broolyn13, Ok, more whataboutism, and history. Why not. Understandably you know more about this than i, but like i said it's good to be going over old and relearning more. Up at 1am. Couldn't sleep.
Jewish exodus from the Muslim world
The Jewish exodus from the Muslim world was the migration, departure, flight and expulsion of around 900,000 Jews from Arab countries and Iran,[1] mainly from 1948 to the early 1970s, though with one final exodus from Iran in 1979–80 following the Iranian Revolution. An estimated 650,000 of the departees settled in Israel.[1]
------ [INSERT: Why "mainly from 1948? Oh, that's right, 1948 is the year Zionist Israel declared independence! Of course, Arab persecution of Jews in their countries apparently intensified then. Was it because of the birth of the stranger in their midst? And Palestinian exodus. And subsequent wars. Umm. .
History of Israel.
The late 19th century saw the widespread consolidation of a Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism, as part of which aliyah (Jewish return to the Land of Israel from the diaspora) increased. During World War I, the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the Allies led to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was granted control of the region by League of Nations mandate, in what became known as Mandatory Palestine. The British government publicly committed itself to the creation of a Jewish homeland. Arab nationalism opposed this design, asserting Arab rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish migration. As a result, Arab–Jewish tensions grew in the succeeding decades of British administration.
In 1948, the Israeli Declaration of Independence sparked the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and subsequently led to waves of Jewish emigration from other parts of the Middle East. Today, approximately 43 percent of the global Jewish population resides in Israel. In 1979, the Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed, based on the Camp David Accords. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo I Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was followed by the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed. Despite efforts to finalize the peace agreement, the conflict continues to play a major role in Israeli and international political, social, and economic life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel ] ------
A number of small-scale Jewish migrations began in many Middle Eastern countries early in the 20th century with the only substantial aliyah (immigration to the area today known as Israel) coming from Yemen and Syria.[2] Few Jews from Muslim countries immigrated during the period of Mandatory Palestine.[3] Prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands that now make up the Arab world. Of these, just under two-thirds lived in French- and Italian-controlled North Africa, 15–20% in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10% in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7% in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey.
The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from Iraq, Yemen and Libya. In these cases over 90% of the Jewish population left, despite the necessity of leaving their property behind.[4] Between 1948 and 1951, 260,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from Arab countries.[5] The Israeli government's policy to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over four years, doubling the existing Jewish population,[6] encountered mixed reactions in the Knesset; there were those within the Jewish Agency and government who opposed promoting a large-scale emigration movement among Jews whose lives were not in danger.[6]
Later waves peaked at different times in different regions over the subsequent decades. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956 following the Suez Crisis. The emigrations from the other North African Arab countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of Jews from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. Six hundred thousand Jews from Arab and Muslim countries had reached Israel by 1972,[7][8][9][10] while 300,000 migrated to France and the United States. In Israel, the descendants of the Jewish immigrants from the region, known locally as Mizrahi Jews ("Oriental"; lit.?'Eastern Jews') and Sephardic Jews ("Spanish Jews"), constitute more than half of the total population of Israel,[11] partially as a result of their higher fertility rate.[12] In 2009, only 26,000 Jews remained in Arab countries and Iran,[13] as well as 26,000 in Turkey.[14] By 2019, the total number of Jews in Arab countries and Iran had declined to 12,700,[15] and in Turkey to 14,800.[16]
The reasons for the exoduses are manifold, including pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionist yearnings or find a better economic status and a secure home in Europe or the Americas and, in Israel, a policy change in favour of mass immigration focused on Jews from Arab and Muslim countries,[17] together with push factors, such as persecution, antisemitism, political instability,[18] poverty[18] and expulsion. The history of the exodus has been politicized, given its proposed relevance to the historical narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict.[19][20] When presenting the history, those who view the Jewish exodus as analogous to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight generally emphasize the push factors and consider those who left as refugees, while those who do not, emphasize the pull factors and consider them willing immigrants.
