The Honest Take

THT Henry Green X Audio.txt
English (US)

00:00:00.000 — 00:00:18.240 · Speaker 1
Libya in 1948 had 38,000 Jews. Today there are zero. Iraq 150,000 Jews in 19483. Today. So it's a very, very sad comment about what I call the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab world.

00:00:20.400 — 00:00:41.320 · Speaker 2
Welcome to the honest. Take the show that goes past the headlines to find out what's actually true about Israel and the people covering it. I'm Ben Chertoff. You've heard the word Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. But there's a second exodus from the same moment in history that almost no one talks about.

00:00:43.240 — 00:01:40.430 · Speaker 2
In 2009, a professor in Miami went looking through Steven Spielberg's archive of Holocaust testimonies 52,000 interviews. He found fewer than 100 from Jews of the Arab world, a whole civilization. The Talmud was written in Babylon, the Zohar in Moorish Spain, and the last witnesses were going silent.

So he started recording hundreds of interviews covering the far HUD in Baghdad, Operation Magic Carpet out of Yemen, Ezra and Nehemiah out of Iraq, families who rented their home to a king and left with nothing. He calls it Sephardi voices, and he argues that you cannot honestly talk about one refugee story of 1948 without telling the other.

He's testified before Congress. He's taken the case to the United Nations, and his latest book puts a number on what was lost. Doctor Henry Green. Welcome to the honest take.

00:01:40.470 — 00:01:42.230 · Speaker 1
Thank you for inviting me.

00:01:42.710 — 00:02:06.230 · Speaker 2
So you grew up in Ashkenazi kid in Ottawa. And by your own admission, you and I'm quoting new close to nothing about Sephardic Jews. Then you land in Israel in the early 1970s, in the middle of the Black Panther protests. What? What did you walk into and what cracked open when you got there?

00:02:06.270 — 00:03:01.540 · Speaker 1
So I go to Israel to study my, uh, I do a master's in sociology, and, um, I really am totally ignorant of the Safadi, but there's a Black Panther protest movement, and and, um, I think I'm supporting civil rights. And I go to the protest movement, and it's about second generation Sephardi Moroccans in particular, um, saying they've been discriminated in Israel.

So first, I'm surprised about discrimination in Israel. That's not the message that I got. And then that you have this other population of Jews that come from their world, that no one's told me anything about. Slowly, I begin to learn about that. Israel, uh, is made up of two major populations, one from the European world and one from the Arab world.

00:03:01.580 — 00:03:09.860 · Speaker 2
Let's fast forward to 2009 when you founded Sephardi Voices. What what was the impetus that that led to this?

00:03:09.940 — 00:04:28.300 · Speaker 1
So I had been the director of Jewish studies at the University of Miami for many years, and I had stepped away from that and wanted to work on another project. And I thought, well, I'm interested in the Sephardi. What about Holocaust testimonies of Jews who were displaced from the Arab lands? So what I did is I went and looked at the Shoah collection at the University of Southern California, where Spielberg had placed 52,000 interviews.

And what I found was that there were less than 100 interviews of Jews who experienced the Holocaust in the Arab world. And there was a major event called The Crowd, which is a horrible riot against Jews in Baghdad in 1941 on Shabbos. So I, um, made a decision like, uh, from Pirkei Avot. Uh, if not now. When?

And, um, it was not to collect the story of the Holocaust survivors from the Arab world. It was to tell the story of the million Jews who were displaced from the Arab world, and to really tell their stories from the establishment of the state of Israel, uh, until, um, more or less the Iranian revolution.

00:04:28.300 — 00:04:45.460 · Speaker 2
For for a listener who's never heard of the numbers involved here, um, roughly 850,000 Jews displaced from the Arab world and Iran. Can you set the scene? What were the communities like? How old were they? What was it like there?

00:04:45.460 — 00:05:20.930 · Speaker 1
So when I think of the North Africa in the Middle East, I think of the Jews as being indigenous peoples, and they are in many, many ways built the the base of how we understand things in terms of Judaism. So, for example, how do you talk about Babylon without talking about the Talmud? And the Talmud is the major interpretation.

How do you talk about, um, about Jewish mysticism without talking about the Zohar? And the Zohar was written in Spain under the Moors.

00:05:20.970 — 00:05:23.010 · Speaker 2
These are communities. I mean,

00:05:24.130 — 00:05:40.890 · Speaker 2
the for instance, the Jewish community in Baghdad was, until the middle of the 20th century, one of the oldest continuously functioning civilizations in humanity. Is that. Am I wrong in in that interpretation? No, no.

00:05:40.930 — 00:06:20.930 · Speaker 1
The the story of the Jews in in Iraq. Um. What's Babylon, Iraq? Um, the person would call themselves today. If they came from Baghdad, they would say, I'm a Babylonian Jew, which says something about their identity, how far back it goes. Yeah, they don't say I'm Iraqi. They say I'm Babylonian. Um, so, uh uh, indeed.

Um, the Sephardi community, the, uh, Jews from Arab lands, uh, if you take communities like Baghdad, have been there for a long time, extremely thriving. In the 1920s, the minister of finance was a Sephardic Jew.

00:06:21.010 — 00:06:24.730 · Speaker 2
And these communities are completely gone now.

00:06:24.770 — 00:06:50.320 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So let's take Libya, for example. Libya in 1948 had 38,000 Jews. Today there are zero. If you take, uh, Iraq, 150,000 Jews in 19483 today. So it's a very, very sad comment about what I call the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab world.

00:06:50.480 — 00:07:12.040 · Speaker 2
I think the numbers would definitely support that description. Um, when you decided to put together this project and record these stories. Um, what? Walk me through an interview. How does how does that work? How do you find them? Um, what what was it like sitting down with all these people?

00:07:12.360 — 00:10:06.030 · Speaker 1
So what I did is I, um, would go to people who were, uh, let's say, from Iraq or Morocco or Libya, and I would say, okay, I've heard about you. Who else could I interview? And they would send me to their friends or their relatives, and then they would say, for example, um, well, 1948 is important, but there was a war in 1967.

You should get some of those people because it's different. Or there was a war in 1973. And so how did that impact these people? Because of the historical event that was going on, that very much resulted in Jews who lived in these countries being attacked because of what Israel was doing, winning a war, as it were.

