[Marxism] The Last Jews of Libya

[Louis Proyect]

On June 9th, a few days after Obama made his appeal to Muslims in Cairo, 
André Aciman wrote an op-ed piece in the N.Y. Times that tried to 
balance the expulsion of Palestinians with that of Jews from Arab countries:

"The president never said a word about me. Or, for that matter, about 
any of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the 
Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in 
the 20th century. With all his references to the history of Islam and to 
its (questionable) “proud tradition of tolerance” of other faiths, Mr. 
Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been 
living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first 
victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world.

"Nor did he bother to mention that with this flight and expulsion, 
Jewish assets were — let’s call it by its proper name — looted. Mr. 
Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never 
recover. My mother’s house, my father’s factory, our life in Egypt, our 
friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not 
just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but 
also by the things we call our own. Take away our things and something 
in us dies. Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed 
my father. He didn’t die right away; it took four decades of exile to 
finish him off."

Although it is entirely plausible that such things happened to Egyptian 
Jews, they did not happen to the Jews of Morocco in exactly the same 
way, at least based on the plot line of “Where are you going, Moshe?”, a 
movie I reviewed on December 12th. Despite the fact that the movie was 
directed by an Arab, there was no attempt to cover up for hostile acts 
against Jews that dovetailed with Zionist attempts to lure them to 
Israel. I wrote:

"Moroccan director Hassan Benjelloun describes how Jews were pressured 
by Zionists into emigrating to Israel in 1963, two years after the death 
of King Mohammed V left the country in an uncertain state. His film is 
set in the small village of Bejjad, where the Jews enjoy warm and 
cordial relations with their Muslim neighbors. The only threat to their 
well-being comes from an ascendant group of fundamentalists who are 
anxious to close down the only bar in town that is run by Mustapha, an 
easy-going Muslim who enjoys serving alcohol to his patrons while they 
enjoy musical performances by local talent, including Moshe, an elderly 
Jew who plays the oud and sings in his native language: Arabic.

"After Mustapha is hauled before the local sharia, he defends himself by 
referring to a Moroccan law that allows the sale of alcohol to 
non-Muslims, which Bejjad has in ample number at least for the time 
being. However, as each busload of Jews departs for Israel, Mustapha’s 
anxiety increases. His only hope is to convince Moshe to remain in 
Bejjad, a feasible project given the oud player’s affection for his 
Muslim friends and neighbors."

I was motivated to delve deeper into this subject since I had noticed 
more and more that the expulsion of the Jews had become a talking point 
of the hard-core Zionist right. They liken the “transfer” of Arab and 
Jewish populations to that which occurred after Turkish independence 
when Greeks were driven from Izmir (Alexandria) and Turks were driven 
from Greece. Or the division of India and Pakistan. Of course, what is 
missing from this formula is any recognition that Palestinians had no 
homeland like Greece or Pakistan that was the equivalent of Israel. 
Instead, they ended up in refugee camps. In a feeble attempt to engage 
with this reality, the Zionists blame the Arab countries for not 
“accepting” them.

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/the-last-jews-of-libya/