But that's all then isn't it. LOL You certainly cherry picked your Arab countries. Interestingly, for me, it does appear matters got worse in some of the four Arab countries you picked when Israel was born in Palestine, 1948. With the exodus of Palestinians, persecution of Jews in those countries you picked worsened. First, your cherries picked:
Jews in Islamic Countries: Iraq [...] In 2020, the U.S. State Department reported that as of 2019, there are fewer than six adult members in the Baghdad Jewish community. It was estimated there were 70 to 80 Jewish families in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. There are possibly more, but some Jewish families are afraid to publicly acknowledge their religion for fear of persecution and practice their faith in secret. Other Jews may have converted to Islam. P - Many Jewish homes were seized by the Iraqi state before 2003, and Jewish schools, shops and synagogues across the country are mostly crumbling from lack of maintenance. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-of-iraq
Jews in Islamic Countries: Syria [...] The report cited the Jewish Chronicle’s conclusion that no Jews were known to be living in Syria. The Jerusalem Post, however, reported that four Jews remained in Damascus (two women and two men) after the president of the Jewish community died in September 2022. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-of-syria
Jews in Islamic Countries: Lebanon
When Christian Arabs ruled Lebanon, Jews enjoyed relative toleration. In the mid-50’s, approximately 7,000 Jews lived in Beirut. As Jews in an Arab country, however, their position was never secure, and the majority left in 1967. [...] In addition to the estimated 70 Jews living in the country, the State Department reported in its 2020 report that another 5,500 registered Jewish voters living abroad have the right to vote in parliamentary elections. P - “The Ministry of Interior delayed the verification of the results of the Israeli Communal Council’s election of members that occurs every six years, according to the State Department. “The council has repeatedly submitted requests to change its government-appointed name to reduce stigma, with no success. The council blames its official name in part for the difficulties experienced with renewals every six years.” P - “It is not taboo to be Jewish here,” Paul Taber, an associate professor of sociology at the Lebanese American University, told Al Jazeera in 2014. “But it is difficult, and that’s largely because of the the political climate in the region, especially the current policies of the Israeli state, such as the war in Gaza and settlements in the West Bank.”7 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-of-lebanon
Saved the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel for last.
Jews in Islamic Countries: Iran [...] The community leaders quickly assembled a group of two rabbis and four prominent young intellectuals and set off to meet with Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iranian city of Qom. After the group congratulated the Ayatollah on his victory over the Shah in the recent revolution, the Ayatollah gave a long monologue concluding by comparing Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and saying that they are the only religions that are truly descended from heaven. The Ayatollah stated that in the Qur’an Moses’s name is mentioned more times than the name of any other prophet. The discussion concluded with Ayatollah Khomeini claiming that “we recognize our Jews as separate from those godless, bloodsucking Zionists.” This was the answer that the Jewish community leaders had been looking for, [...] Today, Iran’s Jewish population is the second largest in the Middle East, after Israel. Although there are active Jewish communities all around the country, Tehran’s community is the most significant. [...] Today, there are 100 synagogues in Iran, 31 are in Tehran, 20 of which are active. Since 1994, there has been no rabbi in Iran, and the beit din does not function.4 The city has two Jewish kindergartens and a 100-bed capacity Jewish hospital. At the entrance to Sapir Hospital, there is a sign in Hebrew and Persian that says, “Love thy neighbor as yourself.” P - The Islamization of the country brought about strict control over Jewish educational institutions. Before the revolution, there were some 20 Jewish schools functioning throughout the country. Most have been closed. Five remain in Tehran. Jewish principals have been replaced by Muslims. In Tehran, there are still three schools in which Jewish pupils constitute the majority. The curriculum is Islamic, and Hebrew is forbidden as the language of instruction for Jewish studies. Special Hebrew lessons are conducted on Fridays by the Orthodox Otzar ha-Torah organization, which is responsible for Jewish religious education. Saturday is no longer officially recognized as the Jewish sabbath, and Jewish pupils are compelled to attend school on that day. Jewish students who attend public school are required by the government to spend two to four hours a week on religious studies administered by the Jewish community. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-of-iran
*Let me return to the home in Poland where my family lived for generations before pogroms forced them to flee. Let the Aborigines return to the homes you stole from them and let the Native Americans return to the homes we destroyed.*
I think you would be freer to travel to Poland than most Palestinians in Gaza can travel to their homeland. Check:
Gaza Strip explained: Who controls it and what to know The Hamas attack that has killed hundreds was launched from one of the most densely populated and impoverished strips of land in the world. [...] Human Rights Watch likened the conditions in Gaza to “an open air prison,” referring to the restriction of movement Israel enforces on Palestinians there. Israel prohibits Palestinians from entering or leaving the area “except in extremely rare cases, which include urgent, life-threatening medical conditions and a very short list of merchants,” according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. P - Israelis, Jewish settlers and foreigners are not subject to those restrictions and are free to travel in and out of Gaza. Over the years, Israel has gradually closed land-border crossings from Gaza into Israel except for one — which is open only to Palestinians with Israeli-approved permits. Egypt sporadically closes its land-border crossing for months on end, which is often the only way people in Gaza can gain access to the rest of the world. P - By limiting imports and nearly all exports, Israel’s 16-year blockade has driven Gaza's economy to near-collapse,... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/gaza-strip-controls-s-know-rcna119405
Related: The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense [...]In U.S. political discourse, it is axiomatic that Israel is in a constant struggle for survival. But this narrative is an anachronism. Israel is in a better strategic position than ever, and its sovereignty is beyond question. Let’s take a tour around the region: Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. It has normal relations with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. The Israelis also have informal ties with Saudi Arabia. Qatar allows Israeli diamond traders to do business in Doha, and Oman has recently agreed to open its airspace to Israel’s airliners. P - Along with its Arab partners, the United States, and Europe, Israel has managed to marginalize the Palestinian question. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171638982
"t's hard to tell if you're serious about this but this is an unsupportable opinion in the actual, real world. By your logic, those other countries couldn't be Islamic if they had a sizable population of Jews, but that's ok, amirite?"
