstantiated charges does not turn them into evidence. At any rate, the Farhud was certainly not a Zionist plot, nor were the arrests, torture, imprisonment and public executions from the late 40s throught the early 70s – all based on trumped-up charges agains Iraqi Jews.
    The attempt to equate the situation of Palestinians with the situation of the Arab Jews is insulting, and nothing short of absurd, and does not deserve further comment.
    I agree, Arab Jews who chose to stay in their native countries generally were the recipients of much worse treatment and enjoyed far fewer rights than do Palestinian Arabs who chose to stay in Israel.

40. Here is an interesting summary of historian Moshe Gat’s investigation quoted on Wikipedia:
    Historian Moshe Gat argues that there was little direct connection between the bombings and exodus. He demonstrates that the frantic and massive Jewish registration for denaturalisation and departure was driven by knowledge that the denaturalisation law was due to expire in March 1951. He also notes the influence of further pressures including the property-freezing law, and continued anti-Jewish disturbances which raised the fear of large-scale pogroms. In addition, it is highly unlikely the Israelis would have taken such measures to accelerate the Jewish evacuation given that they were already struggling to cope with the existing level of Jewish immigration. Gat also raises serious doubts about the guilt of the alleged Jewish bombthrowers. Firstly, a Christian officer in the Iraqi army known for his anti-Jewish views, was arrested, but apparently not charged, with the offences. A number of explosive devices similar to those used in the attack on the Jewish synagogue were found in his home. In addition, there was a long history of anti-Jewish bomb-throwing incidents in Iraq. Secondly, the prosecution was not able to produce even one eyewitness who had seen the bombs thrown. Thirdly, the Jewish defendant Shalom Salah indicated in court that he had been severely tortured in order to procure a confession. It therefore remains an open question as to who was responsible for the bombings, although Gat suggests that the most likely perpetrators were members of the anti-Jewish Istiqlal Party. Certainly memories and interpretations of the events have further been influenced and distorted by the unfortunate discrimination which many Iraqi Jews experienced on their arrival in Israel.

41. “Further, historically there was never a contradiction between the terms of dhimmitude and holding high office”.
    There is however a contradiction between the terms of dhimmitude and having full and equal citizenship of a state, as was the case with Moroccan Jews after independence.

42. Yes, JES, I know what Moshe Gatt says. Not everyone agrees with him, and as I recall, he does not offer an explanation as to why the overwhelming majority of them waited until the last minute, and suddenly started flooding the registration office AFTER the bombings began. Seems like a bit of a coincidence.

43. LOL! As soon as someone dredges up the archaic dhimmi thing, you know they are getting their information from anti-Islamic sources. You also know that they do not really understand what the concept of dhimmi was (get that? it’s WAS, not IS).

44. worse treatment and enjoyed far fewer rights
    JES this provocative statement, you either dishonest in this or simply ruthless by saying that.
    As far as I know as I worked in university in Iraq and also my sister graduates from university this is early seventies, there are Jews friends and student they got same treatment and free educations exactly what all Iraqi had.
    

45. JES, no one has even mentioned the Farhud, let alone suggested that it was a “Zionist plot”, so I am not sure why you are bringing it up in this way, except defensiveness. The Farhud,in any case, occurred about a decade prior to the Jewish exodus, and was not necessarily a major factor.
    We can discuss the Farhud and its aftermath in some detail if you like. It was a very particular and terrible thing on the part of a very specific and limited group of people, that happened at a particular time for a particular reason that had nothing to do with any generalized hostility toward Jews. On the contrary, as I am sure you know, a number of Muslim and Christian Iraqis were killed while trying to protect their Jewish neighbors and colleagues.
    As for the “unsubstantiated charges”, there must surely be a good reason that the majority of Iraqi Jews believe that the Zionist underground was behind the bombings and other actions that immediately preceded the stampede to register for emigration. Further, some of the perpetrators have not only confessed, they said why they did it. One of their reasons, according to them, was to convince the Israeli government that the situation for Iraqi Jews was dire and they were in desperate need of “rescue”.

46. *Jews were not intimidated into leaving Egypt, Iraq and other Arab countries post 1948.
    *The Six Day War in 1967 was provoked by Israel so that it could occupy Arab land.
    *There was no terrorism directed against Israel before the 1967 “occupation”.
    *Iran and Hizbollah had nothing to do with the mass murder of Jews in the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires.
    *Jews were warned by the Mossad to stay home from work on 9/11.
    *The Holocaust never happened.
    Did I forget anything?