So the reason why it's so important to, to understand this is that because the European Jewish community was so, so small, what happened is post 1600, when Jews were thrown out of, um, uh, Spain and Portugal, and they come to the Americas and they go to Europe. What we end up having is the story of those European Jews coming to America.

So 250,000 Jews lived in the United States in 1880, by the end of World War one, you now have several million. So the stories we are learning always are the stories of the European Jews and the czars and what happened in Germany and on and on and on. But the Sephardi are having really, for the most part, a much better life in these Arab worlds because they were considered as dhimmi.

They were considered as protected citizens because they believed in God. And so, okay, you had to ride on a mule instead of a horse. Your synagogue couldn't be as tall, but you could practice your religion. You could build a synagogue, right? You could have Passover. You could have the events that said, I am a Jew and feel proud about that.

And they were bad times, a good times. But there was never a crusade. There was never a A policy in the Islamic world that said, like Christianity, that Jews killed Jesus, the Jews killed God instead. It was good times. Well, you're the merchants. Good times. You can be an advisor. Bad times was different, but it wasn't ever a policy that said Jews were bad.

00:10:06.910 — 00:10:10.950 · Speaker 2
A lot of that depended on who was in charge at a given time. Right?

00:10:10.990 — 00:10:46.980 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So, I mean, the geopolitics change in one way or the other. But and so you do have movement here and there. But but generally speaking, generally speaking, um, when the Inquisition happened, let's say in 1492. Sure. Some Jews went to Italy, but the overwhelming majority of Jews went to the Ottoman Empire or back into North Africa.

Well, why would you go to an Islamic state if you did not feel you'd be more safe than going into a Catholic world. That's that's my point.

00:10:47.020 — 00:11:03.780 · Speaker 2
So what? What happened? How did. How did that change? You know, you mentioned the Froude. And in 1941, in the Mandate of Palestine, there's the Arab riots in 36. They have one massacre in 29. What shifted?

00:11:03.940 — 00:16:52.150 · Speaker 1
Well, there were three different things that I would bring to explain that the first and the most important is that the Ottoman Empire is falling apart, and the Ottoman Empire basically controlled a lot of, um, Eastern Europe. They controlled, um, the Middle East and a lot of North Africa. So what the Western powers wanted was to be able to get to the oil, to get to the gas, in order to move forward with their economies.

And so they saw the Ottoman Empire as weak. And when World War One came between, um, um, the Ottomans and the Germans, they were the bad guys and, uh, the West were the good guys. Uh, the Brits and French went to the tribes, the Bedouin tribes, and said, look, if you help us, if you help us, we will help create a nation state for you.

And so the fall of the Ottoman Empire led to the establishment of, um, many of these nation states that we know about in various kinds of ways. And the Brits and the French, though unfortunately, were not, uh, very righteous in what they were doing. Um, they, for example, said in the Sykes-Picot agreement, uh, in 1916, um, uh, if you help us to the Bedouin tribes, we will help make you a nation state.

Then the following year, they, uh, work with the Jews and set up the Balfour Declaration that says that we are in favor of a Jewish homeland. So they're promising to both. Right. And then what happens is that the war is won. And, um, many of these colonies begin to arise in different kinds of ways, uh, with much more ability to be a territory of the Western power.

So you have a Libya becoming, um, a a territory of Italy. Uh, pre-World War one, just pre-World War one. You have, uh, Morocco and Tunisia becoming a territory of France. So after the war. Um, the Brits, uh, should choose the Faisal family to become the, uh, the heads of Saudi Arabia and, uh, member of the family is upset because, um, he didn't get something, so they make him the king of Iraq.

But what they sort of miss in doing that is that Iraq is more a Shia population tied to Iran rather than a Sunni population tied to Saudi Arabia. So they put a Sunni now in charge of a Shia population. And and so World War One is one big reason that things will fall apart is because the Shia and the Sunni are not that friendly.

Number one, and that the states that are being set up are really territories in which they've promised to one Bedouin tribe, one family, that they will be able to dominate. So instability comes out of that in various kinds of ways. Number two, because they've set up the Balfour Declaration, the Brits and Zionism is beginning to take hold after World War One.

Uh, you know, founded in 1896 and, and, uh, that the first sign is Congress, 1898. So what happens is that the Zionists begin moving forward post-World War one, establishing especially in establishing the infrastructure for what would become the state of Israel. And so you end up having, um, Palestinian populations, the two minority groups now under the Brits who control, um, Palestine, the Jewish Arab, which is both Christian and Muslim, and other groups that are living in Palestine, um, wanting to be able to move forward with whatever their idea of a of a state is.

So that creates instability. And and the third reason has to do with, uh, European ization, because when you, when you call a colonialist the, um, let's say Marrakesh or or a Casablanca or or a Tripoli or or doesn't matter a Baghdad, what you did was you began to lay the seeds of secularization and European culture.

And the people who most took advantage of that was the Jews because they viewed it as a way to be economically productive, to be able to move within European culture. And and of course, for people who were more rural or people who did not have those same benefits in terms of their abilities. It put the Jews in a more precarious position as time continued.

00:16:53.750 — 00:17:17.510 · Speaker 2
Let's get concrete if we can. When when the state was when the state turns on its Jews. What? What did that look like on the ground? Obviously different states had different degrees of expulsion, but the citizenship laws, the property seizures, the the attacks, the arrests, you know, what did that look like for Jews on the ground?

00:17:17.949 — 00:17:53.590 · Speaker 1
Well, here's the first thing you have to appreciate when one talks about Jews in the Arab world. Um, One cannot make statements that create uniformity. What happens in Iraq is different than Morocco, which is different than Libya. So I was going to just give you a few sense of a little sense of various things.

I in my book, for example, I, um, here's a guy named Moshe Levi. And, um, so he's a person who lived in, um,

00:17:54.990 — 00:18:38.500 · Speaker 1
Benghazi in Libya. And and so I'm, I'm, I want to take you sort of from the Holocaust. Okay. So he says he's talking about the Germans. There was a pogrom in Benghazi taking place in the streets. Where were children? Inside the house. We barricaded the doors. We were scared to death that something would happen to us.