No
Supporters call Israel’s new Jewish nation-state law a “defining moment.” Critics say it’s “apartheid.”
By Miriam Berger Updated Jul 31, 2018, 8:57am EDT
Demonstrators attend a rally to protest the “Jewish nation-state bill” in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on July 14, 2018. Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images
1. It states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.”
2. It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades Arabic — a language widely spoken by Arab Israelis — to a “special status.”
3. It establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”
Each of these statements would be contentious on its own, but taken together, they’re a clear, unequivocal statement of how the Jewish state’s current leaders see both the country and the diverse people who call it home.
Ayman Odeh, the leader of a coalition of primarily Arab parties currently in the opposition, said in a statement that Israel had “passed a law of Jewish supremacy and told us that we will always be second-class citizens.”
But at the core of the new law is a deep, existential debate that Israelis have grappled with almost since the country’s founding: Can Israel be both a “Jewish state” that protects and celebrates Jewish identity, and a liberal democracy that protects the rights of all minorities, including non-Jews?
The new law is about longstanding disputes over borders and identity
Waves of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries as well as from Russia and Eastern Europe, South America, and Ethiopia have kept Israel’s Jewish population growing. Under Israel’s law of return, any Jew can easily become an Israeli citizen.
In the decades since its founding, Israel has fought several wars with its Arab neighbors, and battled Palestinian uprisings and terror attacks.
Today, Arab Israelis have a different legal status from the 350,000 Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, the 2.5 million who live in the Palestinian Authority-administered West Bank, and the 1.9 million who live in the blockaded Gaza Strip under the rule of Hamas, which the US and several other Western countries have designated a terrorist organization.
Those populations of Palestinians are technically stateless. This means that, for instance, Palestinians in East Jerusalem can’t vote in Israeli national elections or obtain Israeli passports, among other restrictions. For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, it means that major parts of their lives are controlled by Israel — a country they have no direct voice in.
Arab Israelis, on the other hand, are citizens of Israel and therefore, at least in theory, have access to the same passports, elections, education, health care, infrastructure, and security as Jewish Israelis.
But while they certainly enjoy more rights than Palestinians in East Jerusalem, who in turn have it better than Palestinians in the West Bank, who have it far better than Palestinians in Gaza, Arab Israelis say that since the state’s founding, in practice they have not been afforded the same rights as Jewish Israelis. This is one reason why many Arab Israelis refer to themselves as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, has documented .. https://www.acri.org.il/en/category/arab-citizens-of-israel/arab-minority-rights/ .. entrenched discrimination and socioeconomic differences in “land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, and education.” More than half the poor families in Israel are Arab, and Arab municipalities are the poorest in Israel, according to ACRI.
For Arab Israelis, then, the new nation-state law is merely the culmination of years of institutional discrimination. Only now the discrimination is officially enshrined in Israel’s basic law — the country’s constitutional equivalent.