47. “Did I forget anything?”
    Well if you’re compiling a list of stupid assertions that have not been made by anybdy on this thread or anywhere else at Helena’s site that list could theoretically go on forever, so knock yourself out. You obviously have a lot of time on you hands.

48. Well, soft mick, they are in full red herring mode now, aren’t they! They’re just throwing ’em out there right and left, in front, and behind.

49. it was a very particular and terrible thing on the part of a very specific and limited group of people, that happened at a particular time for a particular reason
    YES its right, in 1991 in southern Iraq the looting was massive then the government stand and punished those criminals.
    In 2003 Oh Yah no security no military forces all the world which the freedom as Rumsfiled like to label it massive looting in Baghdad all most every thing.
    JES even the looting went so far to the historical bricks from Babylon site were loaded in trucks for Babylon historical site was travelled west Iraq toward Jordanian borders?
    Did they pass to Israel, so you got bricks 5000 years old for the bases of the temple that Nabukhathnosa’ar II destroyed?

50. Shirin, nee’ Sherry, is correct in one regard, the situation of the Jews of Iraq and the Arabs of Palestine are not equivalent.
    Many Arabs of Palestine lost their homes and property during a war that they and their supporters declared and lost.
    The Jews of Iraq lost their homes and property even though they played no aggressor role whatsoever. Their losses were due to pure Iraqi Arab bigotry and hatred.
    I remember the old Sherry/Shirin, who at least acknowledged that the Iraqi government was incredibly unfair and racist toward its Jewish population (though even then she would try to greatly exaggerate the effect of the Zionist underground’s sabotage). Now she has deteriorated into a dishonest heap of vitriol and hate. How sad.

51. “Further, some of the perpetrators have not only confessed, they said why they did it.”
    so Shirin, you’re saying that confessions under torture are admissible as long as it’s only Zionists being tortured?

52. Ah, Mick, so you are perfectly aware of how diligent the Algerians have been at keeping Gaston Ghrenassia off of his home turf, as well as his stage name, and probably of how diligently Ghrenassia has pursued cultural reunion nights with the descendants of the Cheik who trained Cheik Raymond. As far as I am concerned, the exodus of Algerian Jews was a blessing in disguise, as it did not leave them there to be slaughtered by the FIS and the GIA. Islam in Algeria is truly the gift that keeps on giving. I’m surprised you didn’t mention that the Constantine underground was supported by Israel, leaving them all as crypto-Mossadniks. The fact is that Jews from Maghribi Arab lands were always lesser citizens, always discriminated against, and the oh-so-convenient-for-their-oppressors departure of Maghribi Jews without any recourse means that Maghribi Jews in Israel in general have no interest in playing Ghrenassia’s masochistic game of attempted reconciliation, his meetings with Arafat, etc. I can only be astonished and thankful that he has not met the fate of Jacques Roseau, but Algerian Jews were always betwixt-and-between, with “too many enemies” to borrow Sayigh’s phrase.

53. “so Shirin, you’re saying that confessions under torture are admissible as long as it’s only Zionists being tortured?”
    They were TORTURED into admitting they were responsible for the bombings and other terrorist actions against Iraqi Jews?! Wow, Whiz! This is quite a big revelation! We all know that Israel tortures Palestinians, and we know Israel tortures Lebanese, but who knew that Israel tortured it’s very own Jewish citizens!
    Have you notified the press about this?!

54. I think JES is adamant to argue for the sake of arguing.
    Now, tell me why is the majority of Syrian Jews, who left Syria, reluctantly, did not migrate to Israel but to New York, where they have a big Syrian Jewish ghetto, a very close knit were outside marriage, even to a Jewish person is considered an outcast.
    Since Tuesday more than 30 Palestinians were killed, a third of those murdered were children, the youngest was 1 year old. Are these innocent children murdered by pure Israeli and Jewish bigotry ?
    You audacity and bigotry towards Arabs is undermining your raison d’etre.

55. There is however a contradiction between the terms of dhimmitude and having full and equal citizenship of a state, as was the case with Moroccan Jews after independence.
    Right mick. Now that you’ve made an irrelevant response to my more tangential argument, perhaps you’d like to support your sweeping generalizations about transfer?

56. Yes, JES, I know what Moshe Gatt says. Not everyone agrees with him, and as I recall, he does not offer an explanation as to why the overwhelming majority of them waited until the last minute, and suddenly started flooding the registration office AFTER the bombings began. Seems like a bit of a coincidence.
    Yes, Shirin, not everyone agrees with him. However, he happens to be the one who actually carried out an extensive investigation of the event. I also think that he provides reasonable explanations as to why they registered when they did.