My father was taken to a concentration camp. We were suffering from malnutrition. The Russian was a half a loaf of bread per person per day over a year. Every night bombs fell. When I hear people talking about PTSD, I say to myself, I went through that.

00:18:39.940 — 00:19:12.020 · Speaker 3
Can you imagine taking those landing craft because the ships could not come close to shore, and then they had those big ropes, nets made from ropes. And you have to climb. You probably saw it how the soldiers do it. Can you imagine? Children? And my grandmother was close to 80 years old. Climb these things, but out of desperation, do everything.

We didn't have anything. There was no need. We didn't have suitcases. We didn't have anything. Just. We left with our clothing. But one thing we had was the jewelry that my father was. He was able to he had a.

00:19:14.180 — 00:19:30.970 · Speaker 3
A can that was for oil. And I don't know how he did it, but he put everything in. So this can was the only belonging. And he made clear that we should. He should look dirty and oily and greasy. Nobody would even touch it. And we were carrying. That was the only thing that we were carrying.

00:19:34.410 — 00:21:08.490 · Speaker 1
So the first thing that I, I want to really, really strongly comment on is that the Nazis were in North Africa. They were in Baghdad. That, Farhad, that I mentioned is a Nazi, uh, riot where they're killing Jews in the Mila, in the like the ghetto and the British aren't helping. So so the Jewish experience during the Nazi times was one of a kind of wake up call.

They thought they were separate from what was happening in Europe, but that European ization process also affected them. And I think one has to appreciate that as that is moving on. So too is what happens post-World War two when the world is trying to make some order and they can't resolve Palestine. So the United Nations in 1947 says in November 29th, we're going to set up two states, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state.

So the various countries that were trying to respond to Nazism, they also were responding to Nazism in terms of their own future. They wanted their own nation state. And so the countries that were, um, colonizing them,

00:21:09.610 — 00:21:36.880 · Speaker 1
they responded to those countries in ways that very much affected the Jews. So, for example, in Algeria, are you with us in the revolution? Are you against us? Well, in Algeria, Jews are French citizens. And so they want. They're called Pierre Noire, and they wanted to remain French citizens. So therefore you're considered to be a fifth column.

You're considered to be the bad guys.

00:21:36.960 — 00:21:37.440 · Speaker 2
Right.

00:21:37.440 — 00:22:33.320 · Speaker 1
So what I'm trying to suggest to you, you can't be uniform. Okay. That's that's that's my number one point. And then as these countries are trying to break up in different ways and apart from the colonizer, you take somewhere like Baghdad. And so you have someone like Abdullah Dangar. Abdullah Dangar was born before the British came across the Tigris Euphrates.

And so Abdullah Dangar says, I watched the British come across the river, and I thought this was freedom for us. And sure, The British took over Iraq. And I just said to you, they brought in a king and the, uh, the Jews in Baghdad. It was like the Jews of New York. The Jews of Alexandria 2000 years ago in Egypt.

What a great life.

00:22:33.600 — 00:22:34.040 · Speaker 2
Mhm.

00:22:34.080 — 00:22:59.400 · Speaker 1
And then Israel becomes a state in 1948, and immediately Iraq makes the decision that they're going to join Jordan and Lebanon and Egypt and attack Israel. And all the Jews who are living in, in Iraq at this point are now viewed as bad guys are viewed as the enemy.

00:22:59.680 — 00:23:12.080 · Speaker 2
But the but the situation, it seems like, had been deteriorating for a little bit. The far HUD was in 1941. Am I am I wrong in that? Understand that understanding. It wasn't like overnight.

00:23:12.120 — 00:23:32.390 · Speaker 1
No, no. But but the there's always like waves of good and bad. So when you think of Iraq becoming an independent country after World War One, the Jews are about 35, 40% of Baghdad. They're the finance minister.

00:23:32.430 — 00:23:34.150 · Speaker 2
They're a huge part of the.

00:23:34.150 — 00:23:35.030 · Speaker 1
Economy, a huge.

00:23:35.030 — 00:23:40.710 · Speaker 2
Part of what I read in your book, I was surprised to see how how big a part of Baghdad.

00:23:40.750 — 00:26:59.500 · Speaker 1
Oh, my God. It's not just it's not just the the economy. The 40 brothers they brought, they fuzed Arab music with Western music. And so it's close. So it's cultural, it's economic, it's political. They are the, the, the pillars in many ways of what Baghdad society is about. Zilkha, the family Zilkha, the family Zilkha, they set up banking in, uh, Iraq, which they then spread to Lebanon and throughout the Middle East.

So it wasn't just in terms of the country. They were taking their ideas and they were exporting it. If I could say in that kind of way, in terms of banking, in terms of culture, in terms of music and and you see this all over the place when the, when, when the Ottoman Empire was falling, um, many Jews decided to leave and they went to Cairo because Cairo was a cosmopolitan city, um, post-World War One.

And you had Italians and you had Greeks. And so, again, the Jews were very the cinema industry in the Middle East began in Cairo by June. By Jews, I mean you you look at culture, you look at banking, you look at economy. I mean, I gave you Cairo as an example. I gave you Baghdad. Well, once in Africa, once in the Middle East, you know.

Um, and it's so these people are also connected because of relatives, because these people are marrying within their religion. They're not intermarrying. So the names, if you take certain names. Oh, yeah. You can just trace it by DNA. So if you go from Morocco all the way to Baghdad, you're going to have the same traditions.

When you learn Torah, you're going to hold it vertically. If you go in the Ashkenazi world, you do it horizontally. You're going to eat rice for Pesach, where in the Ashkenazi world you're not going to eat rice for pizza. So. So what I'm trying to get at here is that if you look at economy, if you look at culture, if you look at banking, if you look at food, it's very unified.

and and these families because they have been in the Middle East a long time. The Moshe Levy, for example, who who I just read a quote from he his family 500 years, he goes back to them being rabbis. So it's a historical presence that they feel and are very, very proud of. And and if I go back to the story of Dangar, Dangar, who who saw the British cross the river and then he leaves in the 1960s.

And when I asked him in the interview, my last question is always, well, how do you identify yourself? And so what does he say? He says, well, well, I'm British, I've lived here 60 years. But then he says, how can I deny that I'm Iraqi? I've lived there for 3000 years.

