As Syria Faces an Uncertain Future, Its Jewish History Resurfaces
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries uncovers the systematic displacement and cultural destruction of Syria’s Jewish population
A systemic and deliberate elimination of the vibrant 2,500-year-old Jewish community in Syria took place largely between the first decades of the 20th century and 1958. In addition to constituting a brain drain and cultural loss to the country, it carries receipts of more than $10 billion by contemporary measures in seized property, assets and holdings.
These are among the many findings in a blockbuster report released by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), a group representing Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The report is the product of six years of painstaking forensic reporting, quantifying the theft and total erasure of a multi-faceted centuries-old indigenous culture of nearly one million people that existed in the Middle East for 1,500 years before the advent of Islam.
With the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, JJAC released its first report—out of 11—as part of this historic project. Its contents are available today for the first time. The remaining reports will be released over the coming months.
According to Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie, co-president of JJAC, the publication of this data perfectly fulfills the organization’s mission.
We want to educate everybody, especially people who are the descendants of Jews from Arab countries, then the Jewish community and then everybody else. With the revelation of this history comes a recognition of the injustice that was visited upon the indigenous Syrian Jewish community
“We want to educate everybody, especially people who are the descendants of Jews from Arab countries, then the Jewish community and then everybody else,” Abadie told The Media Line. “With the revelation of this history comes a recognition of the injustice that was visited upon the indigenous Syrian Jewish community,” he added.
It’s a story that very few people know about it. What [the Syrian government] did was uproot a community that goes back to the time of the destruction of the First Temple. They uprooted a community even older than the Arabs themselves, older than Islam. And they did it with impunity. They covered up the story and never really were taken to task for what they did.
“It’s a story that very few people know about it. What [the Syrian government] did was uproot a community that goes back to the time of the destruction of the First Temple. They uprooted a community even older than the Arabs themselves, older than Islam. And they did it with impunity. They covered up the story and never really were taken to task for what they did,” Abadie asserted.
The erasure of the Syrian Jewish culture is especially dramatic. “The community was renowned for its substantial economic contributions. Jewish merchants played a role in foreign trade, managed significant banking networks, and engaged in international commerce connecting Syria with Baghdad, Persia, and India,” states the report.
However, from the 1930s onward, the Jews’ situation in Syria was imperiled by Arab nationalist movements that were targeting the local Jewish community. This took the form of “fascist-inspired movements, the emergence of Nazi-style youth groups, increasing physical attacks, and growing antisemitic rhetoric,” states the report.
The post-World War II era saw the most aggressive persecution, including comprehensive property confiscation, severe movement restriction, systematic economic marginalization, violent incidents, and government-sanctioned harassment.
“The post-World War II era saw the most aggressive persecution, including comprehensive property confiscation, severe movement restriction, systematic economic marginalization, violent incidents, and government-sanctioned harassment,” according to the report.
The report’s 94-page Historical and Economic Analysis of Syria’s Jewish community details the researchers’ scope and methodology in uncovering and documenting seized assets; included is a breakdown of economic losses by category, such as rural assets, urban assets, and valuation of personal property and moveable assets. It also explains how the present-day valuations were calculated.
Born in Lebanon, Abadie is the son of Syrian Jews from Aleppo. “My parents suffered persecution,” he said. “They escaped Aleppo—my mother in 1948 and my father in 1950—and found safe haven in Lebanon, bribing immigration officials, train conductors,” and others along the way. But they suffered twice, he said, as they were eventually driven out of Lebanon in 1971.
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According to Abadie, Syria went into a tailspin after kicking out its Jewish population. “It is not a matter of opinion but fact,” he stated. “Bereft of creativity, money, finances and culture, what was left of Syria? Or Yemen? Or Lebanon? These countries became backward countries. They lost.”
The JJAC report recounts that the Jewish community of Syria, mainly in Damascus and Aleppo, numbered 50,000 in the early 20th century but fell to 30,000 by 1948 and 5,000, some ten years later. By 1991, only 100 Syrian Jews remained in their native land, and of those, only four Syrian Jews are believed to be living there today. The cause of this dramatic attrition was “continuous state-sponsored persecution and discriminatory policies,” according to the report.
The timing of the report is significant given the abrupt regime change in Syria, said JJAC co-president Sylvain Abitbol, who serves with Abadie.
The current narrative is that the Jews are Europeans and colonizers and that there is only one set of refugees because Jews have never been part of the landscape of the Middle East. We are coming out with a report that documents the presence of Jews in the Middle East for thousands of years.
“The current narrative is that the Jews are Europeans and colonizers and that there is only one set of refugees because Jews have never been part of the landscape of the Middle East. We are coming out with a report that documents the presence of Jews in the Middle East for thousands of years,” he told The Media Line.
The newly released report on Syria’s vanquished Jewish community is only the first in the series. It aims to prove that Jews are an indigenous people of the Middle East, having lived in the region continuously for millennia, fully 1,500 years before the advent of Islam. “Occurring in the latter part of the 20th century, the breadth and scale of the near-total displacement of Jews from eleven Muslim countries ranks among the more significant cases of mass displacement in modern history. For over 75 years, the world has ignored some 1,000,000 Jews uprooted from the totalitarian regimes, dictatorships and monarchies of Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, and Aden, as well as Iran. Today, less than 1% of those Jews remain,” states the report.
“We have been expelled from all those countries,” reiterated Abitbol, a Moroccan Jew who was forced to leave his country in 1967 at the age of 18. He went to France and then settled in Canada.