57. Sure, he provides reasonable explanations. The trouble is that there are other equally or even more reasonable explanations that cannot really be dismissed. One DOES have to wonder why the vast majority waited to begin registering until AFTER the bombings began, and why there was a major upsurge in registrations right at that point, doesn’t one?

58. PS Moshe Gatt is not the only one who has carried out an extensive investigation.

59. …no one has even mentioned the Farhud, let alone suggested that it was a “Zionist plot”, so I am not sure why you are bringing it up in this way…
    Because, Shirin, it was the Farhud that turned many of the young Jews in Iraq into Zionists. Also, the Farhud marked the begining of a deterioration in the position and security of Iraqi Jews after the post-WWI improvemnts in their lives. It was following the Farhud, for example, that Jewish families began adopting Arabic family names to protect their businesses, and most important, their children in school. Further, the Farhud was no an isolated incident, and it is irrational, if not dishonest, to discuss the exodus of Iraqi Jews without discussing it.
    As for the “unsubstantiated charges”, there must surely be a good reason that the majority of Iraqi Jews believe that the Zionist underground was behind the bombings…
    First, there is no evidence that “the majority” – or even a substantial number – believe, or even entertain, the idea. Secondly, and more important, this is no argument you have given.
    I think that the issue of the “confessions” has been dealt with by Gat.

60. One DOES have to wonder why the vast majority waited to begin registering until AFTER the bombings began, and why there was a major upsurge in registrations right at that point, doesn’t one?
    No one is arguing, Shirin, that there wasn’t a connection between the bombings and the registration. Further, it is not surprising that people waited until the last minute. So did the majority of European Jews; only in most cases, the “last minute” came too late.
    Just because they waited until the last minute and then were spurred to flee by a series of bombings does not mean that the Zionists bombed their own people!

61. As you like, JES.

62. WP,
    Because a destination other than Israel is one of the Alawite regime’s conditions for allowing Syrian Jews to leave.

63. They were TORTURED into admitting they were responsible for the bombings and other terrorist actions against Iraqi Jews?! …who knew that Israel tortured it’s very own Jewish citizens!
    Who confessed Shirin? Who confessed and when? The confessions used to convict and execute Shalom Shalom and Yosef Basri were extracted by torture in Iraq.

64. Sorry, I should not have used the word confessed. That gave the wrong impression, though it certainly was criminal, whoever did it. I should have said they admitted to it. There was quite a series on it thirty or forty years ago in one of the major Israeli papers – I think Maariv, but I could be remembering that part wrong. They said they did it not so much to terrorize Iraqi Jews into registering as to convince the Israeli government that Iraqi Jews’ situation was dire and urgent.

65. Eurosabra,
    Yes, that is correct about Syrian Jewish immigration to Israel. However, where “world peace” is way off the mark is concerning the “ghetto” in New York. Most of the Syrian Jews who emigrated to New York (who were, by the way, for the most part Spharadim) did so during Ottoman times and after WWI. In other words, they have already been in the US for generations.
    I guess, if what “world peace” says about “intermarriage” is true, that Jerry Seinfeld is an outcast!

66. I should have said they admitted to it. There was quite a series on it thirty or forty years ago in one of the major Israeli papers – I think Maariv, but I could be remembering that part wrong. They said they did it not so much to terrorize Iraqi Jews into registering as to convince the Israeli government that Iraqi Jews’ situation was dire and urgent.
    Shirin, I didn’t know that you read Hebrew newspapers.
    Who admitted it? What did they admit to?
    As far as I know, one person “admitted” that a second person had set of a bomb after the synagogue bombing in an effort to get those who had been arrested and tortured into confession release.
    BTW, in response to the newspaper series there was also a law suit against the journalist who authored it.

67. “Because a destination other than Israel is one of the Alawite regime’s conditions for allowing Syrian Jews to leave.”
    So what?
    Even if that is true, what would prevent a Syrian Jew from first going to a third country (say, the US) and then moving on to Israel, if that was what they wished? The fact is, the vast majority of Jews who have gone to Israel have done so because they had little or no choice. This was true for the European Jews after World War ll, and it was true for the Soviet Jews who made up what is very likely the last major wave of Jewish immigration to Israel.