00:27:02.300 — 00:27:03.659 · Speaker 4
We used to tell the

00:27:04.660 — 00:27:16.010 · Speaker 4
Muslim friends. We used to tell them we are here before you. We have more right than you have. But how can I deny that I'm an Iraqi?

00:27:18.450 — 00:27:21.290 · Speaker 4
I didn't go there as an immigrant.

00:27:23.250 — 00:27:24.450 · Speaker 4
I've been there.

00:27:27.050 — 00:27:28.410 · Speaker 4
3000 years.

00:27:34.570 — 00:27:46.610 · Speaker 1
And it says something about their identity and. And how that culture has not gone away. That it's very, very much part of who they are.

00:27:46.850 — 00:28:04.810 · Speaker 2
And it wasn't only Jews getting kicked out who lost a significant amount. The, the the economies of Baghdad, the culture of Baghdad lost that Jewish influence. And really, you know, I was surprised to make that connection. I shouldn't have been, but that they took a hit from that.

00:28:04.850 — 00:28:18.209 · Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, this is something that, you know, is, um, argued about all the time. It's that what is the loss to these communities that lost their Jews and

00:28:20.090 — 00:29:30.199 · Speaker 1
like, like many, many countries, what happens is that the people who are more educated, the people who are more cosmopolitan, um, if things are going badly, they leave and find another place. It's called push and pull. You push it out because of persecution or there's no jobs, and you go somewhere where you have religious freedom or there's jobs.

And so who's leaving? The Jews are leaving because it's not only their assets, they're taken away, um, and synagogues and, and, and, um, community centers. It's I really have no future. And so where am I going to go? I gotta go somewhere. And most of these people were not given citizenship in these countries, right.

Because they weren't Muslim. And so they had French citizenship or they had Italian citizenship. And Israel, of course, one of their major, major agendas was to bring the scattered, uh, uh, seeds of Jews everywhere back to Israel. And so

00:29:31.200 — 00:30:31.280 · Speaker 1
Jews, because they were more educated, more cosmopolitan, would then use the situation to go to these countries or to go to Israel. But again, let's not be monolithic. There were Jews who lived in the Atlas Mountains. Atlas mountains are near Marrakech, and they were very, very illiterate, poor. And they ended up in part because of their messianic theology going to.

To Israel. And they were the ones, especially when they went to Israel. There were heavily discriminated against because they didn't have the education. They looked like Arabs and they spoke Arabic. And that's part of when we began the conversation of the protest movements, because these were the ones who were especially discriminated against.

00:30:31.320 — 00:31:09.030 · Speaker 2
Let's get into the stories of the the actual, uh, rescues, um, that are incredibly cinematic in, in how they went down. I mean, as I'm, as I'm reading through your book, I'm thinking there's so many films that, um, that need to be made of this, um, but Operation Magic Carpet out of Yemen, operation Ezra and Nehemiah out of Iraq.

These are tens of thousands airlifted in months. What? What were those operations really like? What did the people who were on it say about them?

00:31:09.350 — 00:32:29.430 · Speaker 1
So these were, um, Mossad operations, um, which had to do with, um, both saving the Jews as well as bring them to Israel, because Israel's population in 1948 was 650,000 Jews. And so they needed Jews to come to Israel. And they and the European Jews really were not coming are the American Jews. And so they turned to the Sephardi, um, to to come and build Israel.

It was not Israel's first choice. It had to do with what happened after 48. And so you take, um, um, Iraqi Jews. So there's a guy named Shlomo Hillel who had was Iraq. He had gone to Israel Pre World War two. And he was chosen to go and bring the Jews from Iraq to Israel. So what he did was he began immediately after World War two, going to Baghdad and beginning to train high school students in the use of arms so that they would be able to defend themselves.

These high school students did not tell their parents

00:32:30.670 — 00:33:53.380 · Speaker 1
they would be in the basement with this guy, showing them how you take a gun apart and how you put it together. And then what would happen is that the, um, there's two stories about this. We don't know which one to go with. There's the Israeli story, and then there's the nun Israeli story. So the Israelis wanted to scare the Babylonian Population, the Jewish population that they had to leave because even though the Iraqi government was taking away their assets and, you know, and, and saying, you can't do this or that, the.

And in fact, one person who was a leader in the community, they hung. And so they were setting the signals that you're no longer welcome here, but. Right, right. It's a big, big decision to pick up yourself and leave. So. So what? Uh. The story is, is that Mossad blew up a synagogue. Now, the view also is that it was the Iraqis that did it.

But the result of that was that many, many felt that it is no longer safe to be there. And then the Iraqi government said, through a negotiation with the Israeli government that if, um, we let them go.

00:33:54.500 — 00:34:57.970 · Speaker 1
You give us $100 a person and they can leave. And so they told people, um, within the community to, uh, sign a form more or less and list their assets and they would be able to leave. And then of course, when they, uh, left and this was the operation, Ezra, Nehemiah, where planes came in and flew them to Cyprus, they couldn't come straight to Israel, from Cyprus to Israel.

Then the government, which had the Iraqi government, which had promised that they would just be holding their assets until they got back. They then took all their assets and then many, many years later, um, you have stories, um, that are just unbelievable movie stories where someone like, um, well, I'm going to tell you two, two stories.

Um, one story is set. Joshua. So Lee said Joshua. Um, her grandfather,

00:34:59.290 — 00:36:58.759 · Speaker 1
um, turned out that he had one of the better homes along the Tigris. And so when the king came who had been appointed, he had nowhere to live. So he said, shoo. His grandfather, for a dollar a year, rented his home to the king. Now, that says something about how respected the Jews were in Baghdad in the 1920s.

So here is Lissette. She goes to a school called Frank iny, because what happened in Baghdad was that after 48 and Iraq fighting against Israel, Jews mostly had left about 135,000 of the 150. So there was one Jewish school called Frank. Any. And everyone went to that school. And unlike other schools, um, they learned Arabic, French, English as well as Hebrew, and they had to write exams when they finished high school in at the baccalaureate, in French, the Arabic exam and the A-levels in English.

So they're very highly educated, these people very highly educated. Lee said Joshua goes to university and she's in university in 1967, and she's on campus when the war is happening and her phones are cut off. There's no contact with her parents who she's going to try to get to, and she finally decides that the only thing she can do is leave.

