Nadine, my understanding is that before the establishment of Israel there was little, if any, persecution of Jews in Arab countries, certainly compared to what the Jews endured at the hands of Christian Europeans
Well, not exactly, though I know that Arab spokesmen have said this so many times that they believe it themselves. The short answer is, this was definitely true before about 1700. Since then, the treatment of the Jews generally got better in Europe (with the obvious exception of the 20th century) while it generally got worse in the Arab lands. Jews were everywhere dhimmis, second class citizens, though what this meant in practice varied, and there were plenty of sporadic pogroms.
For example, most of the Jews of Yemen were driven out in 17th century pogroms and those who survived lived in extremely oppressed conditions - most trades forbidden, severe dress and behavior codes to enforce their lowly status, etc. I remember the first time I listed to Jewish Yemeni music, I wondered, what are they playing? old garbage cans? It turned out that Yemeni Jews developed a tradition of banging brass trays in accompaniment to song, since the playing of musical instruments was forbidden to Jews.
Then in the late 19th and early 20th century Zionism started up and the Arab states came under German influence, which was first established in WWI by the Ottoman-German alliance. Things got much worse for the Jews in the Arabs lands, who also suffered more than most from the general bad conditions of the late Ottoman empire and the semi-colonization of the 20th century.
By the thirties the Arab nationialist movements were under strong Nazi influence, and things got worse for the Jews. The prosperous Iraqi Jews (did you know that Baghdad was 40% Jewish before WWII?) suffered in the thirties from the stripping of their citizenship much as the German Jews did, then in 1941 came the great fahroud, the huge pogrom that killed hundreds and destroyed hundreds of businesses. After that the Jewish community was terrorized, but they were not allowed to leave, even after Israel was established in 1948. Finally the British negotiated a deal with King Faisal II in 1951 where the Jews were to be allowed to go to Israel, and the Arab refugees from Palestine (who weren't yet "Palestinians") were to be allowed to go to Iraq. The Iraqis did the first half of the deal, conveniently confiscating all the property of the Jews, while reneging on the second half. The community fled en masse, thus ending a Jewish presence in Mesopotamia which had been there consistently since 586 BCE. |