68. Oh! A law suit! Well that proves beyond a doubt it was false, now, doesn’t it?

69. Murphy,
    “Accidents” like Ghazi Kanaan’s happening to relatives who remain in Syria? The regime doesn’t let people leave all at once, for precisely that reason. And, really, the Jews who went to Israel went because the non-Jews in their previous location decided NOT TO LET THEM STAY and non-Jews in other places that might have been a refuge decided NOT TO LET THEM COME. Ex-Soviet Jews had a choice of destinations, including the US, pre-’92, the BRD for Jews admitted to the DDR or leaving post-’92, and Israel.

70. Again Shirin, who “admitted” or “confessed” that the bombings in question (particularly that of the Masud Shemtov synagogue), and what proof do you have?
    Further, you assertion about the timing of the mass applications for exit are, simply, false. Here is what appears in Wikipedia:
    From the start of the emigration law in March 1950 until the end of the year, 60,000 Jews registered to leave Iraq. In addition to continuing arrests and the dismissal of Jews from their jobs, this exodus was encouraged by a series of bombings starting in April 1950 that resulted in a number of injuries and a few deaths. Two months before the expiry of the law, by which time about 85,000 Jews had registered, another bomb at the Masuda Shemtov synagogue killed 3 or 5 Jews and injured many others.
    In other words, over 70% of the 120,000 Jews who would be airlifted out of Iraq – some 85,000 – had already registered to leave before the bombing campaign which you claim inspired the mass exodus. (And this doesn’t account for the hundreds who had “illegally” fled prior to the airlift.) Additionally, I don’t believe that it was Zionists who dismissed Iraqi Jews from their jobs or arrested and tortured them.
    Really, Shirin, either you should substantiate your claims or reconcile yourself to the reality that, from the early 1940s on, the life of Jews in Iraq was plagued by pogroms and other horrors.

71. And Murphy, my response to you would be: So What?
    Even if what you argue is accurate(which I don’t believe it is) what exactly does it prove? The issue is what caused them to leave in the first place; not who was willing to let them in. That (second) issue is precisely why there is a State of Israel. I think that Eurosabra has made that point to you quite clearly.

72. “Right mick. Now that you’ve made an irrelevant response to my more tangential argument, perhaps you’d like to support your sweeping generalizations about transfer?”
    I was responding to the issue at hand, Eurosabra’s inaccurate statemens about Moroccan Jews. I am not obliged to address your tangents, or rehash hoary old debates about transfer about which you have in any case long made up your mind. This is a free country, I am a busy person and I am under no compulsion to accompany superannuated Zionist bores on their woolgathering expeditions.

73. Eurosabra,
    as regards Macias, the position was that he would be welcome in Algeria as a private citizen or in order to give concerts but not as a member of a French governmental delegation, given his pro-OAS and pro-Sharon record and his history of writing less than conciliatory articles about Algeria and Algerians.
    You seem to have given up on defending your statements that Jews were forcibly deported from Morocco and Tunisia, and faced deportation from Algeria, so I won’t pursue it any further.
    While the history of North African Jewry is richer and more variegated than your ethnocentric tunnel vision could register, I don’t deny that generally Jews enjoyed a lower social, economic and political status than the general population. You might wish to speculate on why this also seems to be the case with the North African population in Israel.

74. Well, this Zionist may be “superannuated”, but he is able to discern a fact: “soft mick” is long on rhetoric but short on facts. In other words, mick is a demagogue.
    Sure it’s a free country, and those of us who are no less busy than you don’t have to accept everything that you assert without proof.
    At any rate, I will take your strident and insulting response as a further indication that you just don’t know what you’re talking about.

75. from the early 1940s on, the life of Jews in Iraq was plagued by pogroms and other horrors.
    

    In September 1949, Israel sent the spy Mordechai Ben-Porat, the one mentioned in Venom of the Zionist Viper, to Iraq. One of the first things Ben-Porat did was to approach el-Said and promise him financial incentives to have a law enacted that would lift the citizenship of Iraqi Jews.

    
    

    Soon after, Zionist and Iraqi representatives began formulating a rough draft of the bill, according to the model dictated by Israel through its agents in Baghdad. The bill was passed by the Iraqi parliament in March 1950. It empowered the government to issue one-time exit visas to Jews wishing to leave the country. In March, the bombings began.

    
    

    Sixteen years later, the Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh, published by Uri Avnery, then a Knesset member, accused Ben-Porat of the Baghdad bombings. Ben-Porat, who would become a Knesset member himself, denied the charge, but never sued the magazine for libel. And Iraqi Jews in Israel still call him Morad Abu al-Knabel, Mordechai of the Bombs

76. JES,
    apologies for being insulting, but I repeat I have no wish to pick over a 60 year old debate in which you are fully aware of the arguments and have already made your mind up on the basis of communal loyalties – it is of no interest to me.