So she dresses up as a muslim woman, goes up to the Kurdish area and escapes to Iran. Edwin Shuker. Same kind of story. He basically escapes in 1970, goes to the Kurdish area and escapes to Iran. Now

00:36:59.800 — 00:37:31.000 · Speaker 1
Edwin ends up in England and Lizette ends up in Canada. Now, why do I mention these two stories? Because the feelings towards the Muslims are very different. It is very, very common for people who leave Iraq because their assets are taken, because they played such a strong contribution lately. Sets grandparents to be very bitter in terms of what happened.

00:37:33.400 — 00:38:34.670 · Speaker 1
On the other hand, Edwin Shuker, who also lost his home, who also had to escape to go to the Kurdish area and then be driven across and who knows if you would live or die In his case, he views it as an opportunity today to build relationships with the Arabs. And so he becomes one of the people who is the future thinkers of the Abraham Accords.

So he, in fact, has bought a place in Dubai thinking that this is a way of reaching out, because I know the culture, I speak the language, I have friends. So the experience is one of, if you take it from, say, the 1920s, when it was a very rich life, to the 1950s when it totally breaks down. It's very different for the people who live that life and tell the stories.

00:38:34.830 — 00:38:35.950 · Speaker 2
Right, right.

00:38:35.990 — 00:39:32.430 · Speaker 1
Very, very different depending on who it is. And and it's also different for each country because Iraq, it's the early 1950s, where in Morocco it's more the mid 19 late 1960s where the population that is more educated, not the ones in the Atlas Mountains, but the ones who are living in Casablanca or living in Marrakesh, where they are more educated.

So, so when you when I think of these kinds of stories, I then try to understand when is it happening and what country. So let me give you another example. Eddie Cohn Eddie Cohn comes from Lebanon. And here's a little quote for him. I'm a Jew. And as a Jew I am guilty. And what is my fault. I have two main charges.

First for the Christians. You you, Eddie killed Jesus. And Muslims would say to me, you stole Palestine.

00:39:33.470 — 00:40:05.380 · Speaker 1
Girls do not want to talk to me because I'm Jewish. Their parents do not allow them to speak or deal with the Jews. As a kid, It's very troubling. You don't know what you've done. So here's this guy. Growing up in the 1980s in Beirut. Okay. And he knows he's a Jew. He's being discriminated against and his father is taken by.

Let's call it the Hezbollah. And they kill him.

00:40:05.660 — 00:40:06.100 · Speaker 2
Right.

00:40:06.140 — 00:40:14.220 · Speaker 1
And so he's now put in the position of what does he do? How does he get out of Beirut?

00:40:14.620 — 00:40:15.220 · Speaker 2
Mhm.

00:40:15.260 — 00:41:02.500 · Speaker 1
And so it takes them a while. And finally he's able to leave Beirut. He goes to France and then is able to get his mother and family out, and then comes to Israel after France and lives there. You take a family like take Algeria. As if I could talk about Algeria for a second. Sure. So you have Emile Diane Emile Diane is a French citizen who lives in Algeria, and he fights in World War One to help the French.

He has a son named Charles and Charles. He fights in World War Two to help the French army. His troop is conquered in Germany.

00:41:03.540 — 00:42:24.850 · Speaker 1
They have to strip to be cleaned and whatever, and they see he's circumcised. And so the Germans say you have. You're Jewish. But his commander, who's not Jewish, says, no, none of these people are Jewish. And so he lives. He goes back to Algeria. He has nothing, and he doesn't know where he can go, because as an Algerian, he wants to be French.

And he just fought for the French. But the Muslims are saying, well, if you're not with us, you're against us. And so he ends up having to leave in 1962 with Jocelyn, his wife. They come to France, his daughter Elisa. What happens to her? She grows up in France. She starts having children and realizes that France is becoming increasingly anti-Semitic.

And I. I'm trying to see if I have a little quote from her here, she says. So she says so it's not politically correct to say that there are places in the suburbs of Paris, and even some places in Paris where you can't go if you're Jewish. I had young guys telling me that I was a whore, a dirty Jew whore.

00:42:25.810 — 00:42:43.530 · Speaker 5
I felt that I didn't want to leave there. I don't want my daughters to be raised there because I couldn't even dress like this. It was dangerous to as a woman to be walking. And still there are areas of Paris being

00:42:44.610 — 00:43:08.770 · Speaker 5
a woman, not Muslim. It's you don't feel safe at all. I'm a French Jew that became an American, and I want to stay here and try to integrate. Um, it's not easy because like I said, every after ten years, I still have people asking me if I'm a tourist here. So I guess all my life I'm going to be an immigrant. But maybe my daughters won't feel the same way.

00:43:09.970 — 00:45:10.600 · Speaker 1
What she is saying is that anti Semitism that was in Europe and she's now talking about, you know, the 21st century. She's also and the people I interview are not really talking about anti-Semitism. They're talking about anti-Israel. It's very different Because if the Jewish community is feeling comfortable in the Arab world, in Cairo and Baghdad, they're not having to deal with a Jewish state.

But when that Jewish state comes, then these countries bring in systematic discrimination. And that systematic discrimination then ends up making it impossible for these people to live or they will be killed, there will be literally killed. And so you end up having the Israeli government coming in and trying to help get them out.

And so you have the Ezra, Nehemiah, you have the magic carpet in Yemen, etc.. But as time continues, there are less and less Jews, and then they become prisoners in the state, and they're not able to leave. And that's why people likely Saturday or Edwin are figuring out a way of how can I bribe someone, how can I if I dress up like a muslim, where do I go that I can then be able to be be safe?

And that is the challenge. And that's the trauma they have. All these people are traumatized, they have PTSD. And the question is then why are some more resilient than the others?

00:45:10.600 — 00:45:55.350 · Speaker 2
I you know, I was struck by one of your examples. I think it was Edwin Shakur who who had moved to and was living in in the UK and makes a point about, um, seeing somebody in uniform and all these years later getting that. Um, getting that fear that he had gotten because of trying to escape from Iraq through. Through Kurdish.

I guess what is would now be Kurdistan and he's in the UK. You wrote this in before October 7th, before with. Um, yeah. Have you been in contact with him post October 7th with this explosion of anti-Semitism in the UK? Because here's somebody who has fled from one place to another place to another place.

