Erensia Sefardi - number 32 - Spring 2003

L'Exode oublié
By Moïse Rahmani
Paris, Editions Raphael, 2003 ? 438 p.

It's about time ! That was my first reaction when my friend Moïse send me his latest book written in French, about the Jewish refugees from the Arab world.
It's about time someone told the world that story; it's about time that the fate of the million Jewish refugees, - by now with their descendants over five million -, confronted the conscience of every freedom loving person. It's about time that the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Arabs on a peaceful Jewish population make front page news. It's about time that the cruel arrogant behavior and intransigence of the Arabs was fully documented and that the world finally learned the truth about the events in the Middle East. It's about time that the Arab despots and dictators, and their followers and supporters in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa know the truth about their behavior. It's about time that the bleeding heart media which has crucified the Jews for everything that goes wrong in the world woke up to the reality that they have been lied to and bought by Arab money to spew their false propaganda.
Moïse Rahmani allows us to remember in his book that one million Jews were forced out of the Arab world, from countries that had a jewish population before the Arab colonialist invasion overcame those areas, and with its usual cruelty and intransigence destroyed or assimilated the native inhabitants.
Whether the Berbers in Morocco, the Kabyles and the Tuaregs in Algeria, the Copts in Egypt, the African animist tribes in the Sudan, the Jews in the Holy Land and in the Jewish kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula or the many Christian communities in the Levant and Mesopotamia, all the native cultures were obliterated by the Arab invaders and the settlers they brought to those lands.
Moïse Rahmani covers the entire spectrum of the Jewish agony in the Arab countries, from Morocco to Iraq and from Syria to Yemen. Except for Morocco, all those countries, at one time or another were connected with the Ottoman Empire which brought more freedom to the non-Moslem inhabitants, especially to the Jews, than they were accustomed to under their Arab overseers.
The closer to the center of power in Istanbul, the more freedom the Jews had; the father away they were from the umbrella of the Sultans, the more they suffered the oppression of the Arab inhabitants, such as in Yemen, Tripolitania or Cyrenaica.
Most of the Jews Moïse Rahmani describes in his book are Mizrahim, Arabic or Berber speakers, many having lived in the area for centuries before the Arab invasion.
Many, also, such as the Berbers and the Kabyles, belonged to native tribes that had been converted by Jewish missionaries, and that put up a glorious fight against the invading Arab armies. One of them, the queen of a Jewish Kabyle tribe, called the Kahena, is still glorified in the native lore.
A small percentage of those Jews which Moïse described are Sephardis, centered especially in Alexandria, Tunis, Oran, Tetuan and Tangiers. They too, after the Ottoman retreat, suffered from all the indignities heaped upon the Mizrahim and the Karaites. Country by country, Moïse gives us a vivid description of the suffering of the Jews in the Arab world, from the pogroms in Constantine, Algeria, in Cyrenaica, in Aden, the last two under the benevolent eyes of the British, to the hangings in Baghdad, the synagogue bombings in Cairo and the toture chambers in Damascus.
There was not one area of the Arab world, in which the Jews, - Sephardim, Mizrahim and Karaites -, did not suffer from the indignities imposed on them by a fanatical, intransigent and blood thirsty population and government.
Eye witness accounts attached to some of the chapters add a living testament to the historical narrative presented by Moïse Rahmani in this superb and timely book on the Jewish refugees and their descendants from the Arab world.
When we read some of those heart wrenching testimonials, we cannot but ask ourselves why the world did not react and save the Jews from the Arab clutches. Where was the United Nations? Where was the United Nations Refugee Organization? Where were all those bleeding heart so called humanitarian groups that champion the Palestinian terrorist? Why did they not come to the Arab world to defend the Jews? Where was the United Nations Security Council? Why were Washington, Paris, London, Rome, Madrid, Moscow, Peking, all eager to turn a blind eye when the Jewish refugees from Arab lands were being massacred and expelled?
Moïse Rahmani clearly shows us that when it comes to Jewish blood and to Jewish refugees, the world is reluctant to acknowledge that anything ever occurred.
What a difference from its reaction when so-called Arab refugees are involved!
This is a must book for any freedom loving person and a book that should help the descendants of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands to obtain justice and their deserved compensation. We highly recommend it.

Albert deVidas