Here’s what the new law actually says
It’s worth breaking down the three parts of the law and examining each one individually to get a better sense of what the law actually says, and what it all means:
1) “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
This declaration doesn’t just say that Israel is the historic homeland of Jews, which is a core part of Zionist ideology .. https://www.vox.com/cards/israel-palestine/zionism .. and the argument for the Jewish state’s existence in what’s now Israel. Instead, this goes further to unequivocally state that Jews — and only Jews — have the exclusive right to “self-determination” within Israel.
In other words, only Jews have the right to determine what kind of state and society they live under. Which means that by default, non-Jews — such as Palestinian citizens of Israel, some of whom are Muslim and some of whom are Christian — don’t have that same right.
Supporters of this declaration say that Jews have the right to a place of their own just like other people have, and that enshrining this principle in the law is necessary to ensure that Israel remains under Jewish control.
Critics, on the other hand, say this measure is undemocratic and essentially enshrines two separate classes of citizens: Jews, and everyone else. Some even liken it to the strict racial segregation in South Africa under apartheid, in which the indigenous black African population was ruled by a colonial regime based on white supremacy.
2) “Hebrew is the language of the state,” while the Arabic language “has a special status in the state.”
Arabic is widely spoken by Palestinians in Israel, as well as by some Jewish Israelis with roots in Arab countries. Yet the assumption in Israel has long been that you need to know Hebrew to get a good education and job, and to be able to interact with official government bureaucracies, which largely conduct business only in Hebrew.
Arabic’s “special status” under the new law ensures that some things, like road signs, will remain in both languages.
But Arab Israelis say that stripping Arabic of its official status is meant to erase their identities and histories. They also say it will put them at an economic disadvantage, because Hebrew is often not taught well in schools in Arab Israeli communities.
3) The law mandates that the “state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development,” without specifying where.
This clause, interestingly, has angered both the law’s supporters and its opponents. The former say it doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t specify Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
This is a fundamental issue for many religious and religious nationalist Israelis. They argue that the West Bank is part of Israel, both because Israel captured the land in 1967 and because it’s part of the biblical Holy Land. And since it belongs to Israel, the argument goes, Jewish Israelis are free to build settlements — small enclaves — in the West Bank.
Most of the international community, as well as Palestinians and more than a few Israelis, disagree. They say that the West Bank belongs to a future Palestinian state, and that Israel has been illegally occupying it since it seized the territory in 1967. As such, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.
So by not specifically mentioning the West Bank, this provision in the new law walks a fine line, enshrining “Jewish settlement as a national value” without explicitly saying where those settlements might be.
Even so, opponents of this measure say it’s damaging not just with respect to West Bank settlements but also for Arab Israelis, as the law appears to create a legal right to separate Arabs from living in Jewish communities.
Supporters of the law say this is what a strong Jewish state looks like
The nation-state bill passed on July 19 with a vote of 62 to 55, after years of political debate (the law was first proposed in 2011).
Netanyahu was ecstatic.
“Today we made it law: This is our nation, language, and flag,” he said in a statement. “In recent years there have been some who have attempted to put this in doubt, to undercut the core of our being.”
In an age of hyperpopulism, where identity politics has made a resurgence as the liberal democracies of the post-World War II order face fundamental challenges from within, the nation-state law is a perfect power play for Netanyahu’s kind of nationalism — even if its actual application remains unclear.
But it’s the sentiment, rather than the specifics, that’s attracted much of the public’s attention.
Niran Dishin, a secular 24-year-old electrician and construction worker in southern Israel, told me he supports Netanyahu and the law, though he admitted that he didn’t really know the details of the legislation, as they didn’t directly impact him.
Like most Jewish Israelis, Dishin served in the Israeli Army for his compulsory duty, which he said has shaped his outlook and disenchantment about peace talks with Arabs. He is “proudly” Mizrachi, a term used to describe Jews who came from Arab countries and who have historically been marginalized by the Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, founders of Israel. Today, Mizrachim are a core Netanyahu voting bloc.
Dishin described Israel as both Jewish and democratic — but in his view of democracy, non-Jews, including Arab citizens, need to meet certain conditions to be given the same rights as him.
“This is a place of Jews,” Dishin said, citing the Bible. “I’m not saying that non-Jews can’t live here. But it’s a Jewish country. One who wants to get rights like every Jew has to give something to the country … has to prove himself.”
But critics say the law is openly discriminatory
One working day after the bill passed, members of the Druze community, a small religious and ethnic Arab minority within Israel, submitted a challenge to the law in Israel’s supreme court.