00:45:56.230 — 00:46:29.310 · Speaker 1
Yeah. It's again, it's very different when you talk to, um, uh, different people. Edwin's view is, um, very different than than many, many of the Jewish people in the United Kingdom. His view is that that he can be an ambassador, as it were, in bringing a different perspective. And that's why I'm saying he he has this home in Dubai.

He he also bought a home in Israel, in, Iraq.

00:46:29.350 — 00:46:30.510 · Speaker 2
I saw that, yeah.

00:46:30.550 — 00:47:31.500 · Speaker 1
I mean, so he's a very different kind of person. His view is, um, that what we need to do is to understand that a lot of this anti-Semitism in Europe is not the same in the Arab world. And this is what I've been trying to comment on, um, that that the Jews were kicked out of England in 1290 and Shakespeare's rating 300 years later about the Merchant of Venice.

And he's never met a Jew. Right. So there is this perception in Europe and in terms of anti-Semitism, which is European, which is very different than the perception of discrimination and anti-Semitism in the Arab world. It's so much connected to the establishment of the State of Israel and the various wars that have, uh, you know, uh, evolved.

00:47:31.620 — 00:47:58.020 · Speaker 2
I mean, there was some crossover, though. I mean, the, the Hajj Amin Husseini in, in spending most of the war in Berlin. The, the many translations of Mein Kampf into Arabic, the Muslim Brotherhood and its connection to, uh, Nazi ideology. I mean, I guess that's that's more of a specific group as opposed to the society as a whole.

Is that the what's the difference?

00:47:58.060 — 00:50:54.490 · Speaker 1
Well, there's again, I, I keep trying to emphasize this, that every country is different, of course. Let me so let's use that example and then use the king of Morocco. So the king Morocco when the Nazis come says where are your Jews? And his answer is I have no Jews. I only have Moroccans. So I'm giving you an example, right, of what happened in Baghdad or Iraq and giving you an example of Morocco.

And we can't conflate them in the same way, you know. Um, and that if you took a look at the waves of people who were ethnically cleansed, then the ones in, um, Iraq, 135,000 with this operation, Ezra, whatever. You know, Ezra, Nehemiah. That's happening in the early 1950s. Okay. But the Moroccans, except for the Atlas Mountains, they're staying around until post 67.

Right. Okay. Very different. It's, um, a period of the Six-Day War changed everything, but. Right. But today, the Moroccans have a treaty with Israel under the Abraham Accords. Mhm. And they actually teach now Holocaust in their schools. Okay. In Morocco we're in in in in in in Iraq. It's just a matter of time where there will be no Jews.

And yet you had this continuous history going back to the time of Jeremiah. So all I'm trying to suggest is that if you look at it in terms of the decrees that happen to Jews in this country, these countries, which is Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, um, Lebanon, Syria, uh, Yemen, Iraq and Iran, these countries.

Okay, it's the same nationalization, right? Uh, loss of assets. Mhm. Okay. Um, and you can just list one after the other after the other. But in how this was put into practice and how people felt the trauma or the SD. It's very different. And so when you get in my book, when you read my book Sephardi Voices, you'll hear so many stories of people who have really suffered in all kinds of ways.

And these stories can be very late. Eddie Cohn, 1980s, his father being kidnaped and killed. It's not the 1950s. This is the 1980s. And Lebanon was viewed as a more safe place for Jews, you know, than Iraq. But

00:50:55.770 — 00:51:10.969 · Speaker 1
the bottom line is that why would a million people leave in a period of 30 years, right? And that is ethnic cleansing. When you put it in the context of the decrees of

00:51:12.130 — 00:51:25.960 · Speaker 1
assets taken, synagogues taken, cemeteries taken, made into parking lots, Um, uh d nationalization and you just go one after the other after the other. And that's consistent.

00:51:26.320 — 00:51:26.840 · Speaker 2
Mhm.

00:51:27.200 — 00:51:29.880 · Speaker 1
And that's what Jews had to face.

00:51:30.440 — 00:52:08.600 · Speaker 2
How come nobody has heard of this. I mean is it not only have you. No. Is there. No. Uh, is is there no refugee organization for all these Jews who were kicked out? Not only is there really no or had there not been any recognition on, on the global stage, but like even Jews, even Ashkenazi Jews, we didn't know this story.

I didn't know until very recently. Um, why is that? You pointed out, uh, the the term, uh, Ashkenazi Ashkenazi enormity, Asch conformity, which.

00:52:09.800 — 00:52:27.479 · Speaker 1
Well, I think, um, from my understanding, I think it has to do with a few things. First and foremost is that, um, Israel was so challenged in 1948, they had no resources. They just had to survive somehow. And so

00:52:28.560 — 00:55:06.710 · Speaker 1
what they wanted to do was to be able to build a perimeter of safety. And so they began building different cities like Dimona or, um, Kiryat Shmona in the north, these various places. And so they sent their pioneers, as it were, these new immigrants to these places. But there were no resources, no teachers, no schools.

So what happened was you ended up being more discriminated against. And when it came to the, um, to finding jobs, people were put into refugee camps. There was tents, but someone from Tel Aviv would go to the camp and say, I need a worker. Well, that person from Europe spoke Yiddish, but the one that came from the Arab world spoke Arabic or spoke Ladino or spoke Kakatiya from from northern Morocco.

So you didn't have the same opportunity. So what happened was you stayed in the camps much longer. The average for an Ashkenazi was six months, for a Sephardi was 18 months. So in terms of education, in terms of a future, that first generation that lived in Israel was discriminated against because Israel didn't have the institutional resources and they were the weaker on the chain, if you put it that way.

And then the other part of it, of course, was that Israel was basically Ashkenazi country. And so they were using European. And they also, you know, when a person walked down the street and they were dressed like an era from, um, I don't know, Morocco and they, they spoke Arabic and they were, um, maybe not as light in skin color.

Then you were afraid that this was an Arab. And so they really, really suffered a great degree of discrimination. Which then brings you back to the protests. Okay. Then what happened is Israel basically made a policy that everyone would be a new Israeli. So there's a wonderful story about Danny Ayalon.

