Regina Waldman and her family hid inside their Tripoli home while a kind neighbor convinced an angry mob that no Jews were inside. Then, when they were finally allowed to leave the country on the condition of surrendering their possessions and money to the government, the family boarded a bus to the airport, but they weren’t safe, yet. The bus driver attempted to set it ablaze with the family inside, and they were again rescued, this time by British soldiers.
“My story is only one out of close to one million people who were expelled from nine Arab countries,â€? Waldman told Professor Dona Nichols’ Diversity in the Media class on October 11th. The “grossly distorted viewâ€? that only one group of refugees — Palestinians — exist in the Middle East is something Waldman said she is fighting to correct.
She calls the thousands like her, expelled from Arab countries, the “forgotten refugees.�
“We don’t want our heritage, which is 3,000 years old, which is rich, to be forgotten,� Waldman said.
Waldman is part of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, a group that dedicated itself to telling these untold tales.
Before Waldman spoke, students watched The Forgotten Refugees, a video produced by The David Project in which Mizrahim, or Eastern Jews, showed the now-deserted synagogues and Jewish quarters of cities like Tripoli and Cairo. When Muslim rule dominated the Arab lands, the video said, the Jews and Christians were called dhimmi and given an inferior status in society, denied basic rights and made to pay special taxes in order to stay alive. Houses of Jews and synagogues were restricted in height so they didn’t tower over Muslim homes or mosques, and they were often chased and taunted in the streets, according to the video.
It continued, asserting that Arab nationalism at the time fueled anti-Semitic sentiment, which was heightened by the rise of the Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini.
“Kill the Jews wherever you find them,� the mufti commanded on the radio in 1944, adding “this pleases God, history, and religion.�
Libyan Muslims took heed to the mufti’s words, and in 1945, a riot in Tripoli and the countryside resulted in the deaths of 135 Jews and the desecration of nine synagogues.
Jews who had once been thriving members of society and even government members in some countries were categorized as “enemies of the state� and stripped of possessions and assets. Jews started to leave Arab lands in masses. In Baghdad in 1969, Saddam Hussein sent a chilling message to the world by publicly hanging nine Jews, in an event attended by a half-million onlookers.
Back in Tripoli, Waldman spoke of being denied basic human rights such as citizenship, the freedom to travel, and freedom to communicate with relatives in other cities. Finally, her family joined many others in leaving their homes and businesses behind to head for relative safety. She had learned “what it meant to live as an oppressed person in my own society.�
Waldman told the class that she hopes the rich history of the Jews in the Middle East isn’t learned through its “warped” presentation in the media and in textbooks. She expressed hope that the world will come to understand that nearly half of the population of Israel is Mizrahi, and that Middle Eastern and North African Jews are allowed to stay in their indigenous countries, along with other minority groups such as Christians.
“Sadly, these communities are slowly becoming extinct as a result of this intolerance,�
Waldman said.