77. Ben-Porat did sue. Ha’Olam Hazeh settled out of court.

78. Here is the famous “admission”, as reported by Tom Segev:
    Compared to the terror currently raging in Baghdad, the 1951 bombing barely rates a footnote, but in the history of immigration to Israel, it still has significance, some of it political – because the bombing at the synagogue fueled a whole host of rumors and accusations. Some claimed that it was carried out by Mossad agents, with the objective of frightening the Jews and encouraging them to move to Israel. This claim is also accepted by several Mizrahi scholars and activists, and is sometimes cited as one of the arguments against Zionism.
    The rumor particularly haunted former minister Mordechai Ben-Porat, the Mossad’s man in Baghdad: Ben-Porat even sued for slander, and won an apology. In the Haganah archives, correspondence between Mossad agents in Baghdad and their handlers in Tel Aviv is preserved, and includes their reports on the synagogue bombing. The impression that arises from the exchange of telegrams is that the Mossad agents in Baghdad and their superiors in Tel Aviv did not know who was responsible for the attack.
    Nonetheless, the issue has remained a mystery – for one thing because the state continues to conceal information related to the episode. I am referring to information David Ben-Gurion wrote in his journal on October 10, 1960. On that day, nearly 10 years after the incident, the prime minister received a detailed report about it from Isser Harel, then head of the Shin Bet. A few lines of what Ben-Gurion wrote are classified. Some time after Harel reported on the incident to Ben-Gurion, the Mossad established a commission of inquiry that “did not find any factual proof that the bombs were hurled by any Jewish organization or individual.” The commission’s conclusions were made public in a book written by Ben-Porat.
    Now, a recent publication is shedding new light on the mystery. The revelations come from Yehuda Tager, an Israeli agent who operated in Baghdad, was exposed and spent about 10 years in prison there. According to Tager, the bombing of the Masuda Shemtov synagogue was not carried out by Israelis, but by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, at least one activist from the Zionist underground, Yosef Beit-Halahmi, did apparently carry out several terror attacks after the arrest of his comrades, in the hope of proving to the Iraqi authorities that the detainees were not involved in these actions. This is the first time someone involved in the episode is confirming that members of the Zionist underground did commit bombings in Baghdad.
    The interview with Tager, now 83, appears in a new book by the British journalist Arthur Neslen, titled “Occupied Minds.” Tager quoted a conversation he had with Beit-Halahmi’s widow: “She said she had asked him (if he had thrown the bombs) and he had replied that if a bomb was thrown while we were in prison, it would have proved that it was not us who bombed the Masuda Shemtov. She implied that he, on his own initiative, without orders from Israel, did it in order to save us.”
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=703367
    I believe the legal term for this is “hearsay”.

79. JES,
    Did he sue Iraqi Jews in Israel still call him Morad Abu al-Knabel, Mordechai of the Bombs
    Check with your friends Iraqi Jew will tell you the truth.

80. BTW JES, why you think Tom Segev telling the truth while you dismissed all the references put here.
    What make this your reference more truthful than others references?

81. Salah,
    I don’t see that other references were posted here. What I have seen are a series of, largely unsupported, assertions.
    Segev is reporting on an actual account of one of the players and of the widow of another. Further, Tom Segev is generally regarded as being associated with the “new historians”. He does not tend to be supportive of the traditional Zionist “narrative”.
    I have “checked” with the many Iraqi Jews that I know. Their accounts are largely centered on the behavior of non-Jewish Iraqis and their lost property and posessions. Others, whom I have known, were either directly or indirectly effected by the arrests and tortures carried out, based on trumped-up charges, as late as 1969. These were first-had reports.
    If you want to see a more balanced and rational account, then you might want to look at the following:
    http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~ajds/mendes_refugees.htm
    I believe that this is a good summary and analysis of what is known and considered to be substantiated fact.

