Israel for the first time marked a national day of remembrance for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were displaced from Arab countries. In June, the Knesset adopted a law designating Nov. 30 as an annual, national day of commemoration for the 850,000 Jewish refugees who were displaced from Arab countries and Iran in…
Lily Padula “There is no asylum seeker problem in Israel.” So said Netanyahu when, following his recent address to members of the Jewish Federations of North America in New York, one of the attendees raised the issue of African asylum-seekers. “They are illegal job immigrants,” the Israeli prime minister said, adding: “Asylum seekers can come…
A memorial to the more than 13,700 Jews who fled Europe to safety in Shanghai during the Holocaust was unveiled at the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum. The memorial was unveiled Tuesday in a public ceremony, according to local news reports. It includes a statue of six Jewish refugees, symbolizing the 6 million Jews killed by…
Moroccan Jews living in the Jewish ghetto in Marrakesh circa 1955 / Getty Images I wish I could cheer the latest bill approved by Israel’s Knesset. I should, theoretically, be happy about it — the new law is designed to address the issues of people like me. And yet, when I read about it, I…
(Haaretz) — Nathan Weinstock hadn’t planned to write a book about the Jews of Arab lands. But when he looked for information about the modern history of Moroccan or Iraqi Jewry, he was surprised to discover that there was no book in French that told the story of the elimination of the Jewish communities in…
Guy Adam In the fall of 2010, I had recently arrived in Tel Aviv and had started my New Israel Fund Fellowship at ASSAF, a humanitarian aid organization helping asylum seekers and refugees in Israel. I met Guy around then at the ASSAF offices. He spoke English, so I explained to him that I was…
Yemeni Jews get instruction at a center for immigrants in Israel. / Getty Images As the Israeli-Palestinian peace process grinds on, and the issue of Palestinian refugees continues to be a sticking point, some Jewish groups are arguing that these aren’t the only refugees we should be considering as the parties move forward in negotiations….
(Haaretz) — Hassan Shakur has made a deliberate decision not to be negative or bitter. He will be optimistic, he says, despite the horrific “times of misery,” as he refers to them, in his homeland, Darfur. Despite a gruesome experience in Cairo and then the escape to Israel. And despite the racism he has encountered in…
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