And Ihab Elbedour, a 23-year-old Palestinian with Israeli citizenship originally from a Bedouin community in the south, fundamentally disagrees with the aims of the new law.
Elbedour, a law student, said that non-Jewish citizens of Israel have long faced discrimination and this new law would make that inequality even harder to challenge. He speaks Arabic and Hebrew, and he learned the latter for school and work and from mixing with Israelis, who largely don’t speak Arabic.
“For me as an Arab, now I see myself as very limited in many things,” Elbedour said. He worried that this law would be used to kick out Palestinians from mixed Arab and Jewish villages and cities, like Beersheba, where he partially grew up. “This country is becoming more extreme against the Arab citizens and the non-Jews,” he said.
Adalah, a Palestinian-run legal center in Israel, is also planning to challenge the law. It’s using a broader human rights argument based on international laws against apartheid and Israeli legislation against racism and discrimination, said lawyer Sawsan Zaher.
“The danger of this law,” Zaher told me, is that “it could limit our ability to challenge discrimination.” She added that while Palestinian citizens of Israel already face institutional discrimination, this new law makes it much harder to challenge. “It will be justified; it will even be encouraged to discriminate against Arabs,” Zaher said.
The new law reflects a deeper political shift in Israel and abroad
Netanyahu has aligned himself with illiberal leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and has even established relations with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
In this context, the nation-state law has shone a light on the deep polarization in Israeli politics and society over the future direction of the country.
This divide was perfectly captured in a pair of images.
After the law’s passage, a lawmaker who supported it snapped a congratulatory selfie of himself, Netanyahu, and other colleagues. Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s second-leading newspaper, put it on the front page with the caption, “The selfie of the nation.”
Knesset member Oren Hazan takes a selfie with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, and MP David Bitan, right of Netanyahu, to celebrate the passing of the nation-state bill on July 19, 2018, in Jerusalem. AP Photo/Olivier Fitoussi
brooklyn13, I said you cherry picked your Arab countries.
"You're fucking kidding me, right? Let the Jews return to their homes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, from which they were expelled in the mid 20th century. "
Here's why i see saying you cherry picked is fair comment: The Arab world is re-embracing its Jews
Changing attitudes and self-interested leaders are behind a surprising religious revival
Jan 22nd 2022 | ABU DHABI
THE SLOGAN of the Houthi rebels, who control northern Yemen, is blunt. “Death to Israel, curse on the Jews,” it reads in part. So it was no shock when the group chased Jews out of its area of control. What might be surprising is where some of those Jews ended up. Yusuf Hamdi and his extended family were rescued in a mission organised by the UN, America, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2021. Mr Hamdi and company then passed up a chance to go to Israel, instead becoming the first Yemenite Jews to settle in the UAE.
Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. [..inside..]
The UAE offered inducements: a rent-free villa, fancy car and monthly welfare cheques. It is all part of an effort to seed new Jewish communities in the country. Since the government declared 2019 the year of tolerance, and officially recognised the existence of Jews in the UAE, new kosher restaurants and a Jewish centre have sprung up. During the festival of Hanukkah last year the state erected large menorahs in city squares (pictured). It plans to open a state-financed synagogue later this year. “Jews are back in the Middle East,” says Edwin Shuker, an Iraqi Jew who fled to Britain, but resettled in Dubai last year.
From Morocco to the Gulf, a surprising number of Arab countries are welcoming back Jews and embracing their Jewish heritage. The reasons vary. The failures and excesses of Arab nationalism and Islamism have forced many countries to rethink chauvinist dogmas. Modernising autocrats have jettisoned communal tropes and pursued multicultural agendas. And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict .. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/05/27/how-the-israeli-palestinian-peace-process-is-failing .. is no longer seen as a priority in the region.“The Arab world has too many problems to still care about Palestine,” says Kamal Alam, an expert on Syria and its Jewish diaspora. “Instead they begrudgingly look at Israel and Jews as models for running a successful country that feeds itself without oil.”
Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, more Jews lived in the rest of the Arab world than in Palestine. At least a quarter of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. So was Iraq’s beauty queen in 1947. But after the creation of Israel and its displacement of Palestinians, Arab rulers turned on their Jewish subjects. Many were stripped of their citizenship and their property. State media and school textbooks promoted anti-Semitism, and the sermons of Muslim preachers fanned the flames. Arab states chased away all but a few thousand of the region’s non-Israeli Jews.