82. “Ex-Soviet Jews had a choice of destinations, including the US, pre-’92, the BRD for Jews admitted to the DDR or leaving post-’92, and Israel.”
    As I’m sure you know, the main influx of Soviet Jews (not to mention “Jews”) into Israel was after the fall of the USSR. It was, and is, extremely difficult for former Soviet citizens to get visas for any Western nation. Hence Israel was their only option if they wanted to escape the chaos and poverty of the ex-USSR. Now that conditions have improved in Russia, large numbers of these “Jews” have returned.
    “That (second) issue is precisely why there is a State of Israel.”
    Yes, I suppose it is the fate of tiny Palestine to absorb the refugees of WWll that the US did not want, and the economic migrants of the USSR that Europe does not want. Should we create another country on someone else’s land to absorb the Iraqi refugees the US refuses to take?

83. Murphy,
    You are in error on several counts. First of all it was always possible for these Jews to get visas to other countries.
    Prior to the late 80s, it was actually quite easy for Soviet Jews to get visas to the US, under refugee status. This policy was only changed in the late 80s when Israel (quite rightly) pointed out that many of these refugees had been let out under Helsinki and with Israeli support and that, further, they took the place of those who genuinely had struggled to get out to come to Israel.
    For the last ten years, or so, it has in fact been extremely easy for these Jews to get entry visas into Germany, as well as financial benefits that exceed those provided by Israel.
    You also claim that large numbers of these “Jews” (not sure what the quotes are for) have gone back to Russia. I don’t know what you call “large numbers”, but this is simply not the case by most reasonable measures. I certainly believe that it is less than the 25% return rate of immigrants to the US to their countries of origin at the start of the 20th century. Further, many of those who do go back for economic reasons fully consider themselves to be Israeli now, and there is a thriving community of Israeli-Russian expats in Moscow and St. Petersberg today.
    So I really don’t know what your point is.

84. Macias and Zehava Ben are both interesting cases, given their continual insistence on rapprochement and their continual rejection by the North African Arab music world. Macias might have known that only the “suitcase carriers” and their ilk would be pure enough for the FLN. As for the contention that Jews were deported, what we have here is a nebulous situation in which the state “smoothed over by helping to leave those who had to leave” (to use Michael Walzer’s term.) So no Palestinians were deported by the State of Israel, after all, either–there were no exit stamps, after all. Moreover, the specifically Maghribi element is lost, and the hardening of lines means that the last Israeli politicos who might be susceptible to some claims of Maghribi solidarity etc. are dying off. Under different conditions, they might have traveled the same route as Edmond El-Maleh and Andre Azoulay. Amir Peretz is the future of the Maghribi community in Israel, and in this generation, Albert Suissa’s meditation on “the ten steps that separated the mellah from the casbah, and the Muslim boy he [Suissa] might have been” is only intelligible because it is in Hebrew.

85. look Eurosabra, postmodernism is a wonderful thing, and perhaps you contradict yourself because you are large and contain multitudes, but your cavalier disregard for consistency in argument is annoying to those of us who remain in the reality-based community.
    “what we have here is a nebulous situation in which the state “smoothed over by helping to leave those who had to leave””
    What we have where? The Algerian state did not exist when the vast majority of Jews left so it did not smooth over anything. And your complaint about Morocco concerns the fact that Jews who emigrated were sanctioned – the state was trying to stop them leaving. Ditto for Iraq.

86. Mick,
    So you are saying that the GPRA did not exist? Fascinating. I suppose that gets Israel equally off the hook for all the Palestinians who left before May 14, ’48, or before Israel took military control of the Galilee in October ’48, or all flight from the Negev before Israel took control at the end of January ’49. The fact is that the FLN had the opportunity to “adopt” native Jews as Algerians and they pushed through the constitution of a Muslim millet, for better or worse, and the other countries of the Arab world emptied of their Jews at independence, for the most part, likewise. That in a time when the French were correcting the dhimmi status of Saharan Jews by making them French, to give them SOME citizenship. And Israeli Maghribis are the second-generation heirs of this dispossession, and someone like Albert Suissa (who makes the best Shakshuka in Rehavia, BTW), who is nostalgic for the ambiguity of Moroccan Jewish identity precisely because “ten steps” separated him from the Muslims, is remembered in Israel mainly for writing a novel containing the masturbatory fantasies of coprophiliac street thugs.
    The Jewish Maghrib is over, really, and the vast majority, several hundreds of thousands, are Israelis now, and this transformation was accomplished at the behest of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, all of whom make it plain that there is no undoing and no return. And all of that compounds the difficulty faced by the VERY real nostalgic component of Israeli maghribi culture, people like Suissa (who depicts the temptations of apostasy from Judaism), Erez Bitton, radicals who really would go back and would have some leverage on their communities, both Mahribi Muslim and Israeli-Jewish, if the initial expulsion weren’t so obsessively denied.

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