Danny Alon was the Israeli ambassador to America. He was the deputy foreign minister. And so his children come to him and they say to him, who am I? Who are we? And so he says, well, you're Israeli, you're the new Israeli, you know, oh my God, we're so blessed after 2000 years. And they go like, yeah, but who are we?

00:55:06.750 — 00:55:07.670 · Speaker 6
Who are we?

00:55:07.870 — 00:58:23.560 · Speaker 1
So do you have to go to the grandparents? And the grandparents say, well, we're Algerian and they go, what am I, an Arab Jew? How is that possible? And you have the story of, um, Cynthia Kaplan. She's from Iraq, she's in America. She marries in Ashkenazi. Her kids, they come to their bar mitzvah and say, okay, tell me about my history.

Well, I'm an Arab Jew. No, no, no, there are no Arabs, no Jews in the Arab world. So. So what happened was that Israel was challenged. And then the educational system, both in Israel and diaspora, didn't teach about Jews from Arab lands because they wanted the new Israeli. And so only it began to surface, really, in the 21st century, when you had second or third generation, the integration Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazi was now marrying Sephardi, where you had the Oslo Accords. Moving forward. There was this sense now that, okay, let's bring this larger history to bear. But in terms of the diaspora, and I really want to emphasize this, the diaspora is about 90% Ashkenazi and about 10% Sephardi leading in the United States, let's say, mostly concentrated in places like Los Angeles, where you have a very large Persian community, New York, you have Assyrian, plus other communities.

Um, so you are always a minority within a minority. And what Jews want is one voice. And so you don't have the luxury of saying, oh, we have this kind of, um, history. We have these kinds of issues. And so the Ashkenazi leadership in, in, in America in particular, has not, uh, advocated for the Sephardi in 2014, the Israeli government passed a new law that you would have young happy team means Refugee Day for the Sephardi.

Okay, we have Yamaha Holocaust Day in 215, it was passed, uh, it was launched by President Rivlin in his house. I was there for the event. And in the last ten years, how many Jewish communities celebrate Holocaust Day? I would say everyone. Right. How many celebrate Yamaha team or even have heard of it? Which says something about Ashkenazi leadership.

It's it's a law passed by the Knesset. They celebrated in Israel every year. Why is Ashkenazi leadership? Why are our communities not having it? And my view on this is, gee, how hard is this? You bring a Holocaust survivor to class for a Holocaust day. Why can't you bring a person who survived and became a member of your community in New York?

Wherever you are in in a Jewish school, and the child or the grandchild will take such.

00:58:23.560 — 00:58:24.320 · Speaker 6
Pride.

00:58:24.320 — 00:58:36.120 · Speaker 1
In hearing their parents or grandparents speak. You can show some video and then have this event to honor the people who left the Arab world.

00:58:37.240 — 00:58:55.160 · Speaker 2
In 2007, you testified before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. What what were you asking the US government to do then? What actually came of it? What are you working on now in terms of that sort of recognition?

00:58:55.440 — 01:00:05.830 · Speaker 1
So the organization that's been the number one advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab world is It's called justice for Jews from Arab countries, with its leader, CEO Stan Ehrmann. And so he arranged for this meeting in Congress. And the idea, the idea was to get the American government to take a position regarding the expulsion of Jews from the Arab Arab world.

And it also had to do with, uh, in the Iraqi war. Um, they found thousands of documents that were in the intelligence building and had been brought back to the states. And so the idea was to have the have Congress, um, make a, a statement. So these documents, these papers, um, could Psidium Torah scrolls could remain in the States.

So it was to get the government of America behind, um, this, um,

01:00:06.990 — 01:02:15.340 · Speaker 1
not only keeping the documents, but to be able to deal with issues like reparations, etc.. Um, and that really did not go anywhere. But there were people, Congress, people like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who was chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, who was extremely supportive of it. And so when, um, we had this opportunity in September of 2025 to put it in front of the United Nations, uh, United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, um, Stan, myself, few others, um, went to Geneva and put this now on the international United Nations agenda that just as the Palestinians have their voice, uh, and their issues.

Uh, so these fady from the Arab world Have similar issues and that you one can't talk about one without the other. It's not to discount the Palestinians, but it's to raise and elevate the voice of the Sephardi. So why I mentioned Ileana is because Ileana is a Cuban refugee. And so Cuban refugees. I come from Miami.

This is where I live, understand what it means to live under these regimes. And so my, my goal, my, my work these days is to try to, uh, to have the American government be much more, uh, a stronger advocate, even in terms of the Sephardi from the Arab world. And in the process of that, to help build a wider, uh, net of the Abraham Accords, because the Saadi can help in doing that, and in the process also try to raise the consciousness of the Ashkenazi so that they celebrate, um, and honor the, uh, the Sephardi through Yamaha team.

01:02:15.380 — 01:02:46.420 · Speaker 2
What would recognition what would justice look like, do you think? Um, you know, you mentioned you can't talk about one refugee crisis without talking about the other in terms of the Palestinians and and the Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Um, Yossi Klein Halevi was on the show a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, he's made the point that there should be reparations for Palestinians, but also reparations for Jews who were expelled.

Is that what you're looking for, or is it more recognition?

01:02:47.140 — 01:03:10.820 · Speaker 1
So the the person who is my mentor and the one who really helps all of us think through this is a person named Erwin Kotler. Erwin Cutler was Mandela's lawyer. He was the justice minister of Canada, and he's now the chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center. And

01:03:12.340 — 01:04:00.610 · Speaker 1
he talks about it as truth and justice, and he uses South Africa in a way of addressing it, um, because it's a recognition of everyone that it's about truth and justice. One needs to know both stories, and then it has to be justice for both. And in the process of doing that, if you're going to have reparations, then it's reparations for both.

It's inclusive. That's that's my point. And it's one in which the justice is not an overnight situation. It's one of process and it involves education. And it involves, um.

01:04:02.650 — 01:04:20.010 · Speaker 1
Involves understanding the the truth behind these stories. You've got to get away from the propaganda from the, you know, the 32nd social platforms, the false news and deal with truth.

01:04:20.130 — 01:04:30.850 · Speaker 2
You've got a new book in the works, right? The forgotten exodus of Arab Jews. What what is in that? What argument are you making there that you haven't made yet?