Telling the truth about the expulsion of nearly one million Jews from Arab lands does not negate the Palestinian narrative, he said. “But it does expand the lens to include the Jewish refugee saga.”
Echoing Abadie, Abitbol spoke about the losses of the Jewish communities driven out of Arab lands and the vacuum that was left behind. “We left assets, businesses, our homes, communal organizations,” he recounted. Despite the losses incurred by the Jewish community, he wishes to tell the leadership of the countries who drove out their Jews, “Look at what you’ve lost! Imagine what would have been if we stayed in your country and prospered. Look at what we did in Israel. In France. We came and built. We contributed to society. We built houses. We built back.”
The contemporary progressive argument that views Palestinian terrorism as an inevitable outcome of the establishment of the State of Israel is countered by the example of Jews like Abitbol, who were expelled and went on to excel in their adopted countries, eschewing vengeance.
Did we scream? No. Did we stay angry? No. We got an education and worked hard. We are the People of the Book. One of the only things we were able to take with us was our education.
Abitbol received his engineering degree, built businesses, and went on to win Canada’s coveted Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Award for contributions to his new country. “Did we scream? No. Did we stay angry? No. We got an education and worked hard. We are the People of the Book. One of the only things we were able to take with us was our education,” he said.
But even within the global Jewish community, the story of the expulsion of the Jews from Arab lands is largely unknown. The reason for this is complicated, explained Abadie. Occurring on the heels of the Holocaust, the plight of the expelled Middle Eastern Jews appeared to pale in contrast to the murder and persecution of millions of European Jews, many of whom were also arriving in the new Jewish state at the same time.
However, there are other reasons why this important narrative was suppressed internally. According to Abadie, the young State of Israel was eager to convey that the great influx of Jews from Arab lands was arriving motivated by Zionist zeal. And while this was not entirely untrue, the Zionism of the Middle Eastern Jews was spiritual and religious in nature, not political.
Our early leaders wanted to pretend that the Arab Jews were coming of their own volition, not as refugees. They believed in Zion but in the sense that they had a connection to Israel, which they understood as the land that God promised to our forefathers. They understood Zionism as part of being a Jew, part of Jewish destiny.
“Our early leaders wanted to pretend that the Arab Jews were coming of their own volition, not as refugees,” he said. “They believed in Zion but in the sense that they had a connection to Israel, which they understood as the land that God promised to our forefathers. They understood Zionism as part of being a Jew, part of Jewish destiny.”
And Israel was the country at that time that was opening her arms to them.
In fact, so stubbornly did the Israeli government resist embracing the truth that it took JJAC 10 years to convince it, in 2014, to recognize the Middle Eastern refugees by creating Yom HaPlitim, Jewish Refugee Day, which is now observed every year on November 30.
The funder for JJAC’s ambitious project is anonymous. In addition to the timeliness of forensics reporting on the seizure of assets and property of Syria’s historic Jewish community, there is an important lesson to be learned from the true, unvarnished history and resilience of Syrian Jews whose worldwide community, numbering more than 100,000, now live primarily in the United States and Israel.
One of those lessons is national pride.
Noam Harary is an independent film director and actor who lives in Brooklyn. “Syrian is my primary signifier; it is how I identify, it is how I am portrayed, it is the food I lean to, it is the songs I like, the music I sing, the accents in my synagogue,” he told The Media Line.
Harary’s father, Ralph, was a Syrian Jew born in Brooklyn. His family lived in Aleppo until 1909, when his grandfather came to the United States and worked to bring his family over. His mother, Miriam, is Israeli. While Harary also feels a kinship with his Israeli heritage, his heart and soul are Syrian, he stated. He said that growing up, he felt “Arab first, Jewish second.” He laughed, considering how radically the world has changed in just a couple of decades since that time, and added that such a statement sounds absurd today.
It was only later in life that I started to understand that being a Syrian Jew was second-class. The expulsion was slow and deliberate and deliberately ambiguous. We were purposely made to feel uncomfortable. There were anti-Jewish riots. It was hard to do business. We experienced Pharaoh’s hardened heart.
Harary gets emotional as he speaks about his father’s heritage and his own and his family’s history. “It was only later in life that I started to understand that being a Syrian Jew was second-class,” he explained. “The expulsion was slow and deliberate and deliberately ambiguous. We were purposely made to feel uncomfortable. There were anti-Jewish riots. It was hard to do business. We experienced Pharaoh’s hardened heart,” he said, using a biblical analogy. “We were told, ‘You cannot leave my land!’ and then ‘Get out of my land!”
The expulsion of the Jews of Syria was indeed a nakba of sorts, Harary said, using the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that Palestinians commonly use for the displacement of Palestinian refugees during Israel’s War of Independence. “The Arab lands kicked out 1 million Jews over the last 100 years. It is remarkable as a Syrian Jew to understand that.”
But emphasizing what Abitbol said, Harary described how Syrian Jews built vibrant communities of their own in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, in Deal, New Jersey, and elsewhere. As an adult, he understands the once-annoying instruction Syrian parents gave their children to marry only other Syrian Jews to preserve their culture in the diaspora.
When asked what made him proudest to be a Syrian Jew, Harary responded instantly: “We are Jews from the cornerstone of civilization. Jews existed [in Syria] for centuries. As a people who are told we have to go home, I find it hard to understand what that means when my people were expelled from our home. I am proud of my Arabic heritage. I am proud of my Arabic food. We’re spicy people, the Latinos of the Middle East.”