In recent years, though, the mood has drastically changed. Most Arabs have no memory of the big Arab-Israeli wars of last century. Milder opinions have been encouraged by leaders who see the Jewish state as a potential trade partner .. https://www.economist.com/business/2021/01/25/emirati-and-israeli-bosses-cannot-wait-to-do-business .. and ally against Iran, and who seek more acceptance in the West. The rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for example, host multicultural gatherings and often muzzle clerics who step out of line. Sympathetic portrayals of Jews have appeared in Arab films and TV shows; documentaries have explored the region’s Jewish roots. Some Arab universities have opened departments of Jewish history. Such is the change in attitude that when four Arab countries—Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the UAE—agreed to normalise relations with Israel in 2020, there were no big protests.
Saudi Arabia has not formally made peace with Israel. But the kingdom—once one of the world’s most closed and intolerant countries—now welcomes Jews, even Israelis (if they are travelling on foreign passports). Hebrew can be heard at fairs and festivals. An Israeli psychic performed at a recent royal party. Anti-Jewish calumnies have been culled from Saudi textbooks. To the consternation of some, an Israeli rabbi called Jacob Herzog is a frequent visitor to Riyadh, the capital. He sits in cafés wearing ultra-Orthodox garb and distributes prayer books. Sometimes he posts pictures of himself dancing with merchants in the bazaar. “Jews used to be afraid of saying they were Jews in the kingdom,” says Mr Herzog, who calls himself the chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia. “Now we’re getting embedded.”
This goes hand in hand with Muhammad bin Salman’s push to attract tourists and investment .. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/the-reinvention-of-the-saudi-economy-is-going-slower-than-planned/21806192 . The crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia has defied the clerics by sponsoring archaeological digs of Jewish sites in the hopes of one day attracting Jewish sightseers. In November an Israeli opened Habitas, a luxury hotel in Al Ula, an ancient rock city. Prince Muhammad has located one of his pet projects, a planned $500bn high-tech city called Neom, on the kingdom’s north-west coast—the better to attract Israeli expertise, say his advisers. “Saudis are becoming closer to Jews than to Palestinians and Lebanese,” says Sultan al-Mousa, the author of a bestselling Saudi novel about a Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire.
In Egypt the government of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is renovating Jewish cemeteries and what was once the biggest synagogue in the Middle East. This may, in part, be an effort to charm America, which gives Egypt heaps of aid. Elsewhere, the motives are clearer. The blood-soaked regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is restoring synagogues and has reached out to the many Syrian Jews in New York, hosting a delegation of them in Damascus. “Syria is engaging with its Jewish exiles in order to buff up its image as a protector of religious minorities and to connect with communities who might possibly give it some political leverage in Washington at a time when it has very little of it,” says David Lesch of Trinity University in Texas.
Mizrahi Jews from Israel are also driving change in the region. With roots in the Middle East, many of them feel marginalised in Israel, where schools tend to focus on European Jewish history. Large numbers of Mizrahim have gone to Morocco .. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2017/11/02/moroccos-little-idyll-of-jewish-muslim-coexistence , some hoping to build a new housing complex for Jews in Marrakech. Others pack dozens of flights each week between Tel Aviv and Dubai. Those who stay put are more open about their heritage. In contrast to their grandparents, who listened to Umm Kulthum, an Egyptian diva, in secret, young Mizrahim blast Arabic music in public. In 2015 three sisters of Yemenite origin released Israel’s first Arabic chart-topper. “Coldness is turning to curiosity about the region,” says Liel Maghen, who runs the Centre for Regional Initiatives, a think-tank in Jerusalem. “There’s an Arabisation of Israeli culture.”
Some take a cynical view of all the bonhomie. “I’ll imprison you [Palestinians] at checkpoints. And then take a selfie in [Dubai’s] towers,” croons Noam Shuster-Eliassi, an Israeli comedienne, in her satirical song “Dubai, Dubai” (which is in Arabic). Others fear Jews could be targeted in the event of a popular backlash against the region’s despots. But the trajectory of Morocco suggests that the improvement in relations could endure. The kingdom began reaching out decades ago. Jews of Moroccan origin are able to reclaim their citizenship. The country has a Jewish museum and a new Jewish study centre and has restored dozens of old Jewish sites, notes Avraham Moyal, a rabbi of Moroccan descent. “We’ve smashed the taboo.” ¦
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Welcome back"
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