01:04:30.890 — 01:05:51.879 · Speaker 1
Okay, so, um, what what Sephardi voice is the untold expulsion of Jews? Um, for mayor of lands that that I published in 21 was with Richard Sternberg, who is also the chair of, uh, of the board of Sephardi Voices. Um, that was really taking, you know, a few of the stories and then, um. Of the hundreds and hundreds and seeming it together with a narrative, with the portraits we take of each individual and many, many, many of the documents that they have given us.

And that collection is now at the National Library of Israel and free and accessible. The book that you're referring to, which will be coming out shortly, is where forensics have been, has been done on what is the size of the assets that were lost? Um, the, the synagogues, the centers, the cemeteries, people's property, their businesses.

And so each country has been looked at forensically in terms of the data. And then a little history has been put in front of that. So one understands how it applies to each country so that you end up with a total, as it were, of what

01:05:52.960 — 01:06:30.120 · Speaker 1
the assets were and and the amount and it's I don't I don't remember off my head if it's 250 billion or 260 billion or something, but whatever that number is, that's part of what would be the discussion if you were going to have reparations. But this will then be added to our presentation in Geneva in September, because this then becomes the evidence based data that one works with in terms of the discussions and moving forward, um, for truth and justice.

01:06:30.440 — 01:06:34.760 · Speaker 2
How is the reception been at the UN Human Rights Council?

01:06:37.280 — 01:06:38.120 · Speaker 2
Uh, right.

01:06:38.120 — 01:07:29.920 · Speaker 1
It's uh. Yeah, there it goes. You know, your your words is, uh, the reception. Um, yeah. It's it's, you know, the United Nations is made up of about 25% of Arab countries. And, um, so you don't have much ability to, uh, get any wind. But but I do think there's many ways of doing this. I mean, I do think that, um.

Um, by people like Ileana, they understand the story. And so it's how do we build networks in various kinds of ways. I live in Miami. Let's use Miami as an example. It's not from the top down as much as from the bottom up, because you have people in Spanish Morocco. Okay. They left. They went to Venezuela. They speak Spanish.

01:07:31.240 — 01:07:33.480 · Speaker 1
Venezuela is going through problems now.

01:07:34.720 — 01:08:34.870 · Speaker 1
They come to Miami. They then are living in Doral, which is a neighborhood that's more Venezuelan. So they're talking to each other about their experience, and now they're bringing their experience from the Arab world into this conversation. This is a second trauma for us. This is what I think it's about.

It's how you build personal networks. And from those personal networks, we understand that each of us are our brother. If we could put it in that kind of way and the experiences are similar, and then we have stronger advocacy groups because we understand what it's about. It's about truth and justice, and we then work together and we are much, much more empowering and what we can do.

And if we can bring that into educational systems, even better.

01:08:35.190 — 01:08:43.789 · Speaker 2
Do you think the Abraham Accords and expanding the Abraham Accords will lead to any more recognition of the

01:08:44.830 — 01:08:47.589 · Speaker 2
of the Jewish exodus among Arab countries.

01:08:48.430 — 01:09:43.779 · Speaker 1
I think that in certain countries it's more likely than other countries. I'm Morocco, for example. Um, so if you have, um, if we're able to do it with, um, another country, let's say, um, um, then you're going to have more contact between those two countries. Jewish merchants are going to go between those two countries.

You're going to build bigger networks and that's it slowly grows. It's like you plant a seed. You don't see the blossoms immediately, but you start seeing the buds and then the blossoms and maybe another generation. And so it's let me give you just another simple example. The Holocaust ended in 1945. I was not brought up

01:09:44.980 — 01:10:52.540 · Speaker 1
where the Holocaust was taught in my Jewish schools. No one taught about it. And then Elie Wiesel writes a book called night. And all of a sudden, people are starting to read about the Holocaust. Okay, that's one generation later. 1967. Still, though, you really don't have the impact yet of collecting stories of building what we have today.

How did that happen? Spielberg made a movie called Schindler's List, and out of that came 52,000 interviews. Okay, now that's another generation later. I think what my role is, is that first stage of just opening, of planning the seats and and then hoping that other people will water it. I think what you're doing, Ben, is one amazing example of that, because you're reaching out to so many people and you're saying, let's help Henry Water.

01:10:53.260 — 01:11:17.940 · Speaker 2
There's so many stories that need to be heard here and so many stories I wish we could have gotten to to talk about. I could have talked all, all night. The the guy who put some roles himself in a in a carpet to go visit his parents and find a wife and then as to they have to be rolled in a carpet to then leave Iran.

These these are amazing stories where, where can people learn more?

01:11:18.820 — 01:11:30.180 · Speaker 1
Um, the best way of is either go to Sephardi voices.com, which is, you know, our website. But to really, really.

01:11:30.460 — 01:11:30.700 · Speaker 2
Get.

01:11:30.700 — 01:11:44.210 · Speaker 1
A handle on it all, go to the National Library of Israel, look up Sephardi voices. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of interviews. Portraits that they can then follow up on.

01:11:44.250 — 01:11:47.330 · Speaker 2
Henry Green, thank you so much for joining me today.

01:11:47.610 — 01:11:50.090 · Speaker 7
Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.

01:11:51.730 — 01:13:16.890 · Speaker 2
Right at the end of our conversation, Doctor Green told me about a student, the president of the campus, Hillel. Killing time before an event. Scrolling the Sephardi Voices website. And there a photograph of her own great aunt and then her grandparents faces she'd never seen. She started to cry. Doctor green called it the kosher.

The connection, he said her tears were like seeds. She wanted to replant. And that's what this whole project is, a civilization of 2500 years, down to fewer than 10,000 Jews in the Arab world today, and a handful of people trying to make sure the story doesn't vanish with them. You plant a seed, you don't see the blossoms right away, but you do start to see the buts.

Doctor Henry Green is the founder of Sephardi Voices and a professor at the University of Miami. His archive is free and open at the National Library of Israel. Links to his work are in the description. If you're not already, subscribe and hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode. And if you like what you heard here, do me a favor.

Take 30s and write us a review. It helps get this podcast in front of other people. Follow Honest reporting on Instagram x, TikTok and Facebook. I'm Ben Chertoff. This is the honest take and we'